A Dark and Hungry God Arises (21 page)

to impose order on destruction; to protect the weak or vulnerable from abuse within society; to protect society itself from threat, whether internal or external. His idealism - so the argument went — was the idealism of a man who believed in what the police stood for; a man who lived to serve those beliefs.

If this perception was accurate, he and Holt Fasner formed a strange and volatile partnership. Holt Fasner was many things, but no one ever accused him of being an idealist.

Certain facts were known. Warden Dios was a much younger man than his boss and mentor; but he looked older, in part because of his prosthesis, in part because he lacked Fasner's enthusiasm for rejuvenation experiments.

He was only in his early thirties when Fasner picked him to head SMI Internal Security, which became the United Mining Companies Police as soon as the UMC was chartered shortly thereafter; he was the only director the UMCP ever had. So he had little or nothing to do with the process by which Fasner built Space Mines Inc. into the UMC: the worst accusation from that period which could be brought against him was that he may have participated in the operation against Sagittarius Exploration.

From that point of view, his record was unblemished by his association with Holt Fasner's more questionable dealings.

Yet he was responsible for the growth of the UMCP

from nothing more than SMI Internal Security to its present status as the single most powerful division of the UMC. The more virulent the problem of piracy became, and the more dangerous relations with the Amnion came to seem, the more necessary his Police grew to be. From his headquarters orbiting Earth, he ruled human space by defending it. He imposed order, which enabled the UMC to function; ultimately he enabled the UMC to exist. In his hands, he held the only power which stood between humankind and the ambiguous threat of the Amnion.

In some circles, Warden Dios was revered. That was natural enough: powerful people frequently were. Holt Fasner himself received reverence from men who were astonished by his achievements.

Elsewhere, however, Dios was considered the most dangerous individual who had ever lived: more dangerous than Holt Fasner because more crucial to humankind's survival. In that view, the most fatal tyranny was that which disguised itself as the protector of its victims.

After the passage of the Preempt Act, few could argue that the UMCP had not become a form of tyranny.

Any useful study of the United Mining Companies had to take into account both the public and the private histories; had to confront the almost paradoxical intersection between economic muscle - which deals only in aggregates — and personal power — which by its very nature resides only in individuals, not in charters, chains of command, or official positions.

The guards had locked her in a room. The genetic technicians had come and gone.

Shivering like an invalid, Morn Hyland sat with Amnion mutagens in her veins and waited for the organic convulsion which would bring her doomed humanity to its end.

Lit by the sulfuric glow her imprisoners preferred, the small, sterile cell around her seemed lambent with insidious yellow threats. It was a bare chamber, not a lab; empty of everything except cleanliness and light, a small san and the couchlike chair where she sat. Any monitors were so unfamiliar or so well disguised that she couldn't identify them: she was apparently alone in a naked room.

Perhaps the Amnion wanted to observe her transformation without inhibiting her reactions - and without risking damage to valuable equipment. Or perhaps their facility on Billingate wasn't supplied for research; perhaps she'd been put in this cell because it was the only space available to hold her. Whatever the reason, she was free to pace the floor or sit still, as she chose.

She sat as still as her shivers and the fear storming through her permitted. Transfixed, she studied the spot on her forearm where the mutagen had been injected as if it were venomous; as if the wound was made by a fang.

A breathing mask protected her lungs against the mordant air: that was her only defense. The Amnion hadn't given her anything to soften her terror, or muffle the violence of the change. Of course not. They had no reason to: here, in the section of Billingate which they had built for themselves, the concept of compassion was as alien as the Amnion themselves. They lacked the psychological, the societal, perhaps even the genetic tools to think in such terms. From their point of view, what they imposed on her was no doubt profoundly good. It satisfied the ribonucleic imperative which shaped their purposes. So of course they did nothing to make her plight easier. They wanted to study her distress as well as her transformation as accurately as possible, in order to refine their methods accordingly.

