Star Trek: TNG 064: Immortal Coil

  “Things?” Soong asked skeptically.

  “People.”

  “Clones?” Soong felt both revulsion and disappointment rise up within him. All this fuss for clones?

  “No, no,” Vaslovik said. “Not clones. Not exactly. My sources claimed the machine made biosynthetic copies of humanoids. In a word: androids. That, in and of itself, is interesting, but the fascinating part is that the device would also make a copy of an organic subject's mind and embed it in the android body.”

  That seemed to get Graves's attention. “Are you serious?”

  “Very,” Vaslovik said.

  Soong quivered on the cusp of fascination and incredulity. It didn't seem possible. . . . No living civilization in this part of the galaxy possessed that kind of technological or physiological information. . . . And then it hit him. No living civilization. An archaeological expedition. “Okay,” he said. “I get it now. Fine . . . assuming that any of this is true, it leads to the question: Who would make such a thing? And why? And where did it go? And do I even want to know how you found out about it? This isn't the sort of thing they circulate in the faculty newsletter.”

  “Answering your questions in order,” Vaslovik said slyly. “I don't know who made it, not precisely, though I should think the why of it would be obvious given a little thought. That's why we came here—to learn more. Where is it now? Only Starfleet knows for sure, though I strongly suspect the pinnacles of virtue who found it subsequently destroyed it to keep it from being misused. Fortunately for us, they missed disposing of the relic we found upstairs, and never probed deeper into the planet. As for whether or not you want to know how I know all this: the answer is No, you don't want to know. And you'd be surprised how much useful information can be found in the faculty newsletter if you know how to read it.”

  “Starfleet?” Soong sputtered. He fixated on the word as soon as it was spoken. “Why would Starfleet do something like that? It's their job—”

  “Don't be naive,” Vaslovik interrupted angrily. “Starfleet's job, first and foremost, is to keep the peace, which, if you don't already know this, translates into maintaining the Federation's sovereignty. Never forget that. And starship captains are notorious for thinking with their hearts, not their heads. What they deem too dangerous, they destroy.” Vaslovik looked away and Soong heard him mutter, “And what they covet, they claim for their own.”

  “I'm not understanding this,” Soong said. “You're saying that Starfleet thought this technology was so dangerous, they destroyed it? Then, with all due respect, Professor, exactly what the hell are we doing here?”

  To Soong's surprise, the corner of Vaslovik's mouth quirked up and then he laughed. “We're doing what Starfleet should have done. We're going to learn the truth, and then decide what to do with the knowledge.”

  Soong sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “All right,” he agreed slowly. “Fine. But first, explain that.” He turned and pointed at the massive hatchway set into the cliff wall.

  From the look of it, at some point in the dim past, enough calcareous water had dripped down the cliff to form huge stalactites, but Graves and Soong had broken them away with pry bar and pick. Unfortunately, they had had no luck with the hatch itself despite several hours of exhausting attempts, both with electronic devices and brute force.

  As they watched, Graves wound up with his pry bar and swung. The bar clanged off the hatch without leaving a mark. Graves dropped the bar into the dust at his feet and let go with a curse. Soong was beginning to believe Graves was the most foul-mouthed individual he'd ever known.

  “I think,” Vaslovik said, approaching the door, “we can abandon the direct approach.”

  Graves grinned sheepishly and wiped a coating of gray dust off his forehead. “Good,” he said. “I can't feel my hands anymore.”

  Vaslovik smiled grimly, but did not otherwise respond as he unzipped his parka and reached into an inner pocket. Soong waited expectantly to see what he would pull out and was confused to see that it was only a stylus and a very old-fashioned-looking one at that. Handling it gingerly, Vaslovik twisted the base of the stylus until a tiny antenna shot out of the cap. He began to twirl the base from side to side, all the time studying a tiny display that opened on the pen's stem. Soong heard a high-pitched whine that forced him to grit his teeth and take a step back.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Just a gadget,” Vaslovik said absently, concentrating on his adjustments. “Something I acquired a few years ago. It's scanning the mechanism and looking for a resonant frequency just in case the lock is designed to . . .” He paused, seemed to struggle for the right words. “It's hard to explain, actually.”

