The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (40 page)

Across
the small cabin from her, Davies sat on the edge of his bunk, securing himself
against weightlessness with his knees. The gaze he fixed on her was dark and
haunted — a stare as restless and concentrated in its own way as the yellow
malice of his father when Angus had raped and degraded her.

In one
hand he held her zone implant control.

Like
Angus.

And
like Nick. For a time Nick also had possessed her by means of the electrode in
her skull.

Like
both of them, Davies was male —

For an
instant the sight filled her with revulsion and dismay.

Once
again she’d fallen under the control of a man who meant to abuse her.

Male or
not, however, he wasn’t like them. She insisted on that while he studied her.
His hand hung limp: none of his fingers moved on the buttons. He was her son;
his mind echoed hers. What haunted his gaze wasn’t malice. It was concern.
Distrust of Nick. Doubt of Angus. And the inevitable, unpredictable aftermath
of being nurtured in her womb at a time when she was filled almost constantly
by a storm of imposed energies. He’d been conditioned to metabolic extremes
which no normal baby could have endured.

She
wondered what he did for rest. He looked like he hadn’t slept since they’d left
Billingate.

Maybe
he couldn’t.

On the
other hand, how long could he stay sane without sleep?

When he’d
watched her wake up for a moment, he asked, “Are you all right?” His voice came
out in a knotted croak, as if he’d spent hours with his throat clenched,
waiting for her.

She
nodded. Drained by transition, she fumbled at the g-seals which secured her in
her bunk; opened the inner sheath, the outer webbing. With her fingers wrapped
in the webbing so that she wouldn’t float away, she swung her legs over the
edge and sat up.

Giddiness
and the lack of g swept through her. She had the uncomfortable impression that
Trumpet
was spinning; tumbling end over end like a derelict. But after a moment her
zero-g training reasserted itself, and her disorientation passed.

Swallowing
at the taste of lost dreams, she murmured, “Where are we?”

He
replied with a frown like his father’s. “Angus says we’re one crossing away
from Massif-5. Once we get there, we’ll have to be ready for hard g almost
constantly, so he wants to give us a chance to move around now. Tach in seventy
minutes. He says.” Davies’ mouth twisted in disgust. “Unless he changes his
mind again.”

Morn
sighed at the reminder of Angus’ belligerence. It scared her more than she wanted
to admit. “He won’t if we don’t give him an excuse. We can keep away from the
bridge. Maybe he’ll stay calm.”

Davies
snorted. Apparently the idea of simply trying to stay out of trouble didn’t
satisfy him. The muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched and released,
chewing bitterness. His hand tightened on her black box. “What’s wrong with
him?” he protested abruptly. “What changed? He wasn’t like this before we left
forbidden space. Then I thought he was actually on our side. Now he acts like
he’s nursing some kind of grievance.”

Morn
bowed her head in the face of Davies’ distress. How could she help him? She
knew nothing about the after-effects of force-growing and mind-transference; or
of gestation and birth under the influence of a zone implant. And she could
hardly function herself without artificial support. Angus was a subject she
didn’t want to examine. She was still in his power, even though he no longer
held her zone implant control. Everything she did and said, everything she
was,
bore the taint of his brutality.

His and
Nick’s.

And yet
Davies was her son.

Holding
herself to the bunk, she shrugged. “You know as much about him as I do.”

“I know
more,” he retorted harshly. “I spent time with him before he got you away from
the Amnion. I know he doesn’t care about me. Having a son doesn’t mean shit to
him.” Morn shook her head slowly, but Davies didn’t stop. “He only rescued me
because Nick tricked him into thinking he could trade me for you.

“It’s
you
he cares about.” Davies’ gaze burned as if he had a grievance of his own;
as if he blamed her for the fact that his father didn’t value him. “He wants
you — but it’s more than that. He wants to please you. That’s why I believed he
was on our side. He wants to do whatever you want him to do.

“Or he
did. Now I can’t tell what’s going on.”

His
pain made her heart ache. Oh, Davies. My poor boy. You didn’t ask for this. You
don’t deserve any of it.

Nevertheless
she kept that kind of comfort to herself. He was too old for it. His body was
at least sixteen. And his mind, his comprehension, was both older and younger
than hers — aged by her sufferings as well as his own; yet immature in
experience.

“That
bothers you,” she said carefully.

For a
moment he forgot to hold himself down. The burst of vehemence which ran through
him sent him tumbling for the ceiling. Fiercely he thrust himself back to his
bunk, clung there.

“Morn,
I’m alone here. I mean
here
.” He hit his forehead with the heel of one
palm. “Everything I remember tells me I’m you. I know that’s not true, but my
memories say it is. I need —

“I don’t
know how to put it.” In anguish he broke out, “I need a
father.
Something to anchor myself on. An image to help me hold on to who I am.

“He
could do that for me. He’s a butcher and a rapist and worse — I know that, I
can’t get it out of my head — but at least I
look
like him. He’s the
only image strong enough to help me. But every time I try to concentrate on it,
he does something that makes me want to hit him with a matter cannon.

“It’s
like he rapes me inside, violates —”

Davies
stopped as if he were choking. Now his air of grievance was gone. He looked
like a young kid, appallingly young, with nowhere to turn.

Morn
wanted to weep. The thought that her son,
her son,
needed Angus — that
he had hungers which only Angus could satisfy — seemed to be more than she
could bear. Wasn’t it bad enough that every part of her own being had been
marred and stained by Angus’ abuse? Did her son require his imprint as well?

Yet how
could she protest? What right did she have? His dilemma was of her making. The
responsibility was hers; absolutely; beyond appeal.

