Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [386]
She was looking at him with extreme worry. He had to laugh out loud. But the effect of his good cheer was apparently not so reassuring to her as he might have desired.
"You have to understand," he told her. "Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it's a strategy for survival. Sometimes . . . it's a triumph." He hesitated. "Do you know what a black gang is?"
Mutely, she shook her head.
"Something I picked up in a museum in London, once. Way back in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, on Earth, they used to have ships that sailed across the tops of the oceans, that were powered by steam engines. The heat for the steam engines came from great coal fires in the bellies of the ships. And they had to have these suckers down there to stoke the coal into the furnaces. Down in the filth and the heat and the sweat and the stink. The coal made them black, so they were called the black gang. And the officers and fine ladies up above would have nothing to do with these poor grotty thugs, socially. But without them, nothing moved. Nothing burned. Nothing lived. No steam. The black gang. Unsung heroes. Ugly lower-class fellows."
Now she thought he was babbling for sure. The panegyric of fierce loyalty for his black gang that he wanted to sing into her ear was . . . probably not a good idea, just now. Yeah, and nobody loves me, Gorge whispered plaintively. You'd better get used to it.
"Never mind." He smiled instead. "But I can tell you, Galen looks . . . pretty small, after Ryoval. And Ryoval, I beat. In a strange sense, I feel very free, right now. And I intend to stay that way."
"You appear to me to be . . . excuse me . . . a little manic, right now, Mark. In Miles, this would be normal. Well, usual. But eventually, he tops out, and finally he bottoms out. I think you need to watch out for this pattern, you may share it with him."
"Are you saying it's a mood swing on a bungee cord?"
A short laugh puffed from her lips despite herself. "Yes."
"I'll beware of the perigee."
"Hm, yes. Though it's the apogee where everybody else has to duck and run, usually."
"I'm also on, well, several painkillers and stimulants, right now," he mentioned. "Or I would never have made it through the last couple of hours. I'm afraid some of them are starting to wear off." Good. That would account to her for some of his babble, perhaps, and had the advantage of being true.
"Do you want me to get Lilly Durona?"
"No. I just want to sit here. And not move."
"I think that might be a good idea." Elena swung out of her chair, and picked up her helmet.
"I know what I want to be when I grow up, now, though," he offered to her suddenly. She paused, and raised her brows.
"I want to be an ImpSec analyst. Civilian. One who doesn't send his people to the wrong place, or five days late. Or improperly prepared. I want to sit in a cubicle all day long, surrounded by a fortress, and get it right." He waited for her to laugh at him.
Instead, to his surprise, she nodded seriously. "Speaking as the one out on the sharp end of the ImpSec stick, I would be delighted."
She gave him a half-salute, and turned away. He puzzled over the look in her eyes, as she descended out of sight down the lift-tube. It wasn't love. It wasn't fear.
Oh. So that's what respect looks like. Oh.
I could get used to that.
As Mark had declared to Elena, he just sat for a time, staring out the window. He was going to have to move sooner or later. Maybe he could use the excuse of his broken foot to inveigle a float-chair. Lilly had promised him that her stimulants would buy him six hours of coherence, after which the metabolic bill would be delivered by hulking bio-thugs with spiked clubs, virtual repo-men for his neurotransmitter debt. He wondered if the absurd dreamy image was the first sign of the approaching biochemical breakdown. He prayed he'd hold out at least till he