Chapter three — the tank trap

 

 

From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4018.4:

Upon assurance from Mr. Scott that there was no bodily danger inherent in his transporter modification, Mr. Spock was chosen as the logical emissary to Organia. He was on the planet during the entire affair which led to the treaty (see Log entry Star Date 3199.4), and personally knows Ayelborne, Claymare and Trefayne — or at least knows the humanoid shapes they assume, as his is known to them. The only other person thus qualified is myself. In addition, Mr. Spock is probably the closest observer of us all.

There was a number of transporter rooms in various parts of the Enterprise, but it was the main one that Scott modified, for the obvious reason: power. Of all the modifications, only one was immediately visible, although Kirk was in no doubt that there were other changes on the free-standing console of which the Transporter Officer and his technician were aware. The circular platform of the transporter chamber itself had been enclosed in gleaming metal, so that its six positions could no longer be seen — only the steps leading up to them.

“The shielding unfortunately is necessary,” the engineering officer explained to Kirk and Spock. “As long as the field is on, the whole interior of the chamber is effectively in another universe — or more exactly, in a kind of continuum in which a transfinite number and variety of universes are possible — and the effect has to be confined. I could just as well have used wire mesh — for instance, shuttlecraft landing-pad web — so we could see in, but I had the armor plate to hand from another job and I was in a hurry, as I assume we all are.”

Scott’s burr vanished completely when he was trying to be as precise as possible. Kirk was thoroughly used to this, but nevertheless it seldom failed to make him smile.

“That’ll do for now, Scotty. We can add frills later. In fact, if this works as you’ve predicted, engineers all over the galaxy will be thinking up refinements for it. For now, what exactly is the program?”

“Pretty much as it always is, Captain, except for the distance involved. We set up the coordinates on the console — by the way, Mr. Spock, what are they?”

“Eleven eight seventy d. y. by eighty-five seventy-four sixty-eight K.”

The Transporter Officer looked astonished — evidently Scott had not yet filled him in on “the distance involved” — but made no comment. Scott went on.

“Then Mr. Spock steps into the tank, and stands on any station; we close the door and activate the machine. He won’t notice a thing, for though he’ll be momentarily surrounded by n-dimensional space, he’s only equipped to perceive four at a time, like the rest of us. But he won’t disappear — he’ll just step out of the tank again. In the meantime, his replicate will be on its way to Organia, and will be returned here automatically, one day after materialization, no matter when that takes place. If that’s not a long enough stay, we’ll send him back. When the replicate arrives here, we’ll again have established Hilbert space in the tank, and will maintain it for as long as it takes the replica to report.”

“Clear enough for now,” Kirk said. “Mr. Spock, are you ready?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Into the tank with you then,” Scott said.

Spock entered, and the door closed behind him. The transporter officer manipulated the controls. As Scott had predicted, there was nothing to be seen, nor did the familiar muted whine of the transporter field seem changed in any way. Kirk tried to imagine what an n-dimensional space would be like, and was not surprised to fail.

“That’s all there is to it,” Scott said. “He can come out now.”

Spock, however, failed to appear. Kirk said, “We seem to have forgotten to arrange any way to let him know that. I assume it’s safe to open the door now?”

“Entirely, Captain.”

Kirk went to the platform and slid the door back. “Mr. Spock…”

Then he stopped. Spock was there, all right, and apparently quite unharmed. In fact, he was one hundred per cent too much there.

There were two identical Spocks in the tank.

The two Spocks were eyeing each other with a mixture of wariness and disdain, like a man trying to fathom the operation of a trick mirror. Kirk was sure that his own expression was a good deal less judicious.

“Which of you,” he demanded, “is the original?”

“I am, Captain,” both Spocks said, in chorus.

“I was afraid you’d say that. Well, let’s get one problem settled right now. Hereafter, I will address you,” he pointed to the man on his left, “as Spock One, and you,” he pointed to his right, “as Spock Two. This implies no decision on my part as to which of you is in fact the original. Scotty, obviously you didn’t anticipate any such outcome.”

“Nay, I dinna,” Scott said. “‘Tis a pity we couldna see into the tank now, since otherwise we’d know which was which by the station he’s on.”

“Can you determine that?” Kirk asked the transporter officer.

“No, sorry, sir, I can’t. Under this new setup, all the stations were activated at once.”

“And Scotty, equally obviously neither of them can be tachyon constructs.”

“Thot’s aye eempossible,” Scott agreed unhappily.

“Then the next task is to figure out how and why this happened, and if possible, discover some way to distinguish between the original and the replicate. With two Spocks on this ship, I must say, there ought to be no logical problem we can’t lick.”

“Unless,” Spock One said, “we think exactly alike, in which case the replicate is simply a superfluity.”

“Quite obviously you don’t think exactly alike,” Kirk said, “or both of you would have offered that remark simultaneously and in the same words.”

