The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (49 page)

As if
it were him she loved —

On
impulse, without caring if Nick noticed, he typed
Punisher’s
entire
message into his board.

The
command entry readout replied before he was finished.

error. Verify coding and retry.>

“Yes,
that
Vector Shaheed,” Nick said with elaborate patience, as if he were speaking
to idiots. “From Intertech.”

Angus
tried again. This time he left out the words, entered only the code-strings.

The
response was the same:

error. Verify coding and retry.>

Hopelessness
boiled up from the bottom of his mind. He seemed to remember hearing his mother
say,
You can’t get away,
even though he’d been far too young to
understand any language except pain and comfort,
No, no, you can’t get away.
I can’t get away from them, and you can’t get away from me. That’s why you’re my
son. Why you ‘ll always be my son.

Nick
silenced his pickup, turned a conspiratorial grin on Angus. “I think I’m
talking to Deaner Beckmann himself,” he whispered as if he didn’t want to be
overheard. “Someone there has actually heard of Vector. These obsessive
researchers all like to talk too much. They keep secrets from everybody else,
but they’ll tell each other anything. Beckmann probably knows what Vector was
working on before he left Intertech.”

Why do
I care? Angus wondered. Why should I care?

Him she
loved —

What
was left? How many other machines did
Trumpet
have aboard?

He only
knew of one.

It’s
got to stop.

Isaac,
he said in silence. Are you listening to me, Isaac? Can you hear me, Isaac?

That
was his name. But it was also his access-code. When his brain formed the exact
pattern of neural activity which represented that word, a window opened in his
head so that he could access some of his databases, query some of his
programming. All the knowledge and guidance held in his. datacore would have
been wasted if he hadn’t been allowed to tap a certain amount of it
voluntarily, under the right conditions.

“How do
I propose to pay for it?” Nick snorted into his pickup. “I propose to pay for
it with
results.
If Vector succeeds, you can have a piece of whatever he
learns. I can’t tell you what that’ll be because I don’t know. But I can tell
you
this.
The Amnion know things about mutation” — he might as well have
said
gravitic tissue mutation
— “that could be right in line with what
you need.”

If that
gambit didn’t gain what Nick wanted, nothing would.

That’s
why you’re my son.

Angus’
zone implants couldn’t literally read his thoughts. They could recognise a
finite number of specific synaptic patterns; but they interpreted his mental
state primarily by identifying the presence of individual neurotransmitters,
the changes in his blood chemistry. Their control operated directly on his
motor centres. They weren’t capable of managing — or even understanding — the
ambiguous activity of his volition.

Why you’ll
always be my son.

Can you
hear me, Isaac?

“Got
you!” Nick crowed abruptly. “
Got
you.”

At once
he swung his station to face his second as if he expected Angus to be
impressed.

“They’re
going to let us in. There!” He pointed triumphantly at a schematic as it etched
itself across one of the screens. “That’s our course past the guns. It’s all coming
in” — he glanced at his readouts — “approach protocols, traffic and navigation
data, ship id, everything we need.

“If
Vector doesn’t fuck up, we’re going to be
rich.
Beckmann is going to
shove credit-jacks at us with both hands.”

Angus
didn’t respond. He couldn’t. All his attention was turned inward: he was too
full of desperation and pain to notice Nick. His wrists and ankles
were tied
to the slats,
and he’d never had the strength to free himself.

When
his datalink opened, he began to recite
Punisher’s
message to himself,
hoping that it would reach through the window to his datacore; hoping that the
same resource which enabled his datacore to hear and comprehend Nick’s orders
would also enable it to receive his own mental voice.

Nick
studied his readouts again; this time he stared as if he couldn’t focus his
eyes. The next instant something like a blow slammed him back in his g-seat.
All the blood drained from his face, his scars; his eyes glared white, as pale
as bone.

Then he
flailed the air with his fists and gave a cry like the one with which he’d
greeted
Captain’s Fancy
’s destruction — the howl of a man whose heart
was being torn open.

A
moment later he looked back at Angus.

His
face had changed like a mask. Stark pallor left his cheeks the colour of his
eyes; but his scars were livid with blood, so dark they seemed black. They
underlined his white glare like streaks of violence.

“
Soar
is here,” he breathed; whispered. “She beat us — she’s already in.”

His
fists clenched convulsively. A spasm twisted him against his belts.

“That
bitch,” he pronounced distinctly, as if he were still in control of himself; as
if he still knew what he was doing. “That fucking bitch. This is her last
mistake. Now she’s
mine!
”

Angus
finished his recitation.

He
waited.

Nothing
happened. He wasn’t strong enough. His datalink remained active until he closed
it; but nothing changed.

ANCILLARY

DOCUMENTATION

SYMBIOTIC
CRYSTALLINE

RESONANCE
TRANSMISSION

Theorists had argued for
decades over the possibility of instantaneous communication across interstellar
distances.

In
practical terms, of course, the possibility didn’t exist. All known means for
the transmission of data were at once too inflexible and too vulnerable to be
efficient across the vastness of space. Waveforms such as radio, photon
emissions such as lasers, linepulses of the kind employed by electronic
telecommunications: all were light-constant (therefore too slow when the
distances involved were measured in light-years), and all were to varying
degrees susceptible to distortion by gravity wells, electromagnetic furnaces,
and plasma flares — not to mention obstruction by planetary or solar bodies, or
even by the seas of dust which swept uncharted through the great void.

