Read The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order Page 34

Angus had no idea why Nick spoke at all, except to show off his expertise. Before long, however, the screens began to indicate that he was right. The stone confusion diminished slightly. One k at a time, scan range improved. The middle should have been the densest part of the swarm; but it wasn’t.

  As the swarm thinned, Nick slowed his pace. Trumpet ducked and dodged toward her destination less recklessly. He spent more time studying his communications readouts, searching the bandwidths for a transmission source close enough to reach him past the moil of rock, through the disruptive barrage of static.

  Warden Dios had called Angus a machina infernalis. An infernal device. He’d said, We’ve committed a crime against your soul.

  Whatever was left of Angus’ soul writhed in protest.

  Abruptly Nick stabbed a key. “There!” He snatched up a PCR from its socket in his board and jacked it into his left ear. His hands continued to run helm commands while he focused one of Trumpet’s dishes on the transmission source he’d just identified.

  “Got it.”

  One screen showed the source: a remote on an inert ball of rock with a relatively stable trajectory. Presumably the remote was shielded against collisions and lightning, and programmed to reorient its antennae as needed. But no signal from that rock could reach deep enough into the swarm to find the Lab. It was part of a whole network of remotes, all bouncing signals back and forth to each other until they gained a clear window on the Lab.

  As Nick listened, a different tension came over him. The sharp concentration with which he navigated became false insouciance. In a tone of feigned relaxation he announced, “Lab Center, this is Captain Nick Succorso, UMCP gap scout Trumpet. Ship id follows.” He hit a series of keys. “Don’t panic—we aren’t spies. We stole this ship from a covert UMCP operation against Thanatos Minor in forbidden space. Otherwise we would all be dead.

  “Voiceprint comparison will confirm my id. I’ve been here before. But none of the rest of us have.” More keys. “Crew manifest follows.”

  A glance at his own readouts told Angus that Nick’s “manifest” made no mention of Morn or Davies. Or of Angus himself.

  He could have listened in to Center’s side of the conversation by using the second’s personal communications receiver. Nick hadn’t told him to do that, however.

  With one part of his broken mind, he hunted for matter cannon emplacements so that he could fix targ. With another he studied indecipherable strings of machine code as if they held the secret of his life.

  “I know that, asshole,” Nick told his board pickup casually, dangerously. “I’m not fucking stupid. Give me a chance, and I’ll tell you why it’s worth the risk.”

  But his tone was misleading. Now he became cautious, despite his earlier hurry. With a few soft gusts of braking thrust, he slowed Trumpet to hold her within range of the remote; out of reach of the Lab’s defenses. Then he waited.

  The transmission distance was negligible to microwave remotes. The Lab delayed responding so that its authorities could talk to each other. Or so that guns could be made ready.

  When Center spoke again, Nick stiffened.

  “No, I will not give you a datacore dump,” he drawled as if he were immune to threats or apprehension. “I’m not here to sell my soul. I just want to use your facilities for a while. Maybe just a couple of hours. Maybe a couple of days.”

  Without shifting his concentration, he adjusted Trumpet’s orientation to avoid a slow scattershot volley of errant scree from a broken asteroid.

  Jamming hard things—

  This time Center answered more promptly.

  Nick’s gaze sharpened at what he heard. After a moment he retorted, “Is your whole operation completely out of touch with reality? Doesn’t the name ‘Vector Shaheed’ mean anything to you? It’s right there on my crew manifest. Vector Shaheed. He’s fucking famous, for God’s sake.” Nick’s mouth sneered, but he kept his scorn for Vector out of his voice. “He’s a geneticist—he wants to use your genetics lab.”

  Down his throat—

  Angus had stopped listening.

  Perhaps Nick had ignored the machine language of Punisher’s message because he simply couldn’t read it. In that case, it probably hadn’t been meant for him. Even Hashi Lebwohl wouldn’t have sent out instructions or promises in a code his operative couldn’t decipher. So who was the message for?

  What was it for?

  Presumably it was written in machine language because it was intended for a machine.

  And laughing.

  What machine? Trumpet?

  Angus’ brain had gone blank when he’d read the words. He hadn’t noticed—couldn’t have noticed—whether the ship’s computers had reacted to the transmission.

  As if it were him she loved—

  On impulse, without caring if Nick noticed, he typed Punisher’s entire message into his board.

  The command entry readout replied before he was finished.

 

  “Yes, that Vector Shaheed,” Nick said with elaborate patience, as if he were speaking to idiots. “From Intertech.”

  Angus tried again. This time he left out the words, entered only the code-strings.

  The response was the same:

 

  Hopelessness boiled up from the bottom of his mind. He seemed to remember hearing his mother say, You can’t get away, even though he’d been far too young to understand any language except pain and comfort, No, no, you can’t get away. I can’t get away from them, and you can’t get away from me. That’s why you’re my son. Why you’ll always be my son.

  Nick silenced his pickup, turned a conspiratorial grin on Angus. “I think I’m talking to Deaner Beckmann himself,” he whispered as if he didn’t want to be overheard. “Someone there has actually heard of Vector. These obsessive researchers all like to talk too much. They keep secrets from everybody else, but they’ll tell each other anything. Beckmann probably knows what Vector was working on before he left Intertech.”

