And then he’d been brought back from the edge of his personal black hole. He wasn’t alone here: other people had saved him. They could have left him to die, damn right, that’s what he would have done himself, get rid of the butcher the rapist the illegal who looked like a toad and stank like a pig while they had the chance, no one would ever know the difference. Gone and good riddance.
The people around him hadn’t done that. They’d retrieved him from the fringes of his doom. And now they were trying to do the same thing again in another way.
Beyond question the power of the void could be made worse. Davies, Vector, and Mikka could fail—
Angus’ terror might have eaten him alive if he’d been able to feel its full strength. His body was immune to it, however. Only his mind remained vulnerable.
“How long do we have to wait?” Mikka asked tensely.
“How should I know?” Davies retorted. “I’ve never done this before. And I sure as hell didn’t design this shit.”
Sounding unnaturally calm, Vector remarked, “Orn Vorbuld”—a name Angus didn’t know—“used to say we have to drain the bad juju out of the chip.”
Mikka snorted. “Orn Vorbuld was an asshole.”
Was. Dead now, apparently. Another casualty.
Like Angus himself.
Try it, he groaned. Haven’t you waited long enough? Haven’t you tortured me enough? Try it, for God’s sake!
Save me or let me die—
“Fuck it,” Davies muttered through his teeth. “I don’t know what we’re waiting for. Give me a swab. I can’t plug anything in if I can’t see the damn socket.”
We’ve committed a crime against your soul.
Angus felt pressure on his back, roughly gentle, mopping blood away. The raw edges of Davies’ incision seemed to sting with cold as if they froze in the air of sickbay; as if the deep chill of space leaked in to claim him for the last time.
It’s got to stop.
Pressure again: harder; more focused. There, in the center of his back; at the nexus of his being.
Silence.
Mikka murmured, “Is it in all the way?”
“I’m not sure,” Davies breathed.
Angus was sure enough for both of them.
Without transition a window opened in the darkness of his head—a window of relief so intense that he would have sobbed aloud if his zone implants had allowed it.
Before he slipped away into the dark, his chronometer informed him that he’d been in stasis for more than four and a half hours.
DAVIES
Davies stared at the bloody gap in Angus’ back where he’d just reinserted the datacore chip into its socket, and waited for his heart to break.
He didn’t have any other ideas. If this didn’t work, Angus might as well be dead. Sickbay might keep him alive indefinitely; but no one aboard Trumpet would ever reach him again.
It wasn’t working. Davies could see that. Held by his restraints, Angus lay like a slab of meat on the surgical table. Only the autonomic rasp of his breathing indicated that he wasn’t a corpse.
Another failure. The last one: the fatal one. He hadn’t been good enough to help Angus save the ship. If Morn hadn’t risked gap-sickness to aid him, they all would have died. For a while he’d been so caught up in his own exhaustion that he’d let Morn and Angus suffer for long, unnecessary minutes. And after that he’d had to rely on Mikka to run helm, despite her injuries and Ciro’s pain, because he hadn’t been able to cope by himself.
He didn’t know how to repair the drives. He wasn’t even smart enough to turn off Trumpet’s homing signal.
But there was worse.
He’d failed to understand himself. Hell, he hadn’t even tried. He’d refused to look at what lay behind his fury for revenge on Gutbuster. Instead he’d let Nick commit his bizarre suicide. He’d killed Sib Mackern as surely as if he’d pressed the firing stud himself. And he’d taken his roiling terror out on Morn as if it were anger; as if she were inadequate in some way, not good enough for him.
I’m Bryony Hyland’s daughter. The one she used to have—before you sold your soul for a zone implant.
Now he’d failed to bring Angus back from stasis. Trumpet’s drives were dead: the gap scout couldn’t navigate; couldn’t cross the gap in any direction; couldn’t even decelerate. All her choices were gone. She was doomed to drift like a coffin consigned to the sea of space until death or the UMCP intervened.
