Flesh and Silver

by Stephen L. Burns

  He hasn’t forgotten about me.

  He cares.

  It was strange how your life could turn on such a small thing as the admission that you needed to eat. She had heard people use the word fate, but never really understood what it meant before this. Sometimes fate smiles, people said.

  Yes, sometimes it did. Fate had given her a better way of atoning for her life as Scylla. A way to repay the Kindred for their forgiveness. A way of proving that she was Angel and not the hated other.

  A way of helping him, and perhaps even proving that she was worthy of his attention.

  Fate had given her the chance of a lifetime, and she intended to take it.

  She crawled back onto her pallet and set her exo’s internal alarm to waken her in six hours. She would go on as before so that no one would know she had eavesdropped, but would rest more often and eat better.

  Now she had a reason to harbor her strength.

  Angel closed one eye and switched the other off to better see Marchey’s face inside her mind. Her face was placid. A tender smile of anticipation sweetened her lips.

  Even before she fell asleep she was dreaming.

  —

  Marchey sprawled across his bed, his mind as restless as his body was still. You’ve got to sleep, he told himself for the hundredth time, only setting off a new chain of associations and memories.

  To sleep, perchance to dream on if you think you’ve got to think maybe she’ll be all right if only I’d…

  Even if he did sleep, he would only dream of all the things that plagued his waking hours. There was no escape. He felt as if he had fallen into a version of Alice in Wonderland rewritten by Kafka and Dante. A quicksand rabbit hole to Hell.

  He turned his head to stare longingly at the glass on his bedside table. Enough 140-proof grain alcohol to start him down the road to unconsciousness like he had wheels on his ass.

  But would the road really end there? If he drank that magic potion, he could slip free from the bewildering web of conspiracy, deception, and intrigue he had somehow become trapped inside for a time. Once free, would he ever come back?

  Sure he would.

  He turned his head and went back to contemplating the smooth white overhead, mind turning but getting nowhere, like a lame gerbil on a squeaky treadwheel.

  Somehow he’d found himself in the center of this whole mess, even though he was dead square in the middle of nowhere without the faintest idea where to go or what to do next.

  “This is stupid,” he muttered, sitting up and gazing blankly around him. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that he was forgetting something, that there was some critical piece of the puzzle right in front of him. Something so obvious that he kept overlooking it.

  When he was a boy there had been a program called Smiling Stan the Answer Man. Stump him and you won a prize. Where was old Smiling Stan now that he needed him?

  In spite of himself, his gaze was drawn toward the door to the inship clinic.

  —

  “You could turn everything around, couldn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

  A foreboding smile appeared on Fist’s skull-like face, “Several ways. Some quite… delightful.”

  Marchey shivered, snugging his robe tighter about him. He had seen enough of Fist’s works to find it easier to imagine what he might find delightful than was good for his peace of mind.

  “Do you have a conscience?”

  “No,” Fist answered with absolute certainty and no small pride. “Why should I wear… a ring in my nose… so that others might… lead me around by it?”

  Marchey was tempted to follow up on that, but the last thing he needed to hear was that he was agonizing over everything for nothing. That any sense of responsibility or even guilt was only a delusion.

  He had to keep moving, keep hitting Fist with scattershot questions. The old man seemed to have only one weakness. His smug self-assurance made him so sure of himself and his own superiority that he could not resist making his infernal games more interesting by perversely putting possible victory in his opponent’s hands without their knowing it. By dropping cryptic hints, or even whole answers spun in such a way as to seem like questions.

  “Is there—is there really any chance you would give me the passphrases that would access everything you stole from Ananke?”

  That maddening smile grew broader. “Yes. If… properly motivated.”

  That answer caught Marchey by surprise. He had expected coy evasion. “What would you want?”

  “Something which would… please me even more.”

  Marchey knew he was supposed to ask what it was he wanted, so he sidestepped the question. “You aren’t in any position to spend any of your gains,” he pointed out instead, making himself smile. “You can’t take it with you.”

  “Perhaps not.” A dismissive twitch of one bony hand. “Many things… I have accrued… will remain behind… most to never be unearthed. Not much of a memorial… but I cannot think… of many who would raise… a monument in my honor.”

  “What else are you leaving behind?” Marchey could have pointed out that Fist’s memorial was the trail of destruction and misery and death he had left in his wake. What outrages had he committed before coming to Ananke? How wide a swath had he cut?

  Back on Ananke a woman named Elyse Pangborn had begun compiling a list of those who had died under Fist’s reign. Almost three hundred names had been on it when he left, and still all the sorrows had not been counted. He could remind Fist of that, but the old architect of atrocity would probably thank him and turn blackly nostalgic.

  “Unused power,” Fist husked, as if naming a remembered lover. “I am even now… a powerful man. With a few words… I could cause… empires to crumble. Could trample the mighty… under my feet… even though… I can no longer… even stand.”

  It was temptation time again. Marchey doubted Fist was boasting. He had hired out to governments and corporations alike before descending on Ananke like a terrible predator. He would have as a matter of course sniffed out their every weakness and shaken hands with every skeleton in their closets, making certain that he could destroy them if the need—or even just the whim—arose.

