Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

“Sure—it’s most fun in Ancient Modern English. How about The Time Machine ?”

“That’s a good one.Frankenstein ?”

“Sure.Islandia ?”

“Uh-huh. I read someplace they’re finally planning to bring out the unedited facsimile edition.”

Mandala laughed. “How long have they been saying that? I wish they would, though.”

Hikaru glanced curiously at the cassette she had given him; she gestured toward it with her foil.

“That one’s Babel-17,” she said. “It’s just about my favorite. Delany’s great.”

“I never heard of it. When was it published?”

“Old calendar, nineteen sixty-six.”

“That doesn’t count as pre-space-flight.”

“Sure it does.”

“Oh—you must start at the first moon landing. I start from Sputnik I.”

“Traditionalist. Hey—that means you haven’t read Sibyl Sue Blue , either. Are you going to turn down terrific books because we disagree about twelve years?”

“Not a chance,” Hikaru said. “Thanks very much.”

As they started toward the practice ground, Mandala impulsively put her arm around Hikaru’s waist and hugged him.

He did not pull away. Not quite. He was too polite for that. But his whole body stiffened. Surprised, hurt, trying to figure out how and where she had read things wrong, Mandala let him go and strode quickly to her end of the floor.

“Mandala—” He caught up with her; he knew better than to grab her, but he touched her elbow. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I... are you mad at me?”

“I misunderstood,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to make a fool of myself twice in one day.”

“You haven’t,” he said softly.

“No?” She faced him. “I thought, yesterday ...” She shrugged. “I’m usually pretty good at taking hints. I’m sorry I pushed you. I can’t claim I didn’t mean it but I never meant to pressure you. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“You didn’t,” he said. “I’m flattered.”

“It’s okay, never mind. You were a lot more polite about it than I would have been to somebody I wasn’t interested in.”

“It isn’t that I’m not interested.”

She could not think of anything to say to that. She had not come out bluntly and told him he was the most attractive man she had ever met, but he had not, after all, been unaware of how she felt. If he found her attractive in turn—and after yesterday she thought he did—then she could not understand his behavior.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened,” he said, his voice strained. “I’m probably leaving. You know I’m thinking about a transfer, we’ve talked about it. You’re the only person I have talked about it with!”

“Sure,” she said. “So what? None of us really knows what they’re going to be doing next week, next month—”

“It wouldn’t be fair to you,” Hikaru said.

Mandala stared at him; she fought to keep pure astonishment from turning to anger. She flung down her foil. It clattered across the floor. “What the hell do you mean, fair to me ? Where do you get off, deciding that? You’ve been honest—what more do you think you could owe me?”

He stood before her, downcast. Mandala wanted to hug him, to take away some of that lost hurt look, but she knew she would not want to stop with a hug. Aside from the absurdity of trying to caress someone while they were both dressed in padded fencing jackets and standing in the middle of a public gym, she did not want to take the chance of embarrassing Hikaru again.

“I just don’t think ...” He paused, and started again. “It seemed so cold, to respond to you when the chances were I’d be taking off almost immediately.”

Mandala took his hand, and stroked the hollow of his palm. “It isn’t fair toyou,” she said. “Hikaru, nobody ever makes long-term commitments on the border patrol. It’s too chancy, and it’s too painful. We used to say to each other: for a little while. I’m not used to anything but that. But you ... I think you’d rather have something that lasted a long time.”

“Itis better,” he said tentatively.

“That’s up to you. It’s fine. I understand, now. You’ve been under one hell of a lot of stress these last few weeks, and you’re under more because of thinking about transferring off the Enterprise . I think you’re right not to want to make it any harder on yourself.”

“I guess that’s part of it.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you,” he said. He hugged her, and she returned the embrace until she was embarrassed herself, by her own response. She drew back, and picked up her foil.

“Come on—I want my lesson.”

They saluted each other with the foils. Hikaru put his mask on.

“Hikaru,” Mandala said, “if you change your mind, let me know.” She pulled her own mask down and slipped into a smooth en garde position.

After several hours of fruitless work, Mr. Spock finally broke the communications link to Aleph Prime. He had tried every conceivable route toward the information he wanted, and every conceivable route dead-ended. He could do nothing more on board the Enterprise .

Before closing down his terminal he pulled up the duty roster to find someone familiar with the bridge who was still on board. Mr. Sulu’s name was first on the list.

Paging the helm officer, Spock reached him in the gymnasium. Sulu appeared on the screen; he pushed his fencing mask to the top of his head. Sweat dripped down his face. Spock ordinarily found Sulu among the easiest of his colleagues to work with. But the other side of the lieutenant’s character, the one that emerged when he was in the grip of his very deep streak of romanticism, Spock found virtually incomprehensible.

Mr. Sulu wiped off the sweat, put down his foil, and became once more the epitome of a serious, no-nonsense, one-track-minded Starfleet junior officer.

“Yes, Mr. Spock?”

“Mr. Sulu, can you interrupt what you are doing?”

“I’ve just finished giving a lesson, sir.”

“I must return to Aleph Prime for a short while, and I do not wish to leave the bridge unattended.”

“I can be there in ten minutes, Mr. Spock.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Spock out.”

But as he reached for the controls he saw Sulu make an involuntary gesture toward him. Spock paused with his hand on the reset button.

“Yes, Mr. Sulu? Is there something else?”

“Mr. Spock—” Sulu hesitated, then spoke all in a rush. “Did the captain say—do you think it’s possible—will Captain Hunter come on board?”

Spock gazed impassively at Sulu for several moments.

Sulu would, at that juncture, have given almost anything to recall his outburst. Mr. Spock was perhaps the only person on the Enterprise who would not, or could not, understand why he had asked the question. As far as Sulu had ever observed, the most effusive reaction Spock ever offered anyone was respect, and that infrequently. He had certainly never shown any signs of hero-worship. Sulu was under no illusions concerning his own feelings about Hunter: they were hero-worship, pure, blazing, and undignified. Hunter had been one of Sulu’s heroes for half his life. Though he had been born on Earth, his

mother was a consulting agronomist and his father was a poet; Hikaru Sulu had spent his childhood and adolescence on the frontier, on a succession of colony planets. His longest stay anywhere was on Ganjitsu, a world far out on the border of a sector that had long been harassed by renegades—the Klingons claimed they were renegades, though of course no one ever believed them—and at the mercy of pirates who were all too human. The Ganjitsujin resisted with inadequate means; for a long time they wondered if they had been forgotten or abandoned. Then Hunter, a very young officer with her first command, swept in like a hunting hawk, beat the pirates back into the hands of the Klingons, and bested the Klingons themselves at their own game.