Flesh and Silver

by Stephen L. Burns

  Still, something about those impossibly long crane-like legs, those tiny cupcake breasts, that body with every muscle and bone as starkly evident as that of an anatomy illustration, those big green eyes, even the pale austerity of her face turned in his heart like a key in a lock. It always had, and it seemed it always would.

  He’d lost her once. Watching her eat and listening to her talk and catching tantalizing tastes of her scent, he wondered how he could have let himself gamble with losing her again.

  This was not a new line of reasoning. The long, labyrinthine trip out to Ixion Station had given him plenty of time for doubts and second thoughts.

  The place Ella had chosen to live was not exactly an easy one to reach. The big wheelhab named Ixion Station hung halfway across the barren gulf between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, pacing the latter. Only twice a year would a passenger-and-supply transport make the long journey into the vast emptiness beyond the orbit of Jupiter’s settled moons to visit. The UNSRA labs, observatories, research and training facilities—along with the small but thriving society that had grown up around those installations—rated no more than that as yet.

  While it was a jumping-off point for the first tentative explorations of Saturn’s mysteries, as yet only a few were allowed to make the leap. Settlement on the moons of that ringed world was so sparse and austere there was nowhere for them to go. Yet.

  Someday that would change, and the trickle would become a steady flow. Until then Ixion remained humankind’s farthest flung permanent outpost.

  If getting to Ixion was difficult, arriving was disconcerting. Cut off as they were, the Station’s inhabitants treated the transport’s arcing flyby and the shuttleloads of goods and personnel it brought them as a cause for celebration. Nearly everyone dropped what they were doing, turning out to greet the new arrivals and hurling themselves into an almost desperate round of partying they called ShipTime.

  This meant that Marchey’s first glimpse of the place had been the sea of upturned faces filling the receiving bay. The people below laughed and clapped and stamped their feet. They whistled and hooted and waved, treating him and his fellow passengers like visiting celebrities.

  The shuttle stewards had warned them beforehand, so he knew they weren’t there to greet him, specifically. That had helped a little, but already apprehensive about the prospect of seeing Ella again, the welcome had made him feel like he’d been suddenly thrust onto a stage under a blazing spotlight. At any moment the rowdy throng below him might demand that he sing or dance. That he amaze them.

  And he could have, if he’d wanted to. How did it go?

  Observe carefully, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll see that I’ve got nothing up my sleeves…

  Then he’d seen her, sudden panic nearly sending him fleeing back into the shuttle.

  “I’m just so glad you really came,” Ella continued, her low husky voice sliding liquidly into his thoughts. Her face was so serious. He knew she had more riding on this than she was saying. Well, so did he.

  He made himself smile. “So am I,” he agreed, neatly managing to lie and tell the truth with the same three words.

  Her invitation had taken him by surprise, as had his spur-of-the-moment decision to take a break from his frustrating, fruitless search for a permanent place to practice.

  It had been the act of a man grasping at straws. She was his last tenuous link with the sort of life he’d led before his idealism and dedication had led him to join the Bergmann Program.

  Her green eyes sought his, a glint of desperation in them. “Sitting here like this, you and me together again…”

  She bit her lip. “It’s so much like before. That’s—that’s what I’ve dreamed of. It’s what I want for us, Gory. For things to be the way they were before.”

  “We had some problems,” he said carefully.

  She dismissed them with a careless flick of one thin hand. He saw that her nails were bitten to the quick. “Then things will be better.”

  “Maybe… but you know our work can still get in the way,” he said, reminding her of their earlier relationship’s greatest obstacle, and taking a halfhearted swipe at being honest about the one it faced now.

  Total dedication to your vocation took the best of what you had to offer, leaving only sloppy seconds for the one you loved. Theirs had torn them apart and driven them in opposite directions. Ella had begun her journey outsystem and up the ladder, at last holing up out here at the edge of nowhere.

  He had certainly found his own extremes. She hadn’t been able to accept how much of himself he gave to medicine then. And now?

