The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (74 page)

Retledge
hesitated momentarily, then said, “All right.” Through a random scatter of
electrons, he advised her, “Stand by to copy
Trumpet’s
departure course
and protocols.”

A few
seconds later helm reported again, “Got it, Captain.”

“We
have it, Chief,” Sorus informed Retledge. “We’ll turn as soon as we reach your
immediate control space.” Hurrying to end the transmission before her voice
betrayed her, she said, “Captain Chatelaine out,” and silenced her pickup with
her fist.

Good-bye.
I’m sorry. For whatever that’s worth.

“Captain
Chatelaine,” Milos observed behind her, “the falseness of your kind is without
end.” Then he asked, “Can you now identify the position you wish
Calm
Horizons
to attain?”

Full of
flaming curses, Sorus swung her station toward him. But his stolid stance and
covered eyes stopped her. Just a few hours of his company had been enough to
make her forget that he’d once been human. And she knew the Amnion well enough
by now to understand that no individual member of that species would ever have
given in to the pressure they’d exerted on her.

Maybe
she deserved what they were doing to her. Maybe she’d always deserved it.

Through
a black gloom she called
Soar’s
charts of the swarm up onto one of her
display screens; overlaid the data Retledge had just supplied; ran some quick
calculations. Then she gave Milos the co-ordinates he was waiting for.

At once
the Amnioni left to apply himself to his “instantaneous contact” device.

As
Soar
moved back into the asteroid swarm, deeper toward the heart of Deaner
Beckmann’s domain, targ began using spare thrust capacity to charge her
super-light proton cannon.

MIKKA

T
hrough the hull, she heard the hiss of hoses pulling free, the snap as
cables jerked from their sockets; she felt the visceral jolt of grapples
unclamping. Metal rang as if it were in distress.
Trumpet
was leaving
dock. For better or worse, the gap scout was free of that place.

Still
she didn’t move. Crouched at one end of her bunk with her back pressed into the
corner of the wall, she remained where she’d been ever since she and Ciro had
come into their cabin. As
Trumpet
drifted loose and lost the asteroid’s
weak g, she tucked one of her legs under the bunk’s webbing so that she wouldn’t
start to float. Other than that, nothing changed. Leaving the Lab didn’t really
make any difference.

Ciro
lay in front of her with his upper body propped on her knees and his head
turned away; her arms were wrapped around him. He refused to speak. He hadn’t
said a word since he’d begged her to kill him.
Now. While you have the
chance.

Please.

Now,
she’d panted back at him, almost gasped, when they’d
reached the privacy of their cabin.
You’re going to tell me what happened.
What Sorus Chatelaine had done to him. What Nick had sacrificed him for.
Whatever
it is, we’ll face it together.

He’d
stared at her as if she were threatening to tear out his heart; as if she’d
already started — Tearless, and as pale as death, he’d stared at her until she
couldn’t bear it; until she was the one who looked away. But he hadn’t
answered.

Tell
me!
she’d howled at him: a cry so fierce that it
seemed to rend her throat; and yet only a small thing, barely a whimper,
compared with the extremity of her dismay.
Tell me, God damn you! I can’t
help you if you don’t
tell
me!

He hadn’t
answered. Instead he’d rolled himself onto the nearest bunk and turned his face
to the wall.

Needing
to breathe, desperate for air and hope, she’d pushed onto the bunk with him;
squeezed into the corner; pulled him toward her until he lay across her knees
and she could hold him. Still he didn’t say anything. He refused to let her see
his face. Eventually she found that she didn’t care whether or not she could
breathe.

Her
brother. And her responsibility: she’d brought him to this. He’d joined
Captain’s
Fancy
because of her; Nick had accepted him because of her. Now he was the
only person left that she still knew how to love.