  “I'll bet,” Soong said skeptically.

  Then, from the hatch there came a loud, menacing click, just exactly the sort of noise Soong would expect to hear from, say, the door for the main vault of the treasury building on the Klingon home world. Graves took a step back.

  Somewhere in the hatch, tumblers shifted. Soong felt his skin crawl with invisible static electricity bugs. Then, there came a thin hiss of air pressure equalizing.

  “How long did you say you thought this hatch has been shut?” Soong asked softly and, he hoped, casually.

  “I didn't,” Vaslovik replied.

  “Hmm. Good bearings on the door, then.”

  Stepping forward, Vaslovik replied, “I've always said you can always judge a culture by the quality of the ball bearings it produces.” He caught the lip of the hatch with a forefinger and pulled. The hatch swung open, releasing a cloud of stale, dry, warm air. Light panels on the walls and ceilings flickered on, revealing a featureless antechamber that terminated in a second hatch.

  “Some kind of airlock,” Soong observed.

  “Or a trap,” Graves muttered.

  “Mmmm,” Vaslovik responded, resting one foot on the lip of the hatch. He scanned the chamber, first with the tricorder, then with the penlike device. “Nothing,” he said, “which doesn't really mean anything. Whoever built this could easily deceive our sensors. No wonder Starfleet never found this.” He paused, apparently considering his options. Then, before Soong could stop him, Vaslovik stepped into the antechamber.

  Nothing happened.

  Graves released his breath. “Please don't ever do that again,” Graves hissed between gritted teeth.

  “Sorry,” Vaslovik said without looking back. “It seemed like the simplest solution. And, besides, you would have to be truly paranoid to build a bomb into an airlock hatch. One way in, one way out. Why clutter it up with explosives?”

  “Sounds like something you've put some thought to,” Soong observed.

  “Oh, certainly,” Vaslovik replied. “And you will, too, someday. When you're older.”

  He fixed his sights on a keypad in the opposite wall. Approaching it, he held the stylus out before him and the device began to whine softly. Soong and Graves glanced at each other, shrugged in unison, then crowded in close to watch. Moments later, a mechanism inside the hatch clicked and popped away from the rim.

  Graves, obviously feeling brave now, tugged the hatch open and stepped into the second room. Soong knew they were pushing their luck and half-expected to see phasers erupt from the walls, but the only sign of movement was lights flickering on.

  This room was not empty.

  It was much larger than the antechamber, though almost as austere. There were several narrow platforms along one wall—most likely beds, Soong decided, though the bedclothes had rotted away to dust ages ago. A wide, waist-high cube surrounded by a half-dozen smaller cubes looked like they may have been what passed locally for a dining area. A bank of machines set into a partially screened-off corner might have been the communications or entertainment center.

  Soong took all these things in with a glance and the fact that he could recognize the objects indicated that these long-dead beings must have shared some basic biological and psychological traits with humans. Of course, Soong thought. They
built humanoid androids. It was a trivial observation, one that barely needed voicing even to himself, but thinking about it meant he could put off the more difficult question of what to make of the contents of the room.

  First and foremost, there was The Machine, which dominated the room and left no doubt in Soong's mind that it was the primary reason for the heavily armored doors. Soong's intuitive ability to analyze technology quickly grasped that this device must be a duplicating machine, like the one Vaslovik had referred to earlier. Either that, or something very near to it.

  But, as amazing as this discovery was, it paled in comparison to the other, to the reality of The Body.

  It lay facedown in the center of the floor, perfectly illuminated by an overhead light, almost like this room was center stage of a dramatic presentation and this was the single object where the audience was meant to focus its attention. It certainly had Soong's attention. It was quite a contrast to the body they had found on the rock shelf. That one had been exposed to the elements, petrified into something very like the stone where it had lain for who knew how long.

  But not so with this body. This copper-skinned individual was perfectly preserved. Soong could easily imagine him standing up, brushing himself off, and saying, “Pardon me . . .”

