The beeping stopped. The main screen above the board lit and displayed the message:
RECEIVING REQUEST FOR SECURE TIGHTBEAM MESSAGE LINK. ACCEPT?
He peered at it a moment, then shrugged. Why not?
So he hit the accept pad, muddily trying to puzzle out who would be calling, and why they weren’t using the usual comm channels. The secure beamlock commsystem was a leftover from the ship’s earlier life as a UNSRA courier packet. He hadn’t even known the damn thing worked.
PLEASE STAND BY FOR FULL RECIPROCAL ALIGNMENT
he was advised. A few seconds passed. Beams locked,
LOW-LEVEL ENCRYPTION MODE. BE ADVISED THAT THERE WILL BE A .5 SECOND ENCRYPTION/DECRYPTION LAG.
The message scrolled up to the top of the screen, vanished.
“Yeah, so?” he asked the blank screen, which blipped as if in response.
Now a woman stared out of the screen at him. Her face was thin and pale, with high cheekbones and deeply etched lines at the corners of her clear hazel eyes. Her hair was moonlight gray and spilled over her shoulders. Her wide, generous mouth was quirked in an expectant half smile, and her arms were crossed before her ample bosom.
“Gory,” she said. Her voice was low and whiskey-hoarse, with the slightest trace of a Russian accent. Marchey stared at her, remembering that face when it had been smooth and unlined, that voice when it had been a soaring alto which could wring tears from your eyes when she sang a love song.
“ ’Milla,” he replied, voice husky with the rememberance of the thirty-two-year-old Ludmilla Prodaresk. Raven-haired heartbreaker. Songbird. Brilliant diagnostician and surgeon.
Fellow Bergmann Surgeon. Her bare arms were silver, just like his own. How many years had it been since he’d seen her last? Ten? Twelve?
They looked each other over in silence. Marchey gazed at her careworn face, tracing the lines with his eyes and saddened that the years had used her so harshly. She was still beautiful, but it was the beauty of an Acropolis or a faded rose, of something that endures as a diminished shadow of its former glory.
Did the years show as clearly on his own face? Not that he’d ever been beautiful. He reached up and ran his hand over the top of his head as if pushing his hair back into place so he’d look his best.
When he realized what he was doing a rueful smile crept onto his face. There wasn’t any hair left to push back, was there? The little bit clinging for dear life to the back of his head hardly counted. He could have easily had it replaced, but why bother? Just as she could have had a rejuve, but had not.
The mischievous grin Ludmilla gave him was so familiar that it resurrected the young woman he had known in her face and eyes. “You are looking like shit, Gory,” she said, then burst out laughing. Her laugh was still young, still as warm and fresh as a spring breeze. It melted away the snows of regret in an instant.
“So are you,” he assured her, laughing himself, looking her in the eye and an unspoken message passing between them: We’re still here. We may be battered and bruised and old before our time. We might have screwed up our lives in ways we never could have imagined when we were young by giving ourselves over to a dream that turned sour, but you’re here and I’m here and dammit! but it’s good to see you again!
“It has been some long time,” Ludmilla said.
“That it has.” Marchey agreed. A lifetime.
The smile faded from her face, letting the years creep back over it. “Must keep reunion short. There is covered pad marked ‘M-S-E-M’ on right side of your board. Please push it.”
“Okay,” he said uncertainly, looking down to find it. He flipped the hinged cover up and tapped the pad underneath.
It chirped and glowed blue. Ludmilla vanished in a squall of sleeting static. A message appeared in red:
MAXIMUM SECURITY ENCODING MODE ENGAGED. PLEASE STAND BY.
After a few moments the picture built back up line by line, but in a low-resolution monochrome.
Ludmilla was no longer alone.
“Hey there, Gory,” drawled the man now standing beside her with his arm around her waist, his voice sounding hollow and synthetic. The loose open-throated shirt he wore showed the ritual scarifications on his chest, put there when he had achieved manhood on Mandela.
Marchey dropped into the chair before the console, gawping back in surprise. The man smiled at him, looking tired, but enormously pleased by the reaction he’d provoked.
“Surprised?” he asked.
Marchey nodded. “I sure as hell am, Sal.”
It took Marchey a few moments to figure out what to say next. “No wonder I couldn’t reach you back at the Institute,” he managed at last.
Sal gave him a crooked grin. “I ran away from home.”
Marchey remembered the ominous comment made by the man who had taken over Sal’s desk. “I think they want you back. Quite badly, in fact.”
“I’m sure they do. I, ah, appropriated a few items from the Institute when I left.”
“You always did have your eyes on that Kamir holosculpture in the lobby.”
Sal looked pained. “Actually, I had to leave that behind.” He shook his head ruefully. “Hated to, but I had all I could carry.”
Marchey knew what he was supposed to ask, and obliged his old friend. “What did you take, then?”
Sal shrugged his thin shoulders. “Oh, just everything MedArm needed to start turning out more Bergmann Surgeons.”
It took Marchey several seconds to get his mind around that. “You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I were.” Sal’s face was utterly serious now.
“I don’t get it. You’re saying MedArm wanted to take over the program and start making more of us. Aside from the fact that they allowed the Institute to be largely autonomous, I thought they had decided we were—how was it they put it?”
“Unworkable,” Ludmilla put in. “ ‘An intriguing but unworkable dead end.’ ” A sardonic chuckle escaped her. “How could we argue? If there is one thing flat-butt bureaucrats should know, is dead end.”
“So why the sudden change?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Sal shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, Gory. There’ve been a lot of changes in MedArm over the last few years, not many of them for the better as far as I can see. A lot of new faces in key positions, and damn few of them with any sort of medical background. Real sweethearts, some of them.”
“I think I met one of them when I tried to call you earlier today. A man named Schnaubel. He was sitting at your desk like he owned it. Pleasant fellow. All the warmth and charm of an ice-covered proctoscope. He seems to be looking forward to your return.”
Sal nodded. “I imagine he does, and I sure hope he has to get used to disappointment.” He hesitated, biting his lip. Ludmilla gave him a reassuring squeeze, whispering something in his ear. He nodded, then stood up straight, like a man facing a firing squad.
“I took them by surprise, Gory. Not because I was clever or anything like that. They just didn’t expect me to do anything.” He spread his hand in a helpless gesture, looking Marchey in the eye, appealing to him to understand.
“I haven’t been much more than a figurehead in charge of an empty shell for a long time now. It’s been years since I’ve had anything to do with scheduling or itinerary. MedArm took that over, and I couldn’t do one damn thing to stop them. About four years ago I went to them, trying to arrange a convocation for all of you. I figured it would do you good to get together again. It has always killed me to see all of you so isolated, so alone.”