But maybe if he took a swipe back at her, then the next time a Bergmann Surgeon was sent here she’d leave the poor bastard alone. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do while he killed this last jug.
He turned his flat, sunken gray eyes on her. “I’ll tell you one thing I’m not reconciled to,” he said in a soft, passionless voice. “That’s the waste of my skills. In a good month I might get the chance to help three patients. Three patients. By all rights I should be on staff in a place like this and treating that many a day. But thanks to narrow-minded prigs like you, my dear Dr. Khan, I’m not.”
He picked up the bottle and offered it to her.
“Maybe you ought to take this, sweetheart. Drink to forget that today I gave a patient help you couldn’t begin to provide. Drink to forget that I could do the same thing tomorrow for another patient if you hadn’t helped make it impossible for me to stay. Drink to forget that you’re putting your own petty prejudices ahead of the well-being of your patients, and forcing me to waste skills that make your best surgical technique look like something done with fucking hatchets and meat cleavers.”
Khan ignored the bottle in his hand. “Are you through?” she asked, grinding the words out between her clenched teeth.
“Almost.” Marchey slouched back in his chair and took a long drink straight out of the jug. “You can choose between accepting what I can do, or only using me when MedArm forces you to. My only choice is between doing what little I’m allowed to do or quitting. I took the Healer’s Oath, and quitting isn’t a part of it. So I get by. How I get by is none of your goddamned business, and since it’s you forcing me to live like this, I suggest that you stuff your sanctimonious attitude up your tight judgemental ass and leave me the fuck alone.”
He grinned at her. “Now I’m done.”
Dr. Khan uncrossed her arms and leaned toward him, resting the knuckles of her clenched hands on the table. “You dare talk about the Healer’s Oath,” she spat. “At least I’m willing to treat anyone who needs help, as it demands. Not like you”
Marchey stared back at her. “I treat whoever MedArm has the Institute send me to treat.”
She nodded, her face taking on the look of a prosecutor who has extracted the damning confession she sought. “Yes, your kind do, don’t you?”
She straightened up, pointing an accusing finger at him. “If I was letting myself be used the way you are, I’d probably drink, too.” Her mouth twitched into a harsh smile. “If anybody ought to stuff their sanctimonious attitude up their ass it’s you. We’re not stupid. We know what’s going on.”
She turned on her heel and stalked away. Marchey watched her, scowling and wondering what he’d missed. We’re not stupid. We know what’s going on. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He could always call her back and ask…
He took another swig from the bottle in his hand, the sweet whiskey dissolving the question like a clot dosed with hemaflux. For all he knew she was convinced that the Bergmanns got their abilities from human sacrifice or a pact with Satan. Some of the more fanatic Christian and Islamic sects did.
He sighed and closed his eyes. Damn being out around people like her. The talk of choice, and his treating only those people MedArm assigned…
He opened his eyes. Another ghost from the past began to materialize across the table from him. He probably could have banished the shade, but let her be. She was one of his few good memories.
When he thought of her now, it was her smile that came to mind through the thickening boozy haze.
A certain special smile he had never seen…
—
Merry put down her glass, the wine hardly touched.
She gazed coolly at the man across the table from her, intrigued in spite of herself. “Something better than money, you say.”
The night hadn’t begun all that well. In fact, it’d been shaping up as a real 4D: Dead, Dull, Disappointing, and ending in Deficit.
She’d been sitting at her usual table in Randy’s Rest, gloomily nursing a cheap algae-based white wine and wondering if there was really any point in sticking around when this juan had pushed through the bead-curtained doorway.
He wasn’t a regular, she knew that at first glance. So she looked the fresh meat over.
He was middle-aged, nearly bald. Well dressed in loose gray pants, crisp white open-neck shirt that was either real silk or a damn good fake, gray gloves, black-cotton and leatherite jacket, black-suede boots. No jewelry except a silver pin on his broad chest. Tasteful and understated. Not some rowdy dusty rock-jock or smirking tourist out for a thrill.
He’d done what most of the new sticks did, standing there just inside the door and checking out the available talent—getting checked out himself at the very same time, the credit scanner in each girl’s head humming over him and reading his paying potential down to the decicredit. This went on during the momentary pause while they waited to see if he got this dumbjohn look of surprise on his face and stumbled back out, having drunkenly mistaken Randy’s for Billy’s Club next door, where the doe-eyed boys posed and preened in their satin loincloths and tight leather jeans.
These tests passed, there was a lacy rustle as the other girls went into display mode, making sure their charms were shown off to their best advantage.
Merry hadn’t even bothered to sit up straight to show off the merchandise, or put her try me look on her face. Habit told her she should, but the disgruntled voice of cynicism said Why bother?
It was a slow Tuesday night in the Rest, with a dozen idle girls besides herself vying for the attention of this one customer. Much as she hated to admit it, she knew she was well past the first-choice category, and maybe even the second or third. Randy let her keep working there more for old times’ sake than for the money she brought in. But he was a practical man. Now her table was way in the back, where the light wasn’t too good, and the sour smell that at times wafted from the head just a couple meters away sometimes seemed like a foretaste of her next step down the ladder.
