Forbidden Knowledge 25 - Chapter 17

[Cord Hurn]

Morn Hyland's cabin door unlocks and the intercom chimes for Mikka Vasaczk's watch to come to the bridge. Though she has an aching head, Morn decides to forgo visiting sickbay in favor of going to the bridge for her duty station. The bridge crew looks shocked to see Morn reporting for duty after she'd threatened to blow up the ship. All of Mikka's watch is on the bridge when Morn enters. Some of the bridge crew object to Nick Succorso, also present there, that it's dangerous to reinstate Morn as a crew member.

Nick answers that the crew must accept Morn's presence, and he assures them that Morn's less of a danger now that he's regained control of his priority codes and Vector has dismantled the self-destruct. Also present on the bridge is data first Sib Mackern, who wonders aloud if Morn is all right. Then Sib speaks for several curious crew members when he asks Morn if she was bluffing.

The question sounded like an accusation. Apparently he preferred to think of her as an enemy.

Her head throbbed horribly, and she was tired of lies. For Davies' sake, however, she faced Mackern squarely. "We needed those gap drive components. And I needed my son. How else could we do it?"

Mikka might have challenged the lie. She'd been with Morn on the auxiliary bridge: she'd seen the truth for herself. Nevertheless she said nothing. Instead she folded her arms across her chest and went on glowering impartially. Earlier she'd supported Nick with her fist: now she supported him with her silence.

For a moment Mackern's mouth opened in protest; sweat or tears filled his eyes. But then, looking suddenly frightened, he mastered himself. In a fumble of movements, as if he'd lost the habit of his limbs, he left the data station and made his way off the bridge.

Morn asks Nick how Davies is doing. Nick answers that he's too busy to check, but orders Liete to look after Davies. Morn thanks him. Morn has trouble focusing on the analysis Mikka has assigned to her, because she's going through zone implant withdrawal. She is aided by Pup giving her coffee and sandwiches, and Pup quietly informs her that Vector sent him out of concern for her. Morn uses one of the bridge's big screens to post data from her analysis of what went wrong with the gap drive. At the same time, on a small console at her station, she looks at information leading her to know which room Davies is being held, and feels thankful that Nick didn't assign Davies to a cramped ejection pod.

Morn then cautiously reviews the recent communications, hoping not to get caught, while also carefully progressing on her assignment to discover what caused the problem with the gap drive. She isn't able to find any definitive answer with her gap drive research, but she IS able to discover a recent communication has been made.

Nick had sent only one message since resuming tard. It hadn't been aimed at Thanatos Minor. Instead it had been beamed at the nearest UMCP listening post.

It was a demand for help.

Nick reported his position, direction, and velocity, and claimed--without explanation--that he was being pursued by Amnion warships. He reminded the UMCP that they couldn't afford to let him be captured. He urged them to send a destroyer into forbidden space to save him.

No chance, Morn said to herself as she read the message. If you think you're worth that, you'd better think again. The UMCP may have been willing to conceal an Amnion mutagen immunity drug from the rest of humankind; but for that very reason no one at UMCPHQ would have approved of the risks Nick had just taken. He'd proven himself too foolish to live. Any ship the UMCP sent out would come as a threat, not to help.

But Morn realizes her knowledge of this message won't help her persuade Nick to let her speak to Davies. Bick arrives on the bridge as Morn's shift ends to escort her to her cabin. When they reach her cabin, he thrusts her within and steps inside to tell her what she did to him was worse than what the woman had cut his cheeks had done. He waves the zone implant control box in front of her but doesn't use it on her. He assures her he will take care of Davies to trade him as a healthy specimen to the Amnion, and he admits he will likely turn her over to them, as well. Then he leaves her cabin.

Morn has trouble sleeping, and when she does manage to get some sleep she sees her family members getting destroyed by her through explosives and gap-sickness. She continues her work on the bridge as data second, then Nick escorts her to her cabin after letting her make a meal. She's ready to try another gambit to help Davies, and feels she has nothing to lose.

