Part 7 (2/2)

I run metal fingers through my soapy hair. Warm from the water, they almost feel like flesh. Almost. I can't feel my own hair between my fingers. It could be anyone's hand. It could be his hand. Stop it, Jenny.

Think. Hot water sears old burns, works into aching joints. Relief and pain are all the same. I want to take that metal hand and claw my own skin back, rip nanoprocessors off my spine and yank until thread-fine wires a yard long hang dripping from the alien fist. I could make a pretty good start on it before I did enough damage that the system quit. I don't mind dying, and I don't mind going to jail. I don't owe Valens anything. Or Bernard Xu. They're good soldiers and so am I.

And Gabe Castaign crawled through fire into an upside-down APC twice to save a girl he'd never met from a bad, a very bad death. He had skin grafts on both hands; we were in the burn ward for weeks together. And the only reason he's in trouble now is because he's like a handle on the back of my head. Jerk him around, and Jenny will do whatever you want to protect him. Flip a switch and watch her dance.

And what am I? Machine? Woman? I'm not even sure anymore.

But I'm valuable. Like an old laying chicken back on the farm, not for myself but for what I can produce. Experimental data, and Peac.o.c.k. The water in the tub cools while I think about how easy it would be to let the metal arm pull me under, to take a deep breath, to drown. Drowning hurts too, but I'm not scared of pain. So what are you scared of, Jenny? Green twigs snapping. Gabe's eyes cold and wide.

It seems supremely natural to let that hand slide across my breast and belly, stroking my own flesh as I might the flesh of a lover. The machine doesn't feel like a part of me: it's alien-other. The servos click faintly as it moves, sound amplified by the water. I watch as s.h.i.+ning fingers wander in slow circles, toy with one of the nipples Peac.o.c.k called pretty, tangle in the dark hair between my thighs.

When I don't fight it, the hand is sensitive, clever-not graceless and rough. I'm surprised by delicate variations in pressure and movement, caress and hesitation. Fingers trace patterns on my skin, metal hotter than flesh. I s.h.i.+ver, slide down in the water and let it creep between my thighs.

In the end, it is my own tongue that betrays me, and not the machine. In the end, under the touch of my own steel hand, with the taste of soapy water in my mouth, I hear myself say Gabriel's name. And the water's cold as the rain outside before I'm done with crying.

I stand and hook a towel off the rack beside the door. The gesture, when I don't stop to think about it, is almost automatic. You've lived with worse things than that, Jenny Casey. And will do again.

I don't have to like it to endure.

I finish my toilet and dress slowly, carefully, taking the time to adjust each b.u.t.ton and cufflink. No makeup, but my hair is tidy and my fingernails are trimmed. My left hand gleams. I check the mirror one last time before I leave my room, noting the taut expression of the professional soldier.

Jenny Casey, cyborg. What the h.e.l.l.

It's not a long walk. Major Maclnnes looks unsurprised to see me when I tap on the open frame of his door, not marking the wood. He glances up from his work and gestures me inside. I let the door swing shut and he waves me into a chair.

”Good afternoon, Corporal. At ease.”

”Good afternoon, Major. I need to talk to you.”

He reaches for his coffee, makes a face when he finds it cold. ”I imagined you would. What can I do for you?”

I swallow, hesitate, forge ahead. Maclnnes is a good cop too. We're all patriots here. ”It's more what I can do for you. Major... sir. Leave Captain Castaign out of this, and I will give you Bernard Xu.”

He chews his cheek while he looks at me, considering before nodding once. ”We'll need his confederates.”

I close my eyes and think about Valens' face plastered all over the evening news. I open them and meet Maclnnes'. ”That can be arranged. But first, sir, please, your word.”

Good Cop gives me half a smile. ”Castaign is home free. As long as you come through.” He gestures me to rise and continues. ”I'll be in touch regarding the details.” He glances down at his papers, but I have to make sure.

”Sir?”

He doesn't look up. ”Dismissed. Happy New Year.”

”Happy New Year, sir.”

I don't feel the cold on the long walk back to my room, or rather, it doesn't feel any different than the cold under my skin. I unlock the door like the machine I will pretend to be and I stand, back pressed against it, shaking, not deserving the release of the tears gorging my eyes. We do what we have to do for the people we have to do it for. Every one of us. We choose the living, or we choose the dead.

I will not cry for you.

My flesh hand and my metal one are fastidious and gentle as I wrap Nell's feather in the chamois and stow it deliberately in the belly of my trunk. Feathers are given to warriors. Warriors do what's right, no matter what the cost.

