Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

“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.

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.