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Morn and
Angus The men who observed these things
had no other way to account for them, so they
jumped to the one
conclusion which made sense to them; a conclusion which suited both Angus'
reputation and their own cynicism.
Without any viable external evidence, they chose to believe that he'd
given her a zone implant.
He had the control in his pocket.
Zone implants were illegal, of course.
They were so illegal
that unauthorized use carried the death penalty.
But - also of course -
mere questions of legality didn't stop people who worked the belt from having
them on hand for emergencies.
In essence,
a zone implant was a
radio electrode which could be slipped between one of the skull sutures and
installed in the brain where its emissions were remarkably effective.
It had been
invented by a doctor trying to
control grand mal epileptic seizures: its emissions blanked out the
neural storm of the
seizure.
People
thought that was where the name "zone" came from: an active implant gave an
epileptic the look of being "completely zoned."
But in fact medical
research had quickly discovered that a variety of results could be obtained by
varying the implant's emissions -by tuning the implant to different zones of
the brain.
Violent insanities could be
tamed.
Manic behaviors could be
moderated.
Catatonia could be
relieved - or induced.
Recalcitrance could be turned
into coöperation.
Pain
could be reinterpreted as pleasure.
Volition could be suppressed
without interrupting consciousness.
Given a
broad-spectrum zone implant, which employed several electrodes, and an
unscrupulous control operator,
independent human
beings could be transformed into intelligent, effective, and
loyal slaves.
Even
the more common, narrower-spectrum implants could achieve comparable results by
turning humans into physical
puppets, or by applying intense
neural punishment and
rewards.
Unauthorized
use of a zone implant carried the
death penalty automatically,
inevitably; without appeal.
But despite the law - and the possibilities
of abuse - even otherwise reputable miners and pilots,
ore haulers and handlers,
considered zone implants necessary medical equipment.
The reason was simple.
Medical science had developed ways
for complete idiots to diagnose and treat complex diseases; ways for lost
or vision-struck belt pilots to repair the damage done to their bodies by
faulty or inadequate
equipment; ways for crushed
limbs and even crushed organs to be prostheticly restored.
Unfortunately, however, no amount of research had
discovered a cure for gap-sickness, that strange
breakdown of the mind which
took perhaps one out of every hundred people who
crossed the dimensional gap
and reduced him or her to a
psychotic killer or a null-wave transmitter,
a raving bulimic or
a gleeful
self-flagellant, a pedophiliac or
a pill-junkie.
One
out of every hundred people had some category of undetectable vulnerability in
the tissue of the brain; and when that
vulnerability was
translated across light-years of space through the imponderable physics of the
gap, some thing happened to that vulnerable brain.
Otherwise healthy
individuals lost command of
their lives in invariably startling, often grotesque, and sometimes
murderous fashions.
There was no cure for gap-sickness.
But
there was a way to cope with it.
The zone implant.
Almost
gently, he returned her tag, then put a hand on her chin and turned her face
toward him.
The stark
horror was back in her eyes.
Her whisper was faraway and forlorn,
lost in darkness.
"I initiated
self-destruct. From the auxiliary bridge."
His fingers clamped onto her
jaw as if he could force her to tell the truth.
He thrust his face
close to hers. "You did what?"
"We were chasing you."
Her gaze
didn't react to his proximity: the things that appalled her were so bright she
couldn't register anything else.
"Dodging asteroids. G was awful. I
thought we were going to break up. I was at my station. Auxiliary bridge. I
thought the straps on my seat were going to tear. Or I was going to
rupture."
"Then it stopped. I could see you on the screens. But I didn't
care. You destroyed that mining camp. I had already seen you kill all those
miners. I didn't care. I should have cared, but I didn't."
"The whole inside of my head was
different."
"I was
floating, and everything was clear."
"Like a vision."
"It was like the
universe spoke to me. I got the message, the truth."
Her stare
remained fixed; but now she had to fight to keep her sobs down.
"The
'truth.' I knew exactly what to do. What I had to do. I didn't question
it."