  Why do I care? Angus wondered. Why should I care?

  Him she loved—

  What was left? How many other machines did Trumpet have aboard?

  He only knew of one.

  It’s got to stop.

  Isaac, he said in silence. Are you listening to me, Isaac? Can you hear me, Isaac?

  That was his name. But it was also his access-code. When his brain formed the exact pattern of neural activity which represented that word, a window opened in his head so that he could access some of his databases, query some of his programming. All the knowledge and guidance held in his datacore would have been wasted if he hadn’t been allowed to tap a certain amount of it voluntarily, under the right conditions.

  “How do I propose to pay for it?” Nick snorted into his pickup. “I propose to pay for it with results. If Vector succeeds, you can have a piece of whatever he learns. I can’t tell you what that’ll be because I don’t know. But I can tell you this. The Amnion know things about mutation”—he might as well have said gravitic tissue mutation—“that could be right in line with what you need.”

  If that gambit didn’t gain what Nick wanted, nothing would.

  That’s why you’re my son.

  Angus’ zone implants couldn’t literally read his thoughts. They could recognize a finite number of specific synaptic patterns; but they interpreted his mental state primarily by identifying the presence of individual neurotransmitters, the changes in his blood chemistry. Their control operated directly on his motor centers. They weren’t capable of managing—or even understanding—the ambiguous activity of his volition.

  Why you’ll always be my son.

  Can you hear me, Isaac?

  “Got you!” Nick crowed abruptly. “Got you.”

  At once he swung his station to face his second as if he expected Angus to be impressed.

  “They’re going to let us in. There!” He pointed triumphantly at a schematic as i
t etched itself across one of the screens. “That’s our course past the guns. It’s all coming in”—he glanced at his readouts—“approach protocols, traffic and navigation data, ship id, everything we need.

  “If Vector doesn’t fuck up, we’re going to be rich. Beckmann is going to shove credit-jacks at us with both hands.”

  Angus didn’t respond. He couldn’t. All his attention was turned inward: he was too full of desperation and pain to notice Nick. His wrists and ankles were tied to the slats, and he’d never had the strength to free himself.

  When his datalink opened, he began to recite Punisher’s message to himself, hoping that it would reach through the window to his datacore; hoping that the same resource which enabled his datacore to hear and comprehend Nick’s orders would also enable it to receive his own mental voice.

  Nick studied his readouts again; this time he stared as if he couldn’t focus his eyes. The next instant something like a blow slammed him back in his g-seat. All the blood drained from his face, his scars; his eyes glared white, as pale as bone.

  Then he flailed the air with his fists and gave a cry like the one with which he’d greeted Captain’s Fancy’s destruction—the howl of a man whose heart was being torn open.

  A moment later he looked back at Angus.

  His face had changed like a mask. Stark pallor left his cheeks the color of his eyes; but his scars were livid with blood, so dark they seemed black. They underlined his white glare like streaks of violence.

  “Soar is here,” he breathed; whispered. “She beat us—she’s already in.”

  His fists clenched convulsively. A spasm twisted him against his belts.

  “That bitch,” he pronounced distinctly, as if he were still in control of himself; as if he still knew what he was doing. “That fucking bitch. This is her last mistake. Now she’s mine!”

  Angus finished his recitation.

  He waited.

  Nothing happened. He wasn’t strong enough. His datalink remained active until he closed it; but nothing changed.

  ANCILLARY

  DOCUMENTATION

  SYMBIOTIC

  CRYSTALLINE

  RESONANCE

  TRANSMISSION

  Theorists had argued for decades over the possibility of instantaneous communication across interstellar distances.

  In practical terms, of course, the possibility didn’t exist. All known means for the transmission of data were at once too inflexible and too vulnerable to be efficient across the vastness of space. Waveforms such as radio, photon emissions such as lasers, line-pulses of the kind employed by electronic telecommunications: all were light-constant (therefore too slow when the distances involved were measured in light-years), and all were to varying degrees susceptible to distortion by gravity wells, electromagnetic furnaces, and plasma flares—not to mention obstruction by planetary or solar bodies, or even by the seas of dust which swept uncharted through the great void.

  Furthermore, humankind had developed an alternative: the gap courier drone. By storing the data to be communicated and transporting it across the dimensional gap as a physical object, humans could obtain results which far exceeded anything mere microwaves or lasers might accomplish.

  In practical terms, then, the whole question of instantaneous communication across interstellar distances was foolish: impossible on the one hand; unnecessary on the other.

  Theorists who relished the foolish, ignored the impossible, and doted on the unnecessary were not daunted.

  Many of them rationalized their efforts in these terms: In normal space, waveforms traveled significantly faster than objects. Objects simply could not be accelerated up to the speed of light. As they approached c, their mass experienced time dilation until at the last, unattainable moment it became infinite. Therefore, as objects approached c, more and more force was required to accelerate them. The final, nearly infinite increments demanded nearly infinite energies.

