Flesh and Silver

by Stephen L. Burns

  It had been like nothing she had ever seen before, and not something she really ever wanted to see again; at once wondrous and indefinably wrong.

  First the bandages had parted, threads cut cleanly as if by the sharpest microtome, and peeled themselves away from Shei’s face, revealing the mangled, hastily gelsealed flesh beneath.

  The gelseal had been swept away and the wounds reopened, chipped bone showing in the deepest lacerations. Then the truly miraculous had manifested itself before her very eyes.

  With just one slow pass of an invisible hand Shei’s wounds had been debrided of even microscopic fragments, a haze of foreign materials rising up, coalescing, and settling down on a tray. Damaged bone had been smoothed like soft clay. Torn muscle and severed blood vessels had snaked together and reknit, melding into one as they were repaired at the cellular level. She had watched an eye that would have had to be replaced under normal circumstances become whole again, and an eyelid that had been blown to bloody lace mended to smooth-domed perfection. She had watched subcutaneous tissues move like hot wax, flowing, flattening, filling in, and sealing. She had seen burned skin slough off, and lacerated—no, shredded— flesh ripple as it migrated to reshape itself to its earlier state like water stills after a disturbing hand is withdrawn. Layer by layer, tissue by tissue, the trauma had been erased without benefit of stitches or staples or gels, and with a surety and speed a whole team of surgeons could not have begun to match.

  When he was done Shei’s face had been almost perfectly restored, the slightly pinker redistributed skin the only evidence it had ever been damaged.

  What she had witnessed was something that went so far beyond the boundaries of what she considered traditional medicine that for her it could only belong in the realm of magic and miracles. Her training and what she knew about his specialty said otherwise, but only in a small uncertain voice. It had been unbelievable. Impossible.

  Yet she had seen it happen.

  Try as she might, she could not keep herself from maintaining a careful, cautious distance from him. There was no way she could look at him in the same way as when she’d first met him, even though she knew it was a grievous sin against him, and her own rationality. Just a couple hours ago he had been an interesting concept in the literature. Then he had become her best hope, and in realizing that hope he had been transformed into something that raised her hackles and brought a prayer to her lips.

  Marchey had been prepared for her reaction. He’d been in a similar situation all too many times before. He shrugged uncomfortably, gazing at the peaceful, now unblemished face of Shei Sinclair.

  A life for a love. May she live long, and her second chance turn out better than his had.

  “She’s very beautiful,” he murmured. “It would have taken major plastic surgery to have repaired all the damage. There was no reason to make her live with even temporary disfigurement.”

  He glanced at the clock. “I gave her a keep-under, so she’ll probably be out for another couple hours. When she wakens she’ll be almost good as new— though I would test her hearing. I’m, um, glad I was here to help.” He made a point of not looking directly at Chang. Had he done so, she would have flinched away.

  Fear, revulsion, violent denial, blind hatred, or, as in Chang’s case, a kind of appalled theistic awe; these were what he always saw on the faces of the medical people who witnessed him at his work. Always.

  This was one wall of the box he and the other Bergmanns had put themselves in. Even those who knew every detail of the Program reacted the same way. What he was and did flew in the face of all their former colleagues knew and did, and that he could so easily accomplish feats they could only dream about made matters worse. The way he looked when in trance unnerved and frightened them, and his having given up his hands to aquire such abilities burned the bridge between his kind and theirs, marking him in their eyes as a dangerous lunatic who had mutilated himself to become some sort of witch doctor.

  Somehow that was never mentioned in the medical journals. At least not yet. Neither was the relief those same people felt when he or any of the thirty-some other Bergmann Surgeons moved on—driven off more often than not. That nobody wanted them on staff, not even the burn units. He hadn’t quite become completely numbed to being a pariah, but he was working on it.

  Now Ella was gone. He’d been braced for it, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.

  He shrugged again, having given up trying to argue his case a couple years before. He began pulling on his gloves so he could get the hell out of there and find that first of many drinks. The gloves were a necessity. There was no way he’d be able to bear being stared at right now.

