Chaos and Order: The Gap Into Madness

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “According to the computer,” Bydell replied as if she were feverish, “that ship is a Behemoth-class Amnion defensive. The biggest warship they make. UMCPDA reports say she has enough firepower to nova a small sun. And”—the data officer swallowed convulsively—“she carries super-light proton cannon.”

  Glessen croaked an involuntary curse. Cray turned away to hide her face.

  An act of war. Combative fury scalded Min’s palms. An Amnion warship had come all the way here from forbidden space to stop Trumpet. The Amnion considered the stakes high enough to justify risks on that scale.

  Was this what Warden wanted? An incursion to shore up his political position by demonstrating how necessary he and the UMCP were? Was this why he’d chosen Milos Taverner to go with Angus?—to set this up?

  How would Succorso react when he learned how much trouble he was in?

  “Captain Ubikwe,” she said harshly, “we’ve got to go after that ship.”

  He didn’t look at her. His eyes studied the displays while his hands worked his board. “Is that an order, Director Donner?” His shoulders clenched as if he were suppressing a shout. “Are you instructing me to ignore the fact that we’re on fire?”

  “Yes,” Min snapped, “that’s an order.” Then she added, “No, I’m not instructing you to ignore the fact that we’re on fire.”

  For a moment Dolph didn’t react. He bowed his head: his bulk seemed to shrink down into itself as if his courage were leaking away. He looked like a man who’d been instructed to kill himself.

  But he didn’t comply. Instead he slammed his fist onto the edge of his console, launched his station around to face her. “Then what do you expect me to do about it?” he roared. “I can’t take on a goddamn Behemoth-class Amnion warship if I can’t maneuver—and I can’t maneuver without killing my people fighting that fire!”

  Min held his angry glare. Her gaze was as strict as a commandment; absolute and fatal.

  “Captain Ubikwe,” she articulated through her teeth, “you have enough plexulose plasma sealant aboard to reinforce the entire inner hull. Pump some of it between the bulkheads onto the fire. Use it to smother the flames.”

  Dolph’s mouth dropped open: he closed it again. Shadows of outrage darkened his gaze.

  “Bydell”—his voice rasped like a scourge—“how hot is that fire?”

  Data consulted her readouts. “According to the computer, it must be”—she named a temperature. Then, inspired by her fears, she jumped to the point of Dolph’s question. “Captain, that’s hot enough to set the sealant on fire.”

  “No.” Min was sure. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that went into UMCPED’s ships. “Plexulose plasma doesn’t become flammable at that temperature until it hardens. The foam won’t burn. If Stoval works fast enough, he can smother the fire before the sealant hardens.”

  “He can’t get that close to it!” Captain Ubikwe protested like a man who wanted to tear his hair.

  Min faced him without wavering. “Tell him to put his people in EVA suits,” she retorted. “They’ll be able to work right on top of the blaze—at least for a couple of minutes.”

  Until the suits’ cooling systems overloaded and shut down.

  Dolph’s mouth twisted as if he were tasting another yell. Gradually, however, the darkness in his eyes cleared. An emotion that might have been amazement or respect pulled at the lines of his face.

  “You know,” he breathed, “that might work. It’s crazy, but it might work.”

  His surprise lasted only a moment. Then he slapped open his intercom and started issuing new orders to Hargin Stoval.

  As soon as the command fourth confirmed that he’d heard, Dolph returned his attention to the bridge.

  “Sergei,” he instructed sharply, “stop this damn rotation. Hargin has enough to deal with. Position us so we can track that ship with one of our good sensor banks. Then give me steady one-g acceleration along her heading.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Patrice was already keying in commands.

  “That won’t catch her,” Dolph explained as if he thought Min might question him, “but it’ll keep us in scan range until she starts braking.

  “She is going to start braking,” he asserted, addressing his people now rather than Min. “A Behemoth-class Amnion warship didn’t come all this way just to give us a thrill. She’s here to hunt for Trumpet. That means she’ll have to slow down.

