Geosynchron (6 page)

"I think the airlock's about to open," said Plithy in stage whisper
from his crevice, snapping Quell back to the present.

Quell let out a scowl. "Quiet."

"Crazy crazy crazy," muttered Rick Willets.

A thought suddenly occurred to the Islander. Why had he never
heard about this place before? Borda couldn't keep the goings-on in
these orbital prisons shrouded in mystery forever. In a world where
thousands of drudges clambered over each other to report on Jeannie
Q. Christina's hairdo every day, there had to be at least a few people
drudging up the truth on the Defense and Wellness Council prison
system. Certainly one of them would have thought to interview a
paroled prisoner from one of these places by now ... unless there were
no paroled prisoners.

Quell looked with sadness on the boy Plithy. The commander
whose eye he had bloodied must have had a lot of stripes on his uniform. Plithy must have seriously pissed someone off for the Council to
relegate him to this state of limbo, without trial, without purpose,
without end.

How the fuck was Quell going to get out of here?

He supposed that if he were a brilliant schemer like Natch, he
would have already deduced an escape. Or if he were a charismatic statesman like his son Josiah, he would have managed to forge a truce
with the connectibles by now. He would have shown them all the
futility of playing silly war games and breaking thumbs to suit the
whims of a madman.

But Quell was neither schemer nor statesman. He was a bio/logic
engineer and a stubborn old fool, and he could think of nothing to do
but lie in the rut the Defense and Wellness Council had thrown him in.

The door to the airlock opened and eight prisoners came stumbling
out. All Islanders but one, by the rustic look of their wardrobe.

Quell felt the battle frenzy take hold of him. He vaulted over the
crate and let out a cry of anger that reverberated throughout the dock.
The prisoners froze in place, panicked; one of them collapsed quivering
to the ground. And then Quell was pounding across the floor, a bellowing behemoth with rifle held aloft in both hands. Three black code
darts went flying past Quell's right shoulder as three different connectible gunmen underestimated how fast a big man could run. In
seven long strides he made it to the row of crates the enemy had staked
out. He hoped that Plithy and the others were following the plan, but
he was quite past the point of return by now.

The Islander made a flying leap over some big steel drum and
began wildly spraying the gathered connectibles with dartfire in
midair. There were twelve of them and only one of him, yet clearly
Quell had put them on the defensive. Two of his darts even found targets before he felt half a dozen pinpricks line up along his torso. Icy
paralysis grabbed hold of him.

Shit, thought Quell as he caught a glimpse of the hard concrete
block that he would be crashing against any second now. Why do I
always forget to watch out for the landing?

He crashed, hard.

But not before seeing the connectibles all collapse to the ground
themselves, victim to the Islanders who had snuck up behind them.
Even Plithy had managed to plug one of the bastards.

Quell smiled to himself in spite of the agony. Misdirection: it was
the oldest and simplest of combat tactics, one that even a bio/logic
engineer with no military training could figure out. Draw the enemy's
attention and their fire with the largest, loudest distraction you could
find, then launch the real assault where they least expected. Sometimes
the simplest tactics were the most effective.

The Islander clawed his way back to consciousness ten minutes
later. He felt as if someone had doused his chest with flaming tar, and
he could scarcely move his arms or legs. But he knew from experience
that these black code pain routines only lasted so long. Blistering
agony for half an hour was better than weeks of grinding pain from
broken thumbs.

"Fucking incredible," said a grinning Plithy as he and Rick Willets
draped Quell's arms over their shoulders and helped him to his feet.

"Crazy," agreed Willets.

All of the connectibles had been corralled into the center of the
dock and roped tightly together. Most of them would be left in the
dock for the next connectible patrol that passed through. A few would
be singled out for the thumb treatment, or worse.

Meanwhile, most of the new prisoners had already vanished down
into the unconnectible level of the prison, where doubtless some young
punk like Plithy was giving them an initiation into the ways of the
Orbital Detention and Rehabilitation Facility, Twelfth Meridian. All
except for one, the tall, gangly fellow who had slipped to the floor in
shock when Quell had let out his war cry. Seemed like the man had
managed to smack his forehead against the floor when he fell. He was
sitting up, dazed but being tended to by two of the unconnectible team.

Quell took a closer look and strangled back a gasp. He knew this
man. This man had been at the top of the Revelation Spire on that hot- rible day a few weeks ago, the day that Quell had scuffled with Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee. He was a man of thin limbs and sharp
angles, with a bulging Adam's apple and eyelids so prominent they were
practically reptilian. Today he was dressed in the standard streetwear of
breeches and a brown shirt, but on that day he had been wearing the
white robe and yellow star of the Defense and Wellness Council.

Papizon, that was his name. One of Magan's flunkies.

