Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Rhetorically Carmel asked, “How in hell did you get to be data first on a ship like this?”

  Nick grinned like his scars. “On-the-job training. It’s good for you.”

  Mackern didn’t respond.

  Detached from the tension around her, Morn considered her situation. She wasn’t concerned about the danger to Captain’s Fancy’s data, not in any immediate sense. For some reason, she hadn’t realized earlier that she could solve this problem. Perhaps she’d been confused by Orn and violence; or by the fact that she was pregnant. But she knew now that she held the solution.

  She was UMCP. She still had her id tag—and her codes.

  She didn’t need to think about that. The ship’s problems had lost interest for her. Instead she considered the implications of her decision to abort her son.

  Externally there were no implications. No one knew she was pregnant: her child’s demise would change nothing. All the implications were internal.

  Like any woman, she’d often thought about having children. The excitement of life growing within her—the necessary pain and release of birth. From time to time, she’d imagined wanting a son. She’d imagined naming him after her father.

  But not like this. This baby was Angus Thermopyle’s last crime against her. He’d been conceived in cruelty and rage: a simple command to the sickbay systems would destroy him. That was just.

  And yet she’d lost her initial sense of shock and betrayal. Instead her determination to be rid of her baby left her feeling light-headed and detached, like a woman who’d decided on suicide.

  A minute later Mackern said tightly, “Ready. I think.”

  “Then do it,” Nick replied.

  Mackern took a deep breath and entered the command.

  Both scan and data went down simultaneously.

  Unable to stop himself, Mackern groaned and covered his head with his arms.

  Malda looked like she was hyperventilating.

  “We’re finished,” Lind said, wide-eyed and appalled. “We’re lost. We’re lost.”

  Helplessly the man at the helm echoed, “Lost.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Mikka’s shoulders slumped; she sounded beaten. “Reset,” she said into her handcom. “Scan and data.”

  As soon as her board came back up, Carmel tested it and reported that she was still wiped.

  With an effort, Mackern pulled his arms down. But then he hung fire; he couldn’t seem to decide which keys to hit. Staring through his sweat, he gaped at his board and didn’t move. His lips trembled as he asked, “Did I do that? Is it my fault?”

  Muttering obscenities, Mikka Vasaczk started around the bridge toward the data station. She may have intended to slap him. Or maybe she knew enough about data to relieve him.

  Nick stopped her with a small slash of one hand—a gesture so self-contained that Morn nearly missed it.

  Mikka confronted Nick from almost directly over his head. Offering the handcom, she asked, “Should I call Parmute?”

  Nick shook his head slightly, dismissed her intervention. He was fighting for Captain’s Fancy’s life. That meant he had to take care of his people.

  “Mackern.”

  The data first sat up straight, as if Nick had run a lash along his spine. “I’m sorry, Nick,” he said without looking at his captain. “I’m not Orn—I’m not good enough. I don’t know anything about viruses.”

  “Mackern,” Nick repeated, as distinct as a filleting knife. “I want a report.”

  “Yes,” Mackern winced out. “I’m sorry. Yes.”

  Tremors ran through his shoulders as he jabbed his fingers at the keys in front of him.

  When his equipment resumed function, he began testing Captain’s Fancy’s data. Hardwired systems running at microprocessor speeds reported back to him almost instantly.

  “It’s gone.” His voice sounded hollow in the silence; haunted. “All our data—everything.” He may have wanted to cry out, but he was too scared. “It’s all been wiped.

  “We’re lost.”

  “Goddamn it, Nick!” Mikka rasped. “I warned you.”

  Surrounded by swelling, Nick’s scars were as bright as an ooze of blood under his gaze.

  For the third time, Morn shook her head.

  The danger was real; she knew that. She understood the nightmare of a blind voyage down the endless gullet of the galaxy. But it didn’t touch her. As long as the ship’s position could be fixed—as long as the ongoing course correction could be measured against Captain’s Fancy’s destination—she wasn’t doomed. None of them were.

