Machine Man (serial)

Cassandra Cautery pulled a chair right up to the edge of my hospital bed and looked at me with wet eyes. I won’t lie. It was very fetching. I know: she was duplicitous, and didn’t care for me at all, and a lawyer. But I had gone a long time without anyone looking at me like that. A very long time. Look, all I’m saying is it was fetching. Give me a break.

“I just want to make sure you’re okay.” She took my hand. Her fingers were surprisingly warm. Somehow I had thought they would be icy cold.

“I am okay.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m okay.”

“If something brought this on—if, say, you found something out that upset you—I want you to know you can tell me. I’ll hold it in the strictest confidence.” She leaned forward. “It’s Dick, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

“Your boss.”

“Oh,” I said. “D. Peters? No, I just wanted to cut off my leg.” Cassandra Cautery looked confused, so I added, “To build a better one.”

She took back her hand. “Oh.”

“I hope this won’t interfere with my work. I’ve had some new ideas. Some aspects of my original design, I don’t know what I was thinking.” I laughed.

Cassandra Cautery gave me a look. It was an evaluative look. She was scanning my body for trace emanations of deception.

“Seriously,” I said.

Something gleamed in her eyes. She looked like a kid who had just stumbled into the living room on Christmas morning and didn’t dare believe that the huge present was for her. But I didn’t understand where the present was.

I said, “Is something going on with D. Peters?” A memory surfaced in my brain, vague and indistinct. “Did he say to you, Don’t do that thing? What thing?”

Cassandra Cautery stood and kissed my forehead. “Shhh. All you need to worry about, Charlie, is getting better.”

I didn’t say anything. I was confused by the kiss. I had gone seven years without a kiss, and now I had two in a week. It was the kind of data event that implied a serious contamination of laboratory conditions.

“And,” she said, “getting back to work.”

26.