The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (56 page)

She
understood from experience. Oh, she’d never been welded. But Angus had imposed
the same kind of submission on her. Later, voluntarily, she’d imposed it on
herself. Time and again she’d felt an appalled outbreak of need and pain
collapse in the face of electromagnetic coercion.

I’m not
your son.

Davies
opened his mouth. He was going to say something hostile; try to defend her by
attracting Angus’ malice to himself; she saw it on his face. With an effort
that caused her to shudder as if she were shaken by fever, she brought up her
hand in a warning gesture, cautioned him to silence.

He
looked at her with his father’s fear and fury clenched in his features.
Nevertheless he clamped his jaws shut. The only sound from him was a low,
visceral snarl.

Artificially
steady, Angus began tapping keys on the second’s board.

Morn
couldn’t do anything except gape as a flimsy sheet scrolled from the console’s
printout.

Angus
tore off the hardcopy slowly, as if it were precious. His datacore demanded
precision. Ineffably meticulous, he pivoted in the asteroid’s slight g and left
the second’s station. Despite the pressure of his zone implants, he appeared
almost at ease, almost graceful, as he moved.

His
boots touched the deck in front of Davies. He stopped himself with a palm on
Davies’ shoulder.

Davies
didn’t move. Stiff with incomprehension, he bore the contact without flinching;
without striking out. His attention was fixed on the sheet Angus carried.

Still
slowly, as if the situation had become too urgent for haste, Angus handed the
sheet to Davies.

For no
reason she could name, Morn found herself holding her breath like a woman who
wasn’t sure whose son Davies truly was, hers or Angus’.

Davies
peered at the hardcopy. He seemed unable to read it. Perhaps he was having
trouble focusing his eyes. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Jesus,”
he sighed — a long, soft exhalation, as if he were draining out of himself. By
degrees he turned toward Morn.

Angus
turned with him: they faced her together. The resemblance between them was
uncanny. Davies was less bloated: he had less muscle, less fat. His black
shipsuit contrasted strangely with Angus’ grimy outfit. But those differences
were trivial. Only Davies’ eyes — eyes like Morn’s — distinguished him from his
father.

Suddenly
Davies flailed his arms at the ceiling and yelled as if he were crowing, “
We’ve
got him! We’ve got him!
”

She
jerked backward involuntarily. She couldn’t help herself: his unexpected
savagery hit her like an attack. His shout echoed in her ears. For a moment she
couldn’t hear anything else. Between them, he and his father had deafened her.

Angus’
cheeks were still wet: his eyes bled tears he couldn’t control. He didn’t glance
at Davies. Instead his yellow gaze clung to her as if he were begging her for
something.

Understanding?
Forgiveness?

Help?

Her
heart laboured for several beats before she was able to find her voice.

“What
is it? What does it say?”

With an
effort Davies forced himself to speak more quietly. “It’s from
Punisher
.”
Yet his eyes burned, and his whole body appeared to emit a furious joy. “We’ve
got his codes. Angus’ codes. Now we can beat Nick!”

Dumb
with supplication, Angus stared at Morn like a beaten animal.

The
words were plain enough.
We’ve got his codes.
Yet she couldn’t grasp
what they meant.
Angus’ codes.
Panic and hope and old pain filled her
chest until she could hardly breathe, crowded her heart while it struggled to
beat.

Now we
can beat Nick!

What do
you mean?

Her
question was inaudible. She’d asked it of herself, not of her son. Or of Angus.

And she
didn’t know the answer.

She
tried again.

“What
do you mean?”

“I mean”
— Davies’ hand shook with eagerness as he shoved the flimsy sheet at her, urging
her to take it — “we can
countermand
him. We can cancel his orders. We
can give Angus new ones.

“We can
beat
Nick.”

Fighting
a constriction in his throat, Angus said thickly, “It’s not that simple.” His
gaze was flagrant with need, but he couldn’t articulate his appeal.

Dumbly
Morn accepted the hardcopy so that she could read it herself.

Warden
Dios to Isaac,
it said,
Gabriel priority.

Familiar
codes identified
Punisher
as the source of the transmission. But ciphers
she didn’t recognise surrounded the words themselves; encysted them. They might
have been some specialised machine language. Certainly they didn’t resemble any
normal UMCP routing or command sequence.

Show
this message to Nick Succorso.

Punisher
had given control over Angus to Nick. Now Angus had given it to
Davies.

And to
Morn.

All at
once everything mattered too much. She couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
Without forewarning or preparation, with nothing to go on except instinct and
desperation, she’d arrived at a crisis in which any error would be fatal.

God
help her, she wasn’t
ready.

Davies
was so full of excitement that he bounced toward the ceiling. He couldn’t
contain himself: he didn’t see the danger. The intensity of his desire to
protect her blinded him.

The
burden fell on her.

Ready or
not.

Her
heart beat in her ears, as loud as drums, and heavy as thunder: the venous
funeral march of her inadequacy. It didn’t matter whether she was ready or not.
No one cared. She couldn’t afford to care herself.

Nevertheless
she was as careful as the pounding in her ears and the frenzy in her soul
allowed.

“Isaac,”
she pronounced unsteadily, “this is a Gabriel priority instruction. Answer my
questions.

“Is
this the message that came in earlier — the one Nick told us about?”

He
swallowed once, convulsively. Beggary bled from his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Did
you obey it?”

“I didn’t
have any choice.”

“You
showed it to Nick?” she insisted, wanting to be clear; wanting him to tell her
precisely where she stood.

Angus
nodded as if his neck were in pain. “Yes.”

“Of
course he did,” Davies put in impatiently. He was too excited: he didn’t seem
to have noticed that the situation had become lethal; that his life as well as
hers was at stake in every sense. Moment by moment Angus’ betrayal grew more
terrible. “Those are his
priority-codes.
He
can’t
refuse them.”

