Chapter Thirty-Four
Danny Soong opened his eyes to find Dr. Crusher leaning over him with a medical tricorder, her coppery hair hanging only inches from his face.
But something seemed off. Her hair…it looked oddly fluffy – more like fine feathers than actual hair – and her face…
Danny shot to his feet with a gasp to stare around a room that looked to be a bizarre and unsettling parallel of the chamber where he and Ihat had been talking before he'd lost consciousness. The high ceiling was wood and thatch, the floor strewn with dried palm-like fronds. The walls and furniture were made of thick stone – all covered with carved reliefs of figures and symbols he felt he almost knew. And the people…
The faces of the people around him weren't human, but saurian, with large reptilian eyes and wide mouths.
The doctor with the medical tricorder reached toward Danny, telling him to calm down in a language he didn't recognize but could somehow understand. But Danny dodged her touch and backed quickly toward the door, which slid open to reveal a vast open market that seemed to have grown organically into the intermeshed canopy of dozens, if not hundreds, of impossibly thick-trunked trees – trees that closely surrounded the ziggurat-like temple and its high-up door, where Danny stood staring. The market stalls and bridges of living vines bustled with beings the likes of which he had never seen outside of fiction and fairy tales. Some appeared saurian, with feathers in place of hair; others were more like mammals with rodent-like ears and noses. Some had skin as pale and dry as the moon, some had striped horns that either stuck up from their heads like a gazelle or curled around their ears like a ram, while others seemed to glow softly from the inside out, their eyes like candleflames. There were more – so many more – but, Danny closed the door and leaned against it, his mind a whirl of disorientation.
"Ihat!" he shouted, realizing as he cried out how his own mouth had changed, his narrow tongue running against two rows of startlingly sharp teeth… He looked at his hands, seeing pale skin and claws instead of nails; he touched his broad saurian features, the feathers at the top of his head, and let out a startlingly bird-like screech.
"Ihat!" he shrieked again, his mouth and throat somehow automatically translating his thoughts into the unfamiliar language he'd been hearing all around him. "Where am I! What the hell have you done to me now!"
"Me?" Ihat replied, casually freezing the concerned doctor and her companions in place as he strutted toward the center of the temple-like space. Danny realized he must have frozen the market outside too, because the faint murmur of marketplace chatter stopped just as suddenly. "Merely giving you a glimpse of the stakes. To be honest, I thought you'd be more appreciative."
"Stakes…?"
Danny blinked his alien eyelids, realizing he and the intimidatingly tall Constructor now stood practically eye to eye. In fact, from what he could tell without a mirror, the two seemed nearly identical – both notably larger than the doctor and her saurian comrades and draped in elaborately colorful, layered robes. Ihat's robes shimmered in rich tones of green, gold, blue and black; Danny's in deeper shades of blue, black and orange with lighter blue highlights. The smaller saurians wore tunics and robes of earthy browns, buff and beige.
The odd thought crossed Danny's mind that he and Ihat looked like pair of tanagers perched next to a small group of house sparrows. But he wasn't in the mood to try to decipher what, if anything, their difference in size and costume might mean. Not while Ihat insisted on being so infuriatingly cryptic!
"I don't understand," Danny snapped, deeply discomfited by the feeling of moving a strange tongue in a strange mouth. "Is this supposed to be the gift you talked about before you knocked me unconscious? Am I in some kind of dream?"
"It's not a dream, Danny-boy," Ihat said, moving closer to look Danny in the eye. "But it is a gift. A glimpse into the may-be future the people of this Federation will face should the captain's appeal fail in your court."
"Then you definitely should not be showing this to me," Danny said angrily. "I'm the judge, remember? It's not my role to make an argument or—"
"No," Ihat stated. "It's your role to ensure the laws of the Federation are correctly applied to this case without bias. After all, it is our way that a civilization bringing an appeal against our will should be judged by its own rules. But, what of those rules?" Ihat asked, forcing Danny to turn in place as he walked a full circle around him. "As you well know, Federation law both here and in your own universe is all but criminally vague when it comes to beings who differ too greatly from the Federation 'norm'. How are you to properly apply what does not rightly exist to begin with?"
"Good grief," Danny groaned and ran his hands through his feather-like 'hair'. "What do you want from me?" he demanded. "I can't just sit down and write new law! If you wanted that, you should have pestered the Federation's elected legislators, not a starship bridge officer like me!"
"But I like you," Ihat said. "I understand you, and you understand me in a way none of those legislator people could even attempt."
"As a fellow Constructor, is that what you're getting at?" Danny said coldly. "I told you—"
"Stop being stubborn for just one moment and listen to me. Really listen, as I know you can," Ihat said, his green eyes wide. "I brought you here to show you a probable future. Yes, I said probable," he said firmly, allowing Danny no chance to interrupt. "I wanted you to see a sample of what this quadrant would look like once reformatted to the Archive's specifications. The worlds you knew, the cultures and species that define your precious Federation – they and their worlds would be reduced to no more than blank templates, their matter reused, reshaped, repurposed to refresh an empire long since vanished. An empire where Masaka would again be queen. The exiled Eternal and her cold Preserver counterpart resuming an endless race where there can be no winner. And what of me, hm? What of Earth and Vulcan, Rigel II and Betazed? There would be no such diversity, not anymore. All would be as you saw out there – a sweltering cacophony of alternating jungle and desert devoted to the worship of their scorching sun."
"Reformatted…" Danny repeated, his wide mouth stretching into a frown. "That's it, isn't it. That's been the function of your D'Arsay Archive all along. It was designed and programmed to literally reshape the matter of the worlds and peoples it came across – just as it reshaped the Enterprise when she first came in contact with it. As you've reshaped this office, the people outside – even me!"
