Few others would do such a thing, perhaps fearing that touching her exo would somehow summon up Scylla like some terrible genie from inside her. The reaction of the children was more typical. They gave the silver-skinned ex-angel cautious smiles and as wide a berth as the tunnel allowed.
It was not that she did not want to be free of the armor in which she had been an unwitting prisoner. She hated it now. The gleaming biometal had gone from a source of pride to a mark of shame, tarnished by the blood of innocents and creaking with the memory of mindless cruelty.
At last she reached her destination, passing through the massive steel door that had once barred the way to the chapel and the chambers off it, including what had once been Fist’s inner sanctum. Now it remained open wide, welcoming any and all back into the place which had been the center of the Kindreds’ faith.
The chapel was one of the few rooms they had managed to complete before Fist’s advent, the work of their finest artisans. Angel entered, sparing not a single glance at the radiant solar clockwork overhead or the intricately-set mosaic floor.
It was the altar table at the far end that had her whole attention. The webbed restraints that had once been bolted to it were gone now. She had torn them off herself. But bloodstains still darkened the scarred top of the white-stone slab, left there as a testament to those who had bled upon it.
A shudder passed through her. As always, the sight of the altar brought back memories of the “penances” she had meted out, and confessions she had extracted on it as Fist’s punishing angel.
Although still in a hurry, she took the time to stop and kneel, her heart tightening in her chest.
In days since Fist’s fall the altar had been quietly turned into a shrine to those who had been lost, lovingly created and tended by those who survived and remembered. A single precious real beeswax taper burned in a tall holder, its soft, lambent glow giving the objects spread across the bloodstained white stone the golden aura of cherished memories.
Indeed, that was what they were.
Dozens of flat and solido pictures of those who had died during Fist’s reign of terror had been placed there. The faces were of every age and sex and color, each of them frozen in a moment from an innocent past. Scattered among them were other momentos. Locks of hair tied in bits of wire or ribbon. Wedding rings and inscribed bracelets. Lockets opened to show a face or faces that had been carried near the heart. Medals. A briar pipe with a well-chewed stem. A china bird with a broken wing. A pair of wire-framed eyeglasses, one lens cracked down the middle. An antique leather-bound Bible and a broken compad diary.
Dried flowers, their faded petals as fragile as the life that had once been in them.
The list went on, but of all the things that had been so loving placed there, she was always the most deeply touched by the saddest testimonials of all. These were toys that had outlived the children they had belonged to. There was an air of hopeless abandonment about them. The dolls and stuffed animals looked mournful, bereft, their staring eyes searching forlornly for the lost one who had loved them.
Angel blinked back a tear in her one green human eye. The blank-glass lens that replaced the other looked on with dry indifference.
There was little of her own childhood she could remember, no more than uncertain whispers. It had been torn from her mind and discarded as useless. Gone with her childhood were all but the most fleeting memories of her mother. The moment she remembered most clearly was the one she most wanted to forget, that moment when as Scylla she had killed her mother. She could recall only shards of that act, but they were vivid and sharp enough to cut her to the quick each time they surfaced.
Once she understood the purpose of the shrine, she had tried to find something of her mother’s to put up there. After two days of fruitless searching she had given up, forced to admit that not a trace of Anya remained.
So she had made a vow that one day she would lay the silver skin of her exo down among the other offerings to the past. Until that time she would remember her mother and all the other dead by serving the living as best she could.
Angel raised her arms, holding her hands toward the altar, candlelight glinting off the polished metal. A mental flick of the wrist sent the ceramyl talons sliding from their sheaths. Try as she might, she could not entirely suppress the traitorous Scylla-thrill it set off.
“This is what I was,” she said in a husky whisper, addressing the dead gathered about her in the quiet chapel. “I still bear the mark of what I was, and it grows heavy on me…”
She bowed her head, leaving the rest unspoken. There were some things she could not say aloud, and the deepest, most secret reason for wanting to shed the angel skin was one of them. Her mother and all the other dead knew what was in her heart, she was somehow sure of that. All she could do was hope they could forgive her for her selfish secret desires.
“I will never hurt one of yours again,” she promised, retracting her claws. She gazed up at the altar, and speaking as if laying down Law to herself and whatever of Scylla remained inside, added, “I will never hurt anyone ever again.”
She stood up, comforted by the renewal of her promises to them and to herself. Even so, she knew that in the end promises weighed no more than the breath on which they were spoken. That was one of the few truths she had learned from her old Master. Only actions had real weight; only the keeping of a promise had value or meaning.
Promises. They were holding her together and tearing her apart.
She had made a promise to prove that she was no longer a monster before she allowed herself to shed the skin of the one she had been. That promise had turned into an iron collar around her neck. Yet she could not bring herself to break it, not even now, when it looked like it might cost her release and acceptance and everything else she dared want for herself.
This seemed to be one of the many prices of becoming human.
—
Marchey did as much of his work as possible on his ship.
His main excuse was that his small inship clinic was better equipped than anything Ananke had to offer. While that was true, it wasn’t the whole truth.
