The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (53 page)

“For a
couple of minutes there, I thought I was about to die. My hands were sweating
so hard my fingers skidded off the keys. By the time I got around to firing
after the old man gave me an order, there was nothing to fire at except rocks
and vacuum. He swore continuously whenever he didn’t have something else to
say, and I knew he was swearing at me.”

Dolph
paused as if he were lost in memory, then sighed. “That’s when it happened.”

He fell
silent; might have been finished.

In
spite of herself, Min wanted him to go on. His voice or his story had a
mesmerising quality: it carried her with it. And she wasn’t alone. She could
see at a glance that every head in the corridor was turned toward him. Foster
bit his lip while he waited as if he didn’t like the suspense.

Compelled
by the unexpected silence, someone offered tentatively, “Hallucinations?”

Dolph
shook his head. “Worse than that.” Suddenly his dark face broke into a grin
like a sunrise. “I fouled my suit.

“I mean
the
whole
suit.” Laughter welled up in him from some core of personal
amusement. “Talk about hot shit!” He started chortling, then began to laugh as
if he were telling the best joke he knew, the best joke of his life. “You would
think I hadn’t been to the head for a week. By the time I was done, the bridge,
I mean the
entire
bridge, stank like a backed-up waste treatment plant.
Our communications third actually
puked
because she couldn’t stand the
smell.”

His
mirth was infectious. Several of his people laughed with him as if they couldn’t
help themselves. A dozen others chuckled.

While
his laughter subsided, he concluded, “Our medtech was right. I was fucking
depressed for
weeks
.”

Shaking
his head, he pulled himself past the hammocks and coasted away in the direction
of his quarters. As he left, his shoulders continued to quake as if he were
still laughing.

Together
Min and Foster drifted back into sickbay and let the doors close.

The
medtech didn’t look at her. Frowning like a man who wasn’t sure of the
propriety of what he’d just witnessed, he asked, “Is that story true, Director?”

She
nodded. “Yes. His captain told me years ago. I’d forgotten all about it.” A
moment later she added, “But the way his captain told it, it wasn’t funny.”

Sounding
wiser than his years, Foster murmured, “It wouldn’t work if it weren’t true.”
Then he returned to his console and monitors.

 _

 _

An hour later, during another
brief patch of clear space, Dolph chimed Min in her cabin to let her know that
twenty-one of his SAD-afflicted people had released themselves from sickbay and
gone back to their duties.

She
still wasn’t sure what it was he’d done, but obviously it’d succeeded.

“You
couldn’t have faked that,” she informed him sternly. “You really think that old
story is funny.”

She
wanted to ask him, How? How do you do that? But the words stuck in her throat.

“Of
course,” he replied through a yawn. “I wanted to give them some other way to
think about how they felt. I don’t mean physically. How they felt emotionally.
Mentally.” Almost echoing Foster, he explained, “It wouldn’t work if I had to
fake it.”

Another
yawn came across the intercom. “Forgive me, Min. I’d better take a nap while I
have the chance.”

Her
speaker emitted a small snik as he severed the connection.

For a
while as
Punisher
wrenched and dove through the system in the direction
of Deaner Beckmann’s lab, Min lay sealed in her g-sheath and tried to imagine herself
laughing at Warden Dios. Or laughing with him at the way she felt about some of
his recent actions.

She
couldn’t do it.

DAVIES

W
ith Morn’s training as well as his own experience, Davies listened
to the ship. He felt the complex pressure of the drives, gauged the various
vectors of braking and manoeuvring g. When
Trumpet
entered the asteroid
swarm which surrounded and protected the Lab, he knew the difference.

The
change was obvious. Quick variations on a comparatively low velocity had a
different effect than changes to avoid obstacles at high speed. And each course
shift as
Trumpet
had crossed the Massif-5 system had been followed by a
matching return to the original heading: pressure on one side; then pressure on
the other. But in the swarm every g-kick of thrust belonged to an ongoing
series of new trajectories as
Trumpet
dodged back and forth among the
rocks.

Lying
paralysed in his g-sheath and webbing tormented Davies. All his energies —
mental, emotional, metabolic — burned at too high a temperature: most of the
time he needed movement more than he needed rest. In addition the discomfort of
his ribs and arm and head galled him. Despite his elevated recuperative
resources and all the drugs sickbay had given him, his body couldn’t heal fast
enough to suit him.

A
restlessness as severe as panic impelled him. As soon as
Trumpet
broached the swarm, he risked getting off his bunk.

He
could use his arm: his cast gave the still-fragile bones enough protection. And
the more flexible acrylic around his ribs supported his chest adequately. As
long as Nick didn’t hit him with too much g, he could move without damaging
himself.

Simply
because his need was so great, he spent ten minutes pumping himself like a
piston between the deck and ceiling of the cabin — the zero-g equivalent of
push-ups. Then he used the san cubicle; scrubbed himself in the needle spray
for a long time, trying to clean away the sensation of Angus’ betrayal.

But
when the vacuum drain had sucked the water away and dried his skin, he decided
not to put on a clean shipsuit. He’d worn the same strange black Amnion fabric
since the hour of his birth. It wasn’t especially comfortable, but he needed
its alienness — needed external reminders of where he’d come from, who he was.
Whenever he let his defences down, he forgot that he wasn’t Morn. Sleeping, he
dreamed her dreams.

Maybe
that was the real reason he couldn’t endure much rest.

Thrust
punched his shoulder against one wall. Not hard: just enough to remind him that
he should be careful. And that he had to check on Morn.

Wrapped
in her webbing and sheath, she slept the flat, helpless sleep of too much cat.
Repeated doses which he’d pushed between her slack lips had kept her
unconscious so long that he began to wonder if she would be able to wake up.
The medtechs in the Academy had enjoyed telling cautionary tales about men and
women overdosed with cat who sank so far down into themselves that they never
returned.