  Nobody else did. Why should she be any different?

  First emptying his wineglass, he crept up a little closer to the matter.

  “I’ve changed, Ella.” That was a bit of an understatement, but he had to start somewhere.

  She nodded. “So have I. That’s why I think we can work it out now.”

  Her face, her voice, all echoed with her need to have it be so. He recognized his own loneliness in her, his own need to fill the emptiness, to find something to cling to.

  “You have changed,” he said, smiling as he backed away from treacherous ground. “You’re more beautiful than ever.” That was true, but it avoided the candor she deserved.

  His deceit had been calculated, and had begun before he left the shuttle. In the time between leaving his seat and reaching the lock he had nervously checked himself over one last time. The gray-velvet gloves he wore were clean and secure. The darker gray sleeves of his jacket were snug at the wrist. The fly of his baggy black pants was shut.

  Lastly, unconsciously and by habit, he had touched the gleaming silver biometal pin clipped to his red silk shirt over his heart, half-hidden by the lapels of his jacket.

  It was the Bergmann Surgeons’ emblem: two arms crossed at the wrists, arms ending just below the elbows, fingers spread wide.

  When he had realized what he was doing he took his hand away, clasping it with his other hand to keep it from straying there again. But his awareness of the pin—and what it meant—remained at the fore of his mind.

  He had considered leaving the pin behind when he came here, or at least leaving it off, but found that he could not. Not so much out of honesty, but because it was a part of him, branding him as one part of an experiment that was both an incredible success and a dismal failure: medal and stigmata all in one.

  There he sat, the silver pin barely peeking, feeling like a cheat and a liar. Sleeves and gloves might hide the path he had taken from her for a while, but she would find out in the end.

  Until then all he could do was try to make the best of their time together. The wine helped.

  Ella had ordered a large bottle of genuine French wine, never batting an eyelash at the price, but had taken no more than a couple polite sips from her glass.

  Marchey felt no similar reticence. In the years since joining the Program, alcohol consumption had increased to the point that someday it might just become a real problem. But that was a concern for some other time. He already had the bottle down to the halfway mark, and planned to see the bottom by dessert.

  Fortifying himself for the moment when he finally revealed his pride and his shame.

  Each glass made it a little easier to belive she would understand, and that their love could rise up like a phoenix rather than crash and burn yet another time.

  Even with things still a little strained and uncertain, Ella felt more at ease with Gory than anyone else she had ever known. She remembered pushing him away there at the end, and how it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now she had to wonder how she could have been so selfish. So stupid. Had it really been that hard to make allowances for his work?

  They were halfway through the main course when their waiter, a thin, smoothly courteous man with a hooked nose and a walrus mustache approached their table.

  “I regret the intrusion on your meal,” he said quietly, “but there is an urgent call for you
, Miz Prime.” He held the flat book shape of a communit against his chest like a stack of menus.

  Ella scowled at him. “Who the hell is it?”

  “The caller is Dr. Carol Chang, Director of Ixion Medical Services. She was most insistent about speaking to you, and instructed me to tell you it was a matter of life and death.” He stepped back and waited impassively for her answer.

  Marchey’s eyes had narrowed at the mention of Chang’s title and office. Already suspecting what sort of a call it might be, Ella was staring at him intently. She seemed to be holding her breath. The call might be for her, but obviously the decision was up to him.

  Like it or not, he really had no choice. He tried to smile. “Maybe you better take it.”

  Her mouth turned down. That hadn’t been the answer she wanted. She gestured curtly. “Put her through.”

  “As you wish.” The waiter placed the unit on the table facing her, keyed it on, then faded back out of sight.

  The image of a diminutive, middle-aged oriental woman appeared on the screen. When she saw that she had been put through, the grim, impatient look she wore shifted to a tight smile. “Ms. Prime?”

  Ella inclined her head fractionally. “Yes.”

