The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (103 page)

Was
this what clarity felt like, when the universe spoke?

Somewhere
nearby a panted exhalation became a small groan of pain.

Involuntarily,
fearing to see what he’d forgotten, Davies turned his head.

Apparently
he’d forgotten everything he truly cared about.

Morn
sprawled in the command station g-seat. Trails of blood ran from her mouth
across her cheeks in streaks drawn by g: she must have bitten her lips or
tongue. Her breathing came in little gulps of distress, barely audible. Davies
seemed to see her eyelids fluttering as if she were in the grip of a seizure.

Another
faint groan made him think that she was recovering consciousness.

That
wasn’t the worst of it, however, oh, not the worst at all, if that had been the
worst he might have been able to forgive himself for forgetting her. But as
soon as the pain of turning his head cleared, he saw that her bleeding, her
unconsciousness, her disturbed eyelids were trivial. There was other damage,
worse —

Her
chest twisted painfully on the edge of the seat back, as if she’d tried to
squirm out of her restraints under hard g. And she was held in that tortured
position by the impossible angle of her right arm.

No
human limb could hang like
that
and be whole.

While
Trumpet
burned against the singularity’s pull, Mom must have pushed her arm past the
cushions until the force of
Trumpet’s
escape caught it; nearly ripped it
off —

Without
transition, as quick as a gap crossing, Davies Hyland became a different
person. Endocrine extravagance transformed him in an instant. Noradrenaline
vanquished pain: dopamine and serotonin sloughed off weight. He didn’t waste
time shouting her name, or panicking. Instead he slapped open his belt clips
and pitched out of his g-seat.

He was
half again too heavy. Under other circumstances, he would have been able to
manage his effective mass; but not easily. Now he thought he could feel his
ribs grinding together. Nevertheless he ignored the extra kg as if they didn’t
exist. He hit hard, but didn’t feel the sting in his soles, or the jolt in his
knees.

Trumpet’s
bridge had been designed to gimbal in heavy g, orienting the
g-seats to protect their occupants as much as possible. But now the ship had
attained a stable orientation. The deck was level under his boots.

Two
strides reached the command station. Morn would be in agony as soon as she woke
up. Simply looking at the deformed line of her arm made his joints ache. What
could he do to help her? He was no medtech. Did he dare move her?

Yes:
that was better than leaving her like this.

Carefully,
quickly, he lifted her arm and shifted her toward the middle of the seat back.

A groan
seemed to bubble past the blood on her lips like a drowned whimper. Her eyelids
stopped fluttering: instead they squeezed tight as if she had to fight a wave
of nausea. A weak cough leaked blood onto her chin. Then, slowly, she began to
open her eyes.

Now he
whispered fearfully, “Morn. Morn? Can you hear me?”

Did it
work?

Intuitively
he knew that she’d done this to herself on purpose. If she was filled with
pain, she might have no room left for gapsickness. And if it did take hold of
her, she would be too crippled to obey it.

She
lifted her eyes to his face. Her mouth shaped a word, although she made no
sound.

Was she
trying to say his name? No. When she tried again, she found enough breath to be
heard.

“Angus.”

He
nearly cried out. Did she think he was his father? Was Angus all she cared
about?

Then a
worse thought struck him.

Shit,
Angus!
He’d forgotten
Angus
, too, forgotten both his parents, even though the
two of them had just saved his life.

Angus
had been outside the ship; had used his portable matter cannon to detonate the
singularity grenade. The black hole must have sucked him down; must have
snatched him off
Trumpet’s
side as lightly as a pebble. Even a cyborg’s
strength would have been far too puny to resist that g.

But
Davies had heard more than one hoarse, dying sound. Like a wince, he lowered
his face to the command station intercom, put his ear to the speaker.

Shards
of pain twisted between his ribs as he bent over.

