Flesh and Silver

by Stephen L. Burns

  The station was OmniMat’s center of Jupiter operations, a sprawling complex of docking trees, free-fall manufactories and materials dumps, transfer site for the refined raw materials extracted and excreted by the huge autofactories gnawing at the moons in toward the planet’s surface. Reaching out from its center like ten-kilometer-long stamens were the magnetic catapults used to launch ships and fling containers of the more durable goods sunward.

  Botha was a place of endless day and ceaseless activity. The autopilot in Marchey’s ship had locked into local traffic control and begun picking its way through busy swarms of workpods and past ponderous container tugs a while earlier. Jon called back just as Marchey’s ship was sliding into its assigned berth at one end of the main residential cylinder of the sprawling complex.

  Marchey had already changed into soft gray trousers and a pristine white tunic, and was just putting the bent silver pin in its place over his heart when Jon came back on-line.

  “We got trouble, Doc,” he said without preamble.

  “Tell me.” The pin in place, he picked up his coffee. He wasn’t thirsty, but he needed something to do with his hands, and thanks to his prosthetics he would have splintered his teeth trying to bite his nails.

  “I think I’d best show you.”

  Jon’s feed blipped into a small inset at the upper left corner of the screen. The rest of it changed to a view of Ananke’s loading bay as seen from high above. Marchey assumed that the feed came from one of the spyeyes Fist had put in every corner of his empire.

  “They came into the same dock you used,” Jon explained over the muted grumble of sound coming from the bay. “No big surprise there ’cause we only got the one workin’. But they overrode the locktube somehow, jammin’ their lock right up against ours, bustin’ the outer doors.”

  Another inset appeared, the view from the pickup outside the lock skewed off at an angle, but showing a section of matte black hull up tight against the stone wall. There was nothing to keep them from leaving their ship and coming through the inner airlock doors.

  Nothing but the small, white-clad figure standing in the middle of the wide ramp before the inner doors and barring the way.

  “Angel,” Marchey said, feeling his insides go cold as methane snow.

  “Mebbe not.”

  “Then who?” he demanded, the moment he said it knowing what Jon’s answer would be, and his foreboding warping into dread.

  “Scylla.” Jon made a helpless gesture. “Angel’s not a fighter, but she sure as shootin’ is. Hell, none of us are fighters, you know that. Since the greatest danger seemed to come from lettin’ them split us up, we planned to all get in front of the lock, sit down and link arms—try to use passive resistance. Just as we were getting’ ready to put ourselves in place she showed up, pushin’ right through, ignorin’ everybody ’cept to tell ’em to get back. She planted herself there, and an’t moved a muscle since.”

  The pickup zoomed in closer, but revealed little more. The robe she wore concealed her exo, its hem brushing the floor to hide even her feet. Her head was bowed as if in prayer, the robe’s hood shrouding her head and face. Her arms were crossed before her chest, her hands hidden by the robe’s sleeves.

  “She may have slowed them down a mite,” Halen continued. “Nothin’s happened in the time it took me to get back here from the bay, but—”

  “But sooner or later they’re going to try to come out,” Marchey finished with leaden certainty. He glanced at the stacks, seeing that he would be locked in and cleared to debark in about two minutes. His gaze was drawn back to the small white figure standing guard before the lock’s double doors.

  Somehow he knew he was seeing Angel, not Scylla. Scylla would never hide her exo, for instance. Nor would she have waited passively, she would have gone in after them. But it wasn’t really a matter of Angel being there and Scylla being off somewhere safely out of the way, like Luna or Limbo or Los Angeles, was it?

  She’s in here with me. That’s what Angel had told him. Like a violent genie in a fragile bottle. Rub it the wrong way and out she would burst in all her awful glory.

  Angel was in way over her head. No matter how good her intentions, if the situation turned ugly, it could all too easily crack the fragile shell she had built around the creature Fist had made of her and cause her to revert to Scylla.

