Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

He saw and felt the tendril reaching out toward his outflung hand, tickling his palm. He jerked away, rolling to escape it, and ended up on his knees, panting, blood running down his face and into his eyes from the bullet graze at his temple. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and his vision cleared.

The spiderweb bullet had imbedded itself in the bulkhead, not in his body. It had begun to grow downward, seeking warmth and nerve cells. As he watched the mass of fibers still reaching toward him, they shivered, glimmering in the light like a skein of silver thread. All of a sudden the fibrils contracted, pulling themselves up into the main body of the growth, and then they relaxed again and the sheen and movement faded.

The spiderweb was dead, and this one had lost its prey. Spock wiped the blood from his face and eyes and concentrated for a moment on stopping the flow from the bullet wound. He was drenched with

sweat.

Dr. Mordreaux was on his way to the bridge.

Already running, Spock grabbed up his phaser from where it had fallen and headed toward the turbo lift, no longer caring if anyone saw him and wondered where he had come from. The lift seemed to take hours to arrive. He plunged inside.

After an eternity, the lift slowed and stopped at the bridge. The doors slid open.

Spock took one step forward, and halted.

He could smell the human blood, and hear the labored breathing of his mortally wounded friend.

Dr. McCoy worked frantically. No one looked toward the open lift.

Again, Spock felt caught up by the chaos; again, he felt the medical team trying to save the captain.

He felt the tubes and needles enter him, and damped down the fresh surge of scarlet pain as oxygen flooded his body. But all the physical manifestations of the world were peripheral. Despite Spock’s strength, Jim was slipping away. Spock’s mind and Jim Kirk’s were melded together, but all the force of Spock’s will could not prevent the dissolution of his friend’s consciousness. It was being crushed out of existence, and he could not hold it together against the destructive force.

“Spock?”

“I am here, Jim.” He did not know if he heard the words or sensed them directly; he did not know if he spoke or thought his answer. He felt himself slipping away with Jim.

“Spock ...” Jim said, “take good care ... of my ship.”

“Jim—”

With a final, agonizing effort, nearly too late, Jim Kirk dragged himself away from Spock, breaking off the terror and despair.

The physical resonance of emotional force flung Spock back against the railing. He slumped to the deck. He and Jim Kirk were both alone.

When the lift doors automatically closed, shutting Spock off from the scene he had hoped to stop, he realized he actually had fallen backwards. His body trembled uncontrollably. The turbo lift waited patiently to be told which deck to take him to. But there was nothing to be done here, nothing at all that he could do.

His hand shaking, he touched the changer control that would rebound him back to where he belonged; he vanished from this time-stream.

Jim Kirk was dead.

Rebound dragged Spock back through the continuum with the same muscle-wrenching force as he had left it. He materialized on the transporter platform and fought to keep his balance. When he staggered, McCoy caught and steadied him.

“Good lord, Spock, what happened?”

“I failed,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I watched Jim die again.”

McCoy hesitated for a moment, trying to think of something to say. He fell back on practicality.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

He pulled Spocks arm over his shoulder and helped him out of the transporter room.

“Mr. Spock!”

The sight of Spock, his face and shirt covered with half-dried green blood, startled Christine Chapel. “What happened?”

“He fell out of bed,” McCoy said shortly, and immediately regretted his tone. “I’m sorry, nurse. I didn’t mean to snap. Please get me a tray and see if you can find that hybrid skin synthetic I mixed up.”

He made Spock sit down. Chapel brought the instrument tray and left it without a word.

Well, McCoy thought, I deserve a cold shoulder.

He slipped the changer’s strap free and laid the device aside, then started to clean the blood from Spock s face.

“Whatdid happen? This looks like a bullet graze.”

“It is,” Spock said without meeting McCoy’s glance. “I encountered the future Dr. Mordreaux. I failed to stop him.”

“It looks like he nearly stopped you.” McCoy suddenly realized what must have happened. “Spock—he didn’t shoot at you with the same gun—?”

Spock nodded.

McCoy whistled softly. “You were lucky. But you did see him?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure...”

“That he was from the future? Yes, Dr. McCoy. I had more opportunity to observe him on this occasion. He was ... a different Dr. Mordreaux.” He glanced at McCoy quizzically. “Did you doubt that was what I would find?”

“Well, it’s nice to have some confirmation.”

Spock fell silent for a few moments while McCoy cleaned the bullet wound.

“I must go back again.”

McCoy started to protest, but nothing he could say, from pointing out that Spock had probably lost nearly a liter of blood to telling him they were both under suspicion of murder, treason, and proscribed weapons research, would be likely to delay him long enough for him to fully recover. Besides, at this point probably their only chance was for him to go back and try again. McCoy would have to stay here, cover Spock’s tracks, and—under different circumstances McCoy would have been able to laugh at this—give him time.

“Are you going back to the same place again?”

Spock considered his choices, a limited number.

“No,” he said finally. “The future Dr. Mordreaux said something which leads me to believe that he is responsible for calling the Enterprise to Aleph Prime. My observations on the singularity correlate with his work, somehow, apparently to his disadvantage.”

“You mean it wasn’t Braithewaite or Starfleet after all who diverted us—but Dr. Mordreaux?”

“The future Dr. Mordreaux. Yes. I believe that to be true.”

“Can you go that far? It’s quite a distance, besides being a long time. When you left before, you blacked out the ship.”

“If I cannot draw power from the warp engines, I will have to turn the Enterprise around and return to Aleph Prime—that is, to the position in Aleph’s orbit from which the signal came.”

Christine Chapel came in and put down the packet of skin synthetic; McCoy and Spock fell abruptly silent. She gave them a strange look and went away again.

“Scotty isn’t going to be thrilled when he hears you want the warp drive back on line. And we’re going to have a hard time explaining why we want to backtrack.”

“I do not intend to inform Mr. Scott of my plans; if he has finished repairing even one of the warp engines it will not be necessary to obtain his permission to tap its power. Nor do I see any reason why I should explain a change in the ship’s course except to say that it is necessary.”

McCoy opened the packet and drew out the skin synthetic with sterile tweezers. This was the first time he had had a chance to try it, and he was anxious to see if it worked. If the cells had fused properly Spock’s body would not reject the skin, as it did skin synthetic for either humans or Vulcans. Since Spock was the only Vulcan/human cross around—at least the only one McCoy knew of—null grafting tissue for his unique immunological system was not exactly common. He covered the long graze and sprayed on a transparent bandage.

“Hardly shows,” he said, rather pleased. “I’ll want to check it every day or so... His voice trailed off as Spock raised his eyebrow again.