The door to her cabin swung open. She heard it, but did not turn. Besides Jenniver, only Snnanagfashtalli could open the door, and she was glad she would to able to see her friend one last time. Not to say goodbye, though. If she said goodbye, Fashtall would try to stop her. She reached out quickly and concealed the remains of the crushed medical sensor. She had promised only that if she needed help, it would signal. It would never signal anything now, and she did not need any help for what she had to do.
“Ensign Aristeides.” The voice was not Fashtall’s; it belonged to the science officer, the first officer—the captain. “May I enter?”
Snnanagfashtalli came up behind her and rubbed her cheek against Jenniver’s temple in the greeting-to-friends. The cream and maroon fur slid smoothly across Jenniver’s short, coarse brown hair.
“If you wish,” she said. It was not an invitation; it bound her to nothing, not even, strictly, to courtesy.
She should stand, salute, make some acknowledgment at least of his presence, if not his superior rank. But she could not even summon the trivial effort required to move in earth-normal gravity. She did not want to offend Spock. On the contrary, he was one of the few people on board she truly admired.
Though Mandala Flynn had treated her kindly, not with the contempt of the previous security commander, Jenniver had feared her for the repressed violence in her, and, paradoxically, for her comparative physical fragility. As a duty, Jenniver had respected Captain Kirk, in the detached way she employed to separate herself from the majority of human-type people who looked through her, tried and failed to conceal their revulsion for her, and felt profoundly uncomfortable in her presence. Snnanagfashtalli, she felt about as she had never felt about another being in her life. Perhaps it was gratitude for friendship and consideration; perhaps it was love. But she had never experienced love, as giver or receiver, so she did not know. She could not ask Fashtall, and she knew no one else well enough to ask. If she asked and they laughed at her, the humiliation would overwhelm her.
But Spock she admired. She always felt she might turn clumsily around—though she was not, in fact, clumsy—and inadvertently crush any other human or human-type on the ship: but about Spock was a resilient strength that reassured her. She never worried about hurting him by mistake with some not-well-thought-out step. And he was the only humanlike creature on the ship who was not repelled by her form. He was indifferent to it, and that reaction was such a relief to her that she could feel comfortable in his presence.
“Do you feel well now?”
She hesitated, but answered. It did not matter what she said; he could not stop her. She hoped he would show her the courtesy of not trying.
“No.” She would not lie to a direct question. “I feel ashamed and dishonored. I have failed, just as I have always failed at everything.”
“Ensign Aristeides, do you realize that you almost died? That any other member of the crew surely would have died, too quickly to sound the alarm?”
“The result was the same. I fainted—I must have fainted, otherwise how could the prisoner have escaped? The captain and my commander are dead. I should not have become ill. My people do not contract illnesses. It would have been better if I had died.”
Fashtall growled. “I tell you again that your people expect too much of themselves.”
Jenniver patted Fashtall’s long-fingered hand, which lay curled and relaxed on her shoulder.
“They ask no more than all the others can give. Only I cannot answer.”
Spock came around and sat down facing her.
“I do not understand what you are saying.”
“Mr. Spock, the crops my people grow are so laden with heavy metals that a single bite of our bread would kill a member of any natural species we know about. We are immune to every human plague, and nearly every toxin. And the doctor tells me I contracted food poisoning ?” She laughed bitterly. “It is nothing but more evidence that I am a useless throwback, suspended somewhere between true humanity and true Changed.”
“Suicide does not appear to me to be a creative way of solving your difficulties.”
“I left my home because I was inadequate to live there. The reasons are different here, but I am still not adequate. I am half-human and the worlds hold no place for me.” She looked away. “You cannot understand.”
“Do you think not?” Spock asked. “I, too, am half human.”
Jenniver laughed again. “Ah,” she said, “truly, you see no differences between us?”
He had the manners not to make things worse by answering.
“I do not doubt you have been made to feel uncomfortable at times, or that you have been the target of hatred,” Jenniver said. “But on this ship; I have seen how the others look at you, and how they look at me. I have seen that you need no friends, but if you chose to reach out, friends would be there for you. I admire your independence, but I cannot mimic it. I yearn for friends, but my own species flees from me. I would have gone mad if not for Snnanagfashtalli.” She sighed. “I did my best to perform a job for which I was not suited. I knew I would, inevitably, fail. But do you think I can endure the shame of failing because of an illness whose epidemic included only me?”
“It was no epidemic,” Spock said. “Strictly speaking it was not even an illness.”
“No use to humor me, Mr. Spock. I’m tired of that, too.”
“I suspected it when Nurse Chapel said you alone of all the crew were stricken. Despite the virulence of the toxin of hypermorphic Clostridium botulinum , you would have had to ingest a massive dose to be affected—a dose too large to be administered in any but its purified form. An analysis of the test results confirmed my suspicion.”
“What are you saying?”
“You were poisoned.”
Snnanagfashtalli growled low in her throat.
