The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (47 page)

After a
moment he’d stared up at Angus with his eyes glazed.

His
scars pulled at his face like a mask.

“Where
did this come from?” he asked dully.

Angus
recited his response as if it were written somewhere in his datacore, waiting
for Nick to need it.

There’s
a UMCP cruiser after us.
Punisher
. We passed her when we first came out
of forbidden space near the belt. Just before we went into tach this last time,
she got close enough to reach us with that transmission. You saw the blip.

“Isaac,”
Nick murmured to himself. He seemed unable to think. “Gabriel priority. What’s
that supposed to mean?”

It
means you’re in command now. You give me orders. I carry them out.

Nick
swallowed heavily; swallowed again. His gaze sharpened. He couldn’t stop
staring at Angus. “Why would you do that?”

I can’t
help it. I’m a cyborg. The cops welded me. I’m run by a computer that makes me
obey anybody who uses my codes.

“A
cyborg.” Nick bared his teeth. “A fucking machine.” By degrees the effort to
grasp what he was hearing seemed to bring him back to life. “What makes you
think I’m going to believe a load of crap like that?”

Angus
wailed at the walls of his crib, but he was too small to break free. He’d
always been too small. His long flight from the abyss was no more than an
illusion; a coward’s desperate, necessary way of lying to himself.

Nothing.
But I’m sure you can figure out a way to test it.

“Fine.
I can test it.” Nick crumpled the sheet of hardcopy.

“Here,
Gabriel.” He tossed it to Angus. “Eat this.”

Angus
caught it. He chewed it to a compact wad and choked it down as if it were one
of Milos’ nics.

Nick’s
eyes began to burn. A hard, red pulse tugged at the edges of his scars.

“Why?”
he demanded. “Why did they do that to you?”

Angus
told him.

Dangerous
hope seemed to flare in Nick’s stare. An end to his losses. A new start. He
flung out of his g-sheath, bobbed to a zero-g grip so that he could bring his
growing excitement and passion closer to Angus’ face.

“Fine.
Let’s pretend that makes sense. Why are they giving you to me now?”

Angus
told him. He told him about Milos.

Nick
swore viciously, eagerly: fatal as thermite, he blazed on the verge of an
explosion. “And you expect me to trust that? You expect me to stake my life on
it? You expect me to believe you aren’t setting me up?”

Angus’
programming didn’t reply. It didn’t need to.

“I’m
going to test you, all right,” Nick promised; he spoke as if the words were
fire. “What kind of equipment did they give you to blow up Billingate?”

Angus’
programming didn’t reply.

“Isaac,
you fucking sonofabitch,” Nick snarled, “this is Gabriel fucking priority.
What
kind of equipment did they give you to blow up Billingate?
”

Pain.
Despair.

UV
prostheses so I can read electronic fields and circuits. Jamming fields so I
can disrupt bugeyes. Lasers so I can cut open doors and people.

Madness.
Ruin.

His
datacore didn’t mention the plates that protected him, the reinforcements that
made him strong.

Nick
thought for a moment, then protested, “Shit, Isaac. If you can do all that, why
did Milos let you go? He could have used you for anything he wanted. Are you
asking me to believe he just walked away from a chance like that?”

There
were limits to what he could make me do. I have restrictions to prevent me from
killing UMCP personnel. That includes you. And he thought he was betrayed.
Hashi Lebwohl told him I wasn’t going to rescue Morn.

“But
Hashi
lied.
” Nick jumped at the idea. A craziness of his own flamed on
his face; a thermonuclear sense of possibility. “And poor miserable Milos
panicked when you started doing things he couldn’t control.

“All
right.” He sounded like he was shouting, even though he kept his voice low.
Blood filled his scars; it seemed to fill his gaze. Heat poured off his skin. “You’re
going to prove it to me. You’re going to help me take over the ship. You’re
going to protect me. And —”

Abruptly
he caught himself as another idea occurred to him. “No, wait a minute. Wait a
minute. How can I—?”