  . . . If not for the large hole in the center of its back.

  “That must have hurt,” Graves muttered.

  Vaslovik glared at him. “Anyone have anything useful to say? Any ideas about what might have killed it?”

  Soong was tempted to say, “The big hole,” but confined himself to saying, “Some kind of energy weapon. Look at how smooth the edges are.”

  “Good observation, Noonien.”

  Soong couldn't stop himself from asking: “But how was it shot if it was alone inside a locked room?”

  Surprisingly, Graves was the one to assume the voice of reason. “Shooter might have transported out. Or, maybe it wasn't shot in the room at all, but merely died here.”

  Vaslovik was studying the scene intently, apparently trying to reconstruct events from half a million years ago. “If it fell face first, then it was facing the large appartatus when it expired. It may have come here to repair itself, but collapsed before it reached the mechanism. . . .”

  “We may never know for certain,” Graves said. He activated his tricorder. “We should take readings before we disturb anything.”

  Vaslovik nodded. “Excellent point, Ira. We have no idea how fragile any of this is. It could all crumble into dust any moment.”

  The whine of tricorders echoed strangely in the enclosed space, but the familiar sounds helped Soong shake off some of his anxiety. When they were sure they had taken enough readings, Soong and Graves entered the room and approached The Machine. While they scanned it, Vaslovik examined the corpse. It did not, as he had feared, crumble into dust.

  “Well?” Vaslovik asked after a time. “Will it work?”

  Graves and Soong exchanged glances. They each had been expecting someone to ask the question. Finally, Soong said, “Possibly. If there's an energy source. Whoever built this made it to last. It's just that . . .” He hesitated.

  “What?”

  “What are you proposing?” Soong asked.

  Vaslovik sighed. “I'm proposing that we help our friend here to get where he was trying to go. If he revives, he'll be able to answer a lot of questions. And if he doesn't . . .” He shrugged. “We'll probably learn a lot in the process. If nothing else, we can take some baseline readings, see what this thing might be capable of.”

  Again, Graves and Soong looked at each other. Vaslovik was so good at making crazy ideas sound reasonable. Graves smiled apologetically and said, “Sounds like a good topic for your dissertation, Noon.”

  Soong laughed. Graves had never called him by his first name before, but the gesture had done its job. He threw his arms up in surrender. “Fine. Yes. No doubt.”

  “Good,” Vaslovik said. “Now that we've settled that, someone give me a hand here.” Vaslovik slipped his hands under the android's arms and finished, “We don't have forever.” And though Soong never understood the significance of it, he could not help but notice Vaslovik's small, secret smile at this private joke.

  Chapter Twelve

  Beverly Crusher stared at the ceiling tiles above the nurse's station and tried to remember the last time she had spent more than twenty-four hours off the Enterprise. Six weeks? Two months? More? Adjusting to planetside wasn't the sort of thing that usually bothered her, but her sleep–wake cycle was out of sync with local time and she was beginning to feel the effects. She knew she could find something in her medkit, a mild stimulant, that would get her around the horn, but, then, if Maddox suddenly recovered—or worse, died—she would be stuck with the same predicament when she returned to the ship. She decided to tough it out. Her shift would be over in . . . how long? She had completely lost track of time.

  She searched the desktop and found the chrono: 1530. Felt like midnight. It was as quiet as midnight, especially compared to what she was used to in the Enterprise's sickbay. There were only two staff on duty, an Andorian technician everyone called Po and the day shift's head nurse, Maury Sullivan.

  “Maury,” Crusher asked. “Is the replicator still down?”

  Maury looked up from the chart she was checking and nodded grimly. “I've been trying to get Maintenance to look at it all day, but it's hard to get anyone's attention for long around here if it doesn't involve splitting elementary particles.” Crusher smiled at the comment and Maury grinned, pleased. “Is it like that onboard a starship?”

  Crusher shook her head. “No,” she said, then added as an afterthought, “not usually, anyway. Besides, everyone knows to keep the doctor happy.”

