Fist had sent Scylla to check on Salli after her coworkers had carried her limp, bleeding body back into the living cubic. She had given them permission to remove the steel and stone splinters which had turned one side of her body to bloody meat, and at Fist’s behest, given them a coagulant and antibiotic spray to use on her. This departure from the ban on secular medicine came about because Salli was their best surviving drill operator and Fist didn’t want to lose her.
Nobody had mentioned the contradiction.
Nobody had suggested giving her any sort of painkiller. Not Fist, not herself, and least of all her comrades from the mines. They knew she was getting better care than most, and asking for such a forbidden thing would have earned them punishment.
Salli’s head moved from side to side, as if denying wakefulness. Angel called her name.
The woman on the pallet moaned as the stim reeled her back to consciousness. Her head rolled in Angel’s direction, and her brown eyes snapped open, bulging in terror as the fearsome silver afterimage burned into her retinas was replaced by the real thing.
“Forgive me—!” she cried, cringing back and flinging up her hands to ward Scylla off. As if that ever could have stopped her.
Angel hugged herself tighter, blinking her one green eye against the dampness she felt welling in it. “It’s all right, Salli,” she said soothingly, forcing the words past the constriction in her throat. “It’s just me. Angel. Not Scylla. I will not hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me?” Salli repeated in a small voice, sounding unconvinced. She peered past her upraised hands.
“I will never hurt anyone ever again,” she answered with a quiet certainty. “I—I am sorry I scared you. You scared me, and I overreacted.”
Salli’s hands fell and she stared back in wide-eyed disbelief. “I scared you?” she said, surprise replacing her fear.
Angel forced a smile onto her face, carefully keeping her teeth hidden. “Startled me, anyway. I forgot you were coming.” That last was half a lie; it was more a matter of someone else filling up every corner of her thoughts.
The other woman returned a tentative smile that let the knot in Angel’s chest begin loosening. “I think maybe I better knock louder next time,” she said with an uneasy laugh, sitting up and looking around. “I brought you some things…”
“I will get them.” They were scattered all over the threshold where they had fallen. Angel went after them, careful to move slowly.
Salli was on her feet by the time Angel had gathered up the articles of clothing and carried them back.
“Thanks,” she said. She selected one item, dropped the rest on the bed. “Let’s see what we have here. I’ve had most of this stuff hidden away for years.” She shook out the pair of pants she’d picked out, then held them up against Angel’s waist.
“Too small.” Salli tossed them aside, rummaged around and found another pair. “Maybe. The color suits you.” She put them aside for the final cut. Next she pulled out something small and sheer, looked at it, then at Angel’s sexless, silver-sheathed body.
“I guess you don’t really need panties, do you?” she said, chuckling as she tossed the silky undergarment atop the discarded pants. “Or a bra, for that matter. You could probably park an ore truck on them babies and they wouldn’t sag.”
Angel didn’t know how to answer that. She watched Salli start pulling one item after another from the pile and measuring them against her. Before long she was chatting away as if nothing had happened, telling Angel about her first bra and her first pair of something called “crotchless panties” while she picked out things for her to wear.
Angel only stood there in wide-eyed dismay, stiff as a pot-metal mannikin. This was a lot more than she had bargained for when she asked Salli to help her dress like a regular woman for her final chance to see Marchey. All the different cuts and colors bewildered her. The rules for matching the various items seemed incomprehensible.
Getting the right things picked out would not be the end of it, either. Then she was going to have to ask Salli to help her put them on.
Rack her brain as she might, she could not remember ever getting dressed like a normal person. The girl she’d been before being turned into Scylla must have worn such things, but she couldn’t remember it.
—
Marchey put the pad aside, his throat dry from almost an hour of straight dictation.
But he was done. The pad now contained the proper procedures for dealing with anything likely to come up with any of the patients he was leaving behind. The tap of a button copied it into the old Medicomp. He’d put new MedMems in both the pad and the Medicomp for Mardi and Elias to fall back on, but this would be faster and easier. All either of them would have to do was name the patient and his or her symptoms. The pad would search out the proper response and walk them through the correct course of action. It wasn’t quite the same as being there, but it would have to do.
He settled back, taking a last look around the room. The Kindred had given him this cubby to use as a combination office and guest room just a couple days after his arrival. The rough-walled room contained the old Medicomp and chair along one side, and a bed at the far end. Along the other side they had placed a couch, table and chair set taken from Fist’s chamber to give it a homey feel. It was supposed to be a place of his own here. They’d even put his name on the door, as if hanging out his shingle for him.
By then he had come to his senses enough to realize that he didn’t belong here, and his stay would be temporary. There had been no polite way to turn it down, but he had used it as little as possible. The bed had never been slept in.
He poured a cup of water from the carafe at his elbow and took a sip. It was flat and tasteless. It eased the scratch in his throat, but did none of the things another sort of drink would do for him. A glance at the clock told him that the time for what he thought of as the Final Appointment had finally come around. Angel was due to show up any minute now.
Thinking about facing her only made him want a real drink all the more.
Just one more. That old familiar refrain.
