The Entropy Effect

“Itis exhaustion, but it’s the sort I’d expect if he’d been through tremendous physical exertion. A couple of Vulcan marathons, say—a hundred kilometres through the desert. The scalp wound is completely inexplicable. He didn’t get it when he fell—he reopened a graze that was already partly healed. And it was patched with hybrid skin synthetic. Spock knew I made some to match his genotype. He could have used it himself. Only he didn’t; the packet was still in storage, unopened.” He stopped, and shrugged. “Shall I go on?”

“No. I can do that myself. He was out of uniform—I’ve never seen him out of uniform on the ship.

And—” He hefted the weird piece of equipment—“this is nothing I’ve ever seen before. Scotty doesn’t know what it does. It’s mostly bioelectronics, which are so new they’re hard to come by. I’ve never signed a requisition for them, and there’s no record that we ever brought any on board the ship.”

Mr. Spock, his awareness rising slowly through the depths of sleep, gradually became aware of the voices around him. They were discussing him, but as yet he could make no sense of the individual words. He tried to concentrate.

“Something very strange is going on,” Jim Kirk said. “Something I don’t understand. And I don’t like that at all.”

“Jim!” Spock sat up so quickly that every muscle and joint and sinew shrieked: he was aware of the sensation but impervious to it, as he should be, but for all the wrong reasons. He grabbed Jim Kirk’s arm. It was solid and real. Relief, and, yes, joy, overwhelmed the Vulcan. He slid his hand up Jim’s arm; he started to reach up to him, to lay his hand along the side of his face to feel the unsettling energy of Jim’s undamaged mind.

He pulled back abruptly, shocked by his own impulses; he turned away, toward the wall, struggling to control himself.

“Spock, what’s wrong? Bones—”

“Well, you wanted him to wake up,” McCoy said drily.

“Nothing is wrong, Captain,” Spock said. He eased himself back down onto the bunk. His voice was steady enough not to reveal that he was on the brink of laughter, of tears. “I am merely ... very glad to see you.”

“I’m glad to see you, too.” Kirk’s expression was quizzical. “You’ve been out quite a while.”

“How long, Captain?” Spock asked urgently.

“A couple of hours. Why?”

Spock relaxed. “Because, sir, the singularity is in the process of converting itself into a very small black hole, what you would call, in Earth tradition, a Hawking black hole. When the conversion is complete, the system will explode.”

Kirk leaped to his feet and started out the door.

“Captain—” Spock said.

Kirk glanced back.

“TheEnterprise is in no danger,” the Vulcan said. “The process will continue for another six days at least.”

“Oh,” Kirk said. He returned to Spock’s side. “All right, Mr. Spock. What happened?”

Spock reached up and touched the bullet wound in his temple. It was barely perceptible, for McCoy had put more skin synthetic on the gash, and sealed it with transparent spray. His brown and gold silk shirt lay crumpled on a table across the room ... and Jim held the remains of the time-changer in his hands.

“You were in the observatory,” Jim said. “Snarl heard you fall. Jenniver Aristeides brought you to sick bay. Do you remember?”

What Spock remembered, he recalled all too well. He glanced from Jim to Dr. McCoy. As they were now, neitheir had existed in the alternate time-stream. And Spock had quite clear memories of a time-stream in which his observations proceeded smoothly: the singularity indeed did appear, and though he could not deduce its cause, it was clear from the beginning that it would soon self-destruct and cease to be a danger. The Enterprise had never been called to Aleph Prime. Dr. Mordreaux had never come on board, and Spock had detected no acceleration in the increase of entropy.

And then he had reappeared in his observatory, dragged back to the Enterprise through space and time, to the place he belonged, and, simultaneously, it seemed, the miscalculation of his stamina caught up with him. Journey, or exhaustion, or both, caused him to lose consciousness.

“Spock?” Jim asked gently. “Do you remember?”

“No, Captain,” Spock said quite truthfully. “I cannot understand what happened.” He had not expected to remember the events in the time-loop he had turned back on itself and wiped out of existence. But he did.

He had learned how fragile the continuum was. He had not restored it to its original form. He had only managed to-stitch it back together where it had torn most seriously; he had put patches over the worst of the rents, and hoped they would hold: perhaps he should not be so startled that the seams were not quite straight and the grain not quite smooth. If the inconsistencies were no worse than an inexplicable astronomical phenomenon that would have to remain a mystery, and conflicting sets of memories in his own mind, then perhaps he should accept them gracefully, and gratefully.

“I apologize, Captain. I cannot explain what happened.”