His voice dropped lower, thick with fury and menace. “MedArm has been corrupted. They’re sending this Helping Hands Foundation to Ananke. You thought that was pretty funny. You know what they’re up to. Tell me.”
Fist said nothing, still looking mildly amused.
Marchey stared down at him. Wanting to wipe that smirk off clear down to the bone. He felt his lips peel back from his teeth, felt the steel top rail under his hands begin to flatten.
“We’re not quite two days out from Botha Station. I don’t think you’re particularly happy about going there. I had a hard time figuring out why. Imprisoning you is no threat, you’re totally bedridden as it is, and you know as well as I do that you’ll be dead meat inside a week—that’s if you last even that long.”
Now he had to venture into a thicket of conjecture, but he made himself smile, as if his guesses were a straight true path through the thorny tangle.
“It seems to me that you have very few things left to lose. One is whatever spoils you took from Ananke. Another is all the nasty secrets you’ve hoarded over the years. Lastly, and I think most precious, is your pride. Which is considerable.”
Fist gave a slight shrug, as if modestly accepting a compliment.
“Botha Station is owned by OmniMat,” Marchey went on, the more he spoke the more certain he was that he’d pieced together at least this one small corner of the puzzle. “UNSRA might be the law in space and on Botha, but OmniMat’s pockets are deep enough to let them buy just about anything they want. The minute they ID you red flags are going to go up all over the place. Odds are that not long after I turn you over to UNSRA, you simply disappear.”
He nodded, watching Fist’s face carefully. “You’d be quite a prize. Not only is every credit you ever stole up for grabs, you probably have all sorts of interesting information about their competitors, about the people they buy from and sell to, and even dirt on OmniMat itself locked away in that rotten old brain of yours. They’d take you off someplace private, shoot you full of drugs, and peel your every secret out of you. You would lose the final round of the game. You would die broken and helpless, humiliated and despoiled.” Fist hadn’t flinched, hadn’t shown the slightest sign of fear or even dismay. That maddening half smile remained, looking like it had been put there by an undertaker.
After a moment it widened, sharp white teeth gleaming between liverish lips. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “That is what… I don’t want.” His tone made it clear that there were still things he did want.
Marchey leaned over him. “You have two choices, old man. Either tell me about the Helping Hands Foundation, the full and absolute truth with the files to back it up, or I turn the sleepfield back on, and the next time you wake up you will be in the hands of people who want everything you know.”
He waited for a reaction, his hands gripping the now flat guardrail, forcing himself to meet Fist’s cold, unblinking stare. The taut silence made his ears ring, and the rising tension was a tightening steel band wrapped around his chest.
Fist gazed back at him, still looking as if he’d found all Marchey had said little more than mildly amusing.
Marchey felt the sweat trickling down his sides and threatening to pop out on his forehead. Fist was going to push it to the limit, to make him back down if he was bluffing.
He clenched his jaw to keep his resolve inside and reached for the sleepfield’s controls, his gaze still locked with Fist’s in a battle of wills where he was fighting as hard as he could and his opponent was scarcely exerting himself.
His hand settled on the touchpad. “Say good night.”
The old man grinned, letting out a bubbling chuckle. “As I have… said before… you are an apt pupil.” His thin hand twitched dismissively. “I concede. You are not bluffing… are you?”
Marchey shook his head, wanting to pant for air but making himself act as if nothing had happened. “No. I’ll still do it if I think you’re lying to me.”
“Yes,” Fist replied agreeably, “I believe… you would. There will be… no need. When I strike a bargain… I stick to it.”
“Like the devil sticks to his deals?” Marchey asked with heavy sarcasm. “Should I change my name to Dr. Faustus?”
The old man let out a hacking chuckle. “Ah, now there… is a name… to conjure with! You flatter me. I am not so… very different… from you. Just a man… who excels… at his art. That is how… I see myself… you know. As an… artist.”
Marchey stared at him. “Is that so?” he asked at last. Fist might just be stalling, but he doubted it. This was probably the overture to the next level of whatever infernal game he was playing.
Although he’d said he was done playing games with the old man, he knew he had only just begun. As the stakes grew higher the chances of walking away from the table diminished. He couldn’t pass up the chance that he might learn something useful. Like it or not, Fist had drawn him into the game, and made sure he’d won just enough to keep on playing. Even this apparent victory was like as not part of the hustle.
“I do. Artistry… may be defined… by a total mastery… over materials… shaped toward a vision.” A sly look crossed his goblin’s face. “Take your old love… Ella Prime… for example.”
The mention of Ella’s name rekindled an ache in the old scar tissue stitched across his heart. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised that Fist knew about her. The sly bastard had proved again and again that Marchey’s life was an open book to him. Dredging up Ella’s name was supposed to be the first blood in this new fencing match.
“All right, let’s,” he returned blandly. Much to his surprise, when he tried to visualize Ella’s face he saw Angel’s instead, and the ache it caused was fresher, sharper, deeper.
