The Entropy Effect

by Vonda N. Mcintyre Неизвестный Автор

  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.

  8

  Hikaru Sulu sat crosslegged 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 understand 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 crosslegged 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, neitheir 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, “wh
at 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, “oryou 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 been 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.

  “Are you all right, Professor?”

  After a bit, he nodded. “As well as can be expected, considering that the universe keeps proving to me how much easier it is to create chaos than order.”

  “One can prove easily enough that chaos is the primary result of all that has occurred.”

  Mordreaux looked up at him. “Ah. You’ve seen the connection between your work and mine. We aren’t fighting me, we really are fighting chaos. Entropy.”

  “I believed at first that I had made some error in my observations,” Spock said.

  “No, they were all too accurate. Ever since I started to use the time-changer, the increase of entropy really has been accelerating.”

  “I found the destructive potential difficult to accept.”

  “Yes. I find it so, too. For a million years human beings have done their best to discover the ultimate weapon. It was left to me to invent the one that really can destroy our universe.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, a habit that had not altered through all the years.

  “It’s getting very bad by my time, Mr. Spock. The universe is simply .. . running down. Well. You can imagine.”

  “Indeed.”

  The false moon vanished behind a painted hillside on the far wall, and streaks of incandescent scarlet sunlight streamed out of the wall behind them.

  “Why did you let it go so far, professor? Or have you been attempting to change things back for a long time?”

  “A long time, yes. But I couldn’t even begin until I recreated my work. The virus program was very efficient, Mr. Spock. All my papers dissolved away. One could search memory bank and library and seldom even find a reference to my name.”

  “You could have contacted me. You must know of my respect for your work. You must have known I would keep copies safe.”

  Mordreaux reached out to pat Spock’s hand, and the Vulcan did not flinch from his touch. All the emotions he received from his old teacher were of sympathy and appreciation, and to his shame Spock felt himself in serious need of the unwanted feelings.

  “Ah, my friend, but you did not survive the accusations made against you. You were sent to rehabilitation, though the authorities must have known what that would mean for you. I’m sure they did know you would resist their efforts to reprogram your mind... .”

  Spock nodded. Many humans had been sent to rehabilitation and come out obedient, complacent, but living; only a few Vulcans had ever received such a sentence, and all of them had died. Knowing he was that much closer to Vulcan than human gave Spock a peculiar sort of comfort.

  “What about Dr. McCoy? And Captain Hunter?”

  “Starfleet forced Hunter to accept a dishonorable discharge. She divorced her family to protect the children from shame, and she joined the free commandoes. She was killed on the border a few months later. One of her officers committed suicide in protest at the treatment Hunter received—”

&
nbsp; “Mr. Sulu!” Despite himself, Spock was surprised. Sulu had never seemed the type to go quite as far as hara-kiri .

  “Sulu ...? No, the name was Russian. I forget exactly what it was. I think Mr. Sulu entered the free commandoes as well.” Dr. Mordreaux shrugged. “Little difference, only a slower method of suicide. As for Dr. McCoy ...” The professor shook his head. “I tried to keep track of him. But after they released him he disappeared. Even before they began the sentence he had lost heart. He was convicted of murdering Jim Kirk, you see.”

  “Yet you came out with your mind intact, that is clear.”

  “They had second thoughts about me,” he said. “They realized how valuable I could be, doing exactly what I was convicted of.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “After I went mad I was of very little use to them, and they stopped watching me quite so carefully. It took me some time to bring myself back to sanity . .. thence here.”

  “I cannot understand why your other self murdered Captain Kirk. You said—on the bridge, yesterday, tomorrow—that he had destroyed you. But all he had done was respond to the orders you sent yourself”

  “I know. But in the time-track in which he didn’t die, he defended your proposal—that I was too valuable to destroy—all too well. After I went mad, I thought it would have been better if I had been sent through rehabilitation. I would have been docile and happy and no one would have persecuted me. So I decided to go back and prevent him from saving me.”

  “How many time-tracks are there?”

  “They multiply, Mr. Spock, like lemmings. The main track split several ways when I sent my friends back in time; it split again, after my trial, when a particularly murderous future version of me came back and started a campaign of revenge—”

  “The defense counsel? And the judge?”

  Dr. Mordreaux nodded. “And Ian Braithewaite, but he came last.”

  The imitation sun had risen high enough to cast shadows, and their silhouetted images stretched far down the hillside.

  “Another track just split off, when I sent that message. There’s the one in which you finish your observations and the change is traced back to me and I’m persecuted for it, and the one in which I prevent your finishing, and realize the entropy effect myself in several years.” He glanced quizzically at Spock. “You see how complicated it gets.”