In the grip of the changer, Spock felt time pass. The sensation was very different from that of the transporter alone, which was nothing more than a brief moment of dislocation at the end of the process. This felt as if he were falling through space, through hard vacuum, buffeted by every eddy of the solar wind, every current of each magnetic field, tossed by gravity waves, by light itself.
He materialized two meters above the ground, in Aleph Prime’s core park, and fell the rest of the way. He landed hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and he had to fight to keep from losing consciousness.
It could have been worse. He knew he could not calibrate the device with total precision—getting from a moving starship to the place where Aleph had been several days before was accomplishment enough—so he had chosen to appear in open space. That way he had a better chance of not reincorporating inside a wall. He would have preferred to appear in the emergency transmitter room, but felt the chances against succeeding were too large to challenge. He got up, brushing himself off, glancing around to discover whether or not he had been seen.
He had chosen darkness as well as open space: the park mimicked a diurnal cycle, and right now it imitated night. An artificial moon hung in the dull black starless sky.
Leaving the park behind, Spock entered one of the maze of corridors that formed Aleph Prime. He passed a public information terminal and requested the time: he had arrived, as he intended, approximately an hour before the emergency message to the Enterprise had been transmitted.
In the pre-dawn hours, even revelers on leave from the ships and transports and mining operations centered around Aleph had mostly gone to their beds, but the few beings Spock did pass paid him no attention. McCoy had been right about the uniform; it would have made him more conspicuous. He was well aware of the human penchant for comparing assignments, ships, commanders: had he been in uniform it would not have been long before some overfriendly inebriated human raised more questions than he could answer.
The small government sector was even quieter than the rest of the station. He knew where the emergency transmitter was, but it was inaccessible to anyone without the proper code. He walked slowly down a hallway lined with glass-walled offices, all dark and deserted: customs, security, Federation, Starfleet, the public defender’s office, the prosecutor’s office—
The lights flicked on; Ian Braithewaite left an inner chamber and entered the main room. Spock froze, but it was too late to get out of sight. Clutching briefcase, portable reader, and a handful of transcript flimsies, Braithewaite came into the hall. The lights faded out when he closed the door. He noticed Spock only when he nearly ran into him; he glanced down distractedly.
“Sorry,” he said. “Can I help you? Are you looking for somebody?”
Of course, Spock thought. He has not met me yet; he does not know who I am, and he has no suspicions about me. Tomorrow, when the Enterprise arrives, he will remember that he has seen me.
Does this mean I fail here, too?
“Where is the Vulcan consulate?” Spock asked.
Braithewaite pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Oh. Right. You’re in the wrong sector, all the consulates are in a higher-class part of the station entirely.” He gave directions to an area in Aleph Prime’s north polar region. Spock thanked him, and Braithewaite left, reading one of the transcripts as he walked. It was no wonder it took him time to recall where he had seen Spock before.
Once the prosecutor was out of sight, Spock tried the door to the emergency transmitter. It was, of course, locked, and the computer that guarded it demanded identifications. He was careful not to speak to it or palm the sensor; he did not want it to have legally admissible proof of his presence.
For a moment he thought about returning to the public information cubicle, accessing the computer, and breaking through its guards to open the transmitter room. He had deceived the Aleph Prime systems before, or, more accurately, he would do it in the future; he could do it now.
But that was exactly what Dr. Mordreaux would do. It was the simplest, most direct way of getting to the transmitter, which the professor had to do if he were to order the Enterprise to Aleph. Al Spock had to do was find a place of concealment, wait, and capture him when he arrived.
Cautiously, Spock tried each door along the corridor. Somewhat to his surprise, one of them opened. Inside it was dark but he did not wave up the lights. He could see well enough: it was a small, empty courtroom, perhaps the one in which Dr. Mordreaux had been convicted, sentenced, and denied any appeal.
Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, Spock thought: a philosophy difficult to express in Vulcan. He could understand why the humans faced with Dr. Mordreaux’s research had been so terrified of it, so determined to suppress it that they would subvert justice to succeed. It was hardly his place to forgive them, though; he could only wish they were not so utterly certain to misuse what the professor had discovered. Had he been on Vulcan, had Vulcans been the only beings involved, they would have studied the principles and honored the discoverer; and they would have agreed, by ethical consensus, never to put the principles into use.
He knew it. He was certain of it. Almost certain.
Concealing himself inside the small darkened courtroom, where he could look out but not be seen, he waited.
His logic did not disappoint him this time. After only a few minutes, Dr. Mordreaux skulked down the hall toward the emergency transmitter, glancing nervously over his shoulder at every other step, stopping short at every faint noise. Over his shoulder he carried a time-changer almost identical to Spock’s.
He placed his hand against the locking panel: he had succeeded in breaking the security circuits, just as Spock would have done. The door slid open. Spock drew his phaser and stepped into the hall.
“Dr. Mordreaux,” he said softly. The professor spun, panic in his face. He grabbed for his own weapon.
“No, wait” he cried.
Spock fired.
He caught Mordreaux before he fell. His phaser had, of course, been set only to stun. He did not wish to kill if he could possibly avoid it. He lifted the elderly man easily and carried him into the courtroom, secured the door from the inside, opaqued the glass walls, and raised the light level so the professor would be able to see when he came to. Spock sat down to wait.
In sick bay, Dr. McCoy worked frantically, afraid too much time had passed, afraid he would fail again, afraid he would have to watch Ian Braithewaite, too, die under his hands.
Spock, he thought, where the devil are you, why don’t you do something? The world’s coming apart at the seams and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Outside the intensive care unit, Scott and Hunter waited. The erratic tones of the life-support systems could not quite obscure Scott’s voice.
“He was afraid he’d be killed,” he said, his voice strained, and tortured. “He was afraid ...”
The poison was overwhelming Ian’s body despite the support of the critical care machines. His heart trembled into fibrillation and his body convulsed with the shock that restored the beat again.
Fight, you stupid headstrong busybody, McCoy shouted in his mind.
He barely noticed when Hunter left.
Chapter 8
Hikaru Sulu sat cross-legged on the floor of Mandala Flynn’s cabin, his hands relaxed on his knees, his eyes closed. He tried to recapture any of the feeling he had had in the room when she was alive. But it was as if she had never been here: she had left behind nothing of the sort that makes one’s room into a reflection of one’s own personality. She had put Hikaru’s antique sabre up on the wall, but it hung alone on the bare expanse. Her ring, warm on the inner surface, cool on the outer, circled his finger.
Mandala’s individuality had not been a function of anything she owned. She was gone, and there was no retrieving her except in memory. She lived strong and clear in his mind—he thought for an instant he caught the soft bright scent of her hair—and he began to un
derstand her disinclination to gather possessions. He could not lose his memories of her, and they could not be taken from him.
The bed was still rumpled from their lovemaking.
The power failure startled him from his reverie, and prodded his guilt. Wandering through the Enterprise in a haze of grief, he was no use to Hunter, no use in finding out what had happened. From what Barry al Auriga had told him, every possible explanation dissolved in a mire of peculiar occurrences. Hikaru felt as stunned and angry as Barry, that Mandala was under suspicion.
He stood up slowly, rising all in one motion from the cross-legged position; in the silence the returning hum of the ventilators sounded very loud. Like a ghost passing through the dim illumination of half-power, Sulu left his lover’s cabin.
In the transporter room, Hunter touched the peculiar addition to the console, being careful not to disturb any of its connections or controls. Spock had no place to beam to, not with a normal transporter, but, as Ian Braithewaite had tried to say, this machine was definitely not a normal transporter anymore.
“What is that thing?” Mr. Sulu asked. He had rejoined her as she left sick bay. Hunter was glad of his company, not only because he could be of use to her with his knowledge of ship and crew, but because she had worried about him all alone with his grief. They had talked about Mandala and Jim on the way from Aleph to the Enterprise; she knew how badly he was hurting.