  “I am Dr. Carol Chang. I deeply regret the intrusion on your privacy, and would not have called if I’d had any other choices. I understand that Dr. Georgory Marchey is your, ah, guest here. An emergency has arisen, and it is imperative that I speak to him.”

  “Well,” Ella began unhappily, an old old resentment still there inside her, as good as new. It was always an emergency, she remembered. Every damn time. How many times?

  “Please,” Marchey whispered.

  “He’s right beside me,” Ella said tonelessly. She turned the unit toward him, then snatched up her wineglass and drained it.

  Chang’s features lit in a genuine smile when she saw him. “Dr. Marchey, this is indeed an honor. Again, I apologize for the interruption.”

  Marchey glanced away, watching Ella refill her glass, her jaw set with anger. He closed his eyes a moment, then faced the screen again. “You said there’s an emergency?”

  Chang nodded. “Yes. One of our young people, a girl named Shei Sinclair, somehow managed to build a toy cannon and make powder for it as a way of celebrating ShipTime. It exploded in her face the first time it was fired.”

  Marchey grimaced. Ella stiffened, wineglass halfway to her lips.

  “We have removed most of the fragments and stopped the worst of the bleeding, but her condition remains extremely grave. Two fragments entered her skull through her left eye socket, their flattened profiles making them follow curving paths. The damage they did is considerable. Both are lodged deep within her brain, one impinging on the medulla. There is steady intracranial hemorrhaging, and her autonomic functions are failing fast. We are already using machine assist to keep her breathing. I am afraid that cardiac function will soon fail as well. The fragments must be removed, but going in for them would be extremely risky. I am prepared to try if I must, but—”

  The oriental woman paused to take a deep breath. “I was reviewing the medical records of our new arrivals when this happened,” she continued in a rush. “Yours was a surprise. I have read about Bergmann Surgeons, but never thought I would see one way out here. Now I have to look on your arrival as a gift from God. If you—”

  There was suddenly a high-pitched buzzing sound in the background of Chang’s pickup. The grating buzz was quickly replaced by a metronomic beeping. She glanced off-screen, brow furrowing. When she faced Marchey again her grim expression had returned and redoubled.

  “She just went ECS. Can you help?”

  Had Marchey been by himself, he would have already been on his way. But for once he wasn’t alone. He turned toward Ella, a strong flash of déjà vu swallowing him up and making him feel unreal. This was so like the times before that the intervening years might as well have been the dream of a single bad night.

  Ella’s face was blank. She stared past him at nothing, green eyes glazed and sightless.

  “Ella?”

  She scarcely heard him, remembering the too many times their lives had been interrupted by a call like this. The resentful hours spent waiting for his return…

  But only if she let them be resentful. Her eyes snapped back into focus. “Go,” she said, digging her fingers into his shoulder.

  Marchey’s relief was obvious. His sunken gray eyes flicked back toward Chang’s image. “You heard?”

  The hope on her face said she had. “Yes. Thank you—both of you!”

  “Now how do I get—”

  Ella’s fingers gripped him even tighter. “I know the way. I’m going with you.” The look on her face defied him to argue.

  He didn’t plan to. “Good.”

  He knew then how she was going to learn what he’d been hiding from her. The end of the suspense gave him no real comfort. This might just be the best way, but would it make any difference in the long run?

  He pushed all those thoughts to one side. There was no turning back, not for any of it. All he could do was keep going and try to cope with where events carried him.

  He shoved his chair back and stood up, Ella rising to her feet beside him as he took a last look at the screen.

  “We’re on our way.”

  “I have seen your Dr. Marchey’s name in the medical journals several times,” Dr. Chang said as she poured two cups of tea. She smiled back over her shoulder at Ella. “And please call me Carol.”

  “All right, um, Carol.” Ella had expected to hate on sight this woman who had spoiled their reunion. Much to her surprise the opposite had been true.

  Chang had greeted them at the door to her office and ushered them inside.

