by Mick Farren
Phaid was puzzled.
'You got a name, old timer?'
'Festler.'
'And that's for free?'
'That's all you get.'
'So what about these visitors, Festler?'
'That's all you get.'
'I just wait and see?'
'You got it.'
Phaid didn't have to wait long. The first visitor went by the name of Sovia. She was a short wiry girl with a prison crop just starting to grow out.
'I represent the women of A7H.'
Phaid smiled.
'All of them?'
'Just shut your mouth and listen up.'
'Sure.'
'I represent the women of A7H and I have a few facts to lay on you as a new arrival. We don't take any shit in this hall. Some women may want to relate to you because they find you attractive and some women will relate to you on a more material level. That will be their choice. If, however, you should force yourself on any of the women in this hall, we'll go to work on you, and when we're finished, you won't have a damn thing to force on any woman again.'
Phaid swallowed. Although the girl was slight and skinny, there was something about her that reminded him of the monstrous Borkastra. Maybe it was a style that was copied all through the prison. It had certainly caused him to take a step back.
'Am I supposed to take that literally?'
'Quite literally.'
'Ain't the guards going to take an interest if you girls start doing stuff like that?'
'We have an understanding with our guards. You'd do best to remember that.'
Phaid nodded. There seemed to be nothing else that he could do. His second visitor was called Graid.
'I control the supplies.'
'What supplies?'
Graid reeled it off like it was a litany that he recited often.
'Each day, each prisoner receives the standard daily ration pack. This ration pack contains three bars of nutrosolid, one soluble beverage mix, one candy bar and five placidile tablets.'
'They like to keep the inmates doped down.'
'You could say that.'
'So each day I get my supply pack. What has that got to do with you?'
Graid smiled.
'I'm Graid. I'm the supply supervisor for this hall, I fetch the supply packs from the guards' delivery truck then, along with my helpers, 1 distribute them.'
Phaid raised a suspicious eyebrow.
'And?'
'And I charge a small distribution fee on each pack.'
Phaid nodded. He had been expecting something of the sort.
'The guards go along with this?'
'We have an understanding with our guards.'
'So what do I have to pay to pick up my own rations?'
'Half a candy bar or one placidile tablet.'
'What happens if I don't give you a piece of my ration pack?'
'No pay, no pack. You'd get awful thin.'
The next visitor was named Strahl. Her message was brief and to the point.
'You want to sell any of your kit?'
Phaid declined. That left him with just one more of the reception committee to deal with. His name was Fonthor-Mun, and, by White Tower standards, he had a bland, well fed, expensive look. His proposition was slightly more complicated.
'Phaid? It was Phaid, wasn't it? I'm what they call the time broker in this hall.'
Phaid was starting to lose patience with the ways of the White Tower.
'What the hell is a time broker?' Fonthor-Mun's expression hardened. 'You shouldn't talk to me like that. I hold some considerable power in this hall. You wouldn't like me to have you handed over to the tender mercies of our blessed Borkastra, would you?'
For the first time since he had been arrested, some of the numbness left Phaid. He started to get angry.
'Are you threatening me?'
Fonthor-Mun quickly smiled and became very anxious to please.
'Of course not. In actual fact, I was about to ask you if you felt like selling a portion of your time.'
Phaid's eyes narrowed.
'What are you talking about?'
'What's your prison number?'
Phaid looked at the identity tag that had been clamped to his wrist.
'A7H-491708319, why?'
Fonthor-Mun seemed to be making calculations in his head.
'8319, that would mean that you'll have to wait around in this hell hole for nine or ten months before you go to the steamer.'
'That sounds like a mixed blessing.'
'You could sell a month of it.'
'Huh?'
'You could trade prison numbers with someone who only has maybe seven or eight months to the steamer. Thus they get an extra month of life and . . .'
'And what do I get out of the deal?'
'A comfortable space in the hall, the companion of your choice, booze, placidile, dog gold - the choice is yours.'
'Presumably you have an understanding with your guards about this kind of transaction.'
'Of course.'
'It's amazing.'
'What is?'
Phaid shook his head.
'Oh, nothing.'
'So, Phaid, do we have a deal?'
'I don't know. I need time to think about this.'
'You may not get such a good offer the next time.'
Phaid knew that he was being hustled.
'I said I wanted time to think about it. I don't think well under pressure.'
Old Festler cackled.
'You did well there, boy. Too many fresh fish fall for this oily bastard's line of patter.'
Fonthor-Mun rounded on him.
'Shut your mouth, you ancient piece of carrion. Your time has all but run out.'
He turned to Phaid.
'You see this creature. He's been in the White Tower for two years. He's lied, cheated, stolen, done everything he could to squirm away from the steamer. Now he could go at any time. Nobody would sell him so much as a day. The old fool has to die, he's the only one who can't accept it.'
Phaid turned to Festler.
'Is what he says true?'
Festler shrugged.
'Give or take a few points.'
'You're all crazy in here.'
'Just like on the outside.'
Phaid spent the next two days sitting on his makeshift bed between Festler and the jolt field. He gave Graid's helper his kickback on the ration pack, beyond that, he refused all offers that were directed at him. Particularly those that might take away the time he had before his appointment with the steamer.
