Apparently that was true. Despite the hot static of the swarm, Soar’s readings matched Trumpet’s assigned departure too closely for the similarity to be coincidental. Every step and turn that Angus had been instructed to take between the rocks aligned itself neatly with Soar’s residual trail.
“Who cares?” Davies retorted bitterly. “Maybe they’re too lazy to plot us a new way out. What difference does it make?”If we already know Soar’s heading, we can go faster.
Sib didn’t wait for Angus to answer. “It isn’t normal,” he put in uncomfortably. He seemed unable to relax: old anxieties kept him tense, even though Nick was effectively helpless. “Places like the Lab spread out traffic as much as they can. They don’t want one ship covering another to disguise an attack. And they don’t want trouble between ships. If there’s trouble, they lose business, no matter who wins.
“But that’s not all.” Sib kept his gun in his hand. “The kind of ships that come here don’t want to be too close together. They don’t know who might turn out to be hostile. And they don’t want anyone else to see where they’re headed.”
Nick let out a clenched laugh, as if he were strangling.
Angus aimed a scowl at Davies. “Sure looks like that fucker Beckmann wants us to go after Soar, doesn’t it?” When Davies didn’t reply, he went on, “The problem is, I can’t figure out why. What’s he got to gain? What could Chatelaine’ve told him that would make him want to help us sneak up behind her?
“I’m not going faster,” he finished, “until I know whose game we’re playing here.”
Davies bit his lip so that he wouldn’t shout, What difference does it make? Who cares!
God damn it, Angus, we’re going to lose her!
“It’s a setup,” Nick croaked unexpectedly. The mention of Sorus Chatelaine’s name translated him out of his self-absorption. “Beckmann’s on her side. Maybe she’s getting old, but I bet she can still tuck. Give her a few hours, and she’d have him eating her shit. He’s setting us up.”
Davies didn’t listen. He couldn’t. According to Soar’s emissions, her thrust was heavier than Trumpet’s. And it was working harder. Gutbuster was pulling away. Angus could have caught her—Trumpet was swift and nimble enough to catch almost anything in this swarm—but he was letting her escape.
Seething, Davies toggled his intercom, opened a ship-wide channel. He didn’t know where Morn was, but he could reach her this way. She’d told Angus that they were going after Soar. And Angus obeyed her—Davies didn’t understand or care why. He meant to call her back to the bridge so that she would make Angus carry out her orders.
Before he could speak, however, he seemed to feel her behind him as if her presence had a palpable aura which altered and defined the atmosphere around the command stations.
He turned, saw her drifting down the companionway, guiding herself with her hands on the rails.
“Morn—” he began.
The focused outrage on her face stopped him. She looked as angry as he felt: furious enough to kill.
Something had changed since she’d left to check on Mikka and Ciro.
When Angus glanced toward her, she told him, “It’s worse than I thought.” Her control showed in the iron lines of her face, the precise delineation of her movements. Nevertheless a tremor she couldn’t suppress serrated her voice so that it cut.
Sib Mackern caught a handgrip on the bulkhead beyond the command station and froze, his face pale. Nick rolled his eyes and croaked out another chuckle.
“Meaning what?” Angus asked brusquely.
Morn floated to the back of Davies’ g-seat so that she could face Angus more easily. “I don’t know if he knew what he was getting Ciro into.” She didn’t need to say Nick’s name: the focus of her anger was obvious. “Whether he did or not doesn’t matter now. But it’s worse than I thought.”
Sib groaned softly. Angus opened his mouth, then shut it again and waited.
“Ciro—” For an instant Morn’s restraint faltered. While she fought to regain it, she swung toward Nick and whispered like a lick of flame, “You did this.” Then she faced Angus again.
“Sorus Chatelaine gave him a mutagen.”
Sib raised a shocked hand to his mouth to keep himself from crying out. Recognition filled his eyes like nausea. Angus sat still; suddenly motionless as if all his internal functions had been suspended.
Forget it, Davies tried to say. That just gives us another reason. We already have plenty. At this rate we’re never going to catch Soar.
