Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  While she stared at him, refusing him, he put her control back in his pocket. “You can be pretty sure I’ll take care of your brat. I need him. Just turning him over to the Amnion wouldn’t be good enough. I want to be able to make you watch while they change him.

  “After that, I’ll probably let them have you, too.”

  He turned on his heel and left.

  As soon as the door closed, its lights indicated that it was locked.

  Davies. Oh, Davies, she prayed. Help me.

  She needed rest desperately. Whenever she fell asleep, however, she plunged directly into nightmares that made her sweat like Angus and scream like the damned.

  They were all the same. In them, the universe suddenly opened around her, giving her clarity, filling her with perfection. When it spoke, its message was absolute truth—and absolutely necessary. Her obedience was so clear and perfect that it felt like joy.

  Her father or her son stood in front of her. They were also her mother, and her father’s sisters; they were Min Donner and several of her instructors at the Academy; they were herself, raped and desolate. But that confusion only made them clearer, more perfectly comprehensible. They were all saying

  Morn, save us

  like utter anguish

  so she took small, perfect explosives, and attached them to her father’s heart, or her son’s, or her own, and watched with clear, vindicated joy as the detonations tore everyone she’d ever loved to bloody bits.

  Then her cries woke her up in a welter of sweat, as if her bones were being squeezed dry.

  After Liete’s watch, and Nick’s, she took another turn on the bridge. This time Vector didn’t send her food or coffee; but when her watch was over, Nick escorted her to the galley and let her fix herself a meal before he led her back to her cabin and locked her in.

  Perhaps because food made her stronger—or perhaps because more time had passed since she’d lost the protection of her zone implant—her nightmares got worse.

  I’m going crazy, she thought while hoarse terror echoed in her memory. I’m finished.

  But this time she had an idea.

  Craziness had its uses. It was unpredictable: no one would expect it. And since she was already finished, she had nothing else to lose.

  She was almost calm as she took her place among Mikka’s watch. Her nightmares had left her haggard, but drained; her fears had been temporarily appeased. Hiding behind the work Nick and Mikka wanted done, she tapped into Captain’s Fancy’s maintenance computer.

  She didn’t tamper with the lock on her door—or on Davies’. That would be too obvious: Nick or Mikka would surely catch her. But they might not be so careful about the intercoms—

  Concealed by stress reports and gap studies, she routed a channel between her cabin and Davies’, and fixed it open. That was risky. If Nick entered her cabin, Davies would hear everything he said: if Davies made a sound, Nick would hear it.

  She accepted the danger because she had no alternative.

  She might be crazy and doomed, but at least she would get a chance to speak to her son.

  Unless Davies was beyond reach—

  That could easily be true. He was locked up, alone with his fundamental confusion of identity. But that confusion was more than just psychological turmoil: it was a state of complete hormonal chaos. Driven by his imponderable transition from fetus to young manhood—and from his mother’s artificially intense sexual stew to his own maleness—his physical state must be wildly out of balance.

  Human beings weren’t made to survive that kind of stress. In the Amnion sense, they weren’t designed for it. They could never replace the years of love and nurturance which nature required. Without those years, Davies was as lost as his father.

  The urgency of her desire to help him rose in Morn’s throat like a scream. But she had to wait until she reached her cabin.

  Nick continued to escort her; continued to grip her arm as if he thought she would run away. She dreaded him doubly now: he might hear that her intercom was open. However, he’d become calmer during the past day. He didn’t look like a man who suffered from nightmares. And the approach to Thanatos Minor gave him things to think about which must have engaged or satisfied him more than Morn did. He didn’t say anything as he took her to her cabin. He simply steered her to her door and locked her in.

  When she was alone, she began to tremble.

  She couldn’t imagine how much stress Davies was under. Her mind hadn’t exactly been in its natural state when it was copied. The effects of her zone implant must have altered the electrochemical data imprinted on his neurons. So he had to be different than she was, even though every learned component of his identity came from her. But would that make him weaker or stronger? The little contact she’d had with him suggested that there were blind patches among his memories. Were they temporary? Would those absent places help or harm him in his isolation and confusion?