His mood was constantly changing. For a lot of the time he was simply numb, staring into space and doing the best he could not to feel a damn thing. This wasn't always easy. A hopeless, frustrated rage would burn up inside him at the injustice of his situation. He felt a desperate, almost overpowering urge to lash out and hurt someone or something. Nothing, however, presented itself. All he could do was to hurt himself. At one point he was tempted to hurl himself headfirst into the jolt field. The drawback to this was that the jolt field was non-lethal. It would be appallingly painful, it might damage his brain, but it wouldn't kill him.
As the rage faded, Phaid would start thinking more positively. If he was stuck in A7H for many long months, he might as well get into the run of the prison hustles.
Maybe he should trade off a month of his life for a few creature comforts and maybe a stake to start something going for himself. If the prison was run by bastards, then he could be as big a bastard as any of them, except . . .
The except always came as the anger born adrenalin wore off and depression started to take over; except, what was the point? He was at the end of his road and no amount of shuffling and scuffling could disguise that fact. The numbness once again took command and Phaid resumed sitting and staring into the jolt field.
The mental cycle went round and round. Its sum total was that he did absolutely nothing. He hoarded the pills and the candy bars from his ration pack but mad
e no move to do anything with them. His inertia was complete. It seemed to be protection against anything that the prison could do to him. Phaid, although he didn't actually think about it in such specific terms, seemed content to sit and decay.
On the fifth day of his incarceration, a whisper went around the hall. Phaid had dimly noticed that there always seemed to be certain prisoners who knew what was going to happen before it happened. Maybe they had a tap into the guards' grapevine, or maybe they were blessed with some sort of jailhouse precognition. Phaid neither knew nor particularly cared. The whispers came all the same and were usually partway correct.
'Borkastra is making the rounds. She's at A7E and she's coming this way.'
This particular whisper put a snap of fear into the air of A7H.
'Borkastra? Here? What does she want to come here for? We haven't done anything.'
'It'll mean trouble. You just see if it doesn't.'
Phaid wished that he was situated somewhere other than right in front of the entrance to the hall. He knew that he would be totally exposed to the Chief Overseer's icy gaze. He tried to slide backwards away from the jolt field. Unfortunately, everybody else had had the same idea and nobody would make room for him.
'She's in the next hall. She'll be here in a few minutes.'
'She's not alone. There's someone with her.'
'Who is it?'
'Solchaim! Solchaim is making a tour of the prison.'
'Solchaim is coming here. We're going to get to see the devil.'
Phaid felt an unpleasant prickling at the back of his neck. He was finally going to catch a glimpse of the being who so many people accused of being the author of all the troubles in the Republic.
The presence of the elaihi made itself known long before Phaid had a chance to actually look at him with his own eyes. Even while he was still hidden from view, screened by the awesome Borkastra, her dogs and a phalanx of her personal guard, an invisible part of him was inside the hall moving around. It searched and probed, seeking something with a cold, but nonetheless desperate urgency. It couldn't be seen and it couldn't be heard, but it could certainly be felt and there was no mistaking that it was some strange psychic extension of the elaihi.
It drifted in and out of the prisoners' minds, opening and shutting them as though they were merely books in a big disorganised library. It was frighteningly powerful. Those who resisted its intrusion found that their freewill was brushed aside like so much insubstantial gauze.
The protective wedge of guards parted and Solchaim himself walked up to the entrance jolt field. Suddenly he was standing just a few paces from where Phaid sat. Phaid froze. He felt like the legendary rabbit confronted by the cobra. For almost a minute, he stared at the ground. It seemed to somehow be important that he resist looking at the elaihi. Resistance, however, was impossible. Almost as though they had a will of their own, his eyes slowly started to move.
It was hard at first for Phaid to come to terms with the idea that the figure that towered over him was of the same kind as those that he had encountered in the desert. Solchaim was tall, as were the other elaihim, but that's where the resemblance ended. The elaihim in the desert had a sparse, almost ethereal air about them. They had that look of uniformity about them as though their individual identities had somehow merged into one great superior overmind: an overmind that seemed to dwell, in part, in some other dimension or on another level of existence.
If Solchaim dwelt on other levels, he didn't make it noticeable. He seemed to be at the very power hub of the serious here and now. There was a monstrous strength folded about him, a strength that had grown cold and unfeeling in the pursuit of too many distant and unimaginable evils. Phaid could feel a coldness, an absolute lack of feeling that could only survive in some purple and yellow subworld on the far side of decadence. In a human being such a thing would have been horrible to contemplate. It would have begged the question of how barren a life could be to shape such frigid isolation. In an elaihi it was so infinitely worse that Phaid didn't even care to think about it.
A secondary surprise was the way in which Solchaim was dressed. The garb of the desert elaihim was a minimum of functional austerity. Solchaim was arrayed for grand, theatrical effect.
