Forbidden Knowledge (34 page)

“Listen to me!” Godsen roared like a klaxon. “How do you know he gave her the control?”

Together Hashi and Min turned on Frik. “Because, my dear Godsen,” Hashi said placidly, “Com-Mine Security did not find it.”

Gritting her teeth, Donner explained, “If they did, they would have executed him before we could stop them. Taverner wouldn’t have been able to stop them. They hate him too much.”

“But that’s terrible!” Godsen protested.

“So I’ve been saying,” drawled Min sardonically.

“If word gets out, if people hear about this—” Frik sounded genuinely distressed. “One of our people, with gap-sickness and a zone implant, wandering around loose—under the control of a known pirate. People are going to ask why we let that happen. We’ve got to get her back.”

“I agree,” Donner rasped. “We’ve got to get her back.” She turned on Lebwohl again. “That’s why I’m in a hurry. I don’t like any of this—and I’m liking it less by the minute.” The passion in her voice blazed higher as she spoke. “I want him
ready
and on his way. He’s my only chance to rescue her. If she isn’t past hope already.”

This time Hashi looked a little nonplussed. “My dear Min,” he said as if he were breathing sand, “I am not certain that his programming can accommodate your wishes.”

She poised herself as if she were about to draw her gun. “What do you mean?”

“Forgive me. I spoke imprecisely. I mean, I am not certain that his programming will be allowed to accommodate your wishes.”

“That’s outrageous,” snorted Godsen. “Of course he’s got to rescue her. You aren’t listening. I tell you, we’ve got a disaster on our hands. The only way we can salvage the situation is by rescuing her.”

“I understand your concern,” Hashi replied placatingly. “However, you must realize that our position is not so simple. I mean, the position of those of us in this room. Let me explain with a question. When our Joshua was arrested by Com-Mine Security, your Morn Hyland fled with Captain Succorso. Why did we permit that to occur?”

“We weren’t there,” Frik said. “We couldn’t stop it.”

But Min had a different answer. “Orders,” she snapped.

“Naturally,” said Lebwohl. “Of course. But that is not an answer. Why were those orders given? What reasoning lies behind them?”

The ED director grew more bitter by the moment. “I don’t know. He’s keeping it to himself.”

Hashi agreed with a nod. “So we must speculate.

“Consider the hypothesis that Morn Hyland was a condition for Captain Succorso’s cooperation. He wanted her, and we want him. Therefore we had no choice but to let him have her.

“This is plausible, but unsatisfactory.

“It is certain that Com-Mine Station could not be allowed to keep her. If they did, they would inevitably have learned the truth—that our Joshua was innocent of the charge against him. Indeed, that the charge was invented by Captain Succorso and our valued ally, Deputy Chief of Security Milos Taverner. Then we would have been exposed. The Preempt Act would have failed, and our director of Protocol would have been faced with a disaster of”—his eyes gleamed—“astronomical proportions.

“However, to relieve the dilemma by allowing Captain Succorso to take her is altogether questionable. Personally I would have preferred to terminate her. She is a random element—and Captain Succorso himself is a rogue. Together they will cause more difficulties than they resolve.

“I cannot persuade myself that we have placed ourselves in this position merely to satisfy Captain Succorso’s wishes.”

“In other words,” Donner said angrily, “you think there’s something else going on here. You think Joshua won’t be programmed to rescue her for the same reason we let her get away with Succorso—and we won’t be told what that reason is.”

“In essence,” Hashi said, “yes.”

Angus’ arms had begun to burn with strain, but he didn’t have the choice of letting them drop.

“We’ll see about that,” Godsen proclaimed. “Protocol isn’t going to take this lying down. Sure, I’m all in favor of Joshua here. I hope he nukes Thanatos Minor to slag. And Captain Succorso with it. You’re right—Succorso’s a rogue. Having an agent like him isn’t worth the risk.

“Some risks I’m willing to take. You know that. Using illegals like Succorso and traitors like Taverner to help us pass the Preempt Act and give us Joshua—that was worth the danger. In fact, it was my idea. If word got out, we were all cooked. But I don’t think we could have passed the Act any other way.

“This is another matter. We have nothing to gain by taking the chance that Succorso and Hyland might go critical on us. We should have blasted them to powder as soon as they left Com-Mine. But we didn’t, so now we’ve got to accept the consequences.

“I’m going to fight this one.” He faced Donner as if he expected applause—or at least gratitude. “You can count on my support. If we don’t at least try to rescue your Morn Hyland, we’re too vulnerable.”

