The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge

  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.

  The board seemed to reel in front of her; her vision swam out of focus. Nevertheless she fumbled her way forward, found the controls to the door, and locked it. To delay anyone who might interfere.

  Then an artificial stability took charge of her misfiring neurons. Her gaze sharpened on the readouts.

  There.

  The board told her which pod had been activated. It gave her a launch countdown, life-support status, departure trajectory, braking parameters. A plot from scan showed her Captain’s Fancy and Tranquil Hegemony; showed her the pod’s programmed course between them. The pod would decelerate straight into one of the warships’ holds.

  The scan plot was automatic. She wasn’t on the auxiliary bridge: she didn’t have access to scan itself, or to helm. She would have to rely on guesswork. But since the plot was automatic, it also showed Thanatos Minor looming in the background. And it gave her Captain’s Fancy’s velocity and heading—which in turn enabled her to estimate the distance and course to that lonely rock. She ought to be able to guess well enough.

  The problem was time. Reprogramming the pod was complex. She only had four and a half minutes left, and she hadn’t started yet. No time to paralyze Nick’s command board. In any case, that could only be done from the auxiliary bridge. So anything she did might be countermanded—if Nick caught her at it.

  She couldn’t chance that.

  Springing to the thrust board, she hit the overrides, cutting off drive control from the bridge; then she initiated the shutdown sequence. Now Captain’s Fancy couldn’t brake or maneuver. That in itself posed no threat to the ship, not this far from Thanatos Minor. But it would distract Nick—

  In fact, he was already on the intercom, shouting, “Vector? Vector! What the fuck are you doing?”

  Three and a half minutes.

  She slapped the intercom silent and returned to the pod board.

  Now. No time for accidents or mistakes. If she could reprogram the pod before it launched, it would be out of reach as soon as it left the ship’s ejection bay.

  Her zone implant made her unnaturally fast as she tapped in Nick’s priority codes.

  She had no intention of canceling the launch—of trying to save Davies aboard Captain’s Fancy. Vector was right: that would achieve nothing. What she had in mind wasn’t much better; but at least it would prolong her son’s life for a while.

  She didn’t have anything else to strive for.

  First she copied the pod’s programming to one of her readouts. Carefully overriding the status indicators which would report a change to the bridge, she erased the programming from the pod. Then she began to write in new instructions.

  Two minutes.

  Accumulated stress frayed her breathing. Unable to pull in enough oxygen for its demands, her body seemed to burn itself as fuel. Spots swirled in front of her eyes, distorting the readouts, confusing her fingers. Her black box was set too high. At some point it would kill her.

  She didn’t falter.

  Initially her orders were identical to the original ones. Launch unchanged. Trajectory unchanged. Those things gave her a starting point for her guesswork. Her instructions diverged at the moment of deceleration. Instead of braking, she told the pod to generate full burn and change course, away from Tranquil Hegemony toward Thanatos Minor. If no one warned the Amnion of what she’d done, they wouldn’t have time to react: the pod would skip past them and away before they could try to reach it.

  And they wouldn’t shoot at it, no, definitely not, not after going to all this trouble to obtain Davies alive—

  One minute.

  But at that velocity it would crash fatally on the rock. Unless Billingate shot down the pod to protect itself. Either way, Davies would die in a helpless fireball. The pod had to decelerate enough to survive the impact; enough to show Billingate it posed no threat. And she had to estimate that: when to initiate deceleration, how much thrust to use.

  She wasn’t Nick: she couldn’t do algorithms in her head.

  Her son would die if she estimated badly.

  No matter. Better to kill him by accident herself than to let him be subjected to Amnion mutagens.

  Fifteen seconds before launch, she finished her programming and copied it to the pod.

  That was the best she could do. She didn’t expect to live long enough to find out whether it was good enough.

  But just in case—

  By the time the ejection pod nosed out of its bay and passed beyond recall, she’d already unlocked the door and left the engineering console room.

