He turned on his heel, pacing back the way he’d come. Even if he hadn’t stumbled onto the “silver lining” file, the end to the Nightmare Effect meant that sooner or later he and the other Bergmanns would have realized that his patients were almost never your ordinary Joe or Jane. They weren’t stupid. They’d figure it out. When that happened they would be appalled, just as he had been. They would be outraged.
As a group, they could best be described as battered idealists. Their idealism was what had led them to risk their hands and their careers in the Program in the first place, and its tattered remnants kept them clinging to its promise in spite of the ruin it had made of their lives. None of them had much to lose. Once they figured out how they were being used they would rebel.
Marchey stood stock-still, having reached the sharpened hook at the end of this chain of deduction.
When that happened, MedArm would need replacements. They had too good a thing going to give it up now. ’Milla’s comment about them becoming robots that had become too troublesome to maintain had been right on the mark, as had Sal’s remark about better ones being made. Obviously the new group of Bergmann Surgeons would be operating under a very different set of inducements, expectations, and motivations than the originals.
Back to the obvious, now that at least a little of the murk surrounding the Institute takeover had cleared.
The patient waiting for him on Botha Station was important to MedArm. One of the select few allowed to receive what the Bergmanns had to offer. More important than all the people of Ananke.
How important?
Now there was a question worth pursuing.
He cinched the belt on his robe tighter and headed toward the commboard. It was about time he found out just who he was going to treat, and why. But he wasn’t going to ask MedArm. No, he was going to give the doctor in charge of the case a friendly call. Colleague to colleague.
When that was done he was going to permit himself one single weak drink. Not to forget, but to celebrate.
After all, it wasn’t every day that he went back into private practice.
5. Intervention
“Well, Doc, we’ve got us some visitors.”
Jon Halen was wearing the same flowered shirt he’d worn the day before, only now it was wrinkled and rumpled, probably from being slept in. There was at least two days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks and chin, and deep bags under his bloodshot brown eyes.
“I told ’em to piss off,” he went on. “They didn’t have no by-your-leave to land, but they ignored me. They overrode the outer landin’ shaft doors somehow and they’re cornin’ on in like they own the place.” He made a face. “Rude bastids.”
Marchey marvelled at how calm Jon sounded. He wanted to curse and pound on something at the unfairness of it all, but somehow kept his voice even. “Damn. All I needed was another half hour.”
At this point he was running on fumes. Sleep had been out of the question as the deadline approached, and he’d spent hour after hour going over what information he had, searching for whatever leverage he could find. Now that the moment of truth was nearly upon him he felt unreadier than ever.
“We’ll try to buy it for you.” Jon grinned. “Hope our credit’s still good. You really think this patient of yours—”
“Preston Valdemar.” The name of the physician in charge at Botha’s Medical Section was Dr. Raphael Moro. He had given Marchey Valdemar’s name, but refused to disclose his condition or anything else about him. Was that out of simple pique because he’d called the man in the middle of the night and awakened him? Or was it on MedArm’s orders?
“Right, I remember his name from the Helping Hands file. Let’s hope he has the mojo to call ’em off. How’re you gonna convince him?”
Now there was a part of his plan he hadn’t let himself examine too closely. “Any way I can.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “Just get me that half hour and keep them from getting a foothold.”
I will.
Angel made herself tear her gaze away from Marchey’s face on the screen and turned back toward her locker. Inside it was the most certain way of keeping that promise.
The most certain and the most dangerous.
She wanted to pray for guidance, but her new self had not yet decided if she believed in God or not— largely because her old self had been so sure of it.
It was strength she wanted to pray for, because in her weakness she found herself seriously contemplating a course of action which could all too easily end up welding the silver skin of Scylla forever around her. Because now that the moment she had been waiting for was nearly upon her she felt small and afraid, completely unequal to the task she had set for herself.
There seemed to be only one way to banish the fear. A way that would at the same time make her more than equal to the threat posed by the intruders. All she had to do was reach out and take it.
Scylla’s silver bracers hung there before her on their charging hooks in the locker. They seemed to gleam with promises of power and completion. They could make everything all right.
She snatched one off its hook with a sudden, convulsive movement and clamped it against her arm.
It responded instantly, powering up the moment its receptors touched the scarred bare skin on the back of her left hand. The status display popped up in the left periphery of her angel eye as the biometal artifact wrapped itself around her forearm like a living thing. Words and numbers flickered, changing as the weapons systems built into the bracer locked themselves into the exo’s circuits and her own nervous system.
A Scylla-thrill of coiled power radiated up her arm from the bracer, sweeping away her fear and doubt before it. With it surged the heady remembrance of power. With just a thought she could release a howling burst of energy capable of punching through the hardened steel of a ship’s hull like so much foil. Even without her other bracer, nothing made of blood and bone could stand against her. The intruders were doomed if she went to them like this, with Scylla’s armaments to back her up.
If she went to them as Scylla.
The shadow self of Scylla was the returning memory of strength and certainty and purity of purpose. Of fearlessness.
Life as Angel had been nothing but a morass of doubt and confusion and longing. Angel was a creature of weakness and helplessness and futility, her lot fear and pain and failure.
Angel had vowed not to hurt anyone ever again, never suspecting the dire circumstances she would face.
Scylla would cut the invaders down like wheat before a scythe. Nothing could stand in her way.
Nothing.
Least of all that fragile construct named Angel. The person she was now. The one he wanted her to be.
“No,” she whispered, giving the mental command while she was still able. The bracer went back to standby and reluctantly released itself to dangle from her arm like some war god’s notion of a charm bracelet. She peeled it off and put it back on its hook.
There was a long, white, hooded robe in her locker, one her old Master had made her wear sometimes. She chose that over Scylla’s most dangerous aspects, shrugging into it and knotting the belt tightly. Then she closed the door to her locker, leaving sure victory behind as she turned on her heel and began her journey toward the landing bay.