Flesh and Silver

4. Consultation

Jon Halen’s lean, dark visage filled Marchey’s screen, lighting up in a toothy grin when he saw him. “Hey there, Doc,” he drawled, “If you’re callin’ bout your bill, the check’s in the mail.”

Marchey had to smile, and not just at that very old, very bad joke. Just seeing Halen again did more to lighten his mood than anything he’d drank lately.

“Glad to hear it. How are things back at the old homestead?”

“Tolerable. I did just get one bit of good news.”

Marchey smirked. “Salli wants to have your children?”

That made Jon snicker. “No, that’s not it. ’Sides, I’ve been too busy humpin’ a keyboard for any of that.”

“Any luck cracking Fist’s accounts?”

Halen’s grin slipped. “Naw, I’m ’fraid not. I’ve been spendin’ ev’ry minute I can spare tryin’ to get a handle on his records, but I’m still just sortin’ the locked files from the open stuff. The old bastard had enough data squirreled away to keep me diggin’ for years.”

He scrubbed his stubbly chin with his misshapen hand, peering at Marchey with one eye. “You been, um, talkin’ to him?”

“A little. Sorry, but he hasn’t told me anything.” Nothing I wanted to hear, anyway. Or believe.

Jon shook his head. “Don’t be. I shouldn’ta even asked. Like I said before, don’t go messin’ with him any more’n you absolute have to.”

“You said you have good news,” Marchey prompted.

Halen’s irrepressible grin reappeared. “I surely do! There’s medical people and all those supplies you wrote up on the way. Just got the word that they’re s’posed to arrive sometime late Friday.”

That was about the same time he’d reach Botha Station. Marchey let out a sigh of relief. Now maybe he could stop feeling so guilty about leaving them. “That’s great. I knew MedArm would come through.”

Jon shook his head. “It an’t them personally, it’s some outfit called the Helping Hands Foundation.”

Marchey sat there after saying good-bye to Jon, mulling things over.

By all rights he should have been feeling pretty good. Jon had accessed the medical files for him, and he had been pleased to see that not only were Mardi and Elias doing an excellent job of keeping them up-to-date, the people in their care were doing at least as well as could be expected. Jon had offered to get Mardi to report directly—Elias was sleeping—but he didn’t want her to think he was checking up on them.

Medical help was on the way. That should have been a load off his mind. It was, mostly. But he had never heard of this Helping Hands Foundation, and couldn’t help wondering why they were doing what was supposed to be MedArm’s job. Bureaucracy at work, no doubt, some penny-pinching MedArm comptroller using a private group of do-gooders to pare his or her precious budget. Once this outfit arrived he’d have to check with Mardi and Elias to make sure they were doing a good job—and raise holy hell if they weren’t.

Jon hadn’t seen Angel since bumping into her in a corridor the morning Marchey left. He’d looked disappointed when Marchey turned down his offer to track her down for him. It appeared that not even his departure had dampened Jon’s desire to put the two of them together.

He got up from the commboard and drifted back to the galley. He’d refilled his glass with straight scotch and knocked half of it back before he remembered that he was rationing the booze.

“Just celebrating,” he mumbled, scowling into his glass. Everything was turning out the way it was supposed to. Everything was coming up roses.

No news was good news. Angel was probably just fine.

He drained the glass. She was undoubtedly going on with her life, already forgetting about him.

Just like he was forgetting about her.

Marchey jerked in surprise and spilled his coffee when his arm chimed that next morning, having forgotten that the day before he’d set it to remind him when Fist’s sleepfield was about to shut down. The unibed had been programmed to give the old man half an hour of wakefuless per day.

He started to get up, then changed his mind and settled back into the galley seat. Let the miserable old bastard stew a few minutes. After swabbing up the mess he’d made he refilled his cup from the dispenser. Took a sip, grimaced.

Brandy flavoring in coffee was not at all the same thing as the real thing. Not even close. He dumped it out.

It was still early in his second day back on the circuit. The two hours he’d been up felt like two days.

The long stretches of monotonous solitude had never grated on his nerves like this before, never made him feel this trapped and jittery.

Of course this was the first time he’d tried to do it this close to sober. He couldn’t recall the countless other times he’d spent days—sometimes even weeks— like a machine on standby clearly enough to say he truly remembered them. They were like the hours spent in sleep. He knew they had passed, but darkly and disconnected from the normal flow of time.

Just three days before there hadn’t been enough hours in the day. Now there were too many days in each hour. The minutes pass slowly when you’re all alone and mostly sober. Any distraction was welcome.

Marchey stood up, bitterly amused by the realization that looking in on Fist was going to be the high point of his day.

“So glad to see you… my dear doctor,” Fist wheezed, gazing up at Marchey with what passed for a friendly smile. The Grim Reaper had that sort of smile.

“Of course… I should be glad… to be able… to see anyone.” He chuckled, a wet, tubercular, hacking sound.

Marchey’s guard went up. He rested his hand on the touchpad, but withheld accessing the ’bed’s systems. “How are you feeling?” he asked, telling himself to watch his step. Fist was up to something.

The old man’s thin, blue-gray lips peeled back from his sharp white teeth. “Probably about… the way I look.”

Marchey let the opening pass. “Any pain?” The neural field created by the Schmidt crystals should be keeping the worst of the pain suppressed, but with Form V you couldn’t count on it. Not that Fist hadn’t earned some suffering by forbidding medical care for his former subjects because it pleased him to hear them praying to be healed. Surely such cruelty ought to be repaid.

“Does my pain… truly disturb you? Or does… it seem just?” Fist asked sweetly, as if he had read Marchey’s mind. “What would you do… if I said… I was in agony?”

The safest course was to ignore the first two questions and take the last at face value. “I’d increase the anesthetic field to emergency strength. If that didn’t take care of it, I’d keep you under the sleepfield fulltime since I’m out of superaspirin, syndorphins, and paraopiates.”

A slight nod. “As I thought.” That awful grin widened. “No pain… I cannot endure. Your agenda… will not be spoiled… by my infirmity.”

Marchey almost asked him what he meant, but caught himself at the last moment. Fist was finessing him for some reason, trying to lure him into something like a fly into a pitcher-plant. So he said nothing.

“What agenda is that… you ask?” Fist wheezed. His voice dropped to a conspirational whisper. “What do I have… hidden away? What passphrases and… code keys unlock it? I may… tell you.” The ghost of a shrug. “I may not. It depends… on you.” He stared up, smugly expectant.

Well, here we go, Marchey thought glumly, not surprised that Fist knew what he wanted and intended to use it to his advantage. But this was an uncharacteristically straightforward approach. Of course, when dealing with Fist the most dangerous trap was the one you didn’t see. There was sure to be one, probably already under his feet. One wrong word would make it snap shut.

He stared back at Fist, doing his best to maintain an impassive, indifferent expression. After a moment the old man nodded, and smiled.

“You are… an apt pupil, Doctor. Caution is… an admirable virtue. But a one-sided conversation… is no conversation at all.” Fist released him by looking away. Marchey swallowed a sigh of relief. Yet this small victory felt hollow. Fist was handling him with kid gloves, he was sure of it. But why?

“We have… been friends,” Fist said quietly, stressing the word friends with smirking sarcasm, “For only… a short time. Still, you are… not a stupid man. You have been trained… to observe… to make deductions… on the basis… of those observations.” He turned his head back to look up at Marchey, who could only uneasily wait for him to get to the point.

“Have you deduced,” Fist whispered, “what motivates me?”

Marchey stared at the old man, knowing that his surprise showed on his face. So he made himself smile.

“You’re a psychopath,” he answered blandly, knowing Fist would take exception to it. If they were going to play games, let him be the one on the defensive.

Sure enough, he frowned and shook his head. “That is a glib… meaningless description… and rather… unflattering at that.” He held up his hand, waggling a bony finger. “Stop playing stupid. It ill… befits you.”

“Self-interest?” Marchey had to admit that he was curious as to what motivated Fist. He was criminally insane, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have some sort of logical framework—no matter how twisted—for all his actions.

“Closer… but a vague category… not a specific motivation.”

“Love?” He had to keep himself from being drawn in, from giving the responses Fist wanted to elicit.

Those pus-colored eyes narrowed. Fist stared at him for several long seconds, then grinned. “Excellent. As I said… you are… an apt pupil. You learn. Use what you… have learned. You believe… that I am leading you… into some sort of trap… don’t you?” It was not a question.

“Aren’t you?” Marchey parried.

“You would know for certain… if only you understood… my motivations.” Haaaaaaaaaaa, Fist’s laugh made his skin crawl, but he knew he’d managed a draw.

Now if he only knew what the hell the game was.

Fist cocked his head to one side. “No doubt you have… called Ananke by now. How are… our dear friends there?”

“Nobody said they missed you.”

A look of mock disappointment. “After all I… did for them. Such ingratitude. How will… they ever get along… without us?”

Marchey snorted. “They’ll get along just fine. They needed you like they needed a plague. The medical help they need is on the way, so they’ll be fine without me.”

He glanced up at the clock, deciding that it was time to end his visit. He hadn’t gotten anything concrete out of the old psychopath, but neither had he found himself up to his neck in concrete and sinking into the mud under forty feet of water. Besides, it was time for a well-earned drink.

Fist’s bubbling chuckle snatched his attention back like a slap in the face. “Not from… MedArm,” Fist said quietly.