  On the bridge, Nick stopped cursing Vector’s silence long enough to watch the pod cross the distance to Tranquil Hegemony.

  It wouldn’t take long. The two ships were only five thousand kilometers apart—and the pod had slightly more than Captain’s Fancy’s velocity, thanks to the short thrust of launch. Just a few more minutes. Then he could start to breathe again. The Amnion kept their bargains. They may have felt justified in giving him flawed gap drive components, but they wouldn’t try any tricks or treachery here. Not this close to Billingate.

  Nevertheless as he studied the displays he felt a premonition clutching at his scrotum. He knew in his balls that something was about to go wrong.

  “Why would he do that?” Carmel asked with her usual blunt temerity. “We’re sitting targets without thrust. From this range, they can take us apart in tidy little pieces. Hell, they can knock off the command module and leave the rest of the ship intact.”

  “I don’t know,” Nick growled irritably. “Figure it out for yourself. Or go find him and ask him. That’ll be his last chance to say anything before I disembowel him.”

  “We don’t need thrust at the moment,” ventured the helm first on Vector’s behalf. “And we’ve got plenty of time to restart the drive before we approach dock.”

  In a neutral tone, Malda Verone said, “I’ve got everything locked on them, Nick. If they fire, we should be able to hit them once or twice before we disintegrate.”

  Nick ignored her. The pod was a quarter of the way to Tranquil Hegemony

  “He must be afraid they’re going to fire,” Lind said abruptly. “Maybe he thinks they’ll hold off if we’re helpless.”

  Nick ignored that as well. He was viscerally certain that the warship wouldn’t fire at him—so certain, in fact, that he hadn’t bothered to get Captain’s Fancy ready for a fight.

  “But why?” protested Alba petulantly. “Why wouldn’t they kill us if we’re helpless?”

  Carmel shook her head. “I’ve got a better question.

  Why does he think they’re going to fire?”

  That was it. Why would those fuckers fire? What excuse did they have?

  What excuse were they about to get?

  Suddenly Nick’s premonition sprang into clarity. Swinging away from the screens, he barked, “What has he done to the pod?”

  Carmel and Malda stared in a shock of comprehension. Lind gaped as if he were about to drool.

  As if answering a summons, Vector Shaheed came through the aperture onto the bridge.

  His face had gone pale, as pallid as Nick’s scars, as if his heart were about to fail him. Yet his smile remained characteristically mild; his composed manner revealed nothing.

&nbs
p; “Vector,” Nick said, soft and deadly, “I told you to watch the engineering console room.”

  The engineer paused between one step and the next. His eyes widened slightly. “What went wrong?”

  Nick leaned over his board, aimed his fury straight at Vector. “I ordered you to make sure nothing did.”

  “I know. It didn’t. I mean, it can’t. It couldn’t.” That was the closest Nick had ever heard Vector come to sounding flustered. “There was nothing that could go wrong. I waited until I was sure of that.

  “I know I shouldn’t have left. But I had to get to sickbay—I had to get something for the pain, Nick. Otherwise I was going to be useless.

  “You can check the computer. There were only five minutes left before launch. I was sure nothing could happen. So I locked the console room and went to sickbay.”

  Carefully he repeated, “What went wrong?”

  Nick didn’t answer. His premonition had moved from his crotch to his face. It felt like acid under his eyes.

  He swung back to look at the screens.

  The pod was close enough to Tranquil Hegemony to begin deceleration.

  It should begin right now.

  Scan reported thrust.

  Too much thrust.

  The pod veered off its programmed heading and started to pick up speed. At full burn, it moved past the warship. In moments it was effectively beyond reach.

  Crying out from the core of his doubt and need, Nick howled, “MORN! You fucking BITCH!”

  “Nick,” Lind said in a strangled voice, “Tranquil Hegemony wants to talk to you. I think they’re shouting.”

