He peered down into his glass. “Not exactly sippin’ whiskey, is it?”
Merry’s face fell. “Sorry. Maybe I can get Randy to—”
“Don’t worry about it. That just means there’s no point in sipping it.” He drained his glass, knowing the sooner he got his palate numbed the better it would taste.
When she started to jump up to get him another, he restrained her by resting one gloved hand on her thigh. “That’s all right. No hurry.”
She settled back. “Okay, but if you want more just say so.” Her face was turned so that the damaged side was hidden from him, and her smile promised all wonders for the asking. “If you want anything” she added, “I’m here to please you.” That last was said in such a way there was no mistaking her meaning.
Her eagerness to cater to whatever urges or impulses he might have was a little disconcerting. No doubt it had been sharpened by the size of the payoff he’d promised her. He felt a little guilty about sandbagging her with such a large sum, but he needed even more forbearance than was usual in her profession. One way or another she would feel satisfied with their transaction.
The money meant nothing to him, but if she took it, he was going to feel cheated. Only time would tell.
“Don’t worry, I will.” He took a deep breath, suddenly feeling as nervous as a boy about to steal his first kiss, and told her one of the things he did want.
“What I would like is for you to tell me what happened to your face.”
Merry was a pro. The expression on the working side of her face barely changed. But the warmth in her brown eyes was snuffed out in an instant. “Airlock accident,” she answered tonelessly. “Blowout.”
Just as he’d thought. “Ah. Savatinian embolism?”
She stared at him in unconcealed disgust. “Look, if you’re a cripfreak, that’s your business. But it’s not mine. I may not like it, but I’ll put up with you getting your rocks off on the way I look if that’s what it takes to earn my money.” Her good eye narrowed and her mouth hardened. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll talk it up just so you can get it up.”
This flash of fierce pride made Marchey like her even more than before. He gave her his most disarming smile. “The reason I asked is because I’m a doctor.”
She snorted. “Right. And you’re here to make me all better with your magic syringe.”
Marchey couldn’t help guffawing at the image she’d conjured. “No, nothing like that,” he assured her, chuckling and shaking his head. “Your condition was caused by hundreds of microscopic gas bubbles bursting numerous small blood vessels in your brain; like a stroke, only widely diffused. Savatinian embolism is a condition that occurs in about one-tenth of one percent of people subjected to explosive decompression.”
“You sure talk like a doctor,” she said grudgingly.
“That’s because I really am one. Here, give me your glass.” He took it from her long slim fingers, carried it and his own to the bar to fix them both refills.
“Sorry I was so touchy,” she said behind him. “It’s just that I don’t like being treated like a freak.”
“Believe me, nobody does.” Just this morning some of the staff at the hospital had treated him like a radioactive pedophile. And those had been the polite ones.
But that was then and this was now. One hurdle had been cleared. He finished assembling their drinks and prepared to go on to the next.
“As for your being a cripple,” he said as he returned to sit beside her, “that’s not a word I particularly care for.”
“Thanks,” she said, accepting the glass he handed her with a nod. “Why’s that?”
“Aside from its cruelty, some would say it fits me, too.”
She looked him up and down. “I don’t see anything wrong with you.” Then her gaze went to his lap and a pink tinge of embarrassment crept onto her face. “Oh… you mean you don’t—I mean you can’t…?” She shrugged. “You know.”
“No, nothing like that,” he assured her. “There might be dust or cobwebs on it, but I’m fairly sure it still works. The thing is, I don’t have any forearms or hands.”
She gave his gloved hands a look, scowling slightly. “What’re those, then? Extra feet?”
“Prosthetics.”
Her scowl deepened. “Proswhats?”
“Prosthetics. Fakes. Artificial substitutes.” He put his glass aside, then peeled off one glove to show her.
Merry gazed in wide-eyed wonder at the silver-metal hand that emerged. “It’s beautiful!” Her voice was hushed, awestruck. Even her drooping eye widened slightly.