Marchey frowned. “How did you know that?”

“The Helping Hands Foundation.” A skeletal grin. “The game grows… more intriguing,” he wheezed with ominous satisfaction. “I am pleased.”

Marchey stared down at the old man, hands clamped tight on the unibed’s sides to keep him from shaking some answers out of the smirking bastard. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

Watch yourself! he warned himself. He’s sucking you in. But he had to ask. Anything that pleased Fist could only spell disaster for everyone else.

Fist’s hooded eyes glinted with perverse pleasure. “Motivation,” he rasped. “Pleasure. Reward. Allegiance. Fulfillment. Accomplishment.” A pregnant pause. “Challenge.”

He let out a long sigh, unmistakably savoring the moment and the situation. “Yes, even love. I do love life when… it puts the sweet raw stuff… of possibility… in my hands.” He closed his hands as if feeling what he spoke about in them and closed his eyes, an expression of something like serenity on his fleshless face.

“It has put… that same sweet stuff… in your hands, too,” he added in a conspirational whisper, as if imparting some secret wisdom.

Marchey leaned closer. “What do you mean?” he demanded again, knowing that he was taking the bait even as he did so.

The only answer he received was an inscrutable half smile.

Marchey would have worried about himself if he hadn’t wanted a drink after his little dance in the dragon’s jaws.

But he sipped rather than gulped, brows knit and his face pensive as he tried to get a fix on the situation.

Fist was toying with him.

But why? Was he being led into the initial passages of an elaborate labyrinth constructed for the simple reason that Fist was unable to resist turning people into rats in a maze, and he was the only rat within reach? Or could it be the beginning of a payback for spoiling his fun on Ananke?

Although he couldn’t say why, he had a feeling that Fist’s agenda was more complex than mere revenge, that his objectives were clear and simple even if his methods of reaching them were not. But was it possible to see them through all the smoke and mirrors?

What motivates me?

The old bastard had known that this Helping Hands Foundation was bringing relief to Ananke, and thought it was funny—or wanted him to think he did. But which? And why?

There was no way to tell. Fist’s every word was calculated, his every expression the manipulation of a mask. Any resemblance to humanity was artifice. The one time he had let his true self show had exposed something Marchey hoped to never see again. The conscienceless egopathy and remorseless brilliance and sheer malignant force of personality that burned inside him put him so far outside the human norm that he might as well be alien.

Fist wasn’t giving anything away, that was for sure. Anything he offered was bound to be tainted—a free lunch where the sandwiches were buttered with arsenic. The smartest, safest course of action was to lock the clinic door, remotely reset the unibed to keep the old man under until they reached Botha Station, and do his best to put the matter out of his mind.

Another sip. A reminder that forgetfulness came in a tasty and convenient liquid form.

He just couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that Fist was holding himself in check. Manipulating him to be sure, but gently compared to the cruel and ruthless way he’d crushed Marchey’s resistance on Ananke. He wanted to start a game. There was something he wanted at stake. He’d as much as offered up everything he’d stolen from the Kindred as incentive to play.

Another sip of his drink. Here was one sure answer. A few more of these and everything else would stop mattering.

He made himself put the glass down, still half-full. Maybe this would be a good time to call Sal Bophanza back at the Bergmann Institute. He dealt with MedArm on a day-to-day basis, and might just know something about this Helping Hands Foundation.

He had last spoken to the Institute’s director over two weeks before, only hours after he’d saved Fist from Scylla. Seeing the look on Sal’s face when he told him of the simple solution to the Nightmare Effect had been one of the high points of his life.

Who would have guessed that a man raised in the Lunar African enclave Mandela would know a Rebel yell or an Irish jig? Sal had let out the first and given an energetic performance of the second.

It had taken Sal a while to calm down. Once he had, Marchey had gone on to explain the situation on Ananke and request immediate relief. Then he had told Sal that he needed to stay on for a while. Sal had promised to do what he could.

When orders to leave Ananke and proceed to Botha Station had come in a few days later, he had hated himself for the sense of relief he felt. Yet at the same time he’d been angered by not at least being allowed to stay on until help arrived. Anger and a sense of duty had won out. He’d called Sal to ask for permission to at least stay until then—although by then it was more out of a sense of duty than desire to stay.

Much to his surprise, his call had been routed straight to MedArm. The unsmiling woman with the Chinese face and Phoban accent he found himself talking to had asked him to state his business. He’d begun to hem and haw out his request. She had interrupted him sharply, stating that the case had been reviewed, and the six days he was being given were more than generous.

When he had tried to argue, she coldly informed him that those six days could be cut to four, or two, or even none, and broken the connection, not even giving him a chance to ask why he was talking to her instead of Sal.

This time his call at least went to Sal’s office. He recognized the big real-wood desk and the meter-long crossed silver arms emblem on the wall behind it.

But the man sitting at Sal’s desk and staring back at him was not his old friend. This man was white, and had the hard-mouthed, expressionless face and ramrod-straight posture of someone whose life was devoted to giving—and unquestioningly taking—orders. If the severe, tightly fitting black onepiece he wore wasn’t a uniform, it might as well have been.

“Schnaubel here.” He glanced at Marchey’s silver arms, his posture subtly shifting from rigid attention to the impatience of someone forced to deal with a annoying underling. “State your business.”

“I’d like to speak to Sal Bophanza if I could, please.”

The answer was immediate and unequivocal. “You cannot. Dr. Bophanza is not presently available—” The pale blue eyes of the man on the screen flicked to one side. His hands were out of sight, but a slight movement of his shoulders told Marchey he was accessing. “—Dr. Marchey.” I know who and what you are, his face said with thinly veiled contempt.

“Can you, um, tell me how I can reach him?” Sal was always available. The Bergmann Program was his life. His devotion to keeping the Institute going and to those who had become the first and only Bergmann Surgeons was total. He had never married, and lived in a suite just off his office. Those rare times he left the Institute he carried a full commlink with him so he could be instantly available to those who might be no more than a friendly voice away from suicide.

This didn’t look good. Not good at all.

“I am sorry,” the man behind the desk said, his tone belying his words. “I am in charge here. Please state your business. Dr. Marchey.”

Marchey made himself smile, even though he felt a sinking feeling in his gut. “No business, really. I just called to, ah, shoot the shit with Sal. Can you at least tell me when he’ll be available?”

“Oh, I’m certain well have Dr. Bophanza back soon,” Schnaubel replied, the superior, completely humorless smile that appeared on his face making Marchey suddenly very afraid for his old friend. “Is there anything else?” Are you done wasting my valuable time?

“No,” Marchey said in the most offhand tone he could muster, “I don’t believe there is. Thanks.” He reached out and broke the connection.

“Well,” he told the blank screen, sitting back and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “That certainly put my mind at ease.”

But it hadn’t. Nor did the rest of his drink.

Late that very same night he was dragged from a restless sleep by an insistent, earsplitting beeping.

After a few sleep-fuddled moments to get his bearings, he realized that the sound was coming from the commboard. He crawled out of bed and shuffled over to it, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

Squinting at the array of multicolored pads, he finally figured out that a comm mode he’d never used before had become active. He scratched his bald pate, unsure what he was supposed to do, then hit the ? pad because it seemed to sum up the situation perfectly.

The beeping stopped. The main screen above the board lit and displayed the message:

He peered at it a moment, then shrugged. Why not?

So he hit the accept pad, muddily trying to puzzle out who would be calling, and why they weren’t using the usual comm channels. The secure beamlock commsystem was a leftover from the ship’s earlier life as a UNSRA courier packet. He hadn’t even known the damn thing worked.

he was advised. A few seconds passed. Beams locked,

The message scrolled up to the top of the screen, vanished.

“Yeah, so?” he asked the blank screen, which blipped as if in response.

Now a woman stared out of the screen at him. Her face was thin and pale, with high cheekbones and deeply etched lines at the corners of her clear hazel eyes. Her hair was moonlight gray and spilled over her shoulders. Her wide, generous mouth was quirked in an expectant half smile, and her arms were crossed before her ample bosom.

“Gory,” she said. Her voice was low and whiskey-hoarse, with the slightest trace of a Russian accent. Marchey stared at her, remembering that face when it had been smooth and unlined, that voice when it had been a soaring alto which could wring tears from your eyes when she sang a love song.

“ ’Milla,” he replied, voice husky with the rememberance of the thirty-two-year-old Ludmilla Prodaresk. Raven-haired heartbreaker. Songbird. Brilliant diagnostician and surgeon.

Fellow Bergmann Surgeon. Her bare arms were silver, just like his own. How many years had it been since he’d seen her last? Ten? Twelve?

They looked each other over in silence. Marchey gazed at her careworn face, tracing the lines with his eyes and saddened that the years had used her so harshly. She was still beautiful, but it was the beauty of an Acropolis or a faded rose, of something that endures as a diminished shadow of its former glory.

Did the years show as clearly on his own face? Not that he’d ever been beautiful. He reached up and ran his hand over the top of his head as if pushing his hair back into place so he’d look his best.

When he realized what he was doing a rueful smile crept onto his face. There wasn’t any hair left to push back, was there? The little bit clinging for dear life to the back of his head hardly counted. He could have easily had it replaced, but why bother? Just as she could have had a rejuve, but had not.

