Forbidden Knowledge (24 page)

“Set it up to Mikka’s board.”

“That’ll take a while,” Vector replied evenly. “The engineer I apprenticed with didn’t teach suicide.” His smile widened. “I’ve never wanted to kill myself. I would rather be dead.”

“You’ve got until we dock,” Nick snapped.

“Then I’d better get started.” Lifting himself upright with his arms, Vector limped through the aperture.

Around the bridge, scan, helm, and communications handled the ordinary business of approach. They passed information and adjustments back and forth. Scorz murmured into his pickup in a voice like machine oil.

Ignoring them, Nick continued with his instructions.

“Mikka, you’ve done this before. It’s your job to make them believe the threat. If you hear me call for help—or if you just think we’ve been gone too long—tell them what Vector did. Send them diagrams, tell them what to scan for, anything that will convince them we can self-destruct on a prohibitive scale. Demand us back in one piece. And a safe departure.

“Make them
believe
it. The whole point of a gamble like this is to make it so real that we don’t have to use it.”

Mikka nodded once, roughly. “I’m not like Vector,” she grated. “I’ve studied suicide.”

Grinning, Nick asked Morn how much time he had left.

She checked her log and told him, “Five minutes.”

“Scorz.” Nick stopped beside the communications console. “I want you to tight-beam this to the precise source of their last transmission. No leakage, no eaves-dropping. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Morn could hardly read her board. Pressure mounted inside her; in spite of coffee and adrenaline, her brain felt swollen, almost tumorous, in her head. She wished she could get Enablement Station on video. She wanted to know what the place she dreaded looked like. Scan told her only that it was shaped like a huge globe, instead of the torus preferred by human designers. But there were no stars near enough to illuminate the station, and its own lights were still out of range.

The ship was being nudged slightly off trajectory by Enablement’s gravitation. The helm second made a jerky correction.

Scorz reported, “Ready.”

Unable to do anything else, Morn watched as Nick keyed communications himself and said, “Captain Nick Succorso to Enablement Station. I have a reply to your proposal.”

Then he stopped and waited.

The fighting gleam was back in his eyes; the lines of his face had regained their eagerness.

He was answered almost immediately.

“Enablement Station to presumed human Captain Nick Succorso. Reply is required. Conformity of purpose must be achieved. You will be repelled otherwise.”

As if he were reciting a formula which he found privately ludicrous, Nick replied, “Conformity of purpose is mutually desirable. Sanctuary is not. Hazard to us will disappear if we can achieve conformity of purpose.” His tone made a sneer out of the alien cadences. “You require an account of the discrepancy between known reality and presumed identification. We require medical assistance. We also require credit.” He named a sum large enough to pay for an entirely new gap drive. “I propose that we achieve conformity of purpose through the mutual satisfaction of requirements.”

A pause hummed gently in the speakers. Then the voice returned.

“The sum you require is large.”

Nick shrugged. “The knowledge I offer is precious. It has relevance to all Amnion dealings with human space.”

Another pause.

“What is the nature of your medical difficulty?”

Nick turned his grin on Morn. “We have a pregnant human female. Her fetus is unacceptable among us. We require a fully mature human child.”

This time there was no pause. “Presumed human Captain Nick Succorso, all your requirements are large. Specificity is necessary. How do you offer to account for the discrepancy between known reality and presumed identification?”

“Blood sample,” Nick replied succinctly.

“In sufficient quantity?” demanded the voice.

“One deciliter.”

After a moment of rumination, the voice said, “The quantity is sufficient.”

“My requirements are indeed large,” Nick continued at once. “What I offer is also large. You require specificity. This is my proposal. The human female and I will enter Enablement Station. We will be taken to the place where the child may be matured. I will concede one deciliter of my blood. Then the child will be matured, and I will be given an acknowledgment of credit. When these matters have been accomplished, the human female with her child and I will return to our ship.
Captain’s Fancy
will depart Enablement Station immediately. We will depart Amnion space at our best speed.

“In this way, conformity of purpose will be achieved.”

Without delay, the voice commanded, “Await decisive reply. Continued approach is acceptable,” and stopped transmitting.

Nick didn’t switch off the pickup or bridge audio. He stood with his head cocked to one side, grinning as if he expected an answer right away.

Morn forced herself to turn her head, scan the bridge. Like her, Karster on targ and the scan second wanted to ask questions; Mikka scowled her concern; Ransum twitched nervously; Scorz shifted his weight as if the seat under him were slick. Nevertheless Nick’s expectant stance kept them all quiet.

