by Jerry
Marchey began to feel better as he watched Ella demolish the appetizers almost singlehandedly. The food helped sober her, and it appeared that she wanted to stay that way; for though she ordered a large bottle of wine, she barely touched her glass. He felt no similar reticence. He had been on good terms with alcohol for most of his life, and during the last few years it had become his constant companion. By the time the entree was served he had emptied the first bottle and had started on a second.
Things were going well. Ella had forgotten her impatience, happy just to be with him again. Marchey’s mood was improving with every glass of wine and with every precious moment spent with Ella. He refused to let himself think about what might happen later. The wine helped.
They were halfway through their main course when the Maître d’ approached their table. “Mme. Prime,” he said quietly, bowing, “I regret the intrusion, but there is a call for you.”
Ella scowled at him. “Who the hell is it?”
“The caller is Dr. Carol Chang, Head of Ixion Medical Services, Mme. Prime. She insisted that I tell you that it was a matter of life or death.” He stepped back and waited impassively.
Marchey’s ears pricked up at the mention of Carol Chang’s office and title. Already suspecting what the call might be, Ella was looking at him. She seemed to be holding her breath. He tried to smile. “You better take it.”
Ella frowned. That was not the answer she wanted. She gestured curtly. “Put her through.”
The Maître d’ bowed. “As you wish.” He placed a holit in the center of the table, cued it, then turned and strode off.
The holo-image of the head and shoulders of an oriental woman appeared over the center of their table. She looked grim and impatient, and when she saw that she had been put through she was only able to manage a brief, tight smile. “Ms. Prime?”
Ella inclined her head fractionally, her face expressionless. “Yes.”
“I am Dr. Chang. I regret this intrusion, and want you to know that I would not have called had I any other choice. I—ah—understand that Dr. Georgory Marchey is your guest. An emergency has arisen and it is imperative that I speak with him.”
“Well,” Ella began unhappily. She remembered, it was always an emergency. How many times?
“Please,” Marchey whispered, his hand sliding to the small of her back, making her shiver.
“He’s right beside me.” Ella said tonelessly. She snatched up her wineglass and drained it.
The disembodied head turned toward Marchey, and the woman’s smooth features lit in a genuine smile. “Dr. Marchey, this is an honor. Again I apologize for the interruption.”
Marchey watched Ella refill her wineglass, then faced the image. “No need to apologize. You mentioned an emergency?”
Dr. Chang nodded. “One of our young people, Shei Sinclair, somehow managed to build a toy cannon and make powder for it toward the ShipTime celebration. The toy exploded in her face when it was fired.” Marchey grimaced, and beside him Ella stiffened, wine halfway to her lips.
“She was critically injured. Her condition is extremely grave. We have removed several metal fragments and stopped the worst of the bleeding. But two fragments that we know of still remain lodged in her brain, and out of conventional surgical reach. One entered through her eye. There is intracranial hemhorraging and her autonomic functions are failing fast—we are already using machine assist to keep her breathing. I am afraid that cardiac function will soon fail as well. She will die for all we can do for her now.
“I was running a review of the medical records of our new arrivals when this arose, and saw yours. You are a Bergmann Surgeon, and I have to look upon your arrival as a gift from God. If you—”
There was suddenly a high-pitched buzzing sound in the background of Dr. Chang’s pickup. The grating buzz was quickly replaced by a metronomic beep. She looked at something offcam, then turned back toward Marchey. Her grim expression had returned and redoubled.
“She just went ECS. Can you help?”
Had Marchey been alone, he would have already been on his way. But he was not alone. He turned toward Ella, a strong flash of deja vu making him feel unreal. Ella’s face was blank. She was staring past him at nothing.
“Ella?” She did not respond. She was remembering the many times in their past when some crucial or tender moment had been destroyed by a call such as this. Her lips moved silently as she recalled her earlier words: Things will be just like before.
Her mouth shaped another word: Better. She had said that, too. Her eyes snapped back into focus. “Go,” she said, digging her fingers into his shoulder.
