The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (27 page)

Faced
with the Dragon’s seething concentration, Warden asked tightly, “Are you
listening to me, Holt? When you look like that, I feel like I’m talking to a
wall.

“This
is an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.”

Abruptly
Holt snorted. As if he were emerging from a trance, he shook his arms and
shoulders, rubbed his hands over his cheeks. His eyes blinked rapidly to clear
his vision.

“You
probably believe that, you blind idiot,” he growled.

“Ward
Dios, the fucking idealist.” His anger was so vivid that it left afterimages on
Warden’s IR sight. “You almost make me regret choosing you for this job. After
all these years you still don’t know what you’re
for
— what the whole
goddamn UMCP is
for.
You still think I invented you because I wanted
cops.
If this weren’t a terrible time to change directors, I would throw you out on your
ass and find somebody with better brains.

“Well,
you
listen to
me,
Ward. This is your last chance.

“Do you
really think I’ve missed the point?”

A pang
twisted Warden’s heart; but he tightened his arms so that the pain didn’t show.
“When you start yelling,” he retorted trenchantly, “I don’t know what to think.”

“In
that case,” Holt said like a breath of flame, “I’ll keep my voice down. I don’t
want to give you any excuse for making a mistake. These are orders, and
you
”
— with the knuckles of one hand, he rapped every word onto his desktop — “are
going to carry them out.

“If the
Amnion want this Davies Hyland, so do I. I want him delivered here, to me, in
person.”

Warden
tried not to let himself hope; he couldn’t afford it in front of the Dragon.
Holt was taking the bait.

“Why?”

“If you
can’t figure that out,” Holt rasped, “you don’t deserve an answer.

“But it
does mean
Trumpet
has to be kept alive. I don’t like anything else you’ve
done here — and you as sure as shit haven’t convinced me I can trust you — but
I’ll give you that one.
Trumpet
has to be kept alive.

“Since
I don’t trust you, I’ll tell you how to do it. I’m not going to put up with
arguments or insubordination or delays. If you give me any grief, I’ll jerk you
out of UMCPHQ so fast your vital organs’ll be left behind.”

Warden
braced himself behind his arms and waited for the axe to fall.

Rapping
the desktop again, Holt said, “I want you to contact
Trumpet
. Make ‘Director
Donner’ do it,” he sneered harshly. “You’re so busy protecting her, I want her
to get her hands dirty. I want you to
make
her get her hands dirty.”

Go on,
say it. Warden clasped his chest until he could hardly breathe.
Say
it
and get it over with.

Holt’s
aura shone with cruelty and relish. “Tell her to give Joshua’s new priority-codes
to Nick Succorso.”

In
spite of his grip on himself, Warden flinched. For an instant time seemed to
stop. Behind his rigid expression and his flat stare, he went into shock.

Tell
her to give Joshua’s new priority-codes to Nick Succorso.

A
magnesium flare took fire in his guts. This was worse than anything he’d
feared, anything he could answer. Holt had beaten him. In his most costly
nightmares he hadn’t dreamed that his master would go so far.

 
—
to Nick Succorso.

“We’ll
let Succorso take Taverner’s place,” the Dragon explained as if he were licking
his chops. “That way we can make sure Joshua doesn’t spring any more surprises
on us. Succorso can force him to follow my orders when I’m ready.”

Joshua’s
new priority-codes —

Whom
had he betrayed most, Angus or Morn? They were the offspring of his most secret
desires: he’d stripped them of everything they needed or owned in the name of
passions they hadn’t asked for and couldn’t share. And those passions had just
died as if Holt had driven a stake through Warden’s heart.

“Once
Succorso takes command of Joshua and
Trumpet
— and gives us confirmation
so I know I’m safe — we’ll give him the rest of my orders.”

Tell
her —

Oh,
Min, you are going to hate me for this.

Without
Morn’s testimony the Bill of Severance would never pass. Not now. And certainly
not later, when the UMCP would be more vulnerable.

But
Warden couldn’t collapse now; couldn’t bear to let Holt unman him entirely. He
still had work to do. Damage-control: his last duty when everything had gone
wrong, and the Dragon’s rapacity swallowed human space. Shame if nothing else
required him to stand up; face the consequences of his arrogance and folly;
save what last small things might still be preserved. He refused to fail under
the burden until he’d paid for everything.

From
somewhere, as if he were digging it out of a grave, he found the strength to
ask, “Which are?”

Holt
grinned. His aura reeked of pleasure. “Kill everybody aboard except Davies
Hyland. Have him bring Davies to me. Let him keep one or two of his people, if
he needs them. Make him kill the rest.
Especially
Morn Hyland and Vector
Shaheed. You and those two bastards have done enough harm.”

Through
a storm of chagrin, Warden realised that Holt had recognised Shaheed’s name
after all.

In a
bleak tone, like one of the damned, he murmured, “How am I supposed to make him
do all that?
He
doesn’t have any priority-codes.”

Holt
positively gleamed with ferocity. “By offering him something he wants. We’ll
let him keep
Trumpet
and Joshua. He’ll jump at it. He can’t refuse a
ship like that — or the chance to have a welded cyborg for crew.”

Angus,
oh, Angus, it was all for nothing, I did it to you for nothing. I told you it’s
got to stop, but instead of stopping anything I committed a crime against you
that you’ll have to live with until Nick does you enough harm to kill you.

And
Morn as well. Nick might agree to kill her, but until the end she would be his
to torment and degrade as much as he wished.

Past
his arms and his lacerated heart, Warden sighed. “I’m sure you’re right. Nick
Succorso is exactly the kind of man who’ll jump at an offer like that.”

