Forbidden Knowledge (21 page)

CHAPTER       
10

W
hen Morn finally awoke—in her cabin, sprawled facedown on her bunk—she had the sensation that a frightening amount of time had passed.

She’d dreamed of Amnion and horror; of rape worse than anything Angus Thermopyle had done to her. Her own screams would have awakened her long ago if she hadn’t been clamped in sleep, bolted down by utter exhaustion. Screaming and nightmares made her slumber seem interminable.

In her dreams, Nick sold her to the Amnion.

That wasn’t what he’d said he would do, but he did it anyway. And the Amnion pumped her full of mutagens until she grew transformed and monstrous; entirely non-human; alien, unrecognizable, and insane. People who were given Amnion mutagens always went mad—that’s what she’d heard in the Academy. They forgot their humanity altogether: they
became
Amnion.

That was her punishment for winning her gamble with Nick Succorso. Nobody else was allowed to win when they played with him.

No wonder she screamed. She should have died. Merely dreaming such a thing should have stopped her heart. After the crazed and cruel overexertion of the past weeks, she should have been unable to sustain the shock of those visions.

Nick was taking her to Enablement Station. To the source of her horror.

Yet she was still alive. Time had passed, and she was waking up. The impersonal material of the pillow rubbed her cheek: the mattress supported her body’s weight. She could feel her black box lumped under her hip; it was still in the pocket of her shipsuit.

If Nick meant to betray her, he hadn’t done it yet.

He’d said,
They’ll help you have your baby, all right. They’ll give you a full-grown kid in about an hour.

He’d said,
Maybe that way I won’t have to leave you behind.

She didn’t understand. She had no idea what he was talking about. In the space of about thirty seconds on the bridge, he’d become as alien and fatal as the Amnion.

She seemed to wake up because she could no longer bear the terror of her dreams. But consciousness held other terrors. She didn’t know how to face them.

“If you’re coming around,” Mikka Vasaczk said stiffly, “you might as well admit it. I can’t keep Nick waiting forever.”

The sound of the command second’s voice didn’t surprise Morn. Her capacity for surprise was gone, exhausted by Nick and nightmares. Everything was a betrayal of one kind or another. There was nothing to be surprised about.

Nevertheless she rolled her head to look at her visitor.

Sitting in a chair near the door, Mikka appeared as ungiving as the bulkhead behind her. She held her arms folded under her breasts; her posture was rigid, as if she’d locked down all her joints. Yet an emotion which might have been hostility or need darkened her eyes.

Morn made an effort to swallow the dryness of long sleep. After a moment she mumbled, “What’s he waiting for?”

“He wants to be sure you’re all right.” Mikka’s tone was like her posture. “We need to start deceleration, and he’s worried about your gap-sickness. He’s waiting for me to tell him you’re awake and safe. And under control.”

Deceleration, Morn thought without surprise. Heavy g.
Clarity.
The idea made her want to turn away.

But Mikka’s gaze held her. She swallowed again. “Where are we?”

The command second didn’t hesitate. “A couple of days off Enablement. Which barely gives us time to slow down. If we go in too fast, the fucking Amnion are likely to vaporize us on general principles.”

Morn blinked at this information. A couple of days off Enablement. Already. While she slept all her choices had been taken away from her. She’d even missed the chance to hope that she and the whole ship might die in tach.

Dully she asked, “The gap drive worked?”

“Just barely,” Mikka answered. “Vector got us through. I didn’t know he had it in him. The drive went critical and shut down when we hit the gap. He overrode the safeties—forced enough power into the field generator to bring us out again. And he was fast. We only missed our target reentry by a million kilometers.

“That’s still too close. We don’t want to look like we’re going to attack. Which is why we’re in a hurry to decelerate.” She paused, then added, “All that power slagged the drive. Too bad.” She may have been trying for sarcasm, but the words conveyed an ache of dismay. “If Nick can’t pull this off,” she concluded harshly, “we’ll never get out of forbidden space.”

“I don’t understand.” Morn couldn’t think about the gap drive; about getting out of forbidden space. “Why would they let us approach at all?”
Captain’s Fancy
was a human ship—an enemy by definition; in violation of treaty. “Why aren’t they going to vaporize us no matter what we do?”

“Oh, the Amnion don’t care who goes into their space.” Mikka had a swelling outrage locked tight inside her. “They might stop a warship, but nobody else. I’m not even sure they would do that. All they care about is who leaves.”

“I still don’t—”

“They want human beings,” Mikka rasped. “You never have to pay for the privilege of getting near them. But you better be damn ready to pay for the privilege of getting away.”

Morn seemed to hear screams echoing through her visitor’s tension. Afraid of dreams, she swung her legs off the bunk and sat up. For a moment she rubbed her face, trying to remove the sensation of helplessness from her nerve endings. Then she put a hand into her pocket to feel the reassurance of the zone implant control.

“How do you know so much about them?”

“Because,” Mikka growled, “we’ve been here before.”

She didn’t elaborate. That memory was locked inside her: it may have been the source of her outrage.

Morn tried a different approach. “Well, if what you say is true,” she asked, “why are we doing it? Why is Nick doing this?”

“He’s perverse, that’s why.” The muscles at the corners of Mikka’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “He’s always been like this. He’s fine as long as we’re in enough danger. Then he’s the best—But if things get too easy—or,” she added mordantly, “if somebody solves too many of his problems for him—he goes off on wild tangents. Just when you think you’re safe, he jerks g out from under you.

