What you keep forgetting is that Angus beat me long ago. There’s nothing left for you.
He taught me everything I know.
When the intercom came on again, she burst into sobs and began flinging her pile of objects around the cabin, hailing the pickup with dispensers and brushes. Between sobs, she panted, “Nick! Nick!” as if she’d ruptured her lungs. As soon she ran out of things to throw, she stood up, grabbed the chair, and used it to batter the walls.
“Nick!”
By the time the intercom switched off, she was sobbing with exertion, as well as with mad, unexplained cunning.
But now she was done waiting. It was time to take the next step.
Gasping for air, she staggered into the san.
No, first she needed shipsuits and bedding. She returned to her room, jerked open the lockers, hauled their contents to the floor. With her arms full, she went back to the san.
She jammed a pillow into the suction drain of the shower. She turned on the water and sealed the door.
Almost immediately she heard warning buzzers.
She wadded up a shipsuit and used it to plug the head. With a nail file, she wedged the flushing button so that it couldn’t stop.
While a sterile wash full of recycling chemicals pumped into the head and began to overflow, she forced a pair of panties into the drain of the sink and turned on the water there.
The alarms became louder. Inarticulate and impersonal, Captain’s Fancy’s internal systems shouted at her to stop. If she put enough strain on them, the maintenance computer would cut off the supply of water to the entire ship.
Water was only water. A nuisance, nothing more; one small annoyance for Nick Succorso while he was busy with other things.
But he had to wonder what she would do next.
If she thought of water, would she think of fire? That would be another matter entirely. Every ship was vulnerable to fire in some way. Could he be sure that she had nothing in her cabin which would let her start a fire?
Walking through runnels of water from the sink and sterilizing chemicals from the head, she left the san and sat down in the middle of her mess on the floor.
Ignore me, Nick. Ignore me now.
Just try.
He couldn’t do it. The part of her that understood knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t done with her yet. He couldn’t take the chance that she would be able to surprise him with something so bizarre that it might kill her. And even if she didn’t die, how much pleasure could he get out of torturing someone who’d gone irremediably crazy?
All she had to do was wait until the door swept open and he stood in front of her.
After a time she realized that she was sitting on the floor for a reason: so that he would think she wasn’t going to attack him.
The door—
He—
She would have been afraid that she was imagining him, that he wasn’t really there; but the expression on his face wasn’t one she would have envisioned. It was a look of consternation, almost of shock. Whatever he’d anticipated would happen to her here alone, he hadn’t expected this.
Therefore his presence was real. She was clear about that.
“I’ve been enjoying this,” he said tightly. “I like listening to you lose your mind.” The dead pallor of his scars contradicted him. “But it’s gone on long enough. You’re disturbing my concentration.”
In response, she picked up a depilatory dispenser and hurled it at his head.
He batted it away with one hand. The other plunged into his pocket and came out holding her zone implant control.
“I didn’t want to do this, but I guess I’ll have to turn you off. Before you wreck the plumbing.”
Try me.
Deliberately Morn raised her hands and began clawing at the skin of her cheeks.
Try me, you sonofabitch.
In a hurry to prevent her from maiming herself, he pointed her black box at her and thumbed the buttons.
Off balance, she sprawled backward into the stream from the san.
For some reason, he kicked her bare foot. He may have wondered if she would react to the blow. But she didn’t. Instead she lay as limp as a woman with a broken neck. Water trickled into the corner of her open mouth.
“I thought you were done hurting me,” he whispered because he knew she couldn’t hear him. “It looks like I was wrong.”
In disgust, he tossed her control into one of the lockers and strode out of the cabin.
The door closed after him.
He didn’t neglect to lock it.
As if of their own accord, the streams from the san stopped. Someone on the bridge must have shut off her cabin’s pumps and plumbing.
Only the water in Morn’s mouth prevented her from laughing hysterically.
She jerked her head up, spat out the water, climbed to her feet as fast as she could. As if she feared that her black box would vanish into the gap of her nightmares, she rushed to pick it up. But it was real in her hands, tangible and true. Her fingers cupped its familiar outlines lovingly; her respiration shuddered as she studied its transcendent possibilities.
Now.
Trembling, she tapped the buttons which sent a low wash of energy and strength along her nerves. Then she closed her eyes and spent a moment simply treasuring the artificial bliss of the sensation.
But it wasn’t enough. She needed to soften her hurts. There. She needed better reflexes, better concentration. There. Soon she would need a lot more strength, but for now a slight increase was sufficient. There.
Fundamental hungers eased in her. The anguish of her limits sloughed off her shoulders. The ship’s atmosphere became cleaner, sharper. She felt that she was restored to herself, that she was Morn Hyland again at last.
That, too, was a form of insanity. Nevertheless she embraced it like a lover.
She didn’t realize that she’d actually damaged her cheeks until a drop of blood fell onto her hands.
Oops. She clenched her teeth to suppress a giggle.
Carefully quiet, because catatonics made no noise, she went to the san to look at herself in the mirror.