But his throat refused to work. He was as crazy as Nick; strangling like Nick. Confusion he didn’t want to acknowledge or confront built up against his defenses, stoking the fires. Sorus Chatelaine had killed Bryony Hyland. She’d given Ciro a mutagen. For some reason Davies couldn’t make a sound.
“Apparently it’s the same one they used on her.” Morn sliced out words as if her voice were a blade. “Then she handed him an antidote. That’s how they control her. It doesn’t stop the mutagen, it postpones it. Puts it on hold. According to her, he can stay human as long as he takes the antidote.
“She promised to keep him supplied. But first he has to sabotage Trumpet.”
Manic triumph flashed in Nick’s gaze. “It worked,” he announced as if everyone on the bridge were waiting to hear what he would say. “I left thè bait under her nose, and she took it. Now we can get her.”
A small quiver ran through Angus. The threat to his ship seemed to bring his systems back on-line.
Ignoring Nick, he asked Morn, “He told you that?”
With his peripheral vision Davies saw Morn nod as if she were too angry to speak.
“It’s perfect,” Nick rasped. “She thinks we’re going to be sabotaged. So we fake sabotage. Suck her in. Then we burn out her fucking heart.
“Burn out her fucking heart at last.”
Davies wished that Nick would shut up. Nevertheless he understood how Nick felt.
If Soar intended to come back in for the kill, it was safe to let her pull away at first. At last he would have a chance to get the revenge he needed; the revenge which had set him ablaze.
“And you believe him?” Angus pursued. “Why should he tell the truth? The only way he can stay human is by doing what she wants. Now that we know, we can stop him. He’s doomed.”
This time Morn shook her head. “I believe him,” she pronounced like a woman who was beyond question.
Angus continued facing Morn; held her gaze steadily. They looked like they were testing something between them. He didn’t challenge or contradict her, however. Maybe he couldn’t.
“At last,” Nick repeated. His voice sank to a murmur as he retreated into himself.
Davies understood that, too. If Nick attended to what went on around him, he would eventually realize that he himself would play no part in the attack on Soar. And then his heart would surely burst.
A twitch lifted Morn’s shoulders in a tight shrug. “Vector might be able to help him,” she went on. “Nick’s antimutagen may work. But he’s so scared—” She took a deep breath to ease her distress. “Even if he survives, this could break him.
“And Mikka is doing everything she can just staying with him. I hope you won’t need her for a while. If you do, we’re out of luck. She isn’t available.”
Angus turned back to his board. “We’ll manage.”
That was fine with Davies. Earlier Angus had picked Mikka to be his second, but Davies yearned to have the second’s station himself, ached to run targ. He didn’t want to be emasculated like Nick—prevented by tape and distrust from carrying his essential passion through to its conclusion.
And yet he couldn’t have named that passion, even to himself. It flamed in him as if he, too, were driven by zone implants; but somehow its significance eluded him. He called it “revenge” only because he was too confused and frantic to look at it more accurately.
No one could emasculate him: he was already a woman. Everything he knew about himself w
as founded on that. Therefore everything was false. His entire existence rested on a lie.
Fiercely he scratched at the edges of the cast on his arm. When he didn’t ask them to do anything else, his hands hovered instinctively on the targ keys, smearing them with moisture and oil. He called his passion “revenge” so that it wouldn’t destroy him.
“What does Vector think?” Sib asked tentatively. “Does he know what to do?”
Morn sighed. For a moment an old weariness seemed to well up in her. The cat she took to muffle her withdrawal may have been wearing off.
“He knows more about that antimutagen than anybody else. Maybe even Hashi Lebwohl.” Slowly she relaxed against the back of Davies’ g-seat. Her hand slid down the padding until it rested on her son’s shoulder. “He sounded pretty confident.
“Oh, one more thing,” she said as an afterthought. “There was a man with her. He helped her inject Ciro. Ciro thinks he was Milos Taverner.”
As he worked, Angus’ eyes betrayed a smolder of mute fury.
