The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (32 page)

“That’s
why he was killed,” Warden pronounced harshly. “Because he discovered that
particular loyalty.”

Are you
listening, Hashi? Do you hear me?

“I see,”
Hashi murmured while he considered the implications. “Then perhaps he deserves
to be lamented.”

Warden
forced himself to make his point more clearly. “Hashi, don’t let it happen to
you.”

The DA
director replied with a smile that left his blue gaze cold. “I am not afraid.
His position and mine are dissimilar. No one but you has ever had reason to
question my loyalty.”

He gave
Warden a small bow, then moved to the door and waited for Warden to unlock it.

As the
bolts and seals opened, however, he turned back to his director. “It occurs to
me,” he said in a musing tone, “that the Amnion cannot force-grow a mind.”

Warden
was running late. And he still had decisions to make — decisions on which any
number of lives depended, including his own. “I jumped to the same conclusion,”
he retorted brusquely.

Hashi
didn’t stop. “It seems consistent with what we know of their methods in other
areas, however, that they are able to copy one. Therefore, if young Davies
Hyland has a mind, it must have been imprinted from someone else.”

“Fine,”
Warden growled. “From whom? Nick Succorso?”

“I
think not.” Hashi was still chewing on the question; but his emanations were
calm, and his voice sounded confident. “Can you imagine that Captain Succorso
would submit to such a process? Surely the Amnion could have offered him no
certainty that his own mind would remain intact when it was copied.

“Indeed,
it seems unlikely that any ordinary human being would have valued Davies Hyland
enough to accept the hazards of such a process.”

Hashi
flashed a speculative glance at Warden, but didn’t wait for a response. He
reached for the door, opened it; in a moment he was gone.

Yet he’d
left behind the hint Warden needed; left it in the air and silence after he
closed the door as if he were trying to make amends.

Hashi
Lebwohl, you God damn sonofabitch, you’re a genius.

Davies
Hyland must have a mind, a human mind. Otherwise the Amnion wouldn’t want him
back — not badly enough to risk an act of war by chasing
Trumpet
. That
was the whole point. If his mind was Amnion, they wouldn’t have lost him in the
first place.

So
where did he get it?
Whose
mind did he have?

Who
would consider him precious enough to be worth the risk of madness or even a
complete breakdown? What kind of person would do such a thing?

Only
Morn.

Davies
Hyland had his mother’s mind.

Warden
couldn’t afford to think about it. He was perilously close to losing his window
to contact Min Donner; to carry out Holt’s orders. And if he paused long enough
to hope, he might be so shaken by it — or so paralysed by doubt — that he would
fail to grasp this one slim opportunity.

Slim?
It wasn’t
slim
: it was by God
emaciated.
Slender to
the point of invisibility.

Nevertheless
he took the risk. It was all he had.

Dropping
into his seat, he leaned over the desktop console and began writing Holt Fasner’s
orders — as well as his own — for transmission to Min Donner and
Punisher
.

SIXTEN

C
aptain Sixten Vertigus was old.

He was
old when he got up in the morning, and the face that greeted him in his mirror
was as wrinkled and used as a sheet of crumpled tissue. What was left of his
hair clung to his scalp in wisps so fine that they responded to any kind of
static. When he shaved — an atavistic habit which he had no inclination to give
up — his hands shook as if the exercise was strenuous; and the skin of his
hands was translucent enough to let him see his veins and tendons. He couldn’t
dress himself without fumbling.

He was
old when he went to his rooms in the Members’ Offices wing of the GCES Complex,
or to the Council chamber, and if he happened to forget his age, everyone he
met from the lowliest data clerk to Abrim Len himself reminded him of it by
treating him as if he were an invalid, temporarily risen from the bed in which
he was long overdue to die.

He was
old while his aides shuffled documents back and forth across his desk; while
his colleagues feigned including him in their discussions because he was too
much a legend to be ignored; while the other Members and their aides, and
President Len and
his
aides, droned on and on about the endless,
mindless, necessary details of governing human space. Sometimes when he stared
at people he was actually asleep; and even when he was at his most alert, his
eyes were so pale that he looked blind: he might have been a man to whom sight
no longer meant anything.

On top
of that, his whole body still hurt. The after-effects of the explosion which
had killed Marthe, and which had very nearly done the same to Sixten himself,
lingered in his fragile bones and tired head, his sore chest and unsteady
stomach.

On some
occasions — but especially this one — he felt more than old; he felt like an
antique, a relic. The former hero of
Deep Star
and humankind’s first
contact with the Amnion was abysmally and irretrievably ancient.

His
condition was not untreatable, of course. As the GCES Senior Member for the
United Western Bloc, he could easily have obtained the same rejuvenation
techniques which had prolonged Holt Fasner’s life. But he didn’t do it; didn’t
even consider it. He didn’t want to live long enough to see whatever future the
Dragon made.

He was
far too old to tackle the job of trying to bring Holt Fasner down.

If he
could have thought of one other Member who might be trusted to take the chance
and face the consequences, just one, he would have handed over the
responsibility without hesitation. But to the best of his knowledge, there were
no other candidates. The people on Suka Bator who might have been willing to
accept the risk — Special Counsel Maxim Igensard came to mind because he was
due to arrive in Sixten’s office at any moment — were tainted by motives which
Sixten considered wrongheaded at best, fatal at worst. And everybody else — the
Members even more than their aides — was too easily scared.