Where had they gone wrong with Marc Vestabule?

Why was it that they could alter human beings entirely, but not by increments? What element of the human mind

- or genetic code - made necessary this all-or-nothing sense of identity? Why were the Amnion unable to master the brain without changing the body?

When they learned the answer to this question, they would be able to create Amnion that could pass as human beings.

Perhaps they could discover the secret by studying Morn as she changed.

Staring at the sore red injury on her forearm, Morn waited to discover the secret for herself.

How bad would it be, when her genetic abhorrence met its ruin? - when her cellular being was blasted apart and made new? Would she be afraid enough to go mad at the crucial moment? Was her fear itself her last defense?

Was terror her sole protection against becoming the most effective traitor possible, the most useful imaginable weapon against her own species?

And was that the only mystery which gave her human life — or any form of life — its uniqueness in the wide universe? If an Amnioni were set in this chair and subjected to a mutagen which would alter its essential being, would the creature feel the same way she did? Or did the chemistry of alien nuclear identity bring with it other defenses, other mysteries?

Such questions obsessed her because she had no answer for the one that really mattered.

Was Nick's immunity drug going to work?

If it failed, she had nothing left to hope for except that fear would destroy her mind before she knew what she had become.

On the other hand, if the drug worked she would be no better off. Not really. She would gain only a little time. The Amnion would inevitably notice that the change didn't take place on schedule. Then, because they were careful — and wanted to learn — they would draw some of her blood and test it in order to determine why the mutagen had failed. They might or might not allow her an opportunity to swallow another of the capsules hidden deep in the pocket of her shipsuit. In the end, that was irrelevant. If this facility lacked the resources for refining new mutagens, her humanity might be prolonged for a while; but that possibility was ultimately irrelevant as well. The significant, the damning, fact was that the enemies of her kind would learn from her the secret of the immunity drug. By stealing these capsules from Nick's cabin, she had made it certain that the Amnion would gain the knowledge they needed to counteract the drug.

To keep herself whole for a few more hours - a day or two at best, if neither this facility nor the warships were equipped to design new mutagens - she'd betrayed her entire species.

She didn't care, did she? Not now: not here. How could she? At any moment the red patch on her forearm might swell and suppurate, carrying a change as dramatic as a volcanic eruption to every cell in her body. The UMCP had betrayed humankind long before she did.

Whether the Amnion learned about it or not, the drug had already been withheld from the men and women who needed it most. Her own treachery only completed the job begun by people who had sworn to protect the human race.

And in the meantime it might gain her a few more hours.

She looked no further ahead than that. Nick Succorso had deprived her of any larger future; he'd cost her everything except the immediate crisis. Deflecting Davies' ejection pod from Tranquil Hegemony to Billingate hadn't solved anything: she knew that. It had simply been the best she could do.

Gain a few more hours.

By the same token, stealing a few of Nick's capsules had also been simply the best she could do. When she'd stuffed a little wadding into the bottom of his vial so that the absence of six or eight capsules wouldn't be too obvious, her sole intent had been to prevent him from noticing the theft in time to stop her. And when she'd questioned him about his dealings with UMCPHQ, she'd wanted nothing more than to understand the scale of the corruption which engulfed her. She had no other goals.

Her only alternative was to give up - and she wasn't going to do that.

Not while Nick was still alive.

Not while he and people like him — the UMCP -

remained free to barter her son and her species for their own purposes.

Her family had taught her convictions which she couldn't set aside without an abrogation of identity as profound in its own way as anything the Amnion might do to her.

Her family had also taught her how to hold a grudge.

So she stared at the small red pain on her forearm and waited while fear stormed through her. Her nerves were strung so tight that she shivered as if she were feverish -

as if her body were fighting frenetically to fend off an organic invasion.