The mischievous grin Ludmilla gave him was so familiar that it resurrected the young woman he had known in her face and eyes. “You are looking like shit, Gory,” she said, then burst out laughing. Her laugh was still young, still as warm and fresh as a spring breeze. It melted away the snows of regret in an instant.

“So are you,” he assured her, laughing himself, looking her in the eye and an unspoken message passing between them: We’re still here. We may be battered and bruised and old before our time. We might have screwed up our lives in ways we never could have imagined when we were young by giving ourselves over to a dream that turned sour, but you’re here and I’m here and dammit! but it’s good to see you again!

“It has been some long time,” Ludmilla said.

“That it has.” Marchey agreed. A lifetime.

The smile faded from her face, letting the years creep back over it. “Must keep reunion short. There is covered pad marked ‘M-S-E-M’ on right side of your board. Please push it.”

“Okay,” he said uncertainly, looking down to find it. He flipped the hinged cover up and tapped the pad underneath.

It chirped and glowed blue. Ludmilla vanished in a squall of sleeting static. A message appeared in red:

After a few moments the picture built back up line by line, but in a low-resolution monochrome.

Ludmilla was no longer alone.

“Hey there, Gory,” drawled the man now standing beside her with his arm around her waist, his voice sounding hollow and synthetic. The loose open-throated shirt he wore showed the ritual scarifications on his chest, put there when he had achieved manhood on Mandela.

Marchey dropped into the chair before the console, gawping back in surprise. The man smiled at him, looking tired, but enormously pleased by the reaction he’d provoked.

“Surprised?” he asked.

Marchey nodded. “I sure as hell am, Sal.”

It took Marchey a few moments to figure out what to say next. “No wonder I couldn’t reach you back at the Institute,” he managed at last.

Sal gave him a crooked grin. “I ran away from home.”

Marchey remembered the ominous comment made by the man who had taken over Sal’s desk. “I think they want you back. Quite badly, in fact.”

“I’m sure they do. I, ah, appropriated a few items from the Institute when I left.”

“You always did have your eyes on that Kamir holosculpture in the lobby.”

Sal looked pained. “Actually, I had to leave that behind.” He shook his head ruefully. “Hated to, but I had all I could carry.”

Marchey knew what he was supposed to ask, and obliged his old friend. “What did you take, then?”

Sal shrugged his thin shoulders. “Oh, just everything MedArm needed to start turning out more Bergmann Surgeons.”

It took Marchey several seconds to get his mind around that. “You’re joking, right?”

“I wish I were.” Sal’s face was utterly serious now.

“I don’t get it. You’re saying MedArm wanted to take over the program and start making more of us. Aside from the fact that they allowed the Institute to be largely autonomous, I thought they had decided we were—how was it they put it?”

“Unworkable,” Ludmilla put in. “ ‘An intriguing but unworkable dead end.’ ” A sardonic chuckle escaped her. “How could we argue? If there is one thing flat-butt bureaucrats should know, is dead end.”

“So why the sudden change?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Sal shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, Gory. There’ve been a lot of changes in MedArm over the last few years, not many of them for the better as far as I can see. A lot of new faces in key positions, and damn few of them with any sort of medical background. Real sweethearts, some of them.”

“I think I met one of them when I tried to call you earlier today. A man named Schnaubel. He was sitting at your desk like he owned it. Pleasant fellow. All the warmth and charm of an ice-covered proctoscope. He seems to be looking forward to your return.”

Sal nodded. “I imagine he does, and I sure hope he has to get used to disappointment.” He hesitated, biting his lip. Ludmilla gave him a reassuring squeeze, whispering something in his ear. He nodded, then stood up straight, like a man facing a firing squad.

“I took them by surprise, Gory. Not because I was clever or anything like that. They just didn’t expect me to do anything.” He spread his hand in a helpless gesture, looking Marchey in the eye, appealing to him to understand.

“I haven’t been much more than a figurehead in charge of an empty shell for a long time now. It’s been years since I’ve had anything to do with scheduling or itinerary. MedArm took that over, and I couldn’t do one damn thing to stop them. About four years ago I went to them, trying to arrange a convocation for all of you. I figured it would do you good to get together again. It has always killed me to see all of you so isolated, so alone.”

His face hardened. “My request was summarily refused. The reason I was given was that it would be a, quote, ‘inefficient disposition of resources’, unquote.”

“We’re being used very efficiently,” Marchey said heavily, remembering Angel’s accusation. He also remembered his angry denial. Had she come too close to a truth he hadn’t wanted to face?

“We are still people, but they do not treat us so,” Ludmilla said quietly, “We are little better than robota now.”

“Yeah,” Marchey agreed. She had used the Czech word Karel Capek had given the world in his play RUR: Robota. Slaves. Robots.

“We robota have no rights. No say in how we are being used.” Her tone sharpened. “After a while we robota become so worn-out we are needing replacement. We become too troublesome to maintain.”

“Or it looks like a better robots can be made,” Sal added. “I got a call from an old friend inside MedArm, someone who had been culdesacked—”promoted’—into a trivial job with no real power. Some information she wasn’t supposed to see happened to cross her desk. She warned me that MedArm planned to ‘retire’ me, take over the Institute, and start cranking out a new batch of Bergmann Surgeons. Crash Priority.”

Marchey shook his head in confusion. It was late, and this was too much to absorb and understand all at once. “I still don’t see what brought on this sudden reversal of policy.”

“I can’t say for sure,” Sal said, “but I don’t think it’s coincidence that all of this seemed to start right after you found a way around the Nightmare Effect.”

Marchey’s first impulse was to dismiss the idea. But on second thought, it did make a certain amount of sense. He himself had wondered if it might be possible to restart the program, now that at long last a cure had been found for one of its most destructive elements. The next generation of Bergmann Surgeons might be able to lead something like normal lives.

But why the big fucking hurry to restart something the powers that be had been insisting was a failure? Why the power play? He said as much to Sal and ’Milla.

“The obvious conclusion is that they want the program strictly under their control,” Sal answered glumly. “But what would that give them that they don’t already have? They already have total control over you and ’Milla and the others.”

He sighed, looking down at his hands. “You were right, Gory.”

“About what?”

“About things turning out like this. I remember when Med Arm first instituted the circuit. You said that all of you had been reduced to nothing more than specialized medical machinery—to tools. I told you you were wrong.”

His tone turned apologetic, edged with self-recrimination. “I was wrong. It only made a bad situation worse. In the beginning I had a say in your disposition, but when I complained that they were running you too hard, they started cutting me out of the loop. The harder I tried, the worse things got.” He raised one hand, let it fall in a helpless gesture. “I had to give up before I made matters worse.”

“You’ve stood by us all the way, Sal,” Marchey said quietly. Ludmilla nodded in agreement.

“Have I? The most useful thing I’ve been able to do for years now was to just be there when one of you needed a friend.”

“That is thing to be proud of, love,” Ludmilla told him, one silver arm hugging him tight. He stared at her a few moments, then back at Marchey, still looking like someone who believed he had done more wrong in his life than right. Marchey knew how he felt.

“When I heard what Med Arm was planning, I knew I had to do something. So I asked for a couple weeks’ vacation. They were glad to grant it because it would put me conveniently out of the way when they took over the Institute.”

Something of the old Sal appeared in his grin. “Well, I fooled the fuckers! I grabbed all the critical stuff—the hypnoregimens, tests, and the rest—wiped everything else, leaving dummy files in their place. ’Milla happened to be there for some repair work on one of her arms. So I showed up at her airlock, told her what was going on, and here we are.”

“Where’s here? And what are you going to do next?”

Sal made a face. “Here is nowhere, and I wish to hell we knew. We really didn’t have time to plan ahead. ’Milla disabled her ship’s transponder, scrambled the circuits that let them control the autopilot, and we hightailed to the outer edge of the Belt because it’s a good place to lose yourself. We were kind of hoping you might know of a good place for us to hide until we get this mess straightened out.”

Marchey scrubbed his face with his hands, totally at a loss. The only thing that came to mind was the question he’d wanted to ask Sal in the first place. So he asked it.

“By the way, have either of you ever heard of the Helping Hands Foundation?”

Sal and ’Milla exchanged a puzzled glance. Sal shook his head. “No, why?”

“I’ll tell you some other time.”

The unlikely fugitives watched him expectantly as he sat there, his thoughts stumbling through all he had just heard like it was some sort of mental obstacle course. He was beginning to get a sneaking suspicion that somehow all this crazy stuff was connected. Nothing he could put his finger on, just a feeling.

He rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to put all that aside. Right now the important thing was figuring out some safe place for them to hide. Some out-of-the-way place where the people around them could be trusted not to reveal their presence.

At last a question with an easy answer. Maybe even a great answer if this Helping Hands Foundation was some half-ass bunch of incompetant do-gooders.

“I know just the place for two renegade doctors to go,” he told them with a chuckle, pleased that he could be of some help to his old friends after all. “It’s not much to look at, but I’d trust the people who live there with my life.”

Coffee.

No brandy in it.

Slouched in the galley seat. Chin propped in his hand like a cut-rate copy of Rodin’s Thinker. Its head was generally made of hollow bronze. People forget that.

He’d already been up for over three hours, having given up on sleep as a lost cause and dragged himself out of the sack quite a bit earlier than normal. All he had been doing was tossing and turning anyway. He had gone back to bed after saying good-bye to Sal and ’Milla, but the occasional fits of uneasy slumber had been filled with disturbing dreams that had him grinding his teeth and curling into a protective fetal ball.

