The Questor Tapes - D. C. Fontana, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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Gene Roddenberry’s
The Questor Tapes
Written By
D.C. Fontana
Based on the Teleplay by
Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon
Story by Gene Roddenberry
PROJECT QUESTOR
The Making of a Man
The android sat before the mirror in the cos-metology section, studying its own smooth hairless face and
body. The table bore an array of dyes, creams, special heat-molding tools. An image flashed briefly in its
brain—a picture of what it should look like. Then the image was gone. Gaps ... too many gaps in
information. Program lacking.
The cosmetology computer keyboard was at the left. The android turned to it and activated it. A schematic
came on as the screen glowed to life. The android studied it, keyed in a new instruction.
The computer completed the run and stopped. The android was motionless for the space of a minute,
analyzing and correlating the information it had absorbed.
Then its eyes flicked down, and it picked up a heat-molding tool . . .
DEDICATION
For Gene L. Coon June 7, 1924—July 8, 1973
"Gene celebrated life. With honesty, candor, love, generosity, humor—yet he delighted in insisting he was a hard-nosed s.o.b. ... He
was an authentic war hero. . . . Yet he was very much against war and killing. So he built an armor around his gentle heart, of
toughness and humor. . . . Any way you looked at Gene, you saw a loving man. He loved his family. . . . He loved people. He loved
reading. He loved writing with a joy I've never seen in another writer. . . . Gene had a literary streak, and so I've adapted an old
Latin verse by the
poet
Catullus, just for him, for now:
By ways unknown and many mem'ries sped,
Brother, to this moment am I come
That I may celebrate the dead
And speak of peace with your ashes dumb.
Accept my thoughts. Such heirlooms of past years
Are joyous things to grace you where you dwell.
Take them, all drenched with a brother's tears.
And, Gene, my brother, now,
hail . . .
and farewell."
(Excerpted from eulogy by John J. Furia, Jr., President Writers Guild of America)
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1974 by Universal City Studios, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a divi-sion of Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Canada.
ISBN 0-345-28024-5
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: October 1974 Second Printing: April 1979
First Canadian Printing: November 1974 Cover art by Dean Ellis
1
Jerry Robinson felt no more for the object lying on the instrument assembly pallet than he felt for any other
com-puter assembly he had constructed in the past seven years. The fact that this computer had the shape
of a male human being in every particular had little bearing on the work he did. He glanced up from a
monitoring device to look at the object for which an entire top-security lab had been built.
It had an average build—about five feet eleven inches and not overly muscular. Still, heavy metal straps
held the arms and legs in a spread-eagle position on the assembly pallet. Jerry could not think of it as
anything other than
it
—the android Emil Vaslovik had left for a five-nation science combine to build. But
the thick metal restraints had been insisted upon by Michaels, the British scientist.
"It resembles an ordinary human body," he had said. "But there is a tempered steel framework under that
plastiskin and an energy source to give it power beyond all human capacity. If anything goes wrong in the
lab, I want to be assured it won't break loose."
So Michaels had been assured, and the android had been strapped down. Jerry saw no menace in the
android. Perhaps he had worked on its component parts too long. To him it appeared to be only a
man-shaped thing with sleek, hairless skin and no details at all to make it seem human. The baldhead had
basic nose and ear shapes in the proper places, but the mouth was only a slit—lipless. The eyes had been
inserted, and the thin plastiskin eyelids were closed; but there were no brows or lashes. The body had no
nipples or navel. Nowhere were there any of the blemishes, scars, wrinkles, or other tiny flaws that human
bodies carry.
Jerry thought ruefully of the long scar on his left shin, the result of a childhood bicycle accident. It could be
covered, if he had enough vanity about it to go to a plastic surgeon and go through the skin grafts.
One up
for the android,
he thought. Any scars it acquired could be neatly repaired in a matter of minutes with a
heat molder.
Michaels' voice broke in on his thoughts. "Ready to disconnect?"
Jerry stepped closer to the android's side and scanned the contact points of the control and readout wires
that led from the exposed circuitry to a telemetry unit over-head. The flap of plastiskin had been pulled back
at the right side of the abdomen, laying open the intricate and astonishingly small servo-units, electronic
relays, and mi-croscopic transistors that would, supposedly, bring the android to life. There was doubt, in
some quarters that the project would succeed. Most of the android's com-ponents had been designed by
Emil Vaslovik before he inexplicably vanished three years ago, and not one of the scientists or technicians
in the room could explain what half of them were or how they worked. Or were supposed to work. The
acid test would come in a few moments.