  For several minutes she was too afraid to speak.

  But he needed her. If she didn’t help him, no one else would.

  She went into the san for a drink of water to clear her throat. Then she braced herself against the wall beside the intercom and said softly, as if she feared eavesdroppers, “Davies? Can you hear me?”

  At once she heard a grunt of surprise, the sound of boots.

  “Don’t touch the intercom,” she told him quickly. “I fixed this channel open. If you key anything, you’ll switch me off.” And Nick or Liete will realize what you’re doing.

  “Morn?” he asked. “Is that you?”

  Her son’s voice. He sounded exactly like his father—if his father had been younger, and less violently defended against his own fear.

  “Where are you? What’s going on? Why is he doing this to me? Why does he hate me?

  “Morn, what have I done? What am I?”

  Her son.

  “Davies, listen.” She tried to reach him through his distress. “I want to answer your questions. I want to tell you everything. But I don’t know how much time we have. If nobody notices what I did to the intercom, we’ll be able to talk for a long time. But anybody who checks might catch us. We need to make this count.

  “Are you having trouble remembering things?”

  She heard his breathing as if he had his mouth pressed to the intercom. After a long pause he said like a small boy, “Yes.” Then, more fiercely, he added, “I don’t even know who I am. How can I remember anything?”

  Be patient, she ordered herself. Don’t rush him. “What kind of trouble?”

  “It just stops.” The pickup flattened his voice: he might have been feeling grief or fury. “I’m a girl. I remember that, Morn. My home is on Earth. I’ve got a mother and a father, just like everybody else. Her name is Bryony, his is Davies, that’s my father, not me. They’re both cops—but she died ten years ago, their ship was crippled and almost destroyed in a fight with an illegal, he was lucky to survive. I’m a cop myself, I went to the Academy, I was assigned to my father’s ship. None of this makes any sense.”

  “I know.” Morn throttled her own sense of urgency in an effort to comfort him. “I can explain it all, but I need to know where it stops. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Maybe he couldn’t hear her. As if the gap between them were light-years long, he croaked, “Whenever I think about you—I mean, about you separate from me—I feel like I’m being raped.”

  “Please.” Sudden weeping filled her throat. She had to swallow hard before she could force up words. “I want to help you, but I can’t until I know where your memories stop.”

  Davies was silent for a long time—so long that waiting for him nearly broke her heart. But at last he spoke. From across the gap, he said, “The ship was Starmaster. She was a UMCP destroyer, but we were covert, pretending to be an orehauler. We’d just left Com-Mine Station for the belt, and we spotted a ship called Bright Beauty. We’d been warned about her. Her captain was Angus Thermopyle”—he stumbled over the name
as if he didn’t know why it was familiar—“and we were told he was one of the worst, but nobody could prove it. We saw him”—Davies’ tone conveyed a shudder—“burn out a defenseless mining camp, so we went after him.

  “I was at my combat station on the auxiliary bridge. We started after Bright Beauty. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  Listening to him, Morn didn’t know whether to feel relief or regret. His memories cut out at the moment when she’d first been hit by gapsickness. At least for the time being, he’d been spared all the horrors she’d experienced. That was probably why he was still sane enough to talk.

  If she could help him before those memories returned, he might be able to deal with them.

  Nevertheless she was left with an appalling burden of explanation.

  “All right,” she said, ignoring her own dismay because his need was so much greater. “Now I know where to begin.

  “This is the most important thing. Nothing that you remember—or ever will remember—about being Morn Hyland happened to you. You know that’s true because you’re obviously not a girl. You don’t resemble your own memories. They aren’t yours. That’s my past. I’m Morn Hyland. You are Davies Hyland, my son.

