The moment those brutal words left his mouth he regretted them. But there was no way to take them back. And it was true, dammit!
Angel stared at him, the color draining from her face. Anger and hurt beat at her insides with steel fists, seeking release. The ghost of Scylla stirred in the urge to return the hurt a hundred times over.
She turned away and stumbled toward the door, knowing she had to get away before she lost control. But she stopped short of it, wanting to repay him for what he had said, wanting to hurt herself for driving him to it, staggering under the weight of what she had said and wanted to say but had not been given the chance to tell him.
She took a shuddering breath. “I am afraid,” she admitted in a low hopeless voice. “I am afraid I will have to live in this thing for the rest of my life. Because I am afraid you are the only one who can free me from it. Not just my body, but me. And you…”
She hunched her shoulders and ducked her head as if to protect herself from the results of what she dared not say, but which had to be said anyway. “You do not even care. About the people here. About me. About anything. Even about yourself. Or that someone might I-I-love you!”
That was it, that was the end. All the emotions surging inside her were too new, too raw and wild to be contained. She lifted her foot, her exo multiplying the power of her coiling leg muscles thirty times over, then lashed out with all of her strength.
The force of her kick ripped the door from its pins, flinging it against the unyielding stone of the tunnel’s opposite wall and shattering it as completely as her hopes. Had anyone been in front of it, they would have been killed.
Angel was past such considerations. Shame and loss consumed her, sending her fleeing into the tunnel and away from all the things she had ruined, the door least among them.
Marchey stared at the empty doorway, feeling old and stupid. Worse yet, he felt ashamed.
I shouldn’t let it end like this. He knew he should go after her, try to repair some of the damage. At least apologize.
He didn’t move a muscle.
But it did have to end. Who said endings had to be happy?
“Are you all right?” Mardi puffed from the doorway. Her lined face was pale and frightened, and she’d come from the hospital ward just down the tunnel at a dead run, a bedpan clutched to her chest like a shield.
He gave her a meaningless smile and waved her away. “Just fine. Everything’s all right. You go back. I’ll be along shortly.”
As soon as she was gone he picked up the bottle Angel had brought him. It was still nearly half-full. That might be enough nerve tonic to get him the hell out of there.
She has to live her own life. So do I. A clean break was probably for the best.
He uncorked the bottle and filled his cup. His silver hand dispensed the medication without a tremor.
“Life goes on,” he informed the silence, raising his cup.
He drank half of it off in one desperate gulp. As he waited for that to hit bottom so he could inhale the rest he wondered why the gift she had given him suddenly tasted so bitter.
After committing the travesty of swilling the fine old scotch down like rotgut, Marchey made his last stop at the infirmary to leave the pad with Mardi and Elias. For some reason it seemed important to hang on to the all-but-empty bottle all the way to the lockbay.
The cavernous, stone-walled chamber was jammed with people there to see him off. Passing through the doors and into the bay he ran into a living wall. Dismayed by this one last barrier to making his escape, he’d stalled, knowing he should have expected something like this. But his mind had been on other things.
There was only one way to get to the other side. After a few moments to gather his nerve, he lowered his head, took a deep breath and waded in, the scotch bottle clutched protectively to his chest.
Every one of the people gathered there seemed to have put on their best clothes for the event, items hidden away for many long years, inappropriate to Fist’s drab dictatorship. Most of this faded finery could best be described as glad-rags, and it was worn by people badly out of practice at having fun. Still, there reigned a festive air such as the place hadn’t known for far too many years.
Jon Halen was waiting for him at the top of the ramp, right in front of the locktube doors. Instead of his usual coverall, he was decked out in a ratty wine-colored velveteen tux that hung on his emaciated frame as if on wire hangers, a tattered red-silk carnation on one lapel. To Marchey he looked like the master of ceremonies at a death-camp talent show.
Marchey stumbled up the ramp to Jon’s side. He felt as if he had been kissed, thanked, hugged, and patted on the back by everyone at least twice. If he’d been sober, he couldn’t have endured it. As it was, he felt like someone who had been thrust out naked and unprotected on Jupiter’s surface, squeezed beyond endurance by an inescapable gravity and pressure. He hadn’t seen any sign of Angel. One small favor.
Jon gave him a welcoming grin. “Well, Doc, this is it.”
Marchey nodded distractedly, wanting only to get the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible. “What about Fist?”
“All aboard. Still sleepin’ like the most uglysome baby you ever did see.”
“Great. Thanks for taking care of that.”
Jon snorted. “Hell, we’re the ones should be thankin’ you! We’d pay you good credit to haul his miserable ass outta here if he hadn’t stole it all.”
“It’s no big deal. Any luck finding out what he did with everything he took from you?”
Halen shook his head. “Nah. I’ve started hackin’ at his comp in my spare time, but I’m a few years outta practice, and that paranoid old bastard set up so many layers of protection it might take me years to chop through ’em all.” He shrugged and grinned. “But let me tell you, it sure do feel good to be back in the saddle again.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I get my tap fixed, and my chances to break the bank’ll be better.”
Marchey had carried only two spare taps in his ship’s stores, and had been forced to use both on patients who needed the extended life-support and monitoring capabilities a direct linkage to their nervous systems offered. Those who’d had taps when Fist took over had been forced to submit to the injection of a black-market nanovirus that attacked their taps’ nanostrand linkages, rendering them useless and unrepairable. A tap was a potent tool, which made it a threat to Fist’s rule.
“Well, Med Arm will fix you up soon. Good luck on your treasure hunt.” He turned toward the locktube. “If Fist lets anything slip, I’ll pass it along.” He would have headed up the tube, but Jon put a restraining hand on his arm. He turned back reluctantly.
“Listen, Doc. That’s a generous offer, but I want you to promise me you won’t go messin’ with him any more than you absolute have to. Okay?”
“All right,” Marchey mumbled, casting a longing look up the tube. “Sure.”
“One more thing.”
“What?” He managed to bite back the now. Halen was staring at him, his face solemn. His gaze was so direct it made Marchey uneasy.
“You’ve done more for us than we can ever repay,” he said with quiet force.
“That’s all right,” Marchey muttered, embarrassed.
“No it in’t. We don’t have much. But the honor of offerin’ you what we do have has been given to me. It an’t somethin’ you have to take right now, and its value is somethin’ only you can tote up.”
Jon drew himself up, his lean humorous face suddenly turning stern and proud. Marchey had opened his mouth to say he didn’t want anything, but was silenced by the man’s magisterial air. The bay went silent as all talk, as though even breath itself, was withheld.