She’d
survived losing Nick. But if she lost her brother —

For a
while after she’d realised that he wasn’t going to talk to her, she’d wept.
That was over now. As dry-eyed as he was, she crouched in the corner and simply
held him while
Trumpet
eased out of dock and slowly, almost
unnoticeably, began to adjust attitude for departure.

Across
the Lab’s immediate control space. Back into the long, jockeying moil of the
asteroid swarm.

How
long would it take? A gentle nudge of thrust moved the ship. First the relative
void around the Lab. Then the swarm itself. Then the Massif-5 system. How long
before Nick took her and her brother and the whole ship beyond the reach of any
imaginable help?

How
long could she suffer Ciro’s silence?

Presumably
Morn and Davies had ambushed Nick in the airlock. Had they succeeded? Mikka
didn’t think so — not when he could get Angus’ help just by commanding it. No,
it was more likely that Morn and her son were dead. Unless Nick kept her alive
because he was addicted to hurting her —

Why had
Angus given them guns?

Ciro
shifted against Mikka’s arms. In a small, strained voice, he murmured, “I want
to be alone.”

Involuntarily
her muscles clenched as if she’d been hit by a stun-prod.

“They
need you on the bridge.” He kept his face stubbornly away from her. His voice
was muffled by her arm; he sounded like a little boy. A boy who knew that
nothing good could happen unless he was left to die. “I’ll be all right. I just
want to be alone.”

She
would have said, No. Would have said, I won’t do it. I can’t leave you like
this. But she couldn’t unlock her throat.

“If you
don’t go, they’re going to come here. Vector or Sib. Or Nick, if he still wants
to punish you. I can’t stand it. If you go, you can make them leave me alone.”

He was
lost. Nick had sacrificed him to Sorus Chatelaine, and now he was completely
gone.

Mikka
swallowed, trying to moisten her throat and mouth. She couldn’t help him. He
didn’t want her help: he was out of reach. The only gift she had left to give
was the dignity of letting him face whatever had happened to him on his own
terms.

She
tried to say, All right. If that’s what you want. But when she opened her
mouth, nothing came out. She’d already exhausted her capacity for tears.

“Please,
Mikka.”

She was
going to do it. As soon as she could undo the knots in her muscles, she would
get up from the bunk, go to the door —

The
chime of the intercom stopped her.

“Mikka?”
Morn’s voice. “Ciro?”
Morn’s.
“Are you all right? May I come in? I need
to talk to you.”

At once
Ciro began to babble. “No, Mikka, don’t let her, I don’t want to see her, I can’t
see her, don’t let her in —”

A
sudden thunder of blood and need nearly deafened Mikka. Her damaged forehead
throbbed. She shot a look at the intercom. No, Morn couldn’t hear him. The
pickup hadn’t been activated.

“I’m
sorry it took me so long to come,” Morn went on. “I know you’re in trouble. I
want to help. But there’s been so much — Please let me in. We need to talk.”

There’s
been so much —

Through
the thunder Mikka suddenly understood what she was hearing.
Morn’s
voice. Morn was alive. And making her own choices regardless of Nick.

Why
hadn’t he killed her?

That
question was urgent enough to reach Mikka in spite of her distress; urgent
enough to outweigh Ciro’s pleading. She wasn’t able to dismiss all the lives
that hinged on it.

Moving
roughly because she couldn’t yet unclench her arms and legs, she shifted Ciro
aside and pushed off from the bunk. He was still babbling — “Mikka, no, please,
don’t, no” — but she ignored him. As soon as she reached the control panel, she
keyed in the code to unlock the door.

Ciro
stopped as if she’d cut his vocal cords.

Morn
waited in the passage, holding a handgrip outside the door. She was alone. Her
eyes seemed unnaturally dark; almost fatal; haunted by doubt and worry.

As the
door swept aside, she showed Mikka an uncertain smile, then came determinedly
into the cabin. There she let
Trumpet’s
gentle acceleration tug her to a
halt. After a glance at Mikka, her gaze turned to the bunk where Ciro lay with
his back toward her and his face hidden against the wall.

