The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge

  Ignoring him, they did their jobs with meticulous care. In theory, their control over him was perfect. The computer between his shoulder blades mastered him absolutely. Nevertheless they worked to ensure that he was as helpless in practice as in theory; that any hope he held out for himself was mere illusion.

  So they spent hours putting him through simple feedback tests—for instance, measuring the differences in his reactions to the commands “Run” and “Run, Joshua.” If they said, “Run,” he could choose whether or not to comply: if they said, “Run, Joshua,” he ran, driven by his computer’s control over his zone implants. Then their neurosensors and computer-links measured his compliance or resistance in order to refine his programming.

  Other tests were made, not by external instruction, but directly through his computer. The links were used to send him complex physical and mental tasks; and every detail of his response contributed to the perfection of his programming.

  Still other tests involved giving him external, compulsory commands which violated his enforced internal exigencies. “Joshua, break my arm.” Because he was outraged to the core of his being, Angus fought to obey: he would have loved to inflict a little pain. But his computer said, “No,” and so his worst savagery came to nothing. He couldn’t damage anyone known to his programming as a member of the UMCP.

  Hope as a concept had no relevance under these conditions. He was a tool, nothing more: a sophisticated organic extension of an electronic device. As long as he lived, he would never make another important choice for himself.

  If he’d been prone to despair, he would certainly have given way to it—and that self-abandonment would have accomplished nothing. Neither his programming nor his programmers cared about his emotional condition. Like escape and disobedience, suicide wasn’t available to him. No matter how much he might feel like lying down and dying, his computer wouldn’t allow it.

  However, Angus wasn’t prone to despair. An overriding passion kept him away from his personal abyss. Precisely because he had so much fear in him, he was able to endure it when a less damaged or malignant mind would have crumbled.

  Since he had no choice, he concentrated on understanding and utilizing his new capabilities as fully as he could. On some level, his lasers and his increased strength, his computer and his augmented vision, all belonged to him. Within the narrow range allowed by his programming, they were his to use. As with Bright Beauty and Morn Hyland, he wanted to know what they were good for.

  While Lebwohl’s people tested him, he also tested himself.

  Eventually he learned that his programming was in fact all that prevented him from getting away. In every other sense, he might as well have been designed and built to break out of UMCPHQ. The new dimension of his sight enabled him to identify and analyze alarms and locks. With his lasers, he could change circuitry or cut open doors—or kill guards. He was as strong as a great ape; as quick as a microprocessor. And his computer recorded everything for him. In fact, it was more useful than an eidetic memory, since it held a wide variety of independent databases which were gradually made accessible to him as his programmers trusted their control over him more and more.

  If he’d been his own master, he could have dismantled his prison and fled.

  But his zone implants held him. He was required to wait.

  In time, no doubt, the strain would have proved too great for him. However, his masters had exigencies of their own. Beyond the walls of Data Acquisition’s surgical wing, events moved at a separate pace; out of reach; out of control.

  One morning—his computer informed him that the time was 9:11:43.17—a group of techs and doctors came into his room. One of them said, Sit on the edge of the bed, Joshua.

  He obeyed because he couldn’t do anything else.

  Another said, Stasis, Joshua.

  Involuntarily he went into one of the null states they used when they wanted to deactivate his computer: a state in which his detached mind continued to work while his body became an inert lump, capable only of sustaining its own autonomic functions. As long as he was in that state, they could have torn off his fingernails, or cut his testicles, or driven spikes into his brain, and he would have been unable to do anything with his horror except perceive what they did—and remember.

  But if they’d intended to harm him physically, they would have done so long ago. As they took off his lab pajamas and began to swab his back with antiseptics, he was appalled, not by their unexplained intentions, but by his own utter immobility.

  With their customary efficiency, they made an incision between his shoulder blades to access his computer. When they unplugged his datacore, the gap in his mind which represented his computer-link turned as black and cold as the void between the stars. Now he was held in stasis by hardwired commands which were part of the computer itself.

  Moments later, however, the doctors plugged in a new datacore. As soon as it came on-line, he felt the disturbing, insidious sensation of having been rebooted. A piece of his brain had just gone into a cyborg’s equivalent of tach.

  Then they disconnected all their links and leads and neurosensors. For the first time since his welding started, he was severed from all external equipment—from every compulsion or requirement which wasn’t recorded in his datacore.

  Finally they sealed their incision with tissue plasm and covered it with a bandage to protect it during the few hours it would take to heal.

  End stasis, Joshua, one of them said.

  Angus Thermopyle raised his head and looked around.

  His observers were irrationally tense. A couple of the techs winced. The doctor closest to him turned a shade paler. He was perfectly under control: they knew that. Yet they were afraid of him. They couldn’t forget who he was.

  He hated them all. If he could have done anything to confirm their anxiety, he would have. Deliberately he took a deep breath, stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles as if he were free to do such things at last; as if for him the idea of freedom could ever be anything more than an illusion.

  Softly he muttered, “It’s about time.”

  The time, his computer informed him, was 9:21:22.01.

  One of the doctors went to the intercom and reported, “We’re done. Tell the director.”

