The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (43 page)

He hadn’t
hit Morn hard enough to stun her. Even though she was already lost, already
doomed, she recovered in time to see his blue eyes glaze over as if he were
about to faint. Beads of his blood struck her face like little wounds.

The
sight of his mangled hand and the shattered box made hysteria bubble and froth
inside her: as extreme as lava; as corrosive as acid.

Vector
must have thought he was saving her life — repaying his debt to her by freeing
her from external coercion. Nick couldn’t replace her black box. He didn’t know
its transmission frequencies, its hardwired codes.

But
Angus did. He could make another zone implant control for her whenever he
wanted.

DAVIES

M
uzzy-headed with pain and cold fury, Davies hissed an obscenity when
Mikka pulled him up from the edge of the table.  It wouldn’t have been so bad
if he’d been able to float weightless, but he was still belted to the galley
stool. Mikka’s effort to raise him set the bones of his upper arm grinding
against each other like the teeth of a saw; sent long knives of hurt probing
between his ribs.

A spasm
raked his face like claws. Locking his teeth together so that the pain wouldn’t
surge up from his chest and choke him, he snarled again, “Shit!”

Mikka
released him slowly, letting him do what he could to hold himself. From what
seemed like a great distance, she asked, “How bad is it?”

He
closed his eyes to help him concentrate. Through the dark he tried to measure
the severity of the damage. Then he muttered, “Sonofabitch broke my arm. And
some ribs.” As he spoke, he identified another hurt. “Feels like he split my
skull.”

“You’re
not alone,” she retorted harshly. “Unfortunately I can’t help you. We’ve been
ordered to the bridge.”

Ordered.
To the bridge. Davies tried to make sense of the words and found he couldn’t.
He was distracted: pain and a hot, primal desire to strike at least one killing
blow interrupted his attention. And the smell —

Vomit.

The
reek seemed so close to his face that he thought he might have done it himself.

When he
opened his eyes again, his vision laboured in and out of focus as if it couldn’t
support the pressure of his heartbeat. After a moment, however, he succeeded at
clearing his sight.

Across
from him, Sib Mackern sprawled facedown on the table. His posture looked
unnatural for zero-g: ordinary muscular contraction would have caused him to
float against the attachment of his belt. Apparently he was stuck in a puddle
of his own puke. Viscid bile and lumps of food smeared his face and the
tabletop: fine, rank beads seemed to orbit above him like constellations.

He was
breathing, but he wasn’t conscious.

In the
galley and the passage, the scrubbers strained to clean gouts and streamers of
drifting vomit from the air, but they hadn’t succeeded yet. The pads would have
to be replaced soon, or
Trumpet’s
air would start to go bad.

“What
happened—?” Davies’ voice caught as the stink and his own pain made him gag. “What
happened to him?”

“Stun,”
Mikka retorted shortly. “Nick took that prod away from Ciro. If it were any
bigger — if it delivered more charge — he would be dead. Ciro, too.

“Can
you move? If you get out of my way, I’ll pick him up.”

Davies
wanted to snort, Move? Sure. I can probably get as far as sickbay. If you and
God help me. But he didn’t have the strength for it. And she didn’t deserve his
bitterness —

Where
had she been when Nick and then Angus attacked Morn?

Where
were they now?

What
the hell was going on?

Gritting
his teeth despite the pain in his head, Davies struggled to bring the rest of
his mind into focus.

“You
said —” He tried to remember what Mikka had said. “We’ve been ordered to the bridge.”
He swallowed a lump of anger. “Says who?”

“Says
Nick.” She had too much bitterness of her own: she wouldn’t have noticed Davies’.
“He’s taken over. Apparently Angus has secrets he hasn’t bothered to explain.
Like why he suddenly lets Nick give him orders. Or how he did that.” With his
peripheral vision, Davies saw her point at the slagged handgun bobbing above
the foodvends.

“Or,”
she finished, “how he got to be so strong.”

Snagged
by the timbre of despair in her tone, Davies turned against his pain until he
could look at her.

The
sight made him flinch and cough as if he’d driven a rib into one of his lungs.

She’d
been hit, all right — hit
hard.
Glints of bone showed through the pulp
above her right eye. That eye had already swollen shut, but the wound hadn’t
stopped bleeding yet. Seeping from the red-black mess of her forehead, a wet
sheen covered the whole right side of her face. Her skull must have been a mass
of fractures.

She
needed sickbay more than he did. She had a concussion: in all likelihood she
was already on her way into shock. And there must have been bleeding inside the
bone. If she developed a cerebral hematoma, she could die.

“Fuck
the bridge,” he told her. Coughing hurt, but he could bear it. It wasn’t as bad
as the danger she was in. “You need treatment. Go to sickbay. I’ll get myself
there in a minute.”

And
Sib, too. He might have swallowed some of his vomit; might be dying —

She
shook her head. “You don’t understand.” She sounded bleak and beaten, lost in a
void of dismay. ‘ ‘Nick ordered us to the bridge. Right now. No matter what
condition we’re in.” In a tight voice, as if she could hardly force up words,
she explained, “He’s got Morn.”

Davies
flung a look like a cry at her.

She
replied with a small shrug. “We’re finished. Even Vector is hurt. She’s the
only one of us who isn’t either bleeding or unconscious” — Davies could see her
brother in Mikka’s eyes, somewhere beyond help — “and I think she’s gone into
hysterics.”

“Then
she needs me.” A rush of serotonin and noradrenaline cleared his brain; he didn’t
hesitate.
He’s got Morn.
His right arm was useless. Shifting so that he
could reach the cleats with his left, he undipped his belt from the stool.
I
think she’s gone into hysterics.

Almost
at once weightlessness seemed to ease the pain in his arm. With his ribs
twisting against each other, he kicked his way out of the galley and headed for
the bridge.

