Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 6

"s.h.i.t, your arm!" Remembering blood, I yank his coat off. "You should have st.i.tches." His blood clots my fingers, flesh and steel alike, in sticky strings.

"No hospitals. No cops."

I meet his eyes for a breathless second before I nod. I'm glad I didn't ask. It's a nasty slice, but the bleeding is slowing, so I improvise a sort of field dressing with a bandanna and make plans to do more about it later.

He bounces on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. "You were f.u.c.king fantastic! I've never seen anybody move that fast!"

"I've always been quick." Seem a little quicker this time, Jenny? Another thought I don't have time to deal with. Now. Ever. Tailored drugs have become de rigueur on the combat lines. There are rumors of other things. Permanent things.

Smoke. Military legendry, like the recruit who lines his sleeping bag with plastic wrap for a winter hike and freezes to death in his own sweat.

I knot the bandanna and drop his arm. His coat falls aside unnoticed as he thrusts me back against the grimy stones, our breath tattering in clouds strobe-lit by the city. He doesn't seem to care that he's shivering as he reaches under my jacket and grabs my shirt collar, bruising my mouth with his, ripping the shirt open with a brutal efficiency that rends cloth and pops b.u.t.tons. His hands clutch my b.r.e.a.s.t.s; his knee presses hard between my legs. Teeth rake my throat, his breath hot in my ear; my wet skin stings with cold.

It wouldn't be the first time I've gone down on a stranger in an alley, and I'm tempted to see if I can make him forget just how cold it is. But my pants are too tight for anything else, and I hear sirens. "Peac.o.c.k, where can we go?"

He groans. Urgent, insistent: "Right here. Right now."

I start to push him away but he catches my hands. I panic and freeze, convinced if I struggle I'll hurt him bad... until he bends quickly and slurps my nipple into his mouth, and each thump of my heart cracks distant and ponderously slow. A wet, rough tongue, the pressure of his thigh against my s.e.x, his fingernails marking my right wrist become my physical reality. The dangerous cold, the heat of his body, the roughness of the stones- -narrow to a tunnel and vanish.

The blackout must last only seconds because he still holds me against the wall, but now it's with concern. Red lights flash across his face. Voices bullhorn-distorted into the p.r.o.nouncements of monsters bang my ears. "Are you hurt?" He sounds like a sergeant I used to know. "Are you hurt?"

The words make no sense the first time. The second time I manage to shake my head. "Come on!" He yanks my arm. I stagger after, dizzy drunk, catching my shoulder against stones. I fall, skinning both knees through my jeans; he drags me up. We run.

His squat is on the second floor. A stained mattress smells of sweat and fear, but it's warmer inside and he has a little kerosene stove and a first aid kit. I get his shirt off, listen to his breath slow and steady through his nose while I st.i.tch his wound. He grunts when needle pierces skin.

My shirt is a ruin, so I toss it aside. After I treat my knees I can't face fighting b.l.o.o.d.y jeans over the wounds, so I lie back on his pillow in my jacket and underwear and try to relax while I wait for the shakes to end... until he comes to me and kneels down and puts his mouth over mine.

I return the caress. Softer, this time. Less like something to prove. We're both human now, human and wounded, and we've seen each other weak. He opens my jacket and admonishes me. "You're too skinny. I can count your ribs." I flush, reaching to kiss him so I won't think, residual heat flooding old burns. He touches the place where my prosthesis joins my body, his eyes huge and dark in the inconstant light. "f.u.c.k. Does it hurt?"

I don't like him touching me there. "It hurts." He smells of antiseptic, of blood and leather, and I'm what he wants me to be, wounded and war-weary, which is not what he wanted before.

Peac.o.c.k pushes me down, hand sliding from my biceps to my collarbone. He spreads my legs insistently, shoving the leather jacket aside to press his teeth into my shoulder. Shocking pain immobilizes me for a long, seeking moment, until I hear the indrawn snuff of air through his nose and my own breath hisses out between clenched teeth in a long and shameless groan. He wraps his arms around me, coat and all, and my skin grows wet under scratchy blankets as we move.