So
eventually he considered that maybe it was good to be old. After all, what did
he have to lose? There wasn’t much time left to him in any case. He’d never had
any significant amount of power. His position as the hero of
Deep Star
and the UWB Senior Member, not to mention as a symbol of probity for such
groups as the Native Earthers, was largely ceremonial; and he only endured it
because it gave him an occasional opportunity to act on his convictions. And
his self-esteem was in no real danger. For years he’d been about as effectual
as the figurehead of an ancient sailing vessel. Failure now wouldn’t make him
feel any more useless.

Still
he had to ask himself whether he could truly bear to fail again.

That
was the wrong question, however.

Could
he truly bear not to make the attempt?

He’d
told Min Donner that his “mission” on the Council had always
been to oppose
Holt Fasner in all his ambitions.
He’d only had personal encounters with
the UMC CEO twice, once before
Deep Star
was sent to establish contact
with the Amnion, once afterward. Yet those experiences had determined the
course of his life
— to study what he did and how he did it until I could
learn the facts which might persuade other people to oppose him with me —
until, inspired by age and foolishness, he’d entrusted his research to his
subordinates, and so lost it all.

In his
own mind nothing larger than himself exists. In his own person he considers
himself bigger than the United Mining Companies, bigger than the Governing
Council for Earth and Space, perhaps bigger than all humankind.

In a
sense, Sixten told himself now, his years and his old failures were irrelevant.
Even the possibility that he might be killed was irrelevant. Instead of
worrying over such things, he should be grateful that Min Donner had brought
him this one last chance. If he failed again, nothing new would be lost. And if
he succeeded, something of inestimable value would be gained.

In any
case — whether he failed or succeeded, lived or died — he would know that he
was still man enough, still
person
enough, to act on his beliefs.

He
tried to feel gratitude while he waited for Special Counsel Igensard.

Unfortunately
his years refused to take pity on him. Time didn’t care whether he was a hero
or a coward. He intended to finish his work on Min Donner’s Bill of Severance;
but instead he was sound asleep in his chair when Marthe’s replacement chimed
his intercom to inform him that the Special Counsel had arrived.

His
eyes felt as dry as stones: he’d nodded off with them open. Blinking painfully,
he fumbled for the intercom toggle. When he finally located it, he heard
Igensard’s voice in the background. “Is he sleeping in there?”

Sixten
hated the note of humourless complacency in the Special Counsel’s tone; the
veiled contempt.

“Of course
I was sleeping,” he told his pickup. He also hated the high, thin quaver of his
own voice, but there was nothing he could do about it. “Do you think being this
old is easy? Send him in.”

By the
time Igensard opened the door and entered, Sixten had straightened his clothes,
rubbed some of the blur off his gaze, and made sure that his private intercom
was active.

Maintenance
had done an efficient job restoring both his office and the outer hall where
his aides had their desks and cubicles. The ceiling had been repaired; the
walls, patched. The carpeting and even his crystallised formica desktop had
been replaced. There was no visible evidence that a kaze had ever attacked him.

Nevertheless
Maxim Igensard came into the room as if he expected to smell high explosives
and blood.

He was
a grey man who cultivated an air of diffidence which had the effect of making
him appear smaller than he was. His hair capped itself to his head as if it
didn’t want to attract attention. He wore tidy, grey bureaucratic garments with
impersonal lines and no distinguishing features: his suit could have been worn
by anybody. Because it hadn’t been cut to fit him, however, it failed to
conceal the unexpected bulge of his belly. As a result, his stomach contrasted
incongruously with his lean face and limbs. Except for his abdomen, he looked
like a man who didn’t eat often enough to become fat.

“Special
Counsel.” Sixten didn’t trouble to stand; he had enough years and status to get
away with sitting in almost anyone’s presence. “It’s easy to catch a man like
me sleeping, even if you get plenty of rest yourself. But you look like you
haven’t been to bed for days.”

This
wasn’t actually true: Maxim looked neither more tired nor less alert than
usual, and his clothes were fresh. But Sixten preferred to credit the Special
Counsel with frailties which didn’t show. The uncomfortable alternative was to
think that Maxim might indeed be as devoid of weaknesses as he appeared.

“You’d
better sit down,” Sixten concluded, nodding at the nearest chair.

From
there Igensard wouldn’t be able to see the small LED on Sixten’s private
intercom which indicated an open channel.

“Not at
all, Captain Vertigus.” Igensard’s tone was as grey and unassuming as his
demeanour — and as unamused. “Of course, there’s a great deal of work to be
done. But I have a capable staff. And a number of the other Members are eager
to give me every assistance.”

He didn’t
decline to sit, however.

By some
perceptual trick, his air of being smaller than he was made him appear more
solid when he sat; denser, perhaps more powerful as well, as if he contained a
nuclear core which was shrinking to critical mass.

“Your
concern is misplaced,” he continued, “if only because
I
have not
recently become the target of assassins.” Deftly he redirected Sixten’s attempt
to take control of the conversation. “Are you sure you’re all right? President
Len assures me you weren’t injured, but I find that hard to believe. You were
so close to the blast —”

Sixten
cut him off brusquely. “My apologies, Special Counsel.” He had no intention of
discussing the kaze’s attack with this man. “Just for a minute there, I thought
you looked tired. Must be my eyes — Lord knows at my age I can’t get away with
blaming it on the light.

“Shall
we get right to the point? You asked to see me. My time is yours, as much as
you need. But I know you’re busy. The best staff in the world can’t cure that
for a man in your position. What can I do for you?”

Maxim
was impervious to such delicate sarcasm. He smiled in a way that left his face
smooth and didn’t soften his diffident, untouchable gaze.