He wanted his heart to break; wanted something essential inside him to snap. Otherwise he would have to face the consequences of all the things he couldn’t do.
He wasn’t listening when Vector sighed, “Well, what do you know. Would you look at that?” Nevertheless an unfamiliar congestion in the geneticist’s tone made him turn his head.
Mikka caught her breath as she followed Vector’s pointing hand.
Davies blinked, but couldn’t grasp what he was seeing. Apparently Vector wanted him to look at one of sickbay’s status displays. Which one? What difference did it make?
“Davies Hyland,” Vector drawled cheerfully, “my intense young friend, you are a genius. Or, as Angus will no doubt say when he gets the chance, a fucking genius.”
“The EEG, Davies,” Mikka urged quietly. She might have been on the edge of tears. “Look at his EEG.”
Now Davies saw it.
Just moments ago that screen had been effectively blank; filled by the undifferentiated emission of Angus’ zone implants. The sensors hadn’t been able to penetrate the noise to detect any neural activity. But now a whole series of normal-looking waves and spikes scrolled along the EEG’s band-widths.
“He’s asleep,” Vector explained before Davies could try to guess what the readings meant. “Not blank. Not in stasis. Sleeping.” He consulted a readout, then went on, “This isn’t exactly natural. These lines”—he indicated a few of the bandwidths—“are too regular. His zone implants are doing this to him. He needs time to heal. But he isn’t blank,” Vector insisted. “His systems are on-line again. He’ll probably wake up when his diagnostics say he’s ready.”
The geneticist grinned at his companions. “Maybe now we have something to hope for.”
Without warning a visceral relief gripped Davies so hard that he doubled over as if he were cramping. Mikka croaked his name, but he wasn’t able to respond. Pains he couldn’t name locked down the muscles in his chest and abdomen, pulling him into a fetal knot. He’d been under too much strain for too long; living on pure adrenaline. Flesh had limits—even his enhanced metabolism had limits—and he’d passed them long ago. Shocked by the sudden change in the stimulus of his neurotransmitters, his nerves went haywire, misfiring in all directions; clenching him into a ball. Adrift in zero g, he bobbed against the wall and bounced back as if he’d lost all mass; all substance.
“Davies!” Mikka snagged him by the arm, stopped his helpless motion. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
If he could have opened his throat, he would have called Morn’s name. But he couldn’t speak; couldn’t breathe—
Vector didn’t hesitate. “I’ll get some cat.” At once he started keying commands for the sickbay dispensary.
No! Davies wanted to protest. No drugs, no cat, don’t give me anything, that isn’t what I need, you don’t have to be afraid of me, I’m not like that! Morn was the one who needed cat. To control her gap-sickness. So that she wouldn’t try to kill them all.
Closed in pain as if it were a womb, his image of himself shifted.
I’m not her.
Here was the proof. When the universe spoke to Morn—when hard g pushed her flesh past its limits—she attempted self-destruct. Or she hurt herself in some way to deflect the impulse. But he had a completely different reaction. He became a killer of another kind altogether. Driven by his terror of the Amnion, and of their desire to use him against his entire species, he sent other people out to die. He hungered for murder, not suicide. And when his body was overwhelmed, he became a un
iverse not of clarity but of pain: helpless as a convulsing epileptic.
He’d figured out how to bring Angus back from stasis.
And he was not Morn.
That knowledge seemed to reach depths in him which it had never touched before. The hurt which cramped his muscles and sealed his lungs was his, no one else’s. It was his inability to distinguish himself from her.
He’d saved Angus.
He didn’t want any goddamn cat.
Before Vector could reach him with a hypo, his chest and limbs began to unlock themselves.
“Vector, he’s moving,” Mikka announced unnecessarily.
Davies drew a long, shuddering breath. Bit by bit he unfolded himself. When he could turn his head, he did his best to nod at Vector and Mikka. “I’m all right.” He hardly heard his own voice, but at least he was able to speak. “I don’t need cat. I’m just—” Words couldn’t convey what he wanted to say. I’m not Morn. That’s important. “I just need sleep.”