  “Cray,” he went on without pausing, “tight-beam a flare for VI Security. Full emergency priority. Tell them they have an Amnion warship on their hands. Give them her position. Tell them to scramble every ship they have out here.”

  “And tell them to flare UMCPHQ,” Min put in quickly. “Tell them to use the fastest gap courier drone they have. On my personal authority.”

  “Do it,” Captain Ubikwe confirmed.

  “Aye, Captain.” At once Cray went to work.

  Dolph considered his readouts, then turned back to his intercom.

  “Hargin,” he called, “we’re about to lose rotation. Instead we’ll have one-g thrust straight ahead. That might make what you’re trying to do a little easier.” Stoval’s firefighters would be able to stand—and to trust the surface they stood on. “Brace yourself.”

  “I hear you, Captain,” Stoval answered. His voice had the hollow resonance of an EVA suit pickup. “We’re rigging the hoses now. We’ll be ready in a minute. Tell Bydell to start the pumps on my signal. We’ll be frying our suits that close to the fire. We can’t afford any delays.”

  “Got that, Bydell?” Captain Ubikwe demanded.

  Determination clenched the data officer’s features. Her hands fluttered and flinched on her board. “Aye, Captain.”

  “We’re standing by, Hargin,” Dolph told his pickup. “Pumps at full pressure. We’ll give you sealant as fast as the hoses can spray it.”

  He continued issuing orders; but Min had stopped listening. She was watching the warship’s blip recede in the center of the main display screen. The Amnioni was pulling away as if she would never stop.

  Min knew better.

  A Behemoth-class defensive, armed with super-light proton cannon. Hunting Trumpet.

  An act of war.

  Damaged by six months of running battles in this system, blind in one sensor bank, her core off true, and now threatened by a fire hot enough to gut her, Punisher was heading for the worst fight of her life.

  MORN

  Morn was losing control: she could feel it. The urgency and outrage which had sustained her were crumbling; falling apart. She was at the mercy of a withdrawal as poignant as the sick loss which afflicted her when she was deprived of her zone implant’s support. Her relief that Vector had been able to help Ciro had left her drained and vulnerable. Now horror seemed to gnaw in her bones.

  Horror at what Nick had done to the Lab. At the destructive madness which had driven him to leave the ship so that he could pit himself against Soar in an EVA suit. At Sib’s willingness to accompany him.

  At the fact that what Nick was doing made sense to Davies—

  As far as I can tell, I’m Bryony Hyland’s daughter. The one she used to have—before you sold your soul for a zone implant.

  Oh, Davies, my son. What’s happening to you?

  Did I teach you this? Did you learn it from me?

  Is it part of me?

  Maybe it was. But if so, it’d died in her when she first came down with gap-sickness—the culmination and apotheosis of her old grudge against herself.

  She more than anyone else couldn’t afford revenge.

  A few minutes ago Davies had returned from the airlock. Without glancing at her or anyone else, he’d seated himself at the second’s station, secured his belts. His face was closed—as dark with bile as his father’s, but somehow less readable. He’d put up walls she couldn’t penetrate; swallowed or buried the near hysteria of his insistence on hunting Soar. His hands on his board were vehement, but steady: he keyed commands with brutal pre
cision.

  “You feel better now?” Angus had asked indifferently.

  Davies hadn’t bothered to reply.

  Status indicators on one of the screens showed that he was running targ diagnostics, making sure that Trumpet’s guns were fully charged, fully functional.

  He couldn’t handle targ as well as Angus. Human desperation or passion were no match for Angus’ microprocessor reflexes. Nevertheless his attitude toward his board gave Morn the impression that he was prepared to be as relentless and bloody as his father.

  Just a little while ago—an hour or two at most—she’d made decisions and stood by them. But now she could hardly hold up her head. She’d learned to desire revenge on Gutbuster at the same time and in the same way that she’d learned to be ashamed of herself. As a child, her secret disloyalty to her parents’ calling had undermined her self-esteem; left her feeling culpable for her mother’s death. And since then that flaw at the core of her convictions had eroded everything she did.

  Now her shame came back to her in a new way.

  As far as I can tell, I’m Bryony Hyland’s daughter.