Oh, the men who came into Randy’s would take her if all the other girls were busy, and not a one of them wasn’t shown at least as good a time as the other talent could give them. Maybe even better, because she didn’t try to coast by on looks alone. Besides, if you could get them to become one of your regulars, that meant that you didn’t have to hustle so hard. A stable of regulars was credit in the bank, and maybe even a ticket out of the Life. She had a couple, but the poor bastards were almost always as stony broke as she was.
It had been hard enough before, on the downhill side of thirty and competing with girls almost half her age. And now?
There was no way she could hope to compete with those perfect young faces.
Yet this coddy hadn’t given any of the other girls a second look. The moment he had seen her his face had gone all funny for a moment.
But not with that What the fuck happened to you? look she’d seen so many times in the past months. It was more like he’d seen a ghost, or stumbled across the last thing he had ever expected to find here. Like maybe his wife, his mother, his sister, or a long-lost lover.
After a moment he got a handle on himself, smiled at her uncertainly, and headed straight for her table.
She did sit up straight then, her translucent red skinsuit tightening around her. A smile went onto her face, part habit, part screw you to the pouts appearing on the other girls’ flawless faces as they saw the trade choosing her over them.
Watching him come closer, she thought about how every so often Fate gave you something besides the finger. This might just be one of those nights. She sure as hell was due for one.
Too many of the juans just waltzed right over to your table and plunked themselves down like they owned it and you, figuring that what they had in their pockets plus what they had in their pants made them irresistible.
They were half-right, anyway.
But this one had politely asked if he could join her, and thanked her when she said yes. He’
d ordered a triple whiskey neat from the waitbot, another wine for her, then come right to the point. He wanted to purchase her services for the night.
All-nighters were rarer for her than they used to be, and though she was tempted to shave her price to guarantee he took her, some ornery remnant of her pride made her quote the standard fee set by her union.
Besides, she could haggle if he said that was too much.
The juan’s face was broad and craggy, with big dark pouches under eyes of a clear cool gray. It was the face of someone who’d lost a lot of weight sometime in the past, and maybe a lot of other things, too. A widower’s face, drawn and dispossessed. But there was humor there, too. He’d given her this puckish smile, and then hit her with this “something better than money” stroke.
“What’s better than money?” Merry figured that maybe he wanted to barter. No problem there, Randy could help her convert almost anything into cash. For a cut, of course, but at least he was honest. More or less.
His smile turned wry. “Lots of things. Trust, for instance. Choice is another.” He peered slantwise at her, probably seeing the look that had crept onto her face at this line of patter.
“I know you don’t know me well enough to trust me,” he continued. Most juans said something like that, she’d have laughed in their faces. But there was something about him and the way he said it that made her take his words seriously.
“You seem nice enough,” she admitted, “but so does my landlord until I come up short when the rent comes due.”
After six years of turning tricks Merry’s internal radar was tuned to within a couple microns of dead center, and she wasn’t getting any rip-artist readings. That was the only thing keeping her from telling him to go try his line on one of the other girls.
He chuckled. “Point well taken. I’ll tell you what. I’ll get us the best room this establishment has to offer, something to eat and drink from room service—”
“The price of a suite gets you a snack tray, and there’s a free bar in the room,” Merry put in. “Drugs and benders are extra.” She could have told him the number of tiles in the ceilings of the bedrooms as well, having had plenty of chance to count them. A hundred in the suites and 144 in the singles.
Another chuckle, and a nod of his balding head. “I love the room already. I’ll also preauthorize a one-KISC charge to be paid to you tomorrow morning. If you still want it.”
He said the number as if it didn’t mean anything to him, like it was the number of tiles in a protel ceiling, and it caught her so off guard she had to make sure she’d heard right.
“You said one KISC?” Hoping she’d heard right.
He grinned at her in obvious amusement. “That’s what I said.”
Merry found it hard to imagine not wanting the thousand International Standard Credits. It was twenty times the price she had quoted him, the union rate for five full days of an A-list girl’s services. Even after Randy skimmed his 10 percent off the top she’d still have over four months’ rent on her cubby.
She held out her slim, red-nailed hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal, handsome.”
Her voice dropped to a sultry purr. “Shall we get the vulgar financial details out of the way, darling, then go somewhere more private?”
“I would be honored,” he replied, closing his gloved hand around hers to seal the deal. His hand felt strangely hard, but his grip was gentle. “My name is Marchey, by the way. Georgory Marchey. My friends call me Gory.”
Merry had noticed that he wore gloves right off the bat, and once again she had to wonder why. But she gave it only a moment’s thought. She’d dealt with odder kinks than that. Much odder.
Of course that still didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding a nun’s habit, a pink-lace merry widow, or even a chicken suit under his clothes. If so, she could play along. One kay bought one hell of a lot of leeway.
“Pleased to meet you, Gory. My name is Merry.”
Marchey made himself comfortable on the suite’s shapeless black couch, watching the woman who called herself Merry fix them each a drink.