Marchey’s relief was obvious. His eyes flicked to Dr. Chang’s image. “You heard?”
Dr. Chang’s face showed a new hope. “Yes. Thank you—both of you.”
“Now how do I get—” Ella gripped his shoulder even tighter, hurting him. He turned toward her.
“I’m going with you. I know the way.” The look on her face defied him to argue. He did not plan to.
He met her gaze. “Good.” He now knew how Ella was going to learn what he had been holding back. The end of that particular suspense gave him no comfort. This might be the best way—but would it matter?
He pushed all of those thoughts to one side. There was no turning back, not for any of it. Another choice had left his hands. He stood, Ella rising beside him, and shot a last glance at the image hovering over their half-eaten dinner.
“We’re on our way.”
“Your Dr. Marchey has quite a reputation inside the medical profession,” Dr. Chang said, pouring tea into two cups. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Ella. “And please call me Carol.”
“All right—uh, Carol.” Ella had wanted to dislike the woman who had ruined her reunion with Marchey, but found that she could not. Instead she had to restrain herself from asking the woman to sit for her then and there.
The Head of Ixion Medical Services was just barely five feet tall, flawlessly proportioned, graceful, and an almost perfect genotype. Though she had to be pushing sixty, the years had treated her well. Ella’s artist’s eye subtracted her crisp white coverall and the small silver crucifix worn outside the coverall’s blouse, added colored silk robes and saw one of Hiroshito’s exquisite porcelain figurines come to life. Yet for her looks she gave off a warmth and air of understanding that invited confidence; Ella had already told her more of her and Marchey’s relationship than she would have thought possible.
As for Marchey, he might as well have been in another room. He had asked to see the young accident victim’s medical records and test reports just moments after he and Ella had reached Dr. Chang’s office, and he had been hunched over the Doctor’s terminal and oblivious to all else since.
Ella caught the spicy fragrance of the tea when Dr. Chang handed her a teacup and smiled at her. With Ella seated and Carol Chang standing, they were eye to eye.
“There are only a handful of Bergmann Surgeons as yet,” Dr. Chang said, “Your—ah—friend is one of the best of them. His name is mentioned quite often in the medical journals, and his being on Station at this time is the answer to a prayer. His special skills are Shei’s only hope.”
Ella frowned slightly, looking over the rim of her cup. “You mentionedthat term before—Bergmann Surgeon. What’s that mean?”
She did not hear Marchey’s breath catch at the mention of his specialty. He risked a glance at Ella and saw that her attention was on Dr. Chang.
Dr. Chang’s eyes widened and her composure slipped. There was an uncomfortable pause before she asked, “You don’t know?” She took a sip of her tea, her movements suddenly jerky and uncertain.
Ella was clearly puzzled by her reaction. “Gorey has always been a surgeon—is this different somehow?”
The silver cross Dr. Chang wore described a glittering arc as she turned away to hide the trapped look on her face. Marchey spoke up then, and she turned toward him gratefully. Ella turned to face him as well, her face sh
owing her unease. She couldn’t understand why her question had provoked such a reaction.
“I must see the child now.” He looked grim. “Ella, I want you to come and watch—there’s something you don’t know about and should see.” He spoke commandingly. His uncertainty and apprehension showed only in the way his gloved hand strayed to the silver metal pin he wore. Ella noticed the pin for the first time, but got no chance to ask about it.
Dr. Chang started toward the door. She moved like she was trying to get away from something that could catch her only if she broke into a run or looked back. “This way, please.”
They followed, Marchey moving with a businesslike briskness that belied the way he felt, Ella trailing behind uncertainly.
The brightly lit, antiseptic-smelling room made Ella uneasy. She did not want to think about the kind of things done in such a room. Her unanswered question left her feeling off-balance, and she had a feeling that the strange distance she had sensed in Marchey was about to end—and not pleasantly. When she saw the small, white-swaddled form on the table in the center of the room, took in the tangle of tubes and wires and the crouching medical arcana, she wanted to turn and leave. There was nothing here she wanted to know about.
