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Authors: Stephen R. Donaldson

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Thermopyle; Angus (Fictitious character), #Hyland; Morn (Fictitious character)

BOOK: Forbidden Knowledge
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“You rescued me.” Her voice was husky, crowded with desires which transcended reason or fear. “I’ll be anything you want me to be.”

For the moment that was true. The zone implant made it true. She took hold of his hand, drew it to her mouth, kissed his fingers. They left a trace of salt on her tongue—the sweat of his concentration when he ran
Captain’s Fancy
out from Station; the sweat of his hunger.

And yet, despite the way her whole body urged him, he still held back. The demands of the zone implant mounted in her; synapses she couldn’t control fired out messages of need. She didn’t want him to talk; she wanted him to come to her, come into her, quench himself in the center of her.

“Is this the approach you used on Captain Thermopile? Is that why he kept you alive?”

“No,” she said automatically, “no,” without thinking. But she needed to think,
had
to think, because the next words she would say without thinking were,
He didn’t use this combination.

Her own hunger seemed like a roar in her ears. Swallowing hard to muffle it, to equalize the pressure, she offered the cheapest answer Nick might accept. “You’ve seen him. I left him for you. I couldn’t feel this way about him.”

She knew nothing about him. Maybe he would be vain enough to accept that.

He wasn’t. Or his vanity was too profound to be satisfied cheaply. He didn’t move; his smile was crooked and bloodthirsty. “Try again.”

Try again. Try again. She couldn’t think. She wasn’t supposed to think, not while the zone implant did
this
to her. What could she tell Nick that would be true enough to be believed and false enough to protect her?

“Please, Nick,” she said, almost whimpering with urgency, “can’t we talk about this later? I want you now.”

He smiled and smiled, but he didn’t relent. Instead, he ran his hand down her chest and circled her breast with his fingertips. Involuntarily this time, she arched her back again. His smile and his eyes gave her no warning as he flicked her nipple hard with one of his fingernails.

Just for an instant the balance of the zone implant shifted toward pain. She gasped; she nearly screamed.

“Your name is Morn Hyland,” he said almost kindly. “You’re UMCP. And Angus Thermo-pile is the slimiest illegal between forbidden space and Earth. He’s sewage—and you’re one of the elite, you work for Min Donner. He should have obliterated you. He should have taken you apart atom by atom and never risked coming back to Com-Mine. Tell me why he kept you alive.”

Fortunately the functions of the control recovered their poise almost immediately. Her scream evaporated as if it had never existed.

“Because he needed crew,” she answered. True enough to be believed. “He was alone on
Bright Beauty.
And I was alone on
Starmaster
—I was the only survivor.” False enough to protect her. “There was nothing I could do to threaten him. So I made a deal with him. He could have left me to die.” She couldn’t think—but she’d made herself ready to answer him. “He kept me alive to crew for him.”

Perhaps because she burned for him so hotly, she seemed to see Nick struggling with himself. His scars were black with blood; everything he looked at was underlined by primal and acquisitive passion. His fingers stroked her nipple as if to wipe away the hurt. She felt a tremor in his muscles as he bent over her and lightly kissed her breast.

“That’s not good enough.” His voice seemed to stick far back in his throat; it came out in a rasp. “But it’s a start. Right now, I want you. You can tell us all the rest later.”

When Morn heard him unfasten his shipsuit, what was left of her mind went blank with anticipation.

Now at last she had a chance to learn what she needed most to know about him.

She had no conception of the romantic way her escape from Angus Thermopyle to Nick Succorso was viewed back on Com-Mine. The idea that anything about her situation was romantic might have made her hysterical.

CHAPTER       
2

 

T
he first thing she learned was that Nick Succorso had limits. He could be exhausted.

During the hours they spent wrapped around each other in her berth, their roles were ones he set for them: artist and instrument. He played her nerves as though they were alive to his will, responsive to nothing except his private touch. In her turn, she replied with a kind of blind, willing ecstasy that bore no resemblance to anything she’d ever felt with Angus Thermopyle—an abandonment so complete that she seemed transported into a realm of pure sex.

For a while that terrified her: in one of her locked compartments, she dreaded his effect on her. If he could do
this
to her, if he could make her feel
this
and
this
, then she was lost, useless; she had no hope.

But then she discovered that “artist” and “instrument” were only roles. She and Nick were acting out an illusion. She was the one with the zone implant: she could have kept going no matter how absolutely she responded to his desires, how completely she abandoned herself. Until the moment when her brain or body burned out, and her synapses consumed themselves in an endorphin conflagration, she could do everything Nick required and more.

He, on the other hand—

In a final burst, his intensity expended itself. Groaning with pleasure, he collapsed suddenly into sleep.

As his passion drained out of them, his scars lost their fierceness. Without hunger behind them, they became only pale and aging tissue, old wounds; the marks of defeat.

