Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

“That would be the effect, yes. But—” Spock stopped. Perhaps it was better, for the moment, that Dr. Mordreaux believe Spock’s motives to be essentially selfish.

“I can’t say I like the idea of myself—even a self that doesn’t exist yet—killing anyone, Mr. Spock.” “Then we must work together to gain our ends.”

Dr. Mordreaux laughed suddenly. “Mr. Spock—do you realize that this conversation in itself might be enough to change my actions in the future? Maybe ...”

They stared at each other for several seconds.

Nothing changed.

Spock’s memories were unaltered; the captain was still dead.

Dr. Mordreaux shrugged. “Well, it was just a thought.” He looked at Spock with sudden suspicion. “I want a promise from you before I agree to help.”

“What sort of promise?”

“You mustn’t try to prevent my friends’ going back or staying back.”

Spock considered the offer for some moments. Would repairing this break in the time-stream without dealing with the other be sufficient? Or would it simply be unfinished effort, ultimately futile? He doubted he would be able to reconcile his analysis of the effects with Dr. Mordreaux’s. In the upper levels of any branch of science, however precise, there was room for doubt, conflict, and contradictory philosophies; obviously, Dr. Mordreaux disagreed that time displacement had a lasting, damaging effect.

But Spock believed that it did, and he had to try to stop the damage.

“I will offer you a compromise, Professor.”

“Such as?”

“I reserve the right to try to convince you that your actions must be undone, if only to rescue you from the fate to which you have been condemned.”

“You want me to deliberately suppress my own work!”

“I would hope you might persuade yourself to use it more responsibly.”

“If I use it at all I’ll find myself right back on my way to a rehab colony! It isn’t what I do with it that’s frightening, it’s that it exists at all. Its potential as a weapon is almost unimaginable. I have the choice of this fate, and vindication of my work with a few people, or living out my life as a discredited fool in the minds of everyone. You see which I’ve chosen! Do you accept my conditions or shall we forget the whole thing?”

Spock took a deep breath: he was offering his honor against very high stakes. “I will comply with your wishes.”

“There are damned few beings in the universe that I’d trust this far, you know. Especially now.”

“I value your trust, sir,” Spock said, quite sincerely.

Dr. Mordreaux nodded.

Spock spent another half hour in the V.I.P. cabin while the professor described the general workings of the time-changing unit. As Spock began to understand just how simple the device really was in principle, he grew more and more intrigued with it, and with the fact that no one had ever discovered it before, if only by pure chance.

Then again, perhaps someone had—and simply used it with far more secrecy.

Ian Braithewaite entered the engine room of the Enterprise . He had been born on Aleph Prime; he had

never been anywhere else. He raced sail-ships as a hobby: he could match techniques with anyone from Aleph, tacking between magnetic field and solar wind or running free before an ion storm toward interstellar space. But the racers he handled, the swiftest, frailest, most dangerous and exhilarating ones, lacked any engine at all. Nothing he had ever experienced compared with the Enterprise .

Only the impulse engines were running—imagine how it would feel with warp drive on full force! The power vibrated at a frequency far too low to hear, but he felt it. It pounded up and through his legs, into his body, all the way to the tips of his fingers. It lent itself to his determination. He did not intend to let such a ship fall into the hands of traitors.

“Are ye lost?”

Montgomery Scott had seen more than one sleepless night recently, and the stress of the previous day overlaid even his exhaustion. Here was someone, Ian felt certain, who had been loyal to his captain.

“I need to talk to you, Mr. Scott.”

“Abou’ what?” Scott asked.

“This is a magnificent ship!” Ian said abruptly, unable to contain his admiration any longer.

“Aye,” Scott said listlessly. “That it is.”

“Mr. Scott—”

“Sir... it’s been a bad time. Technically you should no’ be here—I’m no’ one to stand on silly rules, but right now I canna show you around.”

“Mr. Scott, I’m not so insensitive that I’d ask for a grand tour after what’s happened. It’s about what’s happened that I must talk to you.”

Scott frowned. Finally, he said, “Come wi’ me, we can talk in my office.”

Mr. Scott came very close to telling Ian Braithewaite that if not for him none of this would have happened at all. But the prosecutor sounded so serious, so unsettlingly intense, that Scott decided he should acquiesce, if only to find out—for a change—what was going on. For he had tried to sort out the last twenty-four hours and failed utterly; the only explanations he could think of came to conclusions he could neither accept nor believe.

The engineer’s office, barely a cubicle, had room for a couple of chairs and a computer terminal and that was about all. Scott transferred a thick untidy stack of readout flimsies from the extra chair to the floor so Braithewaite could sit down, and turned the second chair away from the keyboard so he could sit down himself.

“It’s no’ usually so messy,” he said apologetically.

“That’s of no account,” Braithewaite said. “Mr. Scott—I’m trained as an investigator and I’m determined to apprehend the people who killed James Kirk.”

“’People’!” Scott said. “But the ship was searched. They found no one who could have helped Dr. Mordreaux—no accomplice.”

“They found no one on the ship who wasn’t on the crew.”

Scott stared at him coldly. “You’re saying one of us helped murder the captain. Is this to mean I’m under suspicion?”

“What—? No, on the contrary! I’m here because it looks to me like you’re one of the few people on the ship I can trust absolutely.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Scott... like you, I saw Mr. Spock where he was not supposed to be. I saw him where he could not be.”

“I dinna understand.”

“Somehow, he was on Aleph Prime, before the Enterprise arrived. Don’t ask me how, but he was. I saw him. He denies it.”

“But that’s—”

“Impossible? As it was impossible yesterday for him to be in the transporter room and on the bridge at the same time?”

“Surely—ye dinna think Mr. Spock is involved in the captain’s death!”

“I think something extremely peculiar is going on. You encountered it, and so did I. If Captain Kirk had paid attention to you yesterday, it’s possible he’d still be alive. Mr. Scott, I don’t pretend to understand what’s happened, not yet. All I’ve got is suppositions, which I don’t want to throw around. Without proof, they’re slander, for one thing, but more important, suspicion’s hard to take back once you’ve cast it.”

“Aye, that’s true,” Scott said, impressed despite himself, for he had been unable to talk over his worries with anyone—even in the hopes that they would show him some simple, undeniable reason why he was wrong—for just that reason. “And hard to take it out of one’s own mind ...” He stopped, not wanting to say any more, wishing he had not said as much.

The trailed-off phrase tantalized Ian, but it was too soon to follow it up directly. He asked a question that seemed to change the subject but actually did not.

“Mr. Scott, did Mr. Spock ever offer any explanation for his being in the transporter room? Any reason at all?”