  “Here.” A tech tossed a shipsuit and a pair of boots onto the bed. “Put these on.” The shipsuit was a dirty gray color, devoid of insignia—indistinguishable from the ones Angus had habitually worn aboard Bright Beauty. “You’ve got about five minutes.”

  In a clump, as if they wanted the safety of numbers, the doctors and technicians left him alone.

  Every monitor in the room focused on him as if he might suddenly go berserk.

  If he could have emitted electronic fields as well as perceiving them, he would have burned out the monitors—if his programming had allowed him that option.

  No chance.

  But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it had come. Whatever his masters wanted him for, it was about to start.

  For the first time since he’d arrived here, his doctors couldn’t tell how fast his heart was beating, how urgently his lungs called for air. So that the monitors wouldn’t see any sign of his eagerness, he got up from the bed slowly; pushed his limbs into the shipsuit and his feet into the boots with an insolent lack of haste. Then he stretched back out on the bed, propped his head on the pillow, and folded his arms over his belly as if he were capable of waiting forever.

  Fortunately nobody challenged his patience to see if he were bluffing. Less than a minute later, Min Donner strode into the room.

  More than ever, she looked as ready as a hawk. Walking or still, her hand swung past her gun, instinctively poised. Her weight was always balanced; her muscles seemed permanently charged with relaxation, as if she were nanoseconds away from an explosion. As far as Angus knew—his new vision could supply him with hints—she had no technological augmentation. And yet she gave the impression that he was no match for her.

 
She made him feel that he’d better look away before she took offense at his scrutiny.

  He would have resisted the impulse on general principles; but the fact that she wasn’t alone caught his attention.

  Milos Taverner was with her.

  The former deputy chief of Com-Mine Security followed the ED director into the room and met Angus’ stare with a dull glower.

  He didn’t look well. Considering his fastidiousness, he seemed as unwell as if he’d been on a binge for weeks. His gaze was dissipated as well as dull; his cheeks—inadequately shaved or depilated—had the color of a corpse which had been left in water too long. The mottling on his scalp resembled the marks of an obscure disease. A nic hung from his lips, curling smoke into his eyes and dropping ash down his shipsuit. He kept his hands in his pockets as if to conceal the way they shook.

  This was the man who held the keys—at least the external ones—to Joshua’s future.

  Angus grinned savagely. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look like shit. Hell, you look like me. Didn’t you enjoy the training? Learning to take orders from me must have been murder for a prissy cocksucker like you.”

  Milos didn’t shift his stance or move his hands. Around his nic, he said in a tone of sour hostility, “Apologize, Joshua.”

  Like a docile prisoner threatened by a stun-prod, Angus said at once, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” Complex emissions from his electrodes compelled him.

  Inside himself, however, he snarled, Enjoy it. Do as much of it as you can. I’ll remember it all.

  “Stop that, Milos,” Donner ordered. “That’s not what he’s for.”

  Milos ignored her. “But since you ask,” he continued, “no, I didn’t enjoy the training. I didn’t enjoy learning to look and act like a man who would crew for you. But there are compensations. I’m planning to get a certain”—he pursed his lips—“satisfaction from the remainder of this assignment.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Angus retorted. “Traitors like you always do.”

  The ED director held up one finger like a command.

  Taverner flicked a glance at her and shut up.

  Grinning again, Angus did the same.

  She nodded once, grimly.

  In no doubt of her authority, she told Angus, “Come with me.” Then she turned her back on him and strode out of the room.

  Shoving his hands into his pockets to taunt Milos, Angus followed.

  This was the first time he’d been out of his room without the attendance of guards and techs; without being attached to external computers and monitors. The experience increased his illusory sensation of freedom. Oh, there were guards in sight—and Min Donner herself served the same function. Yet the change behind the sensation was real. He was done with being tested—done with being cut and measured and coerced like an animal in a lab. For better or worse, his programming was complete. Now at last he would get out of this sterile, inhuman place. He would be given a chance to take action.

  By its very nature, action involved movement into the unknown. Unknown to Angus himself, certainly; but also, in a more subtle and perhaps hopeful sense, unknown to his programmers.

  The first thing he needed to do, in order to give that hope substance, was to get rid of Milos. That would have to wait, of course. Nevertheless he had every intention of tackling the problem as soon as possible.

  In moments, Min had led him and Taverner out of DA’s surgical wing into parts of UMCPHQ he’d never seen before. Impersonally helpful, his computer interpreted the wall-coding which enabled people to navigate the vast complex. If he’d known where he was going, he could have found the way himself. However, Donner didn’t explain anything. And Milos—who probably knew the answer—kept his thoughts to himself. When his nic expired, he dropped the butt on the floor and lit another. That and the way he hid his hands in his pockets were the only outward signs that he realized his safety was at an end.

  Out of Data Acquisition. Across a section of Enforcement Division. Into Administration.

  Angus’ pulse increased. More and more, his eagerness resembled alarm.

  Abruptly Donner stopped outside a door marked CONFERENCE 6.

  Sardonically pleasant to mask his fear, Angus asked, “Now what? I thought you were done torturing me.”

  Again she held up one commanding finger. But she spoke to Milos rather than to Angus.

