The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (39 page)

Make
cyborgs, Angus thought in a spasm of disgust. His anger was growing,
accumulating hour by hour, but it had nowhere to go. No wonder the cops didn’t
shut “the Lab” down. They probably sent their own researchers to work there, to
help them learn how to perform the kind of surgery they’d done on him.

Mikka
took a deep breath. As she went on, her scowl deepened until it seemed to
clench the bones of her skull.

“The
man who built it and runs it is called Deaner Beckmann, and he’s no ordinary
illegal. According to his reputation, he’s more of a lunatic libertarian — or
an anarchist. He doesn’t believe in the kind of laws that prevent him from
doing whatever research interests him. And what interests him — so they say —
is gravitic tissue mutation. He wants to evolve genetic adaptations that will
allow organisms to survive the stress of working close to singularities.
Eventually he wants to evolve human beings who can study singularities up
close.”

“Why?”
Ciro asked in surprise.

“Because,”
Mikka answered tightly, “he thinks humankind’s future lies inside. I guess he
thinks all the stuff black holes suck in must
go
somewhere. But
people
can’t go there if they can’t take the pressure.” She snorted sardonically. “So
he wants to make a few changes.”

“Unfortunately
for him,” Morn put in as if she were still trying to warn Angus, “that kind of
research is illegal. As illegal as the unauthorised use of zone implants.”

Davies
nodded like an echo.

Drifting
around the bridge, Nick snickered satirically.

Mikka
gave him a glare as if she wanted to hit him, then finished what she was
saying.

“The
story about Beckmann is that he got started with a grant from Holt Fasner. But
he lied about what he actually wanted to accomplish — or where he intended to
work on it. He’s been in the middle of that asteroid swarm ever since. Since he
doesn’t believe in anything that limits research, he lets other people come and
work with him. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Sounds
perfect,” Vector murmured without raising his head from his work. “He’ll have
everything I need.”

Sib
Mackern squirmed like a man who was trying not to throw up. “You actually want
to go there?” he asked the engineer. “A place where they do BR surgery and make
cyborgs?” Old fears twisted his face. “How is that different than being Amnion?”

“Because
if they were Amnion,” Morn said stiffly, “they wouldn’t get to choose.” Her
hand moved toward the back of her head as if she were remembering the ways her
zone implant could be used against her.

“Don’t
worry about it,” Vector told Sib. “It’ll be fun — I’ll be in my element.” A
self-mocking smile crossed his face. “And I’ve always wanted to be the saviour
of humankind. I don’t care where I do it.”

“‘The
saviour of humankind.’” Nick aimed a false grin at Vector. “I like that. You
couldn’t save your way out of a sack of shit if they
gave
you the damn
lab. The only time you ever do anything right” — just for an instant his grin
cracked into a snarl — “is when you panic.”

Furiously
Mikka swung the second’s station to face Angus. “Are you going to shut him up”
— she jerked a vehement nod toward Nick — “or do I have to do it?”

Angus
glowered back at her. Programmed inhibitions seemed to fill his throat,
tightening until he felt that he was being strangled.

“Let
him talk, Mikka,” Vector put in quietly. “He’s just trying to pretend he still
exists. Sneering is all he has left.”

“I don’t
care
,” Mikka spat. “I spent too many years believing in his fucking
superiority. I don’t want to
hear it
anymore.”

Angus
hated it. More than anyone else aboard, he needed to rage and strike; needed
the kind of violence which would break him out of his prison. He would
willingly, gleefully, have killed Nick with his bare hands, raped Morn right
there, or beaten his own head to pulp, just to prove he could do it. But
everything was impossible. He couldn’t even explain why he’d let Morn and
Vector persuade him to head for Massif-5.

“Then
get off the bridge,” he told Mikka harshly. You’ve been betrayed.
We all
have.
Do you think I
like
listening to people who can say whatever
they want? “You’re relieved. Don’t come back until we reach Massif-5.”

Nick
floated to a bulkhead, paused on one of the handgrips. His grin was so
abhorrent that Angus howled to himself; but he made no sound.

“Angus?”
Morn asked tensely. “What’s wrong?”

She
knew him too well.

“We’ve
got to do
some
thing about him,” Sib insisted, pointing at Nick. He
sounded uncharacteristically determined. “If we don’t at least lock him up, he’s
going to drive us all crazy.”

“Angus,
this is backward,” Davies said earnestly. “Sib is right. Mikka’s not the
problem. Nick is.”

Angus
didn’t answer his son. He didn’t face Morn’s question, or respond to Sib, even
though his own voiceless protests and appeals tore at his heart. His datacore
declined to let him lock up a UMCPDA operative.

Mikka
confronted him squarely, searching him with her hard scowl. When he refused to
reply, she bit her lip suddenly, then gave a tight shrug.

“I need
rest anyway.” She spoke to Morn without looking at her. “He’ll want my help
later. Unless he decides to let Nick replace me. In that case there’s no reason
for me to be here.”

Keeping
her eyes to herself, she undid her belt and pushed out of the g-seat, floating
in a precise somersault for the companionway. When she reached the handrails,
she pulled along them and rose out of sight.

“
Damn
it.” Anchored with his other hand so that he wouldn’t drift away, Davies
thumped his fist on the edge of the command console. “I thought we could trust
you,” he rasped at Angus. “I thought you’d changed.”

“He
has,” Morn said in a concerned tone. “He hates Nick. He wouldn’t do this.”

With a
visible effort, she forced herself closer to Angus’ station. When she was
directly in front of him, she raised her eyes to his. They were deeply bruised,
dark with damage — and yet somehow inviolable, as if she could remain whole
under any kind of assault.

“Angus,
something is wrong. We need to know what it is.
I
need to know.”