  Maury laughed, delighted. “That must be nice. The best we can do around here is threaten to withhold antacids.”

  “Not quite the leverage one would hope for,” Crusher commented. “Tell you what: you tell me where to get a decent cup of coffee and I'll ask someone from the Enterprise to take a look at your replicator.”

  “Ooo,” Maury said, hopping out of the chair, “you have got yourself a deal. How do you take it?”

  “No, no,” Crusher said. “Just tell me where to go.”

  Maury waved her hand dismissively. “Forget it. You'll never find it. I think they designed this place to be some sort of perverse intelligence test. It would take you forever to find your way there.” She paused. “And besides, my husband works in the lab next to the canteen. I can stop and say hi.”

  “Oh.” Crusher said, slightly disappointed. She had been thinking a walk would be nice, too. “Okay. What do I do if someone calls?”

  “They won't,” Maury said, heading for the door, “but if they do, well, you're the one they want to talk to. You're the doctor.”

  “I suppose that's true,” Crusher said, more to herself than to anyone else since Maury was already out the door. Then, she leapt up and yelled, “Cream and sugar.”

  And then it was very quiet, except for the ping of some distant monitoring equipment and the occasional puff of air from vents. Crusher thought about calling the Enterprise and checking on the state of sickbay, but she had done that only a couple of hours ago and if she did it again, the staff would think she was being a pest. Deciding that she needed something—anything—to focus on, she turned to the library computer and pulled up Maddox's medical records.

  Crusher had checked all the scans the ICU staff had run before she had arrived and then run tests of her own, but both sets had shown precisely the same thing: nothing. No neurological injury. No infectious agent. No historeaction. No implanted biomechanical device. Maddox was unconscious, in a state that more closely resembled sleep than a coma. There was brain activity, but it was disorganized, jumbled and unresponsive to the environment. It was almost, she decided, like Maddox's brain was encased in some kind of force field, cutting it off from any outside stimulus. The worst part, the part that she tried not to think about too
much, was that Maddox might be in there somewhere trying to figure out how to get to the other side.

  Maybe we should run the scans again. Maybe we've missed something. Maybe there's something wrong with their equipment and I should transfer him to the Enterprise. She laid her head down on the desk. Maybe I should take a nap. She would close her eyes for a minute, just a minute. Maury would be back soon. If someone needed her, the call would wake her up. She was good at waking up quickly. She was a doctor.

  “Doctor?”

  Crusher shot up in her chair. “Yes?” she said too loudly.

  “Were you asleep?”

  It wasn't Maury's voice. She almost tapped her combadge thinking it was the Enterprise calling, but then she looked around behind her.

  “Data? No. I mean, yes, I guess I was, but I didn't mean to be. How long . . . ?”

  “I entered the room only thirty-five seconds ago, so I cannot say for certain.”

  Crusher glanced at the nearby chrono, then tried to remember what time it had been the last time she looked. She wasn't certain, but it couldn't have been long. Five minutes, maybe? She quickly checked Maddox's monitor and found exactly what she expected to find: Maddox, unconscious, unmoving.

  “I . . . Okay, Data. I'm sorry. I'm a little disoriented.” She combed her hair back from her eyes with her fingers and tried to shake the gummy feeling out of her brain. “What can I do for you?”

  Data moved around to sit in the chair where Maury Sullivan had been seated. He seemed a little hesitant, almost, Crusher thought, embarrassed. “I came,” he said, “because I was curious about Commander Maddox's condition and wondered if you had any information that you did not report in your last log entry. I know you sometimes choose to withhold speculations.”

  Crusher felt the corners of her mouth curl up, surprised to discover that Data knew so much about her report-writing style. “That's true,” she replied. “But, unfortunately this time, I didn't. Commander Maddox's body has healed and, as far as I've been able to determine, there's no organic damage to his brain. Unfortunately, we haven't figured out how to reach his mind. There may be something we haven't thought of yet, but . . .” Her train of thought petered out and she shrugged. “There isn't much more to say, I'm afraid.”