  “Keep it simple,” she advised him. “You’ll live longer.”

  Opening the door, she ushered the two men inside.

  Angus found himself in a room like an interrogation chamber in an old video. Lit by a single light, a long table surrounded by hard chairs stood in the center of the space. The light was so bright, so narrowly focused, that the middle of the table gleamed as if it were hot; but its ends remained dim, shrouded, and the walls were barely visible. A quick glance told him that the corners were thick with monitors of all kinds. However, none of them was active. Apparently no one would eavesdrop on or record him this time.

  That made his anxiety worse.

  Min Donner pointed him into a chair within the circle of light. Milos she instructed to take a seat opposite him. Then she sat down at one end of the table. In the gloom, she looked as hard and unreachable as her reputation.

  “This is fun,” Angus muttered. “What do you want us to do now? Make friends?”

  Min watched him from the dimness. Milos’ dull gaze revealed nothing.

  Impelled by mounting apprehension, Angus demanded, “Did I tell you how he betrayed Com-Mine? How he and that glamorous fucker, Succorso, set me up? Hell, if more cops were like him, there wouldn’t be anything left for me to do.”

  The ED director didn’t move a muscle.

  “Personally,” another voice remarked, “I would be more interested in hearing how you acquired a name for such despicable crimes without accumulating evidence against yourself in your ship’s datacore.”

  Angus jerked his head to look at the other end of the table.

  A man sat there.

  Angus hadn’t heard him come in. And he definitely hadn’t been in that chair a moment earlier. Yet he was there now. Maybe he’d been hiding under the table. Or maybe the purpose of the contrasting dazzle and gloom was to let him come and go with as much stealth as he pleased.

  He was hard to see, but Angus made out enough detail to perfect his fear.

  The man had a chest as thick as a barrel, short, sturdy arms, strong fingers. Despite the dimness, the lines and angles of his face appeared as exact as if they’d been machine-tooled; his mouth, jaw, and forehead might have been cut from a block of steel. Gray hair uncompromisingly cut spread stiffly across his scalp. Only the crookedness of his nose moderated his features: it gave the impression that it had been broken several times.

  Glints of light reflected piercingly from his single eye, the right one. Over the socket of the left he wore a synthetic patch glued to his skin.

  Warden Dios.

  UMCP director.

  In effect, he was the most powerful man in human space. Holt Fasner, UMC CEO, wielded the political influence, the economic muscle. But the fighting force intended to protect humankind from the Amnion took its orders from Warden Dios.

  Oh, shit.

  That patch was the clue which identified him. All the stories about Dios which circulated across space mentioned it. For reasons which varied according to the source of the story, Dios’ left eye had been replaced by an infrared prosthesis which enabled him to read people as accurately as a vital stress monitor. He’d become a man to whom no one could lie.

  Someone else, with different goals and priorities, would have had the prosthesis added like Angus’ to his natural vision, so that it didn’t show. Not Dios. He flaunted his augmented sight as if daring anyone to mislead him. According to some of the stories, he wore the patch as a courtesy to his subordinates, so that they wouldn’t be disconcerted by having to look into a mechanical eye. Others said that he wore it because it made him appear more dangerous
. Still others insisted that it concealed, not an eye, but a gun.

  In any case, the patch would be no obstacle to the prosthesis. That material wouldn’t stop either infrared wavelengths or impact fire.

  Angus was on the verge of hysteria. Nevertheless his fear steadied him: he was at his best when he was terrified. “Most of the time,” he answered as if he were calm, “I did it by interrupting scan. My ship”—memories of Bright Beauty gave his voice a vibration of anger—“didn’t record what she couldn’t see.”

  Because his computer was no longer programmed to interrogate him, it let this statement pass.

  “Then the interrupts should have been recorded.” Dios’ tone was mild and firm. He didn’t threaten anyone because he had no need of threats. “I don’t have your transcripts in front of me,” he said to Milos. “What did you find in his datacore?”

  Milos twisted as if he were squirming. Perhaps because he, too, feared the UMCP director, he took the nic out of his mouth. “There were glitches. We decided they were interrupts. We couldn’t think of any other explanation.”

  Dios smiled like a piece of steel. “They were fortuitous, at any rate. I commend your foresight, Angus. Without those ‘glitches,’ Com-Mine Security would almost certainly have gathered enough evidence to execute you. Then neither of you would be available to us now.

  “As it happens, we need you.” His eye glittered at Angus and Milos alternately. “In fact, the need is so acute that you’ll be leaving in about an hour. This will be your last briefing.”

  Milos opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind. Instead he put his nic back between his lips.

  “From here,” the director continued, “you’ll be taken to your ship. She’s a Needle-class gap scout. Crew of two, space for eight. According to her official records, she has no armaments—just some rather sophisticated shielding and defenses. However, we’ve concealed a few refinements that will probably interest you.

  “Actually”—he fixed his gaze on Angus—“you know all about her. You could rebuild her from scrap, if you had to. But you haven’t accessed the data yet, for the simple reason that we haven’t told you her name. We call her Trumpet. You’ll find a complete data base coded under that name.”