Chaos and Order: The Gap Into Madness

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  MORTI

  Morn came out of deep dreams with the vaguely disturbing sensation that someone had flipped a switch. One moment she was far down in slumber so delicious and comforting that it seemed to soothe her from the surface of her skin to the center of her aggrieved heart. The next she was awake, with her eyes open and her limbs weak; aching because her hurts were still there after all, unassuaged by dreams or rest.

  She recognized the phenomenon. It was the stress of transition from artificial sleep and peace to ordinary, vulnerable mortality. But the recognition did little to console her. She’d become so dependent on the emissions of her zone implant that even helpless unconsciousness seemed preferable to the limitations and pains of being human.

  Across the small cabin from her, Davies sat on the edge of his bunk, securing himself against weightlessness with his knees. The gaze he fixed on her was dark and haunted—a stare as restless and concentrated in its own way as the yellow malice of his father when Angus had raped and degraded her.

  In one hand he held her zone implant control.

  Like Angus.

  And like Nick. For a time Nick also had possessed her by means of the electrode in her skull.

  Like both of them, Davies was male—

  For an instant the sight filled her with revulsion and dismay. Once again she’d fallen under the control of a man who meant to abuse her.

  Male or not, however, he wasn’t like them. She insisted on that while he studied her. His hand hung limp: none of his fingers moved on the buttons. He was her son; his mind echoed hers. What haunted his gaze wasn’t malice. It was concern. Distrust of Nick. Doubt of Angus. And the inevitable, unpredictable aftermath of being nurtured in her womb at a time when she was filled almost constantly by a storm of imposed energies. He’d been conditioned to metabolic extremes which no normal baby could have endured.

  She wondered what he did for rest. He looked like he hadn’t slept since they’d left Billingate.

  Maybe he couldn’t.

  On the other hand, how long could he stay sane without sleep?

  When he’d watched her wake up for a moment, he asked, “Are you all right?” His voice came out in a knotted croak, as if he’d spent hours with his throat clenched, waiting for her.

  She nodded. Drained by transition, she fumbled at the g-seals which secured her in her bunk; opened the inner sheath, the outer webbing. With her fingers wrapped in the webbing so that she wouldn’t float away, she swung her legs over the edge and sat up.

  Giddiness and the lack of g swept through her. She had the uncomfortable impression that Trumpet was spinning; tumbling end over end like a derelict. But after a moment her zero-g training reasserted itself, and her disorientation passed.

  Swallowing at the taste of lost dreams, she murmured, “Where are we?”

  He replied with a frown like his father’s. “Angus says we’re one crossing away from Massif-5. Once we get there, we’ll have to be ready for hard g almost constantly, so he wants to give us a chance to move around now. Tach in seventy minutes. He says.” Davies’ mouth twisted in disgust. “Unless he changes his mind again.”

  Morn sighed at the reminder of Angus’ belligerence. It scared her more than she wanted to admit. “He won’t if we don’t give him an excuse. We can keep away from the bridge. Maybe he’ll stay calm.”

  Davies snorted. Apparently the idea of simply trying to stay out of trouble didn’t satisfy him. The muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched and released, chewing bitterness. His hand tightened on her black box. “What’s wrong with him?” he protested abruptly. “What changed? He wasn’t like this before we left forbidden space. Then I thought he was actually on our side. Now he acts like he’s nursing some kind of grievance.”

  Morn bowed her head in the face of Davies’ distress. How could she help him? She knew nothing about the aftereffects of force-growing and mind-transference; or of gestation and birth under the influence of a zone implant. And she could hardly function herself without artificial support. Angus was a subject she didn’t want to examine. She was still in his power, even though he no longer held her zone implant control. Everything she did and said, everything she was, bore the taint of his brutality.

  His and Nick’s.

  And yet Davies was her son.

  Holding herself to the bunk, she shrugged. “You know as much about him as I do.”

  “I know more,” he retorted harshly. “I spent time with him before he got you away from the Amnion. I know he doesn’t care about me. Having a son doesn’t mean shit to him.” Morn shook her head slowly, but Davies didn’t stop. “He only rescued me because Nick tricked him into thinking he could trade me for you.

