Machine Man - Max Barry [41]
I remembered Lola reaching for me. Me straining to catch her. But my legs hadn’t moved. They were inert. They were anchors. I had seen slowly spreading shock on Lola’s face. Her mouth opening and closing. Her fingers describing a slow arc through the air, terminating at the red flower blossoming beneath her yellow dress. The way she fell.
“That’s really your fault, Charlie. I don’t want to start pointing fingers. But the way you ran off … it made everyone wonder what you might do.”
Men in uniforms had pulled me from my legs. The nerve interface tore. A syringe had pierced my shoulder.
“I’m not sure you appreciate the pressure we’re under. Management. The daily stresses. The what-ifs.”
I coordinated my arms and levered myself up. I was in a small windowless room. The walls were a pale, nostalgic blue. On one wall was a first aid cabinet. It was a medical room.
“She’s in surgery,” said Cassandra Cautery. “You can watch, if you like.”
I opened my mouth. Dizziness swarmed. I wanted to say: Surgery? And: Thank you and save her and or else.
“I’d like your input on something, when you feel up to it,” she said. “I’d like to know why your girlfriend has a metal heart.”
SHE LEFT. It was just me, a bed, and a vinyl floor with some disturbing stains. Compared to the rest of the company, this room was third world. I guess it said something about our priorities. We were not healers.
The door was locked. At least, I assumed so. I couldn’t bring myself to drag myself off the bed and across the floor to check. I was missing my legs. I had operated without them before, but now I knew I would never leave them again. Sitting there, half a man, waiting to find out if Lola was alive or dead, I vowed I would never let anyone take pieces of me again.
EVENTUALLY THE door opened and there was Carl. At first neither of us spoke. The last times we had interacted, once I fled him on artificial legs and once he shot Lola in the heart. It was an unusual social situation.
“She, uh, going to be all right,” said Carl. “I think.” In the hallway outside, I saw a wheelchair. Carl came toward me, his arms out. I tried to push him away because I wasn’t ready for him to touch me. It would be a long time before that would be okay. But he had arms like propane tanks and I was groggy and missing a hand. He lifted me off the bed. Against Carl’s rock-hard pectorals, I began to blubber. It was a posttraumatic reaction. I had been through a lot.
“Everything will be all right,” said Carl.
I sobbed. Carl was probably a decent man. A decent man, in a tough job.
“It was nonlethal ammunition. I wouldn’t have fired otherwise.”
I stopped. I was familiar enough with our company’s munitions line to know our definition of nonlethal. When we wanted to refer to weaponry that left the target not merely alive but likely to regain full quality of life, we said noncrippling. I punched Carl in the shoulder. It didn’t seem to affect him. I tried again and he put me in the wheelchair. “That book sucked,” I said. “That stupid time travel book.” Carl didn’t say anything and after that neither did I.
CASSANDRA CAUTERY was waiting in a small, dark observation room above an operating theater, a tiny, suited silhouette. As Carl wheeled me in, she glanced at me, then returned her attention to green-cloaked figures revolving around an operating table below. Carl closed the door. Before he could get his hands on my wheelchair, I found the grips and pushed myself to the glass.
Lola was on the table. I could see one of her arms poking from beneath an ocean of green cloth. It was the only piece of her on display but it was enough. A surgeon stood with his back to me, his shoulders working. It felt very wrong, Lola lying there while a man she didn’t know dug into her.
“I think Miss Shanks must have got herself into a trial,” said Cassandra Cautery. “The heart is a SynCardia, but very unusual.”
I could see it. The top, at least. It sat in a steel bowl on a tray to a surgeon’s right, a red-stained chunk of plastic and metal. It looked strange. But then, it had been deformed by