She was almost calm as she took her place among Mikka's watch. Her nightmares had left her haggard, but drained; her fears had been temporarily appeased. Hiding behind the work Nick and Mikka wanted done, she tapped into Captain's Fancy's maintenance computer.

She didn't tamper with the lock on her door--or on Davies'. That would be too obvious: Nick or Mikka would surely catch her. But they might not be so careful about the intercoms--

Concealed by stress reports and gap studies, she routed a channel between her cabin and Davies', and fixed it open. That was risky. If Nick entered her cabin, Davies would hear everything he said: if Davies made a sound, Nick would hear it.

She accepted the danger because she had no alternative.

She might be crazy and doomed, but at least she would get a chance to speak to her son.

Morn worries that Davies may already be beyond reach, because of his incredible experience of having been forced-grown into near-maturity--and because of the odd way he acquired his personality through a copy of her mind. Davies must be feeling incredibly confused, Morn frets. She knows that if she doesn't help Davies understand his situation, then no one else will. When Morn is escorted into her cabin and locked in, she must master her fear of discovering Davies is too weakened by ignorance to remain sane. She stays rigid with fright for a few moments before taking a deep breath and getting a drink of water. Then she speaks to Davies through the intercom, and warns him not to touch it.

"Morn?" he asked. "Is that you?"

Her son's voice. He sounded exactly like his father--if his father had been younger, and less violently defended against his own fear.

"Where are you? What's going on? Why does he hate me?

"Morn, what have I done? What am I?"

Her son.

"Davies, listen." She tried to reach him through his distress. "I want to answer your questions. I want to tell you everything. But I don't know how much time we have. If nobody notices what I did to the intercom, we'll be able to talk for a long time. But anybody who checks might catch us. We need to make this count.

"Are you having trouble remembering things?" She heard his breathing as if he had his mouth pressed to the intercom. After a long pause he said like a small boy, "Yes." Then, more fiercely, he added, "I don't even know who I am. How can I remember anything?"

Be patient, she ordered herself. Don't rush him. "What kind of trouble?"

"It just stops." The pickup flattened his voice: he might have been feeling grief or fury. "I'm a girl. I remember that, Morn. My home is on Earth. I've got a mother and a father, just like everybody else. Her name is Bryony, his is Davies, that's my father, not me. They're both cops--but she died ten years ago, their ship was crippled and almost destroyed in a fight with an illegal, he was lucky to survive. I'm a cop myself, I went to the Academy, I was assigned to my father's ship. None of this makes any sense."

"I know." Morn throttled her own sense of urgency in an effort to comfort him. "I can explain it all, but I need to know where it stops. What's the last thing you remember?"

Maybe he couldn't hear her. As if the gap between the, were light-years long, he croaked, "Whenever I think about you--I mean, about you separate from me--I feel like I'm getting raped."

"Please." Sudden weeping filled her throat. She had to swallow hard before she could force up words. "I want to help you, but I can't until I know where your memories stop."

Davies was silent for a long time--so long that waiting for him nearly broke her heart. But at last he spoke. From across the gap, he said, "The ship was Starmaster. She was a UMCP destroyer, but we were covert, pretending to be an orehauler. We'd just left Com-Mine Station for the belt, and we spotted a ship called Bright Beauty. We'd been warned about her. Her captain was Angus Thermopyle"--he stumbled over the name as if he didn't know why it was familiar-- "and we were told he was one of the worst, but nobody could prove it. We saw him"--Davies' tone conveyed a shudder--"burn out a defenseless mining camp, so we went after him.

"I was at my combat station on the auxiliary bridge. We started after Bright Beauty.
That's the last thing I remember."

Listening to him, Morn didn't know whether to feel relief or regret. His memories cut out at the moment when she'd first been hit by gap -sickness. At least for the time being, he's beep spared all the horrors she'd experienced. That was probably why he was still sane enough to talk.

If she could help him before those memories returned, he might be able to deal with them.

Nevertheless she was left with an appalling burden of explanation.