Less than ten seconds’ indecision passed before he reached toward his pouch for the small flask he’d brought with him in case he needed another shot of nerve tonic. No sense in letting such careful preparations go to waste.
Just as his hand closed around it he heard something thump against his door.
—
Angel stood before the door to Marchey’s cubby, the present she had brought him clutched in one hand, the other poised to knock. She stood there like that for over a minute before she let her hand fall, admitting to herself that she had made a mistake.
She looked down at herself. The problem was with the clothes. She had worn a pair of coveralls once, using them to disguise her silver body when she had ventured into the steel corridors of the hospital wheel to kidnap Marchey. Fist had occasionally bidden her to wear a white ceremonial robe.
But all that had happened in another life. Those things had not been worn so that she might look like a normal woman. So she might look, well, pretty.
For all the life she could remember her silver armor had been enough. Never once had she felt a whisper of shame or self-consciousness. She hadn’t even known that all the things which made her a woman were hidden under there.
Now she did know, and covering the places other women covered made her acutely aware of them, secret places that felt suddenly exposed by being doubly hidden.
All she had wanted to do was try to breach the wall he had thrown up between them, a wall that might as well have been built from meter-square blocks of nitrogen ice, it was so palpably cold and solid.
Scylla would have torn the wall down and forced him to acknowledge her. To Angel, it looked insurmountable.
In the beginning he had been so kind and warm. He smiled when he saw her, that smile making her feel like her insides were filled with warm syrup. He took time to talk to her, tried to make her laugh. He call
ed her Angel, and when he said that name it made her want to be Angel more than ever.
Then suddenly one day the warmth and kindness were gone. It was almost as if he’d gone to bed one night as one man and woken up the next as a stranger.
From that moment on he had begun treating her with a brusque impatience that left her hurt and bewildered. He would grimace when he saw her, as if the sight of her pained him, and speak only in monosyllables, if at all.
Sometimes she thought that maybe he still saw her as Scylla, as the monster who had threatened his life and hurt him. Or maybe he was angry at her for refusing to let him release her from her exo. Maybe she simply didn’t deserve his attention. Hadn’t earned it. Maybe it was all that and more, each reason another block in the wall.
When she had found that he was going to leave, she had thought she was going to die. She had gone to him, and though she had wanted to beg him to stay, she had only asked that he give her an hour of his time before he left. He had grudgingly agreed, and she had kept herself away from him since then so that he would not have an excuse to change his mind.
Now that fateful hour had come around, and with it her last chance to break through. She had thought that maybe if she looked different he might see her differently. But this was not going to work. The blouse and slacks were only making her so nervous that she was sure to make a fool of herself.
So she put his present on the floor and began trying to figure out how to remove the blouse. She remembered that it had fastened up the back—for reasons Salli had not been able to make entirely clear. She reached behind her and began fumbling at the buttons.
Either the exo limited her range of motion just enough to make the operation impossible, or dealing with things such as pearl buttons was an arcane, acquired skill. No matter how she contorted herself, she could not get even one button loose. Finally she abandoned that approach and tried to pull the blouse off over her head.
Only to get hopelessly stuck when she had it half on and half off. She wriggled and writhed in rising desperation, face trapped in a fold of silky cloth, unable to see, afraid she would tear the fragile thing, and wishing she had learned to curse.
Now in full-blown panic, she shuffled and shucked and spun, only succeeding in kicking over the present she had brought.
She heard it skid across the stone floor. Her heart froze when it clunked up against the foamstone door panel. Moments later she heard the door open, followed by the surprised sound of a sharply indrawn breath.
Her first impulse was to shred the source of her humiliation into a thousand pieces as she ran away to hide. But this was her last chance to see him, and she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away.
Angel made herself stand there, her hidden face red with shame as she waited for whatever happened next.
—
The sight that greeted Marchey when he opened the door stopped him cold. His eyes went wide as he saw Angel there in the tunnel, apparently being eaten by a shirt.
He almost laughed, but caught himself in time. After a moment he figured out what had probably happened. Like a child unskilled in dressing herself, she had gotten tangled up in the blouse that she was trying to either take off or put on.
Doing his best to keep a straight face, he went to her aid. “On or off?” he asked gently.
“Off!” came the muttered, muffled reply.
“Off it is.” He didn’t have any trouble getting it unbuttoned and peeled off her, even though it had been several years since he had helped a woman undress. There was something subtly erotic about it.
Or maybe not so subtle. When he stepped back it seemed like a good idea to hang on to the shirt and hold it in front of him.
Angel looked miserable, her pale face pinked with embarrassment. She stood there with her head bowed, staring at her feet as if trying to figure out how to kick herself.
Marchey’s heart went out to her. He was all too aware that she was caught somewhere between childhood and womanhood, with a stiff dose of delayed adolescence thrown in to make things even more difficult. Added to all that was her hardly knowing how to be a person.
The only way out of it was to pretend that nothing had happened, a coping mechanism that was hard to beat for all-around usefulness. So he bent down to retrieve the object on his doorstep. It was obviously a bottle, carefully wrapped in a piece of cast-off insulating foil. “For me?”
