The Gap Into Conflict - The Real Story by Stephen R. Donaldson

Author:Stephen R. Donaldson [Donaldson, Stephen R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780553295092
Publisher: Bantam Spectra; Bantam Books
Published: 1991-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

10

He did his best to believe it was happening. In an odd way, as long as he kept her alive his survival depended on her: he could be truly safe only if he killed her and disposed of her body. And that option was one he no longer considered. He was as likely to destroy Bright Beauty as to murder Morn. Therefore he couldn’t afford to be wrong. He had to break her and be sure of it; damage her so much that he could trust the results.

Because he was afraid, he was in no danger of trusting them prematurely.

In the end, however, his success was inevitable. After all, what choice did she have? He’d made himself her entire world; he was everything she felt. He knew how this kind of pressure worked: it had been tried on him more than once. His control of her circumstances—as well as of her physical being—was absolute. With the tap of a button, he could reduce her mind to a brute howl of pain. When she satisfied him, he could reward her, not with pleasure—for some reason, he was reluctant to see what she would look like pleased—but with relief from hurt; with sleep; with the occasional opportunity to choose her own movements, take care of herself in her own way.

By degrees, he beat her down until she was like a child toward him: dependent; urgent to please. He taught her that his survival was hers as well; that any peril he met would hit her first, and harder. And he played on the bizarre ethic to which she’d sworn herself when she became a cop. Again and again, he assured her that she deserved what was happening to her. She’d killed her family, hadn’t she? She’d betrayed them all. No, it wasn’t something she’d done by conscious choice. It was worse: it was something she’d done because of who she was; because of the fundamental flaw which left her vulnerable to gap-sickness.

With all his cunning, he worked to deprive her of her capacity to think in any terms which didn’t come to her from him.

And he watched the results, studied them with a coward’s intuitive precision. He saw the darkness accumulating in her gaze; the gradual slackening of her skin; the change in the way she moved, so that every action became a limp. When he fucked her, he felt her begin to respond, driven to swallow her revulsion by self-loathing and the need to satisfy him. When she slept, he heard her whimpering for help which never came.

At last even his grubby, suspicious nature believed that she’d been damaged enough to risk.

Still cautious, he prepared his safeguards and coercions. Then, with a UMC cop for crew, he took his ship out of hiding.

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