  “I guess that’s about it.” He cast a last yearning glance at the child whose life he’d saved, wishing he could stay to see her waken. To see those brown eyes open and that sweet face smile.

  But that could never happen. Bitter experience had taught him and the other Bergmann Surgeons what would happen if he did, and taught them well. Some memory of his invasions remained inside her, creating a sort of peculiar psychic scarring. If she woke and saw him, she would begin to scream and shriek, gripped by a terror so harsh and primeval it could well kill her.

  The Nightmare Effect, they called it. At the beginning of the Program several patients had nearly been lost before the lesson was learned.

  Dr. Chang took a hesitant half step toward him. “Thank you… Doctor.” Her eyes met his for an instant, then slid uneasily away. “I—I’m sorry.” She hung her head, face burning with shame. “About Ella. About everything.”

  “The child lives,” he answered. “That’s all that matters.” In one way that was even the truth. It was the sole redeeming value of Bergmann Surgery. Because of it the child and hundreds of others in similar dire extremity lived.

  He picked up his jacket and left quietly, without looking back.

  —

  “Are you done with your dinner, sir?”

  Marchey stared sightlessly up at the waitress several seconds before he came back to the here and now of the Litman commissary. He blinked the past away and focused on her face. Broad and Slavic. Blue eyes. Red cheeks and a strand of sweat-dampened hair curling across her high square forehead. A harried, hopeful smile.

  She was on duty all by herself. He’d watched the other people in the commissary ordering her around like a slave, and so tried to keep his own requests gentle and to a minimum.

  “Ah, I suppose I am.” He checked the level in the bottle near his glass. Running toward empty from drinking on autopilot. That would never do. “I could use another flagon of this fine whiskey, though. When you get the time.”

  The waitress nodded as she took his plate away. “All right. What about dessert?”

  “Why not? Something chocolate. You pick.”

  “I guess I can do that,” she said, not sounding very sure about it. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”

  “No rush.” She hurried away, veering off to answer an imperious summons from another table.

  He poured the dregs from the bottle into his glass, took a meditative sip. Not so many years ago remembering the last time he’d seen Ella would have torn him apart. Now he felt scarcely a quiver. Amazing what enough time—and nearly half a liter of 110 proof whiskey—could do.

  Every year he felt less and less. Soon he would feel nothing at all. This was a state he alternately looked forward to and dreaded during those odd times he was sober enough to think about it.

  Shei Sinclair had been a child of thirteen then. Now she probably had a husband and children, and retained only vague memories of her brush with death. Perhaps the odd nightmare. He hoped her life was a happy one.

  —

  Two days after his interrupted reunion dinner he’d joined the boarding queue and trudged up the ramp, his bag in his hand. As he stepped into the lock he turned and looked back. No one was there to see him off.

  He hadn’t heard a single word from Ella. Nor had he tried to contact
her. Some things were beyond the reach of his healing skills, and would always remain so.

  Dr. Chang had sent two messages detailing Shei’s condition. Memory loss had been minimal. A slight hearing impairment was already fading. Her most severe aftereffect proved to be vivid recurrent nightmares of an armless monster pawing through her insides, nightmares terrible enough to make her wake up screaming in spite of sedation. The messages were very formal and quietly apologetic.

  Just before leaving he had composed and sent a reply:

  DEAR DR. CHANG. I AM GLAD THE CHILD IS DOING SO WELL. I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE BLAMELESS FOR WHAT HAPPENED; YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN REMISS IF YOU HAD NOT ASKED FOR WHATEVER HELP WAS AVAILABLE, AND WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN ELLA AND ME WAS PROBABLY INEVITABLE. AT LEAST A GOOD CAUSE WAS SERVED.

  BUT PLEASE BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU WOULD ENVY. MY KIND ARE A FAILED EXPERIMENT. A PHYSICIAN MUST MINISTER TO PEOPLE, NOT JUST BE THE REPAIRER OF THEIR AFFLICTIONS. THAT IS MY LOT. FOR ALL I HAVE SEEMINGLY GAINED, I HAVE LOST EVEN MORE. NO LONGER DO I HAVE THE PRECIOUS CONNECTION WITH MY PATIENTS THAT MADE ME WHAT I ONCE WAS, NAMELY A GOOD DOCTOR. A HEALER.