Yet she stayed. She hovered near the door and her hands worried and plucked at each other nervously. Her question remained: What was a Bergmann Surgeon? The answer felt like a threat.
Marchey went straight to the table, his face intent. He began his initial examination in silence. Dr. Chang dismissed the attendant and started toward the table. Marchey waved her back without turning.
“Will the secondaries take over if I unplug her for a moment?” he asked over his shoulder as he checked the pupil of Shei’s eye. Her other eye was too damaged to check. He shook his head at what he saw in that good eye.
“Yes, it’s a full table.”
Marchey nodded absently at Carol Chang’s answer, then sighed and turned to look across the room and meet Ella’s eyes.
Ella took an involuntary half-step back at the look on his face. It seemed to say a sad farewell. He wore the face of a condemned man, despairing and apologetic. She wanted to go to him and take his hand, he looked so forlorn.
Marchey’s eyes dropped in something like shame and he pushed up his sleeves. He began to strip off one gray velvet glove. The fabric came away and underneath it his forearm was silver. His wrist was silver. His hand—palm, thumb and fingers, was silver; metal sculpted and polished, metal shaped and jointed to mimic the flesh and bone it had replaced. He pushed up his other sleeve and removed his other glove, his already-revealed hand winking in the light as it moved like a thing alive. His other hand and arm were the same, a mirror-twin of the first. His face burning, he studiously avoided Ella’s shocked and uncomprehending stare.
Ella started forward, protest filling her chest to the bursting point. Dr. Chang restrained her, speaking quietly but firmly.
“Not now—please. Wait until he is done.”
“But his hands, what happened to his—” She swallowed and fell silent as she saw him hold up one gleaming hand and the tip of one finger open and extrude an implug with a faint click and whine.
Marchey gently probed the base of the girl’s skull, pulled the impline linking her to the table’s life-support and monitors, then plugged the implug dangling from his finger into Shei’s tap. The back of Ella’s neck itched in sympathy. She watched him stand there, swaying a bit, to all appearances daydreaming.
Dr. Chang spoke up before Ella could voice her question. “He’s linked now to Shei’s tap. Most imped doctors can do that, but only by using a special interface. He can read more and his interface is in his prosthetic.” Ella mouthed the word prosthetic, staring at the silver hands. It tasted like tinfoil against tongue and teeth.
There was a soft snick and Marchey’s hand withdrew after reconnecting the child to the table. He then placed a hand on either side of her head and moved them in a slow circular motion, keeping his hands parallel to each other. They hummed loudly in the still white room.
“Now he’s scanning the location of the fragments. He does not have to do this—we’ve taken full scans—he’s just being careful.”
Ella watched intently, scarcely hearing Dr. Chang. Her attention was welded to the alien, argent metal that replaced the gentle hands she remembered. Marchey seemed lost to all but his work.
At last he straightened up, muttering something under his breath. One silver hand brushed the dying child’s forehead tenderly.
Something clicked inside Ella. She was suddenly assaulted by a flood of jump-cut, staggeringly vivid sense-memories of Marchey’s hands touching her, his hands softly stroking her cheek, his warm palms and fingers cupping her breasts, thumbs and fingers caressing, knowing where to go and how to move as if possessed of a wisdom of their own, his hand in hers in the dark, comforting and reassuring . . .
But those hands were gone. Gone. Her skin crawled as she imagined those terrible cold metal things touching her.
“—gone . . .” Ella started toward the table, toward Marchey. Dr. Chang again held her back.
“Please,” she said evenly, keeping herself between Ella and Marchey. “Don’t break his concentration.” Her voice became more urgent. “Shei’s life depends upon it.”
The pleading note in Dr. Chang’s voice reached Ella. She swallowed hard, meeting the other woman’s eyes, then nodded after a moment. Her gaze went back to Marchey. Dr. Chang turned to watch as well, staying close to Ella.
