The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (96 page)

She was
too much for him: harsh and kind; brutal and inarguable. Goaded by frustration,
a frenzy rose in him like hysteria. He didn’t try to hold it back.

“No, I
won’t
like
it! Don’t you think I
know
that?
None
of us are
going to like it! If they take us, one of us will have to be brave enough to
kill everybody else.

“
But
I know what gap-sickness feels like!
If you understand everything else, why
don’t you understand that? I know what it
means
when the universe speaks
to you! And I know how much it hurts afterward. If you do that to yourself
again, it’s going to tear me apart.”

Somehow
he’d found a place where she could still feel pain. Like a ship from the gap,
she seemed to spring fury at him out of nowhere. Her rage resumed tard so
nearby that he felt its heat in the bones of his face.

“
This
is the best I can do!
” she cried like the hull-roar of thrust, the quantum
howl of matter cannon. “If you aren’t able to run
Trumpet
by yourself
,
shut up and let me work!
”

Without
transition she swung away from him, leaving him scorched. Savagely she pounded
her board with the blade of her hand to toggle her intercom pickup.

“Mikka
and Ciro, Vector, pay attention.” She didn’t try to moderate her anger; or
muffle the tremor of fear and grief running through it. “I don’t have much
time. You asked for reports. This is all I can tell you right now.”

As she
talked, however, her distress seemed to ease; or it faded into the urgent
concentration she turned on the command board. Sentence by sentence her voice
grew calmer, restoring the gulf which separated her from Davies.

“We
came up on another ship,
Free Lunch
. From Billingate. We assume she’s
working with
Soar
. We fired on her — she fired back. That was the first
attack, the first hard g. We ran.

“Angus
wasn’t sure how to tackle her, so he took us back the way we came. Toward
Soar
.
He thought we had a better chance against her.

“When
we met her, we tried evasive manoeuvres. But then we lost thrust. We couldn’t
stop — we hit an asteroid. You felt that collision.

“Now
Angus is trying some other kind of tactic. We don’t know what it is. But
Soar
is blind — at least for a few more minutes.
Trumpet
has a dispersion
field that turns matter cannon fire into distortion.
Soar
can’t see us,
and we can’t see her. We’re safe until her scan clears. Then she’ll come after
us.”

Roughly
Morn dredged her hands through her hair as if she needed to pull her thoughts
away from her console in order to finish what she was saying.

“If
Angus tells us what he has in mind — and if I have time — I’ll pass it on. In
the meantime, Davies and I aren’t going to let
Soar
take us. If we run
out of other choices, we’ll try to set up a feedback loop in the gap drive, see
if maybe we can drag
Soar
into tach with us when she gets close. We’ll
never come out again — but she won’t either.

“Hang
on. We aren’t finished yet.”

Roughly
she silenced her pickup and returned her full attention to the command board.

Again
Davies stared at her. He felt that he’d been staring at her in horror or
amazement for hours. When she said the words “set up a feedback loop in the gap
drive”, his distress was transformed.

The
helpless discrepancy of identity beneath his protest and rejection underwent a
strange tectonic shift. Sure, set up a feedback loop. Why hadn’t he thought of
that? If she could find enough residual energy in the ship’s systems, enough
juice in the energy cells —

The
idea should have scared him. If Morn’s gap-sickness commanded self-destruct,
she could turn the gap drive in on itself and be sure of death.

But he
wasn’t scared: his visceral dread had become wonder. The fact that Morn knew
how to kill
Trumpet
was only part of the shift; only the catalyst. If
she could contrive a feedback loop, so could he. He could destroy the ship
himself.

Which
meant that if she died or went mad, he could still save the ship and his
friends from
Soar
. He could spare them all from ending as Amnion.

Could
spare himself.

In the
grip of an epiphany, he glimpsed the true passion behind his bloody hunger for
revenge on
Soar
/
Gutbuster/
Sorus Chatelaine. His wildness and
determination had more to do with what
Soar
wanted him for than with
what
Gutbuster
had done to
Intransigent
and Bryony Hyland.

He
wished absolutely to destroy Sorus Chatelaine in all her guises so that she
wouldn’t capture him and turn him into a weapon against humankind.

The
understanding seemed to ease his anger at Morn; his fear of her. If he wasn’t
helpless to meet his deeper dreads, he could deal with his more immediate alarm
as well. He could work with her —

She
studied her keys and readouts as if her son had ceased to exist. The screens
told him that the boson storm — matter cannon energies transmuted to secondary
and tertiary quantum discontinuities — was starting to fray, pulled apart by
particle dissipation and the sharp gauss of the swarm. Before long
Soar
would
recover her sight.

If
Angus was able to restore thrust —

Was
that why he’d fled from the bridge? Was he trying to effect some last,
desperate repair which would give
Trumpet
back her power?

Davies
needed an answer.

Clearing
his throat, he asked with as much calm as he could muster, “Why do you think
Angus hasn’t run out on us?”

Morn
didn’t glance up. “Because he doesn’t want to die.” She’d recovered her
distance, walled herself around with emptiness. “An hour after his brain fries
and his corpse falls apart, he’ll still be fighting to live. I don’t know where
he’s gone, but he is going to
do
something.

“If we’re
lucky, it might give us a chance.”

That
explanation made sense to him: it fit with what he remembered of Angus. On the
other hand, it didn’t help him comprehend why she seemed to know Angus better
than he did, even though he was crowded to bursting with her memories.

The
scan displays reminded him that he had no time for such questions. In minutes
Soar’s
sensors and sifters would recover their ability to identify their surroundings.

Without
warning the command intercom crackled. Harsh as a blow, Angus’ voice struck the
bridge.