  I HEARD WHAT YOU SAID, AND YOU HAD IT WRONG. YOU REMAIN A HEALER, AND YOUR SKILLS WILL NEVER BE OBSOLETE.

  IT IS I WHO HAVE BECOME THE MERE MECHANIC.

  BELIEVE ME, IT IS NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL.

  Once on the shuttle he’d slumped back in his seat, the red edges of a headache beginning to throb at his temples. While sorting through his beltpouch for one of the soporifics he had become increasingly dependent on, the shuttle’s steward approached him, a large foil-wrapped package in his arms.

  “Dr. Marchey?”

  “Yes?” Ah, there was one. He popped the pill out of its blister and put it in his mouth. It tasted bitter, but then again so did everything lately. He swallowed it dry.

  “I was told to see that this package got to you.” The steward handed it over. “Careful sir, it’s heavy.”

  So it was. Surprisingly heavy.

  “Thanks.” He lowered it to his lap, dug into his pouch again and located a five-credit chip. “Here you go. When do you start serving drinks?”

  “Soon as we debark, sir.” He touched his cap. “Thanks.”

  The steward sidled down the aisle, slipping the chip into his pocket. Marchey put the package on the empty seat beside him, then picked it right up again, unable to contain his curiosity.

  Under the foil was a carbon-fiber box, and inside the box—

  —

  Marchey sat in the commissary, glass of Mauna Loa in his hand, remembering the moment with an aching clarity. Like it had happened only yesterday, not nearly a decade ago.

  Inside the box had been a bisque-fired clay sculpture, the ceramic the color of old ivory. The piece was exquisitely wrought and yet fairly throbbed with raw power and emotion, eloquent proof that her talent remained undiminished under all the hype.

  The piece portrayed two sculptors who had begun work on a statue of two lovers embracing. But one sculptor stood helplessly by, gazing hopefully up at the unfinished lovers. His arms lay at his feet, arms crossed at the wrists and tools still clutched in his hands. He cradled a wounded child in the stumps of arms held up toward the sculpture as if in supplication.

  The other sculptor, the tall thin woman, huddled on the ground near him, her averted face a mask of frustrated shame. Her posture was that of someone who could not muster the courage to pick up her scattered tools and stand, taking the first step in trying to help complete the work they had begun. Her face was turned away from fellow sculptor and work alike.

  The lovers were rough-hewn and unfinished, yet there was no mistaking who they were.

  Marchey recalled staring at it for a very long time, tears streaming down his face.

  When the acceleration warning sounded he’d returned it to its box, then belted it into the seat beside him.

  She understood. Not that it changed anything, but at least she understood.

  Marchey stared into his empty glass, adrift between past and present, and finding comfort in neither.

  The waitress returned. She placed a plate and fresh fork in front of him. “Here’s some chocolate cake, sir. I hope it’s all right.”

  He gave her a fractured smile. “It looks delicious.”

  She replaced the empty bottle of Mauna Loa with a fresh one. “And your drink. Can I get you anything else?”

  “Nothing, thanks. I’ve got everything I need.”

  She went away. He opened the bottle and filled his glass, then forked off a bite of cake, tasted it.

  It was delicious.

  But the whiskey was better.

  “I want to talk to you, Doctor Marchey.” A peremptory tone and sarcastic emphasis on Doctor.

  The swarthy, hawk-faced woman whom he’d saluted with his glass earlier had come to his table for a showdown. He’d remained vaguely aware of her presense all through his second bottle of Mauna Loa and memories of Ella. She and her companion had argued in harsh whispers for several minutes. Finally he left their table, looking angry.

  She’d sat there for a while, drinking coffee and no doubt working herself up to a fine rage. At last she’d flung down her napkin and stood up, strode over, and planted herself at the other side of his table. Her arms were crossed before her formidable bosom, and she was radiating enough righteous wrath to make the whiskey in his glass begin to bubble and steam.

  He peered at the name tag pinned to her dark blue jacket. Dr. Ismela Khan. That explained her splendid command of Arabic invective.