Furthermore,
humankind had developed an alternative: the gap courier drone. By storing the
data to be communicated and transporting it across the dimensional gap as a
physical object, humans could obtain results which far exceeded anything mere
microwaves or lasers might accomplish.

In
practical terms, then, the whole question of instantaneous communication across
interstellar distances was foolish: impossible on the one hand; unnecessary on
the other.

Theorists
who relished the foolish, ignored the impossible, and doted on the unnecessary
were not daunted.

Many of
them rationalised their efforts in these terms:

In
normal space, waveforms travelled significantly faster than objects. Objects
simply could not be accelerated up to the speed of light. As they approached
c
,
their mass experienced time dilation until at the last, unattainable moment it
became infinite. Therefore, as objects approached
c
, more and
more force was required to accelerate them. The final, nearly infinite
increments demanded nearly infinite energies.

And
yet,
in effect,
objects were able to travel much faster than light by
the dimensional legerdemain of crossing the gap. The physical properties of
objects enabled them to go into the gap — where no waveform could reach them —
and emerge intact.

Well
then, if such sleight of hand could be practised upon objects — legerdemain
that depended on the very physical properties which restricted matter to
velocities lower than the speed of light — why could not an analogous sleight
be devised for waveforms, a sleight specific to the unique material properties
of microwaves and light?

So some
theorists argued. Their imaginings remained purely speculative, however, even
fanciful, until the results of some rather specialised inquiries into the
characteristics of certain crystalline structures became known.

Working
in zero-g environments, crystallographers were able to design and produce
crystals of a purity unknown on Earth: a purity which never occurred in nature.
The original purpose of the inquiry was to study the relationship between the
crystallographic planes and the “seed” atoms from which those planes were
projected, on the plausible assumption that the planes represented a form of
code which when deciphered might reveal new insights into the atoms themselves.
And, of course, the purer the crystal, the more accurate the code. However, the
research soon produced the secondary discovery that certain pure anisotropic
crystals grown in pairs from nearly identical “twin” atoms had a property which
became known as “symbiotic resonance.” When one such “twin” was subjected to
mechanical strain in order to induce a piezoelectric effect, the other
exhibited an equal — and simultaneous — response.

It was
as if both “twins” had been subjected to exactly the same strain at exactly the
same moment, even though the crystals were not in physical contact with each
other. In fact, the “twins” had been grown in separate containers and were
insulated from each other by a variety of fluids and barriers.

Subsequent
research determined that the range across which symbiotic resonance took place
was a function, first, of the purity of the crystals and, second, of the
similarity between their “seed” atoms. In particular, the more nearly identical
the “seed” atoms were, the greater the obstacles — both of space and of matter
— which the “twins” could ignore in their response to each other.

Theorists
interested in the possibility of instantaneous communication across
interstellar distances were ecstatic.

Clearly,
symbiotic resonance had the potential to be a means of data transmission.
Piezoelectric responses could be produced as code in one “twin” and decoded
from the reaction of the other. And if such communication could take place —
without any measurable time lag — between one side of a lab and the other, why
not between one side of a station and the other?

Why not
between the station and Earth? Between Earth and her planets? Between Earth and
the stars?

Crystallographers
were unable to advance any theoretical objections. Certainly their research
repeatedly confirmed that this resonance occurred independent of time. Yet
practical objections abounded — and these were effectively insurmountable.

In
order to achieve symbiotic resonance across distances greater than a few dozen
meters, the “seed” atoms of the “twins” would need to be identical to standards
so strict — identical down to the precise orbital placement of the component
electrons — that they were virtually inconceivable to human minds; quite
unattainable by human methods. The purity of the crystals themselves could be
improved; but how could the “seed” atoms be made identical? Just as Einstein
had defined the limits of physical velocity, Heisenberg had established the
limits of atomic predetermination.

Crystallographers
found it easier to believe that objects would one day be accelerated past the
speed of light than to credit that individual “seed” atoms could ever be made
identical.

Naturally
the theorists were no more daunted now than they had been earlier. If
communication by symbiotic resonance was effectively impossible for human minds
using human methods, that didn’t necessarily imply that it was impossible for
other minds using other methods. Was it not conceivable, they argued, that the
techniques of the Amnion might be equal to the challenge of “symbiotic crystalline
resonance transmission”?

That
was just a theory: no more inevitable than any other act of speculation.
Nevertheless, the bare idea was enough to make the men and women charged with
the defense of human spacemen like Warden Dios, women like Min Donner — break
into a cold sweat.

DARRIN

C
aptain Darrin Scroyle, master of the mercenary vessel
Free Lunch
,
sat naked in his cabin, absentmindedly scratching the grizzled hair on his
chest while he studied the readouts from his personal data console.

Displayed
on one of the small screens was a schematic of the Massif-5 system. His last
reading of
Trumpet’s
homing signal showed him the gap scout’s point of
insertion into the system. At the moment she was one easy gap crossing ahead of
Free Lunch
.