Nick raised his head, brandished a snarl. “I couldn’t betray you, Pup. You aren’t real enough. There’s nothing there to betray.”
“I imagine Vector feels the same way,” Mikka put in to cover Nick’s malice. “So it’s up to you and Davies.”
“Actually, no,” Vector remarked promptly. “I don’t feel that way. But I would rather not talk about it”—he faced Morn steadily with his blue gaze and his calm smile—“until I hear what you and Davies have to say.”
Mikka frowned her surprise, but didn’t object.
Davies studied the damaged patches on the back of Morn’s head while she regarded Vector. When she spoke, he seemed to know what she was about to say before he heard it.
“What about you, Davies? What do you want?”
I want to be you, he answered silently. I want to be Angus. I want to make something good out of all this.
But he didn’t say that aloud.
“I’ll tell you what I think we should do,” he replied instead. “I think we should turn this whole mess over to the UMCP. Mikka’s right—when the stakes are this high, we have to consider the consequences. The Amnion know an immunity to mutagens is possible. Nick made that obvious—you confirmed it. The UMCP need to know about that. It changes the whole dilemma of dealing with forbidden space.
“And they need to know about me. I mean they need to know why the Amnion are after me. If we—if humankind is in danger of being infiltrated by Amnion who look just like us, we’ve got to warn them. That’s the only defense.” The thought of being used to help create more effective versions of Marc Vestabule filled Davies with a nausea which had nothing to do with his stomach.
“That’s right,” Sib put in, suddenly urgent. “And there’s something else. I just remembered. Nick said he figured out why the Amnion gave us those gap components—the ones that nearly killed us. If he’s right, it was an experiment. They’re testing a way to reach near-C velocities by using a special kind of gap drive. When Vector saved us, we came out of tach at almost 270,000 kps. Nick thinks that’s exactly what those components are for.”
Nick nodded to himself. He still lay on the floor; yet he conveyed the impression that everything on the bridge revolved around him.
“We know it works,” Sib hurried on. “If they can make it work—if they can do what we did without slagging their drives—then ships like Calm Horizons can hit human space at .9C. Ships with super-light proton cannon.
“There’s no defense against something like that.”
At once new apprehensions burned along Davies’ nerves. Sib was right: there was no defense—A much slower vessel with super-light proton cannon, a lumbering tub called Gutbuster, had killed his—no, Morn’s—mother; had nearly killed her father’s entire command.
His nerves cracking with adrenaline, he insisted, “That’s another reason why we should turn this mess over to the UMCP. They need to know.”
Morn, they need to know.
“I know you think they’re corrupt,” he argued even though she hadn’t contradicted him; hadn’t said anything at all. The mute steadiness of her gaze made him feel that he had to justify himself —that if he couldn’t persuade her something precious would be lost. “Nick’s immunity drug proves it. But keeping our mouths shut isn’t the answer. We’ve got to tell them what’s going on so they can defend against it. And we can force them to account for themselves if we make what they’ve done public.”
He stopped hard, almost held his breath while he waited for her reaction.
She didn’t need to think before she answered. Her ordeals had taught her to be sure. With the strength of hype and caffeine rather than of zone implant emissions, she said, “I gave them more than confirmation. They took samples of my blood when I still had the drug in my system. I don’t know if those samples survived. If they were on the shuttle—if Soar or Calm Horizons got them—then it’s only a matter of time before they’re taken to a lab where they can be analyzed. Then the Amnion can start redesigning their mutagens.”
Before Davies could say anything, she went on, “But you mentioned consequences. Have you thought about what happens to Mikka, or Sib, or Vector?
“You say you want to ‘turn this whole mess over to the UMCP.’ Suppose Angus lets us do that. Or suppose we take the ship away from him, so he doesn’t have any say in the matter. What happens to Mikka and Sib and Vector? They’re illegals, Davies. And they saved our lives. Do you want them arrested? Do you want them executed? Ciro might get leniency—he’s still young. But Mikka and Sib and Vector could be executed.