But I'm not there. I'm across town, feeling nothing as I watch the body I've lived in for years kill two men without appreciable effort. I hear green branches breaking like rotten ice. A chill without relation to the cold settles into my bowels. I've killed. Special Forces, heavy infantry.

I've never killed without orders before. Never done it without the cold, conscious decision to close my finger on the trigger, my hand on the hilt. Peac.o.c.k's hands brush tender, livid weals along my spine, trace unshapely outlines of nanoprocessors, knead deep onto slick, ropy burn scars. The pleasure's like a twisting blade, more intense than anything but fire. I barely feel it. His sweltering body presses my chill skin; I wonder if I will ever be warm again.

He blows out the stove to save kerosene and we lie in the urban half-dark and let the city paint our skins in warrior colors, red and gold and violet. I light a cigarette, let the match burn until flame sputters against steel. He trails a casual touch down my side. "You're Native, aren't you?"

I grin at the friendly, dancing coal of my cigarette. The little, red light leaves time-lapse trails across my retina. "I'm part Mohawk and part Canuck. Metis. A mongrel." I feel-not good, but amiable, detached from the pain. It's enough. For now. "I come from a long line of iron workers and electricians."

"So of course you went for a soldier. You're a girl. You could have got out of it." It's a funny, anachronistic turn of phrase. I stare at him speculatively until I remember where I've heard it before. There's a song my mother used to sing, before she died. Pretty song. "Where have all the husbands gone? Gone for soldiers, every one..."

"Three meals a day and a warm place to sleep without having to steal or wh.o.r.e for it? Sign me up." I gesture expansively with the cigarette. "I wasn't drafted, Peac.o.c.k. I enlisted." I don't mention the other things. I never talk about the other things. The tracks went away with my arm, and I can even enjoy being touched, these days. Nine years in the service. Nine years after Chretien. The Army saved more than my life.

I earned Nell's feather, dammit. The same way warriors always have. I don't feel Peac.o.c.k touch the arm, but he taps on it with questioning fingers. "Was this a part of the bargain too? How about the combat enhancements?"

I pretend I didn't hear the question.

Harsh chuckles. "Don't play dumb. I know it's not supposed to exist, but I saw you fight." There's a little hitch in his voice that turns the next line into a joke at his own expense. G.o.d bless his black little heart. "And-I mean, I've never had any complaints, but I've never made a woman faint before, either."

I open my mouth to deny it and choke. The cigarette tastes like old socks. I pinch it out as he sits up and wraps his arms around his knees. "Don't you hate them even a little? For turning you into-" he hesitates, as if the drama of his words troubles him "--turning you into a killing machine?"

"Why aren't you in service? Why do you live in a squat?"

His lips quirk up. "I'm an objector."

"You're a deserter."

He rolls over, fits himself against my side. I both crave the touch and am repulsed by it, and so I lie there, rigid, while he curls his fingers into my hair and tugs hard enough to make me gasp. "I got fired." And then he slides his body over mine once more, and even my slight resistance fails.

For all the city is bright, the darkness feels profound. Peac.o.c.k speaks. "You didn't know."

I swim back into reality. He's robbed me of my armor, my control. The son of a b.i.t.c.h made me cry. I won't forget that. Won't forget, either, how every touch resonated wildly under my skin. If the fight didn't convince me of something wrong, sick, strange inside me... the last hour would have. My voice is the voice of a stranger, pressed shaking through my teeth. "You ever miss your brother, Peac.o.c.k? You ever think if you turn over your shoulder real quick, you might catch him standing there?"

That shuts him up for a good long time. He slides away in the darkness. "Maker. I've got a friend you should talk to."

I laugh. There's nothing funny left in the world. I'm a hole even the darkness could fall into. "A shrink?"

He runs his hand the length of my body, leaving behind a bruised feeling that's nothing to the ache inside. "No." The silence is agony, but I'm not asking. Eventually, he tells me anyway. "A reporter."

I look around Gabe's quarters for something to throw, but nothing seems fragile enough to interest me. I slam the door instead. Twice, because it feels good. "Jesus Christ, Gabe! They f.u.c.king raped me. They put something in my body that I don't want there! And all you can tell me is, 'You're not thinking clearly'? Merde!" I clench my right hand into a fist. Servos creak as the left one matches it.