Seconds passed, measured out by the ship’s chronometers.
Known reality and presumed identification must be brought into conformity.
What did that mean? What
could
it mean, except the thing she feared?

Ransum, the helm second, couldn’t endure the silence; she was too tense. “Nick—” she began.

Instantly livid, Nick fired a glare at her that withered her in her seat. Like the crack of a whip, he barked, “Shut up!”

Just as instantly, he resumed his attitude of calm poise.

Morn felt that the bridge was collapsing around her, sinking into Nick as if he were a black hole.

Then the speakers came to life; they seemed to blare as if Scorz had inadvertently turned up the gain. Nick snapped alert, balancing on the balls of his feet with his hands ready.

“Enablement Station to presumed human Captain Nick Succorso,” the Amnioni voice said without preamble, “your proposal is acceptable. Conformity of purpose will be achieved through the mutual satisfaction of requirements. Immediate acknowledgment is required.”

Nick jabbed a punch at the empty air; his teeth flashed like a predator’s. Distinctly he recited the formula.

“It is acceptable. Conformity of purpose will be achieved through the mutual satisfaction of requirements.”

Then he reached across the communications board to switch off the pickup.

Brandishing his fists, he shouted triumphantly, “Got you, you sonofabitch!”

Only the reassuring shape of the zone implant control in Morn’s pocket kept her from whimpering.

Enablement Station loomed into video range, but now she had no time to study it. For the better part of two hours, she channeled information to Vector, who wasn’t inclined to suicide, and suggestions to Karster, who didn’t know enough about his board to set up an adequate batch command. And then
Captain’s Fancy
began to receive docking instructions from Station. Data research was required to determine the degree of compatibility between the ship’s equipment and Enablement’s.

She was too busy to panic—or to ask any more questions.

Dock was less than half an hour away when Nick ordered Alba Parmute to the bridge and told Morn to leave the data board.

As she got out of her seat, she hid her hands in her pockets so that he wouldn’t see them shaking.

“Give Mikka your id tag,” he ordered. “I don’t want Enablement to know they’ve got a chance at a UMC cop. They don’t normally cheat—but that might tempt them to make an exception.”

Morn hated to surrender her tag. But she also couldn’t deny that he was right. And the time when she could have opposed his intentions was long past: it was on the other side of the gap.

She pulled the chain over her head and handed her id tag to the command second.

Nick gestured her to accompany him off the bridge.

Clenching her teeth in an effort to hold her voice steady, she asked, “What now?”

“Meet me at the suit lockers,” he replied briskly. “Amnion air is breathable—sort of—but we’re going to treat this like EVA. That gives us some extra protection. They can’t trick or force mutagens into us while we’re wearing those suits. And suit communications can reach Mikka from anywhere on Enablement.”

Before she could reply, he strode away.

She almost went after him; she didn’t want to be alone, not now, with a crisis she dreaded ahead of her, and no idea how far she could trust anyone. The thought of an EVA suit gave her an odd comfort, however. She was grateful for a chance to carry her own atmosphere with her; grateful to wear a layer of impermeable mylar and plexulose between her skin and anything Amnion.

The only problem was where to put her black box. She considered that difficulty as she hurried toward the lockers. EVA suits had plenty of pouches and pockets; if she put her control in one of them, she could reach it at need.

But what if the Amnion required her to take off her EVA suit in order to force-grow little Davies?

The idea chilled her like ice down her back.

It was plausible—even predictable. How could she reach the control then, in front of witnesses? Probably in front of Nick?

And how could she bear all her fears without the help of her black box?

Trembling from the core of her bones to the tips of her fingers, she decided to keep the control in her shipsuit.

In fact, she needed its help now. When she reached the lockers—before Nick could catch up with her and see her change—she combined functions and intensities to cast a haze over her emotions; a haze which numbed her dread, but still allowed her to think. Then, while false neural relief eased her tremors, she selected an EVA suit in her size, checked its status indicators to be sure it was ready, and began putting it on.

Nick was only a minute behind her. He approached the lockers grinning, his eyes alight with risks. As he pulled open his personal locker and took out his suit, he remarked in a tone of grim pleasure, “You’re going to have a hell of a story to tell your kid. He’ll be the only brat in the galaxy whose parents thought he was worth taking chances like this for. I don’t even
want
the little bastard, and yet here I am.”

“Nick—” Her zone implant could only calm her incrementally: tight layers of fear had to be peeled away before they could be numbed. And he hadn’t yet answered the most important question gnawing at her. Carefully she asked, “What do they mean, ‘Known reality and presumed identification must be brought into conformity’? I don’t understand.”

