Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Morn, please,” Mackern begged. “He’ll kill me when he finds out. Don’t waste it. Don’t let it be for nothing.”

  She heard him. By degrees, her alarm subsided. Intelligence rose to her in slow bubbles from the depths. She swallowed, and her eyes lost some of their blindness.

  “‘Time,’” she murmured. “You said ‘time.’”

  “Yes!” he urged at once, encouraged and febrile at her response. “We’re almost alongside that warship, Tranquil Hegemony—twelve hours out of Billingate. He promised them an exact launch time. You’ve got”—he flung a glance at the cabin chronometer—“twenty-six minutes.”

  Once again his words slipped away from her. Billingate? Tranquil Hegemony? They were familiar, but she’d lost their meaning. Why was he talking about being killed? She still had twenty-six minutes left.

  Deliberately she brought his name back from the place where she’d mislaid it. “Sib Mackern. What’re you doing here?” Pieces fit as she articulated them. “He’ll kill you for this.”

  “I just can’t stand it,” he replied as if he suddenly understood her, knew what she needed; as if his fear enabled him to follow her struggle out of despair. She needed words she could recognize, words that might restore her connection to sanity.

  “When he sold your son the first time,” he explained, “back on Enablement—I was ready to mutiny then. If I hadn’t been alone. If I weren’t such a coward.” His image of himself held no room for courage. “Since I joined him, we’ve done things that made me sick. They gave me nightmares and made me wake up screaming. But nothing like that. Nothing like selling a human being to the Amnion.

  “I’ve seen them, Morn,” he insisted as if he were the only witness. “Those mutagens are evil. What they do is—” His whole body shivered with revulsion. No language sufficed for his abhorrence. “You were right. Any one of us could be next.

  “I thought then that I couldn’t stand it. I had to do something about it, even if I was alone, and he killed me for it.

  “But you saved me. You saved my life, Morn.” He was telling her the truth about himself: she could see that. The sweat on his face and the hunted fright in his eyes made his honesty unmistakable. “You rescued Davies yourself.

  “After that I was ready to do anything for you, anything at all, all you had to do was ask. But I didn’t get a chance. He let you out. He acted—you both acted like you’d planned it together, like it was all just an elaborate trick, a ruse, to get away from Enablement. You confused me so badly, I didn’t know whether to be grateful or appalled.”

  Grimly he kept his voice at a whisper. “I wanted to be grateful. You gave me a reason to keep working for him. You made me think he had limits, there were some crimes he wouldn’t commit. But I was afraid that this was the real trick, that acting like you planned it together was the real ruse. That he didn’t have limits. And if he didn’t, you must be paying a terrible price to protect yourself and Davies.

  “When we came in range of that warship, I learned the truth.

  “I can’t stand it. That’s all. I just can’t stand it.

  “I want to help you,” he finished. “This is the only thing I can do.”

  It was working: as he spoke, he created links for her, spans across the vast space of her loss. More knowledge came up from the depths, new pieces of understanding. Nevertheless his presence in her cabin still refused to make sense.

  “Why?” she asked again. “What good will it do me when he kills you?”

  “Morn.” Dismay twisted his face. “Have you forgotten? Did he hurt you so badly that you can’t remember?

  “He’s going to give them your son. He’s going to launch Davies to them in an ejection pod in”—his eyes jerked to the chronometer and back again—“twenty-one minutes.”

  That was it: the keystone; the piece she needed. When it slotted into place, she was restored.

  For the first time her eyes came fully into focus on her rescuer.

  Stay calm, counseled the part of her that understood. Don’t rush it. You’ve got enough time. Don’t make any mistakes.

  Intensely quiet in a way that left no doubt of what she meant, she asked, “Where is he?”

  Mackern wasn’t calm. “They took him to the pod, oh, twenty minutes ago.” She seemed to see the time draining from his face. “I had to wait for that. Liete guarded this hall until they moved him. She said she didn’t trust you to stay locked up. I couldn’t risk coming here until she reported he was in the pod.