He sets his cup aside and leans forward on the blue tweed modular, uncrossing long legs. "Apparently not."

Tired carpet fibers twist under my feet. I launch into another rant, sunlight glittering on dust motes stirred by my restlessness. "Corporal," he interrupts. "Sit the f.u.c.k down."

I drop onto inst.i.tutional tweed, hating myself for it but unable to disobey a command. I was a G.o.dd.a.m.n good soldier once upon a time.

"Now talk. Calmly, and one problem at a time."

"It's not just the arm. It's... other things." I fight the urge to claw at crawling skin, as if I can still feel Peac.o.c.k's handprints. "Jesus. They did something to me. To my nervous system, to my brain."

"Maker, you don't really believe that s.h.i.t."

Something about his dismissal crystallizes my rage into a cold, intelligent fury. My voice drops into its normal register, steadies. "Tell that to the guys I wasted last night."

His eyes get a little wide. "Pardon?"

"I killed two people last night. By accident. It was self-defense, but I tell you I did not mean to kill them. They started a fight. And then I had no control."

He searches my face for signs that I can hear the craziness in the things coming out of my mouth. I hold up the prosthesis. "I punched a man's chest in with this, Gabe."

His face goes blank with unbelief. Gesturing him to his feet, I stand. "I am not crazy." Focusing everything on not responding, on letting myself take the punch. "Hit me, Gabriel."

He looms, blue eyes worried, wrinkled brow. "Maker...."

"Do it!" He hesitates. I swing, aiming to miss, and he moves faster than anybody that big has a right to, fluid and sharp on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. Left hand across his body for a grapple, grab the metal wrist and twist me to the ground, twice my ma.s.s and all that weight to carry me down. Except: I slip away from his grab, block high, turn to the side as his other hand goes past me. The prosthesis moves like a hammer: teeth grit as I pull the shot, turn it from a vicious cross into a staggering block, feel the dumped momentum of all that metal twist my shoulder and neck, tug of the weave through scarred muscle. Then Gabe's wrist is in my hand and I bend double, put him over my shoulder. Put him on the floor. It costs me something not to slam that fist through the bridge of his nose between startled-wide eyes. He blinks at gleaming steel, hands coming up too slowly ever to stop me.

Elapsed time: three tenths of a second.

I stand up, reconstructed hip creaking audibly, and turn my back on Gabriel Castaign. He doesn't speak as he gets off the floor and pads to the kitchenette.

It's raining ice outside. My missing arm hurts like dipped in fire, and that's not a metaphor. I could have killed him. If he'd been half a step faster, I might not have been able to stop myself. "Is it broken?"

"Just sprained, I think." Disarrayed half-curls bounce as he presses a coldpack tight to his wrist. "All right. I buy it. They screwed you." His gaze turns level and considering. "Now I think you'd better start to look at this rationally."

"Rationally! Merde!" Gabe holds up one finger, and I hate myself worse for wanting him more. Ashamed, I fall silent.

"Oui. Rationally. There's nothing you can do to fix what's happened. So decide-now-if you're mad enough to destroy your career, pick up a dishonorable discharge, and maybe go to jail."

I never thought of the Army as my career before. "Jail?"

"Look. I'm telling you this because I'm your friend, but you never heard it from me. I was invited to answer a few questions at four o'clock this morning. Questions about you. Where we had gone, what we had done, when you had left the rest of us and what your excuse had been. I wasn't-at home, and they knew exactly where to find me. Mil-Int, I mean.

"I didn't know you'd killed anybody. But you're in trouble, and it's Army trouble, not civilian." He flips the icepack to the floor. "The evidence is under your skin, and it doesn't look like anybody intends to bring charges. It can wait."

"Wait. I see." Trembling with defused adrenaline, I turn toward the door. He watches me go, and something unsaid drags at the air.

Valens smiles as he opens his office door. Over his shoulder, I see metal-topped desk, inst.i.tutional yellow block wall. "Casey! I wasn't expecting you until this afternoon. Problem with the arm?"

"Captain Valens." I step past him into his office, still shaking, thinking the cold in my bones is from more than the ice in my hair. He turns to face me and all my good intentions fail. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h. Jesus Christ, Valens. Or are you going to try to tell me that you didn't know?"