He didn’t look at her; he was busy with his suit. But his grin sharpened. Away from the bridge and other people, he was willing to explain.

“I told you I let them give me one of their mutagens, but it didn’t take. ‘Known reality’ is that when human beings get that mutagen, they turn Amnion.
Pure
Amnion—RNA, loyalty, intelligence, everything. ‘Presumed identification’ is that I’m apparently the same man I was before they treated me. What I’ve offered them is a chance ‘to account for the discrepancy’—to find out why their mutagen didn’t take.”

Only the emissions of her black box enabled Morn to pursue her question.

“Why didn’t it?”

His laugh was harsh enough to draw blood.

“I’ve got an immunity drug. Your precious Hashi Lebwohl gave it to me. Data Acquisition at its finest. The real reason I came here before was to test it for him.”

That was the reply she’d dreaded. UMCP corruption. And a betrayal of humankind so profound that its implications shocked her out of her calm. Her zone implant might as well have been switched off. Abysms of treachery seemed to gape around her like the gaps between the stars.

Not Hashi Lebwohl’s treason: not the UMCP’s.

Nick’s.

“And you’re going to let them have it?” she demanded. “You’re going to let them take it out of your blood and study it, so they can learn to counteract it?”

His laugh sounded like a snarl. His tongue twisted inside his cheek: between his teeth, a gray capsule appeared.

“I haven’t taken it yet.”

He shifted the capsule back against his gum.

“It’s not an organic immunity. It’s more like a poison—or a binder. It ties up mutagens until they’re inert. Then they get flushed out—along with the drug. The immunity is effective for about four hours.

“I’m not going to take it until after they sample my blood. That way they won’t learn anything. The drug won’t be in my system yet. And if we’re lucky we’ll be long gone before they finish their tests.”

He was planning to cheat the Amnion.

Abruptly his gaze slid away from hers. “I can’t give it to you. They’ll need your blood, too, or else they won’t know enough about you to force-grow your brat. I can’t take the chance that they’ll find the drug.”

Before Morn could react, the intercom chimed, and Mikka’s voice said, “Five minutes to dock, Nick. Secure for zero g.”

The zone implant seemed to take forever to gain control over Morn’s wailing nerves.

CHAPTER       
12

F
or a while she drifted as
Captain’s Fancy
cut internal spin; she and Nick clung to the zero-g grips and floated together. Like him, she’d left her faceplate open. But she couldn’t meet his gaze. He was focused on her acutely. Congested blood darkened his scars, and his gaze burned. Her eyes stared past his as if she were stunned.

She should have set her zone implant higher. Its effects weren’t enough. She was about to meet the Amnion for the first time. It was possible that she was about to lose her humanity altogether, that the genetic core of her identity would be taken from her. She should have set her implant’s emissions high enough to make her completely blank. Then at least she might have been spared this visceral, human dread.

But the control was in the pocket of her shipsuit, inside her EVA suit. She couldn’t reach it now.

She and Nick had lost the floor as if they were in freefall, but that was an illusion. The station’s mass plucked at them, urging them to let go of the grips; the bulkhead past her boots began to feel like the floor. Still she and Nick held on. The floor would shift again when
Captain’s Fancy
docked—when the ship surrendered herself to Enablement’s internal g.

“One minute,” Mikka Vasaczk’s voice announced from the intercom. “No problems.”

Morn’s identity was already under attack. Even without mutation, her understanding of her self and her life was being altered; force-grown to a different shape.

Nick had an immunity drug for the Amnion mutagens.

It had been given to him by Hashi Lebwohl—it belonged to the UMCP.

And the UMCP had withheld it from humankind. The cops,
her people
, had left all human space naked to alien absorption, when they had the means to effectively end the threat.

What kind of people did such things? What kind of men and women had she and her father committed themselves to?

Vector Shaheed was right.
The UMCP is the most corrupt organization there is.

How could she have been so wrong? How could her father and her whole family have been so wrong?

A jolt shuddered through the hull: impact and metal stress. The contact relayed the hum of servomechanisms, the clampdown of grapples and transmission cables, the limpet attachment of Enablement’s sensors. On a human station, Morn would also have heard the insertion of airlines, the brief hiss of equalizing pressure. Not here: human and Amnioni only breathed each other’s air when they had no other choice.

She and Nick dropped to the new floor.

