Read Online Gap [1] The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict by Stephen R. Donaldson - Free Book Online Page A

‘unauthorized use of a zone implant.’ Why are you doing it?”
    Without warning, he felt vulnerable to her—violent and angry. But he still didn’t hit her. Because of the chink she’d found in him, his answer was simple. “I need a crew. How else can I get a gap-sick cop to crew for me?”
    Eventually she nodded, as if what he said made sense.
    With misery in her eyes, struggling visibly against her fear, she got to her feet and did what he told her. She went past him down the corridor.
    For no reason he could explain—no reason he knew—he handed her a clean shipsuit before she entered the san.
    By the time she emerged, however, the inexplicable inconsistency of his own behavior had made him savage. He was a coward; and when he did things he didn’t understand, things that weren’t what he’d intended, things that weren’t what he wanted, he scared himself. When he was scared, he took action.
    He was being weak. He should have forced her to live in that fouled suit in order to humiliate her properly, teach her what his power meant. What was he doing? Was he feeling sorry for her? The idea made him want to break her arms. He would see her dead—he would crush her—before he would allow her to do anything that might make him weak.
    And yet he contained himself until she came out of the san of her own volition. Fuming, fretting, swelling into a fury, he still waited, storing up violence, until she opened the door herself and came out to face him.
    Then he lost his self-possession.
    He was already on the edge of his restraint: the sight of her pushed him past his limits. She was clean—and being clean brought back her fundamental beauty. She was probably the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen this close. And she showed a kind of courage simply by leaving the san; she had the capacity to face her fate. Her eyes shone with a heart-wrenching combination of fright and defiance, with a dread of what he could do to her mixed with a refusal to be cowed. And he could do anything he wanted. She was his: he had the control to her zone implant clenched in his sweating fingers.
    For that reason, he pushed the button which took away her ability to move. Then he put down the control and beat her bloody with his bare fists, marring her beauty so that it wouldn’t terrify him anymore.

CHAPTER
6
    S everal hours passed before he came to the realization that he’d hurt himself as well as her.
    With the zone-implant control, of course, he could have overridden the damage to some extent. As soon as she regained any measure of consciousness, he could have forced her into motion, made her serve him in any number of ways. Certainly he could have muffled the sensations of damage for her. But she would still have been useless as crew: he had left her in no condition to learn the things he needed to teach her about Bright Beauty. He would have to give her time to recover before he could get any real use out of her.
    In other words, he’d increased the amount of time he would have to spend in hiding. He’d delayed the moment when he would be able—if not safe—to travel with Morn’s help instead of hindrance. And no matter how well hidden he was, the fact remained that a stationary target was easier to find and hit than a moving one.
    He’d increased the risk to himself for the satisfaction of beating her.
    And he’d hurt himself in another, subtler way as well. She was his. Wasn’t she? Like his ship, she was in his command. With the zone implant, he could make her do anything he wanted; perhaps by taking control of her body and directing it as he wished; perhaps by exerting neural pressure—pain and pleasure strong enough to coerce her. He could make her (now that she was unconscious and out of sight, his imagination began to tease him) do that. He could do that to her. So why was he afraid of her looks? Beauty only made it better—only increased her humiliation, demonstrated his power more completely. Anything that