  “Do you really like destroying things?”

  Fist regarded him, one wispy eyebrow raised as if surprised he could ask such a crass question. “I like to… change things. It is so easy… it is irresistible. As for the other… Rome was counted beautiful… long after… its empire collapsed… and its… great works crumbled. Destruction… like beauty lies… in the eye… of the beholder.”

  None of that was anything he could, or should even try to argue. He had to try another tack.

  “Do you like being the way you are?”

  Fist grinned slyly. “Do you?” A condescending note entered his phlegmy voice. “At least I am… not what others… have made of me… not blindly playing… a fool’s role… assigned to me.”

  Marchey felt a chill, knowing Fist had just told him something important. He stared at the old man. “What are you telling me?”

  “The obvious.” Cruel humor glinted in his yellow eyes. “Isn’t that obvious?” Haaaaaaaaaaaa.

  Marchey licked his lips. “Go on.”

  Fist shook his head, feeble but unbendable. “This game is played… one move at a time. Now it is your move… my dear doctor.”

  Am I playing some sort of role? A fool’s role at that?

  He shook his head, frowning in concentration. That wasn’t quite what Fist had said. Am I still playing a fool’s role assigned to me? Assigned was a key word, he was sure of it.

  He leaned back in the galley seat, drumming his metal fingers against the tabletop as thoughts rattled through his head.

  What am I doing?

  Going crazy. Wishing I was drunk. Wishing I’d never left Ananke. Wishing I had some way to help Angel. Feeling old and stupid. Playing mind games with a psychopath. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on inside Med Arm while I’m stu
ck on this goddamn ship with the shit about to hit the fan back on Ananke—

  He blinked, gray eyes widening as pieces fell into place with an almost audible click.

  I’m stuck on this ship. Back on the circuit again. On my way to Botha Station.

  But why?

  Because it’s my job, it’s what I do. Because—

  Because MedArm is sending me there!

  He sat bolt upright, a chill running down his back. “Is that obvious enough for you, Doctor Dickhead?” he muttered to himself in sour amusement. His mind raced in a hundred directions as that one simple fact illuminated so many things that had been in darkness. He forced himself to calm down and go through it one step at a time.

  They’re sending me there to treat a single patient they rate as more important than all the people of Ananke.

  Who was the patient? What was wrong with him or her?

  They had never said. No name, no condition. Just the expectation that I would unquestioningly obey orders.

  Why shouldn’t they expect that? He always had.

  He got up and began to pace the carpeted deck, the hem of his robe flapping around his bare legs. That led to a couple obvious conclusions. But there was something else… a further inference nagging at the edge of his thoughts. Two more unconnected pieces drifting closer together, very nearly locking into one.

  Sal said that it appeared MedArm had suddenly decided to take over the Institute and restart the Program right after a way around the Nightmare Effect had been found.

  Now he knew that MedArm—or at least some group inside it—had been using the Bergmann Surgeons to further some hidden agenda of their own by using them to treat only certain people. He and ’Milla and all the others had remained unaware of how their use had been corrupted because the Nightmare Effect made it pointless to try to get to know their patients— not that the speed with which they were shuffled around gave them much chance anyway. That dovetailed so neatly it had to be engineered.

  He turned on his heel, pacing back the way he’d come. Even if he hadn’t stumbled onto the “silver lining” file, the end to the Nightmare Effect meant that sooner or later he and the other Bergmanns would have realized that his patients were almost never your ordinary Joe or Jane. They weren’t stupid. They’d figure it out. When that happened they would be appalled, just as he had been. They would be outraged.

  As a group, they could best be described as battered idealists. Their idealism was what had led them to risk their hands and their careers in the Program in the first place, and its tattered remnants kept them clinging to its promise in spite of the ruin it had made of their lives. None of them had much to lose. Once they figured out how they were being used they would rebel.

  Marchey stood stock-still, having reached the sharpened hook at the end of this chain of deduction.

  When that happened, MedArm would need replacements. They had too good a thing going to give it up now. ’Milla’s comment about them becoming robots that had become too troublesome to maintain had been right on the mark, as had Sal’s remark about better ones being made. Obviously the new group of Bergmann Surgeons would be operating under a very different set of inducements, expectations, and motivations than the originals.

  Back to the obvious, now that at least a little of the murk surrounding the Institute takeover had cleared.

  The patient waiting for him on Botha Station was important to MedArm. One of the select few allowed to receive what the Bergmanns had to offer. More important than all the people of Ananke.

  How important?

  Now there was a question worth pursuing.

  He cinched the belt on his robe tighter and headed toward the commboard. It was about time he found out just who he was going to treat, and why. But he wasn’t going to ask MedArm. No, he was going to give the doctor in charge of the case a friendly call. Colleague to colleague.

  When that was done he was going to permit himself one single weak drink. Not to forget, but to celebrate.

  After all, it wasn’t every day that he went back into private practice.

  5 Intervention

  “Well, Doc, we’ve got us some visitors.”

