The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (17 page)

“And it
would have worked,” Davies cut in, “if Angus hadn’t come along. You’re pretty
good at figuring these things out after the fact, but you weren’t able to
handle them at the time.”

Nick
twitched one shoulder in a small shrug, but didn’t respond.

For a
moment the bridge was silent. Mikka chewed the private bitterness of her
thoughts; Vector watched Morn and Angus as if he were waiting for something;
Ciro concentrated hard, like a kid fighting not to drown in waters over his
head. Absentmindedly Sib scratched his thin moustache with the muzzle of his
handgun; then he remembered to level the gun at Nick again.

Slowly
Angus turned away from Nick. He stood facing Morn like a recognition that she
was in command.

She
made a palpable effort to recover the assurance — the desperate clarity — which
had sustained her earlier. With undisguised hunger she looked at her zone implant
control; then, as if she were punishing herself, she pushed it back into her
pocket. Grimly she dragged her hair away from the sides of her face, tucked it
behind her ears.

At last
she met Angus’ gaze.

Confronting
him with her wounded eyes, she said, “That brings us back to what we were
talking about before. It all went wrong for the Amnion when you intervened. So
now they have even more reason to want to stop us.” She paused, holding his
stare, summoning her courage. Then she asked bluntly, “What are we doing here,
Angus?”

Angus’
expression was unreadable. Davies could see the small muscles around his eyes
tug and release as if they were signalling, but their message was coded;
indecipherable.

After a
moment Angus answered, “Hiding.”

“Shit,”
Nick sneered. “I’ve already told you what I think of that explanation.”

Mikka
glanced at Nick dourly, then said to Angus, “He’s right. That’s bullshit. Why
do we need to hide? Why didn’t we head straight for human space as soon as we
got clear of Thanatos Minor’s debris? Who’re we supposed to be hiding from?”

“We’re
three light-years deep in Amnion territory,” Morn added. Her tone grew steadier
as she spoke. “We’re safe for now, but we’ve given them time. Time to react.
Time to hunt for us. Time to organise a blockade — or a chase.

“Why
did you do that, Angus?”

When he
didn’t respond, she tightened her jaw. Carefully she articulated her real
question. “Who are you working for?”

The
muscles around his eyes tightened and released like little spasms of pain; the
corners of his mouth knotted. Suddenly Davies thought he knew the truth. He’d
seen Angus look like that once before — or rather Morn had.

After
Nick had crippled
Bright Beauty
, Morn had regained consciousness in time
to see Angus sitting like a battered toad in his g-seat. She’d checked her
readouts, learned what had happened. Then she’d said to him, “
You’re beaten.
He beat you
.”

He’d
turned a face grey with despair toward her. As if he were trying to be angry,
he’d retorted, “
Proud of him, aren’t you.
Beat
me
. “

“Angus.”
She’d never used his name before. “I can save you. I’ll testify for you. When
you go back to Com-Mine, I’ll support you. I’ve still got my id tag.

“Just
give me the control. The zone implant control.”

Her
desperation had been that profound. Angus had broken her in ways he hadn’t
anticipated.

To
her dismay, she saw tears in his eyes.

“I’ll
lose my ship.”

“You
can’t save it,” she shot back. “I can handle Station Security. And the UMCP.
But nothing can save your ship.”

Softly,
he said, “And give up my ship. That’s the deal, isn’t it. You’ll save me. If I
let you have the control. But I have to give up my ship.

She
nodded. After a moment, she replied, “What else have you got to bargain with?”

There,
right then, he’d looked the way he did now — trapped and helpless, more bitter
than he could bear. In some fashion that Davies couldn’t understand, Angus was
trapped again; caught by needs and exigencies he could neither avoid nor
satisfy.

When he
replied, his tone was casual and false.

“Hashi
Lebwohl.”

Ciro opened
his mouth in surprise; Mikka gaped like her brother. Disappointment clouded
Vector’s blue eyes, and his habitual calm smile drooped.