“You
listening? Pay attention, bastard.” He must have been talking to Davies; must
have thought Davies had the command station. “I’ve got orders for you.”

Quickly
Morn searched her readouts. “He’s in an EVA suit,” she whispered. “Using suit
communications. But he hasn’t left the ship yet.” Then she keyed her pickup.

As if
she’d been expecting this, she answered, “We hear you, Angus. We’ll do whatever
you tell us. I think that dispersion storm is starting to dissipate.
Soar
might
be able to see us again in three or four minutes.”

When
she spoke to Angus, she didn’t sound distant. She sounded the way Davies
remembered feeling when she’d asked Angus to give her the zone implant control,
back aboard
Bright Beauty
.

Angus’
shock at hearing Morn’s voice was palpable despite the metallic inadequacy of
the intercom speaker.

“You
can’t do this, Morn! God damn it, what’s happened to your brains?
We need
hard g
.

“Get
out of there. Let Davies do it.

“Davies,
don’t let her stay!”

With a
snarl of his own, Davies bared his teeth and started running commands which
might force scan through the distortion. At the same time he called up a
checklist of the weapons locker’s contents. Surely Angus didn’t intend to go
EVA without guns.

Morn
glanced at him, saw what he was doing. He had the impression that under other
circumstances she might have smiled. Relief or gratitude? Hope? He didn’t know.

“He can’t
handle it alone,” she told Angus. “You know that. We’ll be defenceless, even if
we’re moving.”

“Which
we won’t be,” Davies put in so that Angus could hear him, “because we haven’t
got thrust.” He wanted Angus to know where he stood.

“So I’m
going to take helm,” Morn went on. “He’ll have scan and targ.”

“You’re
crazy!” Angus’ voice seemed to echo with anguish. “
I’ll lose my ship!
”

Morn
thumped the sides of her board with her palms; pulled her hair back from her
face. “Angus,” she returned sharply, “we’re dead where we sit. Craziness is the
only thing that might get us out of this. Stop complaining about it. Take your
own chances. I’ll take mine.”

“And I’ll
lose my ship!” he raged. “Is this the same deal over again? You get helm, but I
have to give up my ship?”

Roughly
Davies keyed his own pickup, tapped into the frequency Angus was using.

“Take
it or leave it, Angus,” he rasped. “She’s right.” He was on Morn’s side again.
His dismay at the risk had become something new. “And she isn’t completely
crazy. She’s already come through hard g once.

“Are
you sure you aren’t the one who’s lost his mind? I checked the weapons
inventory — all you’ve got is that portable matter cannon.
Soar’s
sinks
will shrug it off like water.”

Answer
that if you can. Then maybe you’ll have a right to complain.

Angus
was silent for several seconds. When he spoke again, he seemed beaten.

“All
right. We’ve all lost our minds. We might as well be crazy together.”

The
tone of his defeat was strangely familiar. He’d sounded exactly like that when
he gave her the zone implant control in Mallorys.
I accept. The deal you
offered. I’ll cover you.

“Pay
attention. I can’t afford explanations right now.”

Remember,
I could have killed you. I could have killed you anytime.

“Thrust
didn’t fail. I powered down the drive. It’s set for cold ignition.”

Morn’s
eyes widened in surprise; she sucked a quick breath. At once she began hunting
her board.

“I want
you to play dead,” Angus went on. “
Sit
there. Until I tell you.” His
tone had recovered its edge. “Then hit those keys. Get us out of here.”

“I’ll
do it,” Morn promised from the centre of her concentration. “I’ve got the keys.
I’m laying in a course now. We’ll be ready.”

“And
give me scan data.” Davies could hear Angus’ attention shift to him. “I need to
know what’s going on.”

“Right,”
Davies answered promptly. As if he were Morn, he felt focus taking over him;
giving him distance. “It’s still a mess out there. You’ll probably see better
than we can.” One of his readouts supplied him with an estimate. “The scan
computer projects we’ll start getting data we can use in eighty seconds.”

A gasp
came across the speaker. Then Angus stopped talking.

Over
the intercom Davies heard his father breathing hard, too hard; panting for air
or courage.

He left
his pickup active. Indicators showed that Morn had done the same. Grimly he
resumed his efforts to pierce the dwindling storm with
Trumpet’s
sensors.

The
storm’s centre was nearby between the gap scout and
Soar
. But the edges
of the distortion would clear first: the centre of the boson distortion would
be the last to drift apart. When he finally, truly, applied his mind to
Trumpet’s
situation instead of to Morn, a new thought sent alarm hiving like insects
along his nerves.

What if
Soar
didn’t hold her position, waiting for sight? What if she altered
her course and continued to advance, hoping to come around the storm and catch
Trumpet
blind?

Sweat
smeared his palms. In contrast his mouth felt as dry as a wasteland. Angus, he
tried to say, Angus, I just thought of something. But he couldn’t find his
voice: his throat refused to work. His hands shook as he pounded keys;
redirected his instruments toward the fraying fringes of the distortion.

Angus
continued to strain for air as if he were wrestling demons.

Almost
at once blips signalled at Davies from several different locations. Ships on
all sides of him; half a dozen or more.

But
that was patently impossible. Ghosts, he was picking up ghosts: spooks and
echoes. If scan claimed to see a ship when its view was blocked by solid stone,
there was no other explanation. Nevertheless it was a good sign, no matter how
much it scared him. If the sensors could see ghosts, they would soon be able to
identify real ships.

Like
moons or satellites trapped by orbital decay, the ghosts appeared to swirl and
converge, coming together as scan laboured to filter out the mad from the
actual.