  Someone must have spoken to her. If so, she wasn’t aware of it: her true attention was focused elsewhere. After a moment, however, she realized that everybody was looking at her.

  Mackern’s lips trembled with dismay. Mikka and Carmel glared their distrust. Lind’s eyes bulged, and his larynx worked like a piston. Malda Verone held her hair back with both hands, as if that enabled her to restrain her fear. The way the helm first stared made him look like he’d swallowed his chin.

  “I said, why?” Nick repeated. He had no patience for her preoccupation. “Mackern and Lind keep saying we’re lost. You keep shaking your head.” Threats were plain in his voice. “I want to know why.”

  Morn made an effort to bring herself back from the calm, unconcerned place where her decision of death resided. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was like her head, light and separate. “I thought you understood. You talk about the fact that I’m UMCP. I didn’t realize I needed to explain.”

  Nick contained his exasperation with difficulty. “Explain what?”

  “I don’t know anything about viruses. I can’t cure what Vorbuld did. But you don’t need to worry about a wipe like this. You haven’t lost anything. The problem isn’t data, it’s function. You can look at anything you want. The virus doesn’t prevent you from looking. You just can’t take action without crashing your systems.”

  You may not even be able to stop this course correction without wiping helm.

  “Morn—” Nick began; he was close to fury.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Mikka cut in, fuming at her. “Function is hardwired! The data is already gone!”

  Morn still shook her head. “No, it’s not.”

  For one heartbeat, everybody stared at her; two; three.

  Then a light like a burst of joy shot across Nick’s face. “Because you’re UMCP!”

  She faced him squarely. “I can access your datacore.” It was a temporary fix, but it would work. “Every scrap of data you ever had is copied there. Automatically. Constantly. And that’s hard memory. It can’t be wiped. It can’t be tampered with.

  “I can access it for you. I’ve got my id tag. I know the codes. I can copy everything back into your systems. It may take a day or two”—the sheer volume of information in the datacore probably ran to thousands of gigabytes—“but you’ll have everything back where it was a few minutes ago.”

  “Amazing!” the helm first breathed as if he were in awe.

  Nick’s eyes shone at her with plain delight.

  “Wait a minute,” Mikka said. “Wait a minute.” She sounded stunned, as if she’d been hit in the sternum. “What about the virus?”

  Morn shrugged without dropping Nick’s gaze. “I presume it’s recorded in the datacore.” She was hardly aware of her own certainty. “It’ll come back with everything else.”

  “So we’ll still have the same problem.”

  “But you can navigate,” answered Morn. “You can tell where you are.”

  What more do you want from me?

  Abruptly Nick rubbed his hands together, then slapped his console. He’d recovered his relish. “By hell, we’re going to beat this thing. I don’t give a fuck about viruses. Let the Bill flush the damn thing for us. While we’ve got it, we’ll work around it. We can leave the internal systems on automatic. We may not be comfortable, but we’ll be alive.

  “We’ll use the computers to run our calculations, plan what we nee
d to do. Then we’ll cut them out of the loop and enter commands manually. It’ll be sloppy as shit, and we won’t be able to fight our way past a signal buoy, but at least we might get where we’re going.

  “All right?” he asked. “Is everybody happy?” But he obviously didn’t expect an answer. “Let’s get started.

  “Mackern, let her at your board. She can set it up. Then you and Parmute can run it.”

  With an expansive sweep of his arm, he gestured Morn toward the data station.

  Light-headed and certain, guided by new priorities, she unbelted herself from the engineer’s seat and walked past Mikka, Carmel, and Lind toward the data first.

  Lind grinned at her like a puppy; Carmel frowned noncommittally. Mikka scrutinized her hard as she passed, then asked Nick, “Do you trust her?”

  “What harm do you think she can do?” he countered. “We’re already wiped. Without that data, she’s as lost as we are.”