Min wasn’t grateful. She snorted, “What makes you think he’ll listen?”

He? Angus thought. He? Were they talking about Warden Dios? The UMCP director?

Who else could give these three people orders?

Did the most powerful man in human space force them to let Morn go with Succorso?

Godsen Frik’s voice had a petulant, almost defensive tone as he retorted, “I can go over his head.”

Both Hashi Lebwohl and Min Donner looked away from the PR director as if they were shocked—or shamed. Studying the floor, Min said softly, “The way you did about the immunity drug.”

Dangerous red flushed across Godsen’s face; but he didn’t respond.

Still addressing the floor, Donner muttered, “I don’t like playing this dirty.”

Now Frik spoke back. “Oh, don’t go all virtuous on us. You’ve got as much blood on your conscience as anyone else. Probably more. Why else do they call you his executioner?

“You brought Joshua here, didn’t you?”

“I obey orders,” she replied as if to herself. “I trust him. I have to. But we’re supposed to be cops. What good are we if we aren’t honest?”

Hashi shrugged delicately. “What is honest? We define a goal. Then we devise a means to achieve it. Is this not honest?”

Some of the blood on Min’s conscience showed in her eyes as she glared at Lebwohl. “I’m getting nauseous,” she growled. “You said you’re going to tell us how he works. Do that, so I can leave.”

A smile quirked the corners of Hashi’s mouth. “I will.

“But I must warn you,” he said to both his fellow directors. “If you disapprove of the possibility that our Joshua will not be programmed to rescue Morn Hyland, you will certainly not be comforted by what I tell you now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Godsen.

“I will spare you the technical details,” Lebwohl replied. “A general outline is sufficient.

“When Joshua’s programming has been designed, and all its priorities and variables have been approved, it will be written to the datacore of his computer. In effect, it will become an integral part of him. The interface between his mind and his computer will allow him to act on the basis of his experience and knowledge—as long as he attempts nothing which in any way violates his programming. He will have the moral equivalent of two minds. One, ours, will impose our instructions on him. The other, his, will act on those instructions.

“Within its limits, the system is reliable. Because of the control supplied by his zone implants, he will be entirely unable to perform any action which does not conform to his programming.

“Unfortunately the system
is
limited. Simply put, the difficulty is that we can never envision every situation or exigency which Joshua will confront. And if his circumstances become such that they are not adequately covered by his programming, he will be able to take independent action—action which might conceivably damage us or our interests. This you already know.”

“Of course we know it,” Frik rumbled. “We aren’t stupid.”

Hashi’s blue gaze appeared to reserve judgment on that point, but his tone conveyed no insult. “The solution we have devised is that Joshua will not work alone. He will be accompanied by a ‘partner.’ This partner will appear to be his subordinate, but will have the capacity to amend his programming as needed. Joshua’s computer will recognize his partner’s voice, and when his partner speaks the proper codes his new instructions will be written directly to his datacore.

“Naturally, if we see reason to adjust Joshua’s programming ourselves, we need only contact his partner. Changes can be made in a few moments.”

Both Min and Godsen waited as Hashi studied them. After a moment, the DA director said, “Joshua’s partner has already been selected and is now being trained. As you may imagine, he cannot be controlled as Joshua himself is controlled. If he were, his own programming limitations might well hamper Joshua’s effectiveness. But we have selected a man whom we consider peculiarly well suited for the task. And I can assure you that his training has been intensive.”

Donner gritted her teeth and went on waiting.

Angus didn’t have the capacity to clench his jaws; nevertheless he, too, waited.

“Don’t drag it out, Hashi,” said Godsen. “Who is he?”

Hashi Lebwohl beamed.

“Why, none other than our trusted ally and colleague, Milos Taverner.”

Somewhere in the back of Angus’ mind, a small hope flickered to life.

“
Taverner?
” Frik spat. “Are you out of your mind? You’re going to trust this entire operation to a man like
Taverner
? He has the scruples of a trash recycler. He’s already sold out Com-Mine Security. All we had to do was
pay
him enough. He’s probably selling
us
, too. If he isn’t, he’ll do it as soon as he’s offered enough credit.”

“I think not.” Lebwohl was unruffled. “We have several safeguards.

“First, of course, a datacore is unalterable. Our Milos cannot effectively issue instructions which run directly counter to Joshua’s programming. And every instruction he gives—indeed, every word he utters in Joshua’s presence—will be permanently recorded. Our Milos will be unable to conceal what he has done.