“True but not relevant, Captain, if I may so observe,” said Spock Two. “Even if we thought exactly alike at the moment of creation of the replicate, from then on our experiences differ slightly — beginning, of course, with the simple difference that we occupy different positions in space-time. This will create a divergence in our thinking which will inevitably widen as time goes on.”

“The difference, however, may remain trivial for some significant time to come,” said Spock One.

“We are already disagreeing, are we not?” Spock Two said coldly. “That is already a nontrivial difference.”

“That’s enough cross talk, both of you,” Kirk said. “You certainly both sound like the real Spock, as well as look like him, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re creating twice the confusion he did on his worst logic jags. Spock One, go to your quarters and remain there until I call you. Spock Two, come with me to my quarters.”

Neither man spoke further until turboelevator and corridors brought them to Kirk’s workroom, where Kirk waved the problematical second First Officer to the chair before his desk.

“Now then,” the Captain said. “first of all, did you in fact get to Organia for even a fraction of a second? And if so, did you see anything useful?”

“No, Captain. Nothing happened except that suddenly there were two Spocks in the chamber. And I can tell you positively that there is no hiatus in my memory at that point.”

“I’m sorry to hear it — not only because we need the information badly, but because it might have provided a clue for telling the two of you apart. You still maintain that you are the original Spock, I suppose?”

“I do,” Spock Two said, in the tone he generally reserved for reporting an established fact of nature.

“Well, you see what the situation is as well as I do. While I suppose I could learn to live with two Mr. Spocks aboard — I might even come to like it — the ship cannot tolerate two first officers. Which of you do I demote, and to what post, and on what grounds?”

Spock Two raised his eyebrows. “May I suggest, Captain, that the situation is far more serious than that? To take a relatively minor aspect of it first, perhaps you can learn to live with two Spocks, but it would be somewhat painful for me. If you will imagine what it would be like for you to have a second James T. Kirk abroad in the universe, you will readily understand why.”

“Hmm. Yes — personally it would be highly unpleasant. Your pardon, Mr. Spock. I just hadn’t had enough time to ponder that aspect of it.”

“I quite understand. But there is a second derivative. It would be positively dangerous to the ship. I am not speaking now of the confusion which it would produce, though that would be bad enough in itself, but of the effect upon the efficiency of the first officer. While I shall learn to endure the situation if you so order — even should I wind up as a yeoman — whichever of us remains first officer would be operating under continual personal stress about which he could do nothing at all. Suppose, for instance, it occurs to him that the demoted Spock is conspiring to replace him? Or consider, Captain, the position in which you would find yourself, should the demoted Spock suddenly charge that he is one you retained as first officer, and that the other man has slipped into his place unobserved? Such an exchange, or a series of them, might well evolve simply from a sense of duty on the part of each man.”

Kirk whistled. “Now that would demoralize everybody, including me, even under peacetime conditions. You’re right, I don’t see how we dare risk it. But what would you suggest we do instead?”

“You have no choice, Captain. You must destroy one of us.”

Kirk stared at him for a long minute. At last he said, “Even if it turns out to be you?”

“Even,” Spock Two said levelly, “if it is I.”

There was an even longer silence, while Kirk thought about the emotional consequences to himself of such a course. It did not make pleasant thinking. But what were the alternatives? The case Spock Two had offered seemed airtight.

“I may in fact do that,” Kirk said finally. “But only if we can work out some foolproof way of determining which of you is the original. In the meantime, please, go directly to the bridge, remain there for ten minutes precisely, and then retire to your quarters until further notice.”

His expression shuttered, Spock Two nodded once and left. The moment the door closed behind him, Kirk opened the intercom and called Spock’s quarters. “Kirk calling Mr. Spock One.”

“Here, Captain.”

“Please report directly to my quarters at once.”

When Spock One entered, Kirk realized with a shock just how grave the identity problem actually was. Had Spock Two, after closing the door, simply walked down the corridor until he was out of sight from Kirk’s quarters, then turned around and come back at a leisurely pace and announced himself as Spock One, there would have been no immediate way for Kirk to have known that it had happened. And, now that Kirk came to think of it…

“Sit down, Mr. Spock. Kirk to the bridge!”

“Uhura here, Captain.”

“Is Mr. Spock there?”

Spock One raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

“No, Captain, it’s not his watch. As a matter of fact he did drop in for about five minutes, but he just left. You might try his quarters — or shall I page him for you?”

“No thanks, Lieutenant, nothing urgent. Kirk out.”

One minor crisis averted — or had it been? He had told Spock Two to stay on the bridge for ten minutes, but Uhura said he had left after five. No, that probably meant nothing; people who are busy seldom notice how long spectators are around, and almost never know, or care, how long ago they left. Scratch that — but there would be hundreds of other such cruxes. Uhura, for instance, like almost all the rest of the crew, did not even know yet what had happened in the Transporter room.

