“—no—” Fist protested, his voice coming out as no more than a cracked whistle. He tried to aim the Fukura at her, but Marchey was in the way. He pawed at the larger man desperately, but Marchey remained oblivious, all his attention was focused on the impossible task at hand.
“Fist.” Scylla’s voice was cold, empty. The sound of a soul scoured by vacuum. She stepped across the bent steel and stone rubble that had once been a heavily reinforced door, pieces crunching under her metal feet. “You. Devil”
Scylla stalked toward her maker, her steps measured and balletic, the gleaming silver metal of her exo flowing liquidly with her every motion. She seemed to glow with gathered power and purpose; a radiant, sword-sharp instrument of vengeance cast in argent and set into unstoppable motion. She was beautiful, the way a panther closing in for the kill is beautiful— form, function, and a terrible grace welded into one deadly purpose.
Brother Fist was in no position to appreciate the breathtaking perfection of his creation as she came toward him. His panic-stricken squirming finally let him get the gun pointed at her. He wasted no breath in warning, instead grimly taking aim at her face and pulling the trigger. The weapon roared and bucked in his hand, wrenching itself out of his feeble grasp.
Scylla’s amped reflexes let her swat the folded steel missile screaming toward her forehead aside like a lazy fly. One glassy eye in the wall of screens shattered explosively and went blind. She bared her sharkish teeth in something too bloodcurdling to be a smile.
“I don’t know if I am really an angel anymore,” she said as she came up behind the oblivious Marchey, her voice flat and hopeless. She shoved him aside, bowling him off his feet. Then she reached for her creator.
“—but I am going to send you to Hell anyway.” Her curved talons hissed from their sheaths and locked into place with a menacing snick. Each one ten centimeters of diamond-hard, microtome-sharp neoceramic, the ones on her left hand still crusted with her own blood.
“One piece at a time.”
She reached toward him to begin.
Brother Fist cringed back in his chair. But it wasn’t deep enough to let him escape his angel’s deadly caress.
—
Marchey found himself facedown on the floor with only a hazy idea how he had gotten there. He got himself onto his knees and turned around in time to see Scylla wrap her taloned silver fingers around Brother Fist’s throat.
“No! Don’t!” he shouted, lurching to his feet. He launched himself at her and wrapped his arms around her to restrain her.
They sank through her body as if they weren’t there. He stared down at his stumps in dumb surprise.
Brother Fist writhed and kicked his feet, the liverish slash of his mouth stretched wide in a soundless howl. His bony fingers clawed in futile desperation at the vise clamped around his throat. Wet, livid red spattered his black cassock as the talons sank like hooks into his wattled neck.
With her head cocked to one side, Scylla stared down at his face as if seeing him clearly for the first time and trying to figure out what he might be. The anger was gone from her face. All that remained was a lifeless, moon-cold landscape.
‘‘Don’t do it Scyl—Angel” Marchey crooned soothingly as he centered himself and brought to bear the invisible hands which made him what he was. He sank them into her back and moved them gently inside her, playing her nervous system like a harp as he cautiously, delicately, probed first this bundle of nerves, then that one.
“I have to.” Her voice was perfectly flat, emotionless as the metal that sheathed her tightening hands. Her shoulders sagged, but her grip did not loosen. Fist’s face was turning bluish gray, his eyes bulging in terminal disbelief. His hands scrabbled like dying crabs, fingers slashed and bloody from clawing at Scylla’s talons.
“You don’t,” Marchey said softly, insistently. “He’s beaten now. Let him go. Look at him. He’s old. Sick. He’s dying. Form V cancer, that’s what he has, and its so advanced that even I can’t do anything to save him. Let that kill him. Don’t let him make a killer out of you.”
Scylla’s one eyelid was growing heavy as Marchey gently stole her consciousness. It sagged at half-mast, like a pale flag of reluctant surrender.