  “It’s you he cares about.” Davies’ gaze burned as if he had a grievance of his own; as if he blamed her for the fact that his father didn’t value him. “He wants you—but it’s more than that. He wants to please you. That’s why I believed he was on our side. He wants to do whatever you want him to do.

  “Or he did. Now I can’t tell what’s going on.”

  His pain made her heart ache. Oh, Davies. My poor boy. You didn’t ask for this. You don’t deserve any of it.

  Nevertheless she kept that kind of comfort to herself. He was too old for it. His body was at least sixteen. And his mind, his comprehension, was both older and younger than hers—aged by her sufferings as well as his own; yet immature in experience.

  “That bothers you,” she said carefully.

  For a moment he forgot to hold himself down. The burst of vehemence which ran through him sent him tumbling for the ceiling. Fiercely he thrust himself back to his bunk, clung there.

  “Morn, I’m alone here. I mean here” He hit his forehead with the heel of one palm. “Everything I remember tells me I’m you. I know that’s not true, but my memories say it is. I need—

  “I don’t know how to put it.” In anguish he broke out, “I need a father. Something to anchor myself on. An image to help me hold on to who I am.

  “He could do that for me. He’s a butcher and a rapist and worse—I know that, I can’t get it out of my head—but at least I look like him. He’s the only image strong enough to help me. But every time I try to concentrate on it, he does something that makes me want to hit him with a matter cannon.

  “It’s like he rapes me inside, violates—”

  Davies stopped as if he were choking. Now his air of grievance was gone. He looked like a young kid, appallingly young, with nowhere to turn.

  Morn wanted to weep. The thought that her son, her son, needed Angus—that he had hungers which only Angus could satisfy—seemed to be more than she could bear. Wasn’t it bad enough that every part of her own being had been marred and stained by Angus’ abuse? Did her son require his imprint as well?

  Yet how could she protest? What right did she have? His dilemma was of her making. The responsibility was hers; absolutely; beyond appeal.

  And Angus was her responsibility as well. Instead of abandoning him to the trap which Nick had set for him, she’d accepted her zone implant control from him and let him live. In the name of her own hungers, her naked and irreducible inadequacy, she’d spared him the death sentence which would have followed his conviction for unauthorized use of a zone implant.

  She had no choice: she had to bear it. Davies needed some kind of answer from her.

  “Try thinking about my father instead.” Simply mentioning that Davies Hyland, whom she had loved and killed, lacerated her. Nevertheless she made the effort, even though it seemed to tear at her chest, filling her lungs with blood. “The man you’re named for. You remember him as well as I do.

  “If the cops are corrupt, that’s Data Acquisition and Administration. Hashi Lebwohl and Warden Dios. Not Min Donner. ED is clean.

  “But even if she’s like them, my father wasn’t. Angus told me—” Her throat closed on the words. She had to swallow a rush of grief before she could go on. “After I crashed Starmaster, there were still a few of us alive. My fat
her was one of them. Angus says he was flash-blinded in the explosion. But even blind he didn’t stop fighting for his ship. Didn’t stop being a cop.

  “When Angus boarded the wreck, my father tried to arrest him. Tried to commandeer his ship. Tried to bluff it through, even though he couldn’t see—”

  Her throat clenched shut again. Until the memory released her, she couldn’t speak. Then she finished, “That’s the best I can do. He’s all I have.” And Bryony Hyland, his wife, Morn’s mother, who had loved and believed and fought with all her heart; who had died saving her ship and her shipmates from Gutbuster’s super-light proton cannon. “There isn’t anything else.”

  But they were enough. For her, if not for her son: they were enough.

  “Come on,” she said quietly, fighting to recover her composure. “Let’s get something to eat. We’re going to need it.”

  At first Davies didn’t react. He watched her with a tightness like Angus’ anger around his mouth and a look of desolation in his eyes. And yet she guessed that he was helpless to contradict her. All the deepest parts of his mind insisted that he was her; that the captain of Starmaster had been his father.