  All Ella could do was wait for whatever happened next and wish she had a sketchpad with her. Lacking that, she tried to memorize Chang’s every move and gesture.

  The head of Ixion Medical Services stood just over a meter and a half tall. She was flawlessly proportioned, uncannily graceful, and had an almost perfect genotype with straight jet-black hair, almond eyes, and skin the color of aged amber.

  Though she had to be an unrejuved fifty, Chang had one of those faces whose beauty time could not diminish. Ella’s artist’s eye subtracted her crisp white coverall and the small silver crucifix worn outside the coverall’s blouse. Dressed in a kimono, she could have been one of Hiroshito’s exquisite porcelain figurines come to life. But warmer, not so aloof and opaque. Old, young, and ageless all at once. She planned to ask the woman if she would sit for her when this was over. Nude, if possible.

  As for Marchey, he might as well have been in another room. He’d asked to see the young accident victim’s medical records and stats the moment they reached Chang’s office, and had been hunched over her Medicomp and oblivious to all else since.

  Ella’s nostrils flared at the spicy aroma of the tea when Chang handed her an eggshell-delicate cup. “Thanks.”

  “You are most welcome.” Chang remained standing. That put her and the seated Ella nearly eye to eye.

  “It is I who should thank you,” she continued. “There are only a handful of Bergmann Surgeons as yet. Your, ah, friend is one of the first and most accomplished of them. Now I know that they are somewhat, well, controversial, but I don’t doubt that in the end the prejudice will disappear.” She turned her head to gaze at Marchey, hope filling her face. “For myself, I can only say that his being here at this time is the answer to a prayer. His special skills give Shei a better chance than anything I can do for her.”

  Ella frowned at Chang over the rim of her cup. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. You called him that before, a Bergmann Surgeon. What’s it mean?”

  Marchey heard Ella’s question. He risked a glance at his old lover. Her whole attention was focused on Dr. Chang as she waited for an answer.

  Chang’s poise faltered. She took a sip of her tea, her movement uncharacteristically jerky and uncertain. Afte
r an uncomfortable pause, she said, “You don’t know.” It came out as both a question and an unhappy statement all at once.

  Ella frowned, puzzled by her reaction. “Gory has always been a surgeon. Is this different somehow?”

  Marchey spoke up at last. “Yes, it is.” Both women turned toward him, Chang looking relieved and Ella clearly baffled by the sudden tension.

  “I must see the child now.” He met Ella’s gaze. “I want you to come and watch. There’s something you don’t know about. Something I haven’t been able to tell you. The only way to understand is to see it for yourself.”

  He spoke firmly. His apprehension showed only in the way his gloved hand strayed for a moment to the silver pin over his heart.

  Chang put her cup aside and started toward the door. “This way, please.” She strode ahead without looking back.

  They both followed, Marchey moving with a businesslike briskness, Ella trailing uncertainly behind.

  Chang led them to a small combination Surgery/ICU just two doors down from her office.

  The brightly lit, antiseptic-smelling room made Ella even more uneasy. She didn’t want to think about the type of things done in such a place. Invasions of the body and dignity. Proof that the flesh could fail in all sorts of horrible and humiliating ways.

  Her unanswered questions weighed heavily on her, leaving her off-balance. From the very first she’d felt Gory’s reserve, suspected that he was holding something back. Hiding something. It seemed that the veil was about to be lifted. She had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to like what was behind it one bit.

  When she finally made herself look at the small, white-swaddled form on the padded table in the center of the room, took in the tubes and sensors and other medical arcana hooked up to it, the urge to turn and escape screwed tighter around her. There was nothing here she wanted to know about. This was all a part of him she had kept at arm’s length the first time around.

  Yet she stayed, hovering fretfully near the door. Her hands worried and plucked at each other nervously. Her question remained: What was a Bergmann Surgeon?

  Marchey went straight to the table, his face intent, and began his initial examination in silence. Chang dismissed the medico in attendance and started toward the table. He waved her back without turning around.