He knew that Merry was just her working name. Her real name wasn’t supposed to matter. While she was Merry it was her job to be whoever and whatever he wanted her to be.
From the back she looked so much like Ella it made him ache. Although not quite as tall, she had that same impossibly thin frame, the narrow waist and small firm behind, the same long lean limbs that would be gawky but for an innate inner grace. She had the same close-cropped, nearly white hair, straggling tendrils curling down her knobby spine.
But when she turned around the illusion unraveled.
Her face was pretty where Ella’s had been plain, softer and less severe, underlaid by an elegant bone structure. Her eyes were brown instead of green, with long dark lashes.
He watched her come toward him, one side of her wide, ruby-lipped mouth curved up in a warm smile that showed no sign of artifice. The other side of her mouth—the other side of her face—remained lax and nearly expressionless. That eyelid drooped in what looked like sleepy suspicion.
There was also a scarcely perceptable drag to her foot on that side. It was so slight that only someone trained to look for such things would have noticed the minor paralytic trace.
His observations were by no means all diagnostic. He was also paying close attention to the undulating roll of her slim hips, the rhythmic flexings of the long lean muscles in her thighs, the sweet and subtle sway and swing of her breasts. He feasted on the sight of her, feeding a gnawing hunger, and sharpening that hunger at the very same time. Just knowing he was still capable of feeling it was a pleasure in itself.
It had been almost two years since he had last been with a woman. There were times—usually those increasingly rare moments when he was stone-cold look-at-yourself-in-the-mirror sober—that he became dismayed and depressed at just how accustomed he was getting to his solitary life and his celibacy. It was almost as if he could feel his libido shrivelling up like some vestigial organ that no longer had a purpose. Before long he was going to have to start counting his balls each morning to make sure he still had them.
Not that he had much choice in the matter. In fact it was better that way. A sex drive firing on all thrusters would have driven him mad, making intolerable a life spent all alone on a ship of his own, ricocheting from place to place like some spacefaring surgical Flying Dutchman.
MedArm called it the circuit, and it had been instituted less than a year after he last saw Ella. That meant he had been on it for over four years. Hard to believe.
Working with the Bergmann Institute, MedArm had created the circuit, giving each Bergmann Surgeon a ship of their own and sending them where they were needed worst. He had no idea how the higher-ups decided where they should go and whom they should treat. It didn’t really matter. At least they were allowed to be of some use.
He and his fellow Bergmanns remained constantly on the move, skulking in and out of health facilities like thieves. The circuit’s chief advantage was that once he was freed from the schedules set by the regular carriers less time was wasted waiting around to get from point A to point B.
Unfortunately that also meant no more long layovers during which he might at least try to find some companionship, be it a brief flirtation, a one-night stand, or even the boozy camaraderie created by adjoining barstools. He would arrive at his destination, perform the procedure he had been brought in for, and more often than not go straight from surgery to the local equivalent of a liquor store and be in his ship and on his way again before the patient regained consciousness.
Only rarely did he remain anywhere long enough for even an unsatisfying taste of paid sex such as with that prostitute on Ceres two years ago. This stop at Vesta was the longest break from the monotonous treadmill he’d had in months. Not only was he here long enough for two procedures, his ship was undergoing some minor refitting, which gave him a bonus night of his own.
He’d ventured into Gusto Mews, Vesta�
��s infamous pleasure district, looking for something—anything—to fill up some small corner of the emptiness inside himself. Some proof he was still alive, still a man. He’d been resigned to settling for paid sex and simulated affection if that was all he could find.
But when he had caught sight of Merry he’d suddenly glimpsed a chance to find something worth having.
She handed him his drink as she sat down on the couch beside him, folding her long legs under her. “Here you go, love.”
“Thanks.” He helped himself to a sip, grimaced. It was cheap fake scotch whiskey, algaecol and artificial flavorings, probably made on-site. Not that such distinctions made all that much difference. He would drink the good stuff when he could get it, and whatever was available when he couldn’t. Humanity had risen from the tribes in the treetops to cities in space because of its ability to adapt. It was only fair he did his part.
The “suite” was as low-rent as the whiskey. It consisted of a three-meter-by-three-meter sitting room furnished with the lumpy couch under his butt, a chunky foamstone table cemented to the floor in front of it, its top covered with a pink-plastic tablecloth and bearing a platter of unidentifiable soy-and algae-based delectables. Then there was the bar. That was no more than a shallow alcove in one wall equipped with four shatterproof glasses, three smudged decanters, a beer tap, and a metered ice dispenser.
A wide arched doorway led to the bedroom, which was barely larger than the fake-fur-covered king-sized bed. There was a deep narrow bathroom off to one side of the bedroom, complete with pay shower. The suite’s black-glazed stone walls were stenciled with patchy red flocking in an Early Bordello design. Bad erotic art hung askew on the walls. Wallscreens faced both the bed and the couch so the happy couple could watch themselves, or some quite likely more photogenic other couple at sport.
Well, he hadn’t really been expecting the Mars Grande. At least it was fairly clean and private.
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