Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

“I found the destructive potential difficult to accept.”

“Yes. I find it so, too. For a million years human beings have done their best to discover the ultimate weapon. It was left to me to invent the one that really can destroy our universe.”

He ran his hands through his hair, a habit that had not altered through all the years.

“It’s getting very bad by my time, Mr. Spock. The universe is simply .. . running down. Well. You can imagine.”

“Indeed.”

The false moon vanished behind a painted hillside on the far wall, and streaks of incandescent scarlet sunlight streamed out of the wall behind them.

“Why did you let it go so far, professor? Or have you been attempting to change things back for a long time?”

“A long time, yes. But I couldn’t even begin until I recreated my work. The virus program was very efficient, Mr. Spock. All my papers dissolved away. One could search memory bank and library and seldom even find a reference to my name.”

“You could have contacted me. You must know of my respect for your work. You must have known I would keep copies safe.”

Mordreaux reached out to pat Spock’s hand, and the Vulcan did not flinch from his touch. All the emotions he received from his old teacher were of sympathy and appreciation, and to his shame Spock felt himself in serious need of the unwanted feelings.

“Ah, my friend, but you did not survive the accusations made against you. You were sent to rehabilitation, though the authorities must have known what that would mean for you. I’m sure they did know you would resist their efforts to reprogram your mind... .”

Spock nodded. Many humans had been sent to rehabilitation and come out obedient, complacent, but living; only a few Vulcans had ever received such a sentence, and all of them had died. Knowing he was that much closer to Vulcan than human gave Spock a peculiar sort of comfort.

“What about Dr. McCoy? And Captain Hunter?”

“Starfleet forced Hunter to accept a dishonorable discharge. She divorced her family to protect the children from shame, and she joined the free commandoes. She was killed on the border a few months later. One of her officers committed suicide in protest at the treatment Hunter received—”

“Mr. Sulu!” Despite himself, Spock was surprised. Sulu had never seemed the type to go quite as far as hara-kiri .

“Sulu ...? No, the name was Russian. I forget exactly what it was. I think Mr. Sulu entered the free commandoes as well.” Dr. Mordreaux shrugged. “Little difference, only a slower method of suicide. As for Dr. McCoy ...” The professor shook his head. “I tried to keep track of him. But after they released him he disappeared. Even before they began the sentence he had lost heart. He was convicted of murdering Jim Kirk, you see.”

“Yet you came out with your mind intact, that is clear.”

“They had second thoughts about me,” he said. “They realized how valuable I could be, doing exactly what I was convicted of.”

“How did you escape?”

“After I went mad I was of very little use to them, and they stopped watching me quite so carefully. It took me some time to bring myself back to sanity . .. thence here.”

“I cannot understand why your other self murdered Captain Kirk. You said—on the bridge, yesterday, tomorrow—that he had destroyed you. But all he had done was respond to the orders you sent yourself”

“I know. But in the time-track in which he didn’t die, he defended your proposal—that I was too valuable to destroy—all too well. After I went mad, I thought it would have been better if I had been sent through rehabilitation. I would have been docile and happy and no one would have persecuted me. So I decided to go back and prevent him from saving me.”

“How many time-tracks are there?”

“They multiply, Mr. Spock, like lemmings. The main track split several ways when I sent my friends back in time; it split again, after my trial, when a particularly murderous future version of me came back and started a campaign of revenge—”

“The defense counsel? And the judge?”

Dr. Mordreaux nodded. “And Ian Braithewaite, but he came last.”

The imitation sun had risen high enough to cast shadows, and their silhouetted images stretched far down the hillside.

“Another track just split off, when I sent that message. There’s the one in which you finish your observations and the change is traced back to me and I’m persecuted for it, and the one in which I prevent your finishing, and realize the entropy effect myself in several years.” He glanced quizzically at Spock. “You see how complicated it gets.”

“And they all evolve from your first use of the time-changer.”

“Yes. I’m afraid so.”

“What happened when you tried to alter those events?”

“I’ve tried once so far. I went back to persuade myself not to demonstrate time-travel. I stayed only a moment. Because I saw one of my friends kill me—another me, I mean, one from my future, or another time-track . .. I’ve been afraid to try again. I know I must, eventually, but...”

“Your chances of altering events from so far in the future are negligible.”

“I have to try.”

“I am not so far removed.”

“You’d go back again—and try to stop me?”

“I promised you not to interfere with your friends.” Spock looked away. “My oath seems ... a trivial matter, compared to what will occur if I do not break it.”

“I doubt your oath is ever trivial to you, Mr. Spock,” Dr. Mordreaux said. “May I release you from your promise?”

“I cannot say. Are you the same being I gave it to?”

“I think I must have been. So much has happened, and my memories of the time before I went mad have grown foggy. But it sounds familiar, and it’s certainly something I would have demanded of you, when I was younger and more foolish. Mr. Spock, I beg of you to let me release you from your promise. I swear to you that to the best of my knowledge, I have the right.”

“I must go back to the start of the unravelling,” Spock said, “whether you have the right to permit me to do so or not. I am grateful for your oath, and I will try to accept it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spock.” Dr. Mordreaux hesitated. “There’s something else I have to tell you, though.

It wouldn’t be fair not to.”

“What is it?”

“The farther you go, the more often, the more damaging it is to your system. It isn’t only the continuum that’s thrown into disarray. You’ve noticed the effects of time-travel on your body?”

“I have experienced ... some discomfort.”

“Discomfort, hm? Well, everyone knows Vulcans are hardier than humans. Still, it is dangerous and it is cumulative. It’s only fair to tell you that, before you decide what to do.”

Spock did not even pause. “The choice is between travelling farther back in time, or returning to my own time to face dishonor, shame for my family, and death. I do not see that that is a particularly difficult decision to make.” He picked up his changer.

Mordreaux picked up his, too. “Maybe I should go with you.”

“That is both unnecessary and irrational. You would be jeopardizing your life, though your chances of accomplishing anything approach zero.”

Mordreaux rubbed his fingers over the amber-bauble surface of his changer. “Thank you, Mr. Spock. The more often I’ve moved through time, the more frightened I’ve gotten of it. I don’t look forward to dying.”

Dr. Mordreaux led Spock to his own rooms in Aleph Prime: the rooms of the earlier Dr. Mordreaux, the one now in the hospital awaiting transfer to the Enterprise . He had lived in an older section of the space station, midway between the core park and the glimmering outer shell. Asteroids formed the substructure of the city: here the corridors resembled tunnels, the rooms, caves.