  If that happened, the threat would probably be neutralized. He knew that the combination of Scylla’s fierce persona and that combat exo probably made her a match for the half dozen or so mercys who would be on the ship. There would be no hesitation, no quarter given. She’d chew them up, spit them out, and grind their remains into the ground.

  Chewing up and spitting out what was left of Angel in the process. There was no way she could escape what she had been twice.

  “Damn,” he muttered, cursing the situation, cursing himself for accusing her of being afraid to shed her exo and truly be Angel. He had a sinking feeling that she was trying to prove him wrong by a test of fire, willingly stepping into the sort of inferno where her darkling sister self could take control.

  There was a drawer under the commboard. He pawed frantically through it, searching for a remote. When he found one he held it up for Jon to see. “I’ll wear this so I can stay in touch. Scare one up and send it down to her…”

  Hesitation overcame him as he tried to think of too many things all at once. He took a deep shuddering breath and started again.

  “Have one of the children take it down to her if you can. That will seem less threatening to the people on the ship, and she might be more likely to take it.”

  Jon nodded. “Hang on.” He looked away, speaking in a hushed, urgent voice to someone offcam, listening for a few moments, then nodding curtly. He faced Marchey again.

  “We’re working on it. Marcy is here with me, and she’s talking to the ship. They’re acting all innocentlike, saying they only want to come out and help.”

  “Stall as long as you can,” Marchey implored him, slipping the remote into his ear, his body heat turning it on. He tapped it with one silver finger. “Keep me advised.”

  [You got it, Doc.] Jon’s voice whispered over the remote as well as over the monitor. He cocked his head a moment, listening to Marcy. “Danny’s on his way down with the remote. You think talking to her will help?”

  “Probably not,” Marchey snapped. Going on the evidence, he would only make matters worse.

  The chime signalling that his ship’s airlock had cycled through sounded. Time to go.

  He grimaced. “Sorry about that, Jon,” he added more gently, taking a last longing look at Angel and hoping he would get a chance to tell her he was sorry for the way he had treated her. She appeared so small, so helpless. In so many ways she was little more than a child. Innocent and vulnerable. Trusting. Could she possibly understand just how big a risk she was taking?

  Yes, she probably did. Maybe because she had never learned how to lie to herself the way he had.

  “Doc?”

  Marchey tore his gaze away to look at Halen’s face in the inset. “Yeah?” There seemed to be something stuck in his throat, thickening his voice to a rusty croak.

  Jon held up his misshapen hand as if in benediction. “If anyone can make somethin’ out of this mess, it’s you. We trust you, brother. Don’t let yourself forget that.”

  Marchey wondered where Halen’s confidence came from. He could use a dose.

  “I hope you’re right,” He sighed wearily. “But did you ever think that maybe none of this would’ve happened if I stayed there with you?” If I hadn’t been too willing to run back to my safe old life. If I hadn’t convinced myself that I had fulfilled all my responsibilities toward you. If, if, if—

  “Could be,” Jon replied imperturbably. Then he smiled, his face that of a man whose faith remained bouyant and unshakable. “God works in mysterious ways, my friend. Did you ever stop to think that maybe you had to leave here to find out what you needed to know, and get where you
needed to be, so you could do what had to be done to stop it?”

  Marchey could only hope he was right. And that if there truly was a god, he she or it was on their side.

  —

  The name of the physician in charge of the patient Marchey had come to see was Dr. Raphael Moro. Early forties. Born on Earth. Educated on Mars. Excellent credentials.

  Marchey knocked at Moro’s office door, hoping he didn’t have to chase the man down, or wait for him to turn up before he could see the patient. Gilt lettering on the door said that Moro was director of the whole Medical Section on Botha. That wasn’t encouraging. Too many administrators believed that the delay and inconvenience they caused others was the best measure of their own power and importance. Giving a Bergmann Surgeon an especially hard time was strictly mandatory.

  The door swung open a few moments later. The sheer size of the man filling the opening made Marchey blink and take half a step backward.