“I don’t care what kind of deal he made with you. He didn’t have to keep it.” Her tone hinted at a shout of protest. “As soon as you figured out that virus, he could have changed his mind. There was nothing you could do about it. We had a nice, secure job set up for Thanatos Minor. The usual UMCP double dealing. He has a talent for giving them what they want and getting paid for it before they find out that it causes them more problems than it solves. We’ve had a lot of success that way, off and on. And we
like
letting the goddamn police pay us for screwing them.

“That’s what we did when we got you off Com-Mine. We were just in too much of a hurry to make sure we got paid.”

Morn blinked at her dumbly, trying to absorb this information. But Mikka went on talking.

“All Nick had to do was ignore you—go to Billingate, do the job, get paid, have
Captain’s Fancy
repaired, and leave before you cops realized you were in worse trouble than ever. But that would have been too easy. Instead we’re stuck on the ragged edge of survival, hoping he can work enough miracles to keep us all alive one more time.”

Her bitterness was plain. However, her manner gave Morn the impression that she was bitter about something else entirely.

It made no difference.
That’s what we did.
Morn didn’t care why Mikka was bitter. She only cared that no one had ever talked to her this openly about Nick’s dealings with the UMCP before.
When we got you off Com-Mine.
There was more going on here than she knew. She wasn’t the only one being betrayed. And she could still make choices. If she keyed all the functions of the zone implant simultaneously at full intensity, she could probably burn out her brain in an instant: she had that one last defense against being sold. She could afford to see how far the command second would go.

Her eyes drifted around the cabin for a moment; she considered the walls and door and intercom with a frown of puzzlement, as if she didn’t quite recognize them. Then she brought her gaze back to Mikka’s.

“Nick is waiting for you.” Morn’s tone was carefully neutral, unchallenging. “You’re supposed to make sure I’m all right—and under control—so he can start deceleration. There isn’t much time left. Why are you telling me all this?”

Mikka didn’t hesitate. Her hostility and her need came to the same thing. Stiffly she replied, “I want you to trust me.”

Morn raised her eyebrows.
Trust
you? Nick’s second? She stared mutely at the woman and waited.

After a moment Mikka explained as if she were taking a personal risk, “I want you to tell me how you do it.”

The dryness had come back into Morn’s throat. Her voice caught as she asked, “Do what?”

“All of it,” Mikka retorted. She seemed to hold herself rigid so that she wouldn’t pace violently or pound the walls. Perhaps it was her fear of the Amnion that made her so vulnerable. “The whole thing. How you survived Angus Thermopyle. How you got away from him. How you’re able to go for weeks without rest, and carry a workload that would kill a cyborg on permanent stim until you look like an animated null-wave transmitter, and still solve a problem that the best of us have been beating our brains out over. How you make Nick—” For an instant she faltered. Her jaws clenched. But then she tightened her self-command. “How you make him need you.

“He’s never done anything like this before. He’s perverse, all right—but not for women. He doesn’t fuck women he trusts. If he starts to trust one, he stops fucking her and finds somebody else. Or if he starts fucking one, he stops trusting her. Or he just gets bored.

“You’ve done something to him. None of us recognize him. Half of us are in shock. The rest are so scared we’re shitting in our suits. I would have staked my life that he would never risk himself like this—or his ship—for any woman. He as sure as hell didn’t do it for
me
, the last time we were here. But you’ve got him doing it. Just so you can have a baby.

“I want to know how.”

The bile in Mikka’s voice was as thick as nausea. Facing her, Morn answered softly, “What makes you think I’ve got a choice? If I did anything else, I would be dead by now.”

A scowl like a spasm twisted Mikka’s features. “Listen to me, Morn.” By an act of will, she kept herself still. “Until you came along, I was the most competent woman I’ve ever met. If you don’t count Nick and one or two other men, I was the most competent
person
I know. I can run every station on this ship. If I have to, I can run them for days. If
Captain’s Fancy
fell apart, I could weld her back together from core to skin. I know to the hour how long our scrubber pads will last, or our food. I can handle anybody aboard except Nick in a fair fight. I’m good with guns.” Grimly refusing to falter again, she said, “In bed I’ve got the stamina of a sex addict. My hips are too big, but I’ve got good breasts and great muscle tone. Nick dropped me when he started trusting me—but at least I know he
trusts
me.

“And you make me look like a gap-eyed starlet in a bad video.”

Deliberately setting aside her defenses, Mikka said, “I need to understand you. Otherwise I’m finished.”

Morn could have responded,
As soon as I explain it
, I’m
finished.
But instinctively she knew that wasn’t true: not at this moment, when Mikka had chosen to expose so much of herself. And Morn had been alone for too long: she had told too many lies, suffered too many losses. Like her visitor, she needed to set aside her defenses—if only for a minute with an honest enemy.

Without trying to second-guess the consequences, she said, “There’s nothing wonderful about it. There’s nothing wonderful about me. When he found out I had gap-sickness, he”—once again, her throat refused Angus’ name—“the captain of
Bright Beauty
gave me a zone implant. That’s how he made me stay with him—how he made me do what he wanted. But he knew that if Com-Mine Security found the control on him, they would execute him. So at the last minute he offered it to me.

“I took it. I traded his life for it.”

Mikka was stunned. She dropped her arms, and her mouth fell open; her eyes went out of focus as if she were staring at the implications of Morn’s revelation. Shock registered on her face, along with what looked like a flare of dismayed compassion. She stood up as if she were suddenly in a hurry to leave the cabin. Just as suddenly she sat down again and refolded her arms.

For a moment the only response she could muster was an inarticulate grunt, as if she’d been poked in the stomach.

Then, slowly, her gaze came back to Morn. She took a deep breath, let out a sigh, and lowered her arms to her sides.

“Well, that’s a comfort,” she murmured. “It’s good to know you aren’t really four times better than I am.”