"You were killing her…"

Picard's voice, this time, and everyone jumped, except Data, who merely tilted his head to see better around Riker's shoulder. The captain lay on his couch with his eyes still closed, lips slightly parted and a gathering frown pulling at his brow. For a moment Riker thought he'd imagined the words, because Picard showed no further sign of consciousness or movement, but the doctor hurried to her patient's side and examined the readouts.

"Looks like I didn't give you nearly enough," she said, almost scolding, and Picard's almost inaudible response:

"Never enough, Doctor…"

His hand waved her away, moving slow with sleep.

"Will…"

Riker, summoned by that whispered word, was at the couch side in two short strides. Picard regarded him through slitted eyes. "What I saw," he said hoarsely, "was monstrous. Data was strangling Lieutenant M'Reva. She was dead in seconds."

"I did not kill the lieutenant, sir," said Data, quietly, from his own couch where Geordi had resumed repairs on his battered face. His expression was as usual, serene: but Riker fancied he caught a hint of mournfulness in the yellow eye. Funny how he does that. For someone without emotions, he sure is expressive.

But Picard was waving his hand again, dismissive. "I know that, Mister Data, I know that. Because when you stood in front of me and knocked me down, you were also behind me…"

And really (said Picard, his voice almost as querulous as Data's over some syllables and with Beverly Crusher trying to ply him with medication as he spoke) if the cold-blooded murder of the Caitian had been unbelievable, that was as

nothing to the assertion that Data could be in two places at once.

"Mister Data, stand down!"

For a moment (a horrible moment, to be sure, and a convincing one) Picard jumped to the obvious conclusion. Lore was back, somehow, and here on Hitchcock. Data's entirely psychotic brother was responsible for this, up to and including the sudden shift in weather and disappearance of a whole colony. Except -

- except that it just wasn't Lore. Didn't move like him, didn't stand like him. Picard had twice been exposed to the Soong brothers in the same room together and he had been struck by how poorly, in the end, Lore impersonated his brother. The resemblance was purely physical: the two androids were too different in bearing and personality. In the same way as you know a close family member if you only saw the back of their head in a crowd, Picard knew Data when he saw him. And the two androids he'd seen, one holding aloft a dying woman and the other standing half-swathed in sand - they were both Data, he was quite sure of it. He stopped, turned to stare more intently at the one he'd half-glimpsed in the overheated fog during his aborted run toward the scene of murder before him.

The second Data stood there in the gale, his lips parted in that delicate expression of surprise that in a human would have been a yell of shock. Then he spoke, mouth forming the word captain and something more. The sound was whipped away by the much louder wind and another noise Picard couldn't recognise, like half a ton of wet cement being ripped up from the ground and hurled at a wall.

Abruptly, that second Data dropped from view, buried under what looked like half of Hitchcock's weight in earth and rock that descended from apparently nowhere. Picard fruitlessly shouted "No! Data!" once again, and spat out a mouthful of grit before turning back to check the other.

The Data with M'Reva in his grip was still there, but now he was casting the body of the Caitian aside and reaching for someone else, hidden by the whirling sand. Blood added to the red atmosphere, a fine spray making gory pebbledash across the captain's face.

"Data!"

Picard strained to see, but before he could clearly make anything out, something misshapen and bleeding skidded out of the maelstrom as if aimed by a catapult.

"Ensign Aliforth," said Picard slowly, and aimed a weary glower at Dr Crusher as she pressed a further cocktail of drugs to his upper arm. "Doctor, you will please desist!"

"I certainly will not," said Beverly, utterly without ire. The captain focussed beyond her, beyond Riker, and said:

"Mister Data…"

"Sir?"

The lines of Picard's face relaxed slightly, expression softening. "Are you all right?" he asked, and Riker almost smiled in pure appreciation of the man. That's what makes a good captain.

"He's gonna be, Captain," said Geordi, giving Data's head a short push to the right so he could better apply the fresh layer of synthetic skin. Data gave Picard a brief nod (Geordi tutted) and affirmed:

"I am - gonna be."

"Good. Now. The timeframe I have just described for Commander Riker. Repeat it from your memory records, please."

The sudden surge of earth and rock had blindsided even the android in the clogging sandstorm, knocked him off his feet and swept him under like a particularly vicious undertow. The force had been considerable, far more than would be expected from a simple earth slide. The sensation was similar to the pull of gravity. Data was effectively deaf, blind and immobilised within microseconds. His internal alarms screamed at him, letting him know that the skin and primary layer of sensors on one side of his face had been flayed off during the incident. He was still not certain as to the cause -

("Speculate," ordered Picard)

Speculation: as there had been no discernable raised ground nearby to produce such a slippage through natural gravity or tectonic motion, and the storm, while fierce, had not been of sufficient strength to lift chunks of rock, then there must have been an autonomous action to cause the movement of the surface of the planet.

("Muhammed didn't need to go to the mountain?" offered Riker, and Data, after a moment's accessing, brightened and nodded.)

The mountain had undoubtedly come to Muhammed, or at least to Data, who was comprehensively buried in it. The weight was immense. Encased in earth, Data flexed his fingers with some effort, finding other items buried with him. His mind catalogued them at speed as he used them to rapidly haul himself out of his predicament. Rocks. A broken bowl. A bone, unidentifiable by touch. A metal pipe, approximately twenty inches -

("Approximately? Data, you must be ill.")

He came out of the morass still clutching the pipe, and immediately saw Picard almost on top of him, the body of Ailforth sprawled to one side, and Picard was…

"I did the only thing I could think to do," Picard interrupted, and Geordi, grateful for the opportunity, forced Data to hold his head still and his mouth shut as he worked. "I attacked the thing."

Riker was still somewhat lost in contemplation of the fact that a few minutes on Hitchcock seemed like hours of explanation. He leant into Picard, almost accusatory in his concern. "You attacked Data?"

Picard was already holding up a finger, forestalling.

"I attacked the thing I thought was Data, Number One."