A Dark and Hungry God Arises (22 page)

Then it fell into the cracks between the pieces of himself, the fragmentation gaps, and was lost.

From out of the cracks came crying instances of confusion like kids abandoned in their cribs.

Why did he have to look at all this stuff about fusion generators? According to his databases, some of these generators used magnetic containment vessels for the forces they unleashed; and some of those bled gravit-ically, increasing the effective mass of bodies around them. He knew that already. Why did he have to review it now?

And what in hell was Warden Dios up to?

We've committed a crime against your soul.

What the fuck did that mean? Why had Dios switched his datacore? Who was the UMCP director trying to betray now?

It's got to stop.

More fragments -

Randomly among them, like electrons bereft of their nuclei, ran small bursts of fury; hints of violence as precise and pure as the noradrenalin in his synapses - and as meaningless as the unguessable physics of tach. An organic human brain was the wrong tool for the work he did. Only expert programming and pervasive zone implants enabled him to go on multi-tasking when he should have been flung apart like a ship in an explosive decompression.

It made no difference to his datacore whether he stayed sane or not. Machine requirements controlled him by electronic compulsion: madness or sanity meant nothing.

Nevertheless he fought to hold the pieces of himself together.

He wanted the joy of running Trumpet.

He wanted to see Morn Hyland again.

He wanted revenge on Milos.

And Warden Dios had given him something to hope for.

We've committed a crime against your soul.

It's got to stop.

Angus knew nothing about men who said such things.

As far as he could tell, they didn't exist. He had to assume that Dios was driven by malice, just like everybody else.

Nevertheless he considered it possible, just barely conceivable, that he wasn't the target of Dios' malice. Not this time. Dios' plotting might be aimed at someone else.

In which case everything might change when the differences between his datacore and Lebwohl's began to make themselves felt.

Screams Angus couldn't utter rang in his head: screams of rage and frustration, loss and hope; the screams of a small boy being tortured in his crib.

They kept him from losing his mind. On a level his zone implants couldn't reach, those voiceless cries focused his hard-earned cunning and his malign intelligence, his hate and his strange expertise, in a struggle to bridge the gaps between the pieces of himself.

Because he lacked the power to vary Trumpet's pre-ordained course, or to stifle the databases he didn't want, he concentrated on his second.

Prewritten commands required him to record everything Milos said and did. Apparently Lebwohl and Dios didn't trust the former deputy chief of Com-Mine Station Security. Fine. Neither did Angus. But his distrust - no, his visceral and compulsory loathing - was both more global and more specific. Lebwohl and Dios presumably suspected that Milos might betray Angus' mission. Angus knew in his bones that Milos would go farther; much farther. Weeks of stun and starvation and abuse — not to mention the taste of nic and shit - had made Angus a more searching judge of Milos' character than any cop.

He wanted to know everything about Milos because he intended to castrate and then disembowel his second with his bare hands, and any fact he could glean, any hint of intention or weakness, was a tool which might help him reach his goal.

In this way, he fought to make himself whole.

Trumpet was still six hours out of dock when Milos finished his communications. The nic dangling from his mouth disguised his smugness; the characteristic mottling on his scalp and the uncharacteristic stains on his shipsuit hid it. Nevertheless Angus felt it pour off his second like an electromagnetic aura. He knew Milos intimately, understood every shade of his second's stolid fastidiousness. Milos was smug. The things he did to humiliate Angus fed an old hunger. And his transmissions - tight-beamed and coded for secrecy — had given him a sense of power which he probably thought didn't show.

One part of Angus glowered at this; he ached to strip it from Milos' bones. Another worked with mechanical efficiency to decipher those messages. Yet another calibrated the distance to Milos' g-seat and the distance to Billingate, measuring possibilities. And another waited -

Trailing smoke, Milos lifted himself from his seat; he bobbed in the absence of g. 'I need rest, ' he said as if he weren't talking to Angus. 'Let me know if anything changes, Joshua. '

Like a badly inflated balloon, he floated toward the companionway which gave access to the rest of the ship.