“My
God,” she whispered. “What happened to him?”

Mikka
drew a shuddering breath. Without transition the thunder became fury. Rage
rolled and crashed like a storm in her head. “Nick set him up. Left him as
bait.
Sacrificed
him. He wanted
Soar
to take him — I don’t know
why. Some kind of scheme.”

Her
throat closed. No words could convey what she felt. She made a helpless
gesture. “He’s been like this ever since she let him go. First” — it was
impossible to say this, it hurt too much, but somehow she forced it out — “he
told me to kill him. Now he wants me to leave him alone.”

Morn’s
eyes widened: the darkness haunting them grew deeper. Her mouth formed the
words, “Kill him?” Then she bit her lip.

Mikka
started to speak again. Or she thought she did. She meant to. Meant to ask, Where’s
Nick? What’s going on? Why are you alive? What did Angus do to you? But she
didn’t make a sound. Her head hurt as if she’d just been hit. The bandage on
her forehead obscured her vision in one eye. And Morn was looking at Ciro as if
she saw his doom in the taut lines of his back.

Mikka
knew this about Morn: she’d been Nick’s victim as well as Angus’; only her zone
implant had kept her sane. But she hadn’t had that support when the Amnion had
pumped their mutagens into her veins. She understood doom.

“Ciro.”

She
said his name softly. Nevertheless her voice was enough to make him flinch.

“Turn
around, Ciro. Look at me. I need to talk to you, and I want you to look at me.”

Ciro
pressed himself harder against the wall.

With
her eyes, Morn asked Mikka’s permission to go on. Mikka nodded roughly, and
Morn nudged herself toward Ciro’s bunk. When she reached it, she closed one
hand in the webbing, pulled herself down to sit on the edge of the bunk, then
rested her other hand on Ciro’s shoulder.

She
made no effort to draw him toward her: she simply let him feel her presence
through his tension.

“Ciro,”
she repeated. “We beat Nick. Sib tied him up. And Angus doesn’t take his orders
anymore. He’s helpless.”

Surprised
out of herself, Mikka broke in, “How—?” How in hell did you manage
that?
At once, however, she set her teeth on her tongue. She didn’t want to
interrupt.

A
subtle change showed in Ciro’s body. He didn’t move, but Mikka could tell that
he was listening.

“The
message that gave Nick Angus’ priority-codes came from
Punisher
,” Morn
answered quietly. “From Dolph Ubikwe. I told you I thought there was something
else going on. Something to hope for. This time I was right.

“Somehow
that message programmed Angus’ computer with new instructions. As soon as Nick
and the rest of you left the ship, Angus told us the same codes. He handed
himself to us. Then he told us how to set him free. How to help him free
himself. Now he doesn’t have any priority-codes. They’re blocked — they don’t
affect him. He can make his own choices again.”

“Wait a
minute,” Mikka protested. She couldn’t help herself: what she heard horrified
her. “You had his codes — you had that bastard in your control — and you set
him
free?
”

Morn
didn’t look up at Mikka. She didn’t need to.

“He
used my zone implant to hurt me. So did Nick. I can’t treat other people that
way.”

Mikka
pressed a hand over her bandage to contain the pain. She was doomed; they were
all finished. Morn couldn’t
treat other people that way.
Great.
Wonderful. So instead she put herself at his mercy. Again. He was still a
cyborg, wasn’t he? Now he had the power to treat everyone else the way he’d
once treated her.

No
wonder she looked haunted. She’d gone over the edge. Like Nick.

Yet she
didn’t sound crazy.
I can’t treat other people that way.
She sounded
like a woman who’d made up her mind to take risks which terrified her.

Mikka
tried to swallow the futility rising in her gorge. “So what choices is he
making?”

Morn
lifted her head. For a moment she closed her eyes, as if that might help her
bear the pain of her memories.