Marchey was surprised by her reaction. “Well, it’s shiny anyway,” he allowed. Even though it wasn’t some crude hook or whirring, humming antique Cyberhand, most people were put off by the sight of it and its twin. In a world where missing limbs could be easily replaced or regenerated, and even normal prosthetic devices were covered by vat-grown skin and could not be identified except by scan, it was proof that there was something strange about him.
They were self-contained, powered only by the whisper of electricity carried by the nerves, self-maintaining, and all but indestructible, the gleaming biometal several times harder than hullmetal, yet supple as skin and providing the same degree of tactile feedback. Most importantly, they were easy to take off and put on. No synskin covered them, and they needed none of the structural or cyberneural connections other kinds used. When brought up against the silver stump-caps the biometal arms melded seamlessly back into them to become one. They were glaringly obvious, but in the beginning there had been no thought of hiding what they had done. They were all proud to have given up their hands and taken these silver replacements.
Now he wore gloves in public.
She started to reach out to touch his hand, hesitated, turning her wide brown eyes toward his face. “Do you mind?”
He held it out palm up. “Be my guest.”
There was nothing cautious or squeamish about the way Merry handled his hand. She stroked the smooth curve where thumb sloped into wrist and leaned close to examine where the fingers met the palm. She felt the shape of the knuckles and tried to wriggle the fingers from side to side as if expecting to find them loose.
“A perfect replica,” she said half under her breath. “Body temperature. Jointed just like a regular hand, but except for a couple access seams, like here on the palm, it’s seamless. It even gives to conform to the surface of whatever object you’re holding, just like a real hand.”
She looked up at him again, still holding his hand like it was a gift he’d given her. “This is stunning workmanship. Absolutely perfect. Class I Biometal, right?”
“The best money can buy,” he agreed. “I was told that each hand and arm have almost twenty-five KISC worth of biometal in them.” He hesitated, marshalling his nerve for the next step, then with his other hand cautiously reached up toward the frozen and drooping side of her face. “May I… ?”
“I guess so,” she answered uneasily. He doubted that most men wanted to touch her there. But he did. Needed to.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” he said softly. “I can juggle eggs with these things.” His silver fingers lightly traced the slack muscles around her eye, along her cheek, around her mouth. Not even a reflexive twitch. She sat stiffly, her eyes warily tracking his hand, her full lower lip caught between her even white teeth. “Of course I always end up with two mitts full of scrambled eggs and the yolk’s on me.”
A laugh burst out of her, sudden and hearty. Marchey felt it filling a place inside him that had been silent and empty for a very long time. Making someone laugh is such a little thing. Such a wonderful, rewarding thing. Only by living without it could you learn just how priceless it was. It felt so good to know he still could dispense the best medicine.
Even if she did take the money—and he hoped she didn’t—that laughter, and her easy acceptance of the way he was, were worth far more than the thousand credits.
Things had been going
quite nicely until he asked The Question. Merry had been afraid he might, and hoping he wouldn’t. Now he had, spoiling everything.
“Hard luck.” She shrugged, trying to pass the matter off. “It’s like gas. Everybody gets their share.”
“And it eventually passes. What was yours?”
She stared at this strange man who had purchased her services for the night, feeling torn. How she’d become a pro was her own business and nobody else’s. It wasn’t exactly a secret, but it was part of her life, not part of her job.
Yet she found herself trusting him enough to tell him. Even wanting to tell him. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he treated her like a lady, like a person. That felt good, and it only made her resent his ruining things all the more.
“You won’t tell me how you lost your hands,” she pointed out, hoping to derail him that way.
He grinned at her over the top of his glass. “Yes I will. I had a run-in with the Manicurist from Hell.”
She snorted derisively. “Right. Well, I became a whore because instead of being curly, all my pubic hair’s shaped like dollar signs.”
His grin got even wider. “Really? That’s most unusual. You must show me later.”