He had dreamed of the people of Ananke, all slat-ribbed and hollow-eyed, chains on their legs, and silver arms like his own held out in entreaty. Walking among them, he had tried to pretend they weren’t there. One by one they they had crumpled behind him, whispering gratitude as they fell. Another had a colossal Brother Fist prodding him through a dark maze, laughing at him when he stumbled into dead end after dead end while desperately trying to reach the small silver figure sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand at the maze’s center. He had a rope to throw her. It was around his own neck. Not a restful night.

The morning, however, had been highly productive. He had spent most of it pacing. Back and forth. Around in circles. Getting nowhere just as fast as his feet could carry him.

It was as if his world had fractured into an antique jigsaw puzzle. But no two pieces would fit together, and what the finished picture would be was a mystery. Or if the pieces did fit together, he couldn’t see the congruence.

Pieces like: What was MedArm up to? Why were they trying to cut Sal out and take over the Institute— which was independently funded from Bergmann’s estate, and supposedly autonomous as long as it met certain basic requirements MedArm itself had set?

And what, if anything, did that have to do with them letting some foundation do their relief work for them on Ananke?

He scowled and slouched lower, eyes half-focused on the steam curling up from his cup. Just like those nebulous vapors, there didn’t seem to anything he could get a solid grip on.

Maybe Sherlock Holmes could figure this mess out, but he sure couldn’t. He took a sip of his coffee, put the cup down. Drinking nothing but coffee and staying sober was supposed to have let him think more clearly. So far all it had done was send him to the head twice and make him more jittery than ever. Much more and he’d end up spending the rest of the morning alphabetizing his socks.

A glance at the clock reminded him that in just under half an hour Fist would be waking up. Which in turn reminded him that he had a whole other puzzle to deal with. One probably twice as insoluble and considerably more dangerous, a cryptogram that could put him in a crypt.

He toyed with his cup. In a way he almost had to admire the diabolical old bastard. There he was, on his way to be turned over to the authorities, so close to death that he could probably read the population number from the welcome to hell sign. So what does he do? He laughs and jokes and tries to play with my head. He drops hints that there’s something going on I should know about, and tries to draw me into playing guessing games about what he wants in trade for telling me about it. As if he—

Marchey froze, coffee cup halfway to his mouth, eyes going wide with realization.

There was something going on. MedArm was trying to force Sal out and take over the Institute. So they could restart the Bergmann program. Their own way, whatever that was.

Fist had done considerable research into the Bergmann Program. Enough to find a way around the Nightmare Effect. Which meant he had an information pipeline into it. But—

—But Sal had just told him that the Institute had been cut completely out of the process of choosing where the Bergmanns went and who they treated. Yet Fist had known precisely when and where to send Scylla to grab him. That could only mean—

—he also had a pipeline into MedArm!

Marchey sat up straighter, brow furrowing as he followed that line of reasoning.

Everything Fist did was based on information. He learned all there was to learn about something, pinpointing its strengths and weaknesses.

He proved that he knew enough about Bergmann Surgeons to subjugate me, using my own ethics against me. He hinted that he knows all about this business with the Helping Hands Foundation—which leads back to MedArm again. Which means—

The old bastard probably knows exactly what MedArm is up to. All of it. He’d as much as come right out and said so. Some of the information was sure to be locked away in those files Jon has so far been unable to crack, but the whole picture is stored away inside that tumorous reptile cage Fist has for a brain.

Some of what he’d said could be construed as an offer to hand over part of that information. To help.

But why would he want to change sides?

Allegiance. Fist had said that, hadn’t he?

But his only allegiance was to himself. He had no more loyalty than a gun or knife or bomb. Marchey remembered the old man saying that he had once worked for countries and corporations as a—what was it he called himself?

A phagewar specialist. He had been, in effect, a mercy. A freelance soldier of misfortune who would work for you if properly motivated.

What motivates me?

“Damn,” he muttered, his line of reasoning turning circular. It was like the old fairy tale about Rumplestiltskin. Guess my name. Only in this case it was Name my price.

Marchey sat back, pondering Fist’s motivations.

He has some sort of stake in all this. Botha Station figures into it. There’s something he wants. But he won’t come right out and say what it is. He has to make a game of it…

Marchey sat very still, sensing but not quite clearly seeing the shape of the puzzle piece in his hand. He thought back over all Fist had said to him, searching for a clue.

Challenge. Reward. Accomplishment. Fulfillment.

He can’t keep himself from playing deadly chess with people’s lives. Until I came along he had won the game on Ananke. He could have lived like a king, but instead had lived an almost monkish existence. Why?

Because the winnings didn’t matter to him?

Because only the game itself mattered?

Because… only the game was real?

That seemed close, but not quite right. Then it turned itself around in his mind, taking on a whole new shape and meaning.

Because he was only real—only truly alive—when he was playing?

It sounded too bizarre to be possible, but then again so was the man himself. Rather than rejecting the idea out of hand, he tried using it as a lens for examining the situation.

Several things suddenly sprang into clear focus. For instance, he’d put the old man under a sleepfield right after his fall. That should have slowed the progress of his disease to some degree. But it hadn’t. Instead, his condition had soon after turned terminal. Yet he seemed to have hit some sort of plateau since first being awakened here on the ship.

Since he started playing with me. Almost as if that fed him, gave him a reason to keep living.

Marchey’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. What was it he said?

Even love. I love life when it puts the sweet raw stuff of possibility in my hands.

But that wasn’t all. Right after he’d said—

It’s put that same sweet stuff in your hands as well.

What cards am I holding? Maybe jokers and deuces, but no aces.

After a moment Marchey sat back and began to chuckle to himself. The game was still a mystery, but he was beginning to get an idea as to what his next move ought to be.

If jokers are all you hold, then that’s just what you have to play.

Marchey beamed down at his gruesome patient and passenger. One sweet warm shot of scotch was nestled in his belly and on his breath. Another had been carefully splashed onto his clothes. He could smell its tantalizing scent with every breath. The slight flare of Fist’s nostrils told him he smelled it, too.

In one hand he carried a glass, in the other a bottle.

Grinning like he had a head full of laughing gas and saying not a word, he put the glass aside and went to work.

First he racked in a second bottle next to the bottle of sterilized in the unibed’s liquids dispenser, this one filled with amber fluid. The tap of a pad filled the siptube with liquid gold. Then he clipped the tube next to the one for water, where Fist could reach it just by turning his head.

“There you go,” he said jovially as he straightened back up. “Have a snort, old man.” He retrieved his glass, held it up. “Be sociable. It’s Happy Hour, and the drinks are on me.”

Fist had watched him stone-faced and silent through the whole process. “What is it?” he rasped.

“Phoban scotch.” He shrugged. “It isn’t as good as the stuff you had stashed away on Ananke, but it beats the hell out of the recycled piss you get from the dispenser.”

Fist’s pus-colored eyes narrowed in calculation. “Why?”

“Well, you see they use real malt for one thing, and age it in genuine wood barrels shipped all the way up from Earth. That gives it a—”

“Silence,” the old man hissed. “I ask why… you have… brought it to me.”

“Sorry.” Marchey took a sip of his drink, smacked his lips. “I wanted you to help me celebrate going all the way off the wagon.”

A slow blink as that information was absorbed and processed. “Why have you decided… to become… a worthless drunk again?”

“A talent like mine is a terrible thing to waste,” he answered with a chuckle.

Fist stared up at him. “You amuse… only yourself. Or are you afraid… to tell me?”

Marchey shrugged, his grin turning into a grimace. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He jerked his chin in Fist’s direction. “You’re so goddamned smart, why don’t you tell me?”

“Everything,” Fist whispered, “is falling apart.”

Marchey hung his head. “Yeah, you’re right. Jon Halen can’t crack any of your files, and I can’t crack you. Sal Bophanza called last night. He’s on the run. MedArm is trying to take over the Institute and start making more of us. They’re up to other stuff I can’t even begin to figure out. Angel has started acting strange, it’s probably my fault, and there’s not one damn thing I can do about it.”

He blinked, took a long slug of his drink. “I can’t stand being back on the circuit, at least not sober. I’m sick of not knowing what the hell’s going on, and I’m tired of beating my head against a brick wall worrying about it.”

An expansive shrug. “So fuck it! I give up! I’ve been a drunk before. It’s not a bad life. It makes everything so much simpler and easier to take. I figure if you can’t cure the disease, you might as well medicate the symptoms.”

He pointed at the siptube. “You could use a dose yourself, old man. You’ve already got one foot in a body bag and the other on a banana peel. So why don’t you join me? Misery loves company.”

Fist ignored the offer. “You are only besieged… not defeated. Surrender is… premature. There might be… a way out… of your strait.”

Marchey chuckled and held up his glass. “Sure is. This is it.” He took another sip. “And it tastes good, too.”

“No,” the old man grated with an impatient shake of his head. “Every dark cloud… has a silver lining.”

Marchey guffawed. “Right. Let’s see. ‘It’s always darkest just before the dawn.’ ”

Fist’s eyes blazed with anger. “Don’t be… a simpleton! Pay attention… to me! Every dark cloud has… a silver lining!” He gasped for breath, winded. “That’s im… portant!”