At the sight, she lost her impulse to laugh.
Her eyes were deeply sunken, bruised by abuse and withdrawal. New lines marked her face, as if she’d been scowling for months. Drying vomit stained one side of her mouth. Her skin was pallid, the color of illness, and the way it sagged against her bones seemed to indicate that she’d lost a lot of weight.
Against her paleness, the oozing welts on her cheeks resembled a grotesque parody of Nick’s scars.
Her zone implant didn’t free her from her limitations. It merely gave her the capacity to push herself past the boundaries of her own survival.
That’s enough, she thought in a tone of cold certitude. That’s all I need.
She turned away from the mirror.
All right. No more maundering. She’d recovered her black box. Her next problem was to find a way out of her cabin.
But now she began to falter.
For some reason, her zone implant eroded her sureness as it filled her with strength, with capability. It blocked her connection to the part of her that understood everything and revealed nothing. How could she get out of her cabin? At one point, she’d known the answer; she’d prepared herself for it. Now it eluded her.
Strength: that must be it. Her zone implant made her strong—and gave her nothing else which could possibly be of any use here. No quickness of thought or action would free her from her prison. But if she applied enough strength—
The door had been designed to withstand pressure at right angles to its surface—decompression or battering—not in the direction of its own movement. The servo-mechanisms which opened and closed it would reverse themselves if they sensed an obstacle. So the problem was one of force and traction; of pushing hard enough in the right direction to engage the feedback circuits. Then the door would open itself.
And an obstruction alarm would tell the bridge
exactly what was happening. Nick would come himself to stop her. Or he would send his people with guns—
No, she couldn’t afford to be concerned about that. One thing at a time. First she had to get out of her cabin. Then she could worry about how to evade capture.
Standing at the door, she set her artificial strength as high as it would go—so high that the rush of endorphins and dopamine in her brain seemed to make a sound like a high wind, and her chest heaved because she couldn’t take in enough air to support that much adrenaline. Then she planted her palms on the door, braced her body against the bulkhead, and shoved.
Shoved.
Pressure rose in her until her ears were full of wind and her eyes started to go blind. Her arms shuddered like cables with too much tension on them: she was probably strong enough to break her own bones. Small pains like vessels bursting mounted in her lungs.
Abruptly the skin of her palms tore. Slick with blood, her hands skidded across the door.
Helpless to catch herself, she lurched forward and cracked her head against the opposite bulkhead. From there, she fell to the floor.
The imposed neural storm was too intense: if she didn’t diminish it, her synapses would fail like overburdened circuit breakers. Apparently locking the door deactivated its feedback sensors. Trembling on the verge of a seizure, she grasped her black box and reduced its emissions.
Her hands left blood on the keys.
So much for getting out of her cabin.
Hunched over her torn palms, she began to cry without realizing it. Possession of her zone implant control wasn’t enough: she needed something to hope for—and there was nothing. Some limits were absolute. No matter what she did to herself, she couldn’t make her body pass through the solid door. Quickness, strength, concentration, freedom from pain—none of those advantages was of any use to her.
The part of her that understood hadn’t planned for this.
Or it wasn’t able to reach her through the effects of her zone implant.
Yet it kept her from crying loud enough to be heard over the intercom.
How much time did she have left? Blinking back her tears, she glanced at the cabin chronometer. Less than six hours. Was that all? She’d lost two or three hours somewhere. But it made no difference. Six hours or six hundred were the same.
She couldn’t get out of her cabin.
She couldn’t do anything to help Davies. He was lost. The next time she saw him—if she ever saw him again—he would be an Amnioni. He would remember nothing of their brief importance to each other. Unless he was given the same kind of mutagen which had transformed Marc Vestabule. Then he would be able to use his memories against her—and the UMCP—and all human space. By giving him birth, she’d betrayed him and her entire species; and there was nothing she could do about it.
She didn’t know how to bear it.
But—the idea came with a jolt like an electric shock—she could kill Nick.
Eventually he would come to check on her; perhaps to turn off her supposed catatonia. He wouldn’t expect to find her awake and charged with violence. If she hit him fast enough, hard enough, she might get past his defenses. All she needed was to land one blow—
All she needed was to drive the nail file through his throat.
She got up, went to the san, and unwedged the file from the head.
Her hands were sticky with blood, but they didn’t hurt; her bruised head didn’t hurt. Her zone implant stifled those pains. Gripping the nail file, she returned to the door and tried to compose herself for more waiting.
To kill Nick. To exact at least that one little piece of retribution for her long anguish.
But she couldn’t wait; not when she was primed with so much energy. Her muscles and her mind were incapable of stillness. She needed decisions, action; bloodshed.
Like her door, that was a conundrum she couldn’t shove aside. She could wait: of course she could. All she had to do was reset the functions of her black box, put herself into a state of rest. Yet if she did that she wouldn’t be able to react when Nick came. For him, she needed this harsh, compulsory keenness—and she didn’t know when he would come. She meant to kill him: therefore she had to wait for him. But she couldn’t wait without imposing an unnatural calm which would make killing him impossible.
