Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [39]
Vaslovik seemed to sense these thoughts, too. It must have been a long time—an extraordinarily long time—since someone had been willing to challenge him, because then he smiled. And it wasn’t an indulgent smile either, but the smile of one master acknowledging another. Soong felt … vindicated, as if he were finally being treated like one of the adults.
“All right,” Vaslovik said, speaking low. “Here’s what I learned before we came here: there was a device in the room upstairs. It duplicated things.”
“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