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Sure he would.

He turned his head and went back to contemplating the smooth white overhead, mind turning but getting nowhere, like a lame gerbil on a squeaky treadwheel.

Somehow he’d found himself in the center of this whole mess, even though he was dead square in the middle of nowhere without the faintest idea where to go or what to do next.

“This is stupid,” he muttered, sitting up and gazing blankly around him. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that he was forgetting something, that there was some critical piece of the puzzle right in front of him. Something so obvious that he kept overlooking it.

When he was a boy there had been a program called Smiling Stan the Answer Man. Stump him and you won a prize. Where was old Smiling Stan now that he needed him?

In spite of himself, his gaze was drawn toward the door to the inship clinic.

* * *

“You could turn everything around, couldn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

A foreboding smile appeared on Fist’s skull-like face, “Several ways. Some quite… delightful.”

Marchey shivered, snugging his robe tighter about him. He had seen enough of Fist’s works to find it easier to imagine what he might find delightful than was good for his peace of mind.

“Do you have a conscience?”

“No,” Fist answered with absolute certainty and no small pride. “Why should I wear… a ring in my nose… so that others might… lead me around by it?”

Marchey was tempted to follow up on that, but the last thing he needed to hear was that he was agonizing over everything for nothing. That any sense of responsibility or even guilt was only a delusion.

He had to keep moving, keep hitting Fist with scattershot questions. The old man seemed to have only one weakness. His smug self-assurance made him so sure of himself and his own superiority that he could not resist making his infernal games more interesting by perversely putting possible victory in his opponent’s hands without their knowing it. By dropping cryptic hints, or even whole answers spun in such a way as to seem like questions.

“Is there—is there really any chance you would give me the passphrases that would access everything you stole from Ananke?”

That maddening smile grew broader. “Yes. If… properly motivated.”

That answer caught Marchey by surprise. He had expected coy evasion. “What would you want?”

“Something which would… please me even more.”

Marchey knew he was supposed to ask what it was he wanted, so he sidestepped the question. “You aren’t in any position to spend any of your gains,” he pointed out instead, making himself smile. “You can’t take it with you.”

“Perhaps not.” A dismissive twitch of one bony hand. “Many things… I have accrued… will remain behind… most to never be unearthed. Not much of a memorial… but I cannot think… of many who would raise… a monument in my honor.”

“What else are you leaving behind?” Marchey could have pointed out that Fist’s memorial was the trail of destruction and misery and death he had left in his wake. What outrages had he committed before coming to Ananke? How wide a swath had he cut?

Back on Ananke a woman named Elyse Pangborn had begun compiling a list of those who had died under Fist’s reign. Almost three hundred names had been on it when he left, and still all the sorrows had not been counted. He could remind Fist of that, but the old architect of atrocity would probably thank him and turn blackly nostalgic.

“Unused power,” Fist husked, as if naming a remembered lover. “I am even now… a powerful man. With a few words… I could cause… empires to crumble. Could trample the mighty… under my feet… even though… I can no longer… even stand.”

It was temptation time again. Marchey doubted Fist was boasting. He had hired out to governments and corporations alike before descending on Ananke like a terrible predator. He would have as a matter of course sniffed out their every weakness and shaken hands with every skeleton in their closets, making certain that he could destroy them if the need—or even just the whim—arose.

“Do you really like destroying things?”

Fist regarded him, one wispy eyebrow raised as if surprised he could ask such a crass question. “I like to… change things. It is so easy… it is irresistible. As for the other… Rome was counted beautiful… long after… its empire collapsed… and its… great works crumbled. Destruction… like beauty lies… in the eye… of the beholder.”

None of that was anything he could, or should even try to argue. He had to try another tack.

“Do you like being the way you are?”

Fist grinned slyly. “Do you?” A condescending note entered his phlegmy voice. “At least I am… not what others… have made of me… not blindly playing… a fool’s role… assigned to me.”

Marchey felt a chill, knowing Fist had just told him something important. He stared at the old man. “What are you telling me?”

“The obvious.” Cruel humor glinted in his yellow eyes. “Isn’t that obvious?” Haaaaaaaaaaaa.

Marchey licked his lips. “Go on.”

Fist shook his head, feeble but unbendable. “This game is played… one move at a time. Now it is your move… my dear doctor.”

Am I playing some sort of role? A fool’s role at that?

He shook his head, frowning in concentration. That wasn’t quite what Fist had said. Am I still playing a fool’s role assigned to me? Assigned was a key word, he was sure of it.

He leaned back in the galley seat, drumming his metal fingers against the tabletop as thoughts rattled through his head.

What am I doing?

Going crazy. Wishing I was drunk. Wishing I’d never left Ananke. Wishing I had some way to help Angel. Feeling old and stupid. Playing mind games with a psychopath. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on inside Med Arm while I’m stuck on this goddamn ship with the shit about to hit the fan back on Ananke—

He blinked, gray eyes widening as pieces fell into place with an almost audible click.

I’m stuck on this ship. Back on the circuit again. On my way to Botha Station.

But why?

Because it’s my job, it’s what I do. Because—

Because MedArm is sending me there!

He sat bolt upright, a chill running down his back. “Is that obvious enough for you, Doctor Dickhead?” he muttered to himself in sour amusement. His mind raced in a hundred directions as that one simple fact illuminated so many things that had been in darkness. He forced himself to calm down and go through it one step at a time.

They’re sending me there to treat a single patient they rate as more important than all the people of Ananke.

Who was the patient? What was wrong with him or her?

They had never said. No name, no condition. Just the expectation that I would unquestioningly obey orders.

Why shouldn’t they expect that? He always had.

He got up and began to pace the carpeted deck, the hem of his robe flapping around his bare legs. That led to a couple obvious conclusions. But there was something else… a further inference nagging at the edge of his thoughts. Two more unconnected pieces drifting closer together, very nearly locking into one.

Sal said that it appeared MedArm had suddenly decided to take over the Institute and restart the Program right after a way around the Nightmare Effect had been found.

Now he knew that MedArm—or at least some group inside it—had been using the Bergmann Surgeons to further some hidden agenda of their own by using them to treat only certain people. He and ’Milla and all the others had remained unaware of how their use had been corrupted because the Nightmare Effect made it pointless to try to get to know their patients— not that the speed with which they were shuffled around gave them much chance anyway. That dovetailed so neatly it had to be engineered.