STAR TREK: TOS #2 - The Entropy Effect

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Spock waited for the stream of questions and objections that would have come from the previous security commander, when he was asked for performance out of the ordinary, but the new commander behaved in quite a different manner.

  “All right, Mr. Spock,” she said. “What’s Dr. Mordreaux been convicted of?”

  Spock found it difficult to tell her, because he disbelieved the accusations so strongly. “Unethical research on self-aware subjects,” he finally said. “And ... murder.”

  “Mr. Spock,” Flynn said carefully, in a tone that offered information rather than criticism, “the detention cells are considerably more secure than my people can make a cabin by tomorrow. And the cells aren’t dungeons; they’re fairly comfortable.”

  “I am aware of the security problem, Commander Flynn, as is Captain Kirk. I am putting my trust in your abilities. The prisoner will be confined in the V.I.P. cabin.”

  “Then I will have the cabin secured, Mr. Spock.”

  “I have posted a liberty schedule for all the crew except your section. I leave that arrangement to your judgment.”

  She glanced at the terminal, where the screen held the security roster ready for assignment. She picked out several officers with electronics background: four people, as many as could work efficiently on the energy screens.

  “Everyone else can go down to Aleph,” she said. “Since we aren’t responding to a system-wide emergency.”

  “No, the orders are simply to transport Dr. Mordreaux. Thank you for your cooperation, Commander Flynn. If I can be of any help to you in making the preparations—”

  “My people can handle it, Mr. Spock, but thanks.”

  He nodded, and the security commander left the bridge.

  By the time Mandala Flynn got off the turbo lift she could hear the whoops of delight as the liberty schedule went up on all the ship’s general communication terminals. She was as glad as the others that a call to a disaster had turned instead into a few hours of freedom. She had to admit, though, that in two months on the Enterprise she had sometimes wished for some incident, some conflict, that was real instead of only practice.

  You could have stayed in the border patrol, she told herself, flying back and forth and up and down the same limiting plane of space, fighting the occasional skirmish, risking your life and getting shot up, until they retired you to a backwater Starbase somewhere.

  Her ambitions aimed higher than that. She was not satisfied with what was known; the unknown fascinated her. That was one reason she had grabbed for the unexpected opportunity to transfer to the Enterprise: not for cross-system detours like the current bit of bureaucratic nonsense, but exploration, new worlds, the real thing. Even if once in a while it meant spending six weeks staring down into a naked singularity.

  Flynn wanted experience on this ship because, in time, she intended to command it or one like it herself. The limits of Federation worlds were far too narrow for her. She was a child of interstellar space, comfortable with it, attuned to it. She belonged in the vanguard of discovery.

  And if you ever find what you’re looking for, she thought, if you ever even figure out what it is you’re looking for—what will you do then?

  She pushed her musings aside as she entered the security duty room, where the four officers she had chosen were already waiting for her.

  When Spock was alone, he opened a communications channel to the station and began his real task, that of obtaining as much information about Dr. Mordreaux’s recent past as he could find.

  First he requested the records on the professor’s trial from Aleph Prime’s housekeeping computer.

  The request bounced back: NO INFORMATION. The tape should be a matter of public record. Spock tried again, appending his security clearance, which should have been sufficient to overcome almost every level of classification. His request was refused.

  He tried several other possible repositories of criminal records, and found nothing. The news services carried no notices whatever in their indices of Dr. Mordreaux’s arrest, conviction, or sentencing; he held no listing in the station directory. Spock pushed himself away from the information terminal and considered what to do next.

  Perhaps the professor had been living under an alias, but that did not explain his disappearance from judicial records, which would have used his real name. Spock considered possibilities, made a decision, and proceeded to deceive the Aleph computers without mercy. Their defenses were adequate for normal purposes—they were not, after all, ordinarily concerned with any particularly sensitive matters—but insubstantial compared to Spock’s ability to break them.