The artist ended, but the instrument endured.

A little while passed before she understood what had happened. When he slumped beside her, her first reaction wasn’t satisfaction or even triumph: it was disappointment. The need which drove her couldn’t be satisfied by anything less than a kind of neural apotheosis. She wanted to ride the zone implant’s emissions until she went nova.

But short of suicide he was the one who had limits. She didn’t.

Because of that, the entire experience was an illusion.

And the illusion was aimed squarely at him. She performed it for his benefit: he was its victim. The appearance that she abandoned herself, that she was wholly his, was false.

She had that much power.

It might be enough to protect her. The thing she’d dreamed and prayed and suffered for when she accepted the zone implant control from Angus was starting to come true.

Then she felt a touch of satisfaction—and then a hint of feral and necessary rage. In its concealed compartment, her fury received its first taste of the food it craved. When she’d betrayed Angus—when she’d enabled Nick’s people to plant Station supplies aboard Angus’ ship by disabling the blip which would have warned him
Bright Beauty
’s holds were unlocked—she hadn’t felt any rage. She’d been too caught up in the risk of what she did: the danger of Angus’ response, and her helplessness against it.

But now she felt that anger. One of her compartments cracked open, and a passion hotter than the zone implant’s enforced yearning leaked out.

It guided her hand as she reached under the mattress and switched off the control.

The transition was hideous. She was going to have to learn how to manage transitions, or else the shock of them would ruin her. They hadn’t been this bad when Angus held the control. Whatever he’d imposed on her, she’d always been eager for it to end, frantic to regain some sense of herself. But now the functions of the zone implant were hers to choose. That made a profound difference.

Earlier, waiting for Nick, she’d tried to prepare herself for the flood of weariness which poured through her when the implant was switched off. To some extent, she was ready for that. But she wasn’t prepared for the grief she felt now, for the keen pain of resuming her ordinary mortality. She’d lost something precious and vital by ending her abandonment.

However, the transition was swift. Or else it was more complex than she realized. Faced with the knowledge that she was only human after all, she started to crybiting her lip for silence, so that she wouldn’t wake Nick. But then, almost immediately, her rage came back to her. And it was followed by her revulsion. If she was only human, then Nick Succorso was only another version of Angus Thermopyle: male; therefore ultimately interested in sex only as a masque of rape and degradation.

Now she had to bite her lip
hard
to keep herself from crying out or flinching; to master the electric jolt of her reaction against what Nick had just done to her. She had to think, and think quickly—

Not Angus. Not like Angus. Even if Nick was essentially the same, he was effectively different. His passions were less naked than Angus’: he was caught up in the masque. No, more than that: he liked the illusion that his personal virility and magnetism were capable of making her respond so utterly.

And if he remained caught up in the masque, if she could keep him there—if he liked the illusion enough—

He would be blinded to the truth.

Without realizing it, she’d stopped biting her lip. Her need for that small hurt was over: her need to fling herself away from Nick was receding. He looked vulnerable now, asleep, and that had never been true of Angus. Despite the long, clean line of his muscles, despite his unmistakable grace and strength, he looked like he could be killed before he woke up. That eased her revulsion.

Now, perhaps, she could have rested. Most of the immediate intensity of transition had declined: the weariness remained. The external reality of her body, as opposed to the internal reality of the zone implant, was that Nick had used her extravagantly. She was acutely sore in some places, and there was a price to be paid for all those endorphins. Sleep would be good for her, if she could sleep without dreaming about Angus. If she could sleep without waking up back aboard
Bright Beauty.

But she didn’t trust sleep. Nick had said,
That’s not good enough.
She had that threat hanging over her.
You can tell us all the rest later.

She had more getting ready to do.

Of course, the “getting ready” she needed most involved further experimentation with the zone implant control. That was too dangerous, however. If Nick caught her at it, she was finished. She left the zone implant control where it was.

Instead she tried to guess what “tell us all the rest” meant. Did he mean, “tell us all,” the whole crew? or “all the rest”?

None of us is safe while you’re aboard.

There were too many unknowns. She only knew one thing about Nick, had only that one lever. Everything else was blank. How much had he learned about her through his contact in Com-Mine Security? What had the UMCP told Com-Mine? How many of his secrets did he share with his crew? What was their loyalty to him based on: personal gain? success? reciprocity?

Who
was
he, that he could get Com-Mine Security to help him betray Angus Thermopyle?

Since she had no way to approach any of her other questions, she concentrated on that one.

Angus Thermopyle was guilty of almost any illegal act imaginable—and yet he was innocent of the specific crime for which he’d been arrested. She knew the truth: she’d been there when he was framed. That was disturbing enough. But even more disturbing to her—considering that she was UMCP born and trained—was Security’s complicity.