“And all you need is love,” Marchey returned agreeably, reaching down to pat one bony cheek. “Maybe you’d rather drink alone. I know I do. Less distraction that way.” He saluted Fist with his glass, then turned to leave.

“I’ll be back to check on you in a little while,” he called over his shoulder. “You better enjoy yourself while you can, you miserable old sack of pus. Time’s running out.”

“Remember… what I said!” Fist wheezed, coming as close to a shout as his ruined lungs would allow. “Dark… cloud! Silver… lining! It’s im…portant!”

Marchey was on his way to the commboard even as the clinic door slid shut behind him. He dropped into the chair before it, letting out a pent-up sigh of relief.

Jon Halen was already on-line waiting for him, looking apprehensive. He let out his own sigh of relief when he saw that Marchey had survived his visit to Fist’s lair.

“Well, Doc,” he said, “how’d it go?”

Good question. Fist would have smelled a lie even faster than he’d picked up on the scent of whiskey, so he’d had to walk the thin outer edge of the truth, and it had taken total concentration. He felt like he’d just walked a molecule-thin tightrope over a pit full of poisonous snakes, but was pretty sure he’d pulled it off. The trip left his whole body feeling clammy with sweat.

“We’ll know soon enough. Try this phrase on Fist’s files: Every dark cloud has a silver lining.”

“Fist said that?” Jon asked doubtfully.

“More than once.” He held up his silver hands. “It might just open the locked files on the Bergmann program.”

“Well, let’s give her a whirl.” Jon looked offcam and began trying it as a passphrase. Marchey waited, listening to the painfully slow clack…clack of keys from Jon’s end. The residual tension from trying to run a bluff on Fist made him feel edgy and impatient. Jon seemed to be taking forever. He reminded himself that the man had not only to work a keyboard, he was doing it with only half of one hand.

“Holeeeee shit,” Jon breathed, looking off-screen in wide-eyed amazement. “We just cracked us open a hundred and sixty-some megs of hard data.” He peered more closely at what was before him, nodding to himself. “You were right, Doc. It seems to be all about the Bergmann Program.”

Marchey slumped back in his chair. His guess that Fist would give him something useful—something to keep him playing—if he thought that his playmate was giving up had been right on the money. The gamble had paid off. The problem was, that didn’t necessarily mean the file contained good news. More likely it was bad. It had only been given up because Fist was sure its contents would make him want to stay involved. There was even a chance that Fist had seen through his bluff and had planned to give him this all along.

There was only one way to find out. “Transmit it to me, would you?”

Jon nodded absently. “Already workin’ on it.” He turned his attention back to Marchey. “There. I’ll wade through it, too, just in case there’s any passphrases to other locked files in it.”

“We can hope, but the old monster doesn’t give away anything for free.”

“ ’Cept trouble. How’d you get this out of him? Torture?”

Marchey shook his head. “I just told him what the situation looks like from where I stand, and convinced him that I was about to give up.” That part hadn’t taken much acting ability. If anything, it was too close to the truth for comfort.

“But you aren’t going to give up, are you?”

“Not yet, anyway.” Not that he felt anything like optimism. If your past predicts your future then he was doomed to failure.

Doomed.

That word had tolled in his mind for two days now. No hour went by that it didn’t knell. He glanced up at the empty scotch bottle he’d brought from Ananke.

Every time he looked at it he thought of her, but he hadn’t made himself put it out of sight.

“By the way,” he said, trying for nonchalance and sounding unconvincing even to himself, “how is Angel doing?”

His insides tightened at the pained look that appeared on Jon’s face. For a fleeting moment he wished he hadn’t asked.

“Not so hot,” Jon said slowly. “She’s been workin’ herself like some sorta machine. Goin’ at it twenty— thirty hours at a knock. She’s eatin’ just enough of that manna stuff to keep body ’n’ soul together. She holes up in her room ever so often, to sleep I guess, and works straight out the resta the time. And—”

He hesitated, obviously trying to decide how much more to say.

Jon’s reluctance to lay more troubles on Marchey’s doorstep was appreciated, but it only made him dread hearing what was yet unsaid all the more.

“Tell me all of it,” he said quietly. “I have to know.”

“All right. Do you ’member Danny Hong?”

Marchey was unlikely ever to forget.

That last time he’d seen him the boy had touched him deeply. Beyond that, he might well be where he was now because of Danny. Seeing him in the lockbay back when he first arrived on Ananke had been the moment when he had truly begun at least trying to look at what was around him, and trying to do something about it. It had nearly gotten him killed back then.

Now it was just driving him crazy. That was progress of a sort, he supposed.

“I remember,” he said shortly.

“Well, Danny told me he saw Angel in one of the tunnels just last night. He said she was walkin’ funny, like some sort of robot from an old vid, and that her good eye was closed. He swore up and down that she was asleep, or near enough to it to make no difference. So I went to check on her earlier today. She was diggin’ in the mines, usin’ only her hands and claws, and goin’ at it like the devil hisself was whippin’ her on. I had a helluva time getting her to stop and talk to me. She’s lost weight, I think—that exo makes it hard to tell—and looks worn to a ragass frazzle. I asked her if she was okay. She told me she was just fine. Maybe a little tired sometimes, but not to worry ’cause her exo was makin her rest when she needed to.”

“Shit,” Marchey growled, sagging lower in his chair. He knew enough exo tech to recognize what Jon had just described. To make a prognosis.

A combat exo like Angel’s was designed for short bursts of furious activity, not protracted periods of heavy labor. It allowed its human host to drive his or her body far beyond the limits where an unaugmented person would simply collapse. That was something combat exo’d soldiers were constantly warned against, because if they pushed too hard for too long, the exo would be forced to take compensating measures. Partial and total overrides. Controlling limbs that were supposed to control it, and invoked rest periods where it would, if all warnings were ignored, actually partially disconnect her from her own body for her own protection.

Angel had never received proper training. Not that long ago she’d thought the silver biometal covering her was her own skin. She didn’t know that she was forcing the quasi-aware nanostrand linkages spun into her nervous system to weave themselves deeper and wider inside her. To change the nature of their interfacings to meet the excessive demands she was putting on her body.

Serious changes.

Irrevocable changes.

She didn’t know that she was slowly frying her own nervous system and forcing the nanostrands to take an active rather than passive role.

That she was all too probably condemning herself to having to wear that exo for the rest of her life.

—Doomed her, Fist intoned in his mind, looking pleased at the prospect of seeing his lost toy broken.

“Are you all right, Doc?” Jon’s voice seemed to come from a thousand kilometers away. But it was millions, not thousands, wasn’t it? She needed help. And where was he?

He sighed, scrubbing his face as if to wipe away the sense of guilt and hopelessness that had fallen over him. “Yeah.” He had to do something about her, but what? He couldn’t think of anything he could say if he got a chance to talk to her. Judging by his performance so far, he would only make things worse.

Jon was eyeing him with obvious concern, waiting for him to say something. Anything.

“Tell everyone—” he began, forcing himself to sit up straight. Tell them what! Come on you numbnuts excuse for a doctor, prescribe something! You knew she was working. You should have seen this coming.

“Tell them that if they see her, they should try to talk to her, to slow her down and keep her from working. See if you can find something for her to do that isn’t so physically demanding. You’ve got to make her take it easier, make her rest more often.”

“All right,” Jon said carefully. “You’re tellin’ me she’s messin’ herself up by workin’ so hard?”

Marchey nodded, not wanting to elaborate. “Just be subtle about making her ease off. If she figures out what you’re up to, it just might make matters worse.” Because of all that Fist had done to her, she could not help but react badly to someone trying to control her actions. She finally had a will of her own, and would die before she gave even a little of it up.

“Consider it done,” Jon said soberly. “Anythin’ else?”

There probably was, but he couldn’t seem to pull his thoughts together enough to figure it out. “No, not now. I better start going over the stuff you sent me. Stay close to that board, though.”

“I’m livin’ here, practically,” Jon assured him, then cut the connection.

One green pad remained lit on Marchey’s board. It indicated that the new information Jon had sent was waiting for him, ready to be accessed. He sat there staring at it for several minutes, his thoughts more than a million kilometers away.

At last he roused himself from his reverie. The time had come to find out what the file contained. He had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to learn anything he really wanted to know.

Only one way to find out.

He reached out and tapped the pad. If nothing else, studying the file would at least give him a temporary escape from the self-recrimination squatting on his chest like a dour and patient vulture, its cry the strangled sound doom.

Marchey’s metal fingers clattered over the keypad in a quicksilver blur. Before giving up his arms he had been a terrible keyboarder. Immediately afterward he’d found that his prosthetics allowed him to type considerably faster than he could voice input or chase menus. The biometal machines that had replaced his meat fingers were untiring and unerring.

He finished instructing the comp with a final burst of machine-gun-fast keystrokes.

read the prompt. He hammered the BEGIN key home hard, almost vengefully. Like driving another nail into his own coffin.

the comp replied.

As if that wasn’t what he’d been doing all along.

Confirm the probable diagnosis with the appropriate tests. That was how any prudent doctor would proceed.

He slumped back and rubbed his bloodshot eyes, wanting a drink in the worst possible way. Craving it so badly his head pounded dully to its call, the vibrations throbbing through his nerves and making them buzz and itch. He could almost smell it. He licked his lips, his mouth watering for the taste.

