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

Author:Stephen R. Donaldson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Succorso, Fantasy, Nick (Fictitious character), General, Science Fiction, Thermopyle, Fiction, Hyland, Angus (Fictitious character), Morn (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780553295092
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 1992-06-01T04:50:32.972650+00:00

He had no actual desire to go to Mallorys. He wanted to seal his hatches and fuck Morn until she wept. It was still possible that his hold on her might snap, and he didn’t want to risk her in public. But he knew he was going to be watched for a long time—at least until inspectors got back from Starmaster. It was important to behave normally. At that moment, “normal” meant Mallorys, where he could start trying to buy the information he needed to make money.

He’d been walking down the path to his doom for some time. Now his doom started moving toward him.

Even though she was unfamiliar with DelSec, he stayed half a step behind Morn’s shoulder so he could keep an eye on her. At once elated and afraid, possessive and angry, he noticed how every man they passed looked at her—noticed it and hated them. In the same way that he’d planned revenge against Starmaster for driving him off Com-Mine Station, he now evolved elaborate, impossible schemes which would teach all these bastards to fear him. It was conceivable that he could claim salvage on Starmaster. Morn’s UMCP id tag might make that possible. With enough money, he would get Bright Beauty rebuilt, better than before. Then he would be invulnerable. He could do anything he wanted.

Dreams like that helped him endure the crowds he despised in DelSec and Mallorys.

He hated Mallorys, of course. But it was better than any of the alternatives. As a group, the drunks and ruins and illegals there knew more and cared less than the rest of the people in DelSec. They meant him harm in ways he understood. For that reason, they were less dangerous than they thought.

Station gravity—roughly .9g—made him feel leaden, bloated; he was in no mood for a drink. His bluff had worked! But everybody on Com-Mine was waiting for him to make a mistake and get caught; all the inspectors, everybody in Security, every prospector or miner who’d ever tried the belt, everybody in Mallorys who knew his reputation and didn’t trust him. And Morn walked as if the weight meant nothing—as if in spite of the many ways it could be hurt, her body carried its beauty easily. All those men wanted her. They wanted to get her away from him.

He was already feeling frightened and bloodthirsty when he caught sight of Nick Succorso through the heat and din of Mallorys.

At once, he felt like he’d been hit in the chest by an impact-ram—more so because he couldn’t show it, didn’t dare react in front of all these people, let them see his weakness.

He would have recognized Nick as an enemy immediately in any case: he knew how to interpret that careless grin, that sharp, buccaneering gleam of humor and superiority. He knew Nick’s contempt for him was instantaneous. He was ugly and luckless and not very clean, and Nick had already begun to sneer at him.

Under any circumstances, Angus would have gone a long way out of his way to damage Nick Succorso.

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