The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (46 page)

At once
Vector took a handgrip, rolled himself onto the padded surface, and lay still
while Mikka and Morn attached restraints to immobilise him so that the
cybernetic systems could work on his hand.

Sib
coded the console for urgent repair, more wounded coming; instructed the
computer to concentrate on Vector’s hand. After that he shifted out of the way
as gleaming metal arms and needles flexed from the walls to anaesthetise,
clean, probe, mend, and suture Vector’s slashed palm and fingers.

“Morn,”
Mikka insisted.

“Right.”
Morn gripped the edge of the table with one hand, pushed her hair back from her
face with the other. A look of frenzy glinted from her eyes, a desperation
strangely like Angus’. Nevertheless she kept her voice steady, tight; as hard
and closed as a fist. “I’ll try to make sense.”

Painkillers
and cat glazed Vector’s eyes. Still he concentrated his gaze on Morn’s face as
if she alone could save him.

“DA is
corrupt,” she began. “We know that. I’ll believe anything I hear about Hashi
Lebwohl. But I’m Enforcement Division. I work for Min Donner. And she’s honest.”

Mikka
scowled at this assertion.

“She
has to be,” Morn insisted. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be a cop. If ED was corrupt,
somebody in my family — my father, my mother, somebody — would have known. We
would have resigned. The whole Hyland clan. And I wouldn’t have followed them
to the Academy.”

This
was true: Davies believed it as soon as she said it, even though he hadn’t
thought of it himself. It matched his memories too closely to be wrong.

“My
family trusted Min Donner. And none of them were stupid. Or blind. So I trust
her, too.”

“So
what?” Mikka retorted.

Morn
didn’t hesitate. “Think about it. That message didn’t come from DA. It came
from ED. From
Punisher
. The last I heard, a man named Dolph Ubikwe is in
command, and he has the kind of reputation honest cops are willing to die for.
He wouldn’t do this. Min Donner wouldn’t order him to do this.

“Unless
there’s something else going on.”

Something
to hope for.

The
appeal in Mikka’s eyes was as plain as beggary. “Like what?”

Vector’s
wounds were deep, but not structural. In moments the swabs and needles finished
with his hand. Too weak to move well on his own, he let Sib and Ciro release
the restraints; let Ciro support him against the wall.

Sib
gestured at Davies.

Wary of
his ribs and arm, Davies mounted the table gingerly until his back settled
against the cushions; then he let his legs straighten. With his good hand, he
unsealed his Amnion shipsuit; Mikka and Sib pulled down the strange black
fabric until his torso was bare. As they attached the restraints, he reminded
Sib, “Morn needs cat.”

“Right.”
Sib typed in the commands to care for Davies, then added orders to dispense a
supply of oral cat.

Morn
watched her son as if she feared that the sickbay systems might hurt him.

Almost
groaning, Mikka repeated, “Like
what?
”

A hypo
from the wall tapped into Davies’ forearm, piped out blood for the computer to
analyse. He felt rather than saw a nearly subliminal flash of X-ray. Limpet
sensors on his skin tested for evidence of internal bleeding. Then cat,
analgesics, and antibiotics washed into him from the hypo. Almost at once he
began to drift away from his pain.

After
that he heard voices as if they could barely reach him; as if the drugs had
sent him into the medical version of tach, leaving everyone else on the far
side of a perceptual gap.

“I don’t
know,” Morn answered. She seemed to keep her tone hard so that she wouldn’t
wail. “Some way to stop Nick when DA is finished with him.”

A clamp
took hold of his broken arm, adjusted it until the bones were properly aligned.
A gleaming extension set the fracture with tissue plasm, metabolins, and a
nearly weightless acrylic cast.

“Maybe
there’s a restriction we don’t know about built into Angus’ programming. Maybe
we’ve stumbled into a covert operation that has to be kept secret.”

Then
the clamp shifted to his shoulder; pushed in one direction while the table
twisted in another to straighten his ribs.

