Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

But the breathing reflex requires a nerve impulse. When McCoy turned off the respirator, Jim’s body never even tried to draw another breath. After the final, involuntary exhalation there was no struggle at all, and that, far more than the evidence of the machines, the persuasion of Spock, or his own intellectual certainty, finally convinced McCoy that every spark or whisper of his friend was dead.

All the life-signs stabilized at zero, and the tones faded to silence.

The doctor pulled a sheet over Jim’s face, over the dead gray eyes.

McCoy broke down. Sobs racked him and he staggered, suddenly aware ofjust how much he had drunk. He nearly fell, but Spock caught him, and supported him in the nearest thing to an embrace that the Vulcan could endure.

“Oh, god, Spock, how could this happen?”

McCoy sank gratefully into darkness.

Spock caught McCoy as he fell, and lifted him easily. Loss and regret pulled at Spock so strongly that he could not deny their existence; all he could do was keep them from showing outwardly. That did not lessen his private shame. His face set, he carried McCoy to one of the cubicles and eased him onto a bunk. He removed McCoy’s boots and loosened the fastenings of his sweat-stained uniform shirt, covered him with a blanket, and lowered the lights. Then, recalling the single, humiliating, inadvertent time he himself had become inebriated, Spock decided to stay until he was certain the doctor had not ingested enough ethanol to endanger his life. Spock sat in a chair near McCoy’s bed and rested his forehead against his hand.

Spock was as oblivious as McCoy to the fact that they had been watched. Across from the quarantine unit, in a half-curtained cubicle, Ian Braithewaite observed everything that happened. He was heavily sedated; he had a hairline fracture of the skull and a severe concussion, from the fall he had taken on the bridge; his head ached fiercely and his vision doubled and redoubled.

At first he did not realize what was happening, and then he thought it must be hallucination or dream. When he realized, with disbelief, that he was observing reality, he tried to struggle up, but the sensors fed more sedative into his system. As the life support displays over Captain Kirk’s body went out, one by one, Ian felt himself losing consciousness. He tried to cry out, he tried to make Spock and McCoy stop, but he could not move. He could only watch helplessly, as Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy argued and then waited for Jim Kirk to die.

Ian fell back into oblivion, believing he would never awaken, but knowing what he had seen.

Spock roused himself abruptly. He had nearly fallen asleep. If he slept now he would be difficult to awaken for several days at least. How long he could hold off the increasing need he was uncertain, but he had no choice. Too many duties lay before him to permit him to rest.

But why had he been kept from dozing? He glanced at McCoy, but the doctor slept soundly, in no distress.

In the dimmed space of the main sick bay, the light from the quarantine unit was partially blocked; it was this shadow falling across him that had aroused Spock’s attention.

Jenniver Aristeides, the security officer who had been taken ill at Dr. Mordreaux’s cabin, gazed through the glass, at the quiet machines, the silent sensors, and the captain’s covered body. Her reflection glimmered as two tears fell from her silver eyes down her steel-gray cheeks, and her fingers clenched on the window-ledge.

Christine Chapel hurried across the room.

“Ensign Aristeides, you shouldn’t be up.”

“The captain is dead,” Aristeides said softly.

Chapel hesitated. “I know,” she said. “I know. Please go back to bed, you’ve been extremely ill.”

“I cannot stay. I am needed.”

Chapel moved in front of Aristeides, blocking her way to the corridor. Aristeides waited patiently, her immense hands hanging loose at her, sides, no aggression in her anywhere. The contrast between the two women was so marked that an observer unfamiliar with their backgrounds would have difficulty believing they belonged to the same species. Nurse Chapel was a tall, strong, elegant woman, but next to Aristeides’ granite solidity she seemed as delicate as the translucent wind-riders that lived above Vulcan’s high deserts, too frail ever to touch the ground.

Spock rose and approached Aristeides quietly. She was the only human being on board the Enterprise who was a match for Spock in terms of strength. She was more than a match. He and Chapel together would not be able to stop the security officer if she chose to pass them.

“Ensign,” he said, “when you are here you must obey the orders of the medical personnel.”

“I am recovered,” she said. “I have duties.”

“Dr. McCoy took you off duty for at least a week,” Chapel said. She glanced beyond Aristeides, to Spock, with relief, and gratitude for at least the moral support: she must be as aware as he that Aristeides could do as she chose. Spock wondered if he could use the nerve-pinch on her, if his hand could span her massive trapezius muscle, if the nerve itself were close enough to the surface to be accessible.

“I should have said honor,” Aristeides said. “I have some honor left.”

“There is no question of your honor,” Spock said.

Aristeides did not answer.

“What made her ill?” Spock asked Chapel. “Is she in danger of a relapse?”

Chapel blinked, and passed her hand across her eyes, seeking back in her memory over hours that seemed like days.

“Hypermorphic botulism,” she said.

“Most unusual.” Spock, like Kirk, had assumed Ian Braithewaite’s two colleagues had been felled by infection from a common source on Aleph Prime, but how could Aristeides contract it as well? Neither Aleph Prime nor the Enterprise had had a general outbreak of food poisoning. On the contrary, the only point of similarity between the victims was their connection with Dr. Mordreaux.

“I am recovered,” Aristeides said. “I cannot stay here. At least let me go to my quarters.”

Spock raised a questioning eyebrow at Chapel. “Is there a medical objection to that?”

“It isn’t a good idea.”

“Please,” Aristeides whispered. “I beg of you.”

A look of pity softened Chapel’s expression. She reached out to touch the metal and plastic band on Jenniver’s left wrist, but the security officer flinched back as if—as if Chapel might strike her? That made no sense. Perhaps she simply did not like to be touched.

“Jenniver,” Chapel said, “will you promise not to take off your sensor? That way if you’re in any distress we’ll know to come help you.”

“If I require help, the sensor will signal.”

That was not a question, Spock thought. She made a statement: she has implied no promise.

“Yes, it will. I suppose it would be all right to stay in your own room,” Chapel said. “You need rest more than anything else right now.”

Jenniver Aristeides inclined her head in gratitude, and Christine Chapel stood aside so she could leave. The security officer trudged away down the corridor and around a corner, out of sight.

Chapel watched her go, then came a few steps back into sick bay and stopped. “I hope that was the right thing to do.”

Spock wanted to check on Dr. McCoy again, but as he turned, Chapel reached out and brushed his sleeve with her fingertips. Spock faced her again, expecting an outburst of some emotional type, which he would refuse to understand.

“Mr. Spock,” she said, with quiet composure, “someonemust tell the crew what has happened. It isn’t fair to make them find out through rumor, or the way Jenniver did. The way I did. You’re in command now. If you can’t—if you prefer not to do it you must ask someone else to.”