Like a
crackle of static, Nick laughed. “I knew it. It had to be the cops.” He shook
his head scornfully. “You miserable bastard, if they can make
you
do
their dirty work, we’re all doomed.”

Morn
held Angus’ gaze and remained still as if she didn’t dare betray any reaction.
Nevertheless Davies believed he knew what she was thinking. He could hear
Vector telling her,
The UMCP is the most corrupt organisation there is. It
makes piracy look like philanthropy.
He could feel her anguish.
We had
the raw materials for a defence, we had all the rungs. And they took it, they
suppressed
it. Forbidden space is their excuse for power
.

For
some reason Davies didn’t feel that same distress. His confusion toward his
father produced a different response.

“This
is one of his operations,” Angus explained as if he were lying — or using
pieces of the truth to hide a lie. “He set it all up. He broke me and Milos out
of UMCPHQ, got us this ship, sent us to Billingate. I had two jobs. Blow up
Billingate’s fusion generator.” He hesitated like a man swallowing panic, then
finished, “And rescue you.

“But it’s
all covert,” he continued harshly. “We can’t just sail back into human space
like we’re expecting a goddamn hero’s welcome. That would ruin our cover.”

“‘Cover’?”
Mikka snapped. “What do we need cover for?”

Angus
ignored her. “We’re supposed to go on looking like illegals. Like rogues.
Lebwohl doesn’t want to be accountable. So there’s no fleet waiting for us. If
the Amnion decide we’re worth breaking the frontier treaty for, we’re on our
own. Until I get new orders.” A complex and ambiguous rage vibrated in his
voice. “We can make our own decisions for a while.”

Morn
frowned. Davies felt the strain in her; the arduous struggle to concentrate
despite her exhaustion and dismay. “Don’t you have to report?” she asked with
difficulty. “Surely DA wants to know what you’ve done — what you’re doing?”

A small,
strange convulsion like a crisis seemed to come over Angus. All his muscles
knotted; his eyes bulged. He might have been on the verge of an infarction. Yet
his tension passed almost instantly, as if he’d taken a massive dose of cat.
When he answered, he sounded unexpectedly simple. His conflict had disappeared
— or been vanquished.

“Of
course he wants a fucking report. This is Hashi Lebwohl we’re talking about.
But I can’t exactly send him one from here, can I?” The question was
rhetorical. “It would take three years to get there —
if
I could send
it, which I can’t.” He slapped a gesture at the schematic on the display
screen. “We’re already occluded by that star.”

Abruptly
Vector left the engineering panel. Frowning to contain his eagerness, he moved
to the command station; gripped the edges of the console as if he needed to
brace his hands so that they wouldn’t shake. Close to Morn, he faced Angus.

“Where
will you go?”

Angus
chewed his answer for a moment before replying, “I haven’t decided.”

“Back to
human space?” Vector offered.

Angus
shrugged bitterly: “We’re safer here. With any luck at all, we could skip
around Amnion territory for years without getting caught. They can’t chase us
if they can’t find our trace. They can’t pick our emissions out of all this
noise, even if they have some way to know we were here.

“But
then,” he rasped, “I wouldn’t be able to report, would I?”

“Then
let me make a suggestion,” Vector said quickly. “Let me tell you what
I
want.”

Morn
looked at him in surprise. She was too tired to jump to the kinds of
conclusions which leaped through Davies.

Angus
considered the engineer. “Why not?” he sneered. “Hell, let’s
all
make
suggestions. We’ve got eight hours before we have to decide anything.”

Vector’s
blue gaze was impervious to scorn. “Angus,” he said intently, “Morn knows
things about me you don’t. We had time to talk aboard
Captain’s Fancy
.”
Nick rolled his eyes in contempt, but didn’t bother to speak. “I think that’s
the first time she’d ever heard there might be such a thing as a mutagen
immunity drug.”

Unselfconsciously
Morn and Davies nodded in unison.

