Angel had no idea what any of that meant. Nor did she care, now that she knew it was not instruction from God. Whatever tatters of concentration she could muster were wrapped around the strange way she felt. She knew she wasn’t moving her legs. She was only thinking about moving them, and her exo was doing the rest, carrying her slack, numb body along inside it. It felt odd, but not unpleasant.
Suddenly she felt something being pushed against her lips. She peered woozily down past her nose, saw her hand forcing a cake of manna into her mouth. She chewed the bland biscuit out of reflex, swallowed the dry crumbs. Her pouch. There had been manna in her pouch. Was that distant gnawing sensation hunger?
Before long her pallet hove into view, doubling and blurring as her organic eye lost focus and track. She couldn’t even remember having passed through the outer door to the chapel.
The next thing she knew she was stretched out on her bed, flat on her back and unable to move.
***HOST FATIGUE LEVEL CRITICAL***
wrote itself inside her angel eye.
***EXTERNAL DANGER LEVEL NULL***FULL OVERRIDE INVOKED***VOLUNTARY SYSTEMS GOING TO ENFORCED REST STATUS***
For the first time in memory her angel eye went dark of its own accord, shutting down so that sensory input from it did not keep her awake. Everything vanished in the darkness that followed. Her pale, haggard face grew lax as she began to sink into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
Moments later she was dragged back toward wakefulness by a loud, insistent buzzing sound. Her angel eye remained stubbornly dark, but she managed to pry the other one back open.
She was still blearily trying to make sense of the sound when it stopped. An instant later the meter-square main screen of her comm lit.
Angel’s breath caught in her throat as Marchey stared out of it at her like a face from a dream. Her heart raced faster and her head swam at the rush of emotions that surged through her. The comm had been left on standby against the one-in-a-million chance that he might try to call her, and against all odds he had!
She tried to get up, desperately wanting to get closer, to touch him if he was real, to answer if he was calling her, but her silver-armored body lay stiff, as if cast from solid metal.
Panic set in. She strained and twisted, trying to flog her body into motion but only able to lift her head slightly off the pillow. Commands to her traitorous limbs were swallowed up by a silent nothingness that furled tighter with every exertion.
***WARNING!!!***
wrote itself in fiery red print inside her still-dark angel eye.
***REST IMPERATIVE***THREAT LEVEL NULL***XO-MEDSYSTEMS INVOKING INVOLUNTARY SEDATION***
Angel’s head fell back, her breath sawing in and out in ragged sobs. Her head spun. Dizziness made everything unreal. She couldn’t think straight, couldn’t tell if she was really awake or trapped in a nightmare, wanting to reach him so badly the need was more than she could contain; but her exo and her weakness defeating her.
The last thing she saw through the tears welling up in her eye was a smile appearing on his face.
She tried to smile back—
4. Consultation
Jon Halen’s lean, dark visage filled Marchey’s screen, lighting up in a toothy grin when he saw him. “Hey there, Doc,” he drawled, “If you’re callin’ bout your bill, the check’s in the mail.”
Marchey had to smile, and not just at that very old, very bad joke. Just seeing Halen again did more to lighten his mood than anything he’d drank lately.
“Glad to hear it. How are things back at the old homestead?”
“Tolerable. I did just get one bit of good news.”
Marchey smirked. “Salli wants to have your children?”
That made Jon snicker. “No, that’s not it. ’Sides, I’ve been too busy humpin’ a keyboard for any of that.”
“Any luck cracking Fist’s accounts?”
Halen’s grin slipped. “Naw, I’m ’fraid not. I’ve been spendin’ ev’ry minute I can spare tryin’ to get a handle on his records, but I’m still just sortin’ the locked files from the open stuff. The old bastard had enough data squirreled away to keep me diggin’ for years.”
He scrubbed his stubbly chin with his misshapen hand, peering at Marchey with one eye. “You been, um, talkin’ to him?”
“A little. Sorry, but he hasn’t told me anything.” Nothing I wanted to hear, anyway. Or believe.
Jon shook his head. “Don’t be. I shouldn’ta even asked. Like I said before, don’t go messin’ with him any more’n you absolute have to.”
“You said you have good news,” Marchey prompted.
Halen’s irrepressible grin reappeared. “I surely do! There’s medical people and all those supplies you wrote up on the way. Just got the word that they’re s’posed to arrive sometime late Friday.”
That was about the same time he’d reach Botha Station. Marchey let out a sigh of relief. Now maybe he could stop feeling so guilty about leaving them. “That’s great. I knew MedArm would come through.”
Jon shook his head. “It an’t them personally, it’s some outfit called the Helping Hands Foundation.”
Marchey sat there after saying good-bye to Jon, mulling things over.
By all rights he should have been feeling pretty good. Jon had accessed the medical files for him, and he had been pleased to see that not only were Mardi and Elias doing an excellent job of keeping them up-to-date, the people in their care were doing at least as well as could be expected. Jon had offered to get Mardi to report directly—Elias was sleeping—but he didn’t want her to think he was checking up on them.
Medical help was on the way. That should have been a load off his mind. It was, mostly. But he had never heard of this Helping Hands Foundation, and couldn’t help wondering why they were doing what was supposed to be MedArm’s job. Bureaucracy at work, no doubt, some penny-pinching MedArm comptroller using a private group of do-gooders to pare his or her precious budget. Once this outfit arrived he’d have to check with Mardi and Elias to make sure they were doing a good job—and raise holy hell if they weren’t.
Jon hadn’t seen Angel since bumping into her in a corridor the morning Marchey left. He’d looked disappointed when Marchey turned down his offer to track her down for him. It appeared that not even his departure had dampened Jon’s desire to put the two of them together.
He got up from the commboard and drifted back to the galley. He’d refilled his glass with straight scotch and knocked half of it back before he remembered that he was rationing the booze.
“Just celebrating,” he mumbled, scowling into his glass. Everything was turning out the way it was supposed to. Everything was coming up roses.
No news was good news. Angel was probably just fine.
He drained the glass. She was undoubtedly going on with her life, already forgetting about him.
Just like he was forgetting about her.
Marchey jerked in surprise and spilled his coffee when his arm chimed that next morning, having forgotten that the day before he’d set it to remind him when Fist’s sleepfield was about to shut down. The unibed had been programmed to give the old man half an hour of wakefuless per day.
He started to get up, then changed his mind and settled back into the galley seat. Let the miserable old bastard stew a few minutes. After swabbing up the mess he’d made he refilled his cup from the dispenser. Took a sip, grimaced.