He
looked at the cabin chronometer: she was due to receive another capsule — or
begin waking up — in forty minutes.

After a
moment he decided he couldn’t wait that long. In spite of the danger, he
unsealed her from her bunk and lifted her out.

At once
he noticed that she’d fouled her shipsuit. Nobody could sleep as long as she
had and stay clean.

Without
transition the rank, sweet smell triggered memories —

This
had happened to her before; happened to him. When Angus had first brought him
aboard
Bright Beauty,
Angus had strapped him down on the sickbay table
to immobilise him. Fresh with horror from the destruction of
Starmaster
,
the slaughter of the Hyland clan, Davies or Morn had cried and wailed, screamed
against the deaf walls until he’d lost his voice; lost his mind. Then Angus had
shot him full of cat —

— and
when he’d awakened, still in the EVA suit which had brought him to
Bright
Beauty
from
Starmaster’s
wreck, this smell was everywhere, filling
the sickbay, filling his head. Angus’ power over him began with murder and
gap-sickness; blood and the clarity of self-destruct.

Asleep
in her son’s arms, Morn whimpered softly and turned her head aside, as if he’d
disturbed her with bad dreams.

Her
small sound and movement brought him back to himself.

Sudden
sweat streaked his cheeks. His heart laboured as if he were fighting for his
life. That was
Morn’s
smell;
her
ordeal, not his: it was
her
memory.
Her nightmare —

 When
he lost the distinction, let himself forget who he was, he became as mad as she’d
been then.

Oh,
Morn.

No
doubt he ought to be crazy. Nevertheless while he could still tell what sanity
was, he clung to it. Morn needed him; that came first. Later he would try to
get rid of the stink in other ways.

Grim
with determination, he drew her weightless body into the san. His stomach
twisted as he pulled off her shipsuit and propped her in the cubicle. At least
she would be spared this one memory: she was still asleep. He set the jets to
produce a fine mist which wouldn’t drown her. While the water ran, he disposed
of her soiled shipsuit, then hunted for a clean one that might fit her.

More
jolts knocked him from side to side as
Trumpet
dodged. Each one hit like
a stun-prod of alarm: he feared its effect on Morn. But they weren’t hard
enough to hurt him. They probably weren’t hard enough to trigger her
gap-sickness.

When he
went back to check on her, he heard her coughing in the mist. She sounded
conscious.

He
raised his voice so that she could hear him. “I’m right here. Nick hasn’t said
anything yet, and I guess the others are still in their cabins, but I know we’re
in the swarm. I assume we’re going to reach the Lab soon. I couldn’t stand to
give you any more cat, so I decided to take the risk of waking you up.”

After a
thin spasm of coughing, she murmured, “Thanks.”

She was
awake. And sane. A sudden rush of relief left him light-headed and vulnerable;
close to tears. No gap-sickness: not this time. Until that moment he hadn’t
realized the extent of his fear. As far as he could remember, Morn had never
tried controlling her mad certainty with cat. He hadn’t known it would work.

Shaking,
he left the san and closed the door.

While
he waited for her to finish, he did more zero-g pushups, working his body until
the alien fabric of his shipsuit chafed his skin and he began to sweat so hard
that he needed another shower; working the dread out of his muscles.

She
emerged clean and dry; but too many hours of enforced sleep had done nothing to
improve her appearance. She looked pale and thin, almost emaciated, as if she
hadn’t eaten for days. Lingering cat dulled her gaze. Despite the absence of g,
her movements seemed frail, confused. It was hard to believe she was the same
woman who’d insisted,
Don’t fight. Don’t refuse. Stay alive — don’t give him
an excuse to kill you.

There’s
a lie here. Somebody’s lying. We need to stay alive until we find out what it
is.

But
Angus hadn’t told Nick how to make another control for her zone implant. That
memory belonged to Davies; he trusted it. He remembered it while he looked at
her so that her weakness wouldn’t fill him with fresh panic.

She
didn’t meet his gaze. Maybe she couldn’t focus her eyes. “Now what?” she asked
wanly.

He
shrugged. Droplets of sweat detached themselves from his face and became
perfect globes. They caught the light like glass beads as they floated toward
the scrubbers. “I guess we wait.” Wait for
Trumpet
to reach the Lab.
Wait for Vector to attempt his analysis of the mutagen immunity drug. Wait for
Nick to make a mistake. Or for Min Donner to perform some inconceivable
intervention. “I don’t have any better ideas.”

She
shook her head. She didn’t either.

 _

 _

Trumpet
remained relatively motionless for what seemed like a long time,
then started moving again. Now every shift of course and nudge of thrust was
gentle, cautious: the ship slid forward as if she were picking her way through
a mine field. Davies fought an impulse to watch the chronometer. Instead he
tried to guess by sheer intuition what
Trumpet
was doing.

She’d
stopped so that Nick could talk to the Lab, get permission to approach. Now she
was moving in. Slowly, so the Lab wouldn’t see her as a threat. So the Lab’s
guns wouldn’t open fire on her. She must be close to her destination. If the
matter cannon emplacements were too far out, rock and static would make
accurate targ impossible. Scan installations might be anywhere in the swarm,
reporting their data along long chains of remote transmitters; but the guns
would be nearer the Lab.

OK:
assume that made sense. How much longer? An hour? More? Less? Deliberately he
avoided the chronometer. Because he needed movement, any kind of movement, he
began doing push-ups again. Gradually, without noticing it, he increased his
pace. Up. Down. The directions were meaningless, of course — simply a frame of
reference. Up down. Nevertheless the action of his body generated its own g;
its own significance. Updown.