Forbidden Knowledge (32 page)

As time ran out, Morn swung the command station so that the back of her seat concealed her from Mikka.

Then the tactile howl of full thrust fired through
Captain’s Fancy
’s hull, and Morn’s mind went away.

ANCILLARY
DOCUMENTATION

GAP DRIVE

P
rogress in science is often a matter of discovering what works first and discovering why it works afterward. Dr. Juanita Estevez of SpaceLab Station developed a functioning gap drive five years before she had any idea what it was.

By some standards, her greatest achievement was her demonstration that it was possible to design and build a gap drive without ever having been aware that the gap existed. Her ignorance was indicated by the fact that, when she finally learned what her invention did, she referred to the effect as “going into tach” and “resuming tard,” as though tachyon/tardyon principles were somehow involved. Plainly they were not—and yet her terminology persisted. A century after the first gap ship returned successfully from its first mission, people still talked about “going into tach” when the gap drive was engaged and “resuming tard” when the gap crossing was complete.

Of course, Dr. Juanita Estevez was a genius—or, as some of her colleagues insisted, “a major loon.”

The device which eventually proved to be a gap drive prototype she built believing it to be a “matter disassembler”: objects of various kinds were placed within the field of the device; power was applied; the objects disappeared, “disassembled” into their component particles and, presumably, dispersed into the atmosphere. Because she was a private individual with a strongly developed instinct for self-protection, Dr. Estevez was in no hurry to attract attention for her work. Instead she concentrated her research in two primary areas: she attempted to measure the emission of “disassembled” particles into the atmosphere; and she strove to discover the limits of the “disassembling” process by experimenting with objects of various weights and structures.

The former produced no results. The latter—eventually—opened the frontiers of the galaxy.

Until coincidence intervened, however, she had no way of knowing that her test objects did indeed go somewhere, not “disassembled” but whole; or that where the objects went involved a complex interaction between the strength of the field, the potential strength of the field, the mass of the object, and the direction and velocity in which the object was moving when the field was energized (in this case, SpaceLab Station spin provided both direction and speed). She knew only that the objects were in fact gone, and that they left no measurable emissions.

But one day she energized her field to “disassemble” a block of solid titanium. At virtually the same instant, an explosion occurred in one of SpaceLab Station’s bulkheads—fortuitously, a redundant cargo hold bulkhead intended to protect the occupied regions of the station if, through accident or terrorism, the cargo should detonate and the hold decompress. The cause of the explosion became apparent when the block of titanium was found in the hole of the bulkhead: the block had come through the gap into a physical space already occupied by the bulkhead; and since the block was solider, harder, the bulkhead tore itself loose.

Of course, no one realized the event’s significance until Dr. Estevez rather sheepishly admitted that the block was hers.

From that moment, it was only a matter of time before human beings began to venture beyond their own solar system.

The initial research was, inevitably, confused and cautious. Dr. Estevez was chagrined by her misunderstanding of her own experiments; and embarrassment made her even more protective and territorial than she might have been otherwise. SpaceLab Station’s administrator of research was torn between his desire to pursue Dr. Estevez’s experiments and his wish to wrest control of the invention away from her. And the administrator of facilities was opposed to the entire project on the grounds that SpaceLab’s ecology was too fragile to absorb the risk that more bulkheads or perhaps even the station’s skin might be damaged.

Nevertheless Dr. Estevez’s research had become too dramatic to be thwarted; and eventually its potential benefits became too obvious to be denied. New versions of the “disassembler” (now called the “Juanita Estevez Mass Transmission Field Generator”) were built; more objects were passed through the gap and relocated; vast computer analyses of the experiments and the results were run. Then predictions were made, and more tests were run to verify the predictions.

The gap drive worked before any but the most abstruse thinkers had conceived of the gap itself. Interdimensional travel became a reality as soon as the interactions of the gap field (primarily mass, velocity, and hysteresis) were adequately quantified—long before any theoretical understanding of the gap itself achieved broad acceptance within the scientific communities of Earth.

As usual, humankind took action first and considered the consequences later.

Dr. Estevez should have expected—but did not—that as soon as a theory of the gap became current scientific coin, her name for her own invention would fall out of use. The JEMTFG became, first, “the interdimensional drive,” and finally, “the gap drive.” In a sense, she was only remembered for her mistakes: references to “tach” and “tard” endured; and the term “an Estevez” referred to “a major blunder with beneficial results.”

She died an extremely bitter, as well as an extremely wealthy, woman.

ANGUS

A
ngus Thermopyle woke up many times and remembered none of them. The nightmare he’d spent his life fleeing had hold of him. There was nothing he could do to make it let go.

He didn’t wake up while he was frozen, of course. He’d been frozen for a number of reasons, and that was one of them: so that he wouldn’t wake up. While he slept, he couldn’t talk.

However, there were other reasons as well. Cryogenic transportation was safer than numbing him with sedatives or doping him with cat. It offered less risk of neurological damage—and Hashi Lebwohl didn’t want one synapse or ganglion harmed. The UMCP director of Data Acquisition had complex intentions for Angus, all of which depended on preserving the integrity of what Angus knew, remembered, and could do.