Satisfied that the contacts had been doing their job, Jerry nodded to Dr. Michaels. "Ready to disconnect,
sir."
"Disconnect it from the lab controls."
Jerry began to remove the leads, his deft fingers moving with the skill of one whose craft is both instinctive
and well learned. A bluish pulsating glow came from a power unit deep inside the android. The color
intensified as Jerry removed the fine wires one by one.
The scientists and technicians hovered over control and monitoring devices as the young microelectronics
engineer worked. Their ID tags identified several as Nobel Prize winners in their fields. The white "clean
suits" gave them all a uniform, bulky look, except for Phyllis Bradley, whose spectacularly contoured figure
could not have been defeated by an old-fashioned diver's suit. She was also one of the Nobel Prize winners.
Jerry completed the disconnections and stepped back a pace. Suddenly the android's chest heaved; Jerry
caught his breath, startled. The rise and fall of the machine's chest steadied into a regular pattern, and Jerry
became aware of the voices routinely reporting.
"Heartbeat simulation steady at eighty." This from Michaels.
Phyllis Bradley flicked her gaze across a console and nodded in satisfaction. "Respiration simulation holding
at twenty-one. Epidermal reading, 98.6. Internal lubricant flow, normal; full circulation. Pulse registering
normal."
Jerry moved to the android's side again. It lay unmoving except for the rhythmic rise and fall of the chest in
a normal breathing pattern. The eyes remained shut. The flawless skin and lipless mouth made it seem
suddenly alien and disquieting. Jerry tentatively reached out to touch the android. The plastiskin was warm,
but far too smooth. He had almost expected a human reaction—per-haps a ticklish drawing away. There
was none, of course; he pulled back his hand, vaguely uncomfortable.
"It's doing nicely on its own." Michaels looked up in time to see Jerry withdraw his hand, and he frowned.
"Have you met a problem there, Robinson?"
"No, sir. When its chest started moving, it startled me, that's all."
Gorlov, the Russian, shook his head. "Strange you should be alarmed. This great toy of ours—you were
most prominent in constructing it. You knew what it should do."
"Maybe I didn't really believe it would work."
Gorlov appeared surprised but had no chance to com-ment. Geoffrey B. Darro entered the security lab. He
was dressed like the others, in a white clean suit, wearing the obligatory identification tag and radiation-level
badge. Jerry always knew when Darro was around, even if he hadn't seen him come in. Everyone
instinctively fell silent and waited to be spoken to.
Darro was a man few people questioned. If they did, they seldom received answers. There probably was a
dos-sier on him—somewhere—but most of what was known about him was only what Darro himself cared
to reveal. Physically, he was a rugged, broad-shouldered man, still showing the easy, fluid motions of a
well-conditioned athlete. He might have been fifty—there was a little gray in his crisp, dark hair.
Intellectually, he was an accom-plished man with a broad grasp of history, politics, eco-nomics, international
strategies, and interplay on all levels. He was fluent in five languages and unyielding in all of them.
Personally, he seemed to have no friends, no as-sociates, no soft spots or weaknesses. At times Jerry was
sure that Darro was made of harder steel than the android. Darro was the official head of the five-nation
Project Questor primarily because he was the one individual on whom they could all agree. He had been
hired by many nations in the past—sometimes to overthrow a govern-ment, other times to save one. He
never broke his word or his contract, and any country which employed him never regretted it. Geoffrey B.
Darro's integrity was as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun.
Darro's eyes flicked around the room, taking it in with one look. The others went back to their monitoring
rather self-consciously. The project chief crossed to the cosmetol-ogy section, where Dr. Chen was using a
computer screen on which color slides flashed up. The finely detailed pic-tures were followed by complete
information on the mold-ing of features, skin pigmentation, hair implantation, and on other cosmetic
instructions.
"Decided on the features you'll give it, Doctor?"
Chen looked around at the big man standing behind him. "Naturally, I would prefer Asian, Mr. Darro. I see
great beauty in the shape and color of my people's faces." He smiled ruefully. "But when we hooked up its
eye units, they turned a rather occidental blue."
Darro grunted. "Apparently Vaslovik had his own ideas on what he wanted."
"One of his many reputations," Chen said. He turned to the computer and keyed in a new diagram.
The screen obediently displayed a large color schematic of the mechanism, which served as the android's
eyes. The rounded front surface resembled an anatomical rendering of a healthy human eye. Chen tapped it
with a finger.
"The part of it we will see looks remarkably human and will probably have normal eye movements,
secretions, and so on."