Plithy and Willets were dragging Quell away from the dock now
and into the long, wide hallway that led to the unconnectible level of
the prison. Soon they were back in friendly territory, and Quell was
able to muster a half-walk, half-shamble with the support of his two
comrades. But his mind remained on the dock and that odd flamingo
of a Council officer. Quell had no idea how many of these orbital
prisons Len Borda maintained, but Papizon's arrival at this one was
certainly no coincidence.

He tried to sort through all the rumors he had heard about the
Defense and Wellness Council from later arrivals at the prison. Magan
Kai Lee was in open rebellion against Len Borda, they said; the Council
had fragmented between the two groups; Magan's officers and Borda's
officers were openly skirmishing in the streets. Were the prisons still
under Borda's control? If so, did that mean that Papizon was here on
some kind of clandestine mission? And what kind of mission could
that be, except to take revenge on Quell?

The three of them arrived at Quell's cramped prison cell. Four
walls, a nonfunctioning viewscreen, a metal chair, a few changes of
clothes he had scrounged from the supply depots, a poor excuse for a
bunk. Plithy dragged the older man to his bunk and deposited him
there as gently as he could. Quell flopped onto his back and groaned.

"Quell," said Plithy. "Can I ask you something?"

The Islander gave a snort of assent.

"What was ... she like?"

"Who?"

A nervous pause. "Margaret Surina."

"Beautiful," said Quell, then rolled over to face the wall, signaling
that the conversation was over.

4

Silence. Gloom. Darkness.

Don't think.

Jittering in his arms and legs and teeth. Patches of consciousness
stitched together with long threads of void.

Natch keeps consulting his internal systems, looking for some
kind of baseline, a pulse for the universe; but time has become unpredictable. There is no consistency to those numbers. The only constant
is steadily mounting hunger, the kind of hunger that spurs the heartbeat to race, the kind that stabs rational thought in the back.

Don't think.

Too much. The hunger is too much. He has vowed to let the world
do to him what it will. But does that include just sitting here in this
dungeon and letting himself starve to death? That's not surrender to
the lofty Fates, that's submission to the timetable of a more mundane
authority, namely, the Patel Brothers. And even in his current state of
inaction, that's a repugnant thought.

Natch pushes himself up weakly from the chair. The ropes puddle
at his feet. He steps outside of them and makes for the doorway at the
other end of the chamber, steadfast in his refusal to make any plans
after he leaves this infernal place. Perhaps he'll find Petrucio. Perhaps
there will be something to eat.

Six paces. Nine paces.

A high-pitched whistle, a drift of wind brushing across his cheek.
Natch looks up and sees-

Silence. Gloom. Darkness.

It's not the darkness of the Patels' domed cavern, however, but the
darkness of a five-year-old's room. It's still two hours before dawn, and
in the hive all is quiet except for the light patter of spring rain and the soft creaks of slowly weathering wood. Children don't stir at this hour,
and even the proctors have abandoned their restless wandering of the
halls.

Natch is lying on the floor. Above him, he can see nothing but the
dark wood of the bureau he has scooted himself under. It's a massive
piece, hand-carved and probably donated from some moldering estate.
The weight would be crushing enough were the bureau completely
empty. But Natch has loaded its drawers with rocks specially gathered
for this purpose until the burden is heavier than anything he has ever
tried to lift; anything less would make the plan an obvious setup. And
Natch can't afford to fail. There are older boys out there who have been
thrashing him in the hallway and teaching his OCHREs new injuries.
These bullies must be dealt with.

Natch takes a deep breath, counts to three, and kicks out the block
of wood that's been propping the end of the bureau up, hard. The block
goes skittering under his bed.

He feels unbearable pain as the full weight of the piece comes down
on him. There's a screaming in his left forearm that he hasn't anticipated as something sharp on the bureau's surface bites into his skin. It's
sharp enough to draw blood. OCHREs start to kick in and dull the
ache, but Natch forces himself to relax, to take in the pain. He's not out
on the street or in Serr Vigal's apartment now; he's in the care of the
hive, and a huge burst of OCHRE activity will only summon suspicious
proctors. It takes a tremendous amount of effort, but Natch soon manages to set aside the pain. He looks on the bureau's opposite side and
sees a maker's mark carved into the wood: a flowery flourish of the letters S and N, the carving jagged and splintery from years of neglect. It
must be the complement to this maker's mark that's digging into his
pinioned left arm, but there's nothing he can do about it now.

When the proctors finally arrive and raise the alarm, when three of
them heave the bureau off and drag him to the infirmary, when he is
lying in bed quietly telling the head proctor a false story about how the bullies had thrown that bureau on top of him, Natch can feel the
bloody imprint of the maker's mark in his left forearm. S and N. His
OCHREs will eventually close up the gash and erase the scar, but for
several nights Natch will sit in the darkness staring at the wound and
wonder what S and N stand for. A carpenter long dead? A company
long defunct? A city, a country?