He felt safer there. More in control. It was his place, it was where he belonged. At odd moments he thought about Ella locked away in a fortress of her own making, and found himself all too easily able to understand her fanatic reclusiveness.
Staying onboard also served to remind his patients that his stay was only temporary.
Still, he had to make rounds at the half-assed hospital he’d helped put together, and there were certain chores that had to be done in the office where the medicomp that had belonged to Ananke’s former doctor had been set up.
There were no more patients to be seen that day. The end was in sight. All that remained was a bit of work in the office, his Final Appointment, and a last swing through the hospital. Then he could finally get the hell out of here.
“Dr. Marchey!”
It was a high, childish voice that called his name from somewhere behind him. He heard running footsteps, turned to see who it was.
Danny Hong skidded to a halt before him. Looking at him now, it was hard to believe that this was the same sick and frightened boy he’d seen when he first arrived on Ananke. His golden skin glowed with returning health. His straight black hair stuck up in every direction, as if set on end by all the energy inside. A white bandage covered the empty socket that had once contained the dangerously infected remains of one eye. A lopsided, long-lashed eye had been crudely drawn on the bandage with a black marker.
“Nice peeper, Danny,” he said, pointing. “Did you draw it?”
“Yes sir. Well, Jimmy and ’Lita helped.”
He nodded approvingly. “Good job. Pretty soon you’ll get a real one.”
Eyes had been on the list of needed tissues he’d sent to MedArm. There had been no way to save Danny’s eye; gangrene had been too advanced. Even using conventional technique implanting a new one would have taken an hour at the most, but
there had been none in his ship’s small tissue bank. Nor had he been able to return sight to a woman who had been blinded by exposure to vacuum, or replace the steel-and-glass lens filling one of Angel’s eye sockets.
The boy gave a squirming shrug, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I guess.” He bit his lip, then squinted up at Marchey with his good eye. “I wish you didn’t have to leave.”
“I have to, Danny,” he said gently. ‘There are other sick people who need me.”
A glum nod. “I guess. I—well, I wanted to tell you a secret before you left. ’Lita said you can tell a doctor anything and it stays a secret.”
“She’s right. Secrets are part of our business. What’s yours?”
Danny looked around to make sure they were alone, then lowering his voice to a whisper, said, “I know how to read and write, sir.”
Marchey blinked in surprise. “Is that so?” He’d been expecting something more along the lines of an adolescent confession of confusing physical urges. Danny was about the right age for such things.
“Yes, sir. Brother Fist said we kids weren’t s’posed to learn such stuff, that he and God would teach us everything we needed to know. But my mom, she taught me anyway. She made me promise never to tell anybody. She said it was our little secret. But now I guess it’s okay to tell you, isn’t it?”
Another of Fist’s nasty little policies coming to light. Not that the old tyrant was the first god-pounder who preferred his flock to remain as ignorant as possible.
He bent down so that he and the boy were eye to eye. “It’s okay to tell everybody now.” He riffled the boy’s hair. “God gave you brains so you could use them. Knowing how to read and write is a wonderful thing. It’s something to be proud of, something you might even want to help teach the other kids.”
Danny absorbed this solemnly. “Then it’s not bad, not a ’bomination?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. Let me tell you something, Danny. Your mom was very wise and brave. Even though she knew it was dangerous, she passed on to you the most precious thing she possessed because she knew it was important. Saying that it was bad was the abomination.”
Danny’s mother had been dead for over a year, the boy all on his own at the age of thirteen and put to work in the mines like an adult. Jimmy and ’Lita Chee, their own daughter four years dead, had taken him in since Fist’s fall. Families like this were springing up all over Ananke, like determined flowers sprouting from scorched earth.
“You should be proud of her and proud of yourself. Every time you read something you should remember her.”
“I do. I read every minute I can.” The boy hesitated, scuffing the ground with his toe, then peered at him slantwise. “I write stuff, too,” he said quietly.
Before Marchey could ask what kind of stuff, the boy spoke in a rush, as if letting out something he’d kept bottled up far too long. Or getting it said before he lost his nerve.
“That’s what I want to do when I grow up. I want to write about my mom. About what happened to her. About what happened to Jimmy and ’Lita and everybody else here. About how Brother Fist did such bad things to us. I want to write about you changing Scylla from an angel into our friend, and how that saved us all from Brother Fist. I want to make sure everybody knows about it, and if I can get it all written down just right, then nobody’ll ever forget about my mom and everybody else, will they?”
Marchey stared at that small earnest face in dismay. He could see that the boy was frightened: of having said his dream out loud, of chancing exposing it to ridicule, of its sheer size and difficulty. But the boy’s face was set with determination to achieve what he had set for himself in spite of his fear, in spite of everything. Like a mirror into the past, it reminded him of the burning sense of purpose he’d once had himself. To be a doctor. To be the best doctor ever. To do what other doctors could not…
What could he say? That the curse of humanity was forgetfulness, and history was nothing but generation after generation repeating the same mistakes? That idealism was the surest road to disappointment, and the higher you set your sights the more certain you were to fall short?