Next
the table retracted to make room for a nozzle which sprayed a more flexible
acrylic around his chest. When it hardened — a few moments at most — this cast
would shield his ribs, as well as restrict his movements so that he couldn’t
hurt himself.

“Or
maybe,” Morn finished, “Min Donner is just going along with Hashi Lebwohl until
she figures out what he’s up to and can stop him.

“There
has to be
some
thing.”

Whatever
it is, it might help us.

Mikka
groaned as if she were close to fainting. “And you want us to stake our lives
on
that?
”

“Yes.”

Yes,
Davies echoed.

Sickbay
diagnostics informed him that his skull had suffered a small crack, but that
there was no internal damage. Other drugs would protect him against shock and
concussion while metabolins speeded the healing of his fractures.

Above
him, Sib handed Morn a vial of tablets. She glanced at the dosage label, then
shook a couple of pills onto her palm. Glaring at them as if she thought they
might kill her, she swallowed them.

Drugs
muffled Davies’ senses, confused his mind. Nevertheless he did what he could to
back Morn up. From the other side of an imposed gulf, he struggled to say, “Angus
is fighting it. He isn’t giving Nick any more help than he has to.”

“Bullshit.”
The more Mikka bled, the weaker she sounded.

“He’s a
cyborg.
He follows orders. How much help do you think Nick needs?”

Davies
glanced at the intercom. Its indicator remained blank.

“Angus
knows —” he mumbled across the void, “knows how to program a parallel control.
For her zone implant. He’s done it before. He can replace the one Vector broke
— whenever he wants.” Had he said everything yet? No, there was more. “But Nick
doesn’t know that.” More. “Angus hasn’t told him.”

Morn
nodded. Her eyes shed hints of gratitude and pride. Unfortunately he couldn’t
answer them. Medication seemed to occupy all the available space inside him,
crowding out words.

This
was wrong. He was supposed to be taking care of her, not lying here stupefied,
as useless as an invalid. For some reason, his restraints had been released;
but when he tried to rise, he found that he couldn’t tell the difference
between one direction and another. He had to watch while Morn and Sib pulled
his shipsuit up onto his arms and shoulders, sealed the front.

Without
warning tears blurred his vision. “I’m sorry,” he told Morn. His voice sounded
constricted and forlorn, as if he were crying. “Too many drugs. I can’t help
you.”

She
lifted him off the cushions. He was weightless; she supported him as easily as
a baby. “You already have.” With both arms she held him out of the way while
Mikka settled toward the table. “And you will again. I took enough cat to put
me out for four hours.” Already it had begun to drain the urgency from her
voice. In moments it would drain her of consciousness as well. “By then you’ll
be able to give me whatever I need.”

He felt
that he could sink down into her embrace and never rise again. Only his strange
endocrine heritage kept him awake.

“Four
minutes,” Sib announced tightly. “You’d better get to your cabins.”

“You,
too,” Mikka told him while he and Ciro fixed her in place. “Tell the systems to
take hard-g precautions. Then go. Take Ciro with you. I’ll be all right.”

Vector
put his undamaged hand like a gesture of reassurance on Ciro’s shoulder. “Come on,”
he murmured. “I’m too weak to get there alone. And I need someone to seal my
g-sheath.”

“Mikka
—” Ciro began as if he wanted to protest, stay with her. Almost at once,
however, he pushed away from the table to open the door for Vector.

Morn
followed, drawing Davies with her.

Already
half-unconscious, they swam leadenly toward their cabin. The air had grown
viscid with mortality; it opposed their movements. And the passage had become
longer while they were closeted in sickbay. It stretched immeasurably ahead of
them, like a corridor in a nightmare. Davies could hardly keep his eyes open.
Still he resisted the cloying pull of the drugs. Morn was in worse shape than
he was: more deeply exhausted; not bred to crises. They would both die if they
fell asleep now.