Angus felt an almost tangible relief as Milos left the bridge. Now maybe he could concentrate on cracking those codes.

The idea that he could improve on - or even affect -

the efforts of his computer was an illusion, however. His microprocessor ran at its own speeds, for its own reasons.

And it made other decisions for him as well. Despite his fragmented fury and need, he found himself growing unexpectedly sleepy. Apparently his programming had decided that he, too, needed rest.

Helpless to do anything else, he leaned his head back against the g-seat and drifted into the dark interface between his mind and the machinery which ruled it.

As he lost consciousness, he swore viciously at Hashi Lebwohl; but that changed nothing.

If he dreamed, his datacore took no notice of it.

He came back to wakefulness four hours later, as alert as if he'd never been away. As soon as he opened his eyes, he realized with an odd sense of dislocation that he knew everything that had happened while he slept. Traffic information from Billingate; Trumpet's relative position; the movements of other ships: all were recorded - and accessible. When he reviewed the data, he half expected to learn that he'd spoken to Operations while he slept; that his programming controlled him so perfectly that it didn't need him to be conscious at all. However, his recordings showed that Trumpet had been entirely passive, apart from her automatic responses to Billingate's approach protocols.

Ignoring the sensation that he existed simultaneously in several different places across the gap, Angus began preparing himself for the state of affairs which awaited him on Thanatos Minor.

Operations didn't broadcast political bulletins, of course; but Angus felt sure that the shipyard was awash in plots and counter-plots. This was apparent from the presence of Captain's Fancy in one of the visitor's berths and Tranquil Hegemony over in the alien sector, as well as from the fact that another Amnion 'defensive', Calm Horizons, had parked herself in prime firing range over the installation. Captain Nick Sheepfucker had come here from the direction of Enablement, trailing two of the biggest hostiles Angus had ever seen. That implied covert agendas and conflicts -

- which in turn might make Angus' mission a hell of a lot easier.

His datacore told him nothing about Captain's Fancy.

He only knew Morn Hyland was aboard because Dios had said so.

But he'd overheard Lebwohl tell Donner and Frik that his programming made no provision for Morn's survival.

That alone would have been enough to make him want her alive.

If he'd been in charge of his own actions, his position would have been more complex. Morn was potentially lethal to him: she had information which could wipe out his last hope. For that reason - among others which he didn't want to think about because they were profoundly disturbing - he'd made a deal with her and kept it.

Left to himself, unwelded, what would he have wanted to do about her now? Kill her where she stood? Yes. Ask her to rejoin him? Yes! Beg her to believe that he'd kept faith with her as long as he could? Yes! and yes! again.

The thought that he might have to stand by and watch her die brought old anguish up through the cracks in his dissociation.

Where Nick was concerned, the questions were less personal, but no more ponderable. What the hell was he doing at Enablement? Were those warships here to chase him down, or protect him? Who had he betrayed this time?

Angus didn't really care. For himself he wanted revenge, pure and simple: the exact nature of Nick's plots and alliances changed nothing. And for Angus' mission the only significant danger Nick represented came through his association with Milos.

The messages which Milos had sent earlier had been beamed, not toward Operations or any other part of the installation, but to Captain's Fancy - and Tranquil Hegemony. And both ships had answered.

That made Succorso at least as fatal to Joshua as Morn was to Angus.

With an emotional violence which had no effect whatever on the steady precision of his hands, Angus Thermopyle chimed Milos' cabin and growled like a demonic cherub, Wake up, baby boy. Game back from dream-land. We've got reality dead ahead, and it's closing fast. '

Then he silenced the intercom so that he wouldn't have to answer Milos' demands for an explanation.

Trumpet's final approach went smoothly. Milos did his job with inexpert but unobjectionable care. And Operations had no reason to treat the gap scout worse than any other ship. After all, the installation was more than adequately protected by its own guns, as well as by Calm Horizons'. Whether or not Trumpet would ever be allowed to leave was less clear.

Finally Billingate's grapples thunked into their sockets in her hull; power, air and communications limpets were attached to her receptacles. Because his datacore left him no choice, Angus began shutting down the ship.

