Fist had watched him stone-faced and silent through the whole process. “What is it?” he rasped.
“Phoban scotch.” He shrugged. “It isn’t as good as the stuff you had stashed away on Ananke, but it beats the hell out of the recycled piss you get from the dispenser.”
Fist’s pus-colored eyes narrowed in calculation. “Why?”
“Well, you see they use real malt for one thing, and age it in genuine wood barrels shipped all the way up from Earth. That gives it a—”
“Silence,” the old man hissed. “I ask why… you have… brought it to me.”
“Sorry.” Marchey took a sip of his drink, smacked his lips. “I wanted you to help me celebrate going all the way off the wagon.”
A slow blink as that information was absorbed and processed. “Why have you decided… to become… a worthless drunk again?”
“A talent like mine is a terrible thing to waste,” he answered with a chuckle.
Fist stared up at him. “You amuse… only yourself. Or are you afraid… to tell me?”
Marchey shrugged, his grin turning into a grimace. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He jerked his chin in Fist’s direction. “You’re so goddamned smart, why don’t you tell me?”
“Everything,” Fist whispered, “is falling apart.”
Marchey hung his head. “Yeah, you’re right. Jon Halen can’t crack any of your files, and I can’t crack you. Sal Bophanza called last night. He’s on the run. MedArm is trying to take over the Institute and start making more of us. They’re up to other stuff I can’t even begin to figure out. Angel has started acting strange, it’s probably my fault, and there’s not one damn thing I can do about it.”
He blinked, took a long slug of his drink. “I can’t stand being back on the circuit, at least not sober. I’m sick of not knowing what the hell’s going on, and I’m tired of beating my head against a brick wall worrying about it.”
An expansive shrug. “So fuck it! I give up! I’ve been a drunk before. It’s not a bad life. It makes everything so much simpler and easier to take. I figure if you can’t cure the disease, you might as well medicate the symptoms.”
He pointed at the siptube. “You could use a dose yourself, old man. You’ve already got one foot in a body bag and the other on a banana peel. So why don’t you join me? Misery loves company.”
Fist ignored the offer. “You are only besieged… not defeated. Surrender is… premature. There might be… a way out… of your strait.”
Marchey chuckled and held up his glass. “Sure is. This is it.” He took another sip. “And it tastes good, too.”
“No,” the old man grated with an impatient shake of his head. “Every dark cloud… has a silver lining.”
Marchey guffawed. “Right. Let’s see. ‘It’s always darkest just before the dawn.’ ”
Fist’s eyes blazed with anger. “Don’t be… a simpleton! Pay attention… to me! Every dark cloud has… a silver lining!” He gasped for breath, winded. “That’s im… portant!”
“And all you need is love,” Marchey returned agreeably, reaching down to pat one bony cheek. “Maybe you’d rather drink alone. I know I do. Less distraction that way.” He saluted Fist with his glass, then turned to leave.
“I’ll be back to check on you in a little while,” he called over his shoulder. “You better enjoy yourself while you can, you miserable old sack of pus. Time’s running out.”
“Remember… what I said!” Fist wheezed, coming as close to a shout as his ruined lungs would allow. “Dark… cloud! Silver… lining! It’s im…portant!”
—
Marchey was on his way to the commboard even as the clinic door slid shut behind him. He dropped into the chair before it, letting out a pent-up sigh of relief.
Jon Halen was already on-line waiting for him, looking apprehensive. He let out his own sigh of relief when he saw that Marchey had survived his visit to Fist’s lair.
“Well, Doc,” he said, “how’d it go?”
Good question. Fist would have smelled a lie even faster than he’d picked up on the scent of whiskey, so he’d had to walk the thin outer edge of the truth, and it had taken total concentration. He felt like he’d just walked a molecule-thin tightrope over a pit full of poisonous snakes, but was pretty sure he’d pulled it off. The trip left his whole body feeling clammy with sweat.
“We’ll know soon enough. Try this phrase on Fist’s files: Every dark cloud has a silver lining.”
