Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

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 stared 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?”

A ray of hope, there. “Professor, if you were in a fugue state—”

“I didn’t do it now , Mr. Spock. They haven’t driven me crazy yet. And despite that joke of a trial, I’ve never murdered anyone.”

“Sir, you have just said you committed the crime.”

Mordreaux looked at him, then laughed. His laugh contained some of the life it had had before, but it held self-deprecation as well.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I assumed you kept up with my papers, even the last ones. They were too outrageous even for you, I suppose.”