Chen pushed another switch, and the diagram changed to reveal the complex microelectronic structure
behind the rounded front area. Chen shook his head. "But exactly how the eye mechanism
operates
is still
guesswork." He switched the screen diagram again, bringing in a closer, more detailed view of the delicate
works. "We have never seen half the micro units Vaslovik used here. Or in the other components, for that
matter."
"Fully disconnected," Robinson said from behind them. Darro turned and moved back toward the assembly
pallet. Dr. Bradley scanned the body monitor again. The levels were all satisfactory and no different from
any aver-age-human-body readings, as far as they went. There was no brain activity, no muscular
movement except for that required by the rise and fall of the chest and the pumping of lubricant through the
veins. "Readings excellent. Run-ning very smoothly on its own," she said.
Michaels nodded and gestured to Jerry. "Seal it up, Mr. Robinson."
Jerry picked up a heat-molding tool and triggered it. The tip glowed red in a few seconds. He moved the
flap of plastiskin into place, covering the exposed transistor packs in its side. The android's chest continued
to move in even cadence, and Jerry hesitated for an instant. The eyes were closed, and the head still looked
alien.
It's a machine,
Jerry reminded himself.
Get on with it.
He applied the molding tip to the loose flap, holding the plastiskin in place to assure smooth bonding. The
"skin" sizzled, but the accompanying odor was not un-pleasant. Some smoke curled up from under the
molding tip as Jerry moved it along the flap.
"You're not burning it?" Darro asked. "No. That's just normal residue in sealing up." Jerry stepped back so
that Darro could see. The sealed area was clean and smooth, totally unblemished, as if the flap had never
existed.
Darro nodded, impressed. "Another of Vaslovik's little inventions?"
"Mine." Jerry shrugged lightly. "I knew we'd need something like it. If it's supposed to look like a man, the
seams can't show."
The project chief studied him intently but did not com-ment. Jerry had a feeling that the fact was registered,
filed, and could be recalled instantly if Darro needed it. The young engineer turned his attention to the
android.
Dr. Audret moved an information-input device over the android's head. It was a dome-shaped object, linked
direct-ly into the lab's programming computers. Audret glanced over at Gorlov. The Russian activated the
data-tape turn-tables. Jerry shifted his weight nervously, impatiently, and Darro instantly snapped his
attention from the android to the engineer.
"Programming ready," Gorlov said.
Darro watched Jerry. "The moment of truth."
Jerry suddenly stepped forward, his hand instinctively reaching out in a plea. "Please! I'm sorry—but I think
you're wrong to use your programming instead of Dr. Vaslovik's."
The scientists turned to look at him with some surprise. Dr. Audret was the first to speak. "Monsieur
Robinson, I think we all consider you a talented young engineer, but since this is a scientific decision—"
Jerry interrupted, turning to Darro as project chief. "Mr. Darro. Dr. Vaslovik's notes
specifically state
we
should activate it with
his
programming tape. They now want to use their own computerized, hybrid
mush—"
Darro cut in, hard and cold. "As project administrator, Mr. Robinson, I will not interfere with scientific
decisions. Nor will you."
"It is a useless discussion," Audret said. "We all know half the Vaslovik tape has been erased—"
"By the attempts of
your
cryptographers to decode it," Jerry snapped.
Gorlov muscled into the debate, interposing himself between Robinson and Audret. "Naturally we wished to
learn what instructions Dr. Vaslovik left for the android. Unfortunately, we did not."
"No, you only managed to destroy what might mean the success of this project."
The Russian lifted his hands in a little gesture of ac-knowledgment. "Once we saw there was nothing to be
gained and only certain loss if we continued, we ceased to experiment with the Vaslovik tape. We have
selected university tapes of your systematized knowledge since our tests show that orderly data fed into the
android will form patterns in the brain-case bionic plasma."
Darro glanced back to Jerry. The young engineer was upset. To Darro, he seemed more concerned than a
tech-nician should be over the proposed programming.
"How can you be that sure?" Robinson demanded. "All we've done is assemble the parts and material
Vaslovik provided, and no one here even understands them or—"
Darro interrupted him again, the hard edge still in his voice. "No more than I understand this change in the
normally cooperative Mr. Robinson. Is it possible, when you worked for Dr. Vaslovik, that you learned
something you haven't told us about?"
"I didn't even know what he was training me
for.
He never so much as mentioned an android."
"Then you have no valid argument against the step proposed by the scientists, have you?" Darro looked
around at them again and nodded. "Enough debate, gentle-men. Please proceed."