“Fist said that?” Jon asked doubtfully.
“More than once.” He held up his silver hands. “It might just open the locked files on the Bergmann program.”
“Well, let’s give her a whirl.” Jon looked offcam and began trying it as a passphrase. Marchey waited, listening to the painfully slow clack…clack of keys from Jon’s end. The residual tension from trying to run a bluff on Fist made him feel edgy and impatient. Jon seemed to be taking forever. He reminded himself that the man had not only to work a keyboard, he was doing it with only half of one hand.
“Holeeeee shit” Jon breathed, looking off-screen in wide-eyed amazement. “We just cracked us open a hundred and sixty-some megs of hard data.” He peered more closely at what was before him, nodding to himself. “You were right, Doc. It seems to be all about the Bergmann Program.”
Marchey slumped back in his chair. His guess that Fist would give him something useful—something to keep him playing—if he thought that his playmate was giving up had been right on the money. The gamble had paid off. The problem was, that didn’t necessarily mean the file contained good news. More likely it was bad. It had only been given up because Fist was sure its contents would make him want to stay involved. There was even a chance that Fist had seen through his bluff and had planned to give him this all along.
There was only one way to find out. “Transmit it to me, would you?”
Jon nodded absently. “Already workin’ on it.” He turned his attention back to Marchey. “There. I’ll wade through it, too, just in case there’s any passphrases to other locked files in it.”
“We can hope, but the old monster doesn’t give away anything for free.”
“ ’Cept trouble. How’d you get this out of him? Torture?”
Marchey shook his head. “I just told him what the situation looks like from where I stand, and convinced him that I was about to give up.” That part hadn’t taken much acting ability. If anything, it was too close to the truth for comfort.
“But you aren’t going to give up, are you?”
“Not yet, anyway.” Not that he felt anything like optimism. If your past predicts your future then he was doomed to failure.
Doomed.
That word had tolled in his mind for two days now. No hour went by that it didn’t knell. He glanced up at the empty scotch bottle he’d brought from Ananke.
Every time he looked at it he thought of her, but he hadn’t made himself put it out of sight.
“By the way,” he said, trying for nonchalance and sounding unconvincing even to himself, “how is Angel doing?”
His insides tightened at the pained look that appeared on Jon’s face. For a fleeting moment he wished he hadn’t asked.
“Not so hot,” Jon said slowly. “She’s been workin’ herself like some sorta machine. Goin’ at it twenty— thirty hours at a knock. She’s eatin’ just enough of that manna stuff to keep body ’n’ soul together. She holes up in her room ever so often, to sleep I guess, and works straight out the resta the time. And—”
He hesitated, obviously trying to decide how much more to say.
Jon’s reluctance to lay more troubles on Marchey’s doorstep was appreciated, but it only made him dread hearing what was yet unsaid all the more.
“Tell me all of it,” he said quietly. “I have to know.”
“All right. Do you ’member Danny Hong?”
Marchey was unlikely ever to forget.
That last time he’d seen him the boy had touched him deeply. Beyond that, he might
well be where he was now because of Danny. Seeing him in the lockbay back when he first arrived on Ananke had been the moment when he had truly begun at least trying to look at what was around him, and trying to do something about it. It had nearly gotten him killed back then.
Now it was just driving him crazy. That was progress of a sort, he supposed.
“I remember,” he said shortly.
“Well, Danny told me he saw Angel in one of the tunnels just last night. He said she was walkin’ funny, like some sort of robot from an old vid, and that her good eye was closed. He swore up and down that she was asleep, or near enough to it to make no difference. So I went to check on her earlier today. She was diggin’ in the mines, usin’ only her hands and claws, and goin’ at it like the devil hisself was whippin’ her on. I had a helluva time getting her to stop and talk to me. She’s lost weight, I think—that exo makes it hard to tell—and looks worn to a ragass frazzle. I asked her if she was okay. She told me she was just fine. Maybe a little tired sometimes, but not to worry ’cause her exo was makin her rest when she needed to.”
