The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (78 page)

“Sorus
Chatelaine gave him a mutagen.”

Sib
raised a shocked hand to his mouth to keep himself from crying out. Recognition
filled his eyes like nausea. Angus sat still; suddenly motionless as if all his
internal functions had been suspended.

Forget
it, Davies tried to say. That just gives us another reason. We already have
plenty. At this rate we’re never going to catch
Soar
.

But his
throat refused to work. He was as crazy as Nick; strangling like Nick.
Confusion he didn’t want to acknowledge or confront built up against his
defences, stoking the fires. Sorus Chatelaine had killed Bryony Hyland. She’d
given Ciro a mutagen. For some reason Davies couldn’t make a sound.

“Apparently
it’s the same one they used on her.” Morn sliced out words as if her voice were
a blade. “Then she handed him an antidote. That’s how they control her. It
doesn’t stop the mutagen, it postpones it. Puts it on hold. According to her,
he can stay human as long as he takes the antidote.

“She
promised to keep him supplied. But first he has to sabotage
Trumpet
.”

Manic
triumph flashed in Nick’s gaze. “It worked,” he announced as if everyone on the
bridge were waiting to hear what he would say. “I left the bait under her nose,
and she took it. Now we can get her.”

A small
quiver ran through Angus. The threat to his ship seemed to bring his systems
back on-line.

Ignoring
Nick, he asked Morn, “He told you that?”

With
his peripheral vision Davies saw Morn nod as if she were too angry to speak.

“It’s
perfect,” Nick rasped. “She thinks we’re going to be sabotaged. So we fake
sabotage. Suck her in. Then we burn out her fucking heart.

“Burn
out her fucking heart
at last
.”

Davies
wished that Nick would shut up. Nevertheless he understood how Nick felt.

If
Soar
intended to come back in for the kill, it was safe to let her pull away at
first.
At last
he would have a chance to get the revenge he needed; the
revenge which had set him ablaze.

“And
you believe him?” Angus pursued. “Why should he tell the truth? The only way he
can stay human is by doing what she wants. Now that we know, we can stop him.
He’s doomed.”

This
time Morn shook her head. “I believe him,” she pronounced like a woman who was
beyond question.

Angus
continued facing Morn; held her gaze steadily. They looked like they were
testing something between them. He didn’t challenge or contradict her, however.
Maybe he couldn’t.

“At
last
,”
Nick repeated. His voice sank to a murmur as he retreated into himself.

Davies
understood that, too. If Nick attended to what went on around him, he would
eventually realise that he himself would play no part in the attack on
Soar
.
And then his heart would surely burst.

A
twitch lifted Morn’s shoulders in a tight shrug. “Vector might be able to help
him,” she went on. “Nick’s antimutagen may work. But he’s so scared — “ She
took a deep breath to ease her distress. “Even if he survives, this could break
him.

“And
Mikka is doing everything she can just staying with him. I hope you won’t need
her for a while. If you do, we’re out of luck. She isn’t available.”

Angus
turned back to his board. “We’ll manage.”

That
was fine with Davies. Earlier Angus had picked Mikka to be his second, but
Davies yearned to have the second’s station himself, ached to run targ. He didn’t
want to be emasculated like Nick — prevented by tape and distrust from carrying
his essential passion through to its conclusion.

And yet
he couldn’t have named that passion, even to himself. It flamed in him as if
he, too, were driven by zone implants; but somehow its significance eluded him.
He called it “revenge” only because he was too confused and frantic to look at
it more accurately.

No one
could emasculate him: he was already a woman. Everything he knew about himself
was founded on that. Therefore everything was false. His entire existence
rested on a lie.

Fiercely
he scratched at the edges of the cast on his arm. When he didn’t ask them to do
anything else, his hands hovered instinctively on the targ keys, smearing them
with moisture and oil. He called his passion “revenge” so that it wouldn’t
destroy him.

“What
does Vector think?” Sib asked tentatively. “Does he know what to do?”

Morn
sighed. For a moment an old weariness seemed to well up in her. The cat she
took to muffle her withdrawal may have been wearing off.

“He
knows more about that antimutagen than anybody else. Maybe even Hashi Lebwohl.”
Slowly she relaxed against the back of Davies’ g-seat. Her hand slid down the
padding until it rested on her son’s shoulder. “He sounded pretty confident.

“Oh,
one more thing,” she said as an afterthought. “There was a man with her. He
helped her inject Ciro. Ciro thinks he was Milos Taverner.”

As he
worked, Angus’ eyes betrayed a smoulder of mute fury.

Davies
didn’t respond to her touch. Unable to contain himself, he ran another course
projection, measuring
Soar’s
emissions against
Trumpet’s
route
and speed. There was no question about it:
Soar
was still increasing the
gap. Soon she would be so far ahead that even
Trumpet
wouldn’t be able
to catch her.

He
would have to wait until
Gutbuster
came back to get him.

In an
odd way, Ciro’s plight eased his frustration. If
Trumpet
was supposed to
be sabotaged, he could more easily believe that his mother’s killer would
return.

 _

 _

Twenty minutes had passed
when the intercom chimed.

Angus
keyed his speaker so fast that Davies didn’t have time to react.

“Vector,”
announced the geneticist’s calm voice. “I’m in sickbay. Morn? Angus?”

His
tone was neutral; hinted at nothing.

“Here,”
Angus answered at once.

“Angus,”
Vector acknowledged. “This sickbay of yours is amazing. I didn’t know the UMCP
built them like this. You’ve got analytical data available here that makes some
of the hospitals I’ve been in look stupid. And if the equipment were any
better, Deaner Beckmann could use it.”

With a
jerk, Morn pulled herself around Davies’ g-seat. As soon as she reached his
board, she toggled his intercom with a stab of her thumb.