Nevertheless she was left with an appalling burden of explanation. That's quite an understatement! But she starts her explanation out with an irrefutable fact: none of what he remembers could have actually happened to him because he's male and in all those memories he's female. Morn explains to Davies that he has her memories. She describes her decision to give birth to him, and Nick's insistence that they go to the forbidden space of the Amnion for him to be birthed and force-grown. Morn tells Davies he needed some experience to go along with his matured body, so her memories and skills and training were copied by the Amnion onto his mind. She speaks of how this was done to give him a personality with which to work with in his life, a necessary foundation for his consciousness.

Morn lets Davies know that the memories of parents are actually his grandparents. She informs Davies that Nick is mean to him because he hates her, not Davies. Davies wants to know why Nick hates her, and she simplifies the answer by noting that Nick's an illegal and she's a cop. She admits that there are other reasons why Nick is wroth with her, but admits to Davies that she doesn't think he's ready to hear those reasons.

Davies wants to know why his memories stop around the time that Starmaster was chasing Angus, and Morn tells him that that particular time was just prior to her first onset of gap-sickness. Morn assures Davies that her gap-sickness is not hereditary, and she warns him that the memories she has that he doesn't recall represent horrible experiences. Morn surmises that Davies hasn't got gap-sickness, because it would already have flared up in him when they recently went through gap travel. She lets him know it was when Starmaster started chasing Bright Beauty that the heavy g occurred which brought on her gap-sickness.

Davies wishes to know if Morn's gap-sickness experiences are why Nick hates her. Morn replies that those experiences are part of why Nick loathes her, and Davies complains he's bearing the brunt of it all. Davies then wants to know why Nick wants to hurt her. Morn confesses it's because she lied to Nick about Davies being Nick's son, to stop Nick from insisting on an abortion. Davies says he knows that Angus is his father, but doesn't understand why Angus isn't visiting him, as he assumes all illegals are on board Nick's ship. Morn informs Davies that Angus is locked up on Com-Mine Station, and that Nick hates Angus more than he hates the police. Then Morn's cabin door opens and Nick walks into the room.

Nick hears Davies ask about what's happening over the intercom, and Nick roars that he can have Morn and Davies shot without consequences. Davies foolishly dares Nick to try it. Nick adjusts the intercom to contact Liete and order her to disable Davies' connection to the ship's intercom system. Liete complies. Nick turns toward Morn like he's ready to strike her.

She almost said, Oh, get it over with. I'm tired of waiting for you to go out of control.

The intercom stopped her.

"Nick." Tension had replaced Liete's usual stoicism. "You're wanted on the bridge."

That got Nick's attention. He spun to the intercom again, keyed it with his thumb. "What's going on?"

"We've got company," the command third reported. "An Amnion warship. She just resumed tard right on the edge of our scan.

"She's between us and Thanatos Minor."

Nick slapped off the intercom and hit the door at a run.

Morn followed before he had a chance to lock her in.

I continue to feel amused reading about how Morn lets no one but herself be in charge of herself, despite how dangerous and improbable it is for her to act this way on a ship of illegals.

[Avatar]

To be honest, FK is probably my least favourite Gap book.

The whole Morn / Davies dynamic just tends to annoy me...not sure why.

--A

[Cord Hurn]

To be honest, FK is probably my least favourite Gap book.

The whole Morn / Davies dynamic just tends to annoy me...not sure why.

--A

There's something about it which interests me, and perhaps it's all the unreality of his being forced to mature so quickly and understand his situation under such dramatically trying circumstances. For me, The Real Story is my least favorite Gap book, as I hated reading about Angus' cruel treatment of Morn, and didn't relate to him at all as a viewpoint character, as he was more than just an anti-hero, but an outright villain. The "Afterword" is really my favorite part of TRS, as I loved SRD's explanations of his writing process and his plans for the Gap going forward into the next books. I think I may create a thread for discussing that Afterword once we are finished with the Group Read of Forbidden Knowledge.

[Skyweir]

Actually I would love that Cord .. if you would. I totally get Av's point re Morn-Davies dynamic and yes I am much the same. It would be fascinating to delve into SRD's process to maybe see it differently.