  Jon Halen was wearing the same flowered shirt he’d worn the day before, only now it was wrinkled and rumpled, probably from being slept in. There was at least two days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks and chin, and deep bags under his bloodshot brown eyes.

  “I told ’em to piss off,” he went on. “They didn’t have no by-your-leave to land, but they ignored me. They overrode the outer landin’ shaft doors somehow and they’re cornin’ on in like they own the place.” He made a face. “Rude bastids.”

  Marchey marvelled at how calm Jon sounded. He wanted to curse and pound on something at the unfairness of it all, but somehow kept his voice even. “Damn. All I needed was another half hour.”

  At this point he was running on fumes. Sleep had been out of the question as the deadline approached, and he’d spent hour after hour going over what information he had, searching for whatever leverage he could find. Now that the moment of truth was nearly upon him he felt unreadier than ever.

  “We’ll try to buy it for you.” Jon grinned. “Hope our credit’s still good. You really think this patient of yours—”

  “Preston Valdemar.” The name of the physician in charge at Botha’s Medical Section was Dr. Raphael Moro. He had given Marchey Valdemar’s name, but refused to disclose his condition or anything else about him. Was that out of simple pique because he’d called the man in the middle of the night and awakened him? Or was it on MedArm’s orders?

  “Right, I remember his name from the Helping Hands file. Let’s hope he has the mojo to call ’em off. How’re you gonna convince him?”

  Now there was a part of his plan he hadn’t let himself examine too closely. “Any way I can.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “Just get me that half hour and keep them from getting a foothold.”

  —

  I will

  Angel made herself tear her gaze away from Marchey’s face on the screen and turned back toward her locker. Inside it was the most certain way of keeping that promise.

  The most certain and the most dangerous.

  She wanted to pray for guidance, but her new self had not yet decided if she believed in God or not— largely because her old self had been so sure of it.

  It was strength she wanted to pray for, because in her weakness she found herself seriously contemplating a course of action which could all too easily end up welding the silver skin of Scylla forever around her. Because now that the moment she had been waiting for was nearly upon her she felt small and afraid, completely unequal to the task she had set for herself.

  There seemed to be only one way to banish the fear. A way that would at the same time make her more than equal to the threat posed by the intruders. All she had to do was reach out and take it.

  Scylla’s silver bracers hung there before her on their charging hooks in the locker. They seemed to gleam with promises of power and completion. They could make everything all right.

  She snatched one off its hook with a sudden, convulsive movement and clamped it against her arm.

  It responded instantly, powering up the moment its receptors touched the scarred bare skin on the back of her left hand. The status display popped up in the left periphery of her angel eye as the biometal artifact wrapped itself around her forearm like a living thing. Words and numbers flickered, changing as the weapons systems built into the bracer locked themselves into the exo’s circuits and her own nervous system.

  A Scylla-thrill of coiled power radiated up her arm from the bracer, sweeping away her fear and doubt before it. With it surged the heady remembrance of power. With just a thought she could release a howling burst of energy capable of punching through the hardened steel of a ship’s hull like so much foil. Even without her other bracer, nothing made of blood and bone could stand against her. The intruders were doomed if she went to them like this, with Scylla
’s armaments to back her up.

  —

  If she went to them as Scylla.

  The shadow self of Scylla was the returning memory of strength and certainty and purity of purpose. Of fearlessness.

  Life as Angel had been nothing but a morass of doubt and confusion and longing. Angel was a creature of weakness and helplessness and futility, her lot fear and pain and failure.

  Angel had vowed not to hurt anyone ever again, never suspecting the dire circumstances she would face.

  Scylla would cut the invaders down like wheat before a scythe. Nothing could stand in her way.

  Nothing.

  Least of all that fragile construct named Angel. The person she was now. The one he wanted her to be.

  “No,” she whispered, giving the mental command while she was still able. The bracer went back to standby and reluctantly released itself to dangle from her arm like some war god’s notion of a charm bracelet. She peeled it off and put it back on its hook.

  There was a long, white, hooded robe in her locker, one her old Master had made her wear sometimes. She chose that over Scylla’s most dangerous aspects, shrugging into it and knotting the belt tightly. Then she closed the door to her locker, leaving sure victory behind as she turned on her heel and began her journey toward the landing bay.

  More than the fatigue earned by the last few days made her walk slowly. But Angel held her head high, knowing that she had just won the first very important skirmish of the battle to come.

  —

  Marchey’s ship had approached Botha Station like a steel bee homing in on the center of a gargantuan chrome poppy, bathed in the light reflected from the vast spreading petals of silvery superfilm reflectors arrayed around the complex. Beyond it, Jupiter’s Cyclopean bulk blotted out the stars with a seething chaos of color endlessly swirled by a madman’s brush; its staggering size dwarfing the imagination. Earth herself could disappear inside old Jove like a pea in a bucket, and its untrammeled breadth never completely fit inside the human head. Jupiter was always far vaster than you remembered, even if you had just seen it less than an hour before.

  Botha’s artificially maintained heliostationary orbit kept it always in sight of the bright nailhead of the distant Sun. That took energy to burn. Its existence made a loud, all-but-impossible-to-ignore statement about the wealth and power the company had at its command.