“Someone tried to kill you, very nearly succeeded, and would have succeeded with any other being on this ship, including me. I believe this same being also poisoned two citizens of Aleph Prime, in the same manner, and arranged the death of Captain Kirk. I cannot yet make assumptions about whether Commander Flynn was a planned target.”
“My gods.” Jenniver blinked slowly several times, her thick brown eyelashes brushing her cheeks. Fashtall patted her gently.
“Who has done this?” The diagonal pupils of Fashtall’s maroon eyes dilated at the prospect of the hunt. “And why?” Jenniver asked.
“I do not know,” Spock said. “I do not know the answer to either question. Dr. Mordreaux was thoroughly scanned when he came on board, and he carried nothing—certainly no gun or poison capsule.”
“I’d hardly let a prisoner give me a poison capsule, anyway,” Jenniver said. “I’m that competent, at least.”
“Indeed,” Spock said. “Ensign, when you were on duty, or shortly before, did you experience any sharp, jabbing sensation?”
“Like a dart, you mean? No, but I wouldn’t. My nervous system wasn’t designed to respond to that sort of stimulus.” Severe physical trauma was the only injury that ought to be life-threatening to one of her breed, and that was the only kind of pain she would feel.
“I see.” Spock considered what she had said, then looked her in the eyes again. “Do you remember losing consciousness?”
“No,” she said quickly, then looked away. “But I must have.”
“According to Mr. al Auriga you were found, barely conscious, braced against the door. This would seem to indicate that even if you did faint, Dr. Mordreaux would have had serious difficulty getting past you.”
“That was the idea. But obviously I was wrong. He did get out. You saw him yourself.”
“I believed that to be true. But if he could not have escaped from his cabin, some other explanation must exist.”
“I wish you’d tell me what it was.”
Spock stood up. “Do you understand now that you are not responsible for what happened? Whatever did happen, you cannot be blamed.”
Jenniver tried
desperately to believe that, but it was hard, so hard ...“I should not have become ill,” she said, for that still was true.
Snnanagfashtalli snarled, a howl of frustration. “She will not hurt herself now!” she said. “If she tries I will tear out her throat”
Jenniver and Spock both looked at Snnanagfashtalli, who glared back with no awareness of irony. With a sudden feeling of release, Jenniver burst out laughing and hugged her friend.
“It’s all right. I’ll be all right now.”
Spock went to the door and opened it, then turned briefly back.
“Ensign,” he said, “please satisfy my curiosity. You did not apply for the position in security?”
“No,” she said. “I tried to transfer out. I kept getting turned down before, and I hadn’t got up the nerve to ask Commander Flynn.”
“What post did you wish?”
“Botany. It wouldn’t be quite the same as plowing rock with a four-hitch of ponies. But it’s the closest I can get without going home.” She paused. “I don’t want to go home.”
Spock nodded. He understood.
Once the crisis had passed, he would initiate her transfer himself. He closed the door behind him and left the friends alone.
5
Dr. McCoy awoke with the worst hangover he had ever had in his life. He should have taken something for it last night, but he had been too drunk, too distracted—and he preserved the anachronistic morality that one should pay for one’s excesses. But when he arose, he had to flee immediately into the washroom; sickness took him till his stomach was empty, his eyes were running, and his throat was sore from the taste of bile. Giving up the attempt to discipline himself, he took an anti-nausea pill and two aspirin, and drank a glass of isotonic solution that would help him rehydrate. The taste was so vile that he nearly got sick again.
McCoy sighed, and washed his face. His eyes were redrimmed and bloodshot; he looked like he still was crying.
Maybe I’ll get to be an old alky lying in a back street on some godforsaken out-of-the-way frontier planet, he thought. All I need is a three-day growth of beard—
At that point he noticed, to his disgust, that the brand of beard repressor he used had worn off: he had not kept track of the reapplication schedule. While the whiskers had not yet grown so long that they made him look even more dissolute, the stubble was scratchy and irritating.
He tramped from the cubicle where he had slept—be accurate, he thought: where he had lain unconscious—back to his own quarters. Failing to keep his gaze averted, he saw that the quarantine unit was empty, the machines shut down and pushed back against the wall. Someone—Spock, perhaps, or more likely Christine Chapel—had kept their wits about them, last night, far better than he. Jim’s body had been taken to the stasis room.
McCoy washed, shaved, applied more whisker repressor, and put on clean clothes. He was embarrassed about the way he had acted since Jim’s death—no, since well before, since refusing to believe the evidence of his machines as well as his own medical training and experience. The moment Uhura relayed the horrible information about the spiderweb, McCoy had known he could not save Jim, but some overwhelming impulse had forced him to try to pull off a superhuman feat. Had his motivation been love, or merely stubbornness and pride? No matter now; he had failed.
He was ashamed, as well, of the way he had treated Spock. The worst thing was that even if he apologized—which he intended to do—he would never be sure Spock understood how sorry he was, any more than he would ever know if he had caused him any distress in the first place.
Their conversation was vivid in his mind. He would almost have preferred a memory blackout. As it was he recalled last night with the surreal clarity of a dream.