She returned her attention to the construct in the transporter. “I’m not quite sure.” She itched to open it up and see what its innards looked like. “I think I’ll give Dr. McCoy one more chance to tell us what’s going on, and what that thing does, before I start playing around with it.”
She closed the amber crystals back into the transporter, and she and Sulu headed back toward sick bay.
“How are you holding up?” she asked quietly.
“Better than a little while ago,” he said. “And you?”
“When I find out why they had to die I’ll be able to tell you,” she said. “I don’t want it to be for nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing,” Sulu said. “Nobody is acting like I’d expect them to, not Dr. McCoy or Mr. Spock or Mr. Scott, and people don’t just change like that for no reason at all.”
She knew he meant it as a defense, but it could equally be used to accuse them. She did not say so.
In sick bay, Ian Braithewaite lay unconscious and surrounded by the critical care machines. The sensors showed his life signs stable, Hunter noted with some relief: she had expected him to die.
McCoy and Scott sat in silence in McCoy’s office, neither glancing toward the other. Hunter sat on a corner of the doctor’s desk, and Mr. Sulu stood just inside the doorway.
“Is Mr. Braithewaite going to be all right?”
“I don’t know,” McCoy said.
“He was afraid he’d be poisoned,” Scott said.
“Will you stop saying that? He wasn’t poisoned here! Somebody fed him the toxin encapsulated. The matrix has been dissolving for a couple of days. Since before he came on board.”
“Since he saw Mr. Spock on Aleph, before the Enterprise ever reached it, just as I saw Mr. Spock where he couldna have been!”
“Braithewaite was probably already hallucinating—”
“Are ye saying I’m hallucinating, too? D’ye meant I’ve been poisoned, too?”
Hunter was willing to let them argue if the result was some useful information, but this was ridiculous. “Dr. McCoy,” she said, “I just found something very strange in the transporter. A bioelectronic addition.”
Scott glanced sharply at her. “Bioelectronic! So was the gizmo Mr. Spock had wi’ him when he disappeared—some kind o’ weapon, Mr. Braithewaite said. Nae thing like that should be in the transporter!” He stood up.
“Stay here, Mr. Scott,” Hunter said, without looking at him, keeping her gaze fixed on Leonard McCoy. The doctor lied with his expression no better than with words. His face turning slowly very pale, he stared at her. “I don’t want to take it apart, Mr. Scott. Not yet. Leonard, do you want to tell me what it is?”
“Not very much, no.”
“Then I’ll tell you something about it. It boosts the beam. And it alters it into ... something else. The most interesting thing about it is the return control.”
“You didn’t touch it—!”
“No. Not so far. But if I engage it, and Mr. Spock still has the gadget’s mate with him, it will bring him back. From wherever he is. Isn’t that right?”
“Maybe.”
“Damn it! Will you just tell me what the hell is going on!”
“Give Spock a little more time,” McCoy said. “Please.”
“How much more time?”
“He said he’d try to come back within twelve hours. He’s been gone almost two.”
“Do you really expect me to do nothing for twelve hours? Without a reasonable explanation? Or even an unreasonable one?”
McCoy shook his head. “If you didn’t believe me before, there’s just no chance you’d believe what I’d tell you now.”
“Leonard,” she said, “what have you got to lose?”
“Everything.”
In the uncomfortable pause, Mr. Sulu stepped forward. “Dr. McCoy,” he said, “please trust her. How can she trust you if you don’t give her a chance?”
McCoy looked up at the helm officer, buried his face in his hands with a groan, and, finally, raised his head again.
“If you turn on the thing in the transporter,” he said slowly, “you might bring Spock back. But more likely you’d kill him.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
He drew in a deep breath, let it out, laced his fingers together and pressed his palms against his closed eyes, and started to tell a story so much more preposterous than even the one Ian Braithewaite had constructed that Hunter listened, fascinated despite herself.