Vector studied him for a moment, glanced down at the hypo in his hands, then referred the question to Mikka.
“Don’t look at me,” she murmured wanly. With the heel of one hand, she pressed the bandage over her eye and the corner of her forehead tighter. Maybe she thought that would make her injuries hurt less. “We all need sleep. If he says he doesn’t want cat, I say send him to bed.”
Slowly Vector nodded.
“I’m going to do that myself,” she went on. Her weariness was palpable. “As soon as I make sure Ciro hasn’t gone back off the deep end.” She sounded defensive as she added, “We might as well rest. We don’t have anything better to do until Angus wakes up.”
That was her brother’s doing, but she seemed to feel responsible for it.
“You’re probably right,” Vector replied as if he thought she needed the acknowledgment. “Go ahead.” He gestured at the console behind him. “I just want to run a few more tests, make sure he’s all right.”
Mikka nodded; turned toward the door. Then she stopped to put her hand on Davies’ arm.
“Thank you,” she said softly. When she looked straight at him, he could see that her good eye was full of loss. “As long as Angus can function, we have a chance. If you hadn’t brought him back, I’m not sure I could live with what Ciro did to us.”
Brusquely she opened the door and left.
When she was gone, Vector dropped his hypo into the sickbay disposal. With a nudge of his hip, he moved himself closer to the command keypad. But he didn’t take his gaze off Davies.
A chance, Davies echoed to himself. Not long ago he’d been alone: alone on the bridge; alone with his failures. But now he’d recovered his father. If Morn could come back from the place where gap-sickness and her shattered arm had taken her, he might finally find it possible to be whole.
Drifting again, he swung around so that Vector wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.
Vector cleared his throat. “You’re a growing boy,” he remarked obscurely. “Give yourself a break. I can handle things here. Do what Mikka says—go to bed.”
Sure. Go to bed.
Keeping his back to the geneticist, he pushed off from the surgical table and let himself out into the corridor running along Trumpet’s core.
Moisture smeared his vision. He could hardly see where he was going.
As soon as the sickbay door closed behind him, he caught a handgrip and stopped. More than anything he needed sleep. Yet he was reluctant to return to his cabin. He’d been through too much recently. His limbs and back still ached from the strain of his seizure. If he found Morn asleep, he would be afraid for her. And if she was awake, he would be afraid of her: afraid of what she’d become; afraid of her ability to pierce his heart.
Before Trumpet’s final escape from the black hole’s g, she’d recovered consciousness briefly. I can’t do this again, she’d said to him. When I’m in trouble, the only thing I can think of is to hurt myself She’d let the singularity crush her right arm. Self-destruct—I need a better answer.
That made sense. Too often she’d driven herself to brutal extremes in an effort to keep him alive; keep him human. He didn’t want to benefit from any more of her excruciation.
Nevertheless he didn’t understand what she meant by a better answer. What else could she have done?
She’d gone too far beyond him. He couldn’t imagine what she might have become.
Yet he’d found a way to rescue Angus from stasis. That steadied him. And by degrees the knowledge that he wasn’t her seemed to grow stronger. Maybe it would be strong enough to help him face her.
He rubbed the back of his hand across his damp eyes, trying to clear them. Then he floated down the corridor in the direction of his cabin.
Morn blinked at him blearily as he entered, as if she’d been awakened by the sound of the door. At first she didn’t appear to recognize him. After a moment, however, she murmured, “Davies.” Her voice sounded rusty with disuse.
He shouldn’t have tried to clean the blur off his vision. He didn’t want to see her like this: pale as illness; her eyes like dark craters in the fragile landscape of her face. All her beauty had been whetted down to bone. In addition, her entire right arm was wrapped in an acrylic cast and strapped across her chest; but she may not have been aware of it yet.
The sight wrung him. He had a strange sense of dislocation—an impression that he was seeing Angus’ handiwork, and Nick’s, from the outside for the first time. Somehow being caught and misdefined by her memories had partially blinded him to the cost of her ordeals. Witnessed from inside, that price was at once more extreme and less tangible.