“Mr. Spock, beginning now, I want you to wear some identifying mark, and see to it that it’s unique and never leaves your person.”

“Then you had better invent it, Captain. Anything that I might choose might also occur to the replicate. And perhaps it should also be unobtrusive, at least for the time being.”

That made sense; Spock One did not want to confuse the more than four hundred and thirty members of the crew with two First Officers until such confusion could no longer be avoided. Neither did Kirk, though he was painfully aware that concealing the problem might equally well compound it.

Kirk drew off his class ring and passed it over. “Use that — and give me your own Command Academy ring. Your, uh, counterpart also has one, of course, but it won’t pass for mine on close inspection. There are no others on this vessel, that I’m sure.”

“No, Captain, no other officer on the Enterprise ever even stood for Command, as the computer will verify.”

“I’ll check it. And again, you’re not to regard this exchange as a sign of preference from me — that issue is far from settled. The exchange is for my convenience only.”

“I quite understand, Captain. A logical precaution.”

Kirk winced. They both were Spock, right down to characteristic turns of phrase and nuances of attitude.

“Good. Now let’s get down to the hard rock. I’ve been talking to Spock Two, and we’ve made a certain amount of progress — though not in a direction I like very much. It wouldn’t surprise me if you’d come to very much the same conclusions he did — but on the other hand, the two of you were disagreeing earlier on, so I’d prefer to rehearse what we said. Briefly, it went like this…”

Spock One listened to the Captain’s account with complete expressionlessness and immobility; but when he was asked for his opinion, Kirk got the next of his many shocks of the day.

“May I suggest, Captain,” Spock One said, “that it is illogical to expect me to view this line of argument with c-complete equanimity? To begin with, you and I are friends — a fact I have never intentionally exploited in any duty situation, but a fact of long standing nevertheless. To find that you would agree to kill any Spock cannot but distort my judgment.”

Kirk, too, listened immobile and without expression, but had he been a cat, his ears would have swiveled straight forward on his head. The hesitations in Spock One’s speech were extremely faint indeed, but, for Spock, they were utterly unprecedented; to Kirk the effect was as startling as though his first officer had been positively stuttering with indignation.

Kirk said carefully, “You were ready to kill me on one occasion. In fact, for a while, you thought you had.”

It was a fearfully cruel thing to have to say; but the time for politeness seemed to be well past.

“I recall that with no pride, Jim, I assure you,” Spock One said, with a kind of stony ruefulness nobody but a man half Vulcan and half human could even have felt, let alone expressed. “But you in turn will recall that I was amok at the time, because of the mating ceremony. Do you wish me back in that irrational state of mind? Or want me to welcome something similar in you?”

“Of course not. Quite the opposite. What I want from you now is the best logic you’ve ever been able to bring to bear, on any situation whatsodamnever.”

“Nothing else will serve, Captain, it seems to me. So let me further observe that my counterpart’s proposal is not conservative. There is a certain justice in his observation that our joint presence on the ship will be disturbing for both of us, but we are not likely to be disturbed about the same subjects at the same time; hence you could use both of us by asking both our opinions, and striking a balance between them.” The ghostly hesitation was gone now — had Kirk imagined it in the first place? “Furthermore, Captain, this whole question of identity is operationally meaningless. I can assure you that I know I am the original — but this knowledge is not false even if I am in fact the replicate.”

“You’ll have to explain further, I’m afraid.” But the difficulty of the argument was in itself reassuringly Spocklike — falsely reassuring, Kirk knew with regret.

“If I am the replicate, I have a complete, continuous set of memories which were replicated with me. As far as I can know, all these memories represent real experiences, and there is no break in continuity in them, nor in my attitudes or abilities. Therefore, both for my purposes and for yours, either of us is the original, and there is no reason to prefer one over the other. A difference which makes no difference is no difference.”

“McCoy’s Paradox,” Kirk said.

“Is that one of the classic paradoxes? I am not familiar with it. I was quoting Korzybski.”

“No, Doc invented it only two weeks ago — but abruptly it has come to life.” Kirk paused. He was not himself expert in logic, and now he was confronted by two experts, each arguing opposite sides of a life-and-death problem, and with apparently equal cogency. “Mr. Spock, I shall of course inform you when I’ve made my decision, but it’s not a matter on which I want to shoot from the hip. For the present, I want you and your counterpart to stand alternate half-day watches. That way, I get both your services continuously, I don’t have to choose between you yet, and I don’t have to flip a coin to decide which of you has to be moved out of your quarters.”

“An ideal interim solution,” Spock One said, arising.

For you, maybe, Kirk thought as he watched him go out. But your — brother — wants you dead.

He sighed and touched the intercom. “Doc? Kirk here. Break out the headache pills, I’m coming to pay you a visit.”