She gave him a smoldering look. “I’ll show you everything I got right this minute.” Not that the translucent skinsuit she wore hid all that much. Still, nothing distracted a man like sex. She reached for the sealtab nestled between her breasts.
He reached out and gently closed a silver hand around hers. His metal fingers rested so lightly on hers they might have been foil butterflies.
“Please tell me,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “You can trust me.” He released her hand. “At least I hope you can.”
Merry looked away, stood up abruptly. “I need another drink.”
She retreated toward the bar, her gait somewhat unsteady. Part of that came from three glasses of wine on an empty stomach. But not all of it. Not even most of it.
To survive as a whore you had to keep your head on straight. Always be the one in control, even when playing the submissive. Keep your emotions out of the transaction. Remember that no matter how nice the juan seemed, he had paid for the use of your body and nothing more. When you lost your handle on all that, you were just asking for trouble.
She knew she was skating on the thin brittle edge of trouble now. Slipping closer and closer, almost as if she wanted to go over it.
Why?
Because this man she had sold herself to for the night was trying to seduce her, and she was liking the way it felt.
Not seduced in the sexual sense, that was already bought and paid for. This was being seduced in the sense of being enticed into dropping her defenses and letting him inside. Of being subtly drawn into the vulnerable nakedness of letting him see the private places she kept hidden by the Merry face she showed the world.
Keeping her back to him, she picked up the scotch bottle and topped off her glass with that instead of wine. Her hand shook, splashing liquor over the rim of the glass, reminding her how rock steady that hand had been once upon a time.
Yes, once upon a time. Didn’t stories which started that way always end with They all lived happily ever after?
She leaned heavily on the bar, keeping her back to this strange juan who refused to follow the rules.
Tell him this, and the next thing she knew she’d be telling him her real name!
“I was a microtech,” she said softly, eyes on her traitorous hands. “Most tech work is troubleshooting and mod-swapping. But sometimes, most often with special purpose equipment, the mod itself has to be rebuilt or reconfigured. That calls for a microtech. The parts are so small and delicate, the circuiting so intricate, it calls for someone with a really fine touch, like a—” she hesitated, searching for the proper comparison.
“Like a surgeon,” he supplied quietly from behind her.
She nodded. “Yeah, like that. I had that touch. I was good. Damn good.” She had been, too. The best on Vespa and within thirty thousand kilometers of it. She’d made serious money and her rep was solid gold.
She took a swallow of whiskey and grimaced, steeling herself to tell the next part. The hard part.
“One day I was working on setting up the controller-mods of an industrial circuiting machine for Iolus Fabrique here on Vespa. Some clown on the crew accidentally left the bolts off a substrate roller collar. Or they had been left out at the factory where it was built. Whatever the reason, that two-hundred-and-fifty-kilo roller broke loose and came crashing down inside it, flattening the modbox directly under it. A modbox I just happened to have my hands inside.”
Retelling it, she shuddered at the remembrance of that sudden blinding burst of pain/surprise/confusion/horror, of stumbling backward, a bubbling scream plugging her throat when she saw the terrible ruined things at the ends of her arms, flopping bonelessly and spurting red in every direction…
The juan, Marchey, was silent. But she could feel his attention wrapped around her as he waited for her to continue. And she would. Now that she had started this there was no turning back. It had to be replayed to the end, just like when you began falling there was no stopping until you hit bottom.
“Both my hands were crushed. Almost every bone in them was broken, and the muscles turned to mincemeat.”
The foreman had taken one horrified look at her, turned white as a sheet, and puked all over his shoes. They’d had to put plastic bags over her hands to keep from losing pieces of them, holding the bags in place with tourniquets to keep her from bleeding to death.
She wheeled around to face him. “You know, I really shouldn’t trust you,” she said in a dead voice.
“Why is that?” Softly, not in challenge. His face solemn, but not forbidding. Willing to accept whatever she said. A bitter wave of spite rose up inside her.