“
I
know
about that drug because I helped develop it. Before I” — Vector grimaced in
self-mockery — “went into this line of work, I was a geneticist for Intertech.
I was on the project to develop an antimutagen until the UMCP shut it down. Not
the United Mining Companies, Angus — the United Mining Companies
Police
.
We were so close to an answer I could taste it, and they took it away from us.

“Obviously
DA must have finished our research. Otherwise Nick wouldn’t be able to go
visiting in places like Enablement Station. And” — he glanced at Morn — “you
wouldn’t still be human. The Amnion must have given you mutagens when they had
the chance. They would have changed you, if you hadn’t taken the drug.”

Morn
nodded again, watching him closely.

“Angus,”
Vector went on, “we’ve got the drug. And I know how to work on it. Hell, I’ve
already
done
most of the work.” Still supporting himself on the command
console, but holding his head up so that he could face Angus straight, he
announced, “I want a lab.”

Passion
made his voice carry and ring as if he were shouting, even though he spoke
quietly. “I want a place where I can analyse that drug — discover the formula,
learn how to make it.”

The
blaze of hope in Morn’s eyes was so radiant that Davies suddenly felt like
crowing. Ciro and Sib stared at Vector in astonishment. However, Mikka aimed
her black scowl at Angus as if she could already hear his refusal.

“And
then?” Angus demanded as if Vector couldn’t sway him; as if no human passion
were precious or compelling enough to touch him.

“And
then I want to
tell
people,” the engineer answered urgently. “I want to
broadcast it like a proclamation. I want to put it on the public news channels.

“I don’t
trust the cops, Angus. They’ve already suppressed this too long. And humankind
needs
it. Hell, we need it ourselves. We could go to some station that isn’t
owned by the UMC, Terminus maybe, and let them process and distribute it. Or we
could just transmit the formula ourselves everywhere we go, make it so public
that it
can’t
be suppressed.

“I don’t
care how we do it. I just want to
do
it. This is my chance” — distaste
twisted his mouth — “my chance to redeem everything I’ve done since I left
Intertech.”

Sib had
forgotten Nick completely. Carried along by Vector’s emotion and his own fears,
he put in, “And it’s a chance to fight the Amnion. I mean, really fight them,
do something effective — not just talk about it, like the cops. Not just shoot
a few illegals so the UMC can have more trade and get richer.”

“Yes,”
Davies breathed. He still found the concept of UMCP corruption difficult to
accommodate, but nothing prevented him from recognising the power of Vector’s
idea, and affirming it.

“Wait a
minute,” Mikka protested. “You’re getting ahead of yourselves.” With an
intuitive leap, Davies saw that her anger was the distrust of a woman who had
learned at considerable cost the danger of hoping for the wrong things at the
wrong time. “You can dream all you want, but it’s worthless if you don’t figure
out how to make it work. Where do you propose to
find
a lab? And how do
you plan to get access to it once you find it?”

“Oh,
that part’s easy.” Nick’s smug grin suggested that he was taunting Angus,
daring him to take Vector seriously. “Any illegal lab in human space will let
you in, if you tell them what you’re doing — and offer to share the results. As
long as you convince them you’re illegal, too.

“
Finding
a lab, on the other hand — that could be tricky.”

Angus
glared at Morn while her eyes shone as if he’d already given his approval.
Without shifting his gaze, he responded to Mikka, “You seem to be the only one
here with any sense. Why don’t you tell these bleeding hearts why this idea
stinks?
Explain
to them that we can’t go find a lab because we don’t
know where to
look
.”‘

Mikka
opened her mouth to speak; but her brother was faster. Impulsively he blurted
out, “Valdor.”

She
closed her lips and stared at him as if he’d had the temerity to slap her.

“That’s
where —” he began. “Valdor Industrial. We lived there. It’s —” But he couldn’t
go on; whatever he was about to say seemed to stick in his throat, caught by
Mikka’s shock and Sib’s amazement and Vector’s broad grin.