  “She said—” He swallowed hard to make his throat work. “She said, ‘He didn’t give us any trouble. He seems to be in some kind of shock. Like he knows what we’re doing to him, but he’s too demoralized to fight it.’”

  Nineteen minutes.

  She didn’t think about Davies. She didn’t need to. He was already the reason for everything. Instead she focused one last question on Sib Mackern.

  “Has he changed his priority codes?”

  The data first shook his head. “He hasn’t had time.”

  No, of course not. And why bother? The only person who might dare use those codes in his place was safely imprisoned, out of her mind.

  That answer fit everything she’d planned and prepared without knowing it.

  With an effort that made her joints ache, she climbed to her feet. “Go back to your cabin,” she told Sib as she took out her zone implant control. “You’re braver than you think.”

  Blood and injury had stiffened her palms. Her fingertips were sore. But none of that mattered.

  One function started to fill her limbs with strength.

  “If either of us survives this, we’ll owe it to you.”

  Another steadied her nerves, restored her reflexes.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to protect you.”

  Another enabled her to move her damaged hands as if they were supple.

  “Be sure to relock this cabin.”

  Sixteen minutes.

  There was nothing she could do here to protect him. His life depended on his own precautions. Nodding her thanks, she keyed her door and moved into the corridor at a steady run.

  “Good luck!” Sib hissed after her softly. “Don’t worry about me!”

  She left him behind as if he’d ceased to exist.

  The corridor was empty. Good. Already she felt full of force, charged like matter cannon. She would kill anybody who got in her way.

  At any rate, she would try. But she didn’t want that. She wanted no more blood on her hands. Her own was enough.

  Silent on bare feet, she reached the lift and hit the call button.

  Stay calm.

  She was calm. Nevertheless she braced herself to attack anyone who might be using the lift.

  No one was. The lift answered her almost immediately, as empty as the corridor.

  She got in and ascended toward the ship’s core—toward engineering and the auxiliary bridge.

  If Nick were watching for her, he would have no trouble keeping track of where she was. The maintenance computer could tell him which doors opened and closed, which lifts were used; it could analyze the gradient drain on the air processing to tell him how many people occupied which corridors or rooms. But it wouldn’t do any of those things unless he asked—and he wouldn’t ask unless he were suspicious.

  If Sib hadn’t betrayed himself in some way—

  If Tranquil Hegemony and the preparations for launch kept Nick occupied—

  Fifteen minutes.

  The lift stopped. The door opened.

  Mikka Vasaczk stood there.

  The command second stared at Morn in surprise.

  No, not her, Morn couldn’t attack her. She was the one who’d captured Morn for Nick. Yet Morn was in her debt, for courtesy and silence if not for active help. Someone else would have captured Morn eventually, if Mikka hadn’t done it.

  But Davies was helpless; he couldn’t defend himself. If Morn didn’t fight for him, he would go to the Amnion.

  Coile
d with the quickness of her zone implant, she sprang at Mikka just as Mikka backed away and raised her hands, palms outward to show that she was unarmed.

  Morn stopped herself in midstride.

  Stay calm. You’ve got enough time.

  Still holding up her hands, Mikka retreated to the wall. A scowl clamped her features, ungiving and austere.

  “This is strange,” she articulated harshly. “I could have sworn he said you were helpless. Things have gotten pretty bad when the captain of a ship like this can’t be trusted to turn on a radioelectrode.”

  “Don’t interfere,” Morn breathed through her teeth. “I’m not your enemy.”

  A sneer lifted Mikka’s lip. The bleakness of her face was complete. In the same tone, she said, “Did you know that Pup is my brother? When our parents died, he didn’t have anywhere else to go. In any case, they were too poor to leave him any good choices. I got him this job so I could keep an eye on him.

  “He can’t be more than a couple of years older than Davies.

  “You told me the truth once when I needed it. You took the chance that I might betray you. It’s too bad I didn’t see you down here. If I did, I could have tried to hit you again.”

