Ah, but maybe he had. I just let it go in one ear and out the other. Having your head stuffed up your ass creates a fairly serious hearing impairment, to say nothing of how it affects cognitive function.
The important thing was that if Valdemar ran the Outer Zone, then he was even more powerful than Marchey had first thought. This new information only made him all the more impatient to get to him. His feigned indifference even harder to maintain as he sat there waiting for Moro to finish venting his spleen.
“MedArm Outer Zone has been goddamn busy,” Moro went on, making it sound like he held Marchey personally responsible. “You know how the system is supposed to run. Doctors are free to work where they want, even outside the system in private practice if they follow the regs. Inside the system we’re subsidized, with incentives for working in depressed areas. Supposedly the only interference with our autonomy is that sometimes new system-educated doctors are assigned short residencies in places with inadequate medical care.”
Some doctors are free to practice where they want, Marchey amended silently. He kept his mouth shut, though. Moro’s face was darkening, and he could almost smell the man’s anger. Moro had an axe to grind, and Marchey was about to see its edge.
“I’m AAA certified,” Moro said with a scowl. “I assume you know what that means.”
“I do.” AAA certification meant that he was qualified to practice all forms of medicine—surgery, obstetry, genetry, euthanasia, nanotony, and all the rest—rating in the top 5 percent of the profession in terms of skill and training. His own battered pride made him add, “I’m AAAB certified myself.”
Only triple A’s had been admitted to the Bergmann Program, which was the origin of that final—sometimes seemingly terminal—B.
“Good for you. What do you know about Carme, then?”
Marchey shrugged. “Outer Jovian moon. Mostly independents and wilders.”
Moro nodded. “That’s where I used to practice. The conditions were miserable. My whole infirmary wasn’t much bigger than this office. ‘Pay what you can, if you can,’ is the motto for strict adherents to the Healer’s Oath, right? I had my own ore accounts ’cause that was what I got paid with more often than not. Everything I made went toward keeping my practice afloat.” Moro’s blocky hands tightened into knuckly fists atop his desk. “I loved that cold, ugly damned place. Those people meant a lot to me, and by Christ I meant a lot to them! But MedArm ordered me to come here, replacing me with some quack with a half dozen malps hanging over his head. When I tried to refuse, they threatened to punch my ticket to practice. So I came here and tried to appeal, getting about as far as I would trying to shovel vacuum. Valdemar laid it out for me. I was here to stay as long as he did, like it or not. Would you like to hear why?”
[Angel won’t take the remote.] Jon whispered in his ear while he waited. Moro was going to tell him whether he wanted to hear or not. But he did, he needed every handle on Valdemar he could get.
“Because I was, and I quote, ‘Too good a doctor to be wasted on that grubber garbage!’ ” Moro roared, thrusting himself to his feet, his big fists braced on the desk as if preparing to vault over it so he could beat the living hell out of Marchey.
He thrust out his jaw. “So here I sit on my ass in this fancy office like some high-class whore! This place is lousy with corporate high rollers. Sometimes I get to treat what he calls the ‘little people,’ ordinary workers and their families.” His expression turned bitter, his voice dropping to a growl. “Otherwise, I do a lot of cosmetic surgery. Rejuves. Coddle ’xecs without the brains to eat right or exercise. Lots of heart and liver work, lots of substance abuse.”
Marchey couldn’t see why Moro was blaming him for all this, unless he simply had to blame somebody. He watched the big man bend over to yank open a desk drawer. “All that’s just bones I’m thrown to keep me out of trouble. What I really am is Valdemar’s personal physician. Here are his records.” He flung a sheaf of hard-copy flimsies at Marchey as if challenging him to a duel.
They fluttered to the ground at Marchey’s feet. His face a blank slate, he bent, picked them up. Straightened up and began skimming through the pages.
He was soon a lot closer to understanding Moro’s fury. He looked up at the other doctor. “Valdemar is a Maxx addict.”
“He calls it his ‘little vice’,” Moro sneered. “One week’s dosage costs the system more than all the pharmaceuticals and supplies I’d use for six whole months back on Carme. But it doesn’t cost him a single frigging credit. It’s his ‘medicine.’ ”
Marchey sighed. Maxx was the street name for a synthesized combination of several naturally occurring neuronal proteins. Even doctors called it that. Its clinical uses included the treatment of spinal cord and other major nerve-bundle injuries, Third Form Autism, certain types of paralysis, Laskout’s Anesthesia, persistent coma, and a handful of related conditions. It stimulated and amplified neurotransmission and acted as a sense enhancer.
The drug’s high cost came from the difficulty of its synthesis and terribly short shelf life. But it was potent stuff. In most cases one or two small doses did the trick. A protracted course of treatment almost never ran for more than a dozen doses administered over a twelve-week period.
Even in relatively high clinical dosages the user’s body was able to deal with it, and its metabolized byproducts. Taking it over a long period of time was another matter. Elimination was outpaced by intake. Wastes accumulated, eventually leading to liver and kidney damage. The brain’s normal chemical balance went from subtly altered to completely and increasingly out of whack, resulting in paranoia, extreme mood swings, synesthesia, and a progressive deadening of the senses that the abuser would of course try to combat with increased dosages of the problem’s cause.
Maxx was a prestige party drug for the rich, or rare champagne treat for the street-level abuser. Full-scale addicts were extremely rare; it took a combination of deep pockets and reliable black-market connections to maintain the habit.
That, or a direct legal pipeline into the supply.
“I’m sure you know that the best way to treat his condition,” Moro growled, “is to take him off the damned stuff and help his system purge naturally.” His tone turned caustic, and he glared at Marchey, eyes narrowing to slits behind his glasses. “Come to find out there is another way. A service one of your kind provided about eighteen months ago.”
Marchey stared down at the flimsies, reading a notation that might as well have been an indictment. “Clean him out. Repair all the damage. Let him start all over again.”
There it was before him, more proof of what they had become. His fellow Bergmann Surgeon Andre Fescu had done just that. But he couldn’t blame Andre. He knew it could have just as easily been himself. He wouldn’t have asked any questions, and not just because nobody would have answered them anyway. He would have done the job and been on his way. In the unlikely event that he’d stopped to wonder why he was treating a Maxx addict, he probably would have chalked it up to cleaning up after a botched treatment.
He looked up at Moro again, all too easily able to understand the man’s anger and frustration. He felt it himself, and it frightened him. This was something else to eat away at the dispassion he so desperately needed.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said, standing up and doing his best to keep his face a mask of indifference. “I think it’s time to see my patient.”
[The door to the ship is opening, Doc! Angel just took a step closer to our airlock doors!]