Chaos and Order: The Gap Into Madness

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “We have always presumed that their dealings were designed for our harm. We have allowed their ruse to proceed so that we may learn its meaning, and so that we may turn it to our own purposes.

  “But this is not an intersection of perhaps and perhaps not, Captain Chatelaine. This is an incidence of must. Action is essential. You are required to initiate the course and acceleration which Calm Horizons has instructed.”

  Beyond question Sorus knew what was coming. But she’d just lost the only place she might have called home, the only people she might have called friends; her ship was damaged; and her enemies were gathering—enemies who turned out to have allies in unexpected places. She had no intention of letting mutated monstrosities like Marc Vestabule and Milos Taverner make her do their work for them. Under these circumstances she would have refused a direct order from the Mind/Union which was the highest source of “decisiveness” she knew of in Amnion space.

  “You still haven’t answered my original question,” she countered stubbornly. “Why are we in a hurry? Trumpet is gone. We can’t stop her now. What do we need haste for?”

  Vestabule’s human eyelid fluttered like a signal flag, but his gaze held hers firmly. “Amnion scan has not yet been restored to full function,” he said. “Therefore data is imprecise. However, it will be made precise in a short time. At present the characteristic residue of ‘going into tach’ “—that human phrase sounded awkward on his tongue—“is discernible, despite the bombardment which clouds your instruments. As distortion fades, Calm Horizons will be able to determine Trumpet’s gap vector. Her velocity and acceleration may be calculated from previous data. What is known of the gap drive parameters of such vessels will enable us to extrapolate both direction and distance.

  “The results will be approximate,” he finished, “but pursuit will be possible.”

  There it was. Pursuit. She’d known it was coming, but she still hated hearing it said aloud. Pursue a UMCP ship on UMCP business into human space, where no doubt there were half a dozen warships waiting to keep trouble off her tail.

  “What, us and Calm Horizons!” she protested acidly, not because she expected Vestabule or Taverner to heed her, but simply because she needed to acknowledge the weight of mortality hanging from her bones. “Have you considered the possibility that the pure and righteous UMCP just might consider that an act of war? Have you considered the possibility that maybe you have more to gain from this kind of peace than they do, and if you break it you might have to pay more?”

  Taverner shook his head slowly, as if the movement were one which he’d memorized but didn’t understand. However, it was Vestabule who answered.

  “Once again you speak of an intersection of perhaps and perhaps not. We have not yet reached that intersection. Calm Horizons will remain in Amnion space. You will pursue Trumpet. You will capture her and her people, if that goal is attainable. Otherwise you will destroy them.

  “But Calm Horizons will come to your support, if it is required. At that intersection, we will accept the hazard of war rather than permit Trumpet to gain safety.”

  Nausea twisted through her stomach as he spoke. An act of war—and Soar right in the middle of it. She was too old for this; she was born too old for it.

  “Damn it,” she objected, knowing that objection was hopeless, “you’re days away from getting a message to the Mind Union. How can you take a risk like this on your own? How do you know the Mind/Union will approve?”

  The decision he’d announced had a human sound, a sound of desperation. Was it possible, she wondered, that the origins of creatures like Vestabule and Taverner could affect Amnion decision-making processes; inject an element of terror which their kind couldn’t recognize?

  Whether that was true or not, Vestabule had no trouble answering her. “We are Amnion,” he replied flatly. “And we must act. That is required. The perils of inaction now outweigh those of action.

  “To ‘approve,’ “he added, “is not a concept which has meaning in relation to the Mind/Union.”

  Facing Sorus directly, he continued, “You also must act. I will not speak of this again. You are required to approach Calm Horizons at the course and velocity you have been given.”

  No flicker or variation of his tone betrayed the threat. Nevertheless she saw it in his eyes. This was a test of wills, of loyalty: his inexorable Amnion exigencies against her human familiarity with fear.