And
Angus was her responsibility as well. Instead of abandoning him to the trap
which Nick had set for him, she’d accepted her zone implant control from him
and let him live. In the name of her own hungers, her naked and irreducible
inadequacy, she’d spared him the death sentence which would have followed his
conviction for unauthorised use of a zone implant.

She had
no choice: she had to bear it. Davies needed some kind of answer from her.

“Try
thinking about my father instead.” Simply mentioning that Davies Hyland, whom
she had loved and killed, lacerated her. Nevertheless she made the effort, even
though it seemed to tear at her chest, filling her lungs with blood. “The man
you’re named for. You remember him as well as I do.

“If the
cops are corrupt, that’s Data Acquisition and Administration. Hashi Lebwohl and
Warden Dios. Not Min Donner. ED is clean.

“But
even if she’s like them, my father wasn’t. Angus told me —” Her throat closed
on the words. She had to swallow a rush of grief before she could go on. “After
I crashed
Starmaster
, there were still a few of us alive. My father was
one of them. Angus says he was flash-blinded in the explosion. But even blind
he didn’t stop fighting for his ship. Didn’t stop being a cop.

“When
Angus boarded the wreck, my father tried to arrest him. Tried to commandeer his
ship. Tried to bluff it through, even though he couldn’t see —”

Her
throat clenched shut again. Until the memory released her, she couldn’t speak.
Then she finished, “That’s the best I can do. He’s all I have.” And Bryony
Hyland, his wife, Morn’s mother, who had loved and believed and fought with all
her heart; who had died saving her ship and her shipmates from
Gutbuster’s
super-light proton cannon. “There isn’t anything else.”

But
they were enough. For her, if not for her son: they were enough.

“Come
on,” she said quietly, fighting to recover her composure. “Let’s get something
to eat. We’re going to need it.”

At
first Davies didn’t react. He watched her with a tightness like Angus’ anger
around his mouth and a look of desolation in his eyes. And yet she guessed that
he was helpless to contradict her. All the deepest parts of his mind insisted
that he was her; that the captain of
Starmaster
had been his father.

Slowly
he took a breath, let go of her with his gaze. Briefly he considered her zone
implant control as if he’d learned to hate it. He would never have been born if
she hadn’t used it to win her contest with Nick. And she would never have
gotten pregnant if Angus hadn’t put a zone implant in her head.

Scowling
like a wasteland, he opened his fingers with a small flick which floated the
control toward her.

She
caught it in her free hand and shoved it down into a pocket of her shipsuit
without taking her eyes off him.

“You’re
right,” he muttered distantly. “We need food.”

He didn’t
look at her as he left his bunk, coasted to the door, and keyed it open. There,
however, he stopped. Holding on to one of the handgrips by the door, he met her
aching gaze.

“I don’t
blame you,” he said quietly. “I remember too much. What happened to you. How
you felt. Why you did what you did.” He made an abortive attempt to laugh. “I
would have done the same thing.”

Pushing
against the handgrip, he drifted backward out into the passage which ran
through
Trumpet’s
core.

As she
followed him, Morn had to fight down a different desire to weep. His
understanding felt like forgiveness for crimes and failings which should have
been unforgivable.

 _

 _

Like
Captain’s Fancy
’s,
Trumpet’s
galley was hardly more than a niche in one wall of the central
passage. However, its foodvends and dispensers as well as other furnishings
were designed for use during weightlessness. The dispensers pumped coffee,
soup, and other liquids into g-flasks; the foodvends primarily offered pressed
foodbars and compact sandwiches which wouldn’t break into crumbs and drift
away. Stools bolted to the deck lined the one narrow table, and restraints
could be attached to cleats on the sides of the stools and along the walls.

Several
hours ago, during one of Angus’ longer pauses between gap crossings, Davies had
located a locker full of equipment like zero-g belts and clamps, and had
appropriated a couple of belts for himself and Morn. When they’d prepared their
meals, they were able to hook themselves to the stools and eat without bobbing
away from the table whenever they moved their arms.

They
ate in silence until Sib Mackern eased into the galley and asked if he could
join them.

Morn gestured
toward a stool. Davies mumbled, “Sure,” around a mouthful of food.

Awkward
with anxiety, Sib pushed himself around the niche until his meal was ready.
Then he moved to a stool across the table from Davies and Morn. Like them, he’d
found or been given a zero-g belt. When he’d clipped himself down, he frowned
at his foodbars and g-flask as if he couldn’t remember why he’d thought he was
hungry.

With
her head lowered, Morn studied him unobtrusively past the fringe of her hair.
Aboard
Captain’s Fancy
he’d let her out of her prison so that she could
try to save Davies from the Amnion. Like Mikka and Vector in different ways, he’d
risked betraying Nick for her sake; risked having his heart cut out — But the
former data first didn’t look like a man who took such chances. He seemed to
give off an air of vague desperation. His pale features had an apologetic cast;
his thin moustache might have been nothing more than grime on his upper lip.
His determination to keep guard on Nick had left him drained and ragged.

She
still wondered why he’d helped her. In one sense, all opposition to Nick struck
her as reasonable, natural. But Sib had served aboard
Captain’s Fancy
for some time; had presumably fallen under the spell of Nick’s apparent
infallibility. Why had he changed his allegiance? In her cabin, before he’d let
her out, he’d said
, Since I joined him, we’ve done things that made me sick.
They gave me nightmares and made me wake up screaming.
His revulsion came
back to her as she remembered how he’d helped her.
But nothing like that.
Nothing like selling a human being to the Amnion.

I’ve
seen
them, Morn. Those mutagens are evil.

What
had he seen?

Hoping
that he would be willing to talk, she tried to start a conversation by asking, “Where
is everybody?”