  That was true. On this point, Morn had no treachery in her. Angus himself might have been honest now.

  But he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save his son. If she were still under his control, he might have used some of the more esoteric functions of her zone implant to give her the most painful abortion possible.

  As she moved, she pulled the chain of her id tag up over her head.

  Mackern stared at her. His skin had a gray, strained tinge, and his gaze was rimmed with sweat.

  Because he seemed to have nothing whatever in common with men like Orn Vorbuld and Nick Succorso and Angus Thermopyle, she smiled at him as she jacked her tag into his board.

  He didn’t smile back. He couldn’t: he was afraid to hope.

  With her tag and her access codes, she tapped into Captain’s Fancy’s datacore; she set it to provide the same kind of playback Com-Mine Security would have used to search for evidence which might convict Angus of something worse than stealing supplies. Then she told Mackern, “Before you initiate, you’ll have to route the data and set the computers to copy it. You know how to do that.”

  He nodded once, carefully, as if he didn’t trust the muscles in his neck.

  “When playback ends,” she continued, “all you have to do is unplug my id tag. That resets the datacore. And it’ll release your board. Then you can get back to work.”

  He mumbled something which may have been “Thanks.”

  Still smiling for his benefit, she turned away.

  Nick watched her across the bridge with passion in his eyes and blood in his scars.

  Riding the moment, as well as the nameless change within her, she said without premeditation or anxiety, “Nick, I’m tired of being a passenger. I want to work. Let me be data third. I’ve got some of the right training—and I can learn the rest.”

  Let me into the systems. Let me find out what we’re doing, where we’re going. Give me a chance to learn the truth.

  Trust me.

  Mikka started to protest; but when she saw the expression on Nick’s face, she stopped herself, clamped her mouth shut.

  His grin intensified. As if he were playing an elaborate game, he said, “I’m like a genie in a bottle.” His tone was a mixture of insolence and lust. “Rub me the right way, and I grant wishes.” Abruptly he waved his arms in a flourish around his head. “Poof! You’re data third.”

  Tight with strain and uncertainty, Lind, Malda, and the helm first laughed nervously. Mikka and Carmel frowned their suspicions. Mackern let out a small sigh, a thin gust of relief.

  Morn gave Nick a crisp salute like the ones she’d so often given her father. Playing the game back at him, she kept the echoes of death and loss off her face.

  “Captain Succorso, permission to leave the bridge.”

  “Permission granted,” he replied as if she’d just made a suggestion lascivious enough to quicken his pulse.

  Still riding the moment, Morn Hyland crossed the aperture and left the command module.

  Without her id tag; almost without any identity she knew or recognized. She’d given that up to purchase something she was in no position to evaluate.

  But she didn’t go to sickbay. Filled by a strange, thorough calm, she felt no urgency to act on her decision.

  CHAPTER 8

  She didn’t go to sickbay. She also didn’t go down to the ship’s core in search of Parmute, the data second, who would be responsible for making sure she knew her duties.

  Instead she went to her cabin to prepare herself for Nick.

  She felt sure he would come as soon as he had the chance: as soon as he confirmed that the datacore playback was proceeding normally; as soon as he and Mikka Vasaczk had made their plans to “work around” the virus. She’d seen the lust in his eyes and scars. The more she proved herself worth having, the more he would want her; would want to prove his power over her.

  She was ready for that. The zone implant made her ready.

  But when she was alone in her cabin, lying naked on her bunk with her black box poised under the mattress, she found herself thinking strange thoughts.

  What would it be like to have a baby?

  She studied her belly to see if the life within her was noticeable. She probed her breasts to learn if they’d begun to swell and grow tender. What sort of pressure would she feel, that would make the pain of childbirth desirable? On an intellectual level, she knew such questions were months premature. Yet they interested her because she was anxious, curious—and lonely. She would never have chosen to be pregnant. But now that pregnancy had been imposed on her, it began to surprise her more and more.

