Without flinching, she answered, “No.”
He snatched in a deep breath: he was about to explode. His pulse throbbed in his scars, making them as dark as the core of his passion. He’d killed people for defying him like this: she was sure of that.
But she was also sure he wouldn’t kill her. Not yet; not while she was so valuable to him; not while he believed the masque. She sat still and waited for him to blast her. Or to restrain himself.
He let his breath out with a discernible tremor. “Just this once,” he rasped between his teeth, “I’m going to let you tell me what your reasons are.”
The time had come for lies. Because she was glad, they came readily.
“Nick, you know what they are. You don’t need me to explain them. I’m a woman. And I love you. I want to have your baby.
“You aren’t used to women who love you. You’ve been betrayed too often. But you’ve seen how I feel about you. I catch fire every time you touch me. Even when you hit me,” she added because she was gleeful enough to take any risk, “I go wild.
“And I haven’t got anybody else. I killed them all—I killed them all, Nick. I’ve got gapsickness, remember? I aborted my whole ship. I’m not going to do that again.
“Right now, you’re all I have. And I already know I won’t have you for long.” This was part of the masque—the false instrument playing on the deluded artist. “No man is ever satisfied with just one woman, and you’re more of a man than anyone I’ve ever met. Sooner or later, I won’t be enough for you. The same way Mikka wasn’t enough, and Alba, and all the others. In the end, you’ll replace me. But I’ll never be able to replace you.
“When you’re gone, I want to have something left. I want to have your son. I want to bear him and raise him, so that I’ll always know you were real.” She emphasized her want in opposition to his. “No matter how much time passes, or my memory fades, I’ll know I didn’t dream you. He’ll remind me that at least once in my life I knew what passion was.”
Her lies touched him: she saw that. His hands flexed on the armrests; an oblique grief moistened the fire in his eyes. He believed the masque: he was accessible to this appeal.
At the same time he was too stubborn, too suspicious—and too intelligent—to lose his way so easily. He had to swallow twice before he could find his voice. Then he said, “Crap.”
She wasn’t daunted. Without hesitation, she responded, “Try me.”
“I intend to,” he growled. “What did you have in mind?”
Her defiance affected her like rapture; it almost made her laugh. After all this time, she finally had a use for her revulsion. But laughing would have had the wrong effect. Instead she leaned forward earnestly and braced her elbows on her knees, shifting her appeal that much closer to him.
“Nick,” she answered, nearly whispering, “you need me. You want to sell me—or what I know—so you can pay for repairs. And you want me to have an abortion. We both know you can get what you want. You can hit me right now—you can knock me out and take me to sickbay. I couldn’t stop you. You don’t even need to worry about how I’ll feel about it. You don’t need my cooperation to sell me. You can just dope me with cat until we get to Thanatos Minor and then hand me over. I’m sure they’ve got drugs that will make me tell them everything I know.
“But you don’t have to go that far. You can just ignore me. I say I want to keep your baby? I say I don’t want to have him on Thanatos Minor? That’s my tough luck. When we get there, you can dope me, baby and all, and sell me the way I am. If you’re afraid I’ll do something to Captain’s Fancy in the meantime, you can take my id tag. That’ll paralyze me pretty effectively.”
As she spoke, he watched her with growing steadiness, confidence. Deliberately she reminded him of his power over her. To set him up.
The things he could do to her no longer scared her.
When the fury had begun to fade from his scars, and his eyes were calmer, she sprang her trap.
“But if you do either of those things—if you force me to have an abortion, or if you force me to have my baby on Thanatos Minor—I’m going to tell whoever you try to sell me to that you’ve been bargaining with the UMCP.”
His sudden stillness told her that she’d hit him where he could be hurt.
“Then,” she continued, “what I know won’t be worth shit. There isn’t anybody in space stupid enough to think that people like Min Donner and Hashi Lebwohl will just sit on their hands while you sell their secrets. The minute you tried to get the UMCP into the auction, you warned them of the danger they’re in, and everything I know became obsolete.”
She went on leaning toward him as if she were begging rather than threatening: he leaned away from her as if he were appalled. Remorselessly, reveling in his distress, she explained, “Every code, every route, every listening post will be changed. Every agent and ship will be warned. It doesn’t matter what was really in that message of yours. It doesn’t even matter that I can’t prove anything. Just the doubt will be enough. That’s something you can’t take away from me—not unless you destroy my mind, and then I won’t have any secrets left.
“All I have to do is tell whoever wants to buy me that you beamed a message to a UMCP listening post, and you won’t be able to get enough for me to buy new scrubber pads.”
She had him. She had him. She was so sure of it that she nearly cheered.
And as soon as she had him, he got away.
Nick Succorso was a survivor—a man who always found a way to keep himself alive. But he was more than that, much more. According to his reputation, he was a pirate who never lost. Once Mikka Vasaczk had swayed the entire crew by shouting, Have any of you EVER seen Nick beaten?
He wasn’t beaten now.
He absorbed the worst Morn could do to him; he was hurt by it. When she was done, he sat still and stared at her for a moment, holding himself as if he couldn’t breathe; as if she’d hit him so hard that all the air was knocked out of him.