  A test—but no contest. Since the day when she’d fallen under the power of his kind, she’d belonged to them body and soul. At the core of herself she’d been overtaken by a darkness which didn’t bear close examination.

  “Do it,” she told the helm first bitterly. “Course and thrust according to Calm Horizons’ instructions. Initiate immediately.”

  A moment later she heard the muted hull-roar of thrust, felt the complex g of acceleration conflicting with internal spin and the shock wave’s vector. Her stomach rebelled briefly, then settled back down.

  Swiveling her station so that she could look away from the Amnion, she went on, “Targ, this would be a good time to run every test you can think of on your systems.”

  “Aye, Captain,” targ responded in a clenched voice. He went to work without raising his head.

  “Scan, give me status.”

  “Almost clear,” scan replied as if she were accustomed to hearing her captain and the Amnion argue over Soar’s fate. “I still can’t confirm instrument stability, but we can see well enough to verify what Calm Horizons is telling us. Except I can’t pick up any emission trace for a ship going into tach.”

  Sorus dismissed that concern: Amnion scan was better than hers. If Calm Horizons reported gap emission, she believed it.

  She wasn’t done with Vestabule and Taverner yet, however. She would obey as she always did; but she meant to know the truth when she did it.

  Simply because he’d been human more recently and might remember more, she directed her glower at Milos.

  “Listen to me,” she breathed, clenching her teeth. “It’s easy for you to say ‘the perils of inaction now outweigh those of action,’ but I’m the one who has to do something about it. I need to understand what’s at stake here. I’m human, my ship is human, we’ll be in human space—that’s why you’re sending us instead of going after Trumpet yourself. But in human space the rules are different. There might be more than one-kind of action I can take. I won’t be able to make the right choices unless I understand what’s at stake.”

  In response, Taverner attempted a smile; but beneath his alien eyes the stretching of his mouth resembled a rictus. “You do not need to understand. I will accompany you. I will be invested with decisiveness for this pursuit.”

  Sorus swallowed an impulse to shout at him. Still softly, she countered, “That’s not good enough. You aren’t human. You don’t even talk human—your grasp on how humans think and act is already starting to fray. You need me to understand.”

  For reasons which weren’t clear to her, Taverner glanced al Vestabule. Nothing she could discern passed between them—nothing more than the erratic blink of Vestabule’s eye—but when Taverner faced her again, a decision had been reached.

  “Very well. I will explain.

  “The Amnion have much to gain by Trumpet’s capture, and much to lose by her escape.”

  “That much I guessed,” she muttered darkly.

  He was unperturbed. “The matter of gain,” he said, “centers on Morn Hyland and Davies Hyland. Her importance is simple. She is a United Mining Companies Police ensign. With her capture all of her knowledge comes into our possession. This is significant, but not critical.

  “In addition, she is a human female protected by zone implants. Her capture would enable us to acquire other knowledge. For example, if she were bred with an Amnion male, such as I am, what would result? Again this is significant, but not critical.”

  Bred? Sorus thought in cold horror. Oh, shit. But she didn’t interrupt.

  “Her offspring,”
Taverner continued as if the subject were purely abstract, devoid of personal necessity, “represents opportunities which are indeed critical.

  “The techniques which you call ‘force-growing’ and ‘transfer of mind’ are old and common among us. Our ability to bring human genetic material—your language supplies no adequate means to convey these concepts, the word ‘mutate’ is quite insufficient—into mind/union with the Amnion is also old and common. More recent research has enabled us”—he may have shrugged—“to mutate human genetic material with diminishing discrepancies of appearance. Still we have failed to produce Amnion which may pass as human.

  “Doubtless this is because genetic manipulation cannot replicate patterns of thought, expression, or behavior, the learned content of being human. Hence the importance of transfer of mind and Davies Hyland.”

  Sorus listened hard; but at the same time she tried not to hear what he was saying. She’d left her links with humanity behind so long ago that she couldn’t pretend to be concerned for her kind now—and yet the implications of Taverner’s explanation chilled her from the surface of her skin to the center of her embittered heart.