Mikka said, “Dock secure, Nick. Vector confirms drive on standby. We’re keeping power up on all systems. They won’t like that, but without it we can’t destruct.”

Nick nodded as if he were replying, but he didn’t key the intercom. To Morn, he muttered, “Don’t look so terrified. Nothing is going to happen to you unless it happens to me first.” Then he grinned sourly. “If you don’t count having a baby.”

“Message from Station,” Mikka reported.

Nick turned away to toggle the intercom. “I’m listening.”

At once a mechanical voice said, “Enablement Station to presumed human Captain Nick Succorso. Drive shutdown required. System power threatens dock integrity.”

Nick didn’t hesitate. “Tell them, ‘Storage cell damage prevents adequate power accumulation. Drive standby necessary to sustain support systems.’”

After a moment Mikka said dryly, “Done.”

The reply was prompt. “Drive shutdown required. Enablement Station will supply power.”

“Tell them,” Nick snarled, “‘Conversion parameters too complex. We desire prompt departure. We resist delay.’”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Mikka muttered as she complied.

She relayed the answer when it came.

“Enablement Station to presumed human Captain Nick Succorso.” Nick mimicked the words with a sneer as the voice spoke. “Amnion defensives
Tranquil Hegemony
and
Calm Horizons
are ordered to exact compensatory damage for any breach of dock integrity.”

“Acknowledge that,” Nick instructed Mikka. “Remind them we have a deal. ‘Conformity of purpose will be achieved through the mutual satisfaction of requirements.’ Point out we have every reason to protect their interests as long as they protect ours.”

That response took a little longer. Then Mikka said again, “Done.”

Nick flashed a grin like a glare at Morn. “‘Compensatory damage,’ my ass. Those bastards haven’t seen a ‘breach of dock integrity’ until they see us self-destruct. There won’t be anything left of those fucking warships except particle noise.”

Or of us, Morn thought. But she didn’t speak. Bit by bit, the zone implant reduced her to a state of dissociated calm, in which numbness and panic coexisted side by side.

In addition to the usual tools and maneuvering jets for EVA work, Nick had an impact pistol clipped to his belt. While he waited for what the Amnion would say next, he detached them all and stowed them in his locker. Morn’s suit carried no weapons, but she automatically did the same with her tools and jets. She would have liked to take at least a welding laser in self-defense; however, she knew the Amnion wouldn’t react favorably.

Abruptly Mikka said, “Here it is, Nick,” and switched Enablement’s transmission to the intercom.

“Enablement Station to presumed human Captain Nick Succorso,” the alien voice articulated. “Two humans will be permitted to disembark
Captain’s Fancy
, yourself and the pregnant female. You will be escorted to a suitable birthing environment. There you will concede one deciliter of your blood. When you have complied, you will be given confirmation of credit, and the female’s fetus will be brought to physiological maturity. Then you will be returned to
Captain’s Fancy.

“Acknowledgment is required.”

“Do it,” Nick told Mikka tightly.

“Your airlock will be opened now,” said Enablement.

Nick looked over at Morn. “You ready?”

Instead of screaming, she nodded dully.

“Mikka,” he said into the intercom, “I’m switching to suit communications. Make sure Scorz knows what he’s doing.”

He snapped down his faceplate, secured it, and powered up his EVA systems. By the time Morn had followed his example, he was talking to the communications second.

“How am I coming in, Scorz?”

“Clear and easy, Nick.”

“Mikka, do you hear me?”

“You’re on broadcast,” Mikka answered. “Everybody can hear you.”

“Morn?” Nick asked.

“I hear you.” Morn’s voice sounded both loud and muffled in her own ears, simultaneously constricted by the helmet and masked by the hiss of air.

“Good. If you miss one word, Scorz, I’ll have your balls. And watch for jamming. Mikka, if they try that, get us out.”

“Right,” Mikka said.

“We’re going now.” Nick hesitated fractionally, then added, “Keep us safe.”

As if the admonition were an insult, Mikka growled, “Trust me.”

“If I have to,” he retorted.

“Come on, Morn.” He was already at the door which opened from the suit locker into the access passage of the airlock. “Let’s get this over with.”

The note of strain in his voice compelled her. So numb that she was no longer sure what she did, she followed him.

With her suit sealed, she felt a moment of dizziness, a crawling in the pit of her stomach. The polarized plexulose of her faceplate seemed to bend her vision, twisting Nick out of shape, causing the walls to lean in. She knew from experience, however, that the effect would quickly become unnoticeable.

It wouldn’t protect her from what she was about to see.