Why would Security risk vital Station supplies to help one known pirate betray another?

No, worse than that: what on earth possessed Security to
trust
Nick Succorso against Angus Thermopyle?

And here was another question, now that she thought about it: Why did Security let Nick take her?

It was one thing to leave her alone with Angus. After all, she’d used her UMCP authority to demand that Com-Mine keep its hands off her. But it was something else entirely to risk Station supplies to help one pirate betray another, with a UMC cop in the middle, and then to simply let that cop depart unquestioned. Why had Security allowed her to leave its jurisdiction?

Yet the issue was even more complex than that. Under any circumstances, Com-Mine Security must have sent a message to UMCPHQ when she first appeared with Angus. Security would have relayed everything she said and did to UMCPHQ as a matter of course. Why hadn’t Enforcement Division replied? Granted, communication across interstellar distances was no instantaneous business. Nevertheless gap courier drones could have carried messages to UMCPHQ and back in a few days. Ordinary ship traffic could have done the job in a couple of weeks. Surely her time with Angus hadn’t been too short to permit a reply? And surely, if ED had replied, Security wouldn’t have let Nick take her?

She was lost in it. If Min Donner, the director of Enforcement Division, had instructed Com-Mine Security to let Nick Succorso take her—Morn couldn’t get past that point. There were too many levels involved, too many implications of treachery. And she’d trusted the UMCP from the day she was born: it was the same thing as trusting her father.

She had to stick with what she knew, or else she would paralyze herself. She had to focus on the present; on survival and the zone implant.

She had to concentrate on Nick Succorso.

Before she could get any further, the cabin intercom chimed. A voice that sounded like Mikka Vasaczk’s said neutrally, “Nick.”

As if he’d never been asleep, Nick sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the berth. Ignoring Morn, he scrubbed his hands up and down his face for a second or two: that was all the time he needed to collect himself. While Morn was still trying to decide how to react, how to play her role now, he stood up and keyed the intercom.

“Here.”

“Nick, you’re wanted on the bridge.” The intercom flattened the voice, made it sound impersonal; untouched.

Nick didn’t reply. Instead he keyed off the intercom and reached for his shipsuit and boots.

He still hadn’t glanced at Morn.

She was too vulnerable, too much at risk: she had to say something. Swallowing weariness and old fright, she asked with as much naturalness as she could summon, “What is it?”

He finished sealing his shipsuit and pulling on his boots before he turned to her.

His eyes were bright; they focused on her with a keenness, an inner intensity, which she might have loved, or at least desired, if she’d met him before she met Angus—if she’d never met Angus. Despite the easy way he carried himself, he conveyed a tense, coiled quality, as if his physical relaxation were a part of what made him dangerous.

He was smiling—even his tone of voice smiled—as he said, “We’re pretty casual here. Not like the UMCP.” And yet she knew she was being warned; perhaps threatened. “We’ve only got a few simple rules. But they aren’t negotiable. Here’s one of them.

“When you hear the word ‘want.’ you don’t ask. It isn’t up for discussion. You just do.

“Understand?”

Morn was definitely being threatened. Keeping her face as blank as a mask, she nodded once, firmly.

“Good,” he said.

The door hissed open, and he was gone.

When the door shut itself after him, she stayed where she was and stared at his departure as if he’d turned her off—as if he’d taken away her reasons for doing anything.

Nick was “wanted” on the bridge. And
want
had a special meaning aboard his ship. It was the command that couldn’t be questioned, the absolute imperative, like the coded order her father might have given her if he’d decided
Starmaster
had to self-destruct; if she’d let him live, and the occasion to issue such an order had ever arisen.

Something had happened.

Captain’s Fancy
was on a routine departure trajectory out from Com-Mine Station. Presumably. What could have happened? What was conceivable? What kind of danger or exigency could have come up after only a few thousand kilometers; still within Station’s control space?

Almost certainly, the explanation involved Com-Mine in some way. It involved Security and Angus.

Morn couldn’t stop staring at the door, at the spot where Nick had left her; she couldn’t move. What was she going to do now? She was losing control of her compartments: pieces of doubt and black horror bled together, combining like elements of a binary poison. She wanted to flee, but she had nowhere to go. There was nothing around her except panic.

Riding a visceral tremble, as if she were caught at the epicenter of a quake and needed to get away from it, she decided to leave the cabin.

Half expecting a shift in
Captain’s Fancy
’s g which would indicate a change of direction—to return to dock, or to meet interceptors from Com-Mine—she left the berth and began hunting through the built-in lockers for a clean shipsuit.

She found one easily:
Captain’s Fancy
was equipped for guests. Female guests, judging by the cut of the shipsuits. But Morn hardly noticed the comfort of wearing clothes that fit. She was in a hurry, and the only thing she cared about was the tremors driving through her—or the danger that they might make her do something foolish.

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