The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (28 page)

Inevitably
the Dragon caught glimpses of this. He knew better than to trust his UMCP
director too much. So he strove to bind Warden closer to him with new acts of
complicity and shame. But there he erred. He misunderstood the true nature of
Warden’s dreams. Each new piece of extorted cynicism drove Warden farther away;
drove him to imagine more, dare more, suffer more in the name of his real
passion.

Shame
pushed
him.

He was
no longer the man he’d once been: he’d transcended himself long ago. By will
and mortification he’d become more than he or Holt Fasner or anyone else
realised.

When
Holt outplayed him, demanded that he sacrifice Morn and Angus as well as
everything they represented, Warden was left stripped of his hopes; naked with
chagrin at all the harm he’d done — and done for nothing.

Intertech’s
antimutagen had been denied to humankind — but not to the Amnion. Vector
Shaheed, the one free man with the knowledge to replicate Intertech’s work, was
about to be killed. Morn Hyland had endured Angus Thermopyle and Nick Succorso,
rape and zone implants, for
months.
Now she would be discarded like a
piece of scrap. Angus himself, who carried the core of Warden’s desperation in
his welded resources and secret programming, would become Nick’s plaything and
tool; the perfect illegal, violent and dehumanised.

What
was left, except shame and the price of failure?

Warden
Dios was at his best when he asked to see Norna Fasner.

He didn’t
try to explain the request to himself. It was purely intuitive — a small
gesture to counterbalance what he’d lost — and he accepted the consequences of
acting on it. Yet it seemed to make him stronger with every passing moment. As
HS guided him into the secure depths of Holt’s headquarters, his heart grew
steady and his respiration calmed. Neither his stride nor his composure gave
his guards any hint that the Dragon had found a way to deprive him of what he
loved most.

There
was always something left.

Perhaps
that was why he wanted to consult an oracle.

So he
followed his escort until the two men delivered him to the specialised cave of
life-support systems and video screens where Norna Fasner lived. At the door he
dismissed them. They had no orders to accompany him in. And surely the Dragon
could eavesdrop on his mother whenever he wished.

Warden
entered her sickchamber alone and closed the door.

The
lights were off in the high, sterile room; but he could see by the
phosphorescent glow of the video screens which filled the wall in front of
Norna’s bed and equipment. That wall was all she had, her whole world: the bed
held her rigid, as if it were a traction frame, so that her equipment could do
the delicate and obscene work of keeping life in her immured carcass. Only her
eyes and mouth could move — and her fingers, allowing her to control the
illumination and screens. In the flat, heartless light, she looked spectral and
bereaved. The medical advances which sustained her son had come too late to do
anything more than impose existence on her. Mortality stained her shrivelled
skin so that it seemed filthy against the clean linen of her bed.

Her
equipment gave off so many IR emissions that Warden’s prosthetic sight was
effectively useless. As far as he could see, she had no aura; perhaps no
emotions; possibly no mind. Yet Holt had told him over the years that she remained
conscious — not only sentient but sharp. On one occasion Holt had said, “I keep
her alive, you know. I don’t mean my doctors or my orders — I mean me
personally.
I
keep her alive. She would go out like a candle if she didn’t
hate me too much to die. She lives for the hope that she’ll get to see me
destroyed. And maybe, just maybe, that she’ll be able to see it coming.”

The
Dragon had laughed as he said this. Apparently he considered it funny.

Warden
was of a different opinion.

He kept
it to himself, however, now as much as then. He wasn’t here to feel sorry for
the woman who had taught Holt his hungers. And he had only ten minutes. If
Norna couldn’t answer him in that time, the risk of visiting her would be
wasted.

Nevertheless
he stopped just inside the door, momentarily paralysed. Holt had told him about
the video screens; but he hadn’t realised how daunting they could be: twenty or
more of them, all alive, all projecting their images simultaneously, all
gabbling at once; and all dead because they had no human IR emissions and
therefore contained no life. As inert as Norna herself, newscasts and sex shows
vied with comedies, sports programs, and dramas to dominate his attention;
voices conflicted with background music and sound effects up and down the
audible spectrum. The effect was at once hypnotic and disturbing, like a
white-noise rumble which felt soothing, but which presaged some kind of
tectonic cataclysm. It created the strange illusion that all but one of the
screens offered gibberish as a way of concealing the sole exception; that the
exception displayed instead a soothsayer’s version of pure, cold truth; and
that it changed places constantly with all the others, so that only the most
savage and unremitting concentration could hope to glimpse its wisdom as it
passed from screen to screen.

Warden
stifled an impulse to curse the Dragon. He didn’t have time for that.

Steadying
himself on urgency, he forced his legs to carry him away from the door toward
the screens until he entered Norna’s field of view. There he turned; put his
back to the video wall and faced her.

“Hello,
Norna.”

In the
phosphor gleam her eyes looked empty, transfixed by death. They made no
apparent effort to track individual images: perhaps she’d learned how to focus
on all the programs at the same time. Or perhaps she’d merely forgotten what
she was looking for. Her lips and gums chewed constantly, as if she were trying
to remember the taste of food. Saliva she couldn’t control drooled into the
wrinkles across her chin.

Just
for an instant, however, her gaze flicked toward him. Then it returned to the
screens.

“Ward.”
Her voice barely reached him through the ambient mutter. “Warden Dios. It’s
about time.”

He
cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You were expecting me,” he remarked because he
didn’t know what else to say.

“Of
course I’ve been expecting you,” she muttered like the voices of her world. “Who
else can you talk to?

“Move.
You’re in my way.”

Warden
glanced behind him, saw that he was indeed obstructing one edge of her view of the
wall. Shrugging an apology, he took a step to the side. “Is that better?”

