Brandy flavoring in coffee was not at all the same thing as the real thing. Not even close. He dumped it out.
It was still early in his second day back on the circuit. The two hours he’d been up felt like two days.
The long stretches of monotonous solitude had never grated on his nerves like this before, never made him feel this trapped and jittery.
Of course this was the first time he’d tried to do it this close to sober. He couldn’t recall the countless other times he’d spent days—sometimes even weeks— like a machine on standby clearly enough to say he truly remembered them. They were like the hours spent in sleep. He knew they had passed, but darkly and disconnected from the normal flow of time.
Just three days before there hadn’t been enough hours in the day. Now there were too many days in each hour. The minutes pass slowly when you’re all alone and mostly sober. Any distraction was welcome.
Marchey stood up, bitterly amused by the realization that looking in on Fist was going to be the high point of his day.
“So glad to see you… my dear doctor,” Fist wheezed, gazing up at Marchey with what passed for a friendly smile. The Grim Reaper had that sort of smile.
“Of course… I should be glad… to be able… to see anyone.” He chuckled, a wet, tubercular, hacking sound.
Marchey’s guard went up. He rested his hand on the touchpad, but withheld accessing the ’bed’s systems. “How are you feeling?” he asked, telling himself to watch his step. Fist was up to something.
The old man’s thin, blue-gray lips peeled back from his sharp white teeth. “Probably about… the way I look.”
Marchey let the opening pass. “Any pain?” The neural field created by the Schmidt crystals should be keeping the worst of the pain suppressed, but with Form V you couldn’t count on it. Not that Fist hadn’t earned some suffering by forbidding medical care for his former subjects because it pleased him to hear them praying to be healed. Surely such cruelty ought to be repaid.
“Does my pain… truly disturb you? Or does… it seem just?” Fist asked sweetly, as if he had read Marchey’s mind. “What would you do… if I said… I was in agony?”
The safest course was to ignore the first two questions and take the last at face value. “I’d increase the anesthetic field to emergency strength. If that didn’t take care of it, I’d keep you under the sleepfield fulltime since I’m out of superaspirin, syndorphins, and paraopiates.”
A slight nod. “As I thought.” That awful grin widened. “No pain… I cannot endure. Your agenda… will not be spoiled… by my infirmity.”
Marchey almost asked him what he meant, but caught himself at the last moment. Fist was finessing him for some reason, trying to lure him into something like a fly into a pitcher-plant. So he said nothing.
“What agenda is that… you ask?” Fist wheezed. His voice dropped to a conspirational whisper. “What do I have… hidden away? What passphrases and… code keys unlock it? I may… tell you.” The ghost of a shrug. “I may not. It depends… on you.” He stared up, smugly expectant.
Well, here we go, Marchey thought glumly, not surprised that Fist knew what he wanted and intended to use it to his advantage. But this was an uncharacteristically straightforward approach. Of course, when dealing with Fist the most dangerous trap was the one you didn’t see. There was sure to be one, probably already under his feet. One wrong word would make it snap shut.
He stared back at Fist, doing his best to maintain an impassive, indifferent expression. After a moment the old man nodded, and smiled.
“You are… an apt pupil, Doctor. Caution is… an admirable virtue. But a one-sided conversation… is no conversation at all.” Fist released him by looking away. Marchey swallowed a sigh of relief. Yet this small victory felt hollow. Fist was handling him with kid gloves, he was sure of it. But why?
“We have… been friends,” Fist said quietly, stressing the word friends with smirking sarcasm, “For only… a short time. Still, you are… not a stupid man. You have been trained… to observe… to make deductions… on the basis… of those observations.” He turned his head back to look up at Marchey, who could only uneasily wait for him to get to the point.
“Have you deduced,” Fist whispered, “what motivates me?”
Marchey stared at the old man, knowing that his surprise showed on his face. So he made himself smile.
“You’re a psychopath,” he answered blandly, knowing Fist would take exception to it. If they were going to play games, let him be the one on the defensive.
Sure enough, he frowned and shook his head. “That is a glib… meaningless description… and rather… unflattering at that.” He held up his hand, waggling a bony finger. “Stop playing stupid. It ill… befits you.”
“Self-interest?” Marchey had to admit that he was curious as to what motivated Fist. He was criminally insane, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have some sort of logical framework—no matter how twisted—for all his actions.
“Closer… but a vague category… not a specific motivation.”
“Love?” He had to keep himself from being drawn in, from giving the responses Fist wanted to elicit.
Those pus-colored eyes narrowed. Fist stared at him for several long seconds, then grinned. “Excellent. As I said… you are… an apt pupil. You learn. Use what you… have learned. You believe… that I am leading you… into some sort of trap… don’t you?” It was not a question.
“Aren’t you?” Marchey parried.
“You would know for certain… if only you understood… my motivations.” Haaaaaaaaaaa, Fist’s laugh made his skin crawl, but he knew he’d managed a draw.
Now if he only knew what the hell the game was.
Fist cocked his head to one side. “No doubt you have… called Ananke by now. How are… our dear friends there?”
“Nobody said they missed you.”
A look of mock disappointment. “After all I… did for them. Such ingratitude. How will… they ever get along… without us?”
Marchey snorted. “They’ll get along just fine. They needed you like they needed a plague. The medical help they need is on the way, so they’ll be fine without me.”
He glanced up at the clock, deciding that it was time to end his visit. He hadn’t gotten anything concrete out of the old psychopath, but neither had he found himself up to his neck in concrete and sinking into the mud under forty feet of water. Besides, it was time for a well-earned drink.
Fist’s bubbling chuckle snatched his attention back like a slap in the face. “Not from… MedArm,” Fist said quietly.
Marchey frowned. “How did you know that?”
“The Helping Hands Foundation.” A skeletal grin. “The game grows… more intriguing,” he wheezed with ominous satisfaction. “I am pleased.”
Marchey stared down at the old man, hands clamped tight on the unibed’s sides to keep him from shaking some answers out of the smirking bastard. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
Watch yourself! he warned himself. He’s sucking you in. But he had to ask. Anything that pleased Fist could only spell disaster for everyone else.
Fist’s hooded eyes glinted with perverse pleasure. “Motivation,” he rasped. “Pleasure. Reward. Allegiance. Fulfillment. Accomplishment.” A pregnant pause. “Challenge.”
He let out a long sigh, unmistakably savoring the moment and the situation. “Yes, even love. I do love life when… it puts the sweet raw stuff… of possibility… in my hands.” He closed his hands as if feeling what he spoke about in them and closed his eyes, an expression of something like serenity on his fleshless face.
“It has put… that same sweet stuff… in your hands, too,” he added in a conspirational whisper, as if imparting some secret wisdom.