Angel nodded, refusing to look at him.
“Are you going to come in so I can unwrap it?”
She peeked shyly up at him. “Are you sure unwrapping me was not enough for you?”
Once he’d thought she didn’t have a sense of humor. But she did, which as much as any other indicator told him that she had a chance to be a whole person again. This proved she also had timing.
At last it was safe to laugh. It felt good. It felt even better when he saw a sheepish smile creep out onto her face.
Angel followed him inside, hovering near the door, her hands nervously plucking at the material of the slacks she was still wearing as if trying to get rid of them one thread at a time.
“Why don’t you sit on the couch?”
“All right,” she said, edging over and sitting down on one end, her back ramrod straight. She looked up at him, her pale face solemn.
He smiled at her. “Let’s see what we have here.” The foil peeled away, and what a surprise, it was a bottle. His eyebrows climbed his forehead when he saw the label, and he had to take a second look to be sure he was reading it right.
“This is real single-malt scotch. Bottled in Scotland,” he said softly, staring at Angel in amazement. “It’s over seventy years old!”
Angel ducked her head. “I remembered you liking to drink that on the trip here. I—I hope it is still good, being so old and all.”
Marchey chuckled. “Oh, I’m sure it is.” He hefted the bottle in his hand, trying to guess its value. A couple hundred credits would probably just buy a shot—if an open bottle could even be found. “Where did you get it? Has this place got an AlkaHall nobody’s told me about?”
“No,” she answered seriously. “Broth—uh, my old Master had boxes and boxes of different kinds of bottles stored away.” A frown appeared as she tried to remember the different kinds. “He had brandy, other kinds of whiskey, gin, vodka, bore—borebon? And wine. All kinds.” She jumped up. “I can go get you some more. Just tell me what you want. Or I can take you there.”
It was a tempting offer. If this was any example of what the old monster had stashed away, it had to be an alcoholic treasure trove, a tippler’s Shangri-La.
But this bottle was the one she had picked out for him. One diamond alone is a treasure. When you have a whole sackful no one gem can have the same value and meaning.
“That’s all right.” He patted the bottle fondly. “You brought me the best one of the whole bunch.”
“You are sure?”
“Positive.” A thought occurred to him. “You might take Jon Halen and Elias Acterelli there, though. Let them, ah, inventory the stock.” They would dole it out fairly, and if anyone deserved a stiff drink, it was the people of Ananke. He also knew that Mardi and Elias had quietly begun assembling a beer-brewing setup in a storage room just off the infirmary. It would be algae beer, since that was the only raw material they had on hand. Fist’s stock would tide them over until they got into production.
“All right.” She sat back down, perching on the edge of her seat as if ready to bolt and run. Her nervousness was painfully obvious. No doubt she was working herself up to something, and it wasn’t too hard to guess what.
Fortunately he knew how to deal with both matters at once. He had planned to keep their meeting short and formal. Somehow that hadn’t worked out, but this might work out even better.
“Well, Angel,” he said, “I think we ought to sample a little of this wonderful stuff. How does that sound to you?”
“I do not—” She made a helpless gesture, a jittery lift of her hands and
shoulders. “I mean I do not know how. I have never consumed alcohol before.”
“Then it’s high time you learned.” He found two cups and put them on the table, then cracked open the bottle. “Don’t worry, you’re in the hands of a very experienced teacher.”
—
Half an hour later Marchey was slouched in the chair, his cup in one hand and his feet up on the table between it and the couch. He was feeling pretty good. The scotch was even better than he had thought it would be; taste and bouquet incomparably smooth, yet with a kick like a caber applied to the cerebrum.
Angel had been unsure if she really liked the taste or not, and the modest amount she had consumed had hit her hard. No surprise there; hundred-proof whiskey is not exactly an ideal drink for beginners.
Her earlier nervousness had been replaced by an almost feline abandon. She was sprawled across the couch, staring dreamily into space with a vague smile on her face.
Marchey took another sip, savoring the taste on his tongue as he contemplated his drinking partner.
Although it was not something he was particularly comfortable thinking about, he had to admit that she was attractive. Hell, she was beautiful. Who could have guessed that there had been a face so sweet under the tattooed horror?
Her filed teeth and the blank glass lens that replaced one eye did little to detract from her beauty. They were nothing more than repairable conditions his eyes automatically subtracted. In fact, he’d gotten to kind of like her teeth. As for her exo, it revealed enough of her form to make him wonder what was hidden. She’d come up with a pearl necklace from somewhere. The strand was looped around one tidy silver breast in a way that kept pulling his eye back again and again.
Her physical appearance accounted for only a small part of her allure. There was a freshness about her, a beguiling innocence. An inviting vulnerability completely at odds with the indestructible shell surrounding her body.
Then there was her eagerness to please him. The awe and yearning and yes, even the love that shone in her eyes when she looked at him. Any man would find that hard to resist. Especially one with far too many years of celibacy under his belt, so to speak. He found her so frighteningly enticing he dared not let himself be around her.
Flesh and Silver Page 18
