Flesh and Silver by Stephen L Burns

Author:Stephen L Burns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Psychic Surgery
ISBN: 0-451-45752-8
Publisher: ROC
Published: 1999-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

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Marchey continued to be amazed by how quickly the people of Ananke had begun the monumental task of putting all they had suffered during Brother Fist’s rule behind them, struggling to rebuild something like normal lives.

Not that everything was sunshine and roses now that Fist’s hold over them had been broken. A considerable number of them had been so deeply traumatized that they might never fully recover. A few extreme cases still hid in their cubbies like wounded animals, cringing back in terror when anyone came near. A handful of others drifted continually through the cold, dim tunnels like blank-eyed ghosts, lost now that an iron hand no longer shaped every aspect of their existence.

Yet somehow the majority of them had begun trying to reassemble the fragments of their shattered lives. That they could do so after all they had been through was a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Some were more resilient than others, taking it on themselves to help the rest. People like Mardi Grandberg and Elias Acterelli, a former nurse and an ex-army medic, together helping him set up a makeshift hospital and institute a rudimentary health-care system. Raymo LaPaz, working day and night to coax more than the bare minimum out of Ananke’s neglected life-support system. Jimmy and ’Lita Chee and their crew, trying to revive the long-disused hydroponics setup.

Hands moving again, helping and healing. And behind all of those projects and a dozen others like the mainspring of a multifaced clock was Jon Halen.

He had to be the strongest and bravest person Marchey had ever met. His wife and two daughters were dead. Forced labor in the mines had cost him both hands and a leg. He had been one of the discards working in the landing bay when Marchey had arrived, toiling away until the too-thin air and hypothermia killed him.

Yet within hours of Fist’s fall he had begun hobbling tirelessly through the tunnels on his homemade crutch. Spreading the word that they were free at last. Reassuring them that this was the beginning, not the end. Cracking jokes. Chivvying others into motion, into action. Reaching into some deep inner reservoir and pulling out optimism, enthusiasm, and humor, then spreading them like a balm.

Jon had made sure that everyone had something to do, just mentioning that this or that needed to be done and making it sound like no one else could do the task, He’d assigned care of those worst off to those who had fallen into listless apathy, giving them a purpose to cling to, keeping them too busy worrying over another’s welfare to dwell on their own misfortunes.

Before the end of the first day he had come to Marchey with a priority-indexed list of those who needed medical attention. When asked where he had learned triage, Jon had smiled and said that he had used the big fancy setup in Fist’s quarters to do it for him, punching the data in one key at a time with a stylus

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