At the control panel, Nick verified that the airlock was tight, then tapped in a sequence to open the doors. Taking Morn by the arm, he pulled her into the lock.

The space was large enough to hold half
Captain’s Fancy
’s crew. Nick went to the inner panel and shut the doors. At once a warning light came on, indicating that Mikka had sealed the ship.

He hit more buttons, and the outer door slid aside.

Beyond the station-side access passage, Enablement’s airlock was already open.

Two Amnion stood just outside it, waiting.

Stumbling between fear and calm, as if she were going mutely insane, Morn let Nick lead her forward.

In the station airlock, they crossed a scanning grid that looked more like a tangle of vines than a technological apparatus. She and Nick were tested for weapons and contaminants, then let pass.

She moved as if she were wading through mire. Every step took her closer to the Amnion and horror.

She wished she could blame her faceplate for the way they looked to her; but she knew she couldn’t. Polarization and plexulose weren’t responsible for the terror which her heart pumped instead of blood—a terror thickened to sludge by her zone implant.

The guards were hominoid in the sense that they had arms and legs, fingers and toes, heads and torsos, eyes and mouths; but there all resemblance to
Homo sapiens
ended. Their racial identity was a function of RNA and DNA, not of species-specific genetic codes. They played with their shapes the way humans played with fashion, sometimes for utility, sometimes for adornment.

They wore no clothing: they had developed a protective crust, as rough as rust, which made garments irrelevant. Keen teeth like a lamprey’s lined their mouths. Their viscid eyes—four of them spaced around their heads for omnidirectional vision—didn’t need to blink. Both Amnion were bipedal: however, one of them had four arms, two sprouting from each side; the other had three, one at each shoulder, one in the center of its torso. Their strangeness made them loom like giants, although they were only a little larger than Nick or Morn.

Draped from their shoulders were bandoliers supporting unfamiliar weapons.

Both of them wore what appeared to be headsets. That made sense. Translation was a complex process, and probably wouldn’t be entrusted to guards in any case; so all communication would be patched between the authorities on Enablement and
Captain’s Fancy.
This was confirmed when the alien voice came over Morn’s earphones, although neither guard had spoken.

“Presumed human Captain Nick Succorso, you are accepted on Enablement Station. You will be escorted to the birthing environment.”

One Amnioni gestured toward a transport sled parked out in the dock.

“Let’s go,” Nick said.

The way the guards moved their heads suggested that they could hear him.

Morn felt another piece of her reality detach itself and slip away. In this place, nothing was fixed; all nightmares became possible.

Light fell like sulfur from hot pools in the ceiling. She stared around her as if she were fascinated; but all she wanted was to avoid focusing her eyes on her guards.

The dock itself was generically similar to the dock of any human station: a huge space crisscrossed with gantry tracks and cables; full of cranes and hoists and lifts. Nevertheless all the details were different. The straight lines and rigid shapes of human equipment were nowhere in evidence. Instead each crane and sled looked like it had been individually grown rather than constructed; born in vats rather than built. The same biotechnologies which made steel by digesting iron ore produced gantries which resembled trees, vehicles which might have been gross beetles. She’d been taught in the Academy that Amnion scan and detection systems were considerably more accurate than anything available to humankind; their computers ran faster; their guns were more powerful. The Amnion had no lack of technical sophistication: what handicapped them was the inefficiency of their manufacturing methods.

Like her black box, thinking about such things did nothing to heal Morn’s dread. Inside her, hysteria beat against the walls erected by her zone implant.

What was about to happen to her son violated the most fundamental tenets of her flesh. A baby not carried to term in a woman’s womb was deprived of the basis of its personality, the core experience on which human perception rested: tests with fetuses gestated in artificial wombs had proven this over and over again. A baby who went incomplete from his mother’s body to physical maturity in the space of an hour might be deprived of human personality and perception altogether.

And Nick had an immunity drug for Amnion mutagens. The UMCP was corrupt—

The zone implant had lost its effect on her mind. Yet it controlled her body. Lassitude filled her limbs like peace: she was no more capable of opposing Nick or fighting for her life than she was of fending off the mounting pressure of lunacy.

Still holding her arm, he led her between the guards toward the transport sled.

The sled appeared to be made of the same rusty material which formed the skin of the Amnion. One guard stepped into the splayed beetle and sat at the incomprehensible controls; the other waited behind Nick and Morn. He, too, stepped over the side, then turned to help her join him. Almost forcing her down beside him, he seated himself in one of the crooked seats.