This Day all Gods Die: The Gap into Ruin

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Held by the table’s restraints, he lay on his face with his EVA suit pulled down around his waist. A new bandage covered the place between his shoulder blades where Davies had once cut him to access his datacore. Spots of fresh blood marked the gauze. She could smell metabolins and antibiotics. The low rasp of his breathing lifted and lowered his chest rhythmically.

  The helmet of his suit bobbed forgotten against one wall.

  He didn’t react to her arrival. Davies had told her that the sickbay systems said he would be all right. He must have been as profoundly exhausted as his son.

  “He’s sleeping,” Vector answered before she could ask a question. “Sickbay is satisfied with his condition. But we won’t really know what shape he’s in until he wakes up. Right now his zone implants are in control. I assume his datacore is taking care of him, forcing him to sleep so he can heal. We couldn’t rouse him unless we found some way to trigger a survival reflex in his programming. I can’t begin to imagine what being outside like that, doing what he did, may have cost him.”

  Vector paused for a moment, then went on with apparent detachment, “Watching the indicators, I get the impression sickbay has run diagnostics on his equipment. That makes sense. The same people who welded him probably designed these systems to take care of him. But the panel”—Vector grimaced ruefully—“declines to let me access the results. I guess I don’t have the right codes.”

  Yes, Morn thought. That made sense.

  Finally she was able to turn her attention away from Angus. She lifted her head; attempted a thin smile to thank Vector for his consideration.

  Now she noticed the ashen hue of his skin, the sluggishness of his movements. Despite his familiar air of calm, his blue gaze was dull, and his round cheeks seemed unnaturally sunken, drawn tight against his skull.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “Davies told me you brought him in. That must have been an ordeal, with your arthritis.” Long ago Orn Vorbuld had beaten Vector up so badly that irreversible damage had been done to his joints. “Why aren’t you resting? You look like you could use it.”

  Vector shrugged. Despite the absence of g, a twinge crossed his face. Distantly, as if he had no personal interest in the subject, he said, “Bringing him in was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I mean physically. We were still in the gravity well. I had to rig a winch to move us. Now I probably need half a dozen joints replaced. At the very least I should let sickbay give me a whole pseudoserotonin multicortisone series. Reduce the inflammation, if nothing else.

  “But really it doesn’t matter,” he added promptly. “Zero g helps. And we all have more important things to worry about.”

  Morn opened her mouth to object; but he wasn’t done.

  “Mikka said she was going to get some sleep”—his tone sharpened—“after she checks on Ciro. But I don’t trust her. I think she’s going to make herself crazy suffering over what he did. If one of us doesn’t stay awake to stop her, she’ll probably go start trying to fix the drives.”

  Morn frowned. Surely he didn’t consider that their most important worry? But she wasn’t ready to tackle larger issues yet. And she was concerned about Mikka—as well as about Mikka’s tormented brother.

  “How is Ciro now?”

  Vector spread his hands. “I have no idea. To be honest, I didn’t ask. Until Mikka and Davies left here, we were all too busy.”

  “Doing what?” Davies hadn’t said anything about this.

  For a moment Vector hesitated. He may have been wondering how much Davies hadn’t explained to her—or why. Then he seemed to put the question aside with a turn of his head.

  “When I brought him in”—the geneticist indicated Angus—“he wasn’t unconscious or asleep. He was in stasis. His datacore had shut him down. We couldn’t figure put how to reach him. As far as we could tell, he was stuck there permanently. We spent quite a while trying to get through to him, but we weren’t able to do it.

  “Then Davies decided to pull the chip.” Vector’s phlegmatic tone gave this detail no special emphasis. “When he plugged it back in, Angus’ computer reset itself. Came back on-line.

  “After that,” Vector finished laconically, “his zone implants put him to sleep.”

  Pull the chip—? Morn thought in amazement. The muting of her mind had begun to fade: she could feel real amazement. Pulling the chip was a brilliant solution. She doubted that she would ever have conceived of it herself.

  And Davies hadn’t mentioned it?