  Moro was huge, and built like a bear. Round-shouldered and slightly stooped, but still standing well over two meters tall. His skin had the coppery sheen of Polynesian bloodlines, set off by the rumpled white scrubs he wore. His stiff black hair stood straight up atop his head, and his wispy black beard had a stripe of pure white running through it.

  He stared silently at Marchey, brown eyes magnified by archaic corrective lenses, the pinched look of distaste on his moon face saying that he disapproved of him on sight. Ignoring Marchey’s greeting and profferred hand, Moro brusquely turned and walked away, leaving it up to Marchey to follow. A half-meter-long, tightly braided black queue draped down Moro’s slablike back, swinging with every step.

  “Sit,” he said, pointing at a chair facing his desk as he passed it.

  Marchey didn’t particularly care for being ordered around like an orderly called onto the carpet for some screwup, but did as he was told. He watched Moro lumber around the side of the desk and lower his bulk into his high-backed leatherite chair, then just sit there glowering at him.

  Even though he could almost feel every precious second ticking by, raising the level of his impatience and anxiety like sand piling higher in the bottom of an hourglass, he dared not let it show. He had to proceed as if this were just another job.

  He folded his silver hands on his lap to keep them still. His prosthetics had been left uncovered on purpose. The sight of them made most doctors—surgeons, especially—uncomfortable. Offering to shake hands usually guaranteed a minimum of delay in being taken to the patient.

  “I can’t say that I’m particularly pleased by having you brought in on this case, Dr. Marchey,” Moro rumbled at last, his tone gruff and putting sarcastic emphasis on Doctor. That was nothing new. Sarcasm, truculence, and even outright contemptuous loathing—Marchey had heard it all before.

  “You’re not?” he replied neutrally.

  [Danny’s in the bay now.] Jon whispered in his ear over the remote a second later.

  Moro put his hands flat on his desk. They were massive, with thick blunt fingers, more like the hands of a stonecutter than a surgeon. “No, I’m not. But I was overruled. MedArm insisted on bringing in one of your kind.”

  “My kind,” Marchey echoed tonelessly. Hostility was nothing new. It looked like Moro intended to articulate his. He didn’t care how vicious the attack was, as long as it was short. Time was running out.

  “Your kind. The kind that provide special treatment for the high-and-mighty.”

  He watched Moro’s mouth tighten, as if he were about to spit, turning that statement over in his mind. Moro knew how they were being used. Khan had as much as said the same thing. Was it general knowledge, or simply rumor and innuendo that had attached itself to them?

  “I refused to give you the patient’s condition when you called because I wanted to see your face. I wanted to see if you showed the slightest frigging sign of a conscience when I told you what you’ve come to do.”

  “Well,” Marchey said mildly, “why don’t you tell me what it is? That way we can both find out what we want to know.”

  “Your patient is Preston Valdemar.”

  “So you told me.”

  Moro’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses. “The name means nothing to you?”

  “No,” he lied. “Should it?”

  “Damn right it should,” Moro growled. “Valdemar used to be Belt Operations Director for OmniMat. But he ‘retired’ to become MedArm’s new Outer Zone Manager a few years back. As you know, the Outer Zone starts with Mars and her moons and comes on out here.”

  He hadn’t. Though Moro didn’t know it, he had just given Marchey the information he needed to understand how MedArm had managed to get away with some of the things it had done.

  MedArm’s control of off-Earth Health Care was total and nearly autonomous. Sometime in the past it had apparently split into what were in effect two separate MedArms. One to cover the cylties, the Venus stations, and the teeming tunnels of old Luna herself. The other, its evil twin, to cover the vast, more newly inhabited and less densely populated spaces of Mars and its moons, the Belt, and Jupiter’s moons. Since the Bergmann Institute was on Deimos, it was under the Outer Zone’s control.

  It was a case of one hand not knowing what the other one was doing, and the body they belonged to— the UN Space Regulatory Agency—knowing even less. UNSRA’s administrative base was, after all, on Luna. Inside the Inner Zone and far removed from the Outer. He had to wonder when this split had happened, and at whose behest.