So he was kept frozen while Min Donner completed her business on Com-Mine Station: the meetings demanded by protocol; the elucidation of policy; the discussions concerning piracy, forbidden space, and the Preempt Act. Then he and Milos Taverner were taken back across the gap to UMCPHQ.

Soon after that, Angus began waking up—and forgetting it. Before they could do anything else, UMCPDA’s surgeons had to unfreeze him. Until they did so, his body and brain were as intractable as permafrost. So he was shifted from the cold tomb of his cryogenic capsule to the warmer helplessness of cat and anesthetics and surgical restraints. On brief occasions, he was allowed to rise toward consciousness so that the surgeons could test their work. But those occasions were too brief to cling to—and the pain he felt until the drugs took him back down into the dark was too acute. In self-defense, he edited them out of his mental datacore.

As a result, he had no understanding at all of what the surgeons did to him; what form his nightmare had taken.

He wasn’t aware that they peeled back his flesh like the skin of a fruit in order to install utility lasers as keen as stilettos along the bones of his forearms and hands. When the operation was done, there was a strange gap between the third and fourth fingers of each hand, a gap over which his fingers couldn’t close. Connected to their power supply, those weapons would be able to cut open locks and thoraxes with equal facility.

He wasn’t aware that his hips and knees and shoulders were taken apart and reinforced to double or even triple the effective strength of his muscles; or that struts to support and shield his spine were installed in his back; or that another shield was molded over his ribs; or that a thin, hard plate was set under his shoulder blades to anchor and reinforce his arms, protect his heart and lungs—and to hold the power supply and computer which would eventually become part of his identity.

He wasn’t aware that his eyes were removed and fitted with prostheses which were then wired into his optic nerves, thus enabling him to see electromagnetic spectra that no organic vision could perceive—spectra relevant to such diverse applications as alarm systems and computer circuitry.

He wasn’t aware that zone implants were installed in his brain: not one electrode but several. When they were activated, they would control him with a subtlety that made the things he’d done to Morn Hyland look like hatchet-work.

And he certainly wasn’t aware that weeks went by while all these operations were performed. In fact, only advanced surgical procedures and potent curative drugs enabled the doctors to do such things to him in weeks instead of months or years. Making cyborgs wasn’t easy; and the difficulties were increased in his case because his designers had to assume that he would be unalterably opposed to his own technological enhancement.

Not because he had moral or visceral objections: nothing in the UMCP files suggested that Angus Thermopyle would reject being made a cyborg for its own sake. No, he would fight forever against his own enhancement because he would never be allowed to command it. The same technology which made him superior to his former self would also rule him; deprive him of volition completely. When the surgeons were done, Angus would be nothing more than a tool, a biological extension of the UMCP’s will.

With luck, he would be the perfect tool. He would retain his mind, memory, and appearance—retain everything which made him dangerous to the UMC and human space. He could go everywhere he used to go, do everything he used to do. But now his every action would serve his new masters.

In their own way, the surgeons worked to transform him as profoundly as an Amnion mutagen.

If all the operations were successful.

That was the crucial question. Neural probes and metabolic modeling could only provide so much information. They couldn’t prove whether or not the surgeons’ efforts succeeded. And the computer which would control him could only be calibrated in reference to his specific electrochemical “signature,” his unique endocrine/neurotransmitter balances.

Eventually the doctors needed him awake.

So they began withdrawing their drugs from his veins; began sending delicate stimulations into his brain. By careful degrees, they urged him out of the sleep which gave him his only protection against horror and pain.

When he regained enough consciousness to thrash against his restraints and scream, they began teaching him who he was.

You have been changed.

You are Joshua.

That is your name.

It is also your access code.

All the answers you will ever need are available to you. Your name gives you access to them. Find the new place in your mind, the place that feels like a window, the place that feels like a gap between who you are and what you remember. Go to that place and say your name. Joshua. Say it to yourself. Joshua. The window will open. The gap will open. All the answers you need will come to you.

Joshua.

Say it.

Joshua.

Angus screamed once more. If weeks of surgery hadn’t left him so weak, he might have been able to burst his restraints. But he couldn’t, so he curled into a fetal ball and did his best to turn himself into a null-wave transmitter. The link between his brain and his temporary computer remained inactive. If he thought anything, if he ever let himself think again, he would remember his nightmare—remember that they’d dismantled his ship; remember the large, sterile room full of equipment for cryogenic encapsulation;
remember the crib
—and then the abyss from which he’d fled all his life would open under his feet.

Nevertheless he was already cooperating with his doctors. Every internally generated whimper and twitch provided them with exactly the data they required—the neural feedback which allowed them to verify their assumptions and calibrate their instruments.

When they were satisfied with what they’d gained this time, they let him sleep again.

The next time, they pushed him harder toward consciousness.

You have been changed.

You are Joshua.

That is your name.

It is also your access code.