Then he
had it.

“Isaac,”
he articulated distinctly, “this is Gabriel priority. From now on, you are
going to follow my orders exactly, even if I never say ‘Isaac’ or ‘Gabriel’
again. Do you hear me? I’m talking to your computer. This is Gabriel priority.
Every order I give you has the force of Gabriel priority. You don’t need to
hear the codes in order to obey me. If you never hear the codes again, you will
still obey me.

“Tell
me you understand.”

I
understand.

Nick
eyed Angus harshly. “Tell me what you’re going to do about it.”

There
were no words. No words for it. All language had been burned out of him, all
meaning extirpated; he would never be released. His last sanity was gone.

I’m
going to obey.

“
Right!
”
Nick rasped through his teeth in triumph. Frenetic with eagerness, he launched
his passion toward the door. “Let’s get going! I’ve got something I want to
teach
those bastards!”

Angus
had obeyed because Warden Dios had given him back to the crib, and his cries
were too thin for anyone except his mother to hear. On Nick’s orders, he’d hurt
Mikka and Davies, slagged Sib’s gun; cornered Morn on the bridge and driven her
into hysteria.

Now he
ran the ship so that Nick would have a chance to prepare himself for what lay
ahead.

Trumpet
had already come far from her point of insertion: she challenged
the system in a kind of navigational combat, soundless and lethal. Trajectories
arced across the display, bent off true by doppler effects and changing
perspectives. His readouts shouted their warnings at him, blips signalling in
confusion as dangers surged close and then receded. Asteroid swarms heaved like
igneous hurricanes across scan and fell astern when he avoided them. The small
scrap of planets and ships punched
Trumpet’s
impact deflectors. G
plucked and sawed at her from all directions, distorting her vectors,
falsifying her helm. She was lured toward collisions too massive to be
deflected, gravity wells too potent to be escaped.

Yet he
mastered the hazards almost easily, showing no strain: his computer and the gap
scout were made for this. Faster than any sane ship,
Trumpet
dodged
toward her destination.

When
Nick had learned all he could absorb at one time, he sometimes napped,
sometimes ate; sometimes he talked. Once he said cheerfully, “You’re probably
wondering why I need bait. Everything would be so much tidier if I just had you
slaughter them in their bunks. Or if your restrictions got in the way, I could
do it. Jettison them from the airlock and be done with it.

“But I’m
ahead of you. Way ahead.” He spoke as if Angus had nothing to think about
except him. “You haven’t figured out what happens after Vector learns how to
identify that drug.”

He
glanced over at Angus. His scars grinned like the fond hunger of a barracuda. “Ask
me what we’re going to do.”

What
are we going to do?

“Go
after Sorus,” Nick announced as if the decision made him proud. “Sorus fucking
Chatelaine. And
Soar
. And for that I need bait.

“She
works for the Amnion — and the Amnion want your dear, sweet son. She’ll jump at
it if I give her a chance at him. She’ll know it’s a trap, but she won’t be
able to help herself.
They
won’t listen to excuses if she fails them.”

He
mused for a moment, then added, “Of course, the cops aren’t going to leave us
alone while we do that. I need something I can offer them to keep them off my
back. Morn would do” — he clashed his teeth together viciously — “but they can’t
have her. I’ve got other plans for her. And I have options. Between them Mikka
and that pitiful asshole Sib know everything I do about those Amnion
acceleration experiments. If
Punisher
starts to cause trouble, I can
dangle that in front of her nose.”

Angus
said nothing. Phosphors danced across his screens and readouts, echoing the
system’s silent; random pavane of destruction. Coercion was the only answer he
had left.

“How
much longer?” Davies demanded from the intercom.

“Shut
the fuck up,” Nick retorted happily. “We’re busy.”

Davies
persisted. “I need to know how much cat to give Morn.”

If he
feared Nick, he didn’t show it. That was good. Angus was afraid enough for
everyone.

