Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [259]
Polyon had heard of brawns who developed an emotional fixation on their brainship, even to the point of having a solido made from the brainship's genotype that would show how the freakish body might have matured without its fatal defects. He hadn't guessed that Forister was the sentimental type, or that he'd have had time to grow so attached to Nancia. The idiot might actually think that he'd rather die than kill his brainship.
"There's no need to clutter the problem with emotionalism," Polyon told him. How could he jolt Forister out of his sentimental fixation? "With partial control of the ship to me and partial control to Nancia, neither of us can navigate out of Singularity."
Damn the transition loop! Forister had caught on to the rhythm by now; and the necessary wait while three distorted subspaces composed and decomposed around them gave him time to think.
"I've a better suggestion," the brawn said. "You say you can navigate us out; well, we all know Nancia can. Restore full control to her, and—"
"And what? You'll drop charges, let me go back to running a prison factory? I've got a better career plan than that now."
"I wasn't," said Forister mildly, "planning to make that offer."
The rhythm of collapsing and composing subspaces was becoming natural to them all; the necessary pauses in their conversation no longer bothered Polyon.
"I had something like your own offer in mind," Forister continued at the next opportunity. "Release Nancia's hyperchip-enhanced computer systems, and she'll get us out of Singularity—and you'll live."
"How did you guess?"
Forister looked surprised. "Logical deduction. You designed the hyperchips; you tricked me into running a program that did something peculiar to Nancia's computer systems; the failure reports I read just before you came in showed precisely the areas where she has had hyperchips installed, the lower deck sensors and the navigation system; you've since exercised voice control on Micaya's hyperchip-enhanced prostheses. Clearly your hyperchip design includes a back door by which you can personally control any installation that uses your chips."
"Clever," Polyon said. "But not clever enough to get you out of Singularity. I assure you I'm not going to restore full computing power to a brainship who is probably mad by now."
"What makes you think that?"
Polyon raised his brows. "We all know what sensory deprivation does to shellpersons, Forister. Need I go into the details?"
"Take more than a few minutes in the dark to upset my Nancia," Forister said levelly.
Polyon bared his teeth. "By now, old man, she's had considerably more than that to deal with. The first thing my hyperchip worm does is to strike at any intelligence linked to the computers in which it finds itself. The sensory barrage would make any human break the link at once. I'm afraid that 'your' Nancia, not being able to escape the link that way, will have gone quite mad by now. So—I think—if you want to live—you'll tell me, now, the rest of the access code."
"I think not," Forister said calmly. "You've made a fatal error in your calculations."
The transition loop stifled all talk for the endless winding, looping moments of passage through shrinking and distorting spaces. Polyon ignored the sensory tricks of spatial transformations and thought furiously. When normspace returned, he reached up from his chair to grasp the solido of Nancia as a young woman. Deliberately, watching Forister's face, he dropped the solido on the deck and ground the fragile material to shards under his boot-heel.
"That's what's left of 'your' Nancia, old man," he said. "Are you going to let your love for a woman who never lived kill us all?"
Forister's face was lined with pain, but he spoke as evenly as always. "My—feelings—for Nancia have nothing to do with the matter. Your error is much more basic. You think I'd rather set you free with the universe in your control than die here in Singularity. This is incorrect."
He spoke so calmly that it took Polyon a moment to understand