“‘Better’?”
Something in the twist of her bloodless lips gave the impression that she was
laughing. “If you think anything around here ever gets ‘better,’ you’ve wasted
a visit. We don’t have anything to talk about.”

He
frowned. He was in no mood for verbal sparring. Nevertheless he kept his
response casual. “Forgive my choice of words. I certainly haven’t seen anything
get better.”

Her
toothless gums continued chewing. “No. And you won’t. Not until you finish him.”

Well,
Holt had warned him that she was sharp; almost presciently cognisant of the
world beyond her screens — the world she couldn’t see. Still her bluntness took
him aback.

“‘Finish
him’?”

“Isn’t
that why you’re here?” Although she appeared to focus on nothing, follow
nothing, her gaze never left the restless movement of images. “Don’t you want
me to tell you what you need to know to finish him?”

A
frisson of alarm ran down Warden’s back, settled in his lower abdomen. How much
could Holt hear? Softly, trusting her to pick his voice out of the gabble —
trying to warn her — he asked, “Norna, does he listen in when you have
visitors?”

He
couldn’t tell whether she heard him or not. For a moment she was silent. Then
her mouth gave another twist that might have been laughter.

“How
should I know? I never have visitors.”

He made
another attempt. “Should you be careful what you say?”

This
time she didn’t pause or hesitate. “Why? There’s nothing left he can do to me.
And if you were worried about yourself, you wouldn’t be here.”

Her
blank concentration on her screens was eerie, almost ghoulish. Like a woman
inured to death and corruption, she watched them as if they showed maggots
feasting on corpses — one scene repeated from different angles on all the
screens.

“Of
course,” she went on, “he doesn’t realise how much I know. He has no idea what
I might tell you. That could be dangerous. But I think you’re safe enough.”

Safe?
The mere concept startled him. He raised a hand to interrupt her, ask her
indulgence.

“Norna,
forgive me. I guess I’m slow today — I’m not keeping up with you. What makes
you think I’m safe here?”

Her
face in the cold light looked so hollow and doomed that he half expected her to
intone like a sibyl, Everyone who comes here is safe. This is the cave of
death, where no other harm enters. As long as you remain, you are beyond hurt.

Her
actual reply was more prosaic, however. “After all the trouble you’ve caused,
he needs you. He can’t afford to punish you now.”

Baffled
as much by the way she spoke as by what she said, he countered, “He’s Holt
Fasner, CEO of the entire created universe. What can he possibly need
me
for?”

Again
that twist like laughter. Apparently she liked his sarcasm. Almost soundlessly
her lips shaped her answer.

“A
scapegoat.”

Ah,
Warden sighed to himself. Someone to blame. That made sense. He felt suddenly
that he’d been freed from the confusion of the screens and the mystification of
her manner. Now he knew how to talk to her.

“Thank
you,” he said more confidently. “I think I understand.

“As I’m
sure you can guess, I’ve just come from talking to him. You mentioned all the ‘trouble’
I’ve ‘caused’. And he told me you warned him I was getting him in trouble. Does
he know what kind of trouble it is?”

“Shame
on you, Ward.” Through the interference of other voices she sounded like a
disappointed schoolmarm. “That’s not the right question. You know better.”

Before
he could absorb this criticism, she asked, “What did you talk to him about?”

He
swallowed a rush of impatience. He was running out of time. Yet he had nothing
to gain by trying to hurry her. Trusting that she didn’t need long
explanations, he answered, “I told him that Joshua’s mission to Thanatos Minor
was a success. But it was also a surprise. Joshua has come back into human
space with some unexpected survivors.”

“Such
as?” she inquired quickly.

He had
no business discussing such things with her. On the other hand, why had he
bothered to come here, if he weren’t willing to face the hazards involved?

Shrugging
to himself, he let her have her way.

“Nick
Succorso. Some of his crew — including a man named Vector Shaheed who used to
work for Intertech back in the days when Intertech was doing antimutagen
research. Morn Hyland.” He did his best to mention Morn as if she had no
special significance. “And somehow she has a son — a full-grown kid,
apparently. She calls him Davies Hyland.”

Norna
considered this information for a moment.

“What
does he want you to do about it?”

Warden
felt that he was exposing his heart as he replied stiffly, “Deliver Davies to
him.” Like Norna he didn’t need to refer to the Dragon by name. “Give Nick
control over Joshua. Kill everybody else aboard.”

Her
empty gaze didn’t shift. Chewing incessantly, her jaws leaked a small sheen of
saliva into the smear on her chin. Only her lips reacted, twisting from side to
side like a grimace.

Now he
couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying.

He
waited until her grimace eased and her cheeks fell slack. Then in a low whisper
he repeated his question.

“Norna,
does he know?”

“I told
him,” she answered, invoked by mirth or grief. “But he doesn’t understand. He
fears death too much. It distorts his thinking.”

“Most
of us fear death,” Warden countered, still whispering. “Most of the time we’re able
to ignore it.”

She let
out a hiss of impatience or vexation. “This is no ordinary fear of death. Have
you suffered under him so long without figuring that out? If I called it ‘mortal
terror,’ that would be an understatement.

“He
wants to live forever.” Bitterly she nodded to herself.

“Yes,
forever. Haven’t I seen it? Why do you think he keeps me damned here? I’ve
spent fifty years paying for what I see.

“He
thinks the Amnion are the answer. Genetic magic. He thinks they know how to
rescue his body before it fails. Or maybe they can grow him a new one.

“He can’t
make peace with them. Humankind wouldn’t let him get away with it. Human beings
are stupid” — she referred to her screens — “but nobody is that stupid. But if
he lets you go to war, he’ll lose everything he wants from the Amnion. So he
needs this hostile truce.”