But he knew he didn’t dare. He’d end up crawling inside the bottle and closing the cap after himself. Once he got inside, it would be a very long time before he came back out again. If ever.

The comp seemed to be taking forever, and alcohol’s siren call was growing stronger by the second. There was no spar to tie himself to, no way to clap his hands over his ears and shut out the strident babble inside his own head. The urge to find something he could hold on to sent his right hand drifting up to caress the silver Bergmann emblem pinned over his heart. His sculpted metal fingers traced the familiar shape delicately, as if probing a wound.

Two silver arms, crossed at the wrists, fingers spread wide. For over fifteen years he had worn that badge, and in turn been worn down by what it represented. It still looked new. He didn’t.

His silver fingers closed around it. He squeezed his eyes shut and ground his teeth together as the urge to tear it off and hurl it across the compartment swept through him like a hot stinging wind, a sirocco of rage and resentment.

Better yet, he could crush it. Mash it all out of shape, just like his life had been warped all out of shape by what it had made of him.

The comp chimed. He opened his eyes and stared at the screen dully.

read the display.

Wonderful. But was he ready?

Because of the way he had instructed it to extract and analyze certain data in the “silver lining” file, he knew there would be a graph. It would show a rising line that documented his fall from illusory grace. It would show him what he should have seen for himself long ago.

Smoldering anger and disgust with himself—with everything—made him clench his hand tighter. Inside his fist the silver emblem began to bend.

He came within a heartbeat of crushing it into an unrecognizable lump before he let his hand fall to his lap. He stared down at the pin. It was bent, but still recognizable. In spite of the way he and the others who wore it had been exploited, it still represented an ideal, and the ideal still lived. He couldn’t let go of it. Not yet.

Marchey made himself sit up straight, stare reality right in the eye, and see his diagnosis confirmed. The touch of a pad put it before him.

He was still a doctor. He knew that you never pronounced something as terminal until you had explored every option.

And if you wanted to excise a malignancy, you had to first find out precisely what kind it was, and how far it had spread.

Fist’s crepey eyelids fluttered as the sleepfield’s effects wore off. His breathing quickened.

Marchey waited for him to come around, his hands gripping the unibed’s high sides to keep him from grabbing the old man’s frail shoulders and shaking him awake.

Those pus-yellow crocodile eyes opened slowly, fixed on him. Fist opened his mouth to speak, but Marchey didn’t give him a chance to say a single word.

“Just keep your damned mouth shut and listen,” he said tightly. “I’m not here to play games with you.”

Fist closed his mouth, his eyes hooded and watchful. Something that might have been faint amusement crept out onto his fleshless face.

“I’ve read your ‘silver lining’ file. I know what the Bergmann Surgeons, myself included, have become.” Saying what he had learned out loud was going to be hard, but now that he had faced the facts there was no going back.

“A certain faction inside Med Arm has taken control of our disposition. They’ve made it so that our services are no longer available to the general public.”

Dr. Khan back in the Litman commissary. She’d hinted at this. It had gone right over his head.

His mouth twisted, every word tasting bitter as gall. “We’ve only been used to treat a select coterie of the rich and powerful, or those useful to them. When you had me kidnapped at Litman, I had been brought in to treat the manager of a banking syndicate. One that just happened to hold the notes on mining equipment owned by a wilders’ settlement. I figure those notes are now in the hands of whoever was behind all this.”

His voice dropped lower, thick with fury and menace. “MedArm has been corrupted. They’re sending this Helping Hands Foundation to Ananke. You thought that was pretty funny. You know what they’re up to. Tell me.”

Fist said nothing, still looking mildly amused.

Marchey stared down at him. Wanting to wipe that smirk off clear down to the bone. He felt his lips peel back from his teeth, felt the steel top rail under his hands begin to flatten.

“We’re not quite two days out from Botha Station. I don’t think you’re particularly happy about going there. I had a hard time figuring out why. Imprisoning you is no threat, you’re totally bedridden as it is, and you know as well as I do that you’ll be dead meat inside a week—that’s if you last even that long.”

Now he had to venture into a thicket of conjecture, but he made himself smile, as if his guesses were a straight true path through the thorny tangle.

“It seems to me that you have very few things left to lose. One is whatever spoils you took from Ananke. Another is all the nasty secrets you’ve hoarded over the years. Lastly, and I think most precious, is your pride. Which is considerable.”

Fist gave a slight shrug, as if modestly accepting a compliment.

“Botha Station is owned by OmniMat,” Marchey went on, the more he spoke the more certain he was that he’d pieced together at least this one small corner of the puzzle. “UNSRA might be the law in space and on Botha, but OmniMat’s pockets are deep enough to let them buy just about anything they want. The minute they ID you red flags are going to go up all over the place. Odds are that not long after I turn you over to UNSRA, you simply disappear.”

He nodded, watching Fist’s face carefully. “You’d be quite a prize. Not only is every credit you ever stole up for grabs, you probably have all sorts of interesting information about their competitors, about the people they buy from and sell to, and even dirt on OmniMat itself locked away in that rotten old brain of yours. They’d take you off someplace private, shoot you full of drugs, and peel your every secret out of you. You would lose the final round of the game. You would die broken and helpless, humiliated and despoiled.” Fist hadn’t flinched, hadn’t shown the slightest sign of fear or even dismay. That maddening half smile remained, looking like it had been put there by an undertaker.

After a moment it widened, sharp white teeth gleaming between liverish lips. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “That is what… I don’t want.” His tone made it clear that there were still things he did want.

Marchey leaned over him. “You have two choices, old man. Either tell me about the Helping Hands Foundation, the full and absolute truth with the files to back it up, or I turn the sleepfield back on, and the next time you wake up you will be in the hands of people who want everything you know.”

He waited for a reaction, his hands gripping the now flat guardrail, forcing himself to meet Fist’s cold, unblinking stare. The taut silence made his ears ring, and the rising tension was a tightening steel band wrapped around his chest.

Fist gazed back at him, still looking as if he’d found all Marchey had said little more than mildly amusing.

Marchey felt the sweat trickling down his sides and threatening to pop out on his forehead. Fist was going to push it to the limit, to make him back down if he was bluffing.

He clenched his jaw to keep his resolve inside and reached for the sleepfield’s controls, his gaze still locked with Fist’s in a battle of wills where he was fighting as hard as he could and his opponent was scarcely exerting himself.

His hand settled on the touchpad. “Say good night.”

The old man grinned, letting out a bubbling chuckle. “As I have… said before… you are an apt pupil.” His thin hand twitched dismissively. “I concede. You are not bluffing… are you?”

Marchey shook his head, wanting to pant for air but making himself act as if nothing had happened. “No. I’ll still do it if I think you’re lying to me.”

“Yes,” Fist replied agreeably, “I believe… you would. There will be… no need. When I strike a bargain… I stick to it.”

“Like the devil sticks to his deals?” Marchey asked with heavy sarcasm. “Should I change my name to Dr. Faustus?”

The old man let out a hacking chuckle. “Ah, now there… is a name… to conjure with! You flatter me. I am not so… very different… from you. Just a man… who excels… at his art. That is how… I see myself… you know. As an… artist.”

Marchey stared at him. “Is that so?” he asked at last. Fist might just be stalling, but he doubted it. This was probably the overture to the next level of whatever infernal game he was playing.

Although he’d said he was done playing games with the old man, he knew he had only just begun. As the stakes grew higher the chances of walking away from the table diminished. He couldn’t pass up the chance that he might learn something useful. Like it or not, Fist had drawn him into the game, and made sure he’d won just enough to keep on playing. Even this apparent victory was like as not part of the hustle.

“I do. Artistry… may be defined… by a total mastery… over materials… shaped toward a vision.” A sly look crossed his goblin’s face. “Take your old love… Ella Prime… for example.”

The mention of Ella’s name rekindled an ache in the old scar tissue stitched across his heart. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised that Fist knew about her. The sly bastard had proved again and again that Marchey’s life was an open book to him. Dredging up Ella’s name was supposed to be the first blood in this new fencing match.

“All right, let’s,” he returned blandly. Much to his surprise, when he tried to visualize Ella’s face he saw Angel’s instead, and the ache it caused was fresher, sharper, deeper.

If Fist was disappointed at his gambit’s failure, he didn’t let it show. “She is a sculptor. Her chosen material… is clay. Clay is base stuff… unformed earth… unformed man… if you believe… in the fable of god. It is nothing… until her hand… transforms it. I too am a… sculptor of sorts. People and lives… situations… are my clay.”

“People and clay are nothing alike.”

Fist’s wispy eyebrows arched. “You think not?” The ghost of a shrug. “Perhaps you… are right. People are… more common. More malleable. Clay must be… found and dug. It does not… seek the hand. The human herd begs… to be shaped. They let outside influences… be impressed like thumbprints… into the shape… of their lives. They willingly become… slaves of wages… and possessions… of fashion or ideology… of another’s opinion… of religion. They seek… rather than evade… being pressed into… armies… movements… mobs… into any shape… the artist… chooses. They are… an irresistible… material.”

Fist paused, panting for breath after this speech. He held up one skeletal hand to say that he wasn’t done. There was a feverish brightness in his gaze, and his usual ironic tone had been replaced with something like passion.