  “When I found out I was pregnant, I decided not to abort you. But I couldn’t have you aboard this ship. She’s an illegal’s ship, Davies. Her name is Captain’s Fancy, and she belongs to that man who acts like he hates you, Nick Succorso. We were on the run. Our gap drive was damaged—we couldn’t reach any safe port.” She edited her account drastically, not to falsify it—he would never be able to trust her if she lied now—but to make it bearable. “So Nick took us into forbidden space. To Enablement Station—to the Amnion.”

  Davies’ silence sounded worse than swearing or protests. He had enough of her memories to understand her.

  “They have a ‘force-growing’ technique, a way to make fetuses physiologically mature fast. I agreed to that because I couldn’t think of any other way to keep you. But a fetus has no experience, no learning, no mind. The Amnion can grow a body, but they can’t create an intelligence, a personality. So they copy it from the mother.

  “That’s why you think you’re me. When you were born, you were given my past—my memories, my training—to make up for the fact that you didn’t have your own.

  “The man you remember is my father, Captain Davies Hyland of Starmaster. He’s your grandfather. I named you after him because I loved and admired him—and because I want to keep some part of him alive.”

  I killed all the rest.

  But she couldn’t say that: she couldn’t risk triggering the memories he’d been spared. Not until she’d given him a context for them; until she’d convinced him that they belonged to her, not to him.

  “Nobody hates you,” she continued, urging him to believe her. “Not you personally. I told you that. Nick treats you like this because he hates me.

  “That’s why he traded you to the Amnion. You didn’t do anything. You aren’t to blame. He’s just trying to find ways to hurt me.”

  As if from an immeasurable distance, Davies asked, “Why?”

  Still editing, Morn replied, “Because he’s an illegal, and I’m a cop. That’s one reason. There are others—better ones—but I don’t want to talk about them until you’re ready.”

  Davies, what’re you thinking? What’re you feeling? What do you need?

  The wall was too hard, too impersonal. She needed to see her son’s face, wanted to hold him in her arms; ached to place herself between him and his crisis.

  She expected him to ask what those other reasons were. When it came, his question surprised her.

  “Morn, why do my memories stop? Your life didn’t. You got pregnant. You left Starmaster and ended up here. You got yourself in so much trouble that you had to go to the Amnion for help. Why don’t I remember any of that?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied slowly, feeling her way. “I’m not an expert on force-growing.” Or psychic trauma. “But I think it’s because the memories are so bad. I won’t lie to you. What happened was—hideous.” And to save her mind from her terror of the Amnion, she’d used her zone implant to blank her fear. Maybe that had inhibited the transference of the memories which scared or hurt her most. “What you remember,” she said as bravely as she could, “stops right at the point where I first came down with gapsickness.

  “That’s my problem, not yours,” she added, hurrying to reassure him. “You don’t have it. For one thing, it’s not an inherited trait. For another, you’ve already been through the gap. If you were susceptible, it probably would have shown up by now. I’m a rare case—my gapsickness stays dormant most of the time. It only becomes active when it’s triggered by heavy g.

  “When Starmaster started chasing Bright Beauty, we had heavy g for the first time. After that, terrible things started happening. If you’re lucky, you’ll never remember them.”

  The intercom made Davies’ voice sound like it came from the far side of the galaxy. “They’re the reason Nick Succorso hates you.”

  “Yes,” she answered thinly, as if his assertion left her faint. “Some of them.”

  “Morn, I need to know what they are.” He was suddenly urgent. “Maybe you’re the one he hates, but I’m the one he’s taking it out on. He gave me back to the Amnion. Now he’s got me locked up—he’s just waiting for his chance to do something worse to me.

  “I need to know why. Or I won’t be able to stand it.”

  His demand hurt more than she would have believed possible. He was her son; the surviving remnant of her father’s beliefs and commitments. He would judge her by standards to which she’d dedicated her life—until gapsickness and Angus Thermopyle had degraded her. To tell him the truth would shame her utterly.

  So what? she asked herself. What does it matter now? If you were stuck where he is, you would feel the way he does.

