The Entropy Effect

“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.

Dr. Mordreaux’s possessions lay in a shambles. Books and papers littered the floor, and the screen of the computer terminal blinked in the way self-aware machines have when their memories are ripped out

or scrambled. The furniture had been overturned, and shards of crockery covered all the floors.

“It appears you objected strenuously to your arrest.”

“Maybe I’m not in the same track I thought I was,” Mordreaux said. “But I don’t remember any where I didn’t go quietly.”

He shuffled through the destruction, to the back room, the laboratory, where the disorder was less extensive. The transporter did not appear damaged. Mordreaux glanced into its workings.

“They’ve taken the changers, of course,” he said, “but the rest of it looks all right.”

He tightened a few connections while Spock worked out the coordinates he would need to use to go back before the track of maximum probability began to split into multiple disintegrating lines.

“The transporter’s set,” Dr. Mordreaux said. “How about you?”

“I am ready,” Spock replied. “What will you do, sir?”

“As soon as you leave, I’ll return to my own time. If I can.”

Spock stepped up on the transporter platform, holding his time-changer in both hands.

“Goodbye, Dr. Mordreaux.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Spock. And thank you.”

Spock replied by touching the controls of the changer. The two energy fields interacted in a rage of light, and Spock vanished.

From Spock’s viewpoint, the cavern-like back room of Dr. Mordreaux’s apartment faded out through spectral colors, red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple to blazing ultra-violet as the energy increased; Spock felt himself being pulled through a void, then thrust back across the ultra-violet energy barrier, through the rainbow, into normal space. He felt himself materialize again, one molecule at a time, as the beam wrenched him back into existence.

He staggered, lost his balance completely, and crashed to the stone floor, falling hard, barely managing to curl himself around the time-changer so it was not damaged. He rolled over on his back, staring upward, momentarily blinded. He started to get up, but froze with an involuntary gasp of pure flaming agony.

Startled voices surrounded him, then shadows: he was still dazzled by the assault of ultra-violet light. He flattened his palms against the cool floor and shut his eyes tight. The pain had become too great to ignore or put aside.

He tried and failed to free any single voice from the tangle around him. He could hear and sense consternation, surprise, outrage. The Aleph Prime authorities must have followed him and Dr.

Mordreaux, or kept the room under surveillance: now they had come to arrest them, more important, to stop them, and nothing would ever convince anyone that he and Dr. Mordreaux were attempting something utterly essential.

One voice threaded through the mass of noise.

“Mr. Spock? Are you all right?”

He blinked slowly several times and his vision gradually returned. The professor bent over him, frowning with concern.

“How did you get here? What are you doing here?”

Spock pushed himself upright, a lurching, graceless motion. Cramps reverberated up and down all the long muscles of his body and he felt as though the room were spinning around him. He refused to accept that perception; he forced his eyes to focus on Dr. Mordreaux, sitting on his heels beside him.

It was not the Dr. Mordreaux he had just left: it was a far younger man, a man who looked nearly the same as he had years before, when Spock knew him at the Makropyrios. In a month he would have aged ten years, after the stress of accusation, trial, and sentencing.

“May I help you up?” Mordreaux asked courteously. He extended a hand but did not touch Spock, and Spock shook his head.

“No. Thank you.” He got to his feet, awkwardly but under his own power. The time-changer thumped against his side.

“Where in heaven’s name did you get that?” Mordreaux asked. “And where did you come from?”

“What’s wrong?” someone called from the other room, and one of the two people standing in the doorway turned back to answer.

“Somebody just materialized on the changer platform.”

“Well, Mr. Spock, it’s been a long time.” Dr. Mordreaux gestured toward the changer. “Longer for you than me, I think, if we count from the Makropyrios.”