“As for… the artist… he must create… or else… the fire inside… consumes him. He must make… his works… by his own… vision of beauty. No standard… but his own… has meaning… no critic… may rightly… judge him.”

He dropped his hand, inviting rebuttal.

Marchey couldn’t argue with his assertion that people let their lives be shaped by all sorts of outside forces, few of them worthy; he had only to look at his own life to see the painful truth of that. But he had seen Fist’s “artistry” firsthand.

“You’re an egopathic monstrosity,” he returned bluntly. “Your so-called artistry is nothing more than calculated, conscienceless brutality. Hitler was not an artist, and neither was Van Hyaams.” He shook his head. “You can’t justify your crimes by calling them art. You are a lot of things, old man, none of them any damn good. But I never suspected you to have a weakness for rationalization or self-delusion.”

Fist only smiled. “Perhaps the self… itself… is a delusion. But I digress. You have learned… much from me. I have made… my mark on you. Yet I am not surprised… you cannot grasp… my aesthetic. Few can. But here is something… within your grasp: One is either… sculptor or clay. Maker… or made thing. There is no… middle ground. One shapes and commands… or is dumb earth… in another’s hand.”

Fist’s gaze narrowed, turning sharp as a poisoned blade, stabbing into Marchey’s eyes and nailing him in place. “That is all… there is to life. Use or be used. Fight or surrender. If you want… to no longer be clay… then look about you. Seek the means. Seize the moment. If you have… a way to shape things… be it tool… or weapon at hand… then use it.”

Marchey shivered, feeling as if a breath of absolute zero had passed over him. There it was: If you have a weapon at hand, use it. He couldn’t make it any more explicit than that, could he?

The weapon Fist was referring to was, of course, his own self. Everything up to now had been a maze of passages leading to this juncture. The climb up the mountain before the high and wide vista of temptation was revealed.

Oh yes, he was tempted. He wanted to make MedArm pay for what they had done to him. That caustic urge churned in his guts; it had an even stronger hold on him than drink. The more he thought about the things they had done, the more his thoughts turned to retribution and revenge.

Now he had been offered the keys to an engine of vengeance. Fist was a weapon, like some unspeakable doomsday computer given human form; tell him what you wanted destroyed, and he would tell you how to reduce it to smoldering ruins. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that even though the old abomination was more dead than alive, he was still more than equal to the task.

Should I change my name to Dr. Faustus? He remembered asking that, not knowing how close to the truth he had come.

There was the rub. No matter how carefully the deal was struck there were bound to be hidden costs. It would be like opening Pandora’s box. There would be no knowing what evils would come of it, and no way to put them back once they had been loosed.

“This has been all very interesting,” he told Fist with a feigned indifference that sounded all too false. “But right now I need information, not philosophy, and you owe me some.”

Fist stared up at him, searching for evidence that he had been tempted, prying at the lines of his face with cold, clever fingers, seeking the slightest crack in his facade.

Marchey pursed his lips. “Is it time for a long nap?”

Fist let out a sigh that might have been either pleasure or exasperation, letting his head roll to the side. “Very well. What was it… you wanted to know?”

“The Helping Hands Foundation.”

Fist squinted up at him with one yellow eye, withered lips twitching into a grim smile. “It’s not going… to make you happy… or make things easier.”

Probably not “Tell me.”

“It is… a Trojan horse.”

Marchey’s heart sank. “Explain,” he said bracing himself to hear the worst.

Fist did explain, expressing some admiration for the scheme’s diabolical design. It wasn’t hard to tell that the old villain was holding nothing back. He obviously thought that finding out just how dire the situation was would only make Marchey all the more likely to take him up on his offer and pay his still-unstated price.

As soon as Fist was through, Marchey raced to the comm to call Jon Halen and give him the bad news.

Jon had heard Marchey out, his customary good cheer eroding away, leaving his gaunt brown face looking old and tired, drooping like a sail with the wind taken out of it. His bony shoulders slumped inside the threadbare flowered shirt he wore, skinny arms draped limply over the arms of his chair.

It occurred to Marchey that they were all of them old: himself, Jon, Sal, and ’Milla; old and out of their depths, thrashing about in a shark-filled sea of changes, trying to fight the remorseless currents and stay ahead of the teeth at their feet, too long past the vigor of youth to have much chance of reaching the shore.

Jon squared his shoulders, running his misshapen hand though his gray-flecked black hair. “So what should we do?”

Marchey spread his hands. “Keep them from landing if you can.”

“If we can,” Jon echoed uncertainly. “What if we can’t?”

“I guess you have to try to keep them bottled up in their ship.”

Jon didn’t look particularly excited about Plan B. He leaned closer to the pickup. “Are you absolute sure Fist an’t lyin’ to you about all this?” he asked plaintively. “He’d think trickin’ us into refusin’ doctors and medical supplies was funnier’n a rubber crutch.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Marchey replied tiredly. “There won’t be any real doctors or nurses on that ship, just mercys with enough field medicine training to pass as medicos. You take them up on whatever little help they’ll be able to offer, and it will cost you everything you have left.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Fist has a file on it. The passphrase is Indian Blanket Benevolence.”

Jon frowned and shook his head. “I don’t get the reference.”

“Old Earth history. The settlement of the American West and the subjugation of its native peoples. One of the most efficient and effective strategies for killing off the indigenous peoples so their land could be taken was giving them blankets.”

“Blankets?”

“Blankets infested with highly infectious disease vectors. What looked like a philanthropic act was actually cold-blooded, premeditated genocide. A dozen blankets could wipe out a whole tribe.”

Jon shuddered, looking sick. “They really did that?”

“They did. In this case they don’t want you dead, but in debt. Accept their help, and you’ll be signing over mining rights, equipment, and yourselves as a ready-made work force all at once. I didn’t get all the mechanics, Fist just gave me the high points. It’s all in the file.”

“Just like old times,” Jon muttered darkly. “Here we were thinkin’ we were home free now we was rid of Fist.”

“I know. That’s why it’s imperative that you have nothing to do with the Helping Hands Foundation. If they get off that ship or land supplies, they’ve as good as won. All they have to do is bully somebody into signing the acceptance contract, and I doubt they’ll hesitate at using force.”

“Okay, I got all that, Doc,” Jon said evenly. “But I don’t see how we can keep them off our backs forever.”

“I’m trying to figure something out. If I can’t, I’ll just have to use my fallback plan.”

“Mind tellin’ me what that might be?”

Marchey sighed, not really wanting to say it out loud. “Worse comes to worst I point Fist at the situation and pull the trigger. He knows a way to stop them.”

Jon stared at him, his brown eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re kiddin’ me, right?” he demanded.

“I don’t know if I am or not,” Marchey admitted bleakly. No matter how much he tried to make it sound like there might be some other way out of this mess, he couldn’t see any alternative. All he could do was put it off until the last possible moment.

Jon’s face hardened, and he leaned closer to the pickup. “Listen, Doc, and listen good. That old man fucks over everthin’ he touches. He’ll fuck you over, too, you give him the chance.”

“That’s a definite possibility,” Marchey acknowledged. Once before Fist had given him what he wanted and very nearly destroyed him in the process. It was hard to imagine him passing up another chance.

“There has to be some other way out of this,” Jon insisted, sounding as if he really believed it. “You’ll find it. You won’t haveta go that far.”

“I sure as hell hope you’re right.” Jon’s optimism and faith in him was reassuring, and yet at the same time unnerving. How could they trust him? He’d deserted them, and left them open to this. “The longer you keep them at bay the better my chances.”

“I know I’m right. Anythin’ else?”

“Keep an eye on Angel for me. Keep her out of this. I don’t want her to get hurt.” Any more than she was already hurting herself. Any more than I’ve hurt her myself.

Halen nodded soberly. “We’ll do everthin’ we can. You can count on us.”

He knew he could, too. That was the one gleam of light in the byzantine labyrinth he had somehow strayed into, knowing he wasn’t facing it entirely alone.

But then again, he was the least of those who would suffer if he failed.

Angel watched Marchey’s face fade from the big main screen as the connection was broken. Jon’s face had been displayed on a smaller side screen that blanked at the same time, but she never noticed.

She sat quietly at the end of her pallet. The toll taken by the past few days showed in her face. Too many hours of work and too few of rest had pared it down, sharpening the curves and throwing her cheekbones into prominence. Her green flesh eye was sunken and kohled with fatigue.

It had only been by chance that she had taken a moment to stop by her cubby on her way from the minehead to grab a handful of manna before going on to put in a ten-hour shift at the smelter. Only chance that she had been there at just the right moment to listen in on Marchey’s call.

When she had gone into her room her mouth had been set in a grim line that said she was running on will alone. That line had begun softening when she saw his face, and now it was very nearly curved into a smile.

She had come within a heartbeat of breaking in and revealing that she could tap in on their call. It had been seeing the ghostly reflection of her own haggard face on the glassy surface of the screen that had stopped her. As badly as she wanted to make some sort of contact with him, she couldn’t let him see her like this. Now she was glad. The missed chance had become a promising opportunity.

Angel took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

He hasn’t forgotten about me.

He cares.

It was strange how your life could turn on such a small thing as the admission that you needed to eat. She had heard people use the word fate, but never really understood what it meant before this. Sometimes fate smiles, people said.

Yes, sometimes it did. Fate had given her a better way of atoning for her life as Scylla. A way to repay the Kindred for their forgiveness. A way of proving that she was Angel and not the hated other.