Holt
leaned forward; pouncing. Sharp with relish, he hissed, “You sonofabitch, you’re
mine,
mine.
I invented the
cops
— I invented
you.
You’re
as welded as any cyborg, and you’ve had your last chance at getting me in
trouble. From now on you’re going to do
what
I tell you,
when
I
tell you,
how
I tell you. And you’re going to
thank
your pitiful
ass you aren’t dead.

“Do you
really
think I’ve missed the point?”

Warden
shook his head. Slowly he unclamped his arms. Every muscle in his chest and
legs ached with cramps: he felt as stiff and unsteady as a cripple.
Nevertheless he climbed to his feet. Holt didn’t need to dismiss him: he knew
he was finished. Fighting knots and strain, he limped toward the door.

“Follow
orders,” Holt said after him. “I’m watching — and you know I can do it. That’s
what all those listening posts are for. If you mess with me, I’ll find out.
Then you’re dead.”

Warden
nodded as if he were beaten.

When
Holt unsealed the door, however, Warden didn’t open it. Instead he turned back
to the Dragon.

Holt
had surprised him with an act of imaginative malice he hadn’t expected and
couldn’t match. There were other things he could do, however. He understood
power and manipulation; he could still fight. With his hand on the door and no
hope left, he replied to his doom with an imaginative act of his own.

“Speaking
of your mother,” he said distantly, “I haven’t seen her for a long time. Do you
mind if I visit her before I go? It should only take a few minutes. And I can
spare the time. We have hours before our best window on the next listening post
Punisher
is likely to pass.”

“My
mother?” Holt was surprised: his face showed it as plainly as his emissions. “Norna?
What in hell do you want to visit
her
for?”

The
UMCP director shrugged awkwardly; falsely. “She’s become something of a legend
over the years — like an oracle, you might say. I want to ask her what makes
her think I’ve been trying to get you in trouble.”

Holt
scrutinised Warden hard. The uncertainty of his aura suggested that he felt the
threat in Warden’s request, but couldn’t identify it. After only a moment,
however, his expression cleared, and he laughed acidly.

“You
poor, misguided lump of shit, you’re still trying to play games with me. Go
ahead” — he fluttered his hands — “visit her.
Enjoy
it if you can. You
two deserve each other. And there’s a good chance you’re going to end up just
like her.”

As
Warden opened the door and closed it behind him, Holt was speaking into an
intercom, instructing HS to conduct the UMCP director to Norna Fasner and let
him talk to her for ten minutes before escorting him to his shuttle.

“Privately,”
Warden told the two guards who came to his sides. As soon as he left Holt’s
sight, his manner became authoritative and sure: he sounded as steady as a
rock. “I want to talk to her alone. Check with him if you don’t trust me.”

“Yes,
sir.” As far as Home Security knew, Warden Dios was still the second most
powerful man in human space. “This way.”

Walking
briskly to work the cramps out of his legs, Warden followed the guards. Holt
had said,
You are mine,
but he was wrong. Warden may have lost
everything else, but he was still himself.

While
any piece of him remained, he intended to go on fighting.

WARDEN

H
e was at his best when he was ashamed.

He
could not have explained that: he was hardly aware of it. Yet it was true. The
tension between his unyielding passion for standards of integrity, commitment,
and efficacy so untrammelled that they could never be attained and his sense of
mortal chagrin when he fell below those standards was fruitful for him. It
taught him strengths he might never have known he possessed.

Shame
and idealism were the means by which Holt Fasner had manipulated him into
becoming what he was: the director of the UMCP, guilty as charged; the man most
directly responsible for the corruption of the cops. Holt had focused his
idealism — his essential belief that it was the honourable and necessary
function of the police
to serve and protect
humanity — to position him
where he would be vulnerable; then had exercised his shame to push him farther
and farther from those ideals.

In a
sense Warden had accepted this. Presumably he could have refused at any time —
could have preserved the man he wished to be by letting Holt fire him. At the
worst Holt might have had him killed. So what? Warden knew to his cost that
there were many worse fates than death.

Yet he
hadn’t refused. At every crisis he’d resisted the Dragon’s cunning up to a
certain point; then he’d let it carry him along.

In a
sense, the reason he did this was simple.

All his
life, he’d considered himself inadequate to his dreams; unequal to the task of
making them live. Certainly he’d been too flawed to see Holt Fasner accurately
when the Dragon had first hired him to work for SMI Security. Stupid with
naiveté, he’d believed that he was being given a chance to do good, valuable
work for a good, valuable man. And Holt had encouraged that illusion with every
trick at his command. Hungry with dreams and shame, Warden had learned to
define himself in terms of law enforcement at its noblest: service and
protection for those who needed it most — and could afford it least.

By the
time he’d realised that Holt used the cops for no purposes but his own, and
that those purposes had nothing to do with idealism, Warden had already
acquired a taste for the nourishment his sore heart craved: the food of lawful
power.

So who
could hope to stop the Dragon, if not an officer of the law? Whose job was it?
And to whom did that job properly belong, if not to the man who had helped make
the Dragon powerful by allowing his own hopes to blind him?

Precisely
because he considered himself culpable, Warden Dios had sworn to take any risk
and pay any price which might help him undo the harm he’d caused by supporting
Holt Fasner’s ambitions.

Of
course he couldn’t undo that harm if he weren’t a cop. The authority of his
position as director of the UMCP was all that enabled him to act. He couldn’t
afford to sacrifice that authority in the name of personal honour.

Therefore
he swallowed the compromises and betrayals necessary to keep his job, earn the
Dragon’s trust. When he wasn’t engaged in some dirty business of Holt’s, he
developed and ran the UMCP as if his organisation were indeed as incorruptible
as it should be. And in the dark corners of his mind, through the gaps between
his other commitments, he set about the complex, secret task of arranging Holt’s
downfall.