  What effect would the zone implant have on her baby?

  Would it drive him mad? Could all those inappropriate hormones and neurotransmitters damage him? Would her feigned and limitless lubricity make him more like his father, or less?

  Oh, shit.

  Without warning, her detachment melted away; her calm streamed out of her, deliquescing like wax. Frightened by the direction of her thoughts, she shook herself, tried to recover her sense of sanity. What the hell did she care what the zone implant did to her unwanted fetus? No matter what happened, she was going to have an abortion. Wasn’t she? Sooner or later—when she had time and privacy to visit sickbay again. Wasn’t she? The clot of chemicals and malice in her womb was just one more consequence of being raped. Like rape, it violated her right to make her own choices. The sooner she rid herself of it, the better.

  That was true. It was true, dammit.

  But if it were true, what did she make of the fact that she’d already chosen a name for her baby?

  Without noticing it, as if while her back was turned, she’d decided to call him Davies Hyland. After her father.

  Shit!

  She wanted to weep again, in frustration and grief. Abruptly she sat up, swung her legs off the bunk to meet her distress standing. At once she began to pace as if she’d been caught and caged. Was she truly so reduced, so damaged, so lost, that she could consider keeping the offspring of Angus Thermopyle’s hate? Did she place her own value so low that she was willing to give Angus’ corrupt seed room in her own body, to grow and thrive?

  No! Of course not. Of course not. She would go get an abortion as soon as Nick expended himself and fell asleep.

  And when she did that, she would be alone: as alone as she’d been after she’d killed her family; as alone as she’d been with Angus at his worst. That small worm of protoplasm gnawing its way toward parturition within her was all she had left. When she killed it, too, her bereavement would be complete.

  The child was a boy, a human being. Her father’s grandchild. And he was a reason to live. A reason that didn’t have anything to do with rage or hate—or with whether the UMCP was as malign as Vector said. A reason which contradicted the lesson Angus had worked so hard to teach her: that she deserved to be utterly alone and helpless forever, sustained only by the neural chicanery of the zone implant, and by her own stubbornness.

  If she kept Davies, she would no longer be alone. She would hav
e a family again; someone who belonged to her—

  Someone who deserved better than to be blown up because she couldn’t tell the difference between sanity and self-destruct. Or to be flushed down the sickbay disposal because she couldn’t face the danger of keeping him alive. No matter who his father was; no matter what dark legacy his progenitors left him.

  She’d believed things like that once, back in the days when she was truly a cop, and the UMCP was honest. Maybe some part of her still did.

  Keeping the child would be like surrendering to Angus Thermopyle.

  Which was exactly what she’d done by trading his life for the zone implant control. She’d chosen to let his crimes against her go unpunished rather than to face the consequences of those crimes without the aid of the black box. The question of how reduced or damaged or lost she was had been answered long ago. The only issue that remained was at once simpler and less ponderable.

  This fetus threatened her survival aboard Captain’s Fancy, her value to Nick. How much was survival worth to her?

  Was it worth more killing?

  How much loneliness could she endure?

  Caught and caged by her past, abandoned by calm, she paced back and forth as if she didn’t know which way to turn, clenching her fists together and knotting her shoulders as if to strangle someone. Despite her fiercest efforts, however, she couldn’t recapture the suicide’s light-headed certainty which had taken her over when she’d decided to abort her son.

  She was still pacing when her door chimed. True to prediction, Nick had come for her. She barely had time to dive onto the bunk and key her zone implant control before the delay programmed into the lock let the door open. As a result, she was flushed and panting as he entered, apparently avid.

  At once she saw that he’d changed since she’d left the bridge. His scars continued to throb under his eyes, but his grin was gone; his elation had faded. His bruises made him look battered and uncertain. He’d discovered a doubt of some kind.

  Not a doubt of Captain’s Fancy’s safety or survival: that would only have sharpened his focus, made him fight harder. It must have been a doubt of himself.