“Is it
going to work?” she asked urgently.

“Oh,
sorry, Morn,” Vector replied. “I didn’t mean to keep you in suspense. Yes, it’s
going to work. I’ve already tested a blood sample. I saw it work.”

Weakly
Sib breathed, “Thank God.” Angus nodded to himself, but didn’t betray any other
reaction.

Inside
his Amnion shipsuit, Davies’ skin oozed sweat like heated tallow.

Sudden
relief seemed to catch in Morn’s throat like a sob. She made a small, choked
sound and released the board so that she could cover her face with her hands.
The movement sent her drifting away from the second’s station, receding from
Davies as if she didn’t want to be near him.

As if
she couldn’t bear standing too close to his fury for revenge.

Come
and get me, he begged the crackling seethe of the swarm and the deep cold of
space. Come on — do what the Amnion keep you human for. It’s me you need. The
Amnion want me alive.

Believe
we’ve been sabotaged. Come get me.

Please.

Vector
wasn’t done. After a moment’s silence he spoke again.

“Can I
ask what’s going on?”

“Don’t,”
Angus returned roughly. His eyes followed Morn’s drift as if he wanted to
unbelt himself and go to her, touch her — as if he thought she might be able to
bear his touch. “Take care of Ciro. Make sure he’s all right. Then come see for
yourself. Finish coding your message. We’ll transmit as soon as we get a window
on Valdor. If we survive this damn swarm.”

He
punched off his intercom. To no one in particular, he growled, “I still want to
know whose game we’re playing.”

When
her back touched the bulkhead, Morn wiped her eyes, rubbed her palms up and
down her cheeks. Then she reached for one of the zero-g grips in case Angus
used navigational thrust. But she didn’t answer him.

“Well,
if Nick’s right —” Sib began. He couldn’t complete the idea, however. “I guess
I don’t understand. What does
Soar
gain by trying to sabotage us? She’s
pulling away — she’ll never know if Ciro succeeded.”

He
looked at Nick as if he wanted Nick to explain himself. But Nick gave no sign
of hearing. Motionless and unreactive, he slumped in his bonds as if he’d been
overtaken by autism.

Under
his breath, Angus muttered, “That won’t last.”

Davies
didn’t know whether he was talking about
Gutbuster’s
escape or Nick’s
withdrawal.

 _

 _

Nevertheless Angus was
right.

After
fifteen minutes or so, Vector returned to the bridge, reported that Ciro’s
blood was clean, and resumed working at the auxiliary engineering console. And
less than half an hour later
Trumpet’s
particle sifters jumped like
Davies’ heart. Across the spectrum, narrow bandwidths spiked as if they were
screaming. Bombarded by subatomic intensities which had nothing to do with the
natural rock and static of the swarm, the sensors chimed alerts.

“Shit!”
Davies gasped. His hands leaped convulsively at the data keys, capturing the
readings, coding them for analysis.

Again
Angus was faster. By the time Davies finished entering his commands, Angus had
already begun feeding results to one of the displays.

“Jesus!”
Sib panted as numbers and implications scrolled to life in front of him. “Are
we hit?”

Violent
jags in the readings suggested weapons fire.

“No,”
Angus muttered as he worked. “But there’s a shock wave coming.”

The
sensors implied a tremendous blast building behind the first violence.

Morn
tightened her grip. She didn’t look at the screens — or even at Davies. Pale
and intense, she kept her eyes fixed on Angus.

After a
second he added, “It won’t reach us. It’ll have to move too much rock to get
out this far.”

“Then
what—?” Sib tried to ask.

Wishing
Morn to look at him, Davies pointed urgently at the screen. “You know what that
is?”

He had
the answer himself: he didn’t need to hear her say it. All he wanted was her
attention. He knew she had made an almost obsessive study of such things in the
Academy.

She was
him. He hungered for her confirmation.

She
shook her head as if she couldn’t turn away from Angus.

“What?”
Sib repeated.

Twisting
against his zero-g belt, Vector studied the display. “Some kind of beam gun,”
he murmured curiously. “But I don’t recognise the signature. Too much
distortion. Some other power source is playing havoc with our reception.”

“Damn
right,” Davies snapped. “That’s the Lab’s generating plant. It just blew.”

Distinctly
Angus growled, “It was hit by a super-light proton beam.
Soar’s
behind
us.”

Morn
flinched as if she’d been stung.

“You
mean,” Sib croaked in protest, “Sorus Chatelaine just destroyed the
Lab?
She doubled back and
destroyed
it?”

Grimacing
a sneer, Davies twitched his head in Nick’s direction. “She took the bait. He
didn’t just set her up. He set up the whole installation. She works for the
Amnion. One reason she’s here is to make sure nobody finds out about our
antimutagen.” Morn,
look
at me. “The Lab was doomed as soon as Nick
started talking to Beckmann.”

Nick,
of course, hadn’t given Deaner Beckmann any warning.

“They
must have trusted her enough to let her inside their guns. They didn’t have anything
that could protect them from a super-light proton cannon.”

Intransigent
herself had barely survived.

“All
those people,” Morn breathed. “
All those people
.” She seemed to shrink
in dismay, as if the shock belittled her. “Nick, what have you
done?
”

Nick’s
eyes flipped open. Slowly he raised his head and started grinning like a skull.

“There
isn’t likely to be another ship with that kind of cannon around here,” Angus
continued. “It’s got to be
Soar
. So now she’s behind us.” With a shrug,
he finished, “If Ciro sabotaged the drives, she wouldn’t have any trouble
catching us.”

Sib
chewed his moustache. “What’re we going to do?”

A
shiver of intensification ran through Nick. “Let me loose,” he offered.