The Entropy Effect

“Some error has been made,” Spock said. “Dr. Mordreaux’s trial tapes are not available from public records. Perhaps he is here but the documents have been lost.”

“I remember where I heard that name!” she said. “They arrested him for murder. But his lawyer invoked the privacy act so they shut down coverage. She was pleading insanity for him.”

“Then he is here.”

“No, if that’s how he was convicted he wouldn’t be here, he’d be at the hospital. But you can look for him if you like.” She gestured toward the bank of screens, one per cell, which gave her an overview of the entire jail wing. Spock saw no one who resembled his former teacher, so he took the guard’s advice and went looking at the hospital instead.

“Sure, he’s here,” the duty attendant said in response to Spock’s query. “But you’ll have a hard time interviewing him.”

“What is the difficulty?”

“Severe depression. They’ve got him on therapy but they haven’t got the dosage right yet. He’s not very coherent.”

“I wish to speak with him,” Spock said.

“I guess that’s okay. Try not to upset him, though.” The attendant verified Spock’s identity, then led him down the hall and unlocked the door. “I’ll keep an eye on the screen,” he said.

“That is unnecessary.”

“Maybe, but it’s my job.” He let Spock go inside.

The hospital cell looked like an inexpensive room at a medium-priced hotel on an out-of-the-way world. It had a bed, armchairs, meals dispenser, even a terminal, though on the latter the control keyboard was limited to the simplest commands for entertainment and information. Mordreaux’s jailers were taking no chances that he could work his way into the city’s computer programs and use his knowledge to free himself.

The professor lay on the bed, his arms by his sides and his eyes wide open. He was a man of medium height, and he was still spare; he still let his hair grow in a rumpled halo, but it had grayed. His luminous brown eyes no longer glowed with the excitement of discovery; now they revealed distress and despair.

“Dr. Mordreaux?”

The professor did not answer; he did not even blink.

Stress-induced catatonia? Spock wondered. Meditative trance? No, of course it must be the drugs. Spock had done some of his advanced work in physics at the Makropyrios, one of the finest universities

in the Federation. Dr. Mordreaux was a research professor there, but every year he taught a single very small and very concentrated seminar. The year Spock attended, Dr. Mordreaux accepted only fifteen students, and he stretched and challenged them all, even Spock, to their limits.

Dr. Mordreaux had early reached a pinnacle in his career, and what was more remained there; his papers frequently stunned his colleagues, and honors befell him with monotonous regularity.

“Professor Mordreaux, I must speak with you.”

For a long time Dr. Mordreaux did not reply, but, finally, he made a harsh, ugly noise that took Spock several seconds to identify as a laugh. He remembered Dr. Mordreaux’s laugh, from years ago: it had been full of pleasure and delight; it was almost enough to make a young Vulcan try to understand both humor and joy.

Like so much else, it had changed.

“Why did you come to Aleph Prime, Mr. Spock?”

Dr. Mordreaux pressed his hands flat against the bed and pushed himself to a sitting position.

“I did not think you would remember me, Professor.”

“I remember you.”

“The ship on which I serve was called to take you on board.”

Spock stopped, for large tears began to flow slowly down Dr. Mordreaux’s cheeks.

“To take me to prison,” he said. “To rehabilitate me.”

“What happened, Professor? I find the accusations against you unlikely at best.”

Mordreaux lay down on the bed again, curling up in fetal position, crying and laughing the strange harsh laugh, both at the same time.

“Go away,” he said. “Go away and leave me alone, I’ve told you before I only wanted to help people, I only did what they wanted.”

“Professor,” Spock said, “I have come here to try to help you. Please cooperate with me.”

“You want to betray me, like everybody else, you want to betray me, and you want me to betray my friends. I won’t, I tell you! Go away!”

The door slid open and the attendant hurried in. “The doctor’s on the way,” he said. “You’ll have to leave. I told you he wouldn’t be coherent.” He shooed Spock out of the room.

Spock did not protest, for he could do nothing more here. He left the hospital, carefully considering what the professor had said. It contained little enough information, but what was that about betraying his friends? Could it possibly be true that he had done research on intelligent subjects, and that they had been hurt, or even died? In his madness, could the professor be denying, in his own mind, events that had actually happened? What could he mean, he had only intended to help people?

Spock had no answers. He would have to wait until Dr. Mordreaux came on board the Enterprise ; he would have to hope the professor became more rational before it was too late.