  Fourteen minutes.

  Morn had no time to feel gratitude. Her heart labored too hard in her chest. The settings on her black box must have been too high: she could hardly get enough air to support them.

  She turned and ran for the auxiliary bridge.

  It wasn’t far: partway down the length of the ship; partway around the core. The deck became an upward curve when she turned: she paid no attention to that. She only noticed the doors she passed—the ones which she knew were safe; the ones which might open on trouble.

  The door to the engineering console room and the drive space stood wide. That was the one she needed. The primary circuits for the ejection pods were there. Another failsafe: if all other systems died, the lifeboats could still be launched from the engineering console.

  She looked inside.

  Vector Shaheed stood at one of his boards with his back to her.

  Thirteen minutes.

  Urgency and hyperventilation mounted in her. Stay calm. She had to go in there, had to get past Vector somehow. Yet she didn’t want to hurt him. For his own reasons, he’d treated her decently. And he already had enough pain of his own. The thought of damaging him in order to help her son brought the taste of vomit back into her mouth.

  Stay calm!

  But there was something else she needed to do as well. She still had time. If she did it first, he might be gone—into the drive space, or out to the bridge—when she came back.

  To save him—or to save what was left of herself—she flitted past him and entered the auxiliary bridge.

  It shouldn’t have been empty. This close to an Amnion warship, the entire crew should have been at combat stations. But of course Nick had no intention of fighting. He’d already negotiated a peaceful “satisfaction of requirements” with Tranquil Hegemony. That was his only practical hope: he couldn’t defy both Tranquil Hegemony and Calm Horizons; not at these speeds; not in Amnion space. Why put more strain on his people, when they were already exhausted?

  Morn went straight to the data station.

  Trusting her own skills and Alba Parmute’s diffused attention on the bridge, she engaged the board and used it to reactivate bridge control over her cabin door. That was for Sib Mackern. Now nothing showed that he’d ever done anything to help her.

  Eleven minutes.

  Keying off the data console, she left the auxiliary bridge and returned to Vector’s domain.

  No luck: he was still there; still working. In fact, he stood at the primary pod board. The readouts she could see past his shoulders seemed to indicate that he was running status and diagnostic checks, verifying the operational condition of the pods; testing life-support; confirming programmed thrust for navigation and braking.

  Making sure that the pod which would carry her son to his doom could be trusted.

  Ten minutes.

  If her inner countdown was accurate—

  She couldn’t wait. She would have to get past Vector somehow.

  She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

  At the sound, he turned.

  She stopped to let him look at her—to let him see that she wouldn’t attack him if she didn’t have to.

  He betrayed no surprise at the sight of her. His phlegmatic stoicism was equal to her unexpected arrival. More in greeting than in distress, he cocked an eyebrow. “Ah, Morn.” If he felt anything unpleasant, it showed only in the faintly unhealthy flush which covered his round face. He looked like a man who’d been exerting himself against the advice of the sickbay computer. “I suppose I should have guessed this would happen. Nick never seems to know the difference between what you can and can’t do.”

  He smiled as if he were mocking her; but she saw no mockery in him as he asked, “Have you come to see Davies off?”

  “Vector,” she said tightly, “get away from that board.”

  I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me hurt you.

  Nine minutes.

  He went on smiling. “Oh, I don’t think so. Nick specifically told me to make sure nothing goes wrong. On this ship, it doesn’t pay to disobey orders—even implied ones. Since he never imagined that you could break free of your zone implant, he didn’t order me to stop you. Still his intent was clear enough. I can’t afford to let you touch anything.

  “In any case, you’ve got nothing to gain. If you stop the launch and pull Davies out, Nick will simply capture both of you and start the whole process over again. He’ll apologize for the delay. Then he’ll probably send both of you to that warship, just to demonstrate his ‘good faith.’ Everything you’ve done will be wasted.”