The monitor in the corner of Gabe's living room opaques; the announcer's voice drones over images of a Peac.o.c.k looking curiously naked in black, combed hair. ”In other national news, the trial of Bernard Xu ended today with Xu's conviction as the ringleader of the terrorist group responsible for last summer's a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on Prime Minister Severin. The prosecutor credits the testimony of Master Corporal Genevieve M. Casey, a decorated veteran of the South African Conflict, as instrumental in the case.” The image s.h.i.+fts: a thin, intense woman in dress green perches on the witness stand like a crow in a naked tree. She's terribly scarred, but seems comfortable in her damage.

I lean forward on the blue tweed modular and pick the remote off the coffee table. It's suddenly hard to swallow.

”Xu and Casey declined comment, but reliable sources.

I change the channel before they get to the part about the sentencing. Or any more news about Africa, where the fighting has worsened again.

Gabe gulps a forkful of narrow noodles, scooped from a tinfoil container. ”Master Corporal?”

”Came through three days ago.” I shrug. ”Fools are going to turn me loose on the kids.”

”You're going to be an instructor?”

I nod. I'm sure that he can see how scared I am. I'm taking those lives in both hands. Maybe I can teach one of them something that will keep him alive. Maybe. ”They can't send me to fight. And I can serve as an object lesson on why you duck.”

Gabe slaps me on the shoulder, his hand lingering a second longer than it has to. ”You are going to be great.”

I wonder. I hear again Maclnnes' voice, from this afternoon, warmly congratulatory as he invited me to join the rest of the prosecution witnesses for dinner. I feel again the pressure of his hand on mine, and flinch. ”You did the right thing, Casey,” he'd said. ”You did right by your country.”

I smiled at Maclnnes, cursed hypocrite that I am, and told him I had a dinner date. Yeah.

I look over at Gabe, who never needs to know, and I look back down at my beer. I did the right thing. I did not choose my country. I did not choose revenge. I chose my friend.

n.o.ble words, but the beer tastes like h.e.l.l.

Mongoose.

Izrael Irizarry stepped through a bright-scarred airlock onto Kadath Station, lurching a little as he adjusted to station gravity. On his shoulder, Mongoose extended her neck, her barbels flaring, flicked her tongue out to taste the air, and colored a question. Another few steps, and he smelled what Mongoose smelled, the sharp stink of toves, ammoniac and bitter.

He touched the tentacle coiled around his throat with the quick double tap that meant soon. Mongoose colored displeasure, and Irizarry stroked the slick velvet wedge of her head in consolation and restraint. Her four compound and twelve simple eyes glittered and her color softened, but did not change, as she leaned into the caress. She was eager to hunt and he didn't blame her. The boojum Manfred von Richthofen took care of its own vermin. Mongoose had had to make do with a share of Irizarry's rations, and she hated eating dead things.

If Irizarry could smell toves, it was more than the ”minor infestation” the message from the station master had led him to expect. Of course, that message had reached Irizarry third or fourth or fifteenth hand, and he had no idea how long it had taken. Perhaps when the station master had sent for him, it had been minor.

But he knew the ways of bureaucrats, and he wondered.

People did double-takes as he pa.s.sed, even the heavily-modded Christian cultists with their telescoping limbs and biolin eyes. You found them on every station and steels.h.i.+ps too, though mostly they wouldn't work the boojums. Noliked Christians much, but they could work in situations that would kill an unmodded human or a even a gilly, so captains and station masters tolerated them.

There were a lot of gillies in Kadath's hallways, and they all stopped to blink at Mongoose. One, an indenturee, stopped and made an elaborate hand-flapping bow. Irizarry felt one of Mongoose's tendrils work itself through two of his earrings. Although she didn't understand staring exactly-her compound eyes made the idea alien to her-she felt the attention and was made shy by it.

Unlike the boojum-s.h.i.+ps they serviced, the stations-Providence, Kadath, Leng, Dunwich, and the others-were man-made. Their radial symmetry was predictable, and to find the station master, Irizarry only had to work his way inward from the Manfred von Richthofen's dock to the hub. There he found one of the inevitable safety maps (you are here; in case of decompression, proceed in an orderly manner to the life vaults located here, here, or here) and leaned close to squint at the tiny lettering. Mongoose copied him, tilting her head first one way, then another, though flat representations meant nothing to her. He made out STATION MASTER'S OFFICE finally, on a oval bubble, the door of which was actually in sight.

”Here we go, girl,” he said to Mongoose (who, stone-deaf though she was, pressed against him in response to the vibration of his voice). He hated this part of the job, hated dealing with apparatchiks and functionaries, and of course the Station Master's office was full of them, a receptionist, and then a secretary, and then someone who was maybe the other kind of secretary, and then finally-Mongoose by now halfway down the back of his s.h.i.+rt and entirely hidden by his hair and Irizarry himself half stifled by memories of someone he didn't want to remember being-he was ushered into an inner room where Station Master Lee, her arms crossed and her round face set in a scowl, was waiting.

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