Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

He tried to make out what had happened, and how, but failed completely. Every reasonable train of thought ended in paradox or impossibility. No evidence whatever of an accomplice had been found, nor did it appear possible that one could have gained access to the ship and subsequently escaped. In contradiction to this, Mordreaux could not have escaped from his cabin unassisted, yet apparently he had done so. The medical records on Jenniver Aristeides were peculiar. She had been so seriously ill that Spock rejected the possibility that she had freed Mordreaux, then taken poison to cover her guilt. But she could have been a conspirator who was betrayed. It seemed within the limits of possibility, if not probability.

The gun had not been found. Nor had it been disposed of: no anomalous amounts of any unusual element had been found in analyses of the recycling systems.

Had the mysterious accomplice, or even Dr. Mordreaux, somehow managed to get to an airlock before all exits from the ship were put under guard? The gun could then have been sucked away into space, and lost. Or perhaps it had been beamed off the Enterprise to no destination, so its subatomic particles were now spread irretrievably over a huge volume of space. That was beginning to look like the only possible conclusion. Yet Mordreaux himself had had no time to perform such a task: Spock could not even work out time enough for him to have done what he was seen to have done.

Spock was slowly coming to the reluctant conclusion that a crew member had arranged and perhaps

even performed the so far motiveless crime.

But could he trust his conclusions? He had the evidence of his own observations to prove Mordreaux committed the murder; but he had the evidence of his own observations and what should have been reasonable conclusions to make him believe Mordreaux was not a violent man: and that conclusion, too, appeared false.

Spock hoped Mordreaux had by now recovered. He needed to talk to the professor; he needed to know his perception of the events. Spock strode toward the V.I.P. stateroom.

What had happened on the Enterprise bore certain discomforting similarities to what Spock had discovered to be implicit in his observations of the naked singularity. The analysis had seemed to indicate that entropy was increasing far faster than it should; that, in fact, the very rate of increase was growing. Spock found the results extremely difficult to believe, so much so that if he had ever permitted himself to feel either relief or anger he would have been more relieved than enraged when the new orders halted his mission. He needed time to go over his observational apparatus again, to determine if the results were merely an artifact.

The events on the Enterprise had that same disquieting aura of wrongness, of occurrences that should not, indeed could not, happen the way they appeared to.

Just as he could make no final determination on the entropy results without more data, he could not understand the events of the past hours without more information. Spock would observe, question, and investigate before he tried to draw more conclusions. Any other plan would be futile.

He would know what happened, and why; he would understand the cause.

The Vulcan language contained no word that corresponded to “coincidence.”

“Mr. Spock!”

Spock faced the cry. Snnanagfashtalli bounded down the corridor toward him, on all fours. Furred crew members were not expected to wear uniforms standard-issue for humanoids; Snarl wore a soft leather harness that carried Enterprise insignia, communicator, phaser attachment. She came to a silent, smooth halt, muscles rippling beneath maroon and scarlet spots. Her long thin fingers knuckled up in running form, and when she flexed her hands the claws extended.

“Please follow. There is great cause for apprehension.” Spock raised one eyebrow. Snarl spoke in fluent Vulcan, with barely a trace of accent, and none of the lisp that flawed her standard English. Vulcan sibilants were pronounced much differently.

“What is the matter?” He, too, spoke in Vulcan.

“Friend Jenniver. The illness has ... unsettled her mind. Disarray is in her, and around her, and she sees only one path to her honor.”

Spock saw no reason at all to believe Snarl did not understand exactly what that phrase meant.

Snarl switched to English. “She is in despair, Mr. Spock.” That could not be expressed in Vulcan, except by recourse to archaic words. “She wishes only to die.”

“Take me to her,” Spock said. “Quickly.”

Jenniver Aristeides gazed at a painting of her home. It hung on the wall, as if it were a window. She had done it herself, at a time when she felt miserably homesick and lonely, weak and incompetent. Painting was an accomplishment not much admired on her home world, and at times she felt contemptuous of herself for indulging in it. But the scene, a landscape, gave her some comfort. She had almost decided to paint the pasture behind her house, with the ponies out to graze after the day’s plowing. But that would have been hopelessly sentimental. And the picture would have been static; in a painting, the powerful creatures, twenty-four hands high, massing two metric tons apiece, would never prick up their ears, toss their manes, and gallop to the far fence kicking their heels like a group of foals. That was how she liked to remember them, not frozen in time. She needed a painting she could pretend might be reality.

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.