He examines me and nods once. "No. I knew." The corner of his mouth lifts. "I must say, you're taking it rather well."

My face should make him pale. I can't understand his calm. I'm scared of me. Why isn't he?

I only hit him once, but not for lack of trying. Fast as I am, I only manage the one swing before the door bursts open and someone starts yelling orders and my name. I spin and freeze like a bunny in the shadow of a hawk. Two MPs, one high and one low, weapons drawn.

One of them orders me up against the wall. Stupid, Jenny. Would you have let you out of your sight, if you were them?

The MP sidles forward, his partner centering her weapon meticulously. There's a kind of Marx Brothers moment as he tries to cuff me, but the other cop has one of those trash-tie things that riot cops use. That goes over the metal wrist okay. It isn't worth getting shot to find out if I could break it.

Valens' arm dangles. I hope I broke it. "Captain." The male MP moves to silence me. Valens stops him with a gesture.

"Casey."

"What you did to me was wrong, sir."

Valens grins. "What I did was make you whole, Corporal. Or would you prefer to spend your life in a wheelchair?"

I stare at the MP's shiny boots. He's ready to lead me out when Valens speaks once more, softer still. "And Casey?"

I look him in the eye. He smiles.

"It's, 'You son of a b.i.t.c.h, sir!"

Not exactly bright lights and hoses, but a stark room with a stark table and a chair as hard as the face of the man who questions me. Another chair for him. Coffee for us both. The cop's name is Major Maclnnes. I'm in deep s.h.i.t.

"It would be best for you if you cooperated, Corporal."

"If you would ask me a direct question, sir, I would be glad to." I twist my fingers together with the steel ones and stare down at them.

"Treason is a capital crime, soldier. Canada is at war."

I meet his gaze. "And I am a soldier who fought in that war, sir, to the best of my ability. Until I could not fight any longer." I'm wallowing. I know it, and he knows it too.

I close my eyes and sag back in my chair, holding myself tight to keep the chill outside. The sound of paper scuffing wood makes me crack them open again. Maclnnes-who, of course, with a name like that, is black-stands and drops a slender folder before me. "Open it," he orders. "Tell me what you see."

"A photograph. Young soldier, Blue Beret. Canadian flag." The soldier is an oriental male, about seventeen. He seems familiar, but all young soldiers look alike: severe and attractive in a baby-blue peacekeeper's hat. I used to look like that too. We were supposed to be the good guys.

"Now this one."

I understand. "It's Peac.o.c.k." It's the same photo, image-shopped to add two years, a dye job, and a dozen piercings.

"You know him?"

"I met him in a bar, sir."

"And what was your interaction, Corporal?"

I meet his gaze squarely. I really want to smile, but can't make it happen. "Sir. We got into a fight, sir."

He waits.

d.a.m.n me to h.e.l.l, I look away. "We had an encounter, sir."

"s.e.xual?"

"Sir?"

"You f.u.c.ked, Corporal?"

"Sir. Yes, sir." Heat paints my face, not banishing the chill. Questions tell you a lot. They had me surveilled. I wonder if they lost me in the brawl, or.... I hope they had fun.

He stands back, head rocking side to side. "I admire your G.o.dd.a.m.n taste, Casey."

I feel so cold. I cradle my coffee mug closer in the metal hand. Absently, I rub the prosthesis. It's killing me. There's something alien in me, and I can't get it out.

Maclnnes turns a wry look at me. "His name is Bernard Xu." The corners of his mouth dip, carving furrows beside his nose. "We believe he was involved, among other things, in a car-bombing in Quebec two months ago; you might recall it."

Mary Mother of G.o.d. Oh yes I do.

"We can run him in on minor charges, and under the Mil-Powers Act, we have a lot of lat.i.tude. But that bombing... will be a high-profile case. And we have no probable cause. We have no proof." He pauses. "You might be up on some serious charges, Casey. Not just a.s.sault.

"If he tried to recruit you... if he told you anything... you could come out of this a hero, Corporal."

War hero. Wounded veteran. Could they just tattoo 'charismatic witness' on my forehead? And of course it has to be a clean, shiny, highly public trial.