Faint
as a whisper of static in the vacuum: respiration. From Angus’ suit pickup came
the low, hollow scrape of excruciated air, in and out —

Davies
jerked up his head. “He’s alive. Morn, he’s alive. He’s still outside,” somehow
Angus must have anchored himself in time, cleated his belts to hold him, “but I
can hear him.”

The
muscles in Morn’s cheeks tugged: she may have been attempting to smile. Almost
inaudibly she murmured, “That’s good. I can’t do this again.”

“Morn?”
Davies bent over her, straining not to miss her words. “Morn?”

“When I’m
in trouble,” she said like a sigh, “the only thing I can think of is to hurt
myself. Self-destruct — I need a better answer.”

Her
voice trailed away like the fall of her eyelids. Gently tension seemed to let
go of her as if she’d dropped off to sleep.

He
stared at her in dismay. Self-destruct? What the fuck are you talking about?
Wake up, damn it! I need you!

Trumpet
had to move; he had to move the ship. Already g had increased as
the gravity well deepened and the failsafes brought up more thrust to counter
it. Angus was still outside,
my God
,
still alive
, and
Soar
could
be anywhere.
Free Lunch
had been sucked down, but
Soar
had been
farther from the black hole; could have survived it. She might be closing for
the kill right now.

Yet
Morn was desperately hurt. Davies didn’t have time to rouse her. And he didn’t
have the heart —

A new
rush of urgency snatched him into motion.

With
the heel of his palm, he slapped the command intercom, silencing Angus’ faint
respiration. A stab of his fingers keyed open a ship-wide channel.

“Mikka?”
he shouted. “
Mikka?
Do you hear me? I need you.”

He had
his father’s voice: his fear sounded like rage.

“And
don’t tell me you can’t leave Ciro!” he snapped as if his anger was aimed at
her. “Let him do his own suffering for a while! I
need
you. I’m alone
here!”

He didn’t
know whether she would answer or not. He didn’t give her a chance. Still on the
same channel, he barked, “Vector? Vector,
move!
I can’t do this many
jobs at once.
I’m alone here!
If I don’t get some help, it’s all going
to be
wasted
,” everything Angus and Morn and the ship had endured would
go for nothing.

“I hear
you.” Vector’s voice sounded unnaturally loud over the hull-roar of thrust.
Davies had turned the gain on the intercom too high. The geneticist’s tone was
tight with suppressed distress; all this g must have brutalised his sore
joints. Nevertheless his reply was prompt; ready. “Tell me what you want. I’ll
do it.”

Davies
didn’t hesitate. “Angus is outside!” he fired back. “He went out with his
cannon —” The situation was too complicated to explain. “He shouldn’t be alive.
But he left his pickup open. I can hear him breathing.

“Put on
a suit. Go get him — bring him in. But be careful! This g is trouble. And it’s
going to get worse. We’re caught in a gravity well. We need more thrust to
break loose. If you don’t keep yourself anchored, we’ll lose you.”

We’ll
lose you both if you try to hold Angus yourself.

“I’m on
my way,” Vector replied. He might have been obeying an order to take his turn
in the san. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll take every precaution there is. I’ll
bring him in somehow.”

Without
pausing he added, “I’ll set my suit for this channel. That way I can still hear
you. Can you talk to me? Tell me what’s happened? How’s Morn?”

Punching
the toggle, Davies closed the intercom. “I haven’t got
time
,” he rasped
to the bridge. “I need
help
.”

Or he
needed Divine inspiration, so that he could save the ship without taking time
to study helm first.

The
bulkheads answered with the muffled fire of
Trumpet’s
drive. God didn’t
say anything.

“I’m
here,” Mikka croaked from the head of the companionway. When the bridge
gimballed, the stair automatically retracted itself to keep the space clear,
but it came back into position as soon as g stabilised. “What’s going on?”

She
wobbled on the treads, hampered by too much weight. Her damaged forehead hadn’t
had time to heal, despite the best sickbay could do for her. And Ciro and g had
hurt her more: Nick’s treachery had attacked her at the core of her being. Even
calling on Morn’s memories, Davies had never seen her look so weak.

