"Most unusual," Data said again. "My head and limbs are throbbing in a most unpleasant way. I feel very weak and tired."

"Are you sick, Data?" La Forge said.

"Sick? Accessing." Data made the usual jerky reading motions with his head. He stopped suddenly, a pained look on his face and a hand to his temple. He said, "Sick. Ill. Ailing. Disabled. Not up to snuff. I have no way of knowing if this describes my condition, never having felt this way before. But it is a logical working hypothesis. I do seem to be not up to snuff." He smiled, evidently felt pain, and touched his temple again. "Captain, may I be excused?"

"If you were any other crew member, I'd send you to sickbay. What do you suggest, Mr. La Forge?"

"It does seem to be an engineering problem. And though I'm not a doctor, I doubt if what he has is contagious to other members of the crew. Come on down to Engineering, Data."

"Very well. This is most interesting. Ow."

"Ensign Crusher, would you see that Mr. Data arrives in Engineering safely."

"Aye, sir."

They got Data to his feet, and he and Wesley shuffled out together.

When the door had closed, Picard said, "It seems likely that Data was infected by the main computer."

"It seems that way."

"Is this related somehow to our holodeck problem?"

"You better hope not, sir. If we have Boogeymen in our mainframe, we are in big trouble."

"Exactly how big?"

"I don't know at the moment. But Data being sick could be a break for us."

"How so?"

"It gives us two views of the problem rather than just one. The parallax could give us a clue or two."

"I want some answers, Mr. La Forge. Or at the very least, better questions. One hour in the conference lounge."

"Aye, sir," said La Forge as he quickly left the room.

Picard looked around. In the entire Federation only three or four cases of mental illness were reported every year. Not one case of computer mental illness had been reported in many years. If the mainframe of the Enterprise was the statistical anomaly, Picard was not confident that La Forge's ideas about parallax would save them.

Down in Engineering Wesley deposited Data in a chair, then sat across from him and watched. It was odd to see Data, who never got tired and normally had the posture of a machine, with his elbows on the table, slumping. He touched his forehead and winced occasionally. Yet Data's skin color was the same as it always was and he didn't sweat. Wesley guessed that he probably didn't have a temperature. He had an operating temperature, but that wasn't the same thing.

Wesley said, "How do you feel?"

Data looked puzzled for a moment and then said, "Generally, with my hands, but I have sensors all over my body. Did I say something funny, Wesley?"

Wesley shook his head and said, "Sometimes I think that pretending you don't know what humor is is the funniest thing about you."

Data didn't understand that, and Wesley knew it was pointless to try explaining it, so he just forged on with another question. He said, "What is your condition?"

"Much the same as it was before. Tell me about being sick."

Wesley considered the question. Most ailments that were common before the twenty-third century had been eradicated. Still, germs, viruses, and other afflictions mutated constantly and were sometimes accidentally carried from one outpost of the Federation to another. People even occasionally caught cold. Wesley suspected that Data knew all this and really wanted to know how humans reacted to being sick. Data was a great one for playacting. His rendition of Sherlock Holmes was not the end. The drama group he directed was famous all over the ship.

Wesley said, "I had a cold once."

"Cold? As in heatless, chilly, nippy, frigid-"

"No, Data. A cold. A viral infection causing you to sneeze and cough and have a fever. Nothing really hurts, but you get bored with sneezing and coughing, and that's after the infection makes you tired to begin with."

"I see that being the son of a doctor has had its effect on you."

Wesley was pleased by that, but he said, "Everybody knows this stuff, Data. But the important part as far as you're concerned, is that when you have a cold you lie in bed with tissues to sneeze into and all your favorite books and a portable computer terminal and maybe some games you can play by yourself and a gla.s.s of water and some cough drops."

"Sounds cluttered."

"Maybe if you were well it would be, but if you're sick, it's just comfortable."

"I see. Comfort is a consideration."

Wesley nodded.

"Useful information. Please excuse me," Data said and rested his head on his crossed arms.

Wesley sat there feeling helpless. If Data were human, he'd already be in sickbay. If he were just a machine, Wesley would already be poking a hyperspanner around inside him. But Data was supposed to be self-adjusting. He wasn't supposed to get sick or broken or whatever.

When La Forge emerged from the turbolift, Wesley went over to talk to him.

"How is he?" La Forge said.

"Not so good. But he's having fun with it."

"That's our Data."

They watched Data for a while. He wasn't moving. Which in Data's case meant nothing. Wesley said, "Did he catch this from the mainframe?"

"I hope not, but the evidence is pretty clear, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Does this have anything to do with my Boogeymen?"

"The diagnostics didn't find the program. But even if the Boogeyman program somehow got through, the machete program would have cleaned it out."

"That's a relief."

"You may be relieved, my boy," La Forge said as he put an arm around Wesley's shoulders and guided him toward Data, "but personally, I'd rather have Boogeymen. At least I'd know what the problem was and how to deal with it. As things are ..." He shrugged.

Data looked up as they approached and attempted to erect a smile. La Forge said, "Can I plug you in again, Data? I'd like to run a little diagnostic of my own."

"Of course," Data said. "Just what the doctor ordered."

"How about some hot chocolate?" Wesley said.

"I must remind you, Wesley, that I do not eat."

"I know that. But I've seen you mimic eating for social occasions. I just thought a cup of hot chocolate would make you feel better."