  “No,” she said, answering Vector’s hesitation, “he didn’t tell me. He gave me a summary of what’s been happening, but he kept it short.” Because—she’d assumed—he was exhausted. “He didn’t say anything about stasis. He didn’t say anything about bringing Angus back.”

  Vector’s mild gaze offered no comment.

  “Do you have any idea why he kept that to himself?” Morn pursued.

  Vector pursed his mouth, studying the question. Despite the blur of fatigue, his eyes hinted at penetration.

  “Your son hasn’t had what I would call an easy life,” he said judiciously. “Early on he spent most of his time helpless while you performed miracles to keep him alive. And since then he’s been struggling to figure out who he is. Not always gracefully, I admit. It’s not a graceful process.

  “If I were in his place, I might not tell you because I didn’t want to scare you. Or”—Vector faced her squarely—“I might be trying to learn how to respect myself without outside help.”

  Trying to learn how to separate himself from her.

  Slowly Morn nodded. That explanation made sense to her. And it matched Davies’ unexpected apology. While she slept her son had grown—

  If she could keep up with him, she might yet discover a way to end her reliance on self-destruct.

  “In that case,” she murmured, “I’ll wait until he brings it up before I tell him what I know about miracles.”

  Rescuing Angus was as much a miracle as anything she’d ever done.

  Through his weariness, Vector smiled again.

  She smiled, too. However, the thought of self-destruct reminded her that she didn’t have much time. While Trumpet coasted, helpless, other ships were moving: other forces were at work, seeking to impose their own priorities on the gap scout. She should get to work herself.

  Changing the subject, she remarked with deliberate nonchalance, “In the meantime, I probably don’t have to mention that we need Angus awake.”

  Vector shook his head. “I’ve been giving him the occasional cybernetic nudge”—he twitched a hand in the direction of the control panel—“just to see what happens. So far what happens is nothing. We’ll have to wait until his computer decides it’s time for him to start receiving external stimuli.

  “As I said,” Vector mused, “he might wake up if his programming recognizes a survival threat. We could set off the decompression klaxon, see if that reaches him. But I don’t think it’s a good idea. After what he’s been through, he needs the rest.”

  Morn agreed. She was sure that Trumpet didn’t have much time. But the situation wouldn’t become urgent until another ship appeared on scan.

  And, she admitted to herself with another pang, she wasn’t in a hurry to deal with Angus again. Too much depended on what he would be like when his zone implants allowed him to awaken. Or perhaps on her ability to hold him to his obscure bargains.

  Let him sleep for a while. Everyone else needed a chance to rest. And think.

  “In that case,” she suggested to Vector, “let’s go to the bridge. We won’t learn anything here. There we can at least sit down. Look at scan, see where we are.” See if the sensors had picked up another ship yet. “Maybe we can start trying to figure a way out of this mess.

  “And maybe,” she added, “we can rig the command board to tell us if Mikka tries anything rash. If we can get that far into the systems.”

  Vector considered for a moment, glanced at the sickbay readouts, then nodded. “You go ahead. I
’ll stop by the galley first—make some coffee, bring us food. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember the last time any of us had a meal.” He grimaced humorously toward Angus. “If you don’t count IVs.”

  He was right. As soon as he said the words, she realized that she was acutely hungry. The prospect of coffee brought a rush of saliva into her mouth.

  At the same time new pain throbbed along her arm. Sensations of several kinds began to return as the drugs withdrew their effects.

  “Sounds good,” she said to cover a wince. “Don’t be long. I must be recovering, or I wouldn’t be this interested in food.”

  Gingerly she nudged herself toward the door.

  She didn’t want to use her right hand again. However, without it movement in zero g was tricky. The same tap which keyed open the door moved her in the opposite direction. But then a lucky thrust with her leg caught one of the surgical table supports and impelled her gracelessly out of the room.

  After that progress was easier: she didn’t have to deal with doors. Protecting her cast, she launched herself from handgrip to handgrip in the direction of the bridge.

  On the rails of the companionway she stopped her motion in order to shift vectors toward the command station.