“In addition, his unreliability is known. We have all the evidence we require. If our Milos seeks to betray us, he will be destroyed. We have left him no doubt of this.”

Hashi smiled benevolently, then continued.

“In any case, whatever your objections, you must consider the question of credibility. Joshua’s partner must appear to be Angus Thermopyle’s subordinate. The Captain Thermopyle who is known upon Thanatos Minor would never serve under another—and would never accept as a subordinate any man who was not demonstrably illegal. His programming will allow him to expose his partner’s treacheries, to explain—and thereby protect—him. That will leave Milos helpless to do anything other than serve us.”

Frik wasn’t satisfied, but Min didn’t give him another chance to protest.

“No, Hashi.” She sounded almost calm. “It’s untenable. You can’t do it. I wondered why we took Taverner away from Com-Mine, but I assumed it was to cover all of us if he got caught. I never thought you wanted him for something like this.

“He’s an impossible choice. You can’t give a known traitor control over a weapon like Thermopyle. One of
my
people is at stake here. I’m going to fight you on this.”

And delay the operation? Angus argued in his paralyzed silence. No, don’t do it, you don’t want that.

Hashi faced Donner squarely. “It has been decided,” he asserted. “The director approved the order weeks ago.” He paused, then added happily, “I am proud to say that the suggestion was mine. I consider our Milos the perfect choice.”

Min bunched her fists, raised them in front of her. But she didn’t have anyone to strike. Through her teeth, she snarled, “Lebwohl, you’re a shit.”

Hashi’s eyes narrowed. In a prim wheeze, he retorted, “It will not surprise you, I think, to hear that I hold you in similar esteem.”

“Come on, Min.” An apoplectic flush covered Godsen’s face. “I’m going to talk to the director. I want you with me.”

Min flashed a scathing glare at him, turned away roughly, and strode out of the room.

“And when the director refuses to alter his decision,” Lebwohl said to Godsen, “you will again attempt to ‘go over his head.’ This time, you will not succeed. The game is deeper than you understand, and you will drown in it.”

Sputtering, the PR director hurried after Min.

When Donner and Frik were gone, Hashi spent some time playing with Angus before putting him back to bed. But Angus did his best to ignore the humiliation. He had no choice, of course—but now he suffered the way his arms and penis burned with less rage and old terror. He had been given something to hope for, something which helped him dissociate himself from his nightmare.

He concentrated on that because he was physically powerless to castrate the DA director.

CHAPTER       
16

W
hen
Captain’s Fancy
hit the gap, she began to come apart.

According to her chronometers, the emergency was brief, so brief that its extremity became almost incomprehensible. As soon as she gained the velocity he wanted, Nick engaged her gap drive, and she went into tach. And as soon as she went into tach, dimensional physics started undoing her atom by atom, pulling her to nothingness like smoke in a slow wind.

For a few seconds she drifted along the rim of nonexistence.

The gap field generator had failed at exactly the wrong instant.

The crisis was too quick for logic. Only imagination and intuition were fast enough to save Nick’s people.

Specifically Vector Shaheed saved them: not because he was a wizard at his job, but because he panicked. Inspired by imagination or intuition, he panicked in the right way.

He was already afraid. The new Amnion equipment had passed most of his tests perfectly—and had come up blank on others. Those few tests had simply refused to run. And that scared him.

Alone in the drive space, with
Captain’s Fancy’s
survival riding on him—with Morn Hyland’s finger pressed to the ship’s self-destruct, and equipment he couldn’t trust in his gap field generator—calm, phlegmatic Vector Shaheed lost his nerve.

When Nick ordered tach, Vector’s hands leaped like intuitions at his control board. Milliseconds after the gap field was engaged, he hit his overrides, trying to cancel the ship’s translation from Amnion to human space.

In theory, that was the wrong thing to do. It had never been done before: no one who survived the gap had ever tried it.
Captain’s Fancy
should have winked away; should have become a phantom, a ghost ship sailing unchartable dimensional seas.

However, in this case the theory itself was wrong. The gap field generated by the Amnion equipment was anomalous: open-ended in a way no sane gap field was ever intended to be. Instead of hastening
Captain’s Fancy’s
extinction, Vector’s overrides snatched her back into normal space.

They also burned out all the control circuits and several components of the drive.
Captain’s Fancy
resumed tard with her gap drive slagged.

