Gap [1] The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict by Stephen R. Donaldson Page B

like a malign frog. He wasn’t accustomed to the way he felt: happy; eager. She might turn out to be exactly what he needed.
    “If I did that,” he replied, “I wouldn’t have a crew.”
    “Crew?” The idea seemed to focus her stubbornness. “I’m not going to crew for you. I’m not—”
    Yet in spite of what she felt, her voice trailed away. He wasn’t paying any attention to her refusal.
    Deliberately, obviously, so that she could watch everything, he instructed the sickbay computer to prepare an anesthetic and pump it into her. While the needle probed her veins, he savored her dismay.
    As she lost consciousness, she breathed in appeal, “Get me out of this—”
    “Oh, I will,” he promised. “I will.”
    If he’d been that kind of man, he would have chuckled.
    Thanks to the advances of medical technology, even Bright Beauty’s tiny sickbay was sufficiently well-equipped to administer a zone implant.
    He had to unstrap her in order to get her head and shoulders out of the suit. That was the hard part, hampered as he was by her dead weight and the confines of the cubicle. The rest was simple. All he had to do was tell the sickbay computer what he wanted and then get out of the way. Cybernetic systems took care of the rest.
    Long ago, he’d disconnected the sickbay computer from his ship’s datacore. Law-abiding ships had that right, to protect the privacy of their passengers and crew: as long as the sickbay computer didn’t feed directly to the datacore, no permanent record was kept of who needed treatment and why; so private citizens didn’t need to worry that their medical records would be used against them. After all, crucial information—such as the presence of gap-sickness—was recorded on id tags. And any captain could add data to anyone’s id file as necessary. However, Angus’ intentions had nothing to do with abiding by the law. He simply wanted to neutralize his sickbay computer as a source of evidence against him.
    In fact, he’d carried his precautions to the extent of programming the computer with an automatic erase, so that it immediately “forgot” every treatment it dispensed, every procedure it performed. According to his official sickbay log, he was the only person who had ever been aboard Bright Beauty —and he had never used his sickbay.
    Confident of his own security, he left the cybernetic systems alone while they worked on Morn Hyland, preparing her for his use.
    Instead of watching what was done to her, he lifted Bright Beauty gently out of hiding and went in search of a better covert, a place where he could feel safe for the time it would take to train his crew. Before long he found the kind of asteroid he liked: played-out and deserted, riddled with abandoned tunnels and workings which would attract nobody. Deep in one of the old mine shafts, out of reach of any ordinary scan, he parked his ship. Just in case he lost control of what he was doing, he shut down her drive and locked everything in the command module with priority codes. Then he went to check on his patient.
    The sickbay computer was done with her: in fact, it had already washed the anesthetic out of her body, and she was starting to wake up. He just had time to pick up the implant control and make sure it was functioning properly before she began to stir, moving her arms groggily and blinking her eyes.
    “You stink,” he said before she was altogether able to understand him. “Go get clean.”
    With an effort, she got her eyes into focus. At the same time, she seemed to realize that her limbs were free—that he had undone the straps. She frowned at him, struggling to think. Reflexively, she pulled her legs up, stretched her arms.
    “What’re you doing?” Her voice sounded rusty, as if she hadn’t used it for a long time. “Why did you put me to sleep?”
    Watching her closely, he rasped, “I said, you stink. Go get clean.”
    “Yes, sir.” She was fresh from the Academy: assent to authority