  Instantly Nick swallowed his dismay. He would have time for it later. He would make Morn pay for it later. Right now he had about ten seconds in which to save himself and his ship.

  Without transition, he shifted into his emergency mode—the state of whetted creative concentration on which his reputation rested. Relaxing in his seat despite the consternation around him, he resumed his air of nonchalant competence.

  “Acknowledge that,” he told Lind. “Tell them an immediate response follows. Then copy this.

  “‘Captain Nick Succorso to Amnion defensive Tranquil Hegemony. We have sabotage. Repeat, we have sabotage. We’ve lost thrust. Scan our power emissions for confirmation. We can’t maneuver.

  “‘The ejection pod containing the human offspring Davies Hyland has also been sabotaged.’” He checked the displays. “‘It will impact Thanatos Minor—’ Carmel, give Lind an ETA. ‘If the sabotage includes adequate deceleration programming, he may survive.

  “‘Sabotage was done by Morn Hyland.’” For a second, his fury surged out of control. “I’ll tear her fucking guts out!” Then he caught himself. Taking a deep breath, he instructed Lind, “Don’t copy that. Message continues. ‘She escaped imprisonment. I can’t explain it. When I learn how it was done, I’ll tell you.

  “‘Your requirements have not been satisfied. I regret this. I regret the appearance that I’ve dealt falsely with you. To dispel this appearance, I’ll comply with any new requirements you wish to satisfy—if they don’t threaten my own safety. Inform me what must be done to rectify Morn Hyland’s treachery.

  “‘To demonstrate that my intentions are honest, I won’t restart thrust until you grant permission.’

  “Send that. Put it on audio when they answer.”

  Vector had recovered from his disconcertion. “Will that work?” he asked quietly.

  “You don’t care,” Nick snarled over his shoulder. “You aren’t going to live long enough for it to make any difference.”

  For the rest of his people, however, and to steady himself, he added, “But they don’t want to blast us, if they can help it. It’ll make them look bad. Billingate can see we haven’t got thrust. They can hear us trying to cooperate. And I’ll bet we still have something those fuckers want”—he grinned murderously—“something I would have given them for nothing.

  “Malda,” he ordered sharply, “put targ on standby. I want them to see us reduce our power emissions. The meeker we look, the better.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he hit his intercom.

  “Mikka. Liete. Organize a search. Make it fast—and thorough. Use everybody. I want you to find Morn. She got out of her cabin somehow. Don’t ask me how. If somebody helped her, I’ll castrate the sonofabitch.

  “Start in engineering and the auxiliary bridge. Then try the drive space. Try the core—try the infrastructure. She might even be hiding in the hull, if she took an EVA suit.

  “Find her, but don’t let her kill herself. Don’t let her arrange for you to kill her. We’re going to need her. She won’t do us any good dead.”

  Snapping off the intercom, he rasped at the screen which displayed Tranquil Hegemony’s position, “Come on, you bastards. Give me an answer. Tell me you’re going to let us live. Tell me we’re going to get out of this with a whole skin.”

  “Who would help her?” asked the helm first. He was out of his depth and foundering. “Who would dare?”

  Because he couldn’t keep himself still, Nick turned back to Vector. “What did she offer you?” he demanded. “Was it something perverse, like ‘immunity from prosecution’? Or was it just sex beyond your wildest dreams?”

  The engineer met Nick’s glare without any apparent difficulty. “Check the sickbay computer,” he said steadily. The hostility around him didn’t intimidate him. “It’ll tell you how bad my arthritis is. The truth is, there’s nothing she could offer me. We’re in no danger of ‘prosecution’ out here. And”—his smile conveyed a suggestion of sadness—“I’m in no condition for sex. I hurt too much.”

  Swearing to himself, Nick swung away.

  He couldn’t wait. If the Amnion didn’t answer soon, he would have to go find Morn himself. Or he would have to kill Vector right here on the bridge. The effort to remain in command of himself was too much. He needed violence.