She came out of the gap like a blast from a matter cannon; hit normal space with a dopplering howl, as if all the stars around her wailed. Instantly scan and navigation went crazy. Her velocity was so great, so far beyond anything her thrusters could have produced, that her computers weren’t programmed for it. Time-dilation effects distorted everything; sensors broke into electronic gibberish. The computers took long minutes to recalibrate themselves—to deduce the ship’s condition and begin compensating for it.

When at last they were able to make sense of the new data, they reported that
Captain’s Fancy
was traveling at .9C: roughly 270,000 kilometers per second.

That should have been impossible. No human ship was built to attain such speed. On the other hand, there was no g involved, no stress. Internally the ship might as well have been drifting. The dilemma was all external; and for the present it involved no immediate hazards. The computers were simply ill prepared to interpret the information
Captain’s Fancy
’s probes and sensors received from the starfield and the deep dark.

Nearly an hour passed before astrogation could tell Nick where he was.

Morn Hyland had a similar problem. Long before she actually recovered consciousness, she had a nagging sense that something was amiss. Something physical: her body was in the wrong place, or the wrong posture. Anxious as delirium, her dreams made her thrash from side to side, whimper in her sleep, strain to reach controls which weren’t there.

Self-destruct. If something had gone wrong, she needed to push the button. Her threats were wasted unless she could carry them out, no one would ever believe her again, the little power she’d gathered for herself would fray through her fingers like smoke.

If she pushed the button, Davies would die. Her son would die. While he was still half insane with dislocated identity and flawed memories. He would never have a chance to become himself; the part of her she considered worth redeeming.

That was better than letting Nick give him to the Amnion.

She stabbed at the self-destruct until her whole hand hurt, and the strain made her arm quiver; but nothing happened.

The button was gone.

The auxiliary command console was gone.

Her hands were empty. Powerless and doomed.

Oh, God.

Forcing her eyes open, she saw the familiar walls of her cabin.

She lay on her berth with her hands clenched over her sternum. They fought each other as if her right struggled to prevent her left from ruin.

Nick knew about her zone implant.

He’d promised Davies to the Amnion.

All her power was gone.

“Are you awake?” a voice asked. She should have been able to recognize it. “I’ve been worried about you. Mikka must have hit you pretty hard. I would have taken you to sickbay, in case you’ve got a concussion, but Nick said no. Can you hear me? If you can, try to say something.”

If she couldn’t recognize his voice, she should have at least been able to look at him and see who he was. But when she made the attempt, pain like impact rifle fire punched the back of her head, and the cabin dissolved in a blur of tears.

Mikka must have hit her hard, all right. In the end, the command second had declared her loyalties. But how could she have done it?
Captain’s Fancy
must have been under heavy g: otherwise Morn wouldn’t have been asleep. Then how had Mikka been able to leave her seat?

There must have been a delay of some kind. Morn must have been too profoundly exhausted to wake up quickly when thrust cut out and her zone implant released her. And during that delay, Mikka had come up behind her—

“Come on, Morn,” the voice said. “Try. You need to wake up. Don’t make me shake you. I might damage you—and you’re hurt enough already.”

As if she’d known who he was all along, she identified the speaker.

Vector Shaheed.

Try. All right. She could do that. It was necessary.

Swallowing pain and tears, she struggled to ask, “Where—”

“You’re in your cabin,” he answered. “We’re all alive—at least for the time being. I’ll probably never understand how, but we survived.”

Despite a blinding series of detonations from her occipital lobe, she shook her head. That wasn’t what she needed to know.

“Where—”

Had they escaped forbidden space? Were they safe from the Amnion?

“Where is your son?” Vector inquired. “Is that what you’re asking? Nick has him locked up. The last I heard, he’s all right. He looks as murderous as his father, but nobody’s done anything to him. Nobody’s had time.”

Morn knotted her fists to keep herself from moaning. Past the detonations, she croaked, “Where are we?”

“Ah, shit,” sighed Vector. “I was afraid that’s what you wanted to know.

“Oh, well. You’ve got a right to an answer.

“We didn’t make it, I’m sorry to say. The new components failed. We came out of the gap so fast that we exceeded our operational parameters. For a while we couldn’t get astrogation working. The computers couldn’t make sense out of the scan data. But I just talked to the bridge a little while ago. Nick—”

He faltered, then said, “Nick wanted me to report on your condition. When I called the bridge, he told me they’ve finally been able to fix our position.

“We’re still in Amnion space. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’ve covered most of the distance to Thanatos Minor. In fact, we’re so close that we’ll have to start decelerating in a day or two. Somehow we managed to turn a disaster into a blink crossing.