“I told you we’re cops, but I think you know what I meant. I wasn’t talking about the kind of cops who suppress antimutagens so that men like Nick can play with them. I was talking about my mother and father—your grandparents. You remember them as well as I do. What do you think they would have done?”
Her grave eyes searched Davies; her question touched him as profoundly as her refusal to let him lock Nick out of the ship. Shortly after he was born, she’d said to him, As far as I’m concerned, you’re the second most important thing in the galaxy. You’re my son. But the first, the most important thing is to not betray my humanity.
He recognized her there. As if they’d reached a place where he could be her, where they were the same, he said quietly, “They would have fought for what they believe in until it killed them.”
Her smile was small and fragile, as naked as glass; nevertheless to him it looked like dawn.
Turning her station toward Nick, she said, “That leaves you.” Her tone was impersonal, as if she no longer felt threatened by him—or as if her loathing for him had become so vast that it could no longer be expressed. “What do you want?”
Ciro looked at her in surprise. “Morn!” Sib objected immediately; and Mikka growled, “Morn—” But Vector nodded his approval; his smile conveyed a suggestion of relief.
Because he recognized her, Davies didn’t protest.
Morn didn’t react to Sib or Mikka; Nick ignored them. For a moment he continued to lie still, as if he hadn’t heard Morn. But then, smoothly, like a hunting cat, he rose into a sitting position with his legs crossed in front of him and his back against the bulkhead.
“I want Sorus.” A mad grin clutched his mouth. He held up one fist with the knuckles white, as tight as a vise. “I want her heart.”
“Fine.” A tinge of acid gave Morn’s voice bite. “She’s yours. On the other hand, that isn’t very useful. You aren’t likely to get a chance at her anytime soon. I can’t help thinking there must be other things you want.” She seemed to stress the word deliberately. “What were you after before you recognized Captain Chatelaine? I presume you were going to sell your immunity drug to the Bill so you could pay for repairs. Isn’t that still what you want?
“You don’t need repairs anymore, but you could use leverage. Otherwise your future doesn’t look good. You might not live long enough to have a chance at Sorus Chatelaine. Aren’t you scheming right now? If you could find the right buyer, you might be able to hire enough help to take on all the rest of us. Even Angus.”
Now Mikka understood what Morn was after. “Sure,” she rasped, “he must be. Whatever else we do, we’d better tell Angus to keep him away from communications. He can’t find buyers if he can’t access communications.”
Nick didn’t glance at Morn or Mikka. For a minute or two, he studied his hard fist and white knuckles as if he might be able to read his fate there. Then, slowly, he lowered his arm.
“There’s only one thing I want from you, Morn,” he said distantly. She might not have been present; he might have been talking to himself. “Take off that shipsuit—let me fuck you right here in front of your kid and your friends.
“You liked it the last time. Nothing’s changed since then—nothing significant. You haven’t suddenly become honest. The only difference is that you needed me then. Now you need Sib and Vector and Mikka and your asshole of a son. You even need Pup, you poor bitch. You need
Angus. One way or another, you’re going to have to let them all fuck you.
“You’re better off with me.”
Davies couldn’t stop himself: he had too much of his father in him. And he knew Nick too well: he could remember every detail of the anguish Morn had suffered at Nick’s hands. Snarling between his teeth, he sprang past the command station.
Morn snapped his name. Mikka followed him a step, then stopped. Ciro jerked himself out of the way. Sib jumped from his g-seat, trying to keep a clean line of fire on Nick.
Davies didn’t have Angus’ bulk or experience, but he’d inherited Angus’ strength. With his fists knotted in Nick’s shipsuit, he hauled Nick to his feet and punched him at the bulkhead. Centimeters from Nick’s face, he spat, “Are you finished?”
Nick didn’t resist. He hardly bothered to focus his gaze on Davies. Nevertheless his scars stretched like sneers across his cheeks as he countered softly, “Are you?”
“Davies!” Morn commanded. “Leave him alone. I don’t care what he says. He can’t hurt me.”