“But I already am a killer,” she whispered, as if confiding a shameful secret. Her voice had become like a child’s, high and breathy, each word coming out more slurred than the last. “I killed my muh—muh—mother! I did! An’ others…”
Tears finally spilled from her one green eye. Human tears, salted with the stinging realization of guilt and loss.
“Scylla did that, Angel,” Marchey whispered soothingly. “You are Angel. You loved your mother. You would never hurt her.”
“Not… me?”
“Not you, Angel. Sleep now, Angel. Let Scylla go. Let this sick old man go. I’ll take care of him for you.”
“I—”
“Please, Angel.”
“I—”
“Please, honey. Please. Do it for me.”
“For… you…” she whispered, slowly relaxing her grip. Brother Fist fell back, gasping and wheezing as he tried to suck air through his bruised and bleeding throat.
Scylla’s arms dropped to her side. She sighed heavily. “I… so… tired…”
“I know, Angel, I know. You can let it all go now. Sleep. I’ll watch over you. Sleep.”
For Marchey the human body was an open book, and he knew every page, every line. He thought he could safely try to manipulate her voluntary muscles now that all the fight had gone out of her. But it was a slow, subtle business. If he’d tried before, she would have resisted, and probably killed him for trying.
He changed the position of his spectral hands, making that bundle of muscles contract, those slacken, gently guiding her down to the floor. Her eye was shut now, her face smoothing as sleep overtook her. He followed her down, still crooning her name, still telling her to sleep, still promising he’d watch over her.
At last Angel was stretched out on the floor, all but asleep, the vengeful angel Scylla quiescent.
Marchey knelt there beside her, gazing down and trying to see the Angel face hidden behind the face of the angel. He bit his lip. Maybe if I just…
He reached out hesitantly, then slowly swept an invisible hand across her face.
The demonic mask vanished under his touch line by line, revealing the pale, smooth face of a rather pretty woman in her mid-twenties. Her expression softened, as if she somehow knew what he had done. Like a light kindled after a long night, a shy half smile appeared, curving her lips.
Marchey sat back on his haunches, sudden tears in his eyes, utterly undone. She was so beautiful that it was almost frightening.
He reached toward her again, drawn to touch that sweet face one more time.
He never got the chance. He heard a rustling sound and a muffled grunt behind him.
Fist! He’d forgotten about F—
Realization came too late. Brother Fist crashed onto him from above, landing on his back and nearly knocking him down.
Marchey threw his head back and screamed as Fist drove the knife clutched in one bony hand deep into his back. He twisted desperately, white-hot pain ripping outward along every nerve as the knife was wrenched out of his flesh.
Operating on blind instinct alone he reared back, bucking his attacker off before he could strike again.
He spun around, slamming his knee down on the knife arm, hearing a satisfying crunch as Fist’s brittle bones broke under it. The old man hissed in pain, the knife tumbling from his fingers.
A guttural curse at his lips, Marchey thrust one immaterial hand into Fist’s scrawny neck and squeezed. Those hate-filled yellow eyes bulged as if about to explode from their sockets. His seamed mouth stretched wide in soundless, breathless agony.
Marchey felt his lips peeling back from his teeth in a feral grin. His pulse hammered in his ears. Adrenaline surged through him in a fierce red tide, washing away his reason and leaving only the urge
to expunge the life from the vile creature writhing under him. To avenge Keri Izzak and Angel and her mother and every one of the countless faceless innocents who had suffered at his hands, to—
His spectral fingers closed around the old man’s spinal cord and he braced himself to rip it right out of his body.
He took a deep breath, gathering himself to—
—to become a killer, now that he could be a healer again.
He let out a furious, frustrated growl. Changing his grip, he expertly and ungently snuffed out Brother Fist’s consciousness.
But not his life.
Marchey sagged back, panting for breath and shuddering from the effort it took to get his emotions back under control, sickened by how close he had come to committing murder.