Yet she
advanced down the steps, gripping the handrails on both sides to keep herself
upright. Carrying her flesh like a burden which had grown too heavy, she reached
the foot of the companionway and stopped, waiting for Davies to speak.

She was
exhausted; nearly beaten. But he couldn’t afford to care.
Trumpet
was no
better off. Angus might well die before Vector could bring him in; might be
haemorrhaging inside his suit, filling all its space with blood torn out of him
by the black hole he’d created. And Morn was in too much pain to hang on to
consciousness.

Mikka
had done some of the navigating until Nick had taken over Angus. She’d already
studied the board —

“Take
helm,” Davies ordered harshly. “Get us out of here. We’re caught in the gravity
well of a black hole. Don’t ask me how that happened. I’ll tell you later. Or
you can read the log in your spare time.

“Morn
needs sickbay bad. I’ll get her there — then I’ll come back. Don’t worry about
g. I’ll handle it somehow.” He had no idea how.
Trumpet
might double or
triple her effective mass before she broke the singularity’s grip. “Straight
ahead,” he went on, “until scan tells you where we are. Then try to find a way
out of the swarm.”

He didn’t
wait for Mikka’s response. Grimly, dreading how much he would hurt her, he
unclosed Morn’s belts. In one motion, he leaned her forward, set his shoulder
under her torso, and heaved her up from her g-seat; braced her by gripping one
of her legs and her good arm. The pain in his ribs seemed to pierce his chest
as he stepped clear of the command station so that Mikka could sit down.

She
hadn’t moved from the companionway. Her face was empty of questions: her
attention had turned inward. Davies feared that she would refuse him. She would
say that Ciro needed her too much, or that she was too worn-out to function.
Groaning inside, he marshalled his strength to yell at her, curse or beg —

But he’d
misread her immobility. She seemed to be thinking aloud as she murmured, “Or I
can reconstruct our position from the log and the location of the black hole.
Look at g vectors in relation to where the rocks used to be around us. I should
be able to put us back on the same course Lab Centre gave us.”

Damn
it.
Damn
it. Why hadn’t he thought of that? What was
wrong
with
him?

No. He
didn’t have time to waste on his own inadequacies. “Do it,” he panted. “Otherwise
we’re finished.”

Gasping
under the pressure of so much weight, he stepped cautiously toward Mikka and
the companionway.

She
shifted out of his way; watched him reach the support of the rails before she
moved to the command station.

The
black hole and
Trumpet’s
thrust loaded him down with at least 100 kg
more than he was accustomed to carrying. His damaged ribs and bound arm
throbbed with stress. The companionway looked frightfully high, impossible to
climb.

But
perhaps this was what he was good for; perhaps his conditioning in Morn’s womb
had prepared him to succeed now. His enhanced endocrine system made him
stronger than he had any structural right to be.

Clamping
Morn’s limbs in the crooks of his arms, he grasped the rails and started
upward.

Yes, he
could do this. He could
do
it. If Mikka didn’t add thrust too soon, he
would be able to gain the head of the companionway. Then all he had to do was
stagger along the passage until he came to sickbay.

That
part would be dangerously easy.
Trumpet’s
orientation in the gravity
well gave the passage a sharp downward slope.

Two
steps. Five. Seven. Yes. The muscles of his thighs burned as if they were
tearing, but they didn’t hurt enough to stop him.

As soon
as he achieved the last tread,
Trumpet’s
drive began to howl more
deeply. At once Davies and Morn took on another twenty kg; thirty —

In an
instant he changed his mind about carrying her. The passage looked as sheer as
a cliff. Straining to handle her gently, he lowered her to the deck, then held
her by her good arm and let her slide downward. At the extent of his reach, he
followed her. By catching at handgrips and the corners of doorways, wedging his
heels between the deck and wall, he kept their descent under control.