He should have let her die, but he couldn’t live with the guilt of it. So he’d made her a monster. And, in doing so, made himself one.
A distant howl made Crake, Silo and Malvery look up as one. The voice was Frey’s, coming from the torture room, just beyond the cell he shared with Pinn and Harkins.
‘They’ve started up again,’ said Malvery. ‘Poor bastard.’
Crake stirred himself. ‘Why’s he bothering to hold out? What does it matter if he signs a confession or not? We’re all going to be just as dead with or without it.’
Malvery grinned beneath his white walrus-like moustache. ‘Maybe he just enjoys being an awkward bugger.’
Silo actually smiled at that. Crake didn’t take up the humour. He felt Malvery put a huge arm round his shoulder.
‘Cheer up, eh? You’ve had a face like a soggy arse since Dracken caught us.’
Crake gave him an amazed look. ‘You know, all my life I’ve been under the illusion that the fear of death was a common, almost universal part of being human. But recently I’ve come to think I’m the only one on this crew who is actually worried about it in the slightest.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I bet the other cell is half-full of Harkins’ shit by now, he’s so scared,’ Malvery said with a wink. ‘Then again, he’s afraid of just about everything. The only reason he’s still a pilot is because he’s more afraid of not being a pilot than he is of getting shot down.’
‘But . . . I mean, don’t you have regrets? Thwarted hopes? Anything like that?’ Crake was exasperated. He’d never been able to understand how the vagabonds of the Ketty Jay lived such day-today lives, never seeming to care about the future or the past.
‘Regrets? Sure. I’ve got regrets like you wouldn’t believe, mate,’ said Malvery. ‘Told you I was a doc back in Thesk, didn’t I? Well, I was good at it, and I got rich. Got a little flush with success, got a little fond of the bottle too.
‘One day a messenger from the surgery turned up at my house. There was a friend of mine, been brought in gravely ill. His appendix, was what it was. It was early in the morning, and I hadn’t gone to bed from the night before. Been drinking the whole time.’
Crake noted that the light-hearted tone was draining out of Malvery’s voice. He realised suddenly that he was in the midst of something serious. But Malvery kept going, forcing himself to sound casual.
‘Well, I knew I was drunk but I also knew it was my friend and I believed I was the best damn surgeon for the job, drunk or sober. I’d got so used to being good that I thought I couldn’t do no wrong. Wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. Some junior doc tried to stop me but I just shrugged him off. Wish he’d tried harder now.’
Malvery stopped suddenly. He heaved a great sigh, as if expelling something from deep in his lungs. When he spoke again it was with a deep resignation in his tone. What had been done had been done, and could never be undone.
‘It should have been easy, but I got careless. Slipped with the scalpel, went right through an artery. He bled out right in front of me, on the table, while I was trying to fix him up.’
Even obsessed with his own misery, Crake felt some sympathy for the big man. He knew exactly how he felt. Perhaps that was why they’d instinctively liked each other when they first met. Each sensed in the other a tragic victim of their own arrogance.
Malvery cleared his throat. ‘I lost it all after that,’ he said. ‘Lost my licence. Lost my wife. Spent my money. Didn’t care. And I drank. I drank and drank and drank, and the money got less and less, and one day I didn’t have nothing left. I think that was about when the Cap’n found me.’
‘Frey?’