But then the fighting light came back into his eyes. A wild grin bared his teeth.
Abruptly he laughed—a harsh sound like an act of violence.
Frozen with sudden alarm, Morn returned his stare and couldn’t move.
“You think you’ve got me, don’t you?” he grated. “You think you’ve given me a choice I can’t refuse. I can let you keep your baby—I can stay away from Thanatos Minor. Then you’ll go on loving me. My ship won’t get fixed, but I’ll have all the fucking sex I can stand. Or I can force you to abort. In which case you’ll sabotage me so bad I’ll have to sell my soul to the Bill just for supplies, and my ship still won’t get fixed.
“I can’t imagine why I don’t fall all over myself to take you up on an offer like that.”
Now Morn was the one who held her breath.
“Maybe it’s because I don’t want a woman who thinks she can push me around.
“Or maybe,” he said in fierce, combative exultation, “it’s because I’ve got options you haven’t considered.”
For a moment her brain reeled; then it snapped back into clarity. She didn’t try to speculate on what he meant. Instead she asked, “Like what?”
With a surge as if he were moving to attack her, he shifted forward in his seat, thrusting his face toward hers, mimicking her posture. The inflexible skin of his scars pulled his grin into a grimace.
“Forbidden space has an outpost in this sector,” he said like a wash of mineral acid. “You know that. You noticed it while you were figuring out where we’re headed. We’ve still got a window on it—just barely. We can go there if we change course now.
“Do you know what they pay for live human beings? I can sell you outright, no matter how obsolete your information happens to be, and get enough cash to flush out that damn virus. While I’m at it, I can sell a loser like Alba Parmute and get enough more to repair my gap drive.”
That threat was worse than anything she’d expected, anything she’d imagined. Sell her? To forbidden
space? Would he do that? She couldn’t tell: she still didn’t know him well enough to guess his limits. Fighting panic, she hurried to contradict him.
“And as soon as you start selling your crew, they’ll never trust you again. Even illegals like yours are going to take exception. They may mutiny. You can’t watch your back twenty-four hours a day. At the very least, they’ll talk. They’ll ruin your reputation. You won’t be the Nick Succorso who never loses. You’ll be the Nick Succorso who sells his own people to forbidden space.”
“That won’t happen,” he replied like a knife, “if I just sell you. You’re UMCP—you’re the enemy. Selling you will make me a goddamn hero.”
“But”—Morn felt that she was laboring against heavy g to keep up with him—“you still won’t have enough money. You’ll be able to flush out the virus, or get your gap drive fixed, but not both. You won’t have anything else to sell.”
Nick’s eyes burned at her. He nodded once and dropped back in his seat. His scars had lost some of their color: they were pale and livid, like old bruises.
Yet his grin looked more ferocious than ever as he pronounced, “Stalemate.”
He was right. They had each found the flaws in the other’s position. Their threats canceled each other.
“Nick,” she said slowly, “I want to keep my baby. And I don’t want to be sold to forbidden space.” The idea was profoundly terrifying. She would have preferred to attempt EVA with a faulty suit. “If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m listening.”
At that, he laughed again like a promise that she would never be safe. Then he leaned forward once more and pointed his index finger like the barrel of an impact pistol straight between her eyes.
Almost in a whisper, he said, “You’re damn fucking right I’ve got a ‘suggestion.’
“This is your problem. You refused a direct order. So you get to solve it.”
Still aiming his finger at her, he left his seat to move toward her.
“Give me a cure for that virus.”
She gaped at him, unable to retort.
“If you do that,” he went on, right in front of her now, “if you fix my ship so that she can maneuver and fight again, I’ll let you keep your baby. I won’t sell you to forbidden space. We’ll go somewhere besides Thanatos Minor.
“If you don’t—” He let the ultimatum hang for a moment. Then he breathed, “You’ll give yourself an abortion. And you’ll keep your mouth shut about messages to the UMCP.”
“Nick—” Her throat knotted; she had trouble dredging up words. “What makes you think I can cure a computer virus?”
Without warning, he moved his finger; he flicked her hard in the tender junction of nerves under her nose. While her eyes filled with involuntary tears, he said softly, “What makes you think I care?”
Then he got up and walked off the auxiliary bridge; left her alone at the data station with tears streaming down her cheeks as if she were beaten.
• • •
She had options, of course. It would be easy to activate the auxiliary data board and trigger another wipe. Then, if she were quick enough, she might be able to snatch an EVA suit and get off the ship before anyone caught her. That would give her a chance to ditch her id tag outside, where no one could ever find it. If she succeeded—and if she used the suit’s maneuvering thrusters to put as much distance as possible between herself and Captain’s Fancy—she might avoid the horrible things Nick and his crew would do to her before they died.
She would die herself when the suit’s air ran out: she would suffocate alone in the vast dark. But at least her death would accomplish something.
It would put a stop to Nick Succorso.
As recently as two or three weeks ago, she might have tried that. She might have been desperate enough.
Now she dismissed it.
She’d changed too much to consider suicide.
