The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson

given.”
    No
flicker or variation of his tone betrayed the threat. Nevertheless she saw it
in his eyes. This was a test of wills, of loyalty: his inexorable Amnion
exigencies against her human familiarity with fear.
    A test
— but no contest. Since the day when she’d fallen under the power of his kind,
she’d belonged to them body and soul. At the core of herself she’d been
overtaken by a darkness which didn’t bear close examination.
    “Do it,”
she told the helm first bitterly. “Course and thrust according to Calm
Horizons’ instructions. Initiate immediately.”
    A
moment later she heard the muted hull-roar of thrust, felt the complex g of
acceleration conflicting with internal spin and the shock wave’s vector. Her
stomach rebelled briefly, then settled back down.
    Swivelling
her station so that she could look away from the Amnion, she went on, “Targ,
this would be a good time to run every test you can think of on your systems.”
    “Aye,
Captain,” targ responded in a clenched voice. He went to work without raising
his head.
    “Scan,
give me status.”
    “Almost
clear,” scan replied as if she were accustomed to hearing her captain and the
Amnion argue over Soar’s fate. “I still can’t confirm instrument stability,
but we can see well enough to verify what Calm Horizon? is telling us. Except I
can’t pick up any emission trace for a ship going into tach.”
    Sorus
dismissed that concern: Amnion scan was better than hers. If Calm Horizons reported gap emission, she believed it.
    She
wasn’t done with Vestabule and Taverner yet, however.
    She
would obey as she always did; but she meant to know the truth when she did it.
    Simply
because he’d been human more recently and might remember more, she directed her
glower at Milos.
    “Listen
to me,” she breathed, clenching her teeth. “It’s easy for you to say ‘the
perils of inaction now outweigh those of action,’ but I’m the one who has to do
something about it. I need to understand what’s at stake here. I’m human, my
ship is human, we’ll be in human space — that’s why you’re sending us instead
of going after Trumpet yourself. But in human space the rules are
different. There might be more than one kind of action I can take. I won’t be
able to make the right choices unless I understand what’s at stake.”
    In
response, Taverner attempted a smile; but beneath his alien eyes the stretching
of his mouth resembled a rictus. “You do not need to understand. I will
accompany you. I will be invested with decisiveness for this pursuit.”
    Sorus
swallowed an impulse to shout at him. Still softly, she countered, “That’s not
good enough. You aren’t human. You don’t even talk human — your grasp on how
humans think and act is already starting to fray. You need me to
understand.”
    For
reasons which weren’t clear to her, Taverner glanced at Vestabule. Nothing she
could discern passed between them — nothing more than the erratic blink of
Vestabule’s eye — but when Taverner faced her again, a decision had been
reached.
    “Very
well. I will explain.
    “The
Amnion have much to gain by Trumpet’s capture, and much to lose by her
escape.”
    “That
much I guessed,” she muttered darkly.
    He was
unperturbed. “The matter of gain,” he said, “centres on Morn Hyland and Davies
Hyland. Her importance is simple. She is a United Mining Companies Police
ensign. With her capture all of her knowledge comes into our possession. This
is significant, but not critical.
    “In
addition, she is a human female protected by zone implants. Her capture would
enable us to acquire other knowledge. For example, if she were bred with an
Amnion male, such as I am, what would result? Again this is significant, but
not critical.”
    Bred?
Sorus thought in cold horror. Oh, shit. But she didn’t interrupt.
    “Her
offspring,” Taverner continued as if the subject were purely abstract, devoid
of personal necessity, “represents