If Fist was disappointed at his gambit’s failure, he didn’t let it show. “She is a sculptor. Her chosen material… is clay. Clay is base stuff… unformed earth… unformed man… if you believe… in the fable of god. It is nothing… until her hand… transforms it. I too am a… sculptor of sorts. People and lives… situations… are my clay.”
“People and clay are nothing alike.”
Fist’s wispy eyebrows arched. “You think not?” The ghost of a shrug. “Perhaps you… are right. People are… more common. More malleable. Clay must be… found and dug. It does not… seek the hand. The human herd begs… to be shaped. They let outside influences… be impressed like thumbprints… into the shape… of their lives. They willingly become… slaves of wages… and possessions… of fashion or ideology… of another’s opinion… of religion. They seek… rather than evade… being pressed into… armies… movements… mobs… into any shape… the artist… chooses. They are… an irresistible… material.”
Fist paused, panting for breath after this speech. He held up one skeletal hand to say that he wasn’t done. There was a feverish brightness in his gaze, and his usual ironic tone had been replaced with something like passion.
“As for… the artist… he must create… or else… the fire inside… consumes him. He must make… his works… by his own… vision of beauty. No standard… but his own… has meaning… no critic… may rightly… judge him.”
He dropped his hand, inviting rebuttal.
Marchey couldn’t argue with his assertion that people let their lives be shaped by all sorts of outside forces, few of them worthy; he had only to look at his own life to see the painful truth of that. But he had seen Fist’s “artistry” firsthand.
“You’re an egopathic monstrosity,” he returned bluntly. “Your so-called artistry is nothing more than calculated, conscienceless brutality. Hitler was not an artist, and neither was Van Hyaams.” He shook his head. “You can’t justify your crimes by calling them art. You are a lot of things, old man, none of them any damn good. But I never suspected you to have a weakness for rationalization or self-delusion.”
Fist only smiled. “Perhaps the self… itself… is a delusion. But I digress. You have learned… much from me. I have made… my mark
on you. Yet I am not surprised… you cannot grasp… my aesthetic. Few can. But here is something… within your grasp: One is either… sculptor or clay. Maker… or made thing. There is no… middle ground. One shapes and commands… or is dumb earth… in another’s hand.”
Fist’s gaze narrowed, turning sharp as a poisoned blade, stabbing into Marchey’s eyes and nailing him in place. “That is all… there is to life. Use or be used. Fight or surrender. If you want… to no longer be clay… then look about you. Seek the means. Seize the moment. If you have… a way to shape things… be it tool… or weapon at hand… then use it.”
Marchey shivered, feeling as if a breath of absolute zero had passed over him. There it was: If you have a weapon at hand, use it. He couldn’t make it any more explicit than that, could he?
The weapon Fist was referring to was, of course, his own self. Everything up to now had been a maze of passages leading to this juncture. The climb up the mountain before the high and wide vista of temptation was revealed.
Oh yes, he was tempted. He wanted to make MedArm pay for what they had done to him. That caustic urge churned in his guts; it had an even stronger hold on him than drink. The more he thought about the things they had done, the more his thoughts turned to retribution and revenge.
Now he had been offered the keys to an engine of vengeance. Fist was a weapon, like some unspeakable doomsday computer given human form; tell him what you wanted destroyed, and he would tell you how to reduce it to smoldering ruins. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that even though the old abomination was more dead than alive, he was still more than equal to the task.
Should I change my name to Dr. Faustus? He remembered asking that, not knowing how close to the truth he had come.
There was the rub. No matter how carefully the deal was struck there were bound to be hidden costs. It would be like opening Pandora’s box. There would be no knowing what evils would come of it, and no way to put them back once they had been loosed.
“This has been all very interesting,” he told Fist with a feigned indifference that sounded all too false. “But right now I need information, not philosophy, and you owe me some.”
Fist stared up at him, searching for evidence that he had been tempted, prying at the lines of his face with cold, clever fingers, seeking the slightest crack in his facade.
Marchey pursed his lips. “Is it time for a long nap?”
Fist let out a sigh that might have been either pleasure or exasperation, letting his head roll to the side. “Very well. What was it… you wanted to know?”
“The Helping Hands Foundation.”
Fist squinted up at him with one yellow eye, withered lips twitching into a grim smile. “It’s not going… to make you happy… or make things easier.”
Probably not “Tell me.”
“It is… a Trojan horse.”
Marchey’s heart sank. “Explain,” he said bracing himself to hear the worst.
Fist did explain, expressing some admiration for the scheme’s diabolical design. It wasn’t hard to tell that the old villain was holding nothing back. He obviously thought that finding out just how dire the situation was would only make Marchey all the more likely to take him up on his offer and pay his still-unstated price.
As soon as Fist was through, Marchey raced to the comm to call Jon Halen and give him the bad news.
—
Jon had heard Marchey out, his customary good cheer eroding away, leaving his gaunt brown face looking old and tired, drooping like a sail with the wind taken out of it. His bony shoulders slumped inside the threadbare flowered shirt he wore, skinny arms draped limply over the arms of his chair.