  Neither the “silver lining” or “Indian blanket” file had mentioned it. As for Valedemar, his name had been cited once, but not his position. See file it had said after his name. No doubt there was another locked file that held the missing pieces and would hyperlink the other two together. One Fist had held back, helpful son of a bitch that he was.

  Why hadn’t Sal told him about this split?

  Ah, but maybe he had. I just let it go in one ear and out the other. Having your head stuffed up your ass creates a fairly serious hearing impairment, to say nothing of how it affects cognitive function.

  The important thing was that if Valdemar ran the Outer Zone, then he was even more powerful than Marchey had first thought. This new information only made him all the more impatient to get to him. His feigned indifference even harder to maintain as he sat there waiting for Moro to finish venting his spleen.

  “MedArm Outer Zone has been goddamn busy,” Moro went on, making it sound like he held Marchey personally responsible. “You know how the system is supposed to run. Doctors are free to work where they want, even outside the system in private practice if they follow the regs. Inside the system we’re subsidized, with incentives for working in depressed areas. Supposedly the only interference with our autonomy is that sometimes new system-educated doctors are assigned short residencies in places with inadequate medical care.”

  Some doctors are free to practice where they want, Marchey amended silently. He kept his mouth shut, though. Moro’s face was darkening, and he could almost smell the man’s anger. Moro had an axe to grind, and Marchey was about to see its edge.

  “I’m AAA certified,” Moro said with a scowl. “I assume you know what that means.”

  “I do.” AAA certification meant that he was qualified to practice all forms of medicine—surgery, obstetry, genetry, euthanasia, nanotony, and all the rest—rating in the top 5 percent of the profession in terms of skill and training. His own battered pride made him add, “I’m AAAB certified myself.”

  Only triple A’s had been admitted to the Bergmann Program, which was the origin of that final—sometimes seemingly terminal—B.

  “Good for you. What do you know about Carme, then?”

  Marchey shrugged. “Outer Jovian moon. Mostly independents and wilders.”

  Moro nodded. “That’s where I used to practice. The conditions were miserable. My whole infirmary wasn’t much bigger than this office. ‘Pay what you can, if you can,’ is the motto for strict adherents to the Healer’s Oath
, right? I had my own ore accounts ’cause that was what I got paid with more often than not. Everything I made went toward keeping my practice afloat.” Moro’s blocky hands tightened into knuckly fists atop his desk. “I loved that cold, ugly damned place. Those people meant a lot to me, and by Christ I meant a lot to them! But MedArm ordered me to come here, replacing me with some quack with a half dozen malps hanging over his head. When I tried to refuse, they threatened to punch my ticket to practice. So I came here and tried to appeal, getting about as far as I would trying to shovel vacuum. Valdemar laid it out for me. I was here to stay as long as he did, like it or not. Would you like to hear why?”

  [Angel won’t take the remote.] Jon whispered in his ear while he waited. Moro was going to tell him whether he wanted to hear or not. But he did, he needed every handle on Valdemar he could get.

  “Because I was, and I quote, ‘Too good a doctor to be wasted on that grubber garbage!’ ” Moro roared, thrusting himself to his feet, his big fists braced on the desk as if preparing to vault over it so he could beat the living hell out of Marchey.

  He thrust out his jaw. “So here I sit on my ass in this fancy office like some high-class whore! This place is lousy with corporate high rollers. Sometimes I get to treat what he calls the ‘little people,’ ordinary workers and their families.” His expression turned bitter, his voice dropping to a growl. “Otherwise, I do a lot of cosmetic surgery. Rejuves. Coddle ’xecs without the brains to eat right or exercise. Lots of heart and liver work, lots of substance abuse.”

  Marchey couldn’t see why Moro was blaming him for all this, unless he simply had to blame somebody. He watched the big man bend over to yank open a desk drawer. “All that’s just bones I’m thrown to keep me out of trouble. What I really am is Valdemar’s personal physician. Here are his records.” He flung a sheaf of hard-copy flimsies at Marchey as if challenging him to a duel.