  At once she saw Mikka.

  Nick’s former command second sat at the second’s station with her back to Morn. Her head hung over her limp hands and the keys as if she’d fallen asleep in the middle of some task.

  Another pang. As the drugs faded, Morn found more and more hurts. Vector was right: Mikka hadn’t been able to let go of her grief and shame long enough to lie down on her bunk.

  But she wasn’t sleeping. As soon as Morn made a sound, Mikka raised her head, looked around.

  Her features were drawn, haggard; sallow with exhaustion and loss. A bandage still covered one eye and part of her forehead where Angus had once hit her; nearly broken open her skull. Weariness blurred her gaze, but the distress in her good eye was too dark and deep to be hidden. Her habitual frown had lost its edge of ready belligerence: it had become a clenched effort to contain the effects of an inner crisis. She looked like a woman who’d lost her reasons for living—and hated herself for it.

  “Morn”—a strained croak, barely audible. “I’m glad—” Her voice trailed away as if she had no words for gladness.

  The sight hurt Morn like her shattered bones. She pushed off from the companionway, floated to the back of Mikka’s g-seat. “Mikka—“She wanted to put her arms around the woman, try to comfort her somehow. But of course that was impossible. She needed her left arm to hold her at the second’s station. “You shouldn’t be here. Look at you. You need rest.” A clutch of empathy nearly closed her throat. “Good God, you need rest.”

  Mikka made a small, aimless gesture. “I know.” Her gaze wandered away. “I can’t.”

  Morn glanced quickly at the screens, found a scan image on one of the displays. Someone—probably Mikka—had routed a steady stream of data from the sensors and sifters to that screen. As far as Trumpet could tell, there were no ships anywhere around her. In fact, there was nothing at all except the black void and the unreachable glitter of the stars. Only a faint spatter of dust occupied the vacuum.

  No doubt astrogation could identify the gap scout’s position; perhaps had already done so. But the information was useless. The numbers told Morn that the nearest hope of a star system was decades away at this velocity.

  Until another ship appeared on scan, Trumpet had nothing to fear. And nothing to hope for.

  “Mikka,” she said as gently as she could, “you’re not alone here. Vector’s still up. I’ve had enough sleep for six people. Angus is probably going to wake up soon. You don’t have to take care of everything yourself.”

  “I know,” Mikka murmured. “I’m not trying to be a martyr. But Ciro’s there. In the cabin. I can’t”—her head drooped as if her neck had gone limp—“can’t stand to be around him.”

  “Because he sabotaged the drives?” Morn asked softly. “Because he obeyed Sorus Chatelaine even after Vector treated her mutagen?”

  Are you that angry at him?

  Slowly, weakly, Mikka shook her head. “I might have done the same thing—”

  Again she trailed away. For a long moment she was silent. When she went on, her voice ached like Morn’s arm.

  “He did what he was told. It’s over for him now. Everything’s over—All he does is lie there crying.

  “I don’t mean sobbing. He doesn’t make a sound. He just lies there with tears streaming down his face. He won’t talk to me. I’m not sure he hears me. I think he’s deaf with grief.

  “He’s only a kid. As far as he knows, he’s killed us all. That didn’t mean anything to him until he did what he was told. It couldn’t. Sorus Chatelaine made him crazy. But now—

  “I guess he can’t figure out how to live with it.”

  Mikka’s head hung over the console. She couldn’t hold it up. “He’s all I have.” She sounded distant and worn, like the low plaint of the air-scrubbers. “All I’ve ever had. And I got him into this. I talked Nick into taking him aboard. I thought I could make a life for both of us.

  “Now he’s gone,” she finished brokenly. “He did this, and he can’t fix it. If I can’t repair the drives for him, there’s nothing left.”

  Pain whetted the edge of Morn’s reactions. She valued Mikka too much to watch in silence while Mikka suffered. And Mikka was simply too worn-out to pull herself back from the gravity well of her despair. Some kind of intervention was necessary.