  She couldn’t see any way out of it. After everything she’d done and endured, the logic of her illness still held her.

  And she was useless. She couldn’t help Vector work. Nor could she take either of the command stations. There was combat ahead—urgent maneuvers and hard g. As soon as Trumpet faced action, Morn would have to return to her cabin, dope herself senseless with cat, and lie passive in her g-sheath while other people determined whether the ship would live or die.

  As useless as Nick in his bonds—

  The thought made her feel like weeping again. If she couldn’t comprehend Nick, she understood all too well the pressure which had impelled Sib to go with him.

  As for the rest—

  /I understand him, Davies had protested. I understand him bet ter than you do! I remember what you remember. And I’m male. Whatever that means. I know what he’ll do!

  He needs this too much.

  Morn was familiar with absolute commitments. She had her own, which had carried her to extremes she would have found unimaginable scant weeks ago. Nevertheless her heart refused to accommodate the sheer scale of Nick’s ahunger to repay Sorus Chatelaine.

  How much time did she have left?—how long before she was forced to return to her cabin and hide herself in drugs?

  Do you really think it’s preferable to keep him tied up here like a piece of meat?

  At the moment she felt it would be preferable to put the muzzle of an impact pistol in her mouth and squeeze the firing stud.

  “That’s it,” Angus muttered abruptly. “We’ve lost their transmission. Sib and Captain Sheepfucker are out of range. If Succorso wants to kill him, he can do it anytime now.”

  Morn looked at him. He seemed to squat like a toad over his console; his face and movements burned with concentration. He still hadn’t troubled to pull up his shipsuit. She could see his-bloated chest too well: remembered it too well—the black triangle of hair covering his heart like a target; his pale skin stained with sweat. Yet he was changed in some way, subtly different from the butcher and rapist she knew. And different as well from the clenched, bitter machine who’d rescued her on Thanatos Minor. Something essential had been set loose in him when she’d allowed him to edit his datacore. His concentration was as hard as his old malice and brutality; but it had new implications.

  She searched for ways to test him; to discover what the changes in him meant. Facing him with the screens behind her, she asked unsteadily, “Are we really going to go back for Sib?”

  Have we sent him out to die just so you can get rid of Nick?

  Angus paused with his fingers on the helm keys. Slowly he lifted his yellow eyes to meet her gaze. She saw shadows of hunger in them; hints of grief behind his certainty and focus. Before Trumpet left forbidden space, she’d asked him, What do you want? And he’d answered, I want you. But when she’d told him, I would rather make myself into a lump of dead meat, his reaction had surprised her.

  He’d seemed almost relieved. As if her revulsion spared him a vulnerability he couldn’t afford.

  She understood now that he’d always wanted his freedom more than he’d ever wanted her. To the extent that she could trust him here, it was because she’d released him from the coercion of his priority-codes.

  At the auxiliary engineering console, Vector cocked his head, obviously listening for Angus’ reply. Davies gave no sign that he’d heard her question.

  Angus studied her for a moment. Then he shrugged. “If we get the chance. Why not? He got rid of Succorso for me. That counts for something. And if he’s that crazy, he might be useful again.”

  His gaze held hers as if he never blinked.

  “You don’t care about anything else?” she pursued. “Sib himself doesn’t matter to you?”

  “I’ll tell you what I care about.” Angus clenched one fist and started tapping it softly on the edge of his console. However, the rest of him showed no emotion. He had zone implants to keep him steady. “I care about why you didn’t want to let Captain Sheepfucker go.”

  Morn frowned. What was he getting at?

  “You broke my heart,” he said gruffly. “You know that? You always wanted him. You wanted him the first minute you saw him, that time in Mallorys.” As he spoke, his voice became more guttural: it sounded like the exhaust of a combustion engine. “I would have killed to have you look at me that way. Hell, I would have killed everybody on the whole damn station.” His mouth twisted. “I would have stopped hurting you if you’d ever looked at me that way.”

  As sudden as a cry, he demanded, “Is that what’s going on now? Are you fucking falling apart right in front of me because you think you’re never going to see him again?”