Davies didn’t respond to her touch. Unable to contain himself, he ran another course projection, measuring Soar’s emissions against Trumpet’s route and speed. There was no question about it: Soar was still increasing the gap. Soon she would be so far ahead that even Trumpet wouldn’t be able to catch her.
He would have to wait until Gutbuster came back to get him.
In an odd way, Ciro’s plight eased his frustration. If Trumpet was supposed to be sabotaged, he could more easily believe that his mother’s killer would return.
Twenty minutes had passed when the intercom chimed.
Angus keyed his speaker so fast that Davies didn’t have time to react.
“Vector,” announced the geneticist’s calm voice. “I’m in sickbay. Morn? Angus?”
His tone was neutral; hinted at nothing.
“Here,” Angus answered at once.
“Angus,” Vector acknowledged. “This sickbay of yours is amazing. I didn’t know the UMCP built them like this. You’ve got analytical data available here that makes some of the hospitals I’ve been in look stupid. And if the equipment were any better, Deaner Beckmann could use it.”
With a jerk, Morn pulled herself around Davies’ g-seat. As soon as she reached his board, she toggled his intercom with a stab of her thumb.
“Is it going to work?” she asked urgently.
“Oh, sorry, Morn,” Vector replied. “I didn’t mean to keep you in suspense. Yes, it’s going to work. I’ve already tested a blood sample. I saw it work.”
Weakly Sib breathed, “Thank God.” Angus nodded to himself, but didn’t betray any other reaction.
Inside his Amnion shipsuit, Davies’ skin oozed sweat like heated tallow.
Sudden relief seemed to catch in Morn’s throat like a sob. She made a small, choked sound and released the board so that she could cover her face with her hands. The movement sent her drifting away from the second’s station, receding from Davies as if she didn’t want to be near him.
As if she couldn’t bear standing too close to his fury for revenge.
Come and get me, he begged the crackling seethe of the swarm and the deep cold of space. Come on—do what the Amnion keep you human for. It’s me you need. The Amnion want me alive.
Believe we’ve been sabotaged. Come get me.
Please.
Vector wasn’t done. After a moment’s silence he spoke again.
“Can I ask what’s going on?”
“Don’t,” Angus returned roughly. His eyes followed Morn’s drift as if he wanted to unbelt himself and go to her, touch her—as if he thought she might be able to bear his touch. “Take care of Ciro. Make sure he’s all right. Then come see for yourself. Finish coding your message. We’ll transmit as soon as we get a window on Valdor. If we survive this damn swarm.”
He punched off his intercom. To no one in particular, he growled, “I still want to know whose game we’re playing.”
When her back touched the bulkhead, Morn wiped her eyes, rubbed her palms up and down her cheeks. Then she reached for one of the zero-g grips in case Angus used navigational thrust. But she didn’t answer him.
“Well, if Nick’s right—” Sib began. He couldn’t complete the idea, however. “I guess I don’t understand. What does Soar gain by trying to sabotage us? She’s pulling away—she’ll never know if Ciro succeeded.”
He looked at Nick as if he wanted Nick to explain himself. But Nick gave no sign of hearing. Motionless and unreactive, he slumped in his bonds as if he’d been overtaken by autism.
Under his breath, Angus muttered, “That won’t last.”
Davies didn’t know whether he was talking about Gutbuster’s escape or Nick’s withdrawal.
Nevertheless Angus was right.
After fifteen minutes or so, Vector returned to the bridge, reported that Ciro’s blood was clean, and resumed working at the auxiliary engineering console. And less than half an hour later Trumpet’s particle sifters jumped like Davies’ heart. Across the spectrum, narrow bandwidths spiked as if they were screaming. Bombarded by subatomic intensities which had nothing to do with the natural rock and static of the swarm, the sensors chimed alerts.
“Shit!” Davies gasped. His hands leaped convulsively at the data keys, capturing the readings, coding them for analysis.
Again Angus was faster. By the time Davies finished entering his commands, Angus had already begun feeding results to one of the displays.
“Jesus!” Sib panted as numbers and implications scrolled to life in front of him. “Are we hit?”
Violent jags in the readings suggested weapons fire.