Gorlov and Audret moved away to the computer con-trols and activated them. The reels of programmed
in-formation began to spin . . . first one, then another, until four of the dozen began to register, status lights
flashing on the consoles. A flicker of colored-light pinpoints re-flected from the information-input dome
down onto the android's smooth, bald skull.
Jerry nervously bit his lip, his eyes darting from com-puters to android and back. Darro watched Robinson.
But, like the others, even the implacable project chief ultimately was drawn to the unmoving figure on the
as-sembly slab.
Phyllis Bradley bent over the EEG oscilloscope, hoping to see something but afraid she would not. There
were so many unknowns . . . Suddenly the straight line on the scope fluttered and then began to pick up a
muted pattern. She kept her voice impassive, fighting the surge of excite-ment she felt. "Getting brain-wave
readings."
Jerry stepped forward slightly, unaware of Darro's scru-tiny. He
had
seen a movement in the android. The
thumb of the right hand twitched.
There
... it jumped again! There was a moment of non-movement. Jerry
had a fleeting impression that the only creature in the lab that had moved was the android. Everyone else
was suspended in mid-breath, waiting. Then there was a slight, convulsive twitch of the right leg ... again . .
. and again.
Gorlov, practical and pragmatic as always, turned to Darro. "This run includes mathematics, engineering,
var-ious sciences. Although we cannot expect the android to understand or use such information, it will
begin setting orderly patterns."
"The greater the number of these molecular patterns, the more likely it is that it will be capable of simple
thought processes," Audret said.
The computer data tapes spun to a halt, and the soft accompanying hum ceased. Everyone's eyes went to
the android. But the man-shaped thing lay still and unmoving again.
Dr. Bradley's voice whispered across the silence. "Brain-wave production, zero."
"Well," Michaels said briskly, "only a first try. We have a good deal more programming to feed in." He
motioned to Gorlov and Audret, who busied themselves with the other computers.
Again, the reels began to spin, the hum growing louder as the full ensemble of twelve gradually engaged.
The flickering pinpoints of light bombarded the android's skull in a dazzling dance of color. The exact
method of in-formation absorption was not understood—another of Vaslovik’s inventions. The android's
limbs quivered slight-ly, much less than before.
Darro had not missed the difference in response. "Dr. Gorlov?"
Gorlov tried to sound hopeful. "The limited results of the first run indicate that many more patterns will be
nec-essary." He glanced pointedly at Robinson. "We
are
using Dr. Vaslovik's specified input procedures."
"This run is longer," Audret said, "giving far more pat-terns, far more complex than the initial ones.
University tapes on logic, literature, medicine . . ."
"Let's hope you haven't burned it out," Jerry said.
He nodded toward the android. It lay immobile, with the single exception of the breathing motion of the
chest. The tapes on the twelve computers spun to a stop, and Phyllis Bradley consulted the EEG
oscilloscope.
"Cerebral activation, zero. No brain waves at all this time."
Jerry examined the toes of his clean suit with intense interest. Darro almost wished the engineer would say
"I told you so" just to get it out of the way. Jerry chose to let it hang there, implied, in the disappointed
silence that clogged the atmosphere of the lab.
Audret finally spoke. "We have no option but to try the Vaslovik tape."
Darro flicked a look at the small computer, which stood apart from the others. Its size and shape
differentiated it from the prim, square mechanisms that crowded together in the computer section. The tape
loaded on its reels was also a sharp departure from the norm in color and width; and when Gorlov activated
the machine, the tape whirled at a different rate of speed. The polka of varicolored light pinpoints began to
play over the android's head.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, abruptly, the android's body went into convulsions. Jerry jumped
back as the torso and limbs strained against the heavy metal straps. The thing's arms and legs flailed at the
restraints with superhuman strength; but the face remained expres-sionless, the eyes still closed. The voices
of the science-team members bubbled up, drowning out the hiss of the turning tape and the clatter of the
android's limbs against the assembly pallet.
The tape ended, and the android's body fell back on the slab, limp. Jerry Robinson had held more hope for
Vaslovik's programming than he cared to admit. The failure of the android assured a failure of Jerry's faith.
2
The Cal Tech lab was Uttered with all the data that had been applied to Project Questor from the
beginning, three years before, to the moment of failure on the assembly slab. The scientists conducted a
postmortem that went on for six hours. Jerry Robinson sat with them but did not contribute. He was
rummaging around in his own thoughts, trying to avoid the shards of shattered hopes. Darro stood slightly
away from the group, watching and listening, weighing the arguments and reactions.
Gorlov's voice rose stridently over the others. "It is
im-possible
to overload its brain case. Dr. Vaslovik's
own notes indicate a billion billion potential configurations."
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