  “Vector, I mean it.” Remaining still cost her an effort. “Get away from that board.” She needed movement, action: her black box was set too high, and her son was running out of time. “I’ve come too far to stop now. I’ll sacrifice anything.”

  She’d been prepared for days. Ever since Davies was born—and sold to the Amnion.

  “I recognize that.” Nothing could have been less sarcastic than the mild scorn of Vector’s smile. “Unfortunately I don’t have any choice. If I don’t get out of your way, you’ll probably kill me. At the moment, you look like you could do that with one hand. But if I do get out of your way, Nick will kill me.”

  His stiffness as he folded his arms reminded Morn of the arthritis which threatened to cripple him; of his loyalty to his friend Orn, who had inflicted him with arthritis by beating him up.

  Eight minutes.

  “No doubt this was inevitable. I mean, the whole thing was doomed from the beginning. I don’t belong here—I’m not the right kind of man for this life. I chose it because I couldn’t live with the alternatives, but it never fit me. Or I never fit it. Outraged idealism seems like as good an excuse as any to turn illegal, but it doesn’t work. The contradiction had to catch up with me eventually. You might say the only thing I’ve accomplished here is that I’ve given the moral high ground back to the people I hate.

  “I’ll be better off if I can end it now.”

  “Vector, stop this! I haven’t got time for it!” Her hands felt like they must surely give off sparks when she flexed them. She should have been gasping for air, but the ferocity of her need held her steady. “‘Outraged idealism’ is a shitty excuse for giving human beings to the Amnion. You know that. But you don’t want to face the logic of your own decisions, so you’re trying to avoid it by despising yourself. You’re trying to prove you deserve what the UMCP did to you. Who’s going to question withholding an immunity drug from an illegal like you? Who’s going to respect Orn Vorbuld’s friends? But it’s not that simple. Don’t you see where that kind of reasoning leads?

  “It leads to genocide, Vector. The destruction of the entire human species.

  “Look at me. You think I’m
here to save my son—and you’re right. But I would do the same thing if you were in that pod. I would do the same thing for Nick.” That was the truth, regardless of her loathing for him. “I’ve got more reason to hate the UMCP than you do. I’ve got more reason to be afraid of Nick. But I will see every one of us dead before I allow this kind of absolute treason.”

  Seven minutes.

  She took two steps forward, surging like a burst of flame.

  “Get out of my WAY!”

  Slowly he unfolded his arms. His gaze had gone inward: his face revealed nothing except its unhealthy flush. “You’re still a cop,” he murmured. “No matter what you’ve done. At bottom, you’re still a cop. One of the few. You say you would take the same risks if I were in the pod. I suppose I believe you. That’s worth something.

  “You’re right, of course. I made the decisions that got me into this mess, and now I don’t want to face the consequences. Those of us who truly and profoundly hate the cops really ought to do better than that.”

  Shifting himself aside, he gestured Morn toward the ejection pod board.

  She went for it so fast that she didn’t see him plant his feet, settle his weight; she didn’t see him draw back his arm. She barely caught a glimpse of his fist as he swung it at her head with all his mass behind it.

  The blow slammed her against the wall, then dropped her to the floor as if she’d been nailed there.

  Six minutes.

  “Sorry about that.” Something muffled Vector’s voice. He may have been sucking his cracked knuckles. “You don’t deserve it. I just had to be sure you didn’t force me to do this.”

  Apparently he glanced at the chronometer. “You’ve got five minutes and forty-eight seconds.”

  Her skull rang like a carillon. For a moment her zone implant couldn’t catch up with the pain. Through a racket of agony, she heard the door open and close.

  Still a cop.

  Force me to do this.

  Five minutes—

  Forget calm, a voice said to her, as distinct as a chime. You’re out of time.

  Clawing at the air, she flipped herself over, got her hands and knees under her.

  Her zone implant saved her: its emissions fought down the pain and weakness, cleared her head; did everything except give her adequate air. Gasping on the verge of unconsciousness, she struggled to her feet.