  And still he could find no useful information. The trial tapes simply did not exist, at least in the computer’s data banks. Whoever had classified Dr. Mordreaux’s case had done an extremely efficient job of it. Either the records had been wiped out—a breach of the constitution of the Federation—or they still existed but no longer interfaced with the information network at all.

  Mandala met Hikaru in the gym. He smiled when he saw her, and sealed the collar and shoulder fastenings of his fencing jacket.

  “I didn’t know if this lesson was still on,” she said.

  “It’d take a lot more disruption of the schedule for me to cancel it,” Hikaru said. “But I didn’t know if you’d be able to come.”

  “I have to check the new shields when they’re up,” she said, “but till then all I could do would be watch over everybody’s shoulders and make them nervous. They’ll be finished about the same time you and I are. Then we’re all going down to Aleph for some fun. It’s on my tab. Want to come?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Mandala tossed him a book. He caught the small cassette.

  “What’s this?”

  “What do you think of old Earth novels? Pre-spaceflight, I mean?”

  “I love them,” he said. “I think The Three Musketeers is my favorite.”

  “My favorite Dumas is The Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “Have you read The Virginian?”

  “Sure—it’s most fun in Ancient Modern English. How about The Time Machine?”

  “That’s a good one. Frankenstein?”

  “Sure. Islandia?”

  “Uh-huh. I read someplace they’re finally planning to bring out the unedited facsimile edition.”

  Mandala laughed. “How long have they been saying that? I wish they would, though.”

  Hikaru glanced curiously at the cassette she had given him; she gestured toward it with her foil.

  “That one’s Babel-17,” she said. “It’s just about my favorite. Delany’s great.”

  “I never heard of it. When was it published?”

  “Old calendar, nineteen sixty-six.”

  “That doesn’t count as pre-space-flight.”

  “Sure it does.”

  “Oh—you must start at the first moon landing. I start from Sputnik I.”

  “Traditionalist. Hey—that means you haven’t read Sibyl Sue Blue, either. Are you going to turn down terrific books because we disagree about twelve years?”

  “Not a chance,” Hikaru said. “Thanks very much.”

  As they started toward the practice ground, Mandala impulsively put her arm around Hikaru’s waist and hugged him.

  He did not pull away. Not quite. He was too polite for that. But his whole body stiffened. Surprised, hurt, trying to figure out how and where she had read things wrong, Mandala let him go and strode quickly to her end of the floor.

  “Mandala—” He caught up with her; he knew better than to grab her, but he touched her elbow. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I ... are you mad at me?”

  “I misunderstood,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to make a fool of myself twice in one day.”

  “You haven’t,” he said softly.

  “No?” She faced him. “I thought, yesterday ...” She shrugged. “I’m usually pretty good at taking hints. I’m sorry I pushed you. I can’t claim I didn’t m
ean it but I never meant to pressure you. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

  “You didn’t,” he said. “I’m flattered.”

  “It’s okay, never mind. You were a lot more polite about it than I would have been to somebody I wasn’t interested in.”

  “It isn’t that I’m not interested.”

  She could not think of anything to say to that. She had not come out bluntly and told him he was the most attractive man she had ever met, but he had not, after all, been unaware of how she felt. If he found her attractive in turn—and after yesterday she thought he did—then she could not understand his behavior.

  “I’ve been thinking about what happened,” he said, his voice strained. “I’m probably leaving. You know I’m thinking about a transfer, we’ve talked about it. You’re the only person I have talked about it with!”

  “Sure,” she said. “So what? None of us really knows what they’re going to be doing next week, next month—”

  “It wouldn’t be fair to you,” Hikaru said.

  Mandala stared at him; she fought to keep pure astonishment from turning to anger. She flung down her foil. It clattered across the floor. “What the hell do you mean, fair to me? Where do you get off, deciding that? You’ve been honest—what more do you think you could owe me?”

  He stood before her, downcast. Mandala wanted to hug him, to take away some of that lost hurt look, but she knew she would not want to stop with a hug. Aside from the absurdity of trying to caress someone while they were both dressed in padded fencing jackets and standing in the middle of a public gym, she did not want to take the chance of embarrassing Hikaru again.

