She feels it's time to push for what she wants, to have her offspring and to avoid having her police secrets sold on Thanatos Minor, and to do that she's willing to openly defy Nick's "wants". Nick asks Morn what her reasons are, and Morn says she wants a son by which to remember Nick after he gets tired of her and breaks off the relationship.Morn was glad that she'd never made the mistake of thinking he would welcome any child, even a son. And she was glad for a chance to defy him at last. In fact, she was delighted--so keenly pleased that her heart sang. Her greatest danger at the moment wasn't that she might back down: it was that she might let too much visceral joy show.
Morn reassures him by reminding him he has the power over her to get what he wants--but then she lets him know that she'll inform everybody he deals with that he bargains with the UMCP. Nick is taken aback by that threat at first, but then he harshly laughs. He observes that he can sell Morn to "forbidden space". This almost makes Morn panic, but then she observes aloud that he won't have enough money to both flush Orn's virus and fix the gap drive if he sells only her. And if he sells any of his crew in addition to her, she points out that his crew will never trust him again.Her lies touched him: she saw that. His hands flexed on the armrests; an oblique grief moistened the fire in his eyes. He believed the masque: he was accessible to this appeal.
At the same time he was too stubborn, too suspicious--and too intelligent--to lose his way so easily. He had to swallow twice before he could find his voice. Then he said, "Crap."
Nick states that he and Morn have reached a stalemate, and Morn asks him what suggestions he has. He responds that if Morn can give him a cure for Orn's virus in the computer systems, then she can keep her baby, and they won't go to Thanatos Minor. Morn doubts she can solve the virus problem, and entertains thoughts of sabotaging the ship and escaping in an EVA suit, ditching her id tag and going as far as she can in space until her air runs out. But then she realizes she can no longer take the option of suicide seriously as a course of action.
For the greater part of the next two weeks, Morn works on the problem of Orn's virus whenever she doesn't need to be data third on the ship's bridge, or entertain Nick in her cabin, or work in a little bit of sleep and eating. She uses the artificial energy provided by her zone implant to forgo sleep as much as possible.And if she killed herself little Davies Hyland would die with her.
Her desire to save him surprised her. On a conscious level, her claim that she wanted to keep him had been a smoke screen to disguise her real reasons for resisting being sold on Thanatos Minor. But now she saw that this claim was true. Maybe she wanted her son as a way of defying Nick; maybe she wanted him for himself; maybe she was overcome by the desire not to add Davies' name to the list of her victims; maybe she was under too much pressure to refuse the logic of her hormones: she didn't know. Whatever the explanation, however, the conclusion was clear: she had become prepared to fight for her baby's life.
Which meant she had to find a cure for Orn's virus.
That was the decision she reached. Aware of what she was doing, and galvanized by it, she accepted Nick's terms, just as she'd once accepted Angus'.
Then she has hope for her idea of performing a datacore time-study. She reasons that running a such a study will show what kinds of changes Orn programmed, which will in turn give vital clues to the nature and location of the virus. But after four more days of scant sleep working on this time-study, her hopes crumble away: the results of the study show no change in programming from the day before Orn first boarded the ship to the present time. Morn is stunned at this failure of analysis, and allows her fatigue to overwhelm her, choosing to not touch her zone implant control to bolster her energy. Vector finds her slumped over the auxiliary control board, drags her down to the galley, pours hot coffee down her, and asks what seems like an odd question.
I've enjoyed card games many times in the past, so Vector's odd little "pep talk" with Morn manages to spark interest in me, simply because it conjures up some entertaining personal memories of poker games (I've never played bridge, though.) Vector's words manage to conjure up a spark of interest in Morn, as well, as she resists the temptation to reach into her pocket, turn off the zone implant, and just fall deeply asleep."Do you play cards?"
The retreat of her grief left her exposed to exhaustion. Numbly she nodded. "Poker. A little. In the Academy. I wasn't good at it."
Apparently she'd given him some kind of permission. He seated himself, picked up a mug of coffee, and said, casually, "It's interesting how games endure. Chess, for example. And poker--as a species, we've been playing poker practically forever. And then there's bridge. I've seen gaming encyclopedias that don't even mention whist--which is where bridge came from--but back when I worked for InterTech we used to play bridge for days. Orn was particularly good at it.
"Bridge and poker." Vector let out a nostalgic sigh. "The only time life is ever pure is when you're playing games like that. That's because they're closed systems. The cards, and the rules--and the ontological implications--are finite.
"But of course poker isn't really a card game. It's a game of people. The cards are just a tool for playing your opponents. That may be why you weren't good at it. Bridge comes much closer to direct problem-solving--the extrapolation of discrete logical permutations. You can't ignore who your opponents are, naturally, but you win with your mind more than your guts.
"You're trying to win this one with your guts, Morn. You need to use your mind."
Morn drank more coffee. She didn't say anything: she didn't have anything to say. Instead she concentrated on the pain in her throat.
"WE have a maxim in bridge," he continued. "If you need a particular card to be in a certain place, assume it is. If you need a particular distribution of the cards, assume it exists. Plan the rest of your strategy as if you have a right to be sure of that one assumption.
"It doesn't always work, of course. In fact, you can play for days without it working once. But that's not the point. The point is, if your assumption is false you were going to fail anyway. That assumption represents the one thing you have to have in order tp succeed. so you might as well count on it. Without it, there's nothing you can do except shrug and go on to the next hand."
[more to come]