It occurred to Marchey that they were all of them old: himself, Jon, Sal, and ’Milla; old and out of their depths, thrashing about in a shark-filled sea of changes, trying to fight the remorseless currents and stay ahead of the teeth at their feet, too long past the vigor of youth to have much chance of reaching the shore.
Jon squared his shoulders, running his misshapen hand though his gray-flecked black hair. “So what should we do?”
Marchey spread his hands. “Keep them from landing if you can.”
“If we can,” Jon echoed uncertainly. “What if we can’t?”
“I guess you have to try to keep them bottled up in their ship.”
Jon didn’t look particularly excited about Plan B. He leaned closer to the pickup. “Are you absolute sure Fist an’t lyin’ to you about all this?” he asked plaintively. “He’d think trickin’ us into refusin’ doctors and medical supplies was funnier’n a rubber crutch.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Marchey replied tiredly. “There won’t be any real doctors or nurses on that ship, just mercys with enough field medicine training to pass as medicos. You take them up on whatever little help they’ll be able to offer, and it will cost you everything you have left.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Fist has a file on it. The passphrase is Indian Blanket Benevolence.”
Jon frowned and shook his head. “I don’t get the reference.”
“Old Earth history. The settlement of the American West and the subjugation of its native peoples. One of the most efficient and effective strategies for killing off the indigenous peoples so their land could be taken was giving them blankets.”
“Blankets?”
“Blankets infested with highly infectious disease vectors. What looked like a philanthropic act was actually cold-blooded, premeditated genocide. A dozen blankets could wipe out a whole tribe.”
Jon shuddered, looking sick. “They really did that?”
“They did. In this case they don’t want you dead, but in debt. Accept their help, and you’ll be signing over mining rights, equipment, and yourselves as a ready-made work force all at once. I didn’t get all the mechanics, Fist just gave me the high points. It’s all in the file.”
“Just like old times,” Jon muttered darkly. “Here we were thinkin’ we were home free now we was rid of Fist.”
“I know. That’s why it’s imperative that you have nothing to do with the Helping Hands Foundation. If they get off that ship or land supplies, they’ve as good as won. All they have to do is bully somebody into signing the acceptance contract, and I doubt they’ll hesitate at using force.”
“Okay, I got all that, Doc,” Jon said evenly. “But I don’t see how we can keep them off our backs forever.”
“I’m trying to figure something out. If I can’t, I’ll just have to use my fallback plan.”
“Mind tellin’ me what that might be?”
Marchey sighed, not really wanting to say it out loud. “Worse comes to worst I point Fist at the situation and pull the trigger. He knows a way to stop them.”
Jon stared at him, his brown eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re kiddin’ me, right?” he demanded.
“I don’t know if I am or not,” Marchey admitted bleakly. No matter how much he tried to make it sound like there might be some other way out of this mess, he couldn’t see any alternative. All he could do was put it off until the last possible moment.
Jon’s face hardened, and he leaned closer to the pickup. “Listen, Doc, and listen good. That old man fucks over everthin’ he touches. He’ll fuck you over, too, you give him the chance.”
“That’s a definite possibility,” Marchey acknowledged. Once before Fist had given him what he wanted and very nearly destroyed him in the process. It was hard to imagine him passing up another chance.
“There has to be some other way out of this,” Jon insisted, sounding as if he really believed it. “You’ll find it. You won’t haveta go that far.”
“I sure as hell hope you’re right.” Jon’s optimism and faith in him was reassuring, and yet at the same time unnerving. How could they trust him? He’d deserted them, and left them open to this. “The longer you keep them at bay the better my chances.”
“I know I’m right. Anythin’ else?”
“Keep an eye on Angel fo
r me. Keep her out of this. I don’t want her to get hurt.” Any more than she was already hurting herself. Any more than I’ve hurt her myself.
Halen nodded soberly. “We’ll do everthin’ we can. You can count on us.”
He knew he could, too. That was the one gleam of light in the byzantine labyrinth he had somehow strayed into, knowing he wasn’t facing it entirely alone.
But then again, he was the least of those who would suffer if he failed.
—
Angel watched Marchey’s face fade from the big main screen as the connection was broken. Jon’s face had been displayed on a smaller side screen that blanked at the same time, but she never noticed.
She sat quietly at the end of her pallet. The toll taken by the past few days showed in her face. Too many hours of work and too few of rest had pared it down, sharpening the curves and throwing her cheekbones into prominence. Her green flesh eye was sunken and kohled with fatigue.
It had only been by chance that she had taken a moment to stop by her cubby on her way from the minehead to grab a handful of manna before going on to put in a ten-hour shift at the smelter. Only chance that she had been there at just the right moment to listen in on Marchey’s call.
When she had gone into her room her mouth had been set in a grim line that said she was running on will alone. That line had begun softening when she saw his face, and now it was very nearly curved into a smile.
She had come within a heartbeat of breaking in and revealing that she could tap in on their call. It had been seeing the ghostly reflection of her own haggard face on the glassy surface of the screen that had stopped her. As badly as she wanted to make some sort of contact with him, she couldn’t let him see her like this. Now she was glad. The missed chance had become a promising opportunity.
Angel took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
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