This seemed to be one of the many prices of becoming human.
Marchey did as much of his work as possible on his ship.
His main excuse was that his small inship clinic was better equipped than anything Ananke had to offer. While that was true, it wasn’t the whole truth.
He felt safer there. More in control. It was his place, it was where he belonged. At odd moments he thought about Ella locked away in a fortress of her own making, and found himself all too easily able to understand her fanatic reclusiveness.
Staying onboard also served to remind his patients that his stay was only temporary.
Still, he had to make rounds at the half-assed hospital he’d helped put together, and there were certain chores that had to be done in the office where the medicomp that had belonged to Ananke’s former doctor had been set up.
There were no more patients to be seen that day. The end was in sight. All that remained was a bit of work in the office, his Final Appointment, and a last swing through the hospital. Then he could finally get the hell out of here.
“Dr. Marchey!”
It was a high, childish voice that called his name from somewhere behind him. He heard running footsteps, turned to see who it was.
Danny Hong skidded to a halt before him. Looking at him now, it was hard to believe that this was the same sick and frightened boy he’d seen when he first arrived on Ananke. His golden skin glowed with returning health. His straight black hair stuck up in every direction, as if set on end by all the energy inside. A white bandage covered the empty socket that had once contained the dangerously infected remains of one eye. A lopsided, long-lashed eye had been crudely drawn on the bandage with a black marker.
“Nice peeper, Danny,” he said, pointing. “Did you draw it?”
“Yes sir. Well, Jimmy and ’Lita helped.”
He nodded approvingly. “Good job. Pretty soon you’ll get a real one.”
Eyes had been on the list of needed tissues he’d sent to MedArm. There had been no way to save Danny’s eye; gangrene had been too advanced. Even using conventional technique implanting a new one would have taken an hour at the most, but there had been none in his ship’s small tissue bank. Nor had he been able to return sight to a woman who had been blinded by exposure to vacuum, or replace the steel-and-glass lens filling one of Angel’s eye sockets.
The boy gave a squirming shrug, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I guess.” He bit his lip, then squinted up at Marchey with his good eye. “I wish you didn’t have to leave.”
“I have to, Danny,” he said gently. ‘There are other sick people who need me.”
A glum nod. “I guess. I—well, I wanted to tell you a secret before you left. ’Lita said you can tell a doctor anything and it stays a secret.”
“She’s right. Secrets are part of our business. What’s yours?”
Danny looked around to make sure they were alone, then lowering his voice to a whisper, said, “I know how to read and write, sir.”
Marchey blinked in surprise. “Is that so?” He’d been expecting something more along the lines of an adolescent confession of confusing physical urges. Danny was about the right age for such things.
“Yes, sir. Brother Fist said we kids weren’t s’posed to learn such stuff, that he and God would teach us everything we needed to know. But my mom, she taught me anyway. She made me promise never to tell anybody. She said it was our little secret. But now I guess it’s okay to tell you, isn’t it?”
Another of Fist’s nasty little policies coming to light. Not that the old tyrant was the first god-pounder who preferred his flock to remain as ignorant as possible.
He bent down so that he and the boy were eye to eye. “It’s okay to tell everybody now.” He riffled the boy’s hair. “God gave you brains so you could use them. Knowing how to read and write is a wonderful thing. It’s something to be proud of, something you might even want to help teach the other kids.”
Danny absorbed this solemnly. “Then it’s not bad, not a ’bomination?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. Let me tell you something, Danny. Your mom was very wise and brave. Even though she knew it was dangerous, she passed on to you the most precious thing she possessed because she knew it was important. Saying that it was bad was the abomination.”
Danny’s mother had been dead for over a year, the boy all on his own at the age of thirteen and put to work in the mines like an adult. Jimmy and ’Lita Chee, their own daughter four years dead, had taken him in since Fist’s fall. Families like this were springing up all over Ananke, like determined flowers sprouting from scorched earth.
“You should be proud of her and proud of yourself. Every time you read something you should remember her.”
“I do. I read every minute I can.” The boy hesitated, scuffing the ground with his toe, then peered at him slantwise. “I write stuff, too,” he said quietly.
Before Marchey could ask what kind of stuff, the boy spoke in a rush, as if letting out something he’d kept bottled up far too long. Or getting it said before he lost his nerve.
“That’s what I want to do when I grow up. I want to write about my mom. About what happened to her. About what happened to Jimmy and ’Lita and everybody else here. About how Brother Fist did such bad things to us. I want to write about you changing Scylla from an angel into our friend, and how that saved us all from Brother Fist. I want to make sure everybody knows about it, and if I can get it all written down just right, then nobody’ll ever forget about my mom and everybody else, will they?”
Marchey stared at that small earnest face in dismay. He could see that the boy was frightened: of having said his dream out loud, of chancing exposing it to ridicule, of its sheer size and difficulty. But the boy’s face was set with determination to achieve what he had set for himself in spite of his fear, in spite of everything. Like a mirror into the past, it reminded him of the burning sense of purpose he’d once had himself. To be a doctor. To be the best doctor ever. To do what other doctors could not…
What could he say? That the curse of humanity was forgetfulness, and history was nothing but generation after generation repeating the same mistakes? That idealism was the surest road to disappointment, and the higher you set your sights the more certain you were to fall short?
“I—” he said around the lump in his throat, “I think you’re right. I also think your mother would be very proud of you. I know I am.” He offered the boy one silver hand. “Good luck.”
Danny shook it solemnly. His hand was small, but his grip was firm and sure.
Even though it was a constant reminder of a past she desperately wanted to put behind her, Angel had not been able to make herself give up her old cubby in a side room off the chapel. It was one of the few things in her life that had not been changed beyond all recognition by Marchey’s arrival and Fist’s fall.
She had another reason for keeping it. One darker and more complex, one that made her feel guilty and weak and unworthy.
Ashamed of what she was doing but helpless to stop herself, she crossed to the big multifunction communit at the end of the room. Trying to ignore the sense of sin she felt, she took it off standby and sat down on the end of her pallet, remote in hand and eyes on the meter-square main screen.
Then she began scanning through the hidden surveillance cameras, searching for Marchey the way she had once used them to sniff out indolence and blasphemy. Viewpoints bloomed and vanished in quick succession on the main screen, the tick of her thumb against the button the loudest sound in the room.