Sweat dribbled like saliva from the edges of the breathing mask. The mask itself felt stifling over her mouth; claustrophobic. If she could have looked at her own face, she might not have recognized herself. Bruises and emotional starvation distorted her beauty; her eyes were as deep and fatal as wounds; her hair straggled wildly, as damaged and unkempt as a nerve-juice addict's.

Yet within her an essential passion burned as if it were unquenchable. Nothing short of an absolute transformation could snuff it out.

For perhaps the first time since Nick had taken the control to her zone implant, she didn't miss it. With its artificial strength, she could have escaped the Amnion by committing neural suicide. Or she could have spared herself this ordeal of dread and horror by muffling her emotions; re-creating the state of psychic numbness which had enabled her to endure her son's birth.

She didn't want to die, however. And she believed that anything which softened her terror would help the Amnion get what they desired out of her.

She had come to a place inside herself where neither death nor imposed capabilities and addiction were as important as the struggle to keep her humanity intact.

Was fear the defining mystery of life? Then let her be afraid. That was preferable to any kind of surrender.

Feverish shivers built into a shudder; tremors shook her muscles as if the convulsion had begun. She might have been suffocating on her own CO2. For a moment she was so frightened that she seemed to see the red patch on her skin swelling like an infection. It would suppurate and burst; mutagenic pus would seep from the wound, gnawing at her flesh and her DNA until she screamed and went wild in stark simple revulsion; until her horror became as vast as the void between the stars, and all things died —

But then the shudder passed. Her vision cleared, and she saw the truth. The redness around the place where the mutagen had been injected was fading. Her skin was as pallid as the underlying bones - and as whole.

In the Academy, she'd been told what to expect from Amnion mutagens. They were supposed to be faster than this; swift as well as violent.

Maybe the immunity drug was working.

What had Nick told her?

It's not an organic immunity. It's more like a poison - or a binder. It ties up mutagens until they're inert. Then they get flushed out - along with the drug.

The immunity is effective for about Jour hours.

Maybe she was going to live.

For a while longer.

And it was possible that the Amnion sector of Billingate lacked the resources to design new mutagens which could overcome the drug. It was possible that she would be able to take another capsule before her enemies tried her again. If she kept track of the time. If she did what Nick had once done: if she held a capsule in her mouth and didn't bite down on it until after her blood was drawn. And if the Amnion failed to guess how her immunity had been accomplished.

When she allowed herself to think that, flashes of dopamine ran through her blood like little epiphanies; bits of hope. Her breathing shuddered inside the mask as if she were about to faint.

A few more hours.

That was all she asked.

Please.

His tongue hurt as acutely as his zone implants allowed: it should have hurt much worse. He had shit and sweat ground into his blisters.

Every inhalation stank; his whole mouth tasted like ash and excrement.

As he took Trumpet in to Billingate, Angus Thermopyle fought the fragmentation imposed on him by his welding; did what he could to stay sane.

Hashi Lebwohl had made him schizophrenic, as dissociated as a multi-tasking computer. What was left of his volition handled the details of approach to Thanatos Minor. Databases fed him information indiscriminately, whether he asked for it or not: facts about Trumpet; UMCP speculations concerning the Bill and Billingate; classification on the Amnion warships; charges against the other illegals in the vicinity; descriptions of fusion generator disasters. At the same time preprogrammed exigencies monitored and sifted everything Milos said and did; recorded every byte of Milos' complex transmissions and labored to decode it.

Such things were abstract. He did them without choosing them; occasionally without understanding them.

Other pieces were more personal.

With every inch of his skin from the crown of his skull to the soles of his feet, he felt Trumpet alive around him: capable of anything; built full of possibilities and surprises. Schizophrenic with a vengeance, he approached the cold rock of Thanatos Minor almost gleefully, reveling in the power of his ship, and in his ability to command her. His tactile pleasure was so acute that his palms itched as if they could remember the time before his hands had been cut open to install his lasers. An emotion like joy flushed across his face as he tapped keys, tested systems, listened to servos.