Marchey stepped back from the table. He crossed his arms before his heavy chest and began to breathe deeply, eyes closed, in some sort of pranayama, or breathing exercise. Ella watched, bewildered, as his silver hands fluttered and flashed like mechanical birds in rhythm with his breathing. His face became increasingly strange as his breath slowed, all expression flattening away to leave a rigid, almost inhuman mein in its place. The seconds limped by and his face became colder and stranger again.
Ella felt a terrible dread stir inside her. She sought the comfort of Dr. Chang’s hand against the cold creeping fear moving up her back, a fear that wrapped itself around her with clammy spatulate hands. Dr. Chang’s hand was cold in hers—was she afraid as well?
Marchey’s eyes opened. But there was nothing of the Georgory Marchey she once knew and loved to be seen in them. They belonged to a stranger—perhaps not even a human stranger. They were dark caves suited to a lurking monster, empty of light or laughter. She had to struggle with herself to keep from running away from this awful stranger that Marchey had become.
Staring straight ahead and seeming to see nothing, Marchey moved to the foot of the table with slow, ratcheting steps. He bent like a badly made puppet and rested his forearms on the table; palms up, elbow to wrist flat on the padded surface. The clockwork birds of his hands did not move. His awful, unreadable eyes closed. He drew his breath through his clenched teeth sharply, as if lifting an impossible burden.
His breath came out in a long hiss and he stepped back, straightening up slowly.
His silver arms still lay on the table, lifeless and abandoned, gleaming and somehow obscene. Just below the joints of his elbows his arms ended in featureless silver plates. Below that there was nothing.
Ella stiffened, her face white and immobile as carved bone. Dr. Chang held her hand tightly. “It’s all right,” she whispered, her tone thin and uncertain. Ella said nothing, staring at Marchey, her lips pressed together as if to keep in a scream.
Marchey moved like a sleepwalker toward the head of the table. Once there, he brought the truncated stumps of his arms down toward the child’s head as if his arms remained. He looked like a bird of prey ready to feed.
Had his hands still been there, they would soon have been past the skull’s bony case and buried deep in the delicate tissue of her brain. He changed position slightly and the silver plates winked knowingly. His eyes were again closed. His face showed no more animation or humanity than a granite gargoyle. He looked evil.
Ella forced a question through her set lips. “—what is h-he?” What is he doing? What is he? Two questions out of a hundred, more.
“He is locating the fragments,” Dr. Chang replied softly. She licked her lips, then continued, “Since it is metal, he will trace each path of entry and bring each fragment out along its path so that no more damage is inflicted by its removal.”
Ella’s bewilderment was total. “But he doesn’t h-have any h-hands,” she stammered, turning toward the older woman. Tears ran unnoticed down her face. “Someone took his hands, his beautiful beautiful hands—”
“He has something better!” It sounded almost like a shout when Dr. Chang spoke. She squeezed Ella’s hand tighter and spoke softly, reassuringly.
“Listen Ella, there is a phenomenon common among amputees called the ‘phantom limb.’ That means that they can still ‘feel’ the missing limb, that something remains although the limb is gone. The strength of the feeling varies from person to person; some do not experience it at all.
“A very great man, Dr. Saul Bergmann, studied this phenomenon. He found that less than a hundredth of one percent of those who felt that phantom limb could actually manipulate matter with that limb image. The ability was so weak and wildly erratic that it took him several years to prove conclusively that it existed. But he did prove it, and also proved that with practice and special training this ability would grow stronger and under better control.”
Ella stared at the doctor. There was no sign that what she was being told was reaching her, and every so often she would take a brief, unhappy glance at Marchey.
“These few very special people could do many unexpected—seemingly miraculous—things with this limb image once they learned to find it and encourage it. But the most amazing thing discovered was the changes it could cause and the things it could do inside the human body. Impossible things. Wonderful things. Bergmann Surgery came out of a growing understanding of—”
Ella had turned to look at Marchey and a small shocked sound escaped her. Dr. Chang turned to look, just in time to watch a jagged fragment of metal slowly emerge through the gauze covering one of Shei’s wounds. It poked out apparently by itself, twisted free of the threads, hung there a second, then lay on the white bandage. A small bloodstain spread slowly away, darkening the clean gauze.