“No,” Angus muttered as he worked. “But there’s a shock wave coming.”
The sensors implied a tremendous blast building behind the first violence.
Morn tightened her grip. She didn’t look at the screens—or even at Davies. Pale and intense, she kept her eyes fixed on Angus.
After a second he added, “It won’t reach us. It’ll have to move too much rock to get out this far.”
“Then what—?” Sib tried to ask.
Wishing Morn to look at him, Davies pointed urgently at the screen. “You know what that is?”
He had the answer himself: he didn’t need to hear her say it. All he wanted was her attention. He knew she had made an almost obsessive study of such things in the Academy.
She was him. He hungered for her confirmation.
She shook her head as if she couldn’t turn away from Angus.
“What?” Sib repeated.
Twisting against his zero-g belt, Vector studied the display. “Some kind of beam gun,” he murmured curiously. “But I don’t recognize the signature. Too much distortion. Some other power source is playing havoc with our reception.”
“Damn right,” Davies snapped. “That’s the Lab’s generating plant. It just blew.”
Distinctly Angus growled, “It was hit by a super-light proton beam. Soar’s behind us.”
Morn flinched as if she’d been stung.
“You mean,” Sib croaked in protest, “Sorus Chatelaine just destroyed the Lab? She doubled back and destroyed it?”
Grimacing a sneer, Davies twitched his head in Nick’s direction. “She took the bait. He didn’t just set her up. He set up the whole installation. She works for the Amnion. One reason she’s here is to make sure nobody finds out about our antimutagen.” Morn, look at me. “The Lab was doomed as soon as Nick started talking to Beckmann.”
Nick, of course, hadn’t given Deaner Beckmann any warning.
“They must have trusted her enough to let her inside their guns. They didn’t have anything that could protect them from a super-light proton cannon.”
Intransigent herself had barely survived.
“All those people,” Morn breathed. “All those people.” She seemed to shrink in dismay, as if the shock belittled her. “Nick, what have you done?”
Nick’s eyes flipped open. Slowly he raised his head and started
grinning like a skull.
“There isn’t likely to be another ship with that kind of cannon around here,” Angus continued. “It’s got to be Soar. So now she’s behind us.” With a shrug, he finished, “If Ciro sabotaged the drives, she wouldn’t have any trouble catching us.”
Sib chewed his mustache. “What’re we going to do?”
A shiver of intensification ran through Nick. “Let me loose,” he offered.
Apparently only Davies heard him. Vector, Sib, Morn, and Angus acted like he hadn’t spoken.
“You know,” Vector put in, “the thing that’s always amazed me about illegals—including myself, of course—is the amount of ingenuity we’re willing to expend so that we can get ourselves into trouble. It’s staggering.” As he talked, he keyed off the console, undipped his belt, and drifted free. A push of his foot moved him toward the command station. His tone sharpened. “Deaner Beckmann was a brilliant man. A little wrongheaded, in my opinion, but brilliant. Half the people there were brilliant. And now every one of them—”
He swallowed hard and hunched over his chest as if emotions he’d forgotten long ago were crowding out of his heart. Distress occluded his blue gaze.
“Let me loose,” Nick repeated. His tone hinted at fever or hysteria. “I’ll stop her.”
Vector caught himself on the arm of Angus’ g-seat. Like Davies, he seemed to want Morn to look at him. Yet she focused on Angus as if he were the only one who mattered, the only one who existed; the only one who could help her.
“I think we should get out of here,” Vector told her and Angus. His voice shook. “Run for open space and start broadcasting. Beckmann and his people were killed because they knew about the mutagen immunity drug. Our only real defense is to tell more people. Tell everybody. If we fight, we might lose. Then the Amnion win, and every one of us will have died for nothing.”
“No!” Davies protested instantly. His inner fire spiked like the readings on Soar’s cannon. “You can’t do that!” She killed my mother! “We have to hit her. Now, in the swarm, where we have the advantage”—where Trumpet’s agility could be most effective—“and she thinks we’ve been sabotaged. We’ll never get another chance like this.”