  Baring her soul, she answered, “Because I lied to him.”

  “That’s all?” Davies rasped like his father. “He hates you because you lied to him?”

  “Yes. Because I lied to him where it hurt the most.” Every word set claws of chagrin and remorse into her heart, but she forced herself to go on. “He’s a tormented man, and I used that against him.

  “He never wanted me to have you. He wanted me for sex, that’s all. So he ordered me to abort you. He could have forced me—he could have done anything to me. I told him every lie I could think of that might change his mind.

  “I told him you’re his son.”

  “But I’m not,” Davies said across the gap. “My father is Angus Thermopile. He said so. Angus Thermopyle. The man who slaughtered those miners.”

  The intercom muffled his implicit accusation, yet Morn heard it like a shout. You’re a cop, and you got pregnant with a man like Angus Thermopyle! You gave me him for a father!

  But her son was too frightened to accuse her. Nothing in her background prepared him for his plight. “Is that really why he hates you?” he asked as if he were pleading. “They’re both illegals. I thought they might be partners. I thought my father was somewhere aboard.

  “I thought he might come see me”—Davies’ voice broke like a kid’s—“might come help me.”

  “No,” Morn answered miserably. “He isn’t here. He’s in lockup back on Com-Mine. They didn’t get him for what he did to those miners, but they found a charge they could make stick.

  “He’s the only man in human space that Nick hates worse than the cops. If Nick had known before you were born that”—she said the name again—“Angus Thermopyle was your father, he would have aborted you with his bare hands.”

  Without any warning at all, the door slid open, and Nick strode into her cabin.

  Dark blood filled his scars, underlining his gaze with fury. A snarl uncovered his teeth. Both his hands clenched into fists.

  “Morn?” Davies asked anxiously. “What was that?”

  His voice over the intercom didn’t surprise Ni
ck.

  “You like to live dangerously,” he sneered at Morn. “Doesn’t it ever occur to you that you can’t afford to mess with me? I don’t have to put up with you”—abruptly he faced the intercom—“or with you, either, you fucking bastard.” His anger flashed like a cutting laser. “I can have you both shot, and nobody here or back at UMCPHQ will even bother to wince.”

  “Try it,” Davies retorted, instantly belligerent—like his father—and too inexperienced to restrain himself. “Try letting one of your illegals get that close to me.”

  Nick toggled the intercom with a blow of his fist.

  “Liete,” he snapped, “disable Davies’ intercom. From now on, he’s deaf, understand? I don’t want him to hear anything.”

  “I understand,” replied Liete calmly.

  Nick punched the intercom off and swung back toward Morn.

  He was going to hit her: she knew that. She could read the particular tightness in his shoulders, the knotted lines of his stance. He had no other outlet. He was going to wait and stare at her until her own fear paralyzed her. Then he was going to hit her hard enough to break bones.

  He might shatter her ribs, or her jaw. If she were lucky, he might burst her skull.

  She almost said, Oh, get it over with. I’m tired of waiting for you to go out of control.

  The intercom stopped her.

  “Nick.” Tension had replaced Liete’s usual stoicism. “You’re wanted on the bridge.”

  That got Nick’s attention. He spun to the intercom again, keyed it with his thumb. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got company,” the command third reported. “An Amnion warship. She just resumed tard right on the edge of our scan.

  “She’s between us and Thanatos Minor.”

  Nick slapped off the intercom and hit the door at a run.

  Morn followed before he had a chance to lock her in.

  CHAPTER 18

  As soon as Nick noticed her, he wheeled on her. “Goddamn it—”

  “Nick,” Morn urged, breathless with intensity, “you need me.” The passage was empty: no one was likely to overhear what she said. As fast as she could find words, she argued, “Maybe you can survive the Amnion. You can’t survive a crew that doesn’t believe in you. You need me with you. To keep alive the idea that we’re in this together. As long as you can make them think we’re on the same side, they’ll believe you’re still the Nick Succorso who never loses.”