Despite
the pressure inside him, he moved carefully, protecting his injuries. Zero-g
grips along the walls helped him control his drift until he reached the
companionway. There he caught one of the handrails and paused to scan the
bridge.

Nick
sat at the command station, grinning like a skull; he flashed his teeth and his
dark scars at Davies as if they were pennons. Angus had taken the second’s
g-seat: he sat motionless, all his muscles locked down; he didn’t turn his head
to glance at his son. Belted to the stool in front of the auxiliary engineering
console, Vector hunched forward as if he were in danger of fainting. He’d
opened his shipsuit and pulled it off his shoulders so that he could wrap his
right hand in one of the sleeves. Blood soaked the fabric. Pale in the flat
white light of the bridge, his bare skin looked flaccid, almost lifeless.

None of
them seemed to feel the slightest interest in helping Morn.

She
floated near the ceiling, bobbing gently against the metal, with her face
hidden between her knees, and her arms clamped around her shins. The strain
with which she clung to herself was palpable. She’d made herself small because
she had no other protection: all her defences and hopes were gone.

For a
moment Davies couldn’t move. He could only stare up at her, dismay throbbing
through him, while he thought, as distinct as a jolt of stun, That’s not
hysterics. That’s insanity. She’s snapped.

Nick
must have taken her zone implant control. Feeling his power over her again must
have been more than she could bear.

It was
more than Davies could bear. Forgetting his broken arm and snapped ribs, his
cracked head, he dove off from the companionway; aimed himself with all his
strength at Nick.

Angus
stopped him.

Davies
didn’t see how it happened. Angus must not have been belted down; must have
turned his head in time to spot Davies’ movement. Before Davies reached Nick,
Angus collided with him, knocked him off course.

For an
instant his brain went blank at the impact on his arm and ribs. Red flushed
across his vision. By the time his sight cleared, Angus was behind him, holding
him with one forearm like a steel bar across his throat.

“Stop
it!” Angus grated in his ear. “You’ve lost — there’s nothing you can do. Don’t
make me hurt you again.”

“He’s
my bodyguard,” Nick remarked to Davies. “Nobody comes at me until they get past
him. Offhand I would say he’s pretty damn good at his job.”

Angus
and Davies hit the bulkhead, rebounded toward the display screens. One more
impact made no difference to Davies: he could hardly feel it. But it shifted
Angus’ position behind him.

A good
squeeze would be enough to crush Davies’ windpipe. Anybody could have done it:
it didn’t require Angus’ strange strength. Davies was already choking. His
broken bones cut inside him like knives. Nevertheless he focused his whole life
in the blow as he slammed his left elbow into Angus’ belly.

Angus
absorbed it with a low grunt; his grip on Davies’ throat held tight. Perfectly
in control, he snagged the toe of one boot on the back of Nick’s g-seat,
slowing his momentum and turning himself in the air so that he struck the
screen softly, cushioned Davies’ body with his own.

“
Stop
it,” he repeated. “At least find out what’s going on before you give Nick
an excuse to kill you.” Then, as if he knew what Davies needed to hear, he
hissed, “Vector broke her zone implant control. That’s how he tore up his hand.”

Davies
discovered that he wasn’t breathing. Broke — ? As he and Angus recoiled slowly
from the screen, he looked at Vector.

Vector
met his gaze and nodded.

Broke
her zone implant control.

Davies
went limp as the worst of his fears drained away.

Until
he remembered that Angus knew how to program a parallel control into his board.

“I wish
you hadn’t told him that,” Nick drawled laconically. “I like seeing him upset.
It would have been fun to let him go on thinking I could force her to tear his
balls off for me.”

“Then
make your fucking orders more fucking explicit!” Angus shot back. He sounded
enraged; almost frantic. Davies could feel his muscles shivering with hindered
violence. “If you don’t
tell
me to do it, it won’t
get done!
”

Nick
grinned at Angus’ anger. “That’s OK,” he retorted. “I like seeing
you
upset, too.”

Davies
seemed to feel tremors run through Angus; neurons misfiring like a suppressed
storm. He didn’t care, however. He looked at Morn, waiting for Angus to let him
go. He still couldn’t see her face: she was clamped too tightly around herself.
But he could take her in his good arm, hug her against him: she might be able
to feel that. If he spoke to her, she might hear —

“Stay
away from her,” Nick told him sharply. “Looks like she’s gone autistic on us,
doesn’t it. Well, let her. I don’t want you to make the mistake of thinking you
can comfort her. It won’t save her.”

Davies
couldn’t stifle his rage, even for Morn’s sake. “You bastard! She needs help!”

“Help?”
Nick snorted at once. “You’re an optimist, you know that, you little shit? In
case you haven’t figured it out, we’ve got an addict on our hands. She didn’t
crack like that because
I
got her fucking control. She cracked because
Vector broke it, and she can’t live without it.

“Well,
now she’s in
real
trouble. When we reach Massif-5, we’ll have to be
ready for hard g all the way to the Lab. That means she has to be ready for
gap-sickness. If she isn’t catted out of her mind, she’ll spend the whole trip
trying to kill all of us. You couldn’t help her if I wanted you to.

“Which
I don’t. I’m going to make her pay
blood
for every lie she ever told me.
This is just the beginning.

“If you
go anywhere near her, Angus will break your other arm for you. You got that?”

Davies
swallowed curses; swallowed bile and blood and pain. Nick was right, of course.
Morn’s gap-sickness would make Valdor’s system a personal hell. Without her
zone implant she had no defence except drugs against a madness which her son
could remember as if it were his.

Aboard
Bright
Beauty
she’d told Angus about it.

I could
see you on the screens. But I didn’t care. The whole inside of my head was
different.