Neurotransmitters crackled like fire along Davies’ synapses; a conflagration hungry for violence. Morn had been trained to fight in the Academy. With one swift smash of his forehead, he could hammer Nick’s skull against the bulkhead, crush his nose, maybe drive splinters of bone into his brain.
But Nick made no effort to protect himself. Morn’s response to a passive or helpless opponent had also been trained into her; into her son. Davies could imagine the strike which would turn Nick’s face to pulp and perhaps kill him. That was as far as his mother’s convictions and reactions allowed him to go.
“You’re lucky,” he muttered to her as he opened his fists and pushed away from Nick. “He hurts me just by being here.”
Then for a second he thought that so much restraint was more than he could bear. Every nerve in his body had been bred to passion and fury and bloodshed: he couldn’t simply turn his back and leave Nick untouched.
Wheeling like a blow, he raged, “You sonofabitch, you never gave her a chancel You didn’t want honesty—you didn’t give a shit whether she was honest! You just didn’t like being so fucking mortal. You wanted her to make you feel like God!”
A spasm like a flinch pulled at Nick’s face, but he didn’t retort.
Davies swung his anger toward Morn. Balked by her forbearance, by the part of her which reined him, he demanded harshly, “It’s your turn. You’ve asked all the rest of us. Now tell us what you want.”
Shadows of pain moved in the depths of her eyes. For a moment exhaustion filled her face, and her shoulders slumped as if mere hype and caffeine weren’t enough to sustain her assurance. He could see that she’d told him the truth, as far as she knew it: Nick had lost the power to hurt her. But her son was another matter. He could inflict pains which reached her core.
“It’s not that simple,” she murmured weakly. “What I want isn’t what counts. We need to face the bigger issues—”
From the head of the companionway, Angus rasped, “This is my ship.” His harshness was like Davies’, but deeper, more organic. “You’re all here because I allow it. You’re all under my command.
“Don’t any of you care what I want?”
Davies clenched his fists at his sides and froze as if he were caught between his own desire to welcome Angus’ arrival and Morn’s impulse to fling herself at Angus’ throat.
DAVIES
Morn stiffened in her seat. Mikka muttered a curse under her breath; instinctively protective, she held out a hand to draw her brother toward her. Shrugging to himself, Vector keyed off the auxiliary board and retracted it into its slot in the engineering panel. Sib flinched; pulled his handgun around to cover Angus, then forced himself to turn the weapon back on Nick. Nick stood leaning on one of the display screens as if he didn’t want to waste his strength holding himself upright.
Scowling a sneer at Sib, Angus came down the treads to confront Morn and Davies.
He’d removed his EVA suit, put on a nondescript shipsuit; perhaps so that sickbay could treat him more easily. A bandage which reeked with the characteristic oily smell of tissue plasm was plastered to the back of his head; a small welt on his forearm marked the place where the sickbay had injected him with analgesics, antibiotics, metabolins. Another bandage covered a wound high on his cheekbone. Nevertheless he didn’t move like a man who’d been injured. He looked rested, strong—and untouchable. His porcine eyes were yellow with malice.
“I’m disappointed,” he rasped sourly. “Doesn’t anybody care what I want?”
After a last glance around the bridge, he fixed his attention exclusively on Morn.
Abruptly Davies forgot why he’d wanted to welcome Angus. Morn’s memories stung his heart. As if it were happening in front of him, he could see Angus’ fist on the black box—
Angus reached into one of the compartments along the bulkhead, selected a scalpel, and handed it toward her. “Take it.”
Anguish she couldn’t utter had filled her like wailing.
The zone implant control demanded a smile; she smiled. It told her to kneel in front of Angus: she knelt.
Grimly Davies stepped between her and Angus, braced one hand like a refusal on Angus’ chest. “I’m warning you—” His voice caught in his throat; he couldn’t go on.
Angus didn’t look at his son: he faced Morn as if the two of them were alone on the bridge.