After a minute he heaved himself to his feet, gasping as the pain from the gash in his back came rushing back almost hard enough to knock him down again. Biting back a moan, he closed his eyes and recentered himself, then reached awkwardly behind him and closed the wound. He didn’t wipe all the pain away; the residual ache would be a reminder to be more careful.
Now what? he asked himself, looking around dully.
He found himself drawn back to gaze down at the sleeping form of Scylla.
No, he reminded himself, Angel
She looked so peaceful. Almost, well, angelic.
But sooner or later she would waken. What then?
She would need help, probably more help than anyone else in this terrible place if she was going to overcome the things which had been done to her. The fairly straightforward task of releasing her from the prison of that exo would only be the beginning of a long, slow, painful process. She had been a thing for years, and it might take just as many years to make her whole again. He would have to make Brother Fist tell him exactly what had been done to her to improve his chances of reversing the damage.
Which brought him to the fallen tyrant. The old monster was neutralized for the moment but would have to be watched closely for his own safety and everyone else’s. There had to be some way to keep him from being killed by those who had ample reason to want him dead, providing a chance to pry his secrets from him before he died.
Thinking about it now, Marchey realized that he might owe Fist something for proving his Oath’s precept that even the meanest human life had value. Abomination that Fist was, he had found a way for the lives of the surviving Bergmanns to have meaning once more.
Maybe so, but he hoped that this unwitting good work tormented the miserable son of a bitch to his dying day.
He had to get word back to Sal Bophanza, let him know that at least part of the dream could be salvaged. Let the others know that the Nightmare Effect was no more.
There were so many things to do. All Ananke was in need of his services. First to mind were a handless man, a scarred and trembling woman, and a one-eyed boy under the shadow of death. After that, who knew how many others.
As daunting as that task appeared, he knew that the wounds of the flesh would be simply and quickly repaired compared to the wounds of the spirit. Those would take him the longest to heal.
Him.
It finally dawned on him that he was assuming that these tasks were his to perform.
His blood went cold, chilled by an icy wave of doubt.
Had it been too long since he’d been anything other than a meat mechanic? Had he lost his touch? Had the years of drinking and apathy and disconnection damned him to be what the last years had made of him, now and forever?
He reached up, invisible fingers tracing the shape of the silver pin hanging from his slashed tunic. First it had been his pride and his hope, then his curse and his shame, and in the end the marker for a dead dream.
And now?
Could it be that this was his chance to begin putting his life back together in a new way? Had he met his own personal knight in shining armor in the form of a silver angel named Scylla, her entering his life as irrevocably changing it as his entering Merry’s had done?
Such thoughts made him uneasy. He knew where he was and what he had to do. That was enough for now.
A world of suffering waited to be eased now that the old order had come apart.
He went and put on his arms, the better to begin picking up the pieces.
3 Diagnosis
Fifteen Days Later
Today is the day.
Marchey didn’t look particularly ready for, or happy about it, however. Slouched on the bench seat of his ship’s galley nook, he had an elbow propped on the tabletop and his chin cupped in one silver hand. His second cup of morning coffee sat in front of him, missing no more than a single disinterested sip.
A pad rested on the plastic tabletop in front of him, its screen displaying the continuing-care files for the people he had been treating on Ananke.
The device might as well have been turned off for all the attention he was paying to it. His eyes were hooded, his gaze turned inward. His thoughts kept skittering away from the task at hand, skipping through the day ahead to circle—but never quite settle on—its end, like moths drawn to a light they dared not approach.
He found it hard to believe that three weeks had passed since he’d found an angel in his temporary room at Litman. More had happened to him in the short time since then than in the three years preceding.
So much had changed since that shanghai visitation. And yet so much remained fundamentally the same, locked imperturbably in old orbits and rolling inexorably onward as if nothing had happened.