“Shit,” Marchey growled, sagging lower in his chair. He knew enough exo tech to recognize what Jon had just described. To make a prognosis.
A combat exo like Angel’s was designed for short bursts of furious activity, not protracted periods of heavy labor. It allowed its human host to drive his or her body far beyond the limits where an unaugmented person would simply collapse. That was something combat exo’d soldiers were constantly warned against, because if they pushed too hard for too long, the exo would be forced to take compensating measures. Partial and total overrides. Controlling limbs that were supposed to control it, and invoked rest periods where it would, if all warnings were ignored, actually partially disconnect her from her own body for her own protection.
Angel had never received proper training. Not that long ago she’d thought the silver biometal covering her was her own skin. She didn’t know that she was forcing the quasi-aware nanostrand linkages spun into her nervous system to weave themselves deeper and wider inside her. To change the nature of their interfacings to meet the excessive demands she was putting on her body.
Serious changes.
Irrevocable changes.
She didn’t know that she was slowly frying her own nervous system and forcing the nanostrands to take an active rather than passive role.
That she was all too probably condemning herself to having to wear that exo for the rest of her life.
—Doomed her, Fist intoned in his mind, looking pleased at the prospect of seeing his lost toy broken.
“Are you all right, Doc?” Jon’s voice seemed to come from a thousand kilometers away. But it was millions, not thousands, wasn’t it? She needed help. And where was he?
He sighed, scrubbing his face as if to wipe away the sense of guilt and hopelessness that had fallen over him. “Yeah.” He had to do something about her, but what? He couldn’t think of anything he could say if he got a chance to talk to her. Judging by his performance so far, he would only make things worse.
Jon was eyeing him with obvious concern, waiting for him to say something. Anything.
“Tell everyone—” he began, forcing himself to sit up straight. Tell them what! Come on you numbnuts excuse for a doctor, prescribe something! You knew she was working. You should have seen this coming.
“Tell them that if they see her, they should try to talk to her, to slow her down and keep her from working. See if you can find something for her to do that isn’t so physically demanding. You’ve got to make her take it easier, make her rest more often.”
“All right,” Jon said carefully. “You’re tellin’ me she’s messin’ herself up by workin’ so hard?”
Marchey nodded, not wanting to elaborate. “Just be subtle about making her ease off. If she figures out what you’re up to, it just might make matters worse.” Because of all that Fist had done to her, she could not help but react badly to someone trying to control her actions. She finally had a will of her own, and would die before she gave even a little of it up.
“Consider it done,” Jon said soberly. “Anythin’ else?”
There probably was, but he couldn’t seem to pull his thoughts together enough to figure it out. “No, not now. I better start going over the stuff you sent me. Stay close to that board, though.”
“I’m livin’ here, practically,” Jon assured him, then cut the connection.
One green pad remained lit on Marchey’s board. It indicated that the new information Jon had sent was waiting for him, ready to be accessed. He sat there staring at it for several minutes, his thoughts more than a million kilometers away.
—
At last he roused himself from his reverie. The time had come to find out what the file contained. He had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to learn anything he really wanted to know.
Only one way to find out.
He reached out and tapped the pad. If nothing else, studying the file would at least give him a temporary escape from the self-recrimination squatting on his chest like a dour and patient vulture, its cry the strangled sound doom.
Marchey’s metal fingers clattered over the keypad in a quicksilver blur. Before giving up his arms he had been a terrible keyboarder. Immediately afterward he’d found that his prosthetics allowed him to type considerably faster than he could voice input or chase menus. The biometal machines that had replaced his meat fingers were untiring and unerring.
He finished instructing the comp with a final burst of machine-gun-fast keystrokes.
READY TO ABSTRACT AND ANALYZE MATERIALS AS PER SPECIFIED PARAMETERS
read the prompt. He hammered the BEGIN key home hard, almost vengefully. Like driving another nail into his own coffin.