  He needed to make the woman who’d cut him pay.

  “Here it comes, Nick,” Lind jerked out as the speakers crackled to life.

  No one around the bridge breathed.

  “Amnion defensive Tranquil Hegemony to human Captain Nick Succorso. You have dealt falsely. Amnion requirements have not been satisfied. However, your thrust drive status is confirmed. Speculation suggests that sabotage is plausible. Your failure to confine the saboteur Morn Hyland is culpable. Nevertheless your destruction will not advance Amnion interests.

  “You will dock at the human installation called Billingate. If the human offspring Davies Hyland survives impact on Thanatos Minor, you will retrieve him and deliver him to the Amnion. In addition, you will deliver the saboteur Morn Hyland.

  “During the interval, the Amnion will take steps to ensure your compliance.

  “Indicate your acceptance of these requirements.”

  Steps? What steps?

  No, don’t ask.

  Nick cocked his fist above his board, threatening the air. Mordantly he asked his people, “Any of you want to haggle? This is your last chance.”

  Everyone watched him. No one spoke.

  His fury rose like demonic glee as he said, “Lind, tell them their requirements are accepted.” And with it came a burst of inspiration, a blind intuitive flash. “Tell them I’ll do everything in my power to make sure they get what they want.” He could hardly contain his excitement. “Tell them we’ll restart thrust as soon as they grant permission.”

  What steps?

  All his best decisions were made intuitively. That was what gave his reputation its air of romance, almost of enchantment. He never hesitated to act on his inspirations.

  “When you’re done with that,” he went on to the communications first, “tight-beam a message to UMCPHQ. Use the coordinates and codes I gave you last time.

  “Copy this.

  “‘I rescued her for you, goddamn it. Now get me out of this. If you don’t, I can’t keep her away from the Amnion.’

  “Send it.”
br />   I’ll teach you to cut me off, he told Hashi Lebwohl silently. And I’ll give your fucking requirements more satisfaction than you can stand, he added to the nearby warship.

  And you are going to foot the bill, he promised Morn.

  What steps?

  Vector’s eyes glittered wetly, as if he were holding back tears. The helm first ducked his head. For reasons she probably didn’t understand, Alba giggled tensely. Malda continued staring at Nick as if she were transfixed. Carmel’s frown didn’t express much approval.

  “Mikka?” Nick snarled at the intercom. “Liete? Have you got her yet? Do you need help?”

  Neither Mikka nor Liete had found Morn.

  If he’d told them to look in his cabin, they would have found her immediately. While he negotiated with the Amnion, and her son sped toward Thanatos Minor, she was there, searching with meticulous care for his store of the drug which rendered him immune to Amnion

  However, she wasn’t recaptured until later, when she tried to conceal herself in one of the ejection pods.

  Bitter and inarticulate, Mikka clamped Morn into an armcuff as Liete called the bridge to report.

  “Take her to sickbay,” Nick snapped like a spatter of acid. “Put her to sleep. I won’t have time to deal with her until after we dock. And get that goddamn zone implant control away from her!”

  Morn shrugged as if she’d learned how to die. Expressionless and doomed, she put up no resistance as Mikka and Liete manhandled her to sickbay, stretched her out on the table, and filled her veins with cat.

  ANGUS

  Now that he knew where he was going, Angus Thermopyle found the waiting harder to bear. He wanted to get away from this place: away from the sterile rooms and corridors of UMCPDA’s surgical wing; away from doctors and techs, therapists and programmers, who pretended that they had valid professional reasons for playing with him. The thought that he would be sent to Thanatos Minor affected him like a promise of escape. And the idea that he would be alone in deep space with no one except Milos Taverner to torment him felt like hope.

  Get it over with, he snarled at Hashi Lebwohl’s staff, even though they couldn’t hear what he said in the silence of his mind. Let me out of here.