When he finished, Hunter and Scott and Sulu all stared at him.
“I’ve no’ heard a crazier story in my life!” Scott said.
“Scotty, you know time-travel is possible,” McCoy said.
“Aye ...” The engineer withdrew into himself.
“Either Dr. Mordreaux wasn’t as loony as I thought,” Hunter said, “or you have gone stark staring mad.”
McCoy sighed. “I know how it sounds, especially now after I’ve spent so much time trying to mislead you. I kept hoping Spock would succeed, if I just gave him the chance.”
“And now you want me to give him the chance.”
“Hunter—you could have stopped him, before. You didn’t.”
“I wouldn’t kill Spock because you lied to me any more than I’d do it because Ian Braithewaite wanted me to.”
“Don’t kill him now. Just give him a little more time. It’s all the truth, I swear to you.”
Hunter leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “I couldn’t do anything for Jim anymore, but he was Jim’s friend, and that is the real reason I didn’t stop him.”
“Hunter,” Sulu said intensely, “it’s a little time—against the chance that Mandala and the captain won’t be—wouldn’t be—killed after all. It’s a risk worth taking!”
She laughed softly. “Not if we’re wrong, it isn’t.” She shook her head, surprised at herself. “I think I’ll spend the next ten years hanging by my thumbs in a military prison for this, but Spock can have his damned twelve hours.”
Lying on the bench in the courtroom, Professor Mordreaux groaned. Spock went to his side, and, when his former teacher had fully regained consciousness, gently helped him sit up.
“Spock? Mr. Spock, what are you doing here? How ... ?” He glanced beyond the Vulcan to the time-changers. “Oh, no,” he said, and began to laugh.
Spock had expected as much, though he had hoped for some semblance of rationality. He would no more be able to reason with this version of Dr. Mordreaux than the last.
The professor jumped to his feet. “How long have I be
en unconscious? Maybe there’s still time!” He rushed toward the door but Spock caught and stopped him before he had gone three steps.
“Mr. Spock, you don’t understand! There’s no time to lose!”
“I understand perfectly, sir. If we wait a few more moments, at least one event in this time-stream will have changed, and perhaps the Enterprise will not be diverted.”
“But that isn’t me! I mean I’m not him!” He made an inarticulate noise of pure frustration and drew a deep breath. He closed his eyes and opened them, and began again.
“You’re stopping the wrong person,” he said. “I’ve come here to try to stop myself—my mad self—from calling you away from the singularity. I know everything that’s happened. You’re here to keep Jim Kirk from being murdered. I’ve been chasing myself through the time-streams for ...” He stopped, and laughed again, still on the edge of hysteria. “Of course duration is meaningless. Don’t you understand, Mr. Spock? I’m trying to stop myself, to save myself—”
Spock rushed past him, out of the courtroom and across the hall. The door to the transmitter room stood wide open. Spock plunged through it, Dr. Mordreaux right behind him, A second Dr. Mordreaux turned away from the subspace transmitter. The tape spun through the machine with a high-speed whine.
“Too late!” Dr. Mordreaux, in front of him, cried with glee.
“Too late,” Dr. Mordreaux, behind him, said softly. “Too late.”
The professor by the transmitter touched his time-changer. Spock’s hands passed through his insubstantial form, and then he was gone.
The future Dr. Mordreaux and Mr. Spock stared at the transmitter. They both knew the message could not be countermanded or overridden. That was part of its fail-safe system.
“Damn,” Mordreaux whispered. And then, “Let’s get out of here before somebody comes along. If they recognize me they’ll probably shoot me on sight.”
They retrieved the time-changers from the courtroom, left the government sector of Aleph Prime, and walked together in silence to the core park. It was deserted now, at dawn, and probably the safest place Dr. Mordreaux could be. They sat down on a bench. Mordreaux buried his face in his hands.
STAR TREK: TOS #2 - The Entropy Effect Page 21