The Entropy Effect

“Partnerships aren’t usually exclusive relationships. Hers certainly isn’t. There are nine people in it now, I think—nine adults, I mean. Four or five of them have careers like Hunter’s, that keep them away most of the time. But with the larger group, the kids have some stability. I met Hunter’s daughter a few years back...” At first they had not got along too well; he was not used to being around children. At least he had realized in time that his patronizing manner insulted her, and that she despised him for it. Once he started treating her as a reasoning human being, they began to work out a watchful friendship.

“Her daughter!” McCoy said, surprised. He had not considered Hunter in any but her Starfleet officer incarnation, and he was nearly as startled as he would have been if Jim Kirk himself had started telling stories of his kiddies back home.

“It isn’t that often that you meet someone whose father you almost had a chance to be,” Kirk said.

McCoy took a long swallow from his coffee mug and rather wished it had something stronger in it.

“I nearly joined Hunter’s group, Bones. After I met them the first few times, they invited me—they invited me three different times, over four years. I felt comfortable with them. I liked them all. I think ...

I think I could have loved them all.” He stopped and did not continue for several seconds. When he did, his voice grew very quiet. “I thought I wasn’t ready for such a big step. I kept turning them down. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I wouldn’t be ready even now. Maybe I made the right decision. But most of the time I think that saying no was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life.”

“It’s never too late to correct a mistake.”

“I don’t think I agree with you about that,” Kirk said. “But anyway they never asked me again after I started to wonder if I should have accepted.”

“You could ask them.”

Kirk shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. It would be such bad manners that they’d almost have to say no.”

“But if the partnership isn’t exclusive, and you and she are still friends—”

“That’s what I thought, for a long while. After the first time they asked me, I thought nothing had changed. Hunter and I were so close for so long .. . But she was growing up and I was still treating everything as nothing more than play. Play is fine up to a point. Play is why the partnership isn’t exclusive. But for me and Hunter—especially after the second invitation into the partnership—it was like I was teasing her, all the time, as if I were willing to go just so far but no farther in trusting her, but expected her to trust me completely. She even told me her dream-name. Do you know what that means?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“Either did I, at the time. It’s hard to explain, but it’s something even deeper than trusting another person with your life.”

Kirk paused again, and McCoy waited for him to continue, knowing how hard it was for Jim to speak of such personal matters.

“We had a lot of serious misunderstandings,” Jim said. “So much so that when they offered me the invitation for the third time, I was surprised. And when I said no the third time, she was surprised. And hurt. I think she very nearly stopped trusting me at all, then. It’s probably a good thing that she got sent one direction and I got sent the other and we didn’t see each other again for a couple of years.”

McCoy listened to a side of his friend that he seldom saw, realizing that all too often he let the clear and hearty surface obscure the depths. Kirk almost never let anyone detect even a hint of private pain; and he had learned a few things from Spock about concealing it, even as he teased the Vulcan about really being human underneath. Truth to tell, Kirk himself was more deeply human underneath than he cared to admit. McCoy wished he could think of something to say that would help.

Kirk took a deep breath and let it out fast and hard. “Jim,” McCoy said carefully, hoping, as he did so, that he was not pushing even their friendship too far, “couldn’t you say to Hunter what you just said to me—about thinking you made a mistake? That wouldn’t be the same as asking to join the partnership, would it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it. But I don’t know anymore if she wants to hear that. Why should she? And even if she does, it would put her in an uncomfortable position. What if the rest of the group said no? Bones, what if they said yes and I got cold feet at the last minute? That would be nothing less than a deliberate insult. It’s the only strain I don’t think our friendship could survive. Not again.”

“You don’t ordinarily change your mind once you’ve made it up.”

“This is different.”

“Why?”

Kirk shrugged. “It just is.”