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“Probably not,” Marchey snapped. Going on the evidence, he would only make matters worse.

The chime signalling that his ship’s airlock had cycled through sounded. Time to go.

He grimaced. “Sorry about that, Jon,” he added more gently, taking a last longing look at Angel and hoping he would get a chance to tell her he was sorry for the way he had treated her. She appeared so small, so helpless. In so many ways she was little more than a child. Innocent and vulnerable. Trusting. Could she possibly understand just how big a risk she was taking?

Yes, she probably did. Maybe because she had never learned how to lie to herself the way he had.

“Doc?”

Marchey tore his gaze away to look at Halen’s face in the inset. “Yeah?” There seemed to be something stuck in his throat, thickening his voice to a rusty croak.

Jon held up his misshapen hand as if in benediction. “If anyone can make somethin’ out of this mess, it’s you. We trust you, brother. Don’t let yourself forget that.”

Marchey wondered where Halen’s confidence came from. He could use a dose.

“I hope you’re right,” He sighed wearily. “But did you ever think that maybe none of this would’ve happened if I stayed there with you?” If I hadn’t been too willing to run back to my safe old life. If I hadn’t convinced myself that I had fulfilled all my responsibilities toward you. If, if, if—

“Could be,” Jon replied imperturbably. Then he smiled, his face that of a man whose faith remained bouyant and unshakable. “God works in mysterious ways, my friend. Did you ever stop to think that maybe you had to leave here to find out what you needed to know, and get where you needed to be, so you could do what had to be done to stop it?”

Marchey could only hope he was right. And that if there truly was a god, he she or it was on their side.

* * *

The name of the physician in charge of the patient Marchey had come to see was Dr. Raphael Moro. Early forties. Born on Earth. Educated on Mars. Excellent credentials.

Marchey knocked at Moro’s office door, hoping he didn’t have to chase the man down, or wait for him to turn up before he could see the patient. Gilt lettering on the door said that Moro was director of the whole Medical Section on Botha. That wasn’t encouraging. Too many administrators believed that the delay and inconvenience they caused others was the best measure of their own power and importance. Giving a Bergmann Surgeon an especially hard time was strictly mandatory.

The door swung open a few moments later. The sheer size of the man filling the opening made Marchey blink and take half a step backward.

Moro was huge, and built like a bear. Round-shouldered and slightly stooped, but still standing well over two meters tall. His skin had the coppery sheen of Polynesian bloodlines, set off by the rumpled white scrubs he wore. His stiff black hair stood straight up atop his head, and his wispy black beard had a stripe of pure white running through it.

He stared silently at Marchey, brown eyes magnified by archaic corrective lenses, the pinched look of distaste on his moon face saying that he disapproved of him on sight. Ignoring Marchey’s greeting and profferred hand, Moro brusquely turned and walked away, leaving it up to Marchey to follow. A half-meter-long, tightly braided black queue draped down Moro’s slablike back, swinging with every step.

“Sit,” he said, pointing at a chair facing his desk as he passed it.

Marchey didn’t particularly care for being ordered around like an orderly called onto the carpet for some screwup, but did as he was told. He watched Moro lumber around the side of the desk and lower his bulk into his high-backed leatherite chair, then just sit there glowering at him.

Even though he could almost feel every precious second ticking by, raising the level of his impatience and anxiety like sand piling higher in the bottom of an hourglass, he dared not let it show. He had to proceed as if this were just another job.

He folded his silver hands on his lap to keep them still. His prosthetics had been left uncovered on purpose. The sight of them made most doctors—surgeons, especially—uncomfortable. Offering to shake hands usually guaranteed a minimum of delay in being taken to the patient.

“I can’t say that I’m particularly pleased by having you brought in on this case, Dr. Marchey,” Moro rumbled at last, his tone gruff and putting sarcastic emphasis on Doctor. That was nothing new. Sarcasm, truculence, and even outright contemptuous loathing—Marchey had heard it all before.

“You’re not?” he replied neutrally.

[Danny’s in the bay now.] Jon whispered in his ear over the remote a second later.

Moro put his hands flat on his desk. They were massive, with thick blunt fingers, more like the hands of a stonecutter than a surgeon. “No, I’m not. But I was overruled. MedArm insisted on bringing in one of your kind.”

“My kind,” Marchey echoed tonelessly. Hostility was nothing new. It looked like Moro intended to articulate his. He didn’t care how vicious the attack was, as long as it was short. Time was running out.

“Your kind. The kind that provide special treatment for the high-and-mighty.”

He watched Moro’s mouth tighten, as if he were about to spit, turning that statement over in his mind. Moro knew how they were being used. Khan had as much as said the same thing. Was it general knowledge, or simply rumor and innuendo that had attached itself to them?

“I refused to give you the patient’s condition when you called because I wanted to see your face. I wanted to see if you showed the slightest frigging sign of a conscience when I told you what you’ve come to do.”

“Well,” Marchey said mildly, “why don’t you tell me what it is? That way we can both find out what we want to know.”

“Your patient is Preston Valdemar.”

“So you told me.”

Moro’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses. “The name means nothing to you?”

“No,” he lied. “Should it?”

“Damn right it should,” Moro growled. “Valdemar used to be Belt Operations Director for OmniMat. But he ‘retired’ to become MedArm’s new Outer Zone Manager a few years back. As you know, the Outer Zone starts with Mars and her moons and comes on out here.”

He hadn’t. Though Moro didn’t know it, he had just given Marchey the information he needed to understand how MedArm had managed to get away with some of the things it had done.

MedArm’s control of off-Earth Health Care was total and nearly autonomous. Sometime in the past it had apparently split into what were in effect two separate MedArms. One to cover the cylties, the Venus stations, and the teeming tunnels of old Luna herself. The other, its evil twin, to cover the vast, more newly inhabited and less densely populated spaces of Mars and its moons, the Belt, and Jupiter’s moons. Since the Bergmann Institute was on Deimos, it was under the Outer Zone’s control.

It was a case of one hand not knowing what the other one was doing, and the body they belonged to— the UN Space Regulatory Agency—knowing even less. UNSRA’s administrative base was, after all, on Luna. Inside the Inner Zone and far removed from the Outer. He had to wonder when this split had happened, and at whose behest.

Neither the “silver lining” or “Indian blanket” file had mentioned it. As for Valedemar, his name had been cited once, but not his position. See file it had said after his name. No doubt there was another locked file that held the missing pieces and would hyperlink the other two together. One Fist had held back, helpful son of a bitch that he was.

Why hadn’t Sal told him about this split?