  “To enable one of us to pass as human,” he was saying, “we must provide a human mind. Among ourselves, Amnioni to Amnioni, such transference presents no difficulties. Yet when we work from human source to human target, we are able to produce a successful target only at the cost of a ruined source. We speculate that human fear causes the source to be effectively erased during transference. And when we work from human to Amnioni, both source and target are ruined. The fear of the source is replicated upon a genetically incompatible target.

  “We improve, but we do not progress.

  “However, the successful transfer of mind between Davies Hyland and his source demonstrates that our techniques may indeed operate effectively on human genetic material. If a human female with a zone implant can endure a transfer of mind to a force-grown offspring without loss of reason or function—and if the condition of that offspring is also truly functional—then the same procedure may prove viable between human and Amnioni.

  “In that case, we will become able to produce Amnion with access to learned human thoughts and behaviors. If those Amnion are grown in human shapes, they will be undetectable to humans. Then human space could be seeded with hosts of Amnion, and the overthrow of Earth-bred life could be accomplished at one stroke.

  “Thus the capture of Davies Hyland is critical. A study of his physical and mental integrity can supply the information we require. His value is only increased by the fact that he also possesses the mind of a United Mining Companies Police ensign.”

  Sorus’ brain reeled involuntarily at the idea. He was talking about genetic kazes: undetectable terrorists who could plant mutagens wherever and whenever they wished—

  Taverner wasn’t done, however. “The matter of loss,” he continued inexorably, “centers on the cyborg Angus Thermopyle and Captain Nick Succorso.

  “The cyborg has done us severe harm in destroying Billingate, and must not be permitted to, return to the United Mining Companies Police victorious. We must demonstrate our capacity to counter his actions. This is significant, but not critical. In addition we have cause to suspect that the harm for which he was designed is not yet complete. Therefore also he must be stopped. Finally we wish to study him so that we may learn the techniques of his construction. These considerations as well are significant, but not critical.

  “Captain Nick Succorso is critical. He possesses a drug which renders him immune to us. This would be a grave threat even if we did not have cause to suspect that the United Mining Companies Police are involved in the uses he has made of that drug. It is imperative that he is not permitted to disseminate his immunity in human space. If humans can be preserved from mutation, they will be able to wage warfare of a kind which must defeat us. In a raw test of technological resources, we will fail. Our means of production are too precise, time-consuming, and costly to compete with yours.

  “Yet that is not the sum of the threat which Captain Succorso represents. By some means which we do not understand—perhaps by what you term ‘intuition’—he has acquired knowledge of our researches into the use of uniquely designed gap drives to produce space-normal velocities which very nearly approximate the speed of light. If our defensives could attain those velocities, our prospects in warfare would be greatly improved.”

  With an effort, Sorus kept her expression blank; but inwardly she gave a groan of surprise. “Greatly improved” was a stunning understatement. If a battlewagon like Calm Horizons could be accelerated to .9c or more, no human station could stand against her. Even Earth might have no adequate defense.

  Without pausing, Taverner concluded, “Captain Succorso must not be permitted to convey his knowledge to the United Mining Companies Police. We fear that human space would have no choice but to engage us in warfare immediately, if only to prevent us from completing our researches.

  “Do you understand now, Captain Chatelaine?”

  She nodded slowly, dumbly. Oh, she understood, all right. She hated her role, but she understood it. If she’d been the “decisive” of Calm Horizons—or even the Mind/Union itself—she would have made the same choice. The stakes were high enough to justify risks on almost any scale.

  Yet she couldn’t let the question rest there. Some streak of stubbornness in her, some mute, unsubjugated piece of her genetic inheritance, pushed her to raise one more objection.

  “I understand fine, but I’m not sure you do. You can talk all you want, but you’ve already missed your chance to take the only action that would have made a difference. You let Trumpet get away. And since then too much time has passed. What good will it do to send me after her now?