  “I just don’t think ...” He paused, and started again. “It seemed so cold, to respond to you when the chances were I’d be taking off almost immediately.”

  Mandala took his hand, and stroked the hollow of his palm. “It isn’t fair to you,” she said. “Hikaru, nobody ever makes long-term commitments on the border patrol. It’s too chancy, and it’s too painful. We used to say to each other: for a little while. I’m not used to anything but that. But you ... I think you’d rather have something that lasted a long time.”

  “It is better,” he said tentatively.

  “That’s up to you. It’s fine. I understand, now. You’ve been under one hell of a lot of stress these last few weeks, and you’re under more because of thinking about transferring off the Enterprise. I think you’re right not to want to make it any harder on yourself.”

  “I guess that’s part of it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He hugged her, and she returned the embrace until she was embarrassed herself, by her own response. She drew back, and picked up her foil.

  “Come on—I want my lesson.”

  They saluted each other with the foils. Hikaru put his mask on.

  “Hikaru,” Mandala said, “if you change your mind, let me know.” She pulled her own mask down and slipped into a smooth en garde position.

  After several hours of fruitless work, Mr. Spock finally broke the communications link to Aleph Prime. He had tried every conceivable route toward the information he wanted, and every conceivable route dead-ended. He could do nothing more on board the Enterprise.

  Before closing down his terminal he pulled up the duty roster to find someone familiar with the bridge who was still on board. Mr. Sulu’s name was first on the list.

  Paging the helm officer, Spock reached him in the gymnasium. Sulu appeared on the screen; he pushed his fencing mask to the top of his head. Sweat dripped down his face. Spock ordinarily found Sulu among the easiest of his colleagues to work with. But the other side of the lieutenant’s character, the one that emerged when he was in the grip of his very deep streak of romanticism, Spock found virtually incomprehensible.

  Mr. Sulu wiped off the sweat, put down his foil, and became once more the epitome of a serious, no-nonsense, one-track-minded Starfleet junior officer.

  “Yes, Mr. Spock?”

  “Mr. Sulu, can you interrupt what you are doing?”

  “I’ve just finished giving a lesson, sir.”

  “I must return to Aleph Prime for a short while, and I do not wish to leave the bridge unattended.”

  “I can be there in ten minutes, Mr. Spock.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Spock out.”

  But as he reached for the controls he saw Sulu make an involuntary gesture toward him. Spock paused with his hand on the reset button.

  “Yes, Mr. Sulu? Is there something else?”

  “Mr. Spock—” Sulu hesitated, then spoke all in a rush. “Did the captain say—do you think it’s possible—will Captain Hunter come on board?”

  Spock gazed impassively at Sulu for several moments.

  Sulu would, at that juncture, have given almost anything to recall his outburst. Mr. Spock was perhaps the only person on the Enterprise who would not, or could not, understand why he had asked the question. As far as Sulu had ever observed, the most effusive reaction Spock ever offered anyone was respect, and that infrequently. He had certainly never shown any signs of hero-worship. Sulu was under no illusions concerning his own feelings about Hunter: they were hero-worship, pure, blazing, and undignified. Hunter had been one of Sulu’s heroes for half his life. Though he had been born on Earth, his mother was a consulting agronomist and his father was a poet; Hikaru Sulu had spent his childhood and adolescence on the frontier, on a succession of colony planets. His longest stay anywhere was on Ganjitsu, a world far out on the border of a sector that had long been harassed by renegades—the Klingons claimed they were renegades, though of course no one ever believed them—and at the mercy of pirates who were all too human. The Ganjitsujin resisted with inadequate means; for a long time they wondered if they had been forgotten or abandoned. Then Hunter, a very young officer with her first command, swept in like a hunting hawk, beat the pirates back into the hands of the Klingons, and bested the Klingons themselves at their own game.

