Hands moving again, helping and healing. And behind all of those projects and a dozen others like the mainspring of a multifaced clock was Jon Halen.
He had to be the strongest and bravest person Marchey had ever met. His wife and two daughters were dead. Forced labor in the mines had cost him both hands and a leg. He had been one of the discards working in the landing bay when Marchey had arrived, toiling away until the too-thin air and hypothermia killed him.
Yet within hours of Fist’s fall he had begun hobbling tirelessly through the tunnels on his homemade crutch. Spreading the word that they were free at last. Reassuring them that this was the beginning, not the end. Cracking jokes. Chivvying others into motion, into action. Reaching into some deep inner reservoir and pulling out optimism, enthusiasm, and humor, then spreading them like a balm.
Jon had made sure that everyone had something to do, just mentioning that this or that needed to be done and making it sound like no one else could do the task, He’d assigned care of those worst off to those who had fallen into listless apathy, giving them a purpose to cling to, keeping them too busy worrying over another’s welfare to dwell on their own misfortunes.
Before the end of the first day he had come to Marchey with a priority-indexed list of those who needed medical attention. When asked where he had learned triage, Jon had smiled and said that he had used the big fancy setup in Fist’s quarters to do it for him, punching the data in one key at a time with a stylus he’d had someone tape to his useless hand because the machine refused to accept voice commands without a passphrase.
His own name had been on the list. Dead last.
Marchey had moved him up, and begun trying to shape a hand out of the ruin at the end of his right wrist. Now he was using those new fingers to cop a feel. Halen was some piece of work, no two ways about it.
Nor was he content with being just a patient. Marchey had managed to keep everyone on Ananke pretty much at arm’s length. Everyone but Jon, that is. He kept waltzing past Marchey’s guard like it was a fence with a ten-meter hole in it, slyly slipping bonds of friendship around him every chance he got.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” Jon asked.
Marchey scratched his chin. “You’re getting, um, horny?”
Jon’s grin spread even wider. “Well, that too—and the look Salli give me makes me think I mightna be the only one.” He grabbed the side of the table with his pinching equipment and levered himself around so he was sitting up, his good left leg dangling over the edge, the stump of his right braced off at an angle. His left arm, which ended just short of where his wrist should have been, rested in his lap.
Now he was eye to eye with Marchey. He held up his new hand between them. “Pretty damned ugly, in’t it?”
Marchey had to agree. “Yes, and I’m sorry, but—”
“But nothin’,” he stated flatly, looking Marchey straight in the eye. “It mightna get me a job modellin’ jewelry, but as far’s I’m concerned it’s beautifu’. Have you got any idea how great it is to be able to hold a cup? To use a comp again?” Mischief crept back into that gaunt face. “Hell, Doc, do you know how wonderful it is to be able to pick your pluggin’ nose when you needs to?”
“Well, I’ve heard…” Marchey answered, trying to keep a straight face, but failing miserably.
“It’s a top-shelf experience,” Jon assured him. His expression turned serious, showing something of the sharp-witted intensity he kept hidden behind his amiable grin and Belter’s slur most of the time.
“When you come here, all I had was this big lump at the enda my arm. It hurt so bad all the time I used to think about stickin’ it in one of the smelters to be rid of it. If that killed me, well, I could live with that. But I didn’t, and now I’m glad. I’ve got me fingers again. The pain is gone. I can touch and hold and feel things. I can even grab Salli’s ass and feel somethin’ like a man again.”
He tapped Marchey’s chest with a stubby finger. “When you took Fist off’n our backs I kind of woke up, looked around me, and figured maybe I could do a little somethin’ about our situation. Start fixin’ some of the damage. So that’s what I did. But I never once thought anythin’ could be done with the mess at the enda my arm. I planned to just go on doin’ my best with what couldn’t be changed.”
His voice dropped lower. “But you looked at it and saw somethin’ I didn’t. Saw that somethin’ better might be made from it. I might’ve seen it myself, but I’d gotten resigned to it bein’ the way it was, and it never occurred to me that I oughta think about it any differenter way.”
He let his hand drop. “There’s somethin’ to be learned from that,” he concluded, watching Marchey’s face expectantly.
“It proves you don’t know diddly about reconstructive surgery, Jon,” he said, intentionally missing the point.
A flash of disappointment crossed Halen’s face, then he shrugged and smiled. “I guess I surely don’t.” He slid off the table and onto his good leg. Marchey handed his crutch to him, then walked him to the clinic’s door.
“By the way,” Jon said with contrived disinterest, “You’re sayin’ good-bye to Angel before you leave, an’t you?”
Marchey had expected him to bring this up sooner or later. Halen had been inordinately interested in his relationship to Angel from the very first. Not that there was one.
“Yes,” he replied shortly. “Now you keep exercising that hand. Continue taking the Calcinstrate to build up bone mass.”
“Butt out, in other words.” Halen grinned disarmingly. “Hey, I can take me a hint, even if you can’t.” He limped on across the main compartment toward the airlock. “Wouldn’t want to rub you the wrong way.”
“More to the point,” Marchey called after him, “don’t you go rubbing Salli the wrong way.”
Jon leaned on his crutch, looking back and leering. “Hell no, Doc! I plan to rub her the right way—providin’ I haven’t forgot how!” He waved his handless arm in farewell and continued across the main compartment and out the airlock.
Marchey went back to the console built in along one wall of the small clinic, shaking his head with amusement. He sat down, his smile fading. “Record update. Jon Halen.”
“Ready,” the comp replied.
“Halen’s gains in finger strength and mobility have exceeded my expectations.” Pinching Salli proved it. Yow!
“As noted before, all residents of Ananke are suffering from severe calcium leaching caused by inadequate diet and low gravity. In Halen’s case, I had to redistribute bone for reconstructive purposes. The Calcinstrate is increasing bone density. At the present rate of accretion I should be able to begin building a second set of phalanges within another week—”
He paused, realizing what he had said. He would not be here in another week. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten that fact; some traitorous part of his mind was still taking it for granted that he would finish the work he had started.
But it was not to be. MedArm was putting him back on the circuit. They said he had been here long enough.
He supposed they were right. Another week might allow him to give Jon those finger joints, but it would not let him do all that needed doing here. A year wouldn’t be enough. It was the work of a lifetime.
It wasn’t like he was abandoning them. MedArm had assured him that the medical help and supplies they needed would be sent soon. There wasn’t much more that he could do until then anyway. His small inship clinic had never been designed to handle anything more than small-scale emergency work or the occasional single-patient transport.