  Slowly he took a breath, let go of her with his gaze. Briefly he considered her zone implant control as if he’d learned to hate it. He would never have been born if she hadn’t used it to win her contest with Nick. And she would never have gotten pregnant if Angus hadn’t put a zone implant in her head.

  Scowling like a wasteland, he opened his fingers with a small flick which floated the control toward her.

  She caught it in her free hand and shoved it down into a pocket of her shipsuit without taking her eyes off him.

  “You’re right,” he muttered distantly. “We need food.”

  He didn’t look at her as he left his bunk, coasted to the door, and keyed it open. There, however, he stopped. Holding on to one of the handgrips by the door, he met her aching gaze.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said quietly. “I remember too much. What happened to you. How you felt. Why you did what you did.” He made an abortive attempt to laugh. “I would have done the same thing.”

  Pushing against the handgrip, he drifted backward out into the passage which ran through Trumpet’s core.

  As she followed him, Morn had to fight down a different desire to weep. His understanding felt like forgiveness for crimes and failings which should have been unforgivable.

  Like Captain’s Fancy’s, Trumpet’s galley was hardly more than a niche in one wall of the central passage. However, its foodvends and dispensers as well as other furnishings were designed for use during weightlessness. The dispensers pumped coffee, soup, and other liquids into g-flasks; the foodvends primarily offered pressed foodbars and compact sandwiches which wouldn’t break into crumbs and drift away. Stools bolted to the deck lined the one narrow table, and restraints could be attached to cleats on the sides of the stools and along the walls.

  Several hours ago, during one of Angus’ longer pauses between gap crossings, Davies had located a locker full of equipment like zero-g belts and clamps, and had appropriated a couple of belts for himself and Morn. When they’d prepared their meals, they were able to hook themselves to the stools and eat without bobbing away from the table whenever they moved their arms.

  They ate in silence until Sib Mackern eased into the galley and asked if he could join them.

  Morn gestured toward a stool. Davies mumbled, “Sure,” around a mouthful of food.

  Awkward with anxiety, Sib pushed himself around the niche until his meal was ready. Then he moved to a stool across the table from Davies and Morn. Like them, he’d found or been given a zero-g belt. When he’d clipped himself down, he frowned at his foodbars and g-flask as if he couldn’t remember why he’d thought he was hungry.

  With her head lowered, Morn studied him unobtrusively past the fringe of her hair. Aboard Captain’s Fancy he’d let her out of her prison so that she could try to save Davies from the Amnion. Like Mikka and Vector in different ways, he’d risked betraying Nick for her sake; risked having his heart cut out—But the former data first didn’t look like a man who took such chances. He seemed to give off an air of vague desperation. His pale features had an apologetic cast; his thin mustache might have been nothing more than grime on his upper lip. His determination to keep guard on Nick had left him drained and ragged.

  She still wondered why he’d helped her. In one sense, all opposition to Nick struck her as reasonable, natural. But Sib had served aboard Captain’s Fancy for some time; had presumably fallen under the spell of Nick’s apparent infallibility. Why had he changed his allegiance? In her cabin, before he’d let her out, he’d said, Since I joined him, we’ve done things that made me sick. They gave me nightmares and made me wake up screaming. His revulsion came back to her as she remembered how he’d helped her. But nothing like that. Nothing like selling a human being to the Amnion.

  I’ve seen them, Morn. Those mutagens are evil.

  What had he seen?

  Hoping that he would be willing to talk, she tried to start a conversation by asking, “Where is everybody?”

  Sib didn’t appear to feel any reluctance. His apprehension needed an outlet. “Nick’s in his cabin. Sleeping, probably. Or maybe he just sits there grinning at the walls.” Sib shuddered at the thought, but he made a palpable effort to keep himself calm. “There’s nowhere he can go without passing the galley, so I decided I could afford to get something to eat.”

  For a moment he stopped as if Nick were the only question that mattered. When first Morn and then Davies looked up at him, however, he went on, “Vector’s still working—he acts like he’s forgotten that even engineers need food and sleep. Sometimes I forget how much his joints hurt when there’s g. He seems to have a lot more energy when he’s weightless.