  He met her tight-lipped glare squarely. “I doubt that.”

  Her dark brows drew down. “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “Just what I said,” he answered mildly. “You don’t want to talk to me. You don’t want to have anything to do with me. Nor do you want to talk. Harangue, maybe. Perhaps villify. Insult and condemn, almost certainly. You can save your breath, Dr. Khan. I’ve heard it all before.” He picked up his glass, took an unhurried sip. “If I’m not mistaken, I already heard a lot of it from you this very afternoon. Why repeat yourself?”

  She gave a grudging half nod. “All right, maybe I did say some things I shouldn’t have—”

  “No need to apologize. I was ignoring you anyway.” He waved his glass toward the empty chair across the table from him. “Have a seat, Dr. Khan.”

  His invitation took her off guard. She looked around the commissary, as if trying to decide how the other staffers might react to her getting cozy with the outcast, then faced him again. “Thank you, no,” she said stiffly.

  “Suit yourself. How about a drink?” Instead of waiting for an answer, he flagged the waitress down as she trotted by.

  “I’d like one more bottle of this fine whiskey and a glass for the lady, please,” he told her.

  The waitress looked uncomfortable, biting her lip and staring at her feet. “You’ve already had three whole quatriliters, sir,” she pointed out diplomatically.

  A hopeful look. “Wouldn’t you prefer some coffee or something?”

  Marchey smiled at her, touched by her concern. “Do I look drunk?” he asked gently. “Act drunk?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  He chuckled and gave her a wink. “Well, actually I am. The thing is, being drunk is something I happen to be exceptionally good at. In my expert medical opinion I’m not nearly drunk enough. So please help me continue this great work. All right?”

  She ducked her head in acceptance. “All right.”

  “Thank you.” When she hurried off he turned his attention back to Dr. Khan. “Please pardon the interruption. Now what’s on your mind?”

  “You’re an alcoholic,” she said accusingly.

  He emptied the bottle into his glass. “I suppose I am.” He took a drink. “What of it? Want lessons?”

  Her upper lip curled in distaste. “You’re disgusting.”

  His eyebrows lifted in mock shock. “I do believe that was an insult!” Then he shook his head s
adly. “Not much of one, though. Surely a surgeon of your caliber can do a better job of drawing blood than that.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but bit it back because the waitress had returned. Khan stood there, the muscles in her jaw twitching with repressed anger as a glass was placed on the table before her and the empty bottle traded for a fresh one.

  She watched the waitress beat a hasty retreat, then scowled at Marchey. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re a drunk,” she informed him in a low hard voice. “It’s probably the only way you can live with yourself.”

  “Maybe so.” He shrugged. “What would you suggest as an alternative? Suicide?” A faint pang of sorrow surfaced, sank back into quiescence. “Some of my friends have been driven to just that, you know. Me, I prefer to drown myself one glass at a time. It’s really quite pleasant. You should try it.”

  “You really don’t care what you are, do you?”

  Another shrug. “I’m reconciled to it.” He put down his empty glass and cracked open the new bottle. “I’m reconciled to a lot of things, like the rude, rotten treatment I get from people like you in places like this. But I do my duty and go where I’m needed. Whether you or I or anybody else likes it doesn’t enter into the matter. I run your gauntlet. I do what needs to be done. I leave.” He poured an amber splash into his glass. “That and happy hour are usually the best part.”

  Dr. Khan watched sourly as he drained his glass and filled it yet again. On days when he operated it always took a lot more to reach the place he liked to live. Some of that came from the D-Tox he’d taken that morning. Instead of starting with half a tank he had to work his way up from dead empty.

  But he could really feel the whiskey now. By the time he finished this bottle he’d be ready to find his way back to his room, have a final nightcap, and pass out. Tomorrow morning he’d reclaim his ship and once again be gone, on his way to somewhere else he could do this all over again. And again. And again.

  Even this conversation was nothing new. Once or twice a year someone took his presence personally enough to want to take a whack at him. He knew if he ignored her she’d go away eventually. The Dead Horse Defense. Her whip arm would get tired sooner or later.