She
lasted long enough to reach their cabin, open the door, swing him inside. After
that, however, she went limp, tugged out of herself by cat and weariness.

Through
a dim, thick haze of somnolence, he steered her into her bunk, sealed her
sheath and webbing. Then, while his mind frayed out into the hungry dark, he
made an effort to do the same for himself.

He
barely succeeded at closing his seals before drugs and loss carried him away.

ANGUS

T
here were no words. No words for it at all. He existed in a world
from which all language had been removed, all meaning stripped away; all
release denied. The message had come in from
Punisher
, and he had read
it, and his last sanity had cracked open like a crushed shell, spilling out
passion and escape and doomed outrage wherever he turned.

Warden
Dios to Isaac, Gabriel priority.

Dios
had given him back to his mother. The inside of his head had become the crib,
where he lay helpless in his anguish. Like a child with nowhere else to turn,
he fled for the recesses of himself, seeking darkness and death; seeking the
vast void where his unanswerable pain could be extinguished.

Show
this message to Nick Succorso.

Yet he
wasn’t a child: he was a man and a cyborg, and his zone implants permitted
nothing. Death he couldn’t have, and insanity couldn’t save him. Alone on the
bridge, with only Nick and ruin for company, he ran
Trumpet’s
helm from
the second’s station, and lay in the crib, and made small mewling noises no one
could hear through his locked teeth.

While
he piloted the ship — not
his
ship, never again his — he watched Nick
study her; suck up data from Angus’ board, Angus’ codes, and become her master.

“Shit!”
Nick remarked from time to time, usually in amazement. “I didn’t know they
could make ships like this. I didn’t know it was fucking
possible.
She’s
a goddamn
treasure.
”

Angus
had lost
Bright Beauty.
He’d lost Morn and his life. Now he lost
Trumpet
.
But his mother didn’t care. Dios had restored him to her; and she cared for
nothing in all the world except his weak cries and his capacity to be hurt.

Still
none of his agony showed on the outside, none of his excruciation; or only a
little — only the appalled, conflicted labour of his heart, the unsteadiness of
his hands, the anguish in his eyes. His datacore ruled everything else.

When he’d
first received
Punisher’s
transmission, his datacore had taken him to
Nick’s cabin, where he’d handed Nick a flimsy hardcopy of the message. His
programming had required him to wait while Nick groped through the implications
of the words; it had compelled him to supply Warden Dios’ answers to Nick’s
questions. Then it had enforced every instruction Nick gave him: every blow;
every protection; every piece of brutality.

Now it
drove him to pilot
Trumpet
through the elaborate chaos of Massif-5’s
system on Nick’s orders; guide what had once been his ship at high speed and
under heavy g past obstacles by the hundred; on and on for hours at a time,
with only an occasional pause to refine the focus of his instruments, or to
meet the needs of his flesh.

As he
lay in his crib, babbling pain and blood, too profoundly harmed to summon an
infant’s thin wail of protest, he also served Nick Succorso and the complex
treacheries of the UMCP with the wordless precision of a machine.

Massif-5
was a nightmare, but he didn’t fear it. He had no external fears. And his
madness was no threat to his instructionsets, or his databases: they didn’t
need his sanity to aim the ship past the loud infernos of the opposing stars,
or among the charted and uncharted hazards which clotted the system.

“What
the fuck do
you
want?” Nick had demanded from his bunk when Angus had
entered his cabin. “Can’t you see I’m sleeping?”

Angus
hadn’t replied: his datacore gave him no answer, and his own were gone. Instead
he’d simply poked the flimsy sheet from the command board’s printout into Nick’s
face.

“Shit.”

Nick
had hauled himself upright against his g-sheath and snatched the hardcopy. Then
his face had turned blank with dumb, stupid surprise. Slowly his mouth had
formed words as if he were reading the message aloud to himself; as if he
couldn’t understand it without moving his lips.