The departure from business as usual was Merry.
A fond smile crept onto his face. Her scent still lingered on him, sweet and beguiling. He said her name aloud. Softly, like a prayer or a benediction. Merry, full of grace.
She’d treated him like a real person, not a monster or a freak, something you used when you had to and sent packing the moment its purpose had been fulfilled. That alone was such a pleasurable feeling that he was scarcely drinking for fear of blunting it.
Since the circuit began his life had been swallowed up by a friendless, rootless, choiceless monotony. It was as if a night of a thousand days had fallen, casting a tarnish across his spirit. He felt himself corroding, drawing inside and growing a thick rusty skin of apathy to survive.
But when someone took the time and trouble to rub a small clear spot in the tarnish…
Marchey gazed down at his gleaming silver arms.
Did a knight in shining armor emerge?
Or had it been a cruel trick on both of them to try to give her what he most wanted for himself? To try to prove to himself that such a thing was still possible?
He pictured it in his mind. The covered mirror and the disassembled comm on the counter below, along with a tool kit he’d had delivered to the room. Taking the unit apart while in working trance had been child’s play. In that state he could play tiddlywinks with platelets and strum single strands of DNA like harp strings. After reattaching his arms he had written:
CHOICE IS BETTER THAN MONEY. THAT’S WHAT I WANT YOU TO HAVE. PUT THIS COMM BACK TOGETHER. YOUR HANDS ARE AT LEAST 85% OF WHAT THEY ONCE WERE, AND WILL RETURN TO 95% WITH USE.
WHEN YOU HAVE DONE THAT, PULL THIS DOWN AND LOOK IN THE MIRROR.
You did what was necessary to survive, keeping your head down and stumbling blindly along.
But if you were very lucky, every once in a while you got a chance to try to shove the night back a little. If your nerve held, and if you could still believe that turning the grim eclipsing tide was possible.
YOU WILL PROBABLY HAVE NIGHTMARES ABOUT ME. I CAN’T HELP THAT, AND HOPE YOU CAN REMEMBER ME FONDLY IN SPITE OF THEM.
The commboard chimed.
His heart began to race, and his hands tightened on his cup. He had to swallow hard before he could speak.
“Yes?”
“Incoming message,” the comm’s smooth, sexless synthesized voice informed him crisply.
“Go ahead.” He closed his eyes. Some obscure impulse made him cross his silver fingers.
“A one-thousand-credit posting you made on Vespa has been returned to your account,” the comm announced. “There is a printed message attached. Shall I read it?”
Marchey settled back, eyes still closed, the better to savor the moment. “Yes. Proceed.”
“ ‘You can wake up from bad dreams, and choose to dream better ones. I know that now. Thank you. If the knight in shining armor is ever on Vespa again and needs some repairs done on his tinwork, look me up.’ The message is signed Delores Esterbrook.”
Marchey’s face eased into a satisfied smile. In his mind he saw her smiling back at him, her face lit like a lamp raised against the dark.
Both sides of it.
The third—no, fourth quatriliter of Mauna Loa was empty.
The memory of that smile barely touched him anymore. And as for choice—
Marchey chose to stand, get his bearings, and head for his room so he could finish drinking himself to sleep.
2. Administration of Tests
The temporary cubby he’d been assigned was in the half-g section of the hospital wheel. The combination of reduced gravity and enough whiskey under his belt to stop most men’s clocks had him moving with the slow, exaggerated caution of someone attempting to walk on the ceiling.
His mind precessing like a gyroscope, he considered the day’s events. As layovers went this had been about average. Forgettable. In the morning he’d be back on the circuit. In a month the only thing he’d be able to remember about today was the excellent Mauna Loa whiskey.
Next stop… where? Ganymede? It didn’t matter. Thanks to the splendid efficiency of MedArm he didn’t have to know. He would be picked up and deposited there like a chess piece.
Queen to King’s bishop 3. The Red Queen, of course. Running like hell but getting absolutely nowhere.
The image made him laugh. But it was a joyless, unpleasant bark that caused a young couple waiting for the elevator farther along the corridor to turn and stare.
He gave them a less than reassuring grin. “Actually,” he called cheerfully, “I’m more a pawn than a queen.” He blew them a kiss. “Really.”
They retreated toward the stairwell, glancing nervously back over their shoulders and whispering. The expressions on their faces suggested that they thought he might be an escapee from the wing with the padded walls.
Marchey’s attention had already strayed from them and back to the task of keeping his feet under him. Whispers were nothing new; they were the sound of the blur, signifying nothing. A behind his back shout of Freak! or Quack! could still penetrate his awareness, but that was about all.
The door to his cubby suddenly materialized before him. He peered at the number closely, even though it had been easy enough to find because it was the last door in a dead-end corridor. That was a nice touch. Whoever said hospital administrators didn’t have a sense of humor?
B/164/G. Home sweet home.
He rummaged through his pouch, pulling out the door key with a gray-gloved hand, watching that hand ’face it with the lock as if it were some unconnected piece of arcane machinery operating on its own.
The lock chirped acceptance and the door slid open. He shuffled in, slapping the plate to close it behind him. One nightcap—well, maybe two—and a check to see how his patient was doing. By pad, of course. There was no sense in taking a chance on killing the poor bastard by looking in on him after saving his life in the first place, That would kind of defeat the whole point of having come here, wouldn’t it?
Now if he could just remember the man’s name…
Had they even told it to him? Probably not.
It wasn’t until he turned toward the bed that he finally realized he was not alone in the room.
Scylla sat rigidly on the bed, waiting for her quarry to react to her presence.
No matter what he did, she was ready. If he tried to run, she would bring him down before he could get even halfway to the door. If he came at her, he would quickly learn what a deadly mistake it was to dare attack an angel.
But he only stood there, swaying slightly, staring at her so blankly that for a moment she wondered if he saw her at all.
His face was broad and rough-hewn, a craggy landscape of shadowed crevasses and eroded cliffs. Only a thinning gray-black fringe of hair clung to the back of his head. His lips were twisted into an odd half grimace that was habitual, judging by the deep grooves bracketing his mouth. He was of medium height, barrel-chested and blocky. She decided he was probably quite strong, even though his broad shoulders were slumped as if from years of grinding toil.
It was his gray eyes that bothered Scylla. They were flat and incurious. She saw nothing of herself reflected in them.
He appeared to be willing to stand there, unspeaking, unmoving, and unmoved, forever. Scylla was not used to people failing to react to her. She did not like it one bit.
“You are Dr. Georgory Marchey,” she said sharply. “You will do exactly as I say. I want you to sit down. Will you obey me, or must I demonstrate what will happen if you defy me?”