Fresh tears spread across his cheeks. Despite his new knowledge—or perhaps because of it—his muscles tightened again, trying to draw him back into a ball.
But he’d brought Angus out of stasis. That was one burden he no longer had to carry; one disaster he didn’t have to explain. Surely he could stand the rest for a few more minutes?
He didn’t try to hide what he was feeling from her. Hunched over as if he were bleeding internally, he slid to the edge of her bunk and sagged there beside her, anchoring himself with his fingers in the webbing of her g-sheath.
“Davies.” With an effort, she swallowed to moisten her throat. “You’re still alive. That’s one good thing, anyway.”
“So are you.” Empathy and weariness hindered his voice; but he didn’t care. “I’m glad. You were hurt so bad—I was afraid you might die—or we all would—before I got a chance to apologize.”
Morn frowned weakly; swallowed again. “For what?” The drugs sickbay had given her were fading, but they still affected her, clogging her reactions, slowing her comprehension.
He was tempted to say, For letting Nick go kill himself. For sending Sib out to die. But those were secondary hurts between her and him; easier to talk about. Instead he told her roughly, “For not trusting you more. For saying all those nasty things to you.”
I’m Bryony Hyland’s daughter.
“Half the time I really can’t tell the difference between us. It confuses me.” Waves of pressure like little convulsions tightened his chest and belly, but this time they weren’t strong enough to stop him. “And I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to be as scared as I would be if I thought about it.
“So I told myself we had to go after Gutbuster because that was the right thing for cops to do. Punish her for her crimes. And I could tell you had qualms about it. You weren’t backing me up. So I treated you like you were weak—like there was something wrong with you—because you didn’t back me up.
“But it didn’t have to do with being a cop.” Anger and failure roughened his tone as he explained. “It had to do with being terrified. Gutbuster was after me. She wanted to give me to the Amnion. And the Amnion want to use me to help them learn how to make themselves look just like human beings. That’s why I wanted to kill her.
“You weren’t being weak. You were thinking about larger questions. More impor
tant questions. Like whose game this is. Who’s manipulating us now, and why. And what we can do about it.
“You didn’t deserve the way I treated you.”
Morn listened attentively until he was done. Her wounded gaze held his face. But after he finished she didn’t respond directly. Instead she murmured in a thin voice, “You said was. Gutbuster was after you. She wanted to give you to the Amnion. What’s changed? What’s going on? Where are we?”
Maybe she was confused herself—by drugs; or by the gap in her awareness of what had happened. Or maybe she simply didn’t realize that when he was separate from her he might not be sure of her forgiveness.
A wave of weariness seemed to break over his head. The muscles in his chest stopped clenching. He slumped on the edge of her bunk, shrinking into himself. Of course she wanted to know what she’d missed while she slept. He would feel the same in her place. Apologies weren’t as important as survival.
For a moment he couldn’t lift his head far enough above his fatigue to answer. But then he closed his eyes and found that if he concentrated just on speaking—if he didn’t let himself look at her, witness her condition—he could go on a little longer.
“It’s hard to describe,” he breathed distantly; putting words together one at a time in the darkness of his head. “The good news is, we got away from Massif-5. We’re coasting out in the middle of nowhere.” He’d seen the astrogation coordinates, but they meant nothing to him. “You saved us when you activated the helm failsafes. Otherwise we would have run into an asteroid. Or gotten sucked back into the black hole.
“Free Lunch was gone.” Fuel for the weird energies of the singularity. “There was no sign of Soar. Mikka took the helm for me, ran us out to the fringes of the swarm. When we got there, we found a major battle going on. A UMCP cruiser—must have been Punisher—was blazing away at Calm Horizons. I still don’t know how they found us. Or how Soar did. They aren’t supposed to know how to follow a Class-1 UMCP homing signal. But the Amnion are so desperate to stop us, they’ve committed an act of war.”