  “The cops’ll be waiting for her to come back—with a whole fleet, if they think they need it. Even if I could catch her before she reaches them—which I can’t—I couldn’t stop her from transmitting any messages she wants. And if you’re right that Succorso is working for the cops, they already know about his immunity drug. They probably gave it to him. Nothing I do can possibly prevent them from spreading that information.

  “Sending me into human space to get shot by a fleet of damn cops is going to accomplish zip.”

  The human side of Vestabule’s face frowned as if he were unsure of her slang. Again he and Taverner glanced expressionlessly at each other before Taverner replied.

  “The question of Captain Succorso’s immunity is not a simple one. I”—for a minute he hung fire, as if his memory had slipped—“I have been the deputy chief of Com-Mine Station Security. If an immunity drug were known anywhere in human space, that knowledge would surely have come to me. Assume that this immunity is a devising of the United Mining Companies Police, and that Captain Succorso received it from them. Still it has not been disseminated. In my”—again he faltered briefly—“my experience, no knowledge or record of such an immunity exists. Therefore we must also assume that the United Mining Companies Police have chosen to suppress this immunity.

  “I—” Taverner stopped. To her surprise, Sorus saw that he was in distress. The effort of thinking like a human drew sweat from his pores, turned his pale skin the color of bone.

  “I speculate,” he resumed in a thin, slightly hurried tone, “that some intraspecies betrayal which I find difficult to comprehend is taking place. One faction has developed this immunity, and now holds it secret from the other in order to gain advantage. I find the concept abhorrent, but I remember that such explanations are plausible among humans.”

  “We do not understand human behavior in this matter,” Vestabule put in roughly. “We wish to understand it. But for the present understanding is not critical. Rather it is critical that knowledge of this immunity has not yet been disseminated in human space, and presumably will not be disseminated unless Captain Succorso takes that action upon himself.

  “As for your concern that Trumpet has fled to the haven of ‘a fleet of damn cops,’ consid
er this.

  “Our analysis of Trumpet’s departure emissions is complete. We have determined her gap vector, calculated her velocity and acceleration, and estimated her gap drive parameters. Here are the results.”

  Without waiting for permission, he reached forward and began tapping keys on the communications board. Almost immediately one of the main screens in front of Sorus flashed to life.

  Vestabule had called up a 3-D coordinates schematic for this quadrant of space. Phosphors marked the spot where Thanatos Minor had once occupied the vacuum. Soar’s position blinked green;; Calm Horizons’ showed amber.

  Swiftly a red line traced Trumpet’s course in normal space: numbers along the line indicated exact changes in thrust and vector. Then a small crimson cross indicated her leap into the gap.

  Based on Calm Horizons’ calculations, straight blue pointed the direction of Trumpet’s crossing. The Amnion warship could only speculate as to how far Trumpet had gone, but she was able to define the gap scout’s course precisely.

  That blue line didn’t run anywhere near human space.

  Sorus had used up her objections. Now she had nothing left except obedience—and darkness.

  Deliberately she thumbed the ship-wide intercom.

  “Stand by,” she told her crew. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. First we’ll rendezvous with Calm Horizons. Then we’re going hunting.”

  Wherever Angus Thermopyle and his people were headed, it wasn’t back to the UMCP.

  ANGUS

  Trumpet came out of the gap with Nick Succorso at the helm and Angus Thermopyle handling everything else scarcely 500,000 kilometers from Thanatos Minor—still within easy scan range.

  Proximity alarms echoed the warnings of Angus’ datacore and the raw squalling of his own instincts. Trumpet’s thrust drive still burned, piling on acceleration. Nevertheless the instantaneous disappearance of brisance from the planetoid’s destruction affected the ship like braking; slammed him and Nick forward helplessly against their restraints. From a hand’s width away, he gaped at his command readouts, but his eyes couldn’t absorb their information rapidly enough.