She
might have added, And
I
have the right to ask.

“Too
bad,” he retorted as if he were sneering at her; as if he were capable of that.
“You can go to your cabin, too. We’re going to hit tach in five minutes.”

Consternation
pulled at the corner of her mouth. “But you said —”

“I
changed my mind.”

He
couldn’t win a test of wills with her: he wasn’t strong enough. If he tried to
hold her gaze and face her down, he would end up whimpering like a baby in his
g-seat. But his zone implants were more insidious than hers — and they were
active. He scowled at her like the impact head of a mine-hammer until she
dropped her eyes and turned away as if he’d beaten her.

“Come
on,” she murmured to Davies. “It’s still his ship — he makes the rules.”

Davies
looked like his chest was congested with shouts. He was full of fever and
extravagance, which he fought to suppress. All his movements seemed
constricted, as if he were holding himself back from some extreme act by sheer
willpower. When Morn spoke to him, however, he bit his mouth shut and coasted
after her up the companionway.

Angus
didn’t watch her go. He didn’t meet Sib’s moist gaze, or Ciro’s immature
outrage; didn’t answer Vector’s quizzical expression. Above all he didn’t look
at Nick. He didn’t want to give any of them a reason to approach him.

If they
did — if they came closer to the command station — they might notice that a
scan blip had appeared on his board.

A ship.

Not
close: the lag to the vessel was nearly eight minutes. But she had resumed tard
almost directly behind
Trumpet
, as if she were on the same course.

As if
she were following the gap scout.

No one
else moved; but Nick left his handgrip and sailed toward Angus, catching
himself at the last moment on the edge of the station. Deliberately he braced
his arms on the console so that he could leer into Angus’ face.

“You
know what your problem is?” he said in a casual, infuriating drawl. “You hate
yourself. You don’t want friends. No, it’s more than that — you don’t even want
allies. You don’t think you deserve them.

“You
raped that bitch’s brains out.
He
remembers every bit of it. And
still
both of them want to be on your side. As for Mikka — she’s so jealous, she
would form an alliance with a snake if it just despised me enough.

“They
all
want
to help you.”

Angus
looked straight at Nick; but with his peripheral vision he studied his readouts.
The following ship was definitely on
Trumpet’s
course. And moving
faster: scan and data estimated her velocity climbing past
.
3C. That
wasn’t enough gain to give
Trumpet
any immediate problems. Still it made
his heart squirm in his chest.

Who was
she?

“But
you won’t have it,” Nick went on. “You hate yourself too much. You can’t
stand
anybody who doesn’t treat you like you’re the foulest motherfucking
sonofabitch in the whole created cosmos.”

Angus
felt dangers crowding around him. A ship on his trail. At least one enemy who
knew him too well.

Driven
by electrodes deep in his brain, he tensed for action as Sib soared toward
Nick, gripping his handgun in his fist.

Nick
froze, deliberately made no effort to defend himself. Nevertheless his grin
curdled, and his skin seemed to fade to the ashen color of his scars.

Sib
stopped himself on the arm of Angus’ g-seat.

“But
Morn and Davies and Mikka aren’t like that, Nick.” He touched Nick’s temple
with the muzzle of his weapon; despite his fears, he held the gun steady. “And
they aren’t alone. The only one I hate is you.”

He,
too, was driven: his fears were as deep as electrodes. In an oblique way, he
might have been declaring his loyalties — not for Nick’s benefit, but for Angus’.

“Don’t
forget me,” Ciro added, even though his voice quavered. “You hurt Mikka. I’m
not going to forgive that.”

Like
Sib, he spoke to Angus as much as to Nick.

The
data scrolling in front of Angus clarified as scan improved its fix on the
pursuing vessel. She was too big, emitted power on too many bandwidths, to be
anything except a warship.

Was she
UMCP?

Or was
she an Amnioni, risking war to hunt down
Trumpet
?

While
everything inside him stormed and wailed, Angus simply glared back at Nick and
waited for his tormentor to go away.

Nick
didn’t move until Sib lowered his gun and faded back. Then, however, he shoved
himself off the console. As he arced to one of the bulkheads, then rebounded
toward the companionway, he tightened his grin. He may have been trying to
conceal relief.

“You’d
better hit tach as soon as you can,” he told Angus.

“We don’t
want anybody to catch up with us.

“I’ll
be in my cabin.”

Curling
his lip at Sib, he left the bridge.

Angus
swore to himself. Nick had seen the blip.

Too
bad.

Determined
and grim, he started running commands.

As he
fed co-ordinates to the helm and power to the gap drive, as he charged matter
cannon and focused scan, he announced, “Tach in thirty seconds.”

Vector,
Sib, and Ciro would need that long to reach the relative protection of their
cabins.

He wanted
to cut the time short; wanted to go
right now,
while he still could. If
he let a UMCP ship catch him, he was finished. Some cop would invoke his
priority-codes, and then his brief, ambiguous freedom would end.

But his
datacore didn’t let him cheat. He gave the people who relied on him their full
thirty seconds before he sent
Trumpet
plunging into the gap.

MORN

M
orn came out of deep dreams with the vaguely disturbing sensation
that someone had flipped a switch. One moment she was far down in slumber so
delicious and comforting that it seemed to soothe her from the surface of her
skin to the centre of her aggrieved heart. The next she was awake, with her
eyes open and her limbs weak; aching because her hurts were still there after
all, unassuaged by dreams or rest.

She
recognised the phenomenon. It was the stress of transition from artificial
sleep and peace to ordinary, vulnerable mortality. But the recognition did
little to console her. She’d become so dependent on the emissions of her zone
implant that even helpless unconsciousness seemed preferable to the limitations
and pains of being human.