All the answers you will ever need are available to you. All you have to do is say your name. Think it to yourself. Accept it.

Joshua.

Say it.

Joshua.

No.

Say it.

I won’t.

Say it!

With a savage twist, Angus pulled his right arm out of its restraints. Punching wildly, he knocked away one of the doctors, smashed a monitor, ripped down all his IVs. He might have succeeded at injuring himself if someone hadn’t hit the buttons on his zone implant control, switched him off.

The link between his brain and the computer remained inactive.

Goddamn it, a doctor muttered. How can he fight? He isn’t awake enough. He ought to be as suggestible as a kid.

But Angus didn’t need to be awake to fear his nightmare. In the end, all the various and violent fears of his life were one fear, one great rift of terror which reached from his perceptual surface to his metaphysical core. He’d never hesitated to fight anything, destroy anything, which threatened to open that abyss—

sprawled in his crib

—anything except Morn Hyland. But that was because, by the insidious logic of rape and abuse, she’d come to belong to him, in the same way that
Bright Beauty
belonged to him. Like
Bright Beauty
, she’d become necessary, even though that necessity made her infinitely more threatening—

with his scrawny wrists and ankles tied to the slats

—but they’d dismantled his ship. With Morn it was different. They’d taken her away. Now, like his horror, she was somewhere where he couldn’t control her, she might be anywhere—

while his mother filled him with pain

—she was everywhere, hunting him with his doom in her hands, stalking him to open under his feet—

jamming hard things up his anus, down his throat, prying open his penis with needles

—so that he would begin the long plunge into terror and never be able to climb out again, never be able to escape the complete, helpless agony which lurked for him at the center of his being—

and laughing

and afterward she used to comfort him as if it were him she loved, and not the sight of his red and swollen anguish or the strangled sound of his cries.

Because he had nowhere else to go, Angus Thermopyle fled into himself to escape himself.

The doctors didn’t let him get away, however. With sleep, they confused his escape; and as soon as he lost his way, they prodded him toward consciousness again, using new drugs, new stimulations.

You have been changed, they said.

You are Joshua.

That is your name.

It is also your access code.

All the answers you will ever need are available to you. All you have to do is say your name.

This time, his fear of what he remembered, or might remember, was greater than his fear of their coercion. In the end, every fear was the same; but until that end was reached, he could still make choices. And the right choice might postpone the abyss.

“My name,” he croaked, retching against the dry disuse of his vocal cords, “is Angus.”

At the same time, another name formed in his mind, as clear as a key.

Joshua.

A choice. To preserve the possibility that he might someday be able to make other choices.

The link was activated.

“That’s it,” said a distant voice. “He’s welded. Now we can start to work.”

“Work,” in this case, meant intensive physical therapy and long hours of tests, as well as more interrogation. And Angus had no choice about any of it.

His zone implants gave the doctors complete mastery over his body. They could twitch any of his muscles at will; they could make him run or fight or accept abuse or lift weights; they could certainly require him to endure their tests. This appalled and enraged him, of course. Nevertheless, when he understood how totally they could control him, he started obeying their instructions before they could resort to compulsion. For him, the distress of coercion was worse than the humiliation of compliance. Obedience only made him wail with rage, with desire for revenge: helplessness restored his nightmare.

His doctors had no idea that he was wailing. On their readouts, they could see the intensity of his neural activity, but they couldn’t interpret it. So they amended the programming of his computer to watch for that activity as a danger sign. If his electrochemical spikes and oscillations became too intense along certain parameters, the computer would use his zone implants to damp them. As long as he remained cooperative, however, they left the inside of his head alone.

Interrogation was another matter.

It bore no resemblance to the treatment he’d received from Milos Taverner and Com-Mine Security. This questioning was entirely internal. In fact, while his computer ran its inquiries, no human questioner needed to be present. The computer simply elicited answers and recorded them.

It did this by the plain yet sophisticated application of pain and pleasure. While the interrogation programs ran, the gap in his head seemed to open, and a set of restrictions and possibilities entered his mind. He thought of them as a rat-runner’s maze, although the walls and alleys weren’t physical, or even visual. If he violated the restrictions, his pain centers received stimulation: if he satisfied the possibilities, he was flooded with pleasure.

Naturally the restrictions had to do not with the content of his answers but with their physiological honesty. If he could have lied without betraying any symptoms of dishonesty, his answers would have been accepted. But his computer and zone implants scrutinized his symptoms profoundly. They could measure every hormonal fluctuation; they could distinguish between noradrenaline and catecholamine in the function of his synapses. In practice, lies were always detected.

Angus struggled against his interrogation for what felt like a long time—a day or two, possibly three. The computer couldn’t control his mind as it did his body; it could only exert pressure, not coercion. And he’d always been able to resist pressure. Milos Taverner certainly hadn’t broken him. Grinding his teeth, swearing pitilessly, and sweating like a pig, Angus tried to endure the interrogations as if they were psychotic episodes brought on by too much combined stim and cat; as if their horrors were familiar and therefore bearable.