WORKING
the comp replied.
PLEASE STAND BY
As if that wasn’t what he’d been doing all along.
Confirm the probable diagnosis with the appropriate tests. That was how any prudent doctor would proceed.
He slumped back and rubbed his bloodshot eyes, wanting a drink in the worst possible way. Craving it so badly his head pounded dully to its call, the vibrations throbbing through his nerves and making them buzz and itch. He could almost smell it. He licked his lips, his mouth watering for the taste.
But he knew he didn’t dare. He’d end up crawling inside the bottle and closing the cap after himself. Once he got inside, it would be a very long time before he came back out again. If ever.
The comp seemed to be taking forever, and alcohol’s siren call was growing stronger by the second. There was no spar to tie himself to, no way to clap his hands over his ears and shut out the strident babble inside his own head. The urge to find something he could hold on to sent his right hand drifting up to caress the silver Bergmann emblem pinned over his heart. His sculpted metal fingers traced the familiar shape delicately, as if probing a wound.
Two silver arms, crossed at the wrists, fingers spread wide. For over fifteen years he had worn that badge, and in turn been worn down by what it represented. It still looked new. He didn’t.
His silver fingers closed around it. He squeezed his eyes shut and ground his teeth together as the urge to tear it off and hurl it across the compartment swept through him like a hot stinging wind, a sirocco of rage and resentment.
Better yet, he could crush it. Mash it all out of shape, just like his life had been warped all out of shape by what it had made of him.
The comp chimed. He opened his eyes and stared at the screen dully.
READY TO DISPLAY ANALYSIS
read the display.
Wonderful. But was he ready?
Because of the way he had instructed it to extract and analyze certain data in the ‘’silver lining” file, he knew there would be a graph. It would show a rising line that documented his fall from illusory grace. It would show him what he should have seen for himself long ago.
Smoldering anger and disgust with himself—wit
h everything—made him clench his hand tighter. Inside his fist the silver emblem began to bend.
He came within a heartbeat of crushing it into an unrecognizable lump before he let his hand fall to his lap. He stared down at the pin. It was bent, but still recognizable. In spite of the way he and the others who wore it had been exploited, it still represented an ideal, and the ideal still lived. He couldn’t let go of it. Not yet.
Marchey made himself sit up straight, stare reality right in the eye, and see his diagnosis confirmed. The touch of a pad put it before him.
He was still a doctor. He knew that you never pronounced something as terminal until you had explored every option.
And if you wanted to excise a malignancy, you had to first find out precisely what kind it was, and how far it had spread.
—
Fist’s crepey eyelids fluttered as the sleepfield’s effects wore off. His breathing quickened.
Marchey waited for him to come around, his hands gripping the unibed’s high sides to keep him from grabbing the old man’s frail shoulders and shaking him awake.
Those pus-yellow crocodile eyes opened slowly, fixed on him. Fist opened his mouth to speak, but Marchey didn’t give him a chance to say a single word.
“Just keep your damned mouth shut and listen,” he said tightly. “I’m not here to play games with you.”
Fist closed his mouth, his eyes hooded and watchful. Something that might have been faint amusement crept out onto his fleshless face.
“I’ve read your ‘silver lining’ file. I know what the Bergmann Surgeons, myself included, have become.” Saying what he had learned out loud was going to be hard, but now that he had faced the facts there was no going back.
“A certain faction inside Med Arm has taken control of our disposition. They’ve made it so that our services are no longer available to the general public.”
Dr. Khan back in the Litman commissary. She’d hinted at this. It had gone right over his head.
His mouth twisted, every word tasting bitter as gall. “We’ve only been used to treat a select coterie of the rich and powerful, or those useful to them. When you had me kidnapped at Litman, I had been brought in to treat the manager of a banking syndicate. One that just happened to hold the notes on mining equipment owned by a wilders’ settlement. I figure those notes are now in the hands of whoever was behind all this.”
Flesh and Silver Page 24