Morn
ignored him.

“And
since then” — she needed to be sure,
needed
to hear Angus say these
things — “he’s been telling you what to do? You’ve been taking his orders? That’s
why you turned against the rest of us?”

“Yes.”
If his zone implants had allowed it, he might have sighed.

She
took a deep breath, let it out slowly in an effort to calm herself. Fear
yammered in her ears — a whole mob of panics clamouring to be heard. The
hardcopy shook in her hand.

“Then
why are you showing it to us now? Did Nick tell you to do this? Is it some kind
of trick?”

That
struck a spark in Angus. Hints of anger showed past his mute supplication. “He
doesn’t know.”

Davies
settled to the deck. “Is that what you’re worried about?” he asked tensely, as
if he were running to catch up with her. “You think this is part of some game
Nick is playing?”

Morn
didn’t answer. She had no attention to spare. Everything in her was
concentrated on Angus.

“Then
who ordered you to do this? And how did they do it?” The sheet trembled. “This
doesn’t say anything about giving us your codes.”

“I don’t
know who.” A small tremor ran through Angus as if he were trying to shrug. “I
can only tell you how.

“It’s
that coding,” he explained harshly, “that machine language. I can’t read it,
but my datacore can. When I entered those strings, it ordered me to show the
message to Davies.

“But
not right away,” he added. “I couldn’t do it if Nick would see or hear me. I
didn’t know I was supposed to do it until he left the ship. My datacore didn’t
tell me —” Another tremor. “They don’t want him to know.”

“In any
case,” Davies objected, “it doesn’t matter. We
have
the codes. We can
use them, no matter what Nick knows.”

For a
moment Morn turned away from Angus’ appeal to face her son. She held his gaze,
let him see the demand in her eyes, until his enthusiasm receded into a scowl.
Then she shifted back to Angus.

“What
did you mean, ‘It’s not that simple’?”

The
tension in his shoulders and arms told her that she was moving closer to his
need; to the thing he wanted to ask of her.

“You
can countermand him,” he replied in a hoarse rasp. “Fine. He can countermand
you. You’ll cancel each other out. What happens then? Maybe you can beat him,
maybe you can’t. But I’ll be paralysed — I’ll be useless.”

Morn
could almost hear him wailing, Please,
please!
as if his pain was beyond
language. The sheer scale of the harm which Warden Dios and Hashi Lebwohl had
done to him shocked her.

But
Davies couldn’t contain himself. “We still have the advantage,” he interrupted.
“Nick doesn’t know he’s in trouble. We can attack him first. Angus can open the
weapons locker. We’ll meet Nick in the airlock with guns. Nail him before he
reaches Angus. Lock him away where Angus can’t hear him. Kill him if we have
to. Let’s see him countermand
that.
”

Angus
never looked aside from Morn. His datacore had required him to give his codes
to Davies; but she was the one he focused on.

“It’s
not that simple,” he repeated. Pressures which should have driven him into
madness — or at least into motion — gripped and released in his muscles, yet
his zone implants held him stationary. “What if he calls me from the Lab? What
if he uses the exterior intercom to talk to me while you’re waiting in the
airlock?” His moment of anger was over. “I have to obey him. If he asks me what’s
going on, I’ll tell him.”

Davies
opened his mouth; closed it again: Morn’s expression stopped him. Like Angus,
he stared at her as if he wanted to ask her for something, beg —

Now she
knew the question Angus wished her to put to him. It came to her as clearly as
if it were written on the hardcopy in her hand. Yet as soon as she identified
it she quailed.

Everyone
might live or die according to what she did — Mikka and Ciro, Sib and Vector,
as well as Nick and Angus, Davies and herself. That was terrible enough. And
yet mere death seemed simple in its own way: its implications could be
understood. Angus’ betrayal and need thronged with larger issues.

She’d
promised herself that she would cling to the legacy of her parents, her family:
that she would commit herself to the convictions and dreams she’d learned from
them: that she would be a cop in the pure sense, even though the cops were
corrupt, even though men like Warden Dios and Hashi Lebwohl were capable of
inflicting such extreme hurts on humankind — and on individual humans.
Precisely because she was weak and flawed, she would make the effort to be
strong.

Now
that seemed impossible.

Unable
to take the next step, she turned aside.

“But
why are we going through all this?” To herself she sounded plaintive, almost
self-pitying; overtaken by vulnerability. Nevertheless she continued, “If
Warden Dios wanted us to have those codes — or Hashi Lebwohl — why not just
give them to us?” This was important, perhaps crucial, despite the fact that it
didn’t touch Angus. “Why hand them to Nick first? He might have killed us
before Angus ever got a chance to enter those codestrings.”

Davies
was nearly frantic with urgency or vexation. “That doesn’t matter, either.”

She
jerked her head toward him. A flare of anger burned across her fear. “It
matters,” she snapped. “Who are we working for now? Who’s trying to use us?
Whose side are we supposed to be on?”

Davies
didn’t flinch or hesitate. “Our own,” he answered as if he were sure. “The side
we choose.”

She
fought an impulse to yell at him. Wake up! she wanted to shout.
Grow
up!
There’s a rift in UMCPHQ. Maybe in all of human space. Warden Dios gave Hashi
Lebwohl orders, and Lebwohl subverted them because he didn’t want to obey. Or
Dios didn’t want Lebwohl to know what his real orders were, so he hid them. Or
Min Donner didn’t like what either of them did, but she didn’t want to risk
overt insubordination, so she sneaked her own orders into the transmission. It
matters!
Where we go from here, everything we do or try to do from now on,
depends
on
who wants Nick to control Angus. Who wants us to take that away from him.