The Gap Into Madness - Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson

Author:Stephen R. Donaldson [Donaldson, Stephen R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780307573049
Publisher: Bantam Spectra; Bantam Books
Published: 1994-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

MORN

Angus’ cry shocked her like stun. Charged with fear, her muscles turned to jelly; the marrow seemed to bleed from her bones. She wanted to protest, What?

What?

What are you talking about?

But she couldn’t find the words. Words were strength—anything she might have said, any response was a kind of strength—and all the strength had burned out of her. The torn triumph or pain in Angus’ voice had left her helpless.

I’m not your son.

Frantically she glanced at Davies.

He, too, had been hit hard. He remembered Angus as well as she did. And his ability to distinguish himself from her was fragile: he’d only had a few days in which to try to re-create himself as a separate human being. Something labored in him, strove to rise against the blow—some defense or rejection, some instinct for intransigence or violence. She could see the struggle on his face. Nevertheless for the moment he was caught the same way she was; trapped and held by the sheer extremity of Angus’ shout.

I am not your fucking SON!

Now he, Angus, broke into coughing as if he’d ripped open his lungs—

—and stopped. Just like that: between one heartbeat and the next. Tears of pain smeared his cheeks, but he ignored them. Maybe he didn’t know they were there. He looked as stunned as Davies, as stunned as Morn herself.

Slowly, as if he, too, had only jelly to support him, he turned back to the second’s station.

Morn recognized that instant transformation. His datacore had taken control: emissions from his zone implants had stifled his coughing, forced down his despair, smothered his triumph. He was a welded cyborg, ruled by decisions made for him days or weeks ago by men who didn’t care what he felt or how he suffered; who cared only how he could be used. Briefly his raw human distress had burst its bounds! But now the inexorable pressure on the neural centers of his brain had recaptured him.

Whatever he did here, it would be because Warden Dios or Hashi Lebwohl—or their proxy, Nick Succorso—required it of him, not because he chose it.

She understood from experience. Oh, she’d never been welded. But Angus had imposed the same kind of submission on her. Later, voluntarily, she’d imposed it on herself. Time and again she’d felt an appalled outbreak of need and pain collapse in the face of electromagnetic coercion.

I’m not your son.

Davies opened his mouth. He was going to say something hostile; try to defend her by attracting Angus’ malice to himself; she saw it on his face. With an effort that caused her to shudder as if she were shaken by fever, she brought up her hand in a warning gesture, cautioned him to silence.

He looked at her with his father’s fear and fury clenched in his features. Nevertheless he clamped his jaws shut. The only sound from him was a low, visceral snarl.

Artificially steady, Angus began tapping keys on the second’s board.

Morn couldn’t do anything except gape as a flimsy sheet scrolled from the console’s printout.

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