“I—” he said around the lump in his throat, “I think you’re right. I also think your mother would be very proud of you. I know I am.” He offered the boy one silver hand. “Good luck.”
Danny shook it solemnly. His hand was small, but his grip was firm and sure.
—
Even though it was a constant reminder of a past she desperately wanted to put behind her, Angel had not been able to make herself give up her old cubby in a side room off the chapel. It was one of the few things in her life that had not been changed beyond all recognition by Marchey’s arrival and Fist’s fall.
She had another reason for keeping it. One darker and more complex, one that made her feel guilty and weak and unworthy.
Ashamed of what she was doing but helpless to stop herself, she crossed to the big multifunction communit at the end of the room. Trying to ignore the sense of sin she felt, she took it off standby and sat down on the end of her pallet, remote in hand and eyes on the meter-square main screen.
Then she began scanning through the hidden surveillance cameras, searching for Marchey the way she had once used them to sniff out indolence and blasphemy. Viewpoints bloomed and vanished in quick succession on the main screen, the tick of her thumb against the button the loudest sound in the room.
Finally, she found him approaching the door to the cubby he had been given, just down the tunnel from the makeshift hospital.
The pickup zoomed in until his head and shoulders filled the screen. She glanced down at her hand, surprised to see one silver finger on the stud which had called for the closeup.
She knew it was wrong to spy on him like this, but could not seem to help herself. From the moment when he had first touched her, first called her Angel, she had been drawn to him. The pull was constant and terrifyingly strong. It was like nothing she had ever experienced, and far too powerful to be denied by fear or shame.
Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she got off her pallet and drifted closer to the screen.
Sadness whispered through her. He looked so tired. There were bags under his eyes. His broad shoulders were slumped as if his silver arms weighed a hundred kilos each, and some vast unseen weight had been piled on his back.
Angel automatically switched to the pickup inside the cubby as he pushed through the door. She tabbed the sound on. Now he was coming toward her, sitting down, taking up a pad.
She watched him work, broad forehead wrinkled in concentration and his voice a soft murmur. It wasn’t until her metal-clad fingers clicked up against the smooth unyielding surface of the screen that she realized she had reached up to touch him. Trying to regain that momentary contact, that scary and splendid connection, which had since eluded her.
“Angel?”
She jumped, the sudden, unexpected sound from behind her catching her so completely off guard that her old angel-self responded reflexively. In the blink of an eye she snatched her hand back and whirled around to face the intruder, crouching down and preparing to pounce. She bared her teeth, legs coiling themselves to fling her across the room in a single bound, her hooked fingers ready to sprout gleaming blades.
Her exo-accelerated senses gave her ample time to recognize Salli Baber. To realize that there was no threat. To understand that once again she had allowed her old reflexes to betray her.
Salli’s reactions only worked at normal human speed. Even as Angel was untensing and beginning to damn herself for her lapse, Salli was paling at the sight she presented. Her mouth stretched into a frightened O and the stack of folded clothing she carried went flying from her hands like startled birds.
Angel compounded her first mistake with a second. She saw Salli’s legs start to fold under her and acted instinctively. Her amped systems empowered her to cross the room and catch the woman before she was even halfway to the floor.
Her intent
ions might have been good, but fear of the silver-skinned angel of vengance had been so deeply hammered into Anankeans’ psyches that most of them were still haunted by the stalking spectre of Scylla in their dreams. Salli let out a strangled squeak of terror and fainted dead away, her brown eyes rolling back into her head.
Angel stared down at the unconscious woman in her arms for several long seconds, faced with further proof of her own inadequacy. Shoulders slumped in defeat, she carried Salli to her pallet and gently laid her down on it.
Face tight with fury and shame, she shut off the monitor, then rifled through her drawers in search of a stim. Finally she found one, and trying to keep herself from thinking about how she had last used one on a man who had passed out during an atonement, pasted it on Salli’s neck.
Then she stepped back out of Salli’s line of sight, hugging herself as she pensively watched over her and waited for the stim to take effect.
Salli was a wiry, dark-haired woman in her early forties. Like so many others, Fist had made her a widow. Although of average height and fairly muscular, the baggy black coverall she wore made her look smaller. Like everyone else, the years of Fist’s rule had left her painfully thin. No one got fat on two bowls of processed algae a day.
Her face was of the sort you would call handsome, good bones and too much character to be merely pretty. Her olive skin was almost completely smooth and unblemished now. Before Marchey had arrived and worked on her, the left side of her face had been twisted and ridged with rough brown scar tissue, a puckered hole large enough to let her broken teeth show through punched in one cheek. That whole side of her body had been similarly scarred, and her left arm had been weak and stiff.
Angel could not keep herself from remembering when Salli’s accident had happened. An overage, under-maintained BoresAll head had exploded. One worker had been killed outright, decapitated by flying steel and stone. Salli had been standing a bit behind him, and so partially shielded from the blast by his body.
Flesh and Silver Page 17