  He shocked her. Too quickly to stop herself, she caught fire; the needy tinder of her spirit burst into flames of protest. He’d hurt her too much for too long, far too long, she’d believed he was destroying her. Pain as hot as a smelter seemed to roar and devour through her.

  “Wanted him?” she yelled into his bloated face and yellow eyes. “You think I wanted him? Do you think I’m crazy? I never wanted him. Wanting to die would have been easier!”

  Her shout jerked Vector around in his seat, made even Davies look up at her. But she ignored them.

  “All I wanted” she flung at Angus, hurling words like knives to tear at him, “all I ever wanted was somebody to help me get away from you!”

  Abruptly she stumbled silent. Again he shocked her. Instead of drawing back or looking away—or answering with his own anger—he watched her with a grin dawning on his face as if she’d filled him with sunrise.

  “Is that true?” he asked in amazement. “Do you mean it?”

  Bitter as acid, she finished, “I was sick of men. Anything male revolted me. But Nick was the only one I saw who looked like he might have a chance.”

  Angus went on grinning. Slowly he began to chuckle like a maladjusted turbine.

  “Shit, Morn. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have spent so much time wishing he was dead.”

  He was too much for her. Revulsion crackled and swirled inside her, as fresh as when he’d first degraded her; as fresh as fire. She wanted to flay his skin from his bones—draw blood for all the damage he’d done her.

  “Of course.” She strove to make her voice as harmful as his. “Of course, you sonofabitch. You don’t care what happens to Sib. You don’t care what Nick was like. You don’t care who he hurt, or how he did it, or what it cost. All you care about is that I didn’t want him more than I wanted you.”

  Angus shook his head. By degrees his strange mirth subsided; the sunrise faded from his expression. Her attack must have reached him. “Maybe that’s true,” he admitted. The admission seemed to pain him, however. Her attack restored his familiar anger. “And maybe it doesn’t matter.

  “I’m a machine,” he rasped with his accustomed harshness. “A goddamn machin
e. That’s all. Warden Dios tells me what to do, and I do it. Sometimes he pulls the strings. Sometimes I get to make my own choices. Sometimes I can’t even tell the difference. What the fuck do you expect me to care about?”

  “You aren’t being fair,” Davies put in unexpectedly. Despite his youth, he sounded as stern as her father delivering a reprimand. “He got you away from the Amnion. Since then he’s been on your side. As much as Nick let him. We would all be dead without him. What more do you want?”

  Carried by conflagration, she wheeled on her son. He was too much like Angus, too male and belligerent: he hadn’t earned the right to reproach her.

  “‘Bryony Hyland’s daughter,’ “she quoted trenchantly. “‘The one she used to have’ before I sold my soul—the pure one.” The one who hated Nick and Soar so much he was willing to let Sib die for it. “I want you to care about what you’re doing. I want you to care about what it costs.”

  Davies met her squarely. He didn’t shout or argue; didn’t so much as raise his voice. “You don’t know anything about what it costs me.”

  She couldn’t stop: she was too angry. “I’ll tell you what I don’t know. I don’t know why you feel so sorry for yourself. And I don’t want to know. It doesn’t interest me. I gave you life, whether you want it or not. I’ve kept you alive ever since.” Angus had only rescued Davies in order to trade him for her. “If you aren’t willing to talk about what’s eating you, at least stop sneering at me.”

  That stung him. Abruptly furious, he faced her with a look like black hate. Straining against his belts, he cried, “I killed my father! I killed my whole family! The universe spoke to me, and I did what it said! I did it with my own hands. And it wasn’t even me! I don’t exist. I’m just a shadow of you!”

  Then his voice dropped to a low snarl. “I need to be the kind of cop you should have been. And you don’t,” he repeated, “know anything about what it costs me.”

  As effectively as a splash of foam, he doused the flames, in her, quenched her desire to draw blood. He was right: she couldn’t begin to guess what his life cost him. And she had no idea what Hashi Lebwohl and UMCPDA had done to Angus; no idea how much he suffered for it. They didn’t deserve her indignation.