"This is part of being sick?"

"If you're lucky," La Forge said.

"Very well."

Wesley went to a food slot and said, "Hot chocolate in a cup. With a marshmallow." He grinned at Data.

"Very plush," La Forge said.

However, what came from the slot was not a steaming cup but a large platter with a red spiderlike creature lying in the center surrounded by greens and lemon wedges. Something round, soft, and purple was caught between its jaws.

"Geordi," Wesley said, very worried.

La Forge came over to look at what had come from the food slot. "Denebian Slime Devil la Tellarite," he said.

"Yeah, but I asked for hot chocolate."

Another cooked slime devil appeared on the stage, knocking the first one to the floor. And then another after that.

"Computer," La Forge called out.

"Working," the computer said.

Wesley stared at the slot in horror.

"What the h.e.l.l kind of computer voice was that?" La Forge said.

Wesley swallowed and said, "That was the voice of a Boogeyman."

They watched the food slot produce another plate of Denebian Slime Devil la Tellarite. La Forge ran for the master situation monitor while he called for his staff.

Chapter Nine.

THE MOOD IN the conference lounge was glum, and Picard saw no reason to lighten it. For the tenth time since sitting down at the head of the table, he punched the ready b.u.t.ton on his memo terminal. The Starfleet logo faded from the screen and was replaced by the word "Working." Picard said, "Report status of Enterprise systems." On the screen the words "One moment please" appeared, and then gibberish rolled across it. Picard was not surprised. He'd gotten gibberish the other nine times, too. Gibberish was the language of the day all over the ship. "Cancel," Picard said. The computer worked to the extent that the screen went blank and the Starfleet logo came up again.

Picard looked around at his senior officers and said, "Mr. La Forge, what is Mr. Data's condition?"

"He seems to be suffering from a minor breakdown of all his systems. His efficiency is down twenty-two percent, his operating temperature is up four degrees Celsius. The activity in his positronic brain is erratic, but my training is in propulsion and ships systems. If I could fix him, I'd be Dr. Soong, but I'm not."

"Can he repair himself?"

"Data seems convinced that he can. His maintenance programs act like our white blood cells; they seek out enemy code and destroy it. a.s.suming, of course, that his maintenance programs have been designed to fight this particular enemy."

"Is there a chance they haven't?"

"It's a big universe, sir."

Picard knew that La Forge was right. He nodded philosophically and said, "Dr. Crusher, do you have an opinion?"

Dr. Crusher shrugged and made a motion of dismissal. She said, "Data's an android and even further outside my specialty than he is outside Lieutenant Commander La Forge's. But I've given him every test that seems relevant. If he were human, I'd say he had the flu."

"Flu?" Riker said.

"Influenza. A group of very contagious viruses that ran rampant through human history. Sometimes the sickness caused by a virus was no worse than a bad cold. But it could kill, too." Dr. Crusher smiled. "Some early virologists called a virus bad news wrapped in protein."

Riker said, "How is Data's problem related to our computer problem?"

La Forge spoke with his hands as well as his mouth. For him, problems had shapes and sizes. He said, "It's pretty obvious that Data was contaminated when he plugged into the ship's computer to run a diagnostic. I'd say that whatever has Data down is also the cause of the problem we have with the ship's computer."

Riker said, "Then if Data's maintenance programs are able to cure him, all we have to do is load those programs into the ship's computer."

"It might work," La Forge allowed, "but we'd be taking quite a chance. First, Data's maintenance programs were designed just for him and his positronic brain. They probably won't work inside the ship's computer. Catching the flu is easy. Curing it is a much more sophisticated operation. Second, if we plug Data into the ship's computer again, he might pick up another dose of whatever it is. Next time it might be fatal."

Picard slapped the table and said, "I hope we never become desperate enough to test Mr. La Forge's theories. The fact that none of you seems to have noticed is that Mr. Data was infected twice."

"Sir?" La Forge said.

Picard realized that he and Wesley were the only ones at the table who had observed Data both plugging into the holo-computer and then into the real computer. He shared that information with the others.

Surprised, Wesley said, "Of course. Data had forgotten Professor Baldwin before Geordi ran the diagnostic on him. That's why we ran the diagnostic on him."

Riker said, "Data's second infection seems to have a different effect on him than his first."

"Another clue, Mr. La Forge?" Picard said.

La Forge thought for a moment before he admitted that it probably was. "But at this point I don't even have a good guess as to what it tells us."

Picard had confidence that La Forge would find the solution, with or without the help of Wesley and Data. But they couldn't brood about it now. Picard went on with the air of a man changing the subject. "This sounds similar to the problem we and the Yamato had with the program broadcast by the Iconian probe. Can we just turn off the ship and restart, using protected master programs?"

Mention of the Yamato made everybody thoughtful. The Yamato had been the Enterprise's sister ship. It was her destruction that had given La Forge the clue he needed to save the Enterprise.

La Forge looked uncomfortable. He lifted his open hand and tilted it from side to side. "I don't think so, sir. This time the core itself seems to be blocked."

Wesley said, "Not just protected?"

"Sure. The main core is protected by shields, triple redundant circuits, debugging programs, and some things so secret that Starfleet tells you about them only if you have a need to know. But now, it's been entirely cut off. The satellite computers that are normally coordinated by the core are now running the ship themselves. I don't know how-but as I said before, it's a big universe."