There was no way out. The gap between what she needed and what she could do was impassable.
She was on the floor again, huddled among scattered shipsuits and sodden bedding. Unable to stop, she kept on crying uselessly.
But it didn’t have to be this way. She’d lost herself somehow when she’d turned on her zone implant. Before that, a lunatic and cunning part of herself had known what to do. She needed to recover that. She needed to restore her link to the part of her which revealed nothing.
There was only one way.
She had to face the remaining six or six hundred hours without artificial support.
No, she couldn’t do it. It was too grievous to be borne. The bare idea set up a keening wail in her heart. Only her zone implant kept her alive: nothing but its emissions protected her from the consequences of rape and gap-sickness, treason and bereavement. She couldn’t give that up. If she turned off her black box, she would be left defenseless in the face of what she’d become.
But she had no choice. There was no other way across the gap.
In silent grief, as if she’d come to the end of herself, she began to cancel the functions of her black box, one at a time.
She did it slowly, to minimize the stress of transition. One function after another, she reduced their intensity by minor increments until their sensations were lost: one function after another, she switched them off only when she’d had time to accustom herself to the loss.
In that way, she surrendered herself to despair.
The cabin became dim around her, not because the light—or her vision—failed, but because it no longer mattered. It was simply the outward sign of an inward imprisonment; a tangible manifestation of her irreducible mortality. Such limits were absolute. They couldn’t be overcome or outflanked or avoided by hope—or by neural chicanery. In a plain test of power, Nick Succorso had beaten her, despite all the lies she’d told him, all the secrets she’d used against him. Her son, and her humanity, had been betrayed by her inability to ever be more than she was.
The part of her that understood everything refused to reveal its intentions. In the end, there was nothing left for her except the aggrieved and restless serenity of madness.
But be quiet about it. Go ahead, lose your mind. Just do it quietly.
Ignoring the blood that crusted her hands, she began to play slowly with locks of her hair. For a while she curled them around and around her fingers, wrapping them into delicate Möbius strips; endless metaphors. Later she separated them into finer and finer strands. When they were fine enough to take hold of one hair at a time, she started pulling them out.
In that way, she sank through the bottom of her despair into an autistic peace.
Like her cabin, which imprisoned her; and her body, which had brought her so much anguish; and all other external hindrances, which had demonstrated her futility: like those things, time itself lost its meaning. It passed her by, unregarded. Her hands and eventually her scalp hurt; but pain, too, was meaningless.
She had no idea what was happening when her door opened. Nothing was revealed to her.
Furtive and frightened, as if he sought to hide from a host of furies, Sib Mackern came into the room and closed the door.
CHAPTER 21
Morn.” Mackern’s whisper was as acute as a cry. “Oh, God.”
She regarded him dully, as if she had no idea who he was.
“Morn.” Sweat beaded on his pale face, darkened his thin mustache. “Get up.” He panted unsteadily, not in exertion, but in fear. “You haven’t got much time.” The way his eyes flinched away from her and returned, around the cabin and back again, evoked the beating wings of his furies. “Oh, God, wh
at has he done to you?”
She felt a nameless agitation. The cabin was cluttered with disaster. When his gaze flinched, the whites of his eyes caught the light and gleamed sickly. She didn’t shift her position; she hardly seemed to breathe. Her face was as haggard as madness. But the rhythm of her fingers in her hair accelerated. She pulled out the strands with a hint of vehemence.
“Listen.”
He dropped to his knees in front of her as if he were falling. Now his face was level with hers.
“You haven’t got much time.”
She looked at him flatly, like a woman who’d gone blind.
Tentatively, nearly wincing, his hands moved toward her shoulders. He touched her—and jerked back as if she were hot enough to scald him. His gaze dropped to his knees; his mouth clenched crookedly. With an effort, he raised his eyes. Then he took hold of her arms.
“He doesn’t know I’m here. It’s not my watch. I waited until everyone was busy, so nobody would see me. But before I left the bridge, I deactivated his door control command circuits. The only thing his board shows is that you’re still locked. He won’t notice what I’ve done unless he tries to open your door.”
She blinked at the data first with blind, uncaring incomprehension. Everything he said sounded as familiar and indecipherable as the gap.
“You can get out.” Desperation mounted in him. “Morn, you’ve got to hear me. I don’t know what he did to you, but you’ve got to hear me. You can get out.”
That reached her. Something stirred in the dark core of her silence. You can get out. The lost or buried part of her that understood everything emitted a precise shiver of recognition. Get out.
Faster and faster, she curled hair around her fingers and pulled it out.
“Oh, Morn.”
The sweat on his face looked like tears. He wasn’t a courageous man—or perhaps he simply didn’t think he was—but he was frantic. Convulsively he snatched back one of his hands and slapped her face. Then he winced and bit his lips, terrified that he’d hurt her.
She let go of her hair, lifted the tips of her fingers to her stinging cheek. Soft as a dying breeze, she breathed, “He can hear you. On the intercom.”