  And yet, in effect, objects were able to travel much faster than light by the dimensional legerdemain of crossing the gap. The physical properties of objects enabled them to go into the gap—where no waveform could reach them—and emerge intact.

  Well then, if such sleight of hand could be practiced upon objects—legerdemain that depended on the very physical properties which restricted matter to velocities lower than the speed of light—why could not an analogous sleight be devised for waveforms, a sleight specific to the unique material properties of microwaves and light?

  So some theorists argued. Their imaginings remained purely speculative, however, even fanciful, until the results of some rather specialized inquiries into the characteristics of certain crystalline structures became known.

  Working in zero-g environments, crystallographers were able to design and produce crystals of a purity unknown on Earth: a purity which never occurred in nature. The original purpose of the inquiry was to study the relationship between the crystallographic planes and the “seed” atoms from which those planes were projected, on the plausible assumption that the planes represented a form of code which when deciphered might reveal new insights into the atoms themselves. And, of course, the purer the crystal, the more accurate the code. However, the research soon produced the secondary discovery that certain pure anisotropic crystals grown in pairs from nearly identical “twin” atoms had a property which became known as “symbiotic resonance.” When one such twin was subjected to mechanical strain in order to induce a piezoelectric effect, the other exhibited an equal—and simultaneous—response.

  It was as if both twins had been subjected to exactly the same strain at exactly the same moment, even though the crystals were not in physical contact with each other. In fact, the twins had been grown in separate containers and were insulated from each other by a variety of fluids and barriers.

  Subsequent research determined that the range across which symbiotic resonance took place was a function, first, of the purity of the crystals and, second, of the similarity between their seed atoms. In particular, the more nearly identical the seed atoms were, the greater the obstacles—both of space and of matter—which the twins could ignore in their response to each other.

  Theorists interested in the possibility of instantaneous communication across interstellar distances were ecstatic.

  Clearly, symbiotic resonance had the potential to be a means of data transmission. Piezoelectric responses could be produced as code in one twin and decoded from the reaction of the other. And if such communication could take place—without any measurable time lag—between one side of a lab and the other, why not between one side of a station and the other?

  Why not between the station and Earth? Between Earth and her planets? Between Earth and the stars?

  Crystallographers were unable to advance any theoretical objections. Certainly their research repeatedly confirmed that this resonance occurred independent of time. Yet practical objections abounded—and these were effectively insurmountable.

  In order to achieve symbiotic resonance across distances greater than a few dozen meters, the seed atoms of the twins would need to be identical to standards so strict—identical down to the precise orbital placement of the component electrons—that they were virtually inconceivable to human minds; quite unattainable by human methods. The purity of the crystals themselves could be improved; but how could the seed atoms be made identical? Just as Einstein had defined the limits of physical velocity, Heisenberg had established the limits of atomic predetermination.

  Crystallographers found it easier to believe that objects would one day be accelerated past the speed of light than to credit that individual seed atoms could ever be made identical.

  Naturally the theorists were no more daunted now than they had been earlier. If communication by symbiotic resonance was effectively impossible for human minds using human methods, that didn’t necessarily imply that it was impossible for other minds using other methods. Was it not conceivable, they argued, that the techniques of the Amnion migh
t be equal to the challenge of symbiotic crystalline resonance transmission?

  That was just a theory: no more inevitable than any other act of speculation. Nevertheless, the bare idea was enough to make the men and women charged with the defense of human space—men like Warden Dios, women like Min Donner—break into a cold sweat.

  DARRIN

  Captain Darrin Scroyle, master of the mercenary vessel Free Lunch, sat naked in his cabin, absentmindedly scratching the grizzled hair on his chest while he studied the readouts from his personal data console.

  Displayed on one of the small screens was a schematic of the Massif-5 system. His last reading of Trumpet’s homing signal showed him the gap scout’s point of insertion into the system. At the moment she was one easy gap crossing ahead of Free Lunch.

  For that matter, so was Punisher. Free Lunch had been following the UMCP cruiser across the dark at a considerable distance; far enough back to be beyond the plausible reach of Punisher’s scan; close enough to keep track of her. With the information from Trumpet’s signal waiting in the vacuum like a series of signposts—and with Punisher’s particle trace leading the way—Free Lunch could have followed her target indefinitely.

  Unfortunately she wasn’t being paid to simply follow the gap scout. And Punisher stood between her and the fulfillment of her contract.

  No doubt Punisher and Free Lunch had diametrically opposed reasons for pursuing Trumpet. If Free Lunch attacked the gap scout, Punisher would fight to protect her.

  Such things had happened before in Darrin Scroyle’s experience. More than once he’d seen righteous Min Donner and conniving Hashi Lebwohl work at cross-purposes. At UMCPHQ the right hand had no idea what the left hand was doing.

  He didn’t find this amusing.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t disconcerted. He didn’t care what Donner’s loyalties were in this situation, or Lebwohl’s. The only question which interested him was: Did Punisher know what he was doing now? Had she received warning of Hashi Lebwohl’s intentions? Did she know that Free Lunch had been given the codes to interpret Trumpet’s homing signal?