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

switched her off—or as if she were trying to find some hidden place where she could still believe in herself—she seemed to sink out of awareness.
    Where she went, he couldn’t follow. For him, fear was a source of inspiration: it enabled him to make the sort of intuitive leap which had brought him to an understanding of her gap-sickness. But the same inspiration or intuition also blinded him to perceptions which involved emotions other than fear.
    The place where Morn went would have made no sense to him. He would have assumed it was a cynical lie—the kind of falsehood which conceals itself in order to sting more effectively.
    She was sinking down to her basic memories, to the place where she had become who she was; to her home and parents.
    Like a little girl, unselfconsciously, she appealed to her mother and father for help.
    In a sense, their power to help or hinder her, like their power to shape her life, came from the fact that they’d been so much absent. They were both cops; and the UMCP policy of crewing ships with families stopped short of children. In consequence, Morn was left with her grandparents (themselves retired veterans of Space Mines Inc. Security) while Davies and Bryony Hyland served missions in the deep void, risking their lives to protect humankind from violence and forbidden space.
    Morn kept the weight of this abandonment to herself. Of course, she grieved when they went away; she thrilled with joy when they returned. But the deeper impact she concealed. Perhaps she herself didn’t know there was any deeper impact. After all, her parents left her in a home where she was loved and attended to; a home where a strict affirmation of law and citizenship was complemented by warmth and affection. For her grandparents, as for her parents, children were the future which the UMCP labored and bled to secure.
    Virtually everyone Morn knew as a child either was or had been a cop. And they were believers: they esteemed their own work in the same way that they esteemed her, and for the same reason. They spoke of her parents with a fundamental respect, an unquestioning validation, which taught her that what her mother and father did was the most necessary and valuable job imaginable. Life beyond the hegemony of the UMCP thronged with profound perils, threats to the human species itself, which Davies and Bryony Hyland had the courage and the conviction to oppose. Vast space was deadly: it called for valor, determination, and idealism.
    How could a child question all this? Whom could she tell that she felt abandoned—or punished? By the time she was old enough to know the right words, they were no longer credible. Abandonment? Punishment? No. She’d been taught to see her father as an eagle, scouring the skies for predators. And her mother was a panther, sleek and soft for her kittens, but ready with fangs and claws to fight her kittens’ enemies.
    In addition, her grandparents, aunts, uncles—and her parents when they were on leave—conveyed the perfect assumption that Morn herself would eventually become a cop. Precisely because she was bright, capable, and loved, she would naturally choose to follow in her parents’ footsteps.
    Morn nodded solemnly, as if she were accepting her mission. Nevertheless she knew it was false. She would never be a cop. When the pain of her abandonment or punishment lost credibility, she learned resentment. But there was no place for that in her life, so it remained hidden. Instead of aspiring to be like her parents, she learned to hold a grudge.
    Even at that age, she was able to hold a grudge steadily—and give no sign of it.
    However, her resentment turned to shame—her whole emotional makeup changed—when she heard of her mother’s death.
    Of course her grandparents were the first to tell her that Bryony had been killed. But in her core, where her image of her mother’s invincibility resided, she didn’t believe the news until she heard it from her father. He came