There were times it seemed to Marchey that human existence—or at least his—was nothing more than a groove cut into a circular disc of time, just like on an antique phonograph record. ’Round and ’round you whirled, creeping incrementally closer to the music’s end. While the groove did give your life direction, the walls of the track abraded, grinding you down so that you fit it perfectly, and nowhere else. Even if you could jump the track, it would be pointless; you would only set yourself back, or skip ahead to a place you were bound to reach sooner or later anyway.
He shook his head, feeling his mood grow even darker. Picked up his coffee, took a sip, grimaced. It had gone cold.
A glance at the time told him why. Almost half an hour had been spent just sitting there, not quite thinking about all the things trying to creep into his awareness, and yet not completely shutting them out. Contemplating his navel and finding only lint.
He turned the pad off and pushed himself to his feet. There were a hundred loose ends he wanted to tie up before the day was over. He couldn’t afford to waste any more time sitting around playing hide-and-seek with the contents of his head.
Besides, you never knew when something might come up behind you, tap you on the shoulder, and say You’re it.
A drink—even a small one—would have been of immense help, but he had given that up. So far, anyway. Work was the only escape he had left, even though that was at least half of the problem.
Today was the day. No way to avoid it any longer.
So he headed toward the small inship clinic aft of the main compartment, hoping that work would be enough to make him forget, at least for a little while.
—
“Open your hand again.”
Jon Halen did as Marchey asked, still fascinated by seeing it work. He was stretched out comfortably on the soft padding of the shipboard clinic’s unibed, its sides folded down to turn it into an examination table.
Jon loved it here in the clinic. It was so warm and clean and brightly lit. And the air! Sweet and rich as wine—not that some wine wouldn’t be nice, too. Beer, even. After almost a decade of abstinence he wasn’t inclined to be fussy.
The hand in question was a three-fingered claw, the dark brown skin mottled with the startling pink of new tissue. It opened like a mechanical grapple; the stubby, rigid thumb opposed by two short unjointed fingers.
“Close it.”
The thumb and single-phalanged fingers came together like pincers, closing smoothly.
Jon had gotten to the point where he no longer had to concentrate to make them work. He shifted his attention to Marchey’s broad, craggy face, pursing his lips thoughtfully at the grim expression there.
He’d watched the man who had rescued them become progressively withdrawn over the past two weeks, starting just a few days after his arrival. Turning dour and aloof. Putting all the distance he could between himself and everyone else. It was like he’d started leaving them even before the orders came down telling him to move on.
Marchey didn’t notice Jon’s scrutiny. All his attention was focused on the results of his handiwork. He knew he should be pleased by what he had accomplished, but couldn’t help thinking about what he could have done with proper supplies and more time.
“Hey, Doc, you know what I did last night?” Jon asked, a mischievous gleam in his brown eyes.
“What?” Marchey asked distractedly. It looked like he was going to have to admit that this was the best he could do under the circumstances. Jon’s hand had been crushed several years before and healed into a lumpy knot with the unmovable stumps of two fingers remaining. Over the space of four sessions he had freed up the fingers, reshaped fused bone and useless cartilage into a movable strut, molded atrophied muscle and tendon around it. Then he had coaxed nerves back into the rebuilt fingers and new-made thumb, turning a gnarled and useless lump into something at least marginally functional.
Still it looked like something a five-year-old might squeeze from a lump of clay. He shook his head. To think he’d once thought himself something of a sculptor. The problem was that he could only work with what was there. He could redistribute bone and tissue, but not make it out of thin air.
‘‘Pinched Salli Baber.”
That got Marchey’s full attention. “You what?” he asked, staring at Jon blankly, unsure he’d heard him right. His patient grinned up at him, tickled by the reaction he’d provoked.
“Pinched Salli Baber. Right on the ass.”
Marchey couldn’t keep a grin from creeping onto his own face. “You pinched her.”
Jon chuckled and nodded, then demonstrated his technique. “My fingers. Her fanny. Yow! You shoulda seen her jump!”
Flesh and Silver Page 15