“I don’t
give a shit,” Nick answered. “Just don’t think you can protect her by letting
her go crazy. You won’t like what I do to her if that happens. Or what I do to
you.”

Grinning
at Angus, he silenced the intercom.

Angus’
mother had smiled that same way when she leaned over the crib.

Sometime
later Nick pointed at a readout and swore. “A homing signal, you sonofabitch?
You didn’t mention that. No wonder
Punisher
was able to catch us.”

He
chewed his lip for a moment, thinking hard; then he relaxed. “Under the
circumstances I probably shouldn’t complain. But I can’t imagine what the hell
you thought you were doing. Tell me why — no, I can guess why you did it. Tell
me why you didn’t mention it.”

Angus
answered like a corpse.

You
didn’t ask. I don’t make choices — I just follow orders. If you don’t ask, I
can’t tell you.

That
was his only defence, his one secret. It had protected him once during DA’s
interrogation. Now it warded him again; let him keep this last, useless piece
of himself intact.

Nothing
required him to tell Nick that he knew how to replace Morn’s shattered zone
implant control.

“Well,
let’s not make it easy for them,” Nick drawled. “They’ve already given me all
the help I need. I don’t think I want to hear what they’re going to tell me to
do when they’re sure I’ve got you under control.”

His
fingers punched at the command board. On a readout, Angus saw that the homing
signal had been deactivated.

Useless,
yes. Empty and insignificant. Yet Angus clung to it.

And to
one other thing as well; one other useless, empty, insignificant act. While he
worked in Nick’s service — and Warden Dios’ — he kept
Punisher’s
transmission visible on another readout. Let Nick notice what he was doing and
be suspicious: let Nick think he needed to be reminded of his compliance. He
didn’t care. He couldn’t. Whenever his programming and Nick’s orders gave him a
chance, he scrutinised that readout with the fixed incomprehension of a madman.

Warden
Dios to Isaac, Gabriel priority.

Show
this message to Nick Succorso.

The
words were embedded in coding that he didn’t recognise and couldn’t read — some
kind of machine language, apparently, intended to enforce obedience from Isaac’s
computer. Nevertheless he studied them whenever he could; stared and stared
until his vision swam and his choked wailing filled his ears.

Warden
Dios had told him,
We’ve committed a crime against your soul.
He’d said,
It’s got to stop.

Angus
hunted for the end of his despair, the bottom of the abyss, but he couldn’t
find it.

Six
hours. Twelve. Eighteen. The strain should have been too much for any man, even
a welded cyborg. It would have been too much if he hadn’t used all his
knowledge, skill, and cunning to thread a course which minimised
Trumpet’s
reliance on thrust. Ordinary mortality needed sleep: even tortured babies in
their cribs slept when they couldn’t bear any more. And Nick rested when he
felt like it. Yet Angus’ zone implants kept him awake, alert; compliant to the
pitch of desperation, despite the fact that his small limbs were bound to the
slats so that his mother could
fill him with pain.

Warden
Dios to Isaac —

Deep in
the lost background of his mind, after each new penetration, she still
comforted
him as if it were him she loved.

Show
this message —

At last
their destination loomed on the fringes of scan — the asteroid swarm, according
to Mikka, where a lunatic researcher named Deaner Beckmann had hidden his
installation. By some bitter coincidence, his lab just happened to have
received its original financing from Holt Fasner. The same man who owned the
cops.

Angus’
databases and
Trumpet’s
instruments confirmed that this particular swarm
was doomed to eventual immolation in Lesser Massif-5. But he hadn’t been given
any indication that the UMCP knew of the Lab’s existence. And
Trumpet’s
scan had no hope of piercing deep enough into the swarm to detect its
emissions. Distance was only part of the problem: that many thousand gigatons
of shattered rock simply shed too much interference of all kinds. And a hot
singularity less than a parsec off the swarm’s course through the system
distorted everything the gap scout could see.