“Because you’re a doctor. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, they told me.” Her upper lip curled in disgust. “Sure, they fixed up my hands so that they look all right if you don’t check too close, and I can do most normal things with them. But my career as a microtech ended that day.” She shivered. “In fact, I can barely stand to be around machinery anymore. I look at it and feel an itch I just can’t scratch.”
He nodded soberly. “Believe me, I know how you feel.”
No, you don’t! screamed the shrill voice of frustration, but the words never made it past her lips. A glance down at his silver hands silenced it, telling her that he just might understand after all.
“So you blame the doctors for not fixing you up the way you were before. First with your hands, and then with your face after the embolism.”
Merry’s thin shoulders slumped. “No, not really,” she admitted. Oh, she had for a while, but had gotten over it.
“Why not?”
“I know that not everything can be fixed. Some things just seem fated to end up on the scrap heap.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m one of them.” The worst part was how long the trip took.
“Why do you say that?”
Merry had to wonder what he was after. Why he cared, if he really did. Yet she couldn’t keep herself from answering. It had been so long since anyone had just listened to her, had been interested in her as anything other than something to get their rocks off with when nothing better or free was available.
It was true that some men wanted to talk as much as they wanted to get laid. More of them than an outsider might think. But what they really wanted to talk about was themselves. Any questions about her were either nervous chatter, a form of voyeurism, or in some cases a desire to get their money’s worth by sticking themselves into her life as well as her body.
She spread her hands. “Isn’t it obvious? I knew I’d never again be the tech I had been. My lawyer warned me that it would be years before I got any sort of settlement. I needed a new career because I needed the income. When my landlord offered to eat my month’s rent if I screwed him, I heard opportunity’s bastard cousin knocking.
Even though I was getting a little old for the trade, I was still doing okay until I got caught in a blowout a few months ago.”
She fingered the lax side of her face and let out a sardonic chuckle.
“I became Frankenwhore. Now I’ve got two maybe-someday settlements coming. Now my landlord keeps his fly closed and demands cash. Not only am I getting old, this isn’t exactly helping further my career as a prostitute. My body’s still okay—”
“Your body looks great.” He grinned. “Believe me, I’ve noticed. As for your face, couldn’t you change your name and maybe wear a mask to hide it, and make you more exotic?”
She ducked her head. “I could, I guess. But I was an honest tech. I never palmed parts or faked burnouts. I never padded my hours or strung a job on. I try to be as honest a pro.” Her tone sharpened. “This is how I am, take it or leave it. I never fobbed off damaged goods as new when I was a tech, and I’ll be damned if I’ll do it as a whore.”
“It must be hard.”
God, you don’t know how hard! She wanted to scream it, cry it, let it out of the damaged fist she kept clamped around it.
And this was hard, laying herself open to a stranger. Exposing parts of herself no one saw no matter how many times she removed her clothes. It was unbearable.
She polished off her drink, the raw liquor searing her throat. She rarely drank this much while working unless it was demanded of her, but at that moment it was just what she needed. Anesthetic and fuel all in one.
This madness had gone on too long. It was time to take control and stop it while she still could. She put her glass aside and forced a smile onto her face.
You’re nothing but a juan, she told him in her head. A coddy. Time I started treating you like one.
“It’s you that should be hard,” she purred, keeping her head turned so only the best side of her face showed. Her fingers toyed with the skinsuit’s sealtab, and once his eyes were on it she drew it slowly down, opening it from breastbone to crotch. Cool air rushed across her skin, making her nipples stiffen.
She sauntered toward him, putting a lot of hip into it. Planting herself right in front of him she bent over, feeling the front of her suit gape open even wider. “Hard instead of difficult. Difficult won’t feed the kitty.” She ran her tongue around her lips. “But I can fix that.” She trailed her red nails up the inside of his thighs, feeling his muscles quiver.
Flesh and Silver Page 6