  “I guess Mikka and Ciro are in their cabin.” The harmonics of strain sharpened in his tone. “I haven’t seen them since Angus sent her off the bridge.”

  A frown pinched Davies’ forehead. He swallowed a gulp from his g-flask, cleared his throat, and said abruptly, “We’re looking for theories.” He indicated Morn with a glance. “What do you think Angus’ problem is?”

  Sib shrugged with an air of helplessness. To all appearances he’d been out of his depth ever since Nick promoted him to be Captain’s Fancy’s data first. Nevertheless he tried to answer.

  “He and Nick are natural enemies. They hate each other. But the way they hate each other—” His voice trailed off into dismay. Then, however, he rallied. “They would rather be allies than take sides with anybody else.”

  Morn shook her head. Her impression of Angus was that his essential hatred was undifferentiated—at once so diffuse and so global that it made no real distinction between illegals and cops. It simply attached itself to anyone available. In any case, she couldn’t imagine the circumstances under which Angus might forget—never mind forgive—the fact that Nick had framed him; beaten him.

  Unfortunately there were other possibilities—

  Why was Angus here, aboard a UMCP ship, surrounded by people he didn’t like or need? And why had he accepted the idea of heading for a bootleg lab? Because he’d made some kind of deal with Hashi Lebwohl: so he said—or at least implied. To save his life, he’d agreed to carry out a covert attack on Billingate, and to rescue—Morn herself? Nick?—if he could.

  Nick was an occasional DA operative: he’d worked for Lebwohl. Did Angus have further orders he hadn’t mentioned, orders which required him to ally himself with Nick in order to carry out some additional part of his deal?

  Without transition the galley seemed to become uncomfortably warm, as if the foodvends were overheating. Morn felt sweat trickling down her spine, running like lice across her ribs.

  “We’re in trouble.” She was hardly aware that she spoke aloud. “We’re in deep trouble.”

  Davies turned toward her, opened his mouth to ask her what she meant. Sib was caught up in his own fears, however; h
e thought Morn was sharing them with him.

  “I know,” he agreed. “But I don’t think it matters what Angus is doing. Nick hasn’t changed. He’s still—” His throat worked convulsively. “He’s still willing to sell any of us. As soon as he gets the chance.”

  Fighting nausea, she warned Davies to silence with a brusque gesture. Her memories were a black hole: they threatened to drag her down. She wanted to hear whatever Sib might say; wanted anything which might help her cling to the present.

  “You told me once”—her voice throbbed with effort—“you’ve seen what the Amnion do. You called it ‘evil.’ ”

  Sib bobbed his head. “Yes.” He tried to smile, but the attempt only made him look lost. “That’s not a word you hear illegals use very often. But I know what I’m talking about.”

  He wanted to tell his story: that was plain. He couldn’t face it without squirming, however, despite its importance to him. He spoke in awkward bursts and pauses, like a man who didn’t know how to forget pain. Blinded by recollection, he stared through Morn as if he were alone with his past.

  “I never really belonged on a ship like Captain’s Fancy. You knew that—I’m sure you could see it as soon as you came aboard. Nick used to tell me I didn’t have the guts for it, and he was right. But that’s not the only reason I didn’t belong.

  “My family was merchanter. We had our own ship—this was about fifteen years ago”—Morn guessed that Sib may have been near Davies’ age at the time—“and like practically everybody else who owned a ship, we were orehaulers. Actually we did most of our work where we’re going now, in-system around Valdor Industrial, but we had a small gap drive, so we could pick our markets when we needed to. We weren’t exactly getting rich, but we weren’t doing badly, either.”

  Like Morn, he seemed to feel the galley getting warmer. Sweat formed slow beads on his temples and oozed on his cheeks.

  “Our last run, we were hired to pick up a load of selenium and most of the miners from an operation on one of the moons of a planet that orbits Lesser Massif-5. The planet was about as far away from Valdor as it ever got, but its orbit was ready to carry it between the suns—which was like dropping it into a smelter. The mine had to be abandoned, at least for a year or two.