“All right, I’ll ask,” she said tightly. “What do you want?” She might have been fighting down a desire to scream.
His brows knotted in a scowl that shrouded his eyes. His tone was a strange mixture of truculence and terror.
“I want you.”
Davies looked over his shoulder at Morn, hoping that she would give him permission to hit Angus.
“Angus, listen to me.” Deep within Morn, Angus’ words seemed to find a place of anger and loathing. Her fatigue and pain sloughed away as if she’d forgotten them; as if she’d used her zone implant control to switch them off. From her pocket she pulled out the black box and held it up against him like a weapon. “I swear to you that if you touch me—if you try to put one finger on me—I’m going to hit all the buttons at once and fry my brains. I would rather turn myself into a lump of dead meat than let you have any piece of me.”
Her eyes held his, daring him to doubt her.
Davies swallowed the constriction in his throat. “And I’ll kill you.”
“One of us will,” Mikka promised severely. “We’ll find a way somehow. We’re alive because of you, and I’m grateful. But I won’t let you have her.”
Sib nodded as if his commitment to Morn affected him like panic.
“Oh, get out of the way, Mikka,” Nick taunted. “Let him have her, if that’s what he wants. You’re illegal. Like me. You’ve done worse than sacrificing the occasional reluctant slut, when you had something to gain by it. You’ve helped me do worse. Don’t try to be so goddamn righteous now. It isn’t credible.”
Angus didn’t glance at Nick. No one else reacted to his gibe. The tension between Angus and Morn ruled the bridge: Nick couldn’t penetrate it.
As if he were relieved—and infuriated by it—Angus retorted, “Why am I not surprised?”
Without warning he aimed his anger at Davies. “Get your hand off me. I’m not going to touch her.”
Davies did his best to match Angus’ scowl. He leaned his weight into his palm, hoping to make Angus feel at least that much of his strength; trying to tell his father what he’d learned from Morn’s memories. He wouldn’t let himself be cowed: he couldn’t afford it.
Then he stepped back.
It’s because of men like you I became a cop.
If Angus had received any part of his son’s message, however, he didn’t show it. Already he’d shifted his attention back to Morn. The strain on his face was impossible to interpret: it might have been rage conflicted with intimate grief. Or perhaps the sickbay systems simply hadn’t given him enough analgesics to con
tain the pain in his head.
“I’ve got something for you.”
With a negligent flick of one hand, he tossed an object toward her as if it were trivial.
Flinching in surprise, she nearly dropped it. But her fingers caught on the chain.
Her eyes widened as she recognized her id tag. “Where—?”
She stopped, unable to finish the question.
“Nick gave it to me,” Angus replied in a tone as troubled as his expression. “He wasn’t being generous. We made a deal. I was supposed to snatch Davies and give him to Nick. Nick was supposed to let me have you. He gave me your id tag to show he was serious.” He shrugged tightly. “He didn’t bother to mention that Davies is my kid. Or that he’d already handed you over to the Amnion.” Sardonically Angus concluded, “Must have slipped his mind.”
Morn ducked her head as if she were trying to hide tears. Relief or chagrin twisted her mouth. Past the screen of her dirty hair, she breathed, “At least he didn’t sell it.”
The Amnion would have paid well for the id tag of a UMCP ensign.
“If he had, it wouldn’t have made any difference,” Angus retorted. He seemed to find an obscure satisfaction in pointing out Nick’s treacheries. “The Amnion already knew about you. They must have known you were a cop when you went to Enablement.”
Morn’s head jerked up; dismay filled her bruised eyes.
Angus answered her silent question. “It turns out Milos Taverner—that motherfucker who used to be my second—was a bugger for just about everybody, Com-Mine Security, the cops, Nick, the Amnion. Anything he knew he sold. He must have sold what he knew about you long before you ever went into forbidden space.
“The Amnion understood the stakes. Better than Nick did. That’s why they were willing to keep on making deals with him when he’d already cheated them so often.”
“Then why did they let me go?” she asked in a tense whisper.