Putting himself, Milos and Trumpet in debt to the Bill.

At the same time he growled to Milos, 'If you've got any special instructions' - his tongue still tasted like hell

- You'd better give them now. This isn't a good place for surprises. Unless you improvise better than you use that board. '

Milos dropped his nic into the growing pile beside his seat and lit another. Without looking at Angus, he muttered, 'Is that what you call "reality"? A place that isn't good for surprises?'

Angus rasped a bitter laugh. 'You haven't got a clue what I call "reality". ' He jibed at Milos because he needed some outlet for his random bursts of anger. "When you find out, I fucking guarantee you won't like it.

'For your first lesson, ' he added as he unbelted from his g-seat, 'we're going to go out and act like we really came here because we wanted to. Even if you spent your whole life in guttergangs until you left Earth' - a guess, but Angus trusted it - 'you haven't seen anything like this before. '

Milos' eyes flicked uneasily. 'Is that a fact?' he drawled; but his attempt to sound unconcerned wasn't a success.

Trust me, ' Angus leered. Flexing his knees, he tested the pull of Thanatos Minor's g. Then he moved, deceptively light on his feet, toward the companionway.

Gripping its rails, he paused. 'By the way, ' he advised,

'don't make the mistake of thinking you can carry weapons here. You'll be scanned down to your balls before you reach Reception. The Bill makes damn sure nobody but him has any firepower. '

Nobody but him and the Amnion.

Alarm forced Milos to look at Angus. Will you get caught?'

Angus grinned. That depends on whether fucking Hashi Lebwohl knows what he's fucking doing. '

As he started up the treads, he saw Milos furtively pull a stun-prod as small as a dagger out of his pocket and slip it into the padding of the second's g-seat. Milos looked like he could no longer remember what smugness felt like.

He definitely wasn't going to enjoy Billingate.

Angus took that as a form of reassurance.

He was a coward: he wanted all the reassurance he could get.

Together he and Milos rode the midship lift down to the airlock. There Angus stopped. Pointing at the control panel, he announced harshly, 'Seconds are supposed to do jobs like this. Are you going to open it, or do I have to hold your hand?'

Milos' eyes were nearly opaque with anger and anxiety.

In a tense rasp, he retorted, 'You're going first, Joshua. I'm not coming out until you make it through the scanners. '

Angus had no response to a Joshua command. He couldn't even shrug. He simply moved to the control panel and keyed the airlock doors.

One window in his head showed him the time: 22: 07: 15. 53 standard; late in Billingate's artificial evening. Another reminded him of the security codes which would lock everyone else out of Trumpet until he or Milos returned. With his prosthetic vision, he watched the evanescent electromagnetic emissions of the servos and locks as the interior hatch lifted. Rage fumed and spattered through him, and accomplished nothing.

After Milos joined him in the airlock, he closed and sealed the interior door, then opened his ship to the complex atmosphere of Billingate.

The access passage ahead was awash with EM fields.

Gossamer, multi-hued, and insinuating, they looked like webs or veils which his crude body would tear when he passed through them. But he knew that he was safe before he touched the first veil. His enhanced sight confirmed what his datacore told him: his computer and its zone implants, his lasers and powerpacks, caused no ripple in the shimmering aura of Billingate's detection scan.

Hashi Lebwohl had unquestionably known what he was doing when he designed Angus' equipment.

Impersonally Angus noted the absence of guards. That was good — from Lebwohl's point of view. It meant the Bill had decided not to challenge Angus' story directly.

Instead he would rely on time and observation to reveal the truth.

Angus wasn't surprised. As a matter of policy, the Bill treated his sources of revenue politely. He spied on everybody; but he didn't willingly offend paying customers.

Over his shoulder, Angus muttered to Milos, 'Come on. It doesn't get much safer than this. '

Without waiting for his second, he headed toward Reception.

There were guards in the reception area, of course; but he ignored them. By the time Milos caught up with him, he'd already used one of the data terminals to verify his credit and link it to voice-print id. Brusquely he motioned for Milos and said, 'Your turn. Tell the nice computer your name so we'll be able to spend your money. '