  “I can’t argue with you.” Morn put words together carefully, hoping to string them in ways Mikka couldn’t refute or deny. “You’re the only one who knows what matters to you.

  “You don’t want to hear about the times you’ve saved my life, or the times you saved this whole ship. You don’t want to hear that when you talked Vector and Sib into joining you against Nick you gave us our only hope—the only way any of us has to redeem ourselves. Without you, Vector and Sib would probably have been stranded on Billingate, we never would have gone to the Lab, Vector wouldn’t have his formula, Nick would still be alive—

  “You probably don’t want to hear me say I’ve got about as much tolerance for seeing you like this as you have for watching Ciro,” who was by God old enough to be responsible for his own insanity.

  Rough needles had begun probing the joints of her arm, the marrow of her bones. An irrational anger rose in her—a desire to yell at Mikka in order to contain her own pain. If Vector didn’t get here soon with food and coffee and distraction, she feared that she might do or say something she would later regret.

  “Maybe I can understand a little of what you’re feeling,” she continued with as much kindness as she could muster. “Angus is my son’s father. Whenever my gap-sickness takes over I’m in love with self-destruct. Which is about the same as killing yourself with exhaustion. But I don’t believe you when you say ‘there’s nothing left.’ You’re still here. Worth caring about. Even if you can’t protect Ciro from himself.”

  At first she couldn’t tell whether Mikka heard her. But then Mikka murmured, “That’s fine.” She spoke without bitterness; without hope. “Until the cops get me.”

  Morn groaned to herself. Mikka Vasaczk was a proven illegal: Nick Succorso’s command second; a woman who’d participated in robbery, murder, and treason in Nick’s name.

  Ciro had raised the same objection. Why is it worse for them to die now?—Mikka, Vector, and Sib. At least they can fight. They don’t have to sit around waiting to be executed!

  At the time Mikka had responded, I don’t care about being executed! I don’t care about anything that might happen days or weeks or months from now, if we’re lucky enough to live that long. I care about you!

  If you want to betray us, then do it. But don’t use me as an excuse.

  Now she felt differently: that was obvious. The danger of being captured was at least as personal to her as it was to Morn.
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  Morn had no answer. She didn’t trust the UMCP herself. She was in no position to promise Mikka justice—or mercy.

  For a moment a clench of pain threatened to make her gasp. When she’d pushed her arm past the support of her g-seat into the grip of the black hole’s gravity well, she’d shattered the bones, damaged the joints, torn ligaments, shredded cartilage. Sickbay had probably worked on her for hours to put her back together. If she had any sense, she would get more drugs right away, before the pain grew worse.

  But she didn’t leave the bridge. She needed the pain—not to punish her, but to teach her the consequences of her own actions. If she hadn’t been so frantic to escape pain and consequences, she wouldn’t have accepted her zone implant control from Angus; wouldn’t have fled Com-Mine Station with Nick. Instead she would have turned herself over to Com-Mine Security; put a stop to everything which had engulfed her—and Angus—since then.

  Rotating around her strapped arm as if it were her personal center of gravity, she swung away from Mikka and drifted to the command station. Carefully she belted herself into the g-seat as if she belonged there. For a moment she closed her eyes and concentrated on simply breathing; exhaling the worst of her hurt.

  When she looked at Mikka again, she’d recovered her composure.

  Gently again, she asked, “What were you trying to do?”

  Mikka had removed her hands from the second’s console as if to disavow responsibility. Despite the absence of g, she slumped like a woman who couldn’t support her own weight. But she was still Mikka Vasaczk, not some callow UMCP ensign appalled by gap-sickness and zone implants and Angus Thermopyle. Regardless of her own distress, she made the effort to reply.

  “Get into the drive databases,” she muttered thinly. “Find schematics. Diagnostic routines. Repair protocols. Anything that tells us how to work on the drives.

  “Wrecking electronics is easy. Like murder. You don’t need brains. All you need is a spanner. But you can’t repair anything if you don’t know what you’re trying to fix.”

  “No luck?” Morn pursued, although she already knew the answer. She wanted to keep Mikka talking until Vector arrived.