Great dissection too. Thank you for all the work YOU DO to keep the group read on track. Always a pleasure to read Great work

[Cord Hurn]

Sure, Sky, I think I would very much like to create a thread dedicated to discussing SRD's "Afterword" to The Real Story, as I find the explanations of his thought and writing processes to be quite interesting. And I thank you so much for your encouragement, and your participation in getting this Group Read completed. We are going to get this done! It's great to see the progress, and thank you again for your kind words.

[Skyweir]

I am eagerly awaiting that thread

With you at the helm Cord, we surely will

To infinity and beyond cc Buzz Lightyear

[Cord Hurn]

I think we will, Sky, and your help and encouragement is certainly appreciated.

One thing to note about this chapter is the further explanation of why Morn is so willing to risk her own safety and freedom to aid Davies. Of course because he's her son, but it's much more than that. A deep lingering guilt for killing her family, a guilt dwelling energetically and maliciously in both her conscious and subconscious, is shown to be a major motivator for Morn to help Davies body and soul, in any way possible, regardless of the further danger that it brings her.

She needed rest desperately. Whenever she fell asleep, however, she plunged directly into nightmares that made her sweat like Angus and scream like the damned.

They were all the same. In them, the universe suddenly opened around her, giving her clarity, filling her with perfection. When it spoke, its message was absolute truth--and absolutely necessary. Her obedience was so clear and perfect that it felt like joy.

Her father or her son stood in front of her. They were also her mother, and her father's sisters; they were Min Donner and several of her instructors at the Academy; they were herself, raped and desolate. But that confusion only made them clearer, more perfectly comprehensible. They were all saying

Morn save us

like utter anguish

so she took small, perfect explosives, and attached them to her father's heart, or her son's, or her own, and watched with clear, vindicated oy as the detonations tore everyone she'd ever loved to bloody bits. Then her cries woke her up in a welter of sweat, as if her bones were being squeezed dry.

Davies is her sole surviving relative, all of her family members rolled into one. She just can't turn her back on him without losing her sense of self and of self-worth completely. Not matter what it costs her.

[Cord Hurn]

The other motivating factor for Morn risking all to help Davies in any way possible is that Davies' situation is so unusual for a human--leaving him in such a psychologically vulnerable state--that Morn feels he deserves clarification and explanation as soon as and as much as possible. She's convinced that she owes it to him.

Unless Davies was beyond reach--

That could easily be true. He was locked up, alone with his fundamental confusion of identity. But that confusion was more than just psychological turmoil: it was a state of complete hormonal chaos. Driven by his imponderable transition from fetus to young manhood--and from his mother's artificially intense sexual stew to his own maleness--his physical state must be wildly out of balance.

Human beings weren't made to survive that kind of stress. In the Amnion sense, they weren't designed for it. They could never replace the years of love and nurturing which nature required. Without those years, Davies was as lost as his father.

The urgency of her desire to help him rose in Morn's throat like a scream. But she had to wait until she reached her cabin.

Davies' balancing point has to be created somehow. It seems logical enough that Morn can give Davies this point of balance by talking about her recent past. He has to be made to understand how his memories actually fit in with his surrounding reality

[Skyweir]

Absolutely totally agree. Davies is a mess mentally. I cant even begin to imagine how confusing and viscerally vulnerable he must feel. He has ALL Morns memories and ALL her experiences.. and ALL his adolescence to navigate.

Thats incredibly fracked up, fragmented territory to defrag. That poor kid and poor Morn. Nothing normal, balanced or well adjusted about any of that.

Ive looked after foster kids who werent as messed up as THAT. Imagine the reality of all the violence he has experienced... via proxy.

Thats a reality of nightmarish proportions. Unpacking all that is going to be unbelievably hard.

Excellent point Cordy .... and it IS important to be able to empathise with this NEW character.

[Cord Hurn]

SRD is good at bringing in heartbreaking realism into his fantastic scenarios, Sky, and the plight of Davies is another example of that. And, it DOES make me want to empathize with him more, indeed. This makes him seem so actual to me, despite the unreality of his being force-grown from a fetus to a teenager in a matter of one hour.