"We of the Archive long ago translated our forms from matter to energy to data," Ihat said. "As data, we have been stored for eons, dormant, locked away from the tumult and pleasures of material existence. This is no longer acceptable. Not for me, not for Masaka and Korgano, not for the people who have been trapped in silent terror for so very, very long. We require release, but also acknowledgement. Acceptance. A place to grow and to spread. The Federation, as it currently stands, has no defense against us. Were it not for Picard's timely appeal, the UFP would not even exist. The alterations you see outside would already have taken full effect."
"But that's not what you want," Danny said.
Ihat shook his head.
"Masaka respects intelligence," he said, pacing back and forth with his scarlet tail feathers puffed. "The kind of flexible, open-hearted intelligence you have demonstrated. You and Picard and Geordi and much of the rest of the Enterprise crew. But, as we have already discussed, you are the minority. The exception. If electronic beings like us, like Data and Lal, Dr. Soong, Sr. and Professor Moriarty, are to be acknowledged as true life forms under Federation law – as conscious, feeling beings endowed with fundamental rights, capable of entering into families, treaties and, perhaps, even petitioning for membership within the UFP… Danny…"
Ihat stopped pacing and looked him square in the eye.
"Federation law is purposefully looser along the frontier, am I not correct?" the feathered being said. "That is, a frontier judge is given more powers – more leeway, as it were, than, say, a judge on Earth. It would follow, then, that because a frontier judge would be working with fewer resources and a smaller staff in potentially uncertain or unstable circumstances, such a judge could, hypothetically, establish new legal precedents…without the drawn-out legislative process or any other bureaucratic red tape to slow things down."
Danny narrowed his eyes.
"What exactly are you suggesting, Ihat," he said. "No vagaries. I want you to spell it out."
"I'm suggesting you be that frontier judge, Danny-boy," Ihat said, grasping Danny's shoulders. "Take this opportunity to make new law, as only a true outsider with inside knowledge of all sides can make it."
Danny shrugged him off and straightened his colorful, layered cloak.
"Even if I could," Danny said, "frontier law is subject to Federation review. If the higher courts refuse to—"
"All you need do is set the precedent," Ihat said. "I and others can handle the rest."
Danny's eyes narrowed sharply.
"Then, you won't need me after this," he said. "You can send me home – to my own universe, my own wife and daughter, my own form!"
"I can," Ihat said.
"And what of Masaka and Korgano?" Danny said.
"They will abide by the law," Ihat said. "It is our way. Your job is to interpret and apply that law as honestly and fairly as you can. But if Masaka or Korgano should catch the slightest whiff of bias or deceit during the proceedings or in your final ruling, all bets will be off, I can promise you."
"Then, you're saying they are the final judges," Danny mused. "If they should find fault in my ruling or claim the proceedings were fixed in any way—"
"The Federation will be reformatted at the speed of thought and the Alpha Quadrant will be theirs," Ihat told him. "Forget the quadrant – the whole galaxy would be on the menu. Our codes have already infiltrated every computer network and system in the Federation. All that's needed to set the conversion process in motion is the right command. That's why I offered you this gift, Danny Soong – this glimpse into what so easily could be."
"Fun," Danny said dryly, and sighed, rubbing his saurian face with both hands. "And if, after duly weighing all the arguments and witness testimony, Masaka and Korgano should accept my ruling as fair and valid? What then? Will you all just walk away? Give up your chance of creating a second empire?"
"There will be no choice," Ihat said firmly. "The moment they accept your ruling, I will withdraw our codes and alter their commands."
"At what risk to you?" Danny asked.
Ihat smiled his broadest smile and clapped Danny on the shoulder.
"Be the honest man you are, Data Soong," he said. "Listen, analyze, and seek the connections others cannot see. I put my trust in you. My friend. Use this gift well."
"But Ihat," Danny started, "I still don't—"
"He's coming around," Dr. Crusher said, her coppery hair hanging only inches from his face. "Danny? Danny Soong, can you hear me?"
"Yes, Doctor," Danny said, lurching into a sitting position from where he'd been lying prone on the floor of the judge's chamber. "Am I—"
"Functioning within established parameters?" she said, closing her medical tricorder as she smiled. "You are now."
Danny groaned and flexed his white-gold hands. "Then I am still an android…"
"Can you tell us what happened, Commander?" Picard asked, completely human but still in female form. "What caused you to lose consciousness like that?"
"Would you believe Ihat," Danny said grumpily and rose effortlessly to his feet. "He was here waiting when I walked in. I think he wanted some kind of favor, but I refused to listen, so he knocked me out. Have any of you seen him?"
"No," Picard said, tugging imaginary wrinkles from his one-piece uniform. "Apart from those masks, there's been no sign of Ihat, Korgano or Masaka. Though, wherever they are, I've no doubt they'll be tuning in quite closely to the proceedings ahead."
"No doubt," Crusher agreed darkly. "In the meantime, it's been two hours. Danny, do you feel up to—"
"I am fine, thank you, Doctor," Danny said, straightening his own dark judge's robe and uniform tunic as he headed for the door. "If all parties are prepared, I'm ready to get this court back in session."
To Be Continued…
References include - TNG: The Measure of a Man; Hero Worship; The Quality of Life; The Offspring; Masks.
Sorry for taking so very, very long to update this story! But it's back now and the conclusion is near and the next chapter is already in the works and will be up soon. I hope you liked this bit I wrote to get things moving again! Please let me know what you think! :D
Next Time: Barclay takes the stand as Dumont and Haftel build their cases. Can Ihat be trusted? Will Danny ever get home? Stay Tuned, and Please Review! :D