  Sulu had seen things on Ganjitsu that he still had nightmares about, but Hunter had stopped the nightmare-reality. Sulu doubted he could make Mr. Spock understand how he felt about her, even if he had the opportunity to explain. No doubt he had lost the science officer’s confidence forever. Sulu wished mightily that he had waited to ask Captain Kirk about Hunter. The captain understood.

  However, Spock was not looking at him with disapproval, or even with his eyebrows quizzically raised.

  “I have no way of knowing Captain Hunter’s plans, Mr. Sulu,” he said. “However, the possibility is not beyond the bounds of reason. If she does pay the Enterprise the compliment of visiting it, I hope she will receive the reception due an officer with such an exceptional record. Spock out.”

  Sulu watched the science officer’s expressionless, ascetic face fade from the screen. Sulu hoped his own astonishment had not shown too plainly: at least his mouth had not fallen open in surprise.

  After all these years I should know better than to make assumptions about Mr. Spock, Sulu thought.

  Spock never failed to amaze him—in quite logical and predictable ways, if one happened to look at them from exactly the right perspective—just at the point where Sulu thought he knew most precisely how the Vulcan would behave.

  “Hey,” Mandala said from behind him, “you better get going, Hikaru—you promised him ten minutes.” She pulled off her fencing mask and they formally shook ungauntleted hands: she was left handed so her right hand was ungloved.

  “Do you think she’ll come on board?”

  Mandala smiled. “I hope so, it would be great to see her again.” She wiped her sweaty face on her sleeve. “You know, if you do transfer, you couldn’t do any better than Hunter’s squadron.” They headed toward the locker room.

  “Hunter’s squadron!” The possibility of serving with Hunter was so dreamlike that he could not make it sound real. “I wouldn’t have a chance!”

  Mandala glanced over at him, with an unreadable expression. She quickened her pace
and moved ahead of him. Surprised, Hikaru stopped, and, a few steps later, so did Mandala.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Where, where in the freezing hell did you pick up such a load of doubt about yourself?”

  “If I applied and she turned me down—”

  “You have the background,” Mandala said. “You have the right specialties. And you have that Academy star.”

  Hikaru grinned ruefully. “You never saw my grades.”

  She spun back toward him, a quick fierce fury in her flame-green eyes. “Damn your grades! You got in and you got through, that’s all that counts! No low-level know-nothing bureaucrat can weed you off a transfer list on the grounds that you couldn’t possibly be qualified for anything you really want.”

  Hikaru knew her well enough by now to hear the pain in her voice, underneath the anger.

  “Did that happen to you?” he asked gently. But he already knew it must have; Mandala had never had the chance to attend the Academy. Both literally and figuratively, she had fought her way up from the ranks.

  “It’s happened ... several times,” she said finally. “And every time it happens, it hurts more. You’re the only person I’ve ever admitted that to. I would not like it said to anyone else.”

  He shook his head. “It won’t be.”

  “This is the only first-class assignment I’ve ever had, Hikaru, and I know Kirk didn’t ask for me. He demanded the first person available who could replace my predecessor. He would have taken anybody.” She smiled grimly. “Sometimes I think that’s what he thinks he got. I have the job by pure chance. But you can bet I’m not going to waste it. I won’t let them stop me, Academy star or not—” She cut off her words, as if she had already revealed far more of herself than she ever meant to. She grasped his shoulders. “Hikaru, let me give you some advice. Nobody will believe in you for you.”

  But do I dare believe in me enough to try to transfer to Hunter’s command? Hikaru wondered. Do I dare take the risk of being turned down?

  Mr. Spock beamed back down to Aleph Prime. The city jail was in a short corridor near the government section; it showed evidence of hard use and neglect. The plastic walls were scarred and scratched; in places graffiti cut so deep that the asteroidal stone of the original station showed through from behind. The walls had been refinished again and again, in slightly different colors, leaving intricately layered patterns of chipped and worn and partially replaced surfaces.