“I do. Artistry… may be defined… by a total mastery… over materials… shaped toward a vision.” A sly look crossed his goblin’s face. “Take your old love… Ella Prime… for example.”
The mention of Ella’s name rekindled an ache in the old scar tissue stitched across his heart. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised that Fist knew about her. The sly bastard had proved again and again that Marchey’s life was an open book to him. Dredging up Ella’s name was supposed to be the first blood in this new fencing match.
“All right, let’s,” he returned blandly. Much to his surprise, when he tried to visualize Ella’s face he saw Angel’s instead, and the ache it caused was fresher, sharper, deeper.
If Fist was disappointed at his gambit’s failure, he didn’t let it show. “She is a sculptor. Her chosen material… is clay. Clay is base stuff… unformed earth… unformed man… if you believe… in the fable of god. It is nothing… until her hand… transforms it. I too am a… sculptor of sorts. People and lives… situations… are my clay.”
“People and clay are nothing alike.”
Fist’s wispy eyebrows arched. “You think not?” The ghost of a shrug. “Perhaps you… are right. People are… more common. More malleable. Clay must be… found and dug. It does not… seek the hand. The human herd begs… to be shaped. They let outside influences… be impressed like thumbprints… into the shape… of their lives. They willingly become… slaves of wages… and possessions… of fashion or ideology… of another’s opinion… of religion. They seek… rather than evade… being pressed into… armies… movements… mobs… into any shape… the artist… chooses. They are… an irresistible… material.”
Fist paused, panting for breath after this speech. He held up one skeletal hand to say that he wasn’t done. There was a feverish brightness in his gaze, and his usual ironic tone had been replaced with something like passion.
“As for… the artist… he must create… or else… the fire inside… consumes him. He must make… his works… by his own… vision of beauty. No standard… but his own… has meaning… no critic… may rightly… judge him.”
He dropped his hand, inviting rebuttal.
Marchey couldn’t argue with his assertion that people let their lives be shaped by all sorts of outside forces, few of them worthy; he had only to look at his own life to see the painful truth of that. But he had seen Fist’s “artistry” firsthand.
“You’re an egopathic monstrosity,” he returned bluntly. “Your so-called artistry is nothing more than calculated, conscienceless brutality. Hitler was not an artist, and neither was Van Hyaams.” He shook his head. “You can’t justify your crimes by calling them art. You are a lot of things, old man, none of them any damn good. But I never suspected you to have a weakness for rationalization or self-delusion.”
Fist only smiled. “Perhaps the self… itself… is a delusion. But I digress. You have learned… much from me. I have made… my mark on you. Yet I am not surprised… you cannot grasp… my aesthetic. Few can. But here is something… within your grasp: One is either… sculptor or clay. Maker… or made thing. There is no… middle ground. One shapes and commands… or is dumb earth… in another’s hand.”
Fist’s gaze narrowed, turning sharp as a poisoned blade, stabbing into Marchey’s eyes and nailing him in place. “That is all… there is to life. Use or be used. Fight or surrender. If you want… to no longer be clay… then look about you. Seek the means. Seize the moment. If you have… a way to shape things… be it tool… or weapon at hand… then use it.”
Marchey shivered, feeling as if a breath of absolute zero had passed over him. There it was: If you have a weapon at hand, use it. He couldn’t make it any more explicit than that, could he?
The weapon Fist was referring to was, of course, his own self. Everything up to now had been a maze of passages leading to this juncture. The climb up the mountain before the high and wide vista of temptation was revealed.
Oh yes, he was tempted. He wanted to make MedArm pay for what they had done to him. That caustic urge churned in his guts; it had an even stronger hold on him than drink. The more he thought about the things they had done, the more his thoughts turned to retribution and revenge.
Now he had been offered the keys to an engine of vengeance. Fist was a weapon, like some unspeakable doomsday computer given human form; tell him what you wanted destroyed, and he would tell you how to reduce it to smoldering ruins. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that even though the old abomination was more dead than alive, he was still more than equal to the task.
Should I change my name to Dr. Faustus? He remembered asking that, not knowing how close to the truth he had come.
There was the rub. No matter how carefully the deal was struck there were bound to be hidden costs. It would be like opening Pandora’s box. There would be no knowing what evils would come of it, and no way to put them back once they had been loosed.
“This has been all very interesting,” he told Fist with a feigned indifference that sounded all too false. “But right now I need information, not philosophy, and you owe me some.”
Fist stared up at him, searching for evidence that he had been tempted, prying at the lines of his face with cold, clever fingers, seeking the slightest crack in his facade.
Marchey pursed his lips. “Is it time for a long nap?”
Fist let out a sigh that might have been either pleasure or exasperation, letting his head roll to the side. “Very well. What was it… you wanted to know?”
“The Helping Hands Foundation.”
Fist squinted up at him with one yellow eye, withered lips twitching into a grim smile. “It’s not going… to make you happy… or make things easier.”
Probably not “Tell me.”
“It is… a Trojan horse.”
Marchey’s heart sank. “Explain,” he said bracing himself to hear the worst.
Fist did explain, expressing some admiration for the scheme’s diabolical design. It wasn’t hard to tell that the old villain was holding nothing back. He obviously thought that finding out just how dire the situation was would only make Marchey all the more likely to take him up on his offer and pay his still-unstated price.
As soon as Fist was through, Marchey raced to the comm to call Jon Halen and give him the bad news.
Jon had heard Marchey out, his customary good cheer eroding away, leaving his gaunt brown face looking old and tired, drooping like a sail with the wind taken out of it. His bony shoulders slumped inside the threadbare flowered shirt he wore, skinny arms draped limply over the arms of his chair.
It occurred to Marchey that they were all of them old: himself, Jon, Sal, and ’Milla; old and out of their depths, thrashing about in a shark-filled sea of changes, trying to fight the remorseless currents and stay ahead of the teeth at their feet, too long past the vigor of youth to have much chance of reaching the shore.
Jon squared his shoulders, running his misshapen hand though his gray-flecked black hair. “So what should we do?”
Marchey spread his hands. “Keep them from landing if you can.”
“If we can,” Jon echoed uncertainly. “What if we can’t?”
“I guess you have to try to keep them bottled up in their ship.”
Jon didn’t look particularly excited about Plan B. He leaned closer to the pickup. “Are you absolute sure Fist an’t lyin’ to you about all this?” he asked plaintively. “He’d think trickin’ us into refusin’ doctors and medical supplies was funnier’n a rubber crutch.”