Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

“Ye heard all he ha’ said to me on the subject. And right after that, Captain Kirk...”

“Yes, of course.” Ian rubbed his temples: the headache had never really gone away, and now it had begun to intensify.

“Are ye all right? Do ye need some water?”

“Yes, please.” Braithewaite blinked to try to dispel the double vision. He closed his eyes tight for a

moment; that was better. He wondered what the early symptoms of hypermorphic botulism were. Scott handed him a glass of water and he drank it gratefully.

“Ye dinna look at all well,” Scott said.

“I’m not feeling too well, but I’m upset and I’m angry and that’s making it worse. Mr. Scott, could a person be beamed from some spot on the Enterprise to some other spot?”

“Well... one could beam from one place, to the transporter room, then to another place. Ye’d have to materialize on the platform in between. ‘Twould be a most lazy and energy-intensive thing to do. Verra wasteful”

“But it could be done.”

“Aye.”

“Mr. Scott, suppose someone beamed Dr. Mordreaux out of his cell to the transporter ...”

The engineer did not alter his expression as Ian spoke, but involuntarily he turned dead white.

‘The possibility does exist,” Ian said.

“Well...”

“Your objections are—?”

“The cabin was shielded, alarms were set. If someone tried it, we’d know. And it shouldna be possible to push a transporter beam through the energy-field.”

“The shields must have been put in place around the cabin specifically for this trip. They might not be completely secure. Or perhaps the beam was boosted, and the alarms turned off.”

“That would be a verra complicated business.”

“But it could be done?”

“Perhaps. But only by a few people.”

Ian waited.

“I could ha’ done it.”

“Only you?”

“Mr. Spock...”

Braithewaite started to speak, but Scott was shaking his head.

“Nae,” Scott said. “This is all wrong. It isna possible.”

Braithewaite rubbed his knuckles in frustration. It had seemed so workable: beam Mordreaux out of his

cell, then beam him to the empty turbo lift waiting at the bridge; he would get out, fire at the captain, and enter the lift again. His accomplice would beam him back to the transporter room, thence to his cell. But unless Scott were covering for someone—and Ian did not believe he was—his expertise would have to be a guide away from a tempting but inaccurate path.

“Nay,” Scott said. “That isna quite what happened.” He paused, and drew a deep breath. “The shields are designed to scramble any transporter beam, it’s no’ possible to power through them whatever the strength.” He looked at Ian, resignation and betrayal in his expression. “Someone who knows the security systems of this ship verra well, who knows how they all interrelate, cut the alarm webs and the shields for an instant, and then, before either could reform—they take a few seconds—that was when the beaming could be done. It could be done several times, and no one would be likely to notice.”

“Who would be able to arrange it?”

“The captain could ha’ done it, or the security commander. I could ha’ done it.”

“The security commander. That’s interesting.” Ian had been told Flynn was ambitious, but she was poorly educated and she was stateless as well; it did not seem to him that she had much chance of advancing any farther. His suspicions intensified. “Anyone else, Mr. Scott?”

“Or... Mr. Spock.” Scott said the last reluctantly, all too aware of what that meant in terms of his altercation with the science officer.

“Someone else could ha’ learned, somehow,” he said abruptly.

“But you saw Mr. Spock in the transporter room only a few minutes before the attack. And he denied being there.”

“Aye,” Scott said miserably. “I canna believe it... I couldna believe it if I hadna seen Mr. Spock wi’ my verra own eyes, and talked wi’ him.” As always under severe stress, his accent grew stronger. “I canna believe it. There must be another explanation. There must be.”

Ian Braithewaite gazed down at his long-fingered hands. Not quite enough: better to get more evidence, more witnesses.

“Mr. Scott, we’d best not speak of this to anyone else, for the time being. It’s all circumstantial, and of course you’re right. There could be another explanation. It could be some dreadful accident.” He stood up.

“Ye dinna believe that, do ye?”

“I wish I did.” He clapped Scott gently on the shoulder and started away.

“Mr. Braithewaite,” Scott said, a little too loudly.

Braithewaite turned back.

“There is another explanation, ye know.”

“Please tell me.”

“I’m making it all up, about Mr. Spock. To protect myself and divert suspicion to him.”

Braithewaite looked at him for several seconds. “Mr. Scott, I hope that if I’m ever in an uncomfortable position, I have a friend around who’s half as loyal as you.”

In the records office, Dr. McCoy requested from the computer the wills of James T. Kirk and Mandala Flynn.

Flynn’s will was a cold, impersonal document, written, not even audio-taped, and stored in the ship’s memory in facsimile. It said no more than to use whatever pay she might have accrued for a wake—McCoy managed to smile a little, at that, for his own will reserved a small portion of his estate for the same purpose—and to bury her on a world, it did not matter which one, so long as it was living.

Flynn’s will was unusual, for she had bequeathed nothing and mentioned no one. Half by accident, most ship people acquired souvenirs of the places they had visited, exotic, alien artifacts to keep or to give to friends and family back home. But according to boarding records the security commander had arrived with very few possessions, and according to her personnel file she not only had no living relatives, she had no official home world, either. She had been born in deep space, in transit between two out-of-the-way star systems; neither of her parents was a native of either. They had been members of a trading vessel,Mitra , which sailed under a flag of convenience; Flynn’s mother had been evacuated as a child from a world now deserted, part of a buffer zone between Federation and Romulan space, and her father was born in an artificial colony that went bankrupt and disbanded. A few years after Flynn joined Starfleet, the trading ship and all its crew, all her family, were lost, victims of accident or treachery, and no trace of them was ever found.

One would have to go at least two generations farther back in Mandala Flynn’s genealogy to find a world that might claim her, relatives who might acknowledge her; she herself had not cared to do so.

Even if she had, her classification would have remained that of a stateless person: a citizen of nowhere, with all the attendant prejudice and suspicion offered one with no real home, and—some would say—no real loyalties either.

Most ship people preferred cremation or space burial, but given Flynn’s background McCoy did not find it so surprising that she wished to return to the earth, any earth.

McCoy let Flynn’s will fade from the screen, and steeled himself to look at Jim’s.

Like most people, Jim Kirk had recorded his will directly onto a permanent memory cell. It could be amended by codicil or destroyed, but the main text could not be altered.

Jim appeared on the screen. McCoy’s eyes stung and he blinked rapidly, for it was as if his friend were merely in the next room, speaking to him, not cold and dead.

Reading from a sheaf of papers, Jim spoke legal formalities and proofs of identity, and a straightforward distribution of his estate. He left his assets in trust for his orphaned nephew Peter, his brother’s child.