That fortified him enough to get his feet under him and totter off to take a shower. The ship’s real-water shower was more than a luxury; it was a lifesaver at times like this. In his delicate condition a sonic shower would probably have killed him.
Fifteen minutes later he returned to the galley, looking and feeling like he might be able to pass for human. He had changed into soft, baggy black trousers and embroidered slippers. Ignoring the water dripping from the hair at the back of his head, he pulled on a loose red-and-black tyon shirt.
He punched up a second coffee, straight this time, and forced himself to eat some sort of tasteless, nutritionally balanced breakfast cake that was gone before he quite figured out what it was supposed to be besides good for him.
When his cup was empty he considered a third, spiked again, but decided he’d better not. At least not yet.
There was something he had to do before he could talk himself out of it. Something best done when he had all his wits about him. Another drink or two of liquid courage might make him feel braver, but would only make the task more dangerous.
He had left the compartment housing the inship clinic brightly lit, as if its occupant were some sort of nocturnal monster the harsh glare could keep contained. Had such things been available, he might have even hung up a shitload of garlic and a gross of crucifixes just for safety’s sake.
He hesitated in the doorway, reconsidering his decision to eschew another drink. Surely just one more would be more help than hurt.
Right. Then one more after that. He stuck to his plan and made himself go on inside.
A deepening chill that had nothing to do with the temperature made him shiver as he approached the unibed. The unit’s sleek black sides had been folded up into patient transport mode, giving it a coffinlike appearance.
He went to the control side of the ’bed and gazed down at the skeletal figure of the man who called himself Brother Fist.
The old man lay there still as death, looking more like something recently exhumed than anything alive. Naked but for a blanket covering him up to his chest, the wrinkled parchment skin slackly draped over the bones of his emaciated body looked too gray and bloodless to be the skin of anything other than a cadaver. His eyes were closed and deeply sunken into their sockets. The liverish slash of his mouth hung slightly open. Only the faint rise and fall of his thin chest betrayed his tenacious hold on life.
Marchey knew that by all rights he should have been dead. Little better than death warmed over because of Form V cancer when he’d had Marchey kidnapped to cure him, his overthrow had been the beginning of the end. The Form V had immediately gone into its wildfire terminal stage.
The average interval between the beginning of terminal stage and death was a week. Anyone else would have been dead from it by now. But not Fist. Somehow he kept his decaying body and putrescent soul together by force of will alone.
Marchey laid one silver hand on the flat touchpad on the unibed’s side, the circuits in his prosthetic directly interfacing with its complex systems. Data whispered into his mind, soft as music from another room: Respiration slow and shallow [7/31], but consistent with patient’s condition. Pulse slow and thready [14], blood pressure low and steady [40s/28d], but CWPC. Blood gasses—
The data whispered on, Marchey interrupting every so often to tweak an adjustment in the life-support parameters. The ’bed’s neural fields were in Pain Suppression, Patient Immobilization, and Deep Sleep modes.
The old monster was fine just the way he was. Still alive, but dead to the world. A sleeping dragon, its fires banked and its hunger held in check. Although weighing barely over forty kilos and only days away from death, he was still almost as dangerous as he had ever been. As long as his mind functioned he would remain so.
Back on Ananke, Marchey had kept him locked in a storage room and buried under a sleepfield. The locks weren’t to keep Fist in, the sleepfield would see to that, but to keep his former subjects out. There was no way he could guarantee Fist’s safety, but he felt that he had a duty to do what he could to insure it.
The lock had seemed like a logical precaution. After all, his former subjects had ample reason to want at him. Most people would have been rabidly trying to get their hands on him, first to torture his secrets out of him, then lynch what was left after the interrogation.
But not the Kindred. They had learned their lesson and learned it well. To have any dealings with Fist was to flirt with destruction. He had enslaved them, tormented and murdered the ones they loved, perverted their faith, and stolen everything of value they had: the fruits of their labor, their freedom, their dignity, and their future. Fist would have seen to it that vengeance cost them all they had regained, and they knew it. They avoided him like the plague he was. After a few days Marchey quit locking the door.
Shortly after he had been given orders to go back on the circuit again he’d offered to take Fist with him and turn him over to whatever authorities would have him. It stood to reason that the people of Ananke would have a better chance of recovering from what had happened if the source of the infection were removed.
The offer had been made to the community as a whole through Jon Halen, who had already emerged as something of a leader. Or at least a spokesman for the consensus. The Kindred had never been much for leaders before Fist, and it was doubtful they would want any others after him. Unsurprisingly enough, Jon returned saying they would gladly be rid of him.
Since then Marchey had toyed with the idea of trying to get Fist to reveal what he had done with the spoils from Ananke. Standing in the shower with the water beating down on his aching head, feeling a tidal pull from behind and faced with the empty hours and days ahead, the idea had taken on a new attraction.
It would help divert his thoughts from… other matters.
“Sleepfield off,” he said, the unibed chiming in response to his command. 4‘Bring the patient around. Keep immobile and anesthetized.”
Wake the dragon. Up to now he had only let Fist rise up to a semiconscious state, first when repairing his broken arm and lacerated throat, then afterward during his daily check on him.
Marchey was perfectly willing to admit that Fist scared the living hell out of him. Anyone with half a brain would feel the same way. His heart beating faster in trepidation, he gripped the side of the bed as if to keep himself from running away. Playing with Fist was a dangerous diversion. Shaving his face with a hundred gigawatt mining laser would be far safer.
Fist’s crepey eyelids fluttered as he began to come around.
Marchey could not shut out the memories of Fist’s endless unapologetic cruelties. His utter delight in the suffering of others. The way he had nearly ruined his life. That brought him the tempting notion of shutting off the painfield as well.
The idea had its own dark magnetism, but he let it slide. Not only because it would be contrary to his Oath and all his principles, but also because he knew Fist would only sieze on it and use it against him. He had no doubt that the old man could surmount his own pain, then use it to cause someone else to suffer.
The frail draped birdcage of Fist’s chest rose higher with each indrawn breath. His bony hands twitched weakly.
Marchey resisted the temptation to step back. Not only was the old man’s breath unspeakably foul, reeking with death and disease, but he knew that the doors to a human chamber of horrors were about to open.
Fist’s rheumy, pus-colored eyes opened slowly, blinked. If he was confused, it didn’t show. The warped animus lurking behind those eyes stared out at what was around it with a cold, inhuman calculation empty of surprise or expectation or ungoverned emotion.