Faced with Nick’s ultimatum, she wanted to know what was at stake. Whatever his message to UMCPHQ contained, she was sure it had nothing to do with auctioning. His knowledge of the listening post’s coordinates proved that he’d had dealings with the UMCP for some time—the kind of dealings which required them to remain in contact with each other.
Vector Shaheed had cause to believe the cops themselves were corrupt; treasonous to humankind. If he was right, it implied that Nick was engaged in something worse than simple piracy.
And if she killed herself little Davies Hyland would die with her.
Her desire to save him surprised her. On a conscious level, her claim that she wanted to keep him had been a smoke screen to disguise her real reasons for resisting being sold on Thanatos Minor. But now she saw that the claim was true. Maybe she wanted her son as a way of defying Nick; maybe she wanted him for himself; maybe she was overcome by the desire not to add Davies’ name to the list of her victims; maybe she was under too much pressure to refuse the logic of her hormones: she didn’t know. Whatever the explanation, however, the conclusion was clear: she had become prepared to fight for her baby’s life.
Which meant she had to find a cure for Orn’s virus.
That was the decision she reached. Aware of what she was doing, and galvanized by it, she accepted Nick’s terms, just as she’d once accepted Angus’.
The proposition was absurd on its face. She knew no more about such things than Nick himself did. Where could she start? What could she do that hadn’t already been tried? How far could she push herself before she failed—before Nick forced her to accept defeat?
Nevertheless she put everything she had into the attempt.
Once again she took to carrying her zone implant control with her, regardless of the danger.
She needed it to deal with Nick, of course. Caught up in his anger over her defiance, and perhaps intending to help her fail, he pursued sex with her as mastery rather than pleasure; he took her brutally in unexpected places, at unexpected times, when she needed to concentrate on other things. And yet as always her survival depended on her ability to preserve the illusion that she hungered for him whatever he did, that even rape only made her love him more. Without her black box, she would have been unable to maintain the masque for as much as five minutes—certainly not for all the long days which followed.
But she also needed the control to keep her attention sharp, to suppress her fatigue, to hold her fear at bay. She had to do her job on Mikka’s watch—and she had to respond to Nick whenever he came at her. That left relatively few hours each day in which she could tackle the problem of the virus; too few. As much as possible, she elected to go without sleep.
Alive with artificial energy, she spent virtually all her spare time on the auxiliary bridge poring over Captain’s Fancy’s programs: running every available diagnostic test on them; scrutinizing their logic; dividing them into their component parts and dummying each part separately to her board so that she could see how it functioned. When she slept, she did so not because she felt the need, but because she knew her body had limits which her zone implant ignored. Her baby had limits. On some days, however, she forgot about limits and worked continuously. Frequently she neglected to eat. Her mind was like a thruster on full burn, consuming its resources in a white, pure fire that seemed to deny entropy and thermodynamics.
After several days of that, she looked as haggard and gap-eyed as a casualty of war; but she didn’t know it.
A week passed, and part of another week, before she thought of an answer.
When it occurred to her, she spent no time at all wondering why she hadn’t conceived of it earlier—or cursing herself for being so dense. She was too busy.
A datacore time-study.
More accurately, a study of Captain’s Fancy’s basic programming as it was recorded over time in the datacore. That would enable her to compare the original programming with its present state. Then a simple comparison test would locate the changes Orn had written into the operating systems.
The job was horrendously complex to prepare, however.
A plain one-to-one comparison between the present state of the ship’s data and its state before Orn came aboard would have taken months to run and reported millions of discrepancies, the record of everything Captain’s Fancy had seen and done since the starting date of the comparison. So Morn had to write a filter through which she could play back the data so that everything irrelevant to the condition and function of the programming itself would be excluded. Then she had to go over that body of information almost line by line in order to delete anything secondary, anything which would bog down the comparison to no purpose.
All that took most of four days. She could have done it in three if Nick hadn’t insisted on using her so hard.
When she was finished—when she’d run her time-study and obtained its results—she finally felt an emotion so organic and spontaneous that it overwhelmed the zone implant’s emissions. Her artificial burn shut down, leaving her at the mercy of her mortality.
The comparison was conclusive. From the day before Orn came aboard to the present, no substantive changes, elisions, or amendments had been made to Captain’s Fancy’s operational programming.
According to her study, there was no virus.
Several moments passed before Morn noticed that she was hunched over the auxiliary data board, sobbing like a bereft child. Caught between physical exhaustion, natural grief, and imposed energy, she couldn’t seem to do anything except cry.
After a time, Vector Shaheed heard her and came to the auxiliary bridge. She had no idea what he was doing as he pulled her to her feet and dragged her out; no idea how much the strain hurt his joints, or where he was taking her. Weeping was all she had in her, and it wouldn’t stop.
He took her to the galley, propped her in a chair at the table, and set a steaming mug of coffee in front of her.
“Don’t worry about burning your mouth,” he instructed. “Burns heal.”
The aroma rose into her face. Obedient to his order—or to an instinct she no longer knew she had—she swallowed her sobs long enough to pick up the mug and drink.
Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision Page 18