A way of helping him, and perhaps even proving that she was worthy of his attention.

Fate had given her the chance of a lifetime, and she intended to take it.

She crawled back onto her pallet and set her exo’s internal alarm to waken her in six hours. She would go on as before so that no one would know she had eavesdropped, but would rest more often and eat better.

Now she had a reason to harbor her strength.

Angel closed one eye and switched the other off to better see Marchey’s face inside her mind. Her face was placid. A tender smile of anticipation sweetened her lips.

Even before she fell asleep she was dreaming.

Marchey sprawled across his bed, his mind as restless as his body was still. You’ve got to sleep, he told himself for the hundredth time, only setting off a new chain of associations and memories.

To sleep, perchance to dream on if you think you’ve got to think maybe she’ll be all right if only I’d…

Even if he did sleep, he would only dream of all the things that plagued his waking hours. There was no escape. He felt as if he had fallen into a version of Alice in Wonderland rewritten by Kafka and Dante. A quicksand rabbit hole to Hell.

He turned his head to stare longingly at the glass on his bedside table. Enough 140-proof grain alcohol to start him down the road to unconsciousness like he had wheels on his ass.

But would the road really end there? If he drank that magic potion, he could slip free from the bewildering web of conspiracy, deception, and intrigue he had somehow become trapped inside for a time. Once free, would he ever come back?

Sure he would.

He turned his head and went back to contemplating the smooth white overhead, mind turning but getting nowhere, like a lame gerbil on a squeaky treadwheel.

Somehow he’d found himself in the center of this whole mess, even though he was dead square in the middle of nowhere without the faintest idea where to go or what to do next.

“This is stupid,” he muttered, sitting up and gazing blankly around him. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that he was forgetting something, that there was some critical piece of the puzzle right in front of him. Something so obvious that he kept overlooking it.

When he was a boy there had been a program called Smiling Stan the Answer Man. Stump him and you won a prize. Where was old Smiling Stan now that he needed him?

In spite of himself, his gaze was drawn toward the door to the inship clinic.

“You could turn everything around, couldn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

A foreboding smile appeared on Fist’s skull-like face, “Several ways. Some quite… delightful.”

Marchey shivered, snugging his robe tighter about him. He had seen enough of Fist’s works to find it easier to imagine what he might find delightful than was good for his peace of mind.

“Do you have a conscience?”

“No,” Fist answered with absolute certainty and no small pride. “Why should I wear… a ring in my nose… so that others might… lead me around by it?”

Marchey was tempted to follow up on that, but the last thing he needed to hear was that he was agonizing over everything for nothing. That any sense of responsibility or even guilt was only a delusion.

He had to keep moving, keep hitting Fist with scattershot questions. The old man seemed to have only one weakness. His smug self-assurance made him so sure of himself and his own superiority that he could not resist making his infernal games more interesting by perversely putting possible victory in his opponent’s hands without their knowing it. By dropping cryptic hints, or even whole answers spun in such a way as to seem like questions.

“Is there—is there really any chance you would give me the passphrases that would access everything you stole from Ananke?”

That maddening smile grew broader. “Yes. If… properly motivated.”

That answer caught Marchey by surprise. He had expected coy evasion. “What would you want?”

“Something which would… please me even more.”

Marchey knew he was supposed to ask what it was he wanted, so he sidestepped the question. “You aren’t in any position to spend any of your gains,” he pointed out instead, making himself smile. “You can’t take it with you.”

“Perhaps not.” A dismissive twitch of one bony hand. “Many things… I have accrued… will remain behind… most to never be unearthed. Not much of a memorial… but I cannot think… of many who would raise… a monument in my honor.”

“What else are you leaving behind?” Marchey could have pointed out that Fist’s memorial was the trail of destruction and misery and death he had left in his wake. What outrages had he committed before coming to Ananke? How wide a swath had he cut?

Back on Ananke a woman named Elyse Pangborn had begun compiling a list of those who had died under Fist’s reign. Almost three hundred names had been on it when he left, and still all the sorrows had not been counted. He could remind Fist of that, but the old architect of atrocity would probably thank him and turn blackly nostalgic.

“Unused power,” Fist husked, as if naming a remembered lover. “I am even now… a powerful man. With a few words… I could cause… empires to crumble. Could trample the mighty… under my feet… even though… I can no longer… even stand.”

It was temptation time again. Marchey doubted Fist was boasting. He had hired out to governments and corporations alike before descending on Ananke like a terrible predator. He would have as a matter of course sniffed out their every weakness and shaken hands with every skeleton in their closets, making certain that he could destroy them if the need—or even just the whim—arose.

“Do you really like destroying things?”

Fist regarded him, one wispy eyebrow raised as if surprised he could ask such a crass question. “I like to… change things. It is so easy… it is irresistible. As for the other… Rome was counted beautiful… long after… its empire collapsed… and its… great works crumbled. Destruction… like beauty lies… in the eye… of the beholder.”

None of that was anything he could, or should even try to argue. He had to try another tack.

“Do you like being the way you are?”

Fist grinned slyly. “Do you?” A condescending note entered his phlegmy voice. “At least I am… not what others… have made of me… not blindly playing… a fool’s role… assigned to me.”

Marchey felt a chill, knowing Fist had just told him something important. He stared at the old man. “What are you telling me?”

“The obvious.” Cruel humor glinted in his yellow eyes. “Isn’t that obvious?” Haaaaaaaaaaaa.

Marchey licked his lips. “Go on.”

Fist shook his head, feeble but unbendable. “This game is played… one move at a time. Now it is your move… my dear doctor.”

Am I playing some sort of role? A fool’s role at that?

He shook his head, frowning in concentration. That wasn’t quite what Fist had said. Am I still playing a fool’s role assigned to me? Assigned was a key word, he was sure of it.

He leaned back in the galley seat, drumming his metal fingers against the tabletop as thoughts rattled through his head.

What am I doing?

Going crazy. Wishing I was drunk. Wishing I’d never left Ananke. Wishing I had some way to help Angel. Feeling old and stupid. Playing mind games with a psychopath. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on inside Med Arm while I’m stuck on this goddamn ship with the shit about to hit the fan back on Ananke—

He blinked, gray eyes widening as pieces fell into place with an almost audible click.

I’m stuck on this ship. Back on the circuit again. On my way to Botha Station.

But why?

Because it’s my job, it’s what I do. Because—

Because MedArm is sending me there!

He sat bolt upright, a chill running down his back. “Is that obvious enough for you, Doctor Dickhead?” he muttered to himself in sour amusement. His mind raced in a hundred directions as that one simple fact illuminated so many things that had been in darkness. He forced himself to calm down and go through it one step at a time.

They’re sending me there to treat a single patient they rate as more important than all the people of Ananke.

Who was the patient? What was wrong with him or her?

They had never said. No name, no condition. Just the expectation that I would unquestioningly obey orders.

Why shouldn’t they expect that? He always had.

He got up and began to pace the carpeted deck, the hem of his robe flapping around his bare legs. That led to a couple obvious conclusions. But there was something else… a further inference nagging at the edge of his thoughts. Two more unconnected pieces drifting closer together, very nearly locking into one.

Sal said that it appeared MedArm had suddenly decided to take over the Institute and restart the Program right after a way around the Nightmare Effect had been found.

Now he knew that MedArm—or at least some group inside it—had been using the Bergmann Surgeons to further some hidden agenda of their own by using them to treat only certain people. He and ’Milla and all the others had remained unaware of how their use had been corrupted because the Nightmare Effect made it pointless to try to get to know their patients— not that the speed with which they were shuffled around gave them much chance anyway. That dovetailed so neatly it had to be engineered.

He turned on his heel, pacing back the way he’d come. Even if he hadn’t stumbled onto the “silver lining” file, the end to the Nightmare Effect meant that sooner or later he and the other Bergmanns would have realized that his patients were almost never your ordinary Joe or Jane. They weren’t stupid. They’d figure it out. When that happened they would be appalled, just as he had been. They would be outraged.

As a group, they could best be described as battered idealists. Their idealism was what had led them to risk their hands and their careers in the Program in the first place, and its tattered remnants kept them clinging to its promise in spite of the ruin it had made of their lives. None of them had much to lose. Once they figured out how they were being used they would rebel.

Marchey stood stock-still, having reached the sharpened hook at the end of this chain of deduction.

When that happened, MedArm would need replacements. They had too good a thing going to give it up now. ’Milla’s comment about them becoming robots that had become too troublesome to maintain had been right on the mark, as had Sal’s remark about better ones being made. Obviously the new group of Bergmann Surgeons would be operating under a very different set of inducements, expectations, and motivations than the originals.

Back to the obvious, now that at least a little of the murk surrounding the Institute takeover had cleared.

The patient waiting for him on Botha Station was important to MedArm. One of the select few allowed to receive what the Bergmanns had to offer. More important than all the people of Ananke.

How important?

Now there was a question worth pursuing.

He cinched the belt on his robe tighter and headed toward the commboard. It was about time he found out just who he was going to treat, and why. But he wasn’t going to ask MedArm. No, he was going to give the doctor in charge of the case a friendly call. Colleague to colleague.

When that was done he was going to permit himself one single weak drink. Not to forget, but to celebrate.

After all, it wasn’t every day that he went back into private practice.