"I keyed
the self-destruct sequence into the computer. That was supposed to blow up
both drives. We would have been turned to powder."
"You aren't an
officer," Angus objected. "You're practically a kid. How did you know the
self-destruct codes?"
"We all knew the codes. Anyone of us could do it.
So Starmaster wouldn't be captured. That was our first priority. Not be
captured. Under any circumstances. If forbidden space got us - a ship like that
- We can all be trusted. We're all reliable. Most of us are family. They
wouldn't let anybody who wasn't reliable on a ship like that."
"But
fa-Captain Hyland caught what I was doing. He tried to abort. Only the
thrusters exploded. I could hear him yelling at me over the intercom - yelling
at me because I was his daughter and I was destroying his ship, I was
destroying him. His sister and brothers. My cousins. Destroying them."
"And then it wasn't clear anymore. There wasn't any vision. We weren't
in any danger. It was all a lie. I
killed my whole family for no reason."
He bared his teeth. "I
told you. You're my crew now. You're mine. You've been impressed."
He
relished the word.
"When I tell you to do
something, I expect it done."
He could see panic in her face.
"You bastard, " she breathed for the
second time. "I am not your crew. I am UMCP. I am going to leave you rotting in
lockup if it's the last thing I do. What have you done to me?"
Angus
didn't answer directly: he was having too much fun.
Instead, he showed
her the control in his hand.
The shock when she recognized the small
box was everything he could have wanted.
It was like her
horror of the way she had
murdered her family, like that in helplessness and extremity; and yet
profoundly different in other, crucial respects.
Terror and loathing
burned across her face. Her hands sprang to her mouth; she made an attempt to
cry out.
Then he lost his
self possession.
He was already on the edge of his restraint: the
sight of her pushed him past his limits.
She was clean - and being
clean brought back her fundamental beauty.

She was probably the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen
this close.
And she showed a category of courage simply by leaving the san; she had
the capacity to face
her fate.
Her eyes shone with a
heart wrenching
combination of fright and defiance,
with a dread of what he could do to her mixed with a refusal to be cowed.
And he could do anything he wanted.
She was his: he had the
control to her zone implant clenched in his sweating fingers.
For that
reason, he pushed the button which took away her ability to move.
Then
he put down the control and beat
her bloody with his bare fists, marring her beauty so that it wouldn't
terrify him anymore.
He couldn't stop trembling.
After all, it
was a good thing that he'd hit her.
The darkness and swelling of her
bruises made her bearable: if she'd remained perfect, he would have had no
choice but to kill her.
So he paid no attention to the
firm lift of her breasts or the
velvet curve of her hips.
He concentrated
exclusively on the livid hurt of her bruises as he climbed on top of her.
His orgasm was so
intense he thought for a moment he'd broken something.
Before he
rolled off her, he had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes flutter open,
seeing her begin to realize what he'd
done.
He filled her with revulsion, even though there was nothing
she could do about it.
That was good.
Nevertheless he continued
trembling.
He could no longer tell whether he was excited or afraid.
"Does that make you feel like a man?"
She sounded bitter and
miserable - and faraway, as though the aftereffects of his blows muffled her
distress.
"Do you have to
destroy me to feel good yourself? Are you that sick?"
"Shut up," he
replied amiably. "You'll get used to it. You'll have to."
He was
grinning; but he still had to brace his hands on his hips to conceal the way
they shook.
Stephen R. Donaldson, from The Real Story: The Gap
into Conflict

Stephen R. Donaldson was
attending Kent State University as a graduate student at the time of the Kent
State massacre on May 4, 1970.
Lord Foul's Bane, the Chronicles of
Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
Mordant's Need The Mirror of Her Dreams
(1986)
A Man Rides Through (1987)
Gap series The Gap into
Conflict: The Real Story (1991)
The Gap into Vision: Forbidden
Knowledge (1991)
The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises
(1993)
The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (1994)
The Gap
into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die (1996)
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