What he had insisted that they do was absurd. In the daytime, sober, with the first shock of grief and incomprehension fading to a dull throb of loss and sorrow, McCoy knew his idea was impossible. He had seen it in a dream because it was a dream.
Spock knew it. His excuses, his explanations, were all so much technological claptrap, a disguise for the real reason he refused to do anything. He knew, deep in his gut, what McCoy now understood: that playing with fate was wrong. Perhaps he actually had been less affected by Jim’s death than McCoy—perhaps his unemotional acceptance of circumstance permitted him to see more clearly. But what it came down to was that death was not an unnatural state; it could be delayed, but never denied; they could not go back, like children telling a story, and fix things so it was all all right, so everyone lived happily ever after, ever after.
McCoy sighed again. He had work to do that he had neglected for too long, but as soon as he was finished he would go find Spock and admit that the Vulcan had been right.
A knock on the door woke Sulu. He lay staring upward for several seconds, wondering where he was. Not on the Enterprise —
Now he remembered. He glanced across the cabin; Ilya’s bunk was rumpled and empty.
The door opened silently and light from the corridor spilled in through the narrow crack.
Mr. Sulu?
He pushed himself up on his elbows, blinking. He could see nothing but shadows beyond the strip of light.
“Yes ...? What...? Who is it?” He felt so tired and groggy that his head spun.
“It’s Hunter. I have to talk to you.” Her voice sounded rough and strained.
Sulu pushed the screen back against the wall, where it obediently dimmed to black. He fumbled for the light switch, and raised the illumination of the cabin as he pulled his blankets a little farther up his chest.
“Yes, ma’am? Come in.”
She walked slowly, reluctantly, to the foot of his bunk. Her hair hung down, unbraided.
“I just got a subspace transmission,” she said. “From the Enterprise . It’s... extremely bad news.” She passed her hand across her eyes, as if she could wipe away pain. Sulu found himself clenching his fist so hard that Mandala’s ring dug into his hand.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
She sat down on the end of the bed. “There’s no easy way to tell you this. Jim Kirk has been murdered.”
Stunned, he listened to her tell him what had happened, though the words were little more than random sounds. Captain Kirk, dead? It was not possible. A whirl of images engulfed him, of the kindnesses James Kirk had shown him, of all the captain had taught him, of the several times Kirk had saved his life.
I would have been there, Sulu thought. I would have been on the bridge when it happened, I might have been able to do something. I might have been able to stop it.
“I’m the highest ranking Starfleet officer in the sector,” Hunter said. Her voice nearly failed her; she stopped, took a deep breath, and put herself under control again. “It’s my duty to investigate Jim Kirk and Mandala Flynn’s deaths. I’m going to—”
Sulu raised his head, unbelieving, cold grief slowly swelling over him.
“Mandala?” he whispered. “Mandala is dead?”
Captain Hunter’s voice trailed off. Sulu stared at her, shaking deep down, his face gray with the second, even more devastating shock.
“Oh, gods,” Hunter said. “Oh, gods, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize ...”
“You couldn’t know,” Sulu said. “Hardly anybody knew.” He gazed down at his hands, which could do nothing, now. The ruby ring seemed dull as stone. Now, he was helpless. “We only just figured it out ourselves.” If he had been there, he might have done something. “It wasn’t your fault.” But maybe it was mine, he thought. Maybe it was mine.
“I’m leaving for the Enterprise in an hour,” Captain Hunter said. “I’ve got a two-seat courier. The other place is yours if you want it.” She got up quickly and left. Afterwards, Sulu never knew whether she went
away because she was going to cry, or because he was.
Max Arrunja unlocked Dr. Mordreaux’s cabin for Mr. Spock, with no more comment than bare civility required; the second member of the doubled guard simply stood by the doorway and st
ared straight ahead. Spock did not try to talk to her, or require her to speak to him. The security division had lost a respected commander, one with far more direct effect on their lives than Captain Kirk had had, someone who had replaced an unsatisfactory superior not with mere competence but with leadership that earned admiration. To a certain extent they blamed Spock for her death, and he had very little evidence that they were wrong.
He knocked on the door, and took the muttered reply as permission to enter. In the dimness beyond, the professor lay curled on his bunk, hunched up under a blanket.
“Professor Mordreaux?”
A pause. “What do you want, Mr. Spock?”
“I told you, sir, that I would return when you had had time to recover from the effects of the drugs you were given on Aleph Prime.”
“I’m not sure drugs are such a bad idea just now.”
“Dr. Mordreaux, there is no time for self-pity. I must know what happened, both here and at the station.”
“I did it,” Mordreaux said. He sat up slowly and turned toward the Vulcan, waving the lights to a higher level.
Spock sat down facing him, waiting for him to continue. The science officer did not trust himself to speak; he realized he had been hoping for a denial he could believe, and some other explanation than that the teacher he had respected most in his lifelong quest for knowledge had murdered Jim Kirk.
“I must have, I think,” Mordreaux said. “I wonder what caused me to do it?”
The Entropy Effect Page 13