The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson Read Free Book Online Page B

think?
    Captain
Vertigus proposed to introduce a Bill of Severance.
    He
feared threats against the UMCP Director of Protocol.
    Morn
Hyland and Nick Succorso had in common a connection with Soar née Gutbuster — a vessel which just happened to be present at Thanatos Minor when both they
and Joshua arrived there. A vessel which Morn had good reason to hate, but to
which Nick might be linked by bonds of another kind.
    And
Hashi was under no illusions about the nature of the relationship between Nick
and Morn. Whatever she may have felt toward him, he was capable of nothing but
exploitation.
    You
deserve her.
    But
that wasn’t all. Certainly not.
    Darrin
Scroyle’s people had heard rumours of an antimutagen for sale from Soar’s captain, Sorus Chatelaine.
    Nick
was presumably the only man in that quadrant of space with a mutagen immunity
drug in his possession — the only man from whom Sorus Chatelaine might have
obtained an antimutagen.
    He’d
been seen talking to Joshua and Milos Taverner.
    And he’d
brought a cargo of some kind from Enablement Station: a cargo which he’d sent
by ejection pod to Billingate to prevent the Amnion from reclaiming it: a cargo
which someone had subsequently stolen.
    Later
Nick was rumoured to have sold one of his people to the alien sector on
Thanatos Minor. Then that sector had been raided by an EVA team from Trumpet . Captain’s Fancy had rammed an Amnion warship and died in order to keep
the raiding team alive.
    Nick no
longer had a ship. Yet he must have rescued something. Something more
valuable to him than his frigate.
    If
you can get her, you bastard, you can have her.
    Reality
itself seemed to be in flux as Hashi Lebwohl rode coriolus forces around and
around inside his head. Micro-events remapped the macro-world. If he’d been
under less pressure, he might have paused to notice that he enjoyed this
sensation; that he felt more alive at moments like this than at any other time.
    The
pressure to act was real, however; ineluctable despite the uncertainty of its
cartography. Yet action was impossible until some manner of readable map, no
matter how intuitive or speculative, had been obtained.
    He
needed to understand.
    Very
well, he told himself. Construct a hypothesis and explore its implications.
Theoretical reality is better than no reality at all.
    Clamping
his hands harder over his eyes, he began.
    He wasn’t
prepared to guess who’d sent kazes against Sixten Vertigus and Godsen Frik.
That ground was too dangerous: he didn’t mean to walk it until he was sure of
each step. But he was quite ready to hazard other speculations — When he did
so, his thin heart nearly stopped.
    Kazes
are such fun, don’t you think?
    Suppose
for the moment that Nick Succorso and Sorus Chatelaine were working together;
that they’d conceived a plan to bring themselves almost limitless wealth. And
suppose, further, that Morn Hyland had opposed them, inspired by her old enmity
toward Gutbuster , if not by loyalty to the UMCP. Suppose that they’d
decided to rid themselves of her, and to greatly increase their opportunities
for wealth, by producing and then selling the DA immunity drug under
circumstances designed to terrify the population of human space.
    According
to this hypothesis, Nick had taken Morn to Enablement so that the Amnion could
make use of her — perhaps by transforming her into some manner of genetic kaze
aimed at UMCPHQ itself. After that everything he, Sorus, and the Amnion did had
been part of an elaborate charade.
    Hashi
reconstructed the charade in his mind, even though it made him tremble.
    The
Amnion had pursued Captain’s Fancy to Billingate in order to create the
illusion that they wished to stop Nick and Morn. To confirm that impression,
Nick had sent her to the Bill in an ejection pod. From Joshua and Milos
Taverner, Nick had learned what had brought a UMCP cyborg to Thanatos Minor.
Then he and his partner, Captain Chatelaine, had begun the rumours that she
possessed