“But I guess that isn’t good news from your point of view.”

Morn shook her head again. Now she was crying because she needed to. Still in Amnion space. Still in reach of Amnion warships. Nick had made a deal for her son. The warships would demand that he keep his end of the bargain.

Her only hope had been that the Amnion wouldn’t follow if
Captain’s Fancy
crossed far enough into human space.

Like her power, her hope was gone.

“If I were you,” Vector said softly, “I wouldn’t give up.”

That surprised her. She hadn’t expected him—or any of Nick’s people—to know or care how many hopes she lost. In fact, she didn’t understand why he was here at all: keeping her company, answering her questions; comforting her.

In a small voice, like a damaged child, she asked, “What do you mean?”

What can I do to save him? What’s left?

The engineer shrugged distantly. “Nick is—well, in the absence of full psychoanalysis, let’s just say he’s relatively heartless. Under normal circumstances, trading away your son wouldn’t cause him any sleepless nights. But under
any
circumstances, trading away your son and getting cheated would make him livid. And the Amnion cheated us. That’s pretty obvious.”

Cheated? Obvious?

Morn stared at Vector and waited for him to go on.

“Nick probably hates you right to the bone. If he weren’t so busy, he’d be hunting for ways to hurt you. Your son is his best chance. But no matter how much he hates you, he isn’t going to keep his end of that bargain when he knows he’s been cheated.”

Still Morn waited.

“Actually,” Vector mused as if he were digressing, “he should have seen this coming. I guess he hates you too much to think straight. Nobody who was thinking straight would have talked the way he did in front of that ‘emissary.’ He made it too obvious that he wanted to get rid of your son. So why didn’t Vestabule try to dicker? Why did he accept Nick’s terms?

“I think it’s because they don’t really want your son. He was just an excuse for another deal. What they really wanted was to give us those gap components.

“Those components weren’t flawed. They weren’t imperfectly compatible. They were
designed
to fail when we went into tach. The Amnion sold them to us to get rid of us—to
erase
us.”

Ignoring the twisting of her vision and the pain as keen as splinters of bone inside her skull, Morn propped herself on her elbow in an effort to face Vector more directly.

“Are you telling me you think they believe we’re already dead, so they won’t come after us?”

Vector nodded.

The idea was too seductive to accept. “But why?” she demanded. “Why did they try to kill us?”

“Presumably because they know Nick cheated
them.
”

“But he didn’t, did he?” she protested, “Not really. I mean, he offered them a chance to test his blood when he knew the results would be useless, but he never promised they would be anything else. He can always claim he kept his end of the bargain exactly.”

“That’s their dilemma,” Vector agreed. “He kept the bargain and cheated them at the same time. They don’t want to get a reputation for acting in bad faith themselves, and yet they don’t want to let him get away with cheating them.

“And
how
he cheated has got to be of overwhelming importance to them. How can he be immune to their mutagens? If they can’t answer that question, all their dealings with human space are suspect.

“What they wanted most, probably, was to capture us, so they could learn the truth—and get a fresh supply of human beings at the same time. But they couldn’t do that. They could never be sure we didn’t have a gap courier drone ready to take word of what happened to us back to human space.

“So erasing us in the gap was by far their safest choice. That way, no one would ever know we were killed or cheated. And the secret of Nick’s immunity might die with us.

“By the time they learn we’re still alive, we should be safe on Thanatos Minor—if you call that safe. It’s public, at any rate. We’ll have illegals from all over the galaxy as witnesses. The Amnion won’t be able to attack or even capture us without ruining their own reputation.”

Morn didn’t want to trust Vector. She didn’t want to leave herself that open, that vulnerable. But she couldn’t quench the flicker of hope which he fanned to life. If the Amnion were not an immediate problem, then she only had Nick to deal with—

Oh, please. Let it be true. Let it be true.

She had never feared Nick as much as she feared the Amnion.

She still couldn’t see the engineer accurately. Tears kept smearing her vision. But now they weren’t simply tears of pain and despair.

“Vector, why?” Her voice was thick with frailty. “Why are you doing this? I threatened your life. For a while, I was willing to kill you all. Why are you doing this for me?”

She should have been listening more closely to the undercurrents in his voice. She should have found some way to blink her sight clear so that she could read his expression. Then she might have been prepared for his answer.

When he replied, he sounded bleak and arthritic; speaking damaged him like heavy g. “I’m keeping you sane. So he can hurt you more.”