A black, fur trimmed cape was thrown around the elaihi's shoulders. Its bulk gave them a hunched appearance. He reminded Phaid of some strange angular bird of prey, a vulture that walked on long spindly legs encased in equally long boots polished to a diamond hard lustre. When Solchaim took a step forward he became more like a spider. A dandified, almost foppish spider in sable and jet, but a spider all the same with a spider's icy determination.
Sapphires sparkled on his fingers, his nails were painted black and buffed to match the finish of his boots. The fingers of his left hand twitched over a set of irregularly threaded beads, not, however, in the manner of someone at prayer, but as though a part of the elaihi's mind was engaged in complex calculations and the beads provided some sort of numerical tally.
Phaid's reluctant gaze was finally forced up to the face of the elaihi. There was the same high forehead and penetrating eyes as those of his desert cousins, but, once again, that was where the similarity ended. Heavy makeup made his eyes seem more sunken and his cheeks more hollow than they really were. He was wearing some sort of dark lip colour that give his mouth a sensuous cruelty. His hair was swept up from the temples, almost giving the impression of horns growing out of his head. Phaid suddenly wanted to look away. He had realised that the elaihi had deliberately made himself into a parody of what humans thought of as evil. He was a total amalgam of all the elegant demons from ten thousand folktales. Phaid wanted to look away, but somehow he couldn't.
Solchaim turned slightly. He had been scanning the inmates of A7H, but suddenly he noticed Phaid staring at him. Their eyes locked. The invisible thing that had been rummaging through the minds of the prisoners suddenly pounced on Phaid. Solchaim's eyes seemed to be burning through to the interior of Phaid's skull. With a ghastly flash of insight, Phaid knew that he was the object of the elaihi's search. He couldn't understand how or why, but there was no escaping the fact that he was the one for whom Solchaim had been hunting.
He recoiled in horror. The elaihi was inside his brain. Phaid squirmed and struggled, trying to expel the alien intrusion. He threw up a wall to block out the invader, but almost at once it started to sag and crack under the rain of hammerblows from the superior elaihim intellect. No matter how Phaid struggled to shore up his defences, he had no chance. His wall collapsed in a cascade of imaginary bricks.
Solchaim's eyes were deep inside his head. Phaid was more naked and helpless than he had ever been, even on the day of his birth. His fear was total. He could do nothing except wait for the blow to fall.
Then, to Phaid's total surprise, Solchaim was gone. Phaid's mind was his own again. Solchaim was still looking at him, but he had completely withdrawn. The elaihi smiled faintly and looked away. He turned on his heel, murmured something to Borkastra, and then quickly strode off in the direction from which he had come.
Solchaim's abrupt exit threw his guard into confusion as they tried to fall in behind him. Borkastra motioned two of them and then pointed at Phaid. Phaid's stomach turned to jelly. What was going on? What had he done? Most important of all, what was going to happen to him?
The jolt field was shut down. The two guards moved quickly into the hall and seized Phaid by the arms. They dragged him to his feet. 'You're coming with us!'
'Don't make any trouble, it'll only make it harder for you.'
'But I . . .'
'Just shut your mouth and keep walking.'
'I haven't done anything.'
'Don't tell us, we're just doing what we're told.'
Phaid was hustled along a seemingly endless series of grim echoing corridors until he was back at the main induction area where he'd had his first taste of what life in the White Tower was going to be like. A few swift body blows from the guards had stopp
ed him protesting his innocence, but when he saw where he was, a faint flutter of hope rose up inside him. Surely it couldn't be that they were going to let him go.
One of the guards produced a pair of manacles, and Phaid's hopes plummeted. His arms were pinned behind his back. The guards pushed him towards a bench that ran along one wall of the open space.
'Sit!'
Phaid sat. One of the guards sat down beside him, the other went about his business. For a long time, Phaid was left to sit and watch the doings in the induction area. In the hour or so that he waited, fifty or more new arrivals passed through the unpleasant welcoming process. Out on the street, the police must have been doing a roaring business.
Most of the new intake went to their fate in a fully docile manner. Arrest, interrogation and the nightmare journey through the tunnels had sapped their will to fight. Phaid remembered his own journey from the police complex to the White Tower. The surprise wasn't that so few prisoners resisted what was being done to them. The surprise was that there were any resisters at all.
During the time that Phaid was sitting in the induction area watching the gloomy lines go by, only one of the prisoners showed any sign of spirit or rebellion. Ironically it was about the youngest prisoner that had been brought in. He was a gang kid, a Scorpion, slight and skinny on the threshold between boy and man. It took two brawny guards to drag him from the transport while he spat, bit and fought. His long skirt was mostly ripped away and the bulk of the cheap jewellery that the gang wore as its emblem had gone. Neither police nor prison guards, however, had been able to do anything but smudge his bizarre black make-up. Phaid wondered how he had managed to get this far without being beaten to a bloody pulp. He had been lucky, but his luck was about to give out on him.
Two of the biggest guards in the place joined the two already holding him. Between them they wrestled him to the ground and pinned him. The remnants of his red and orange skirt were ripped away and his make-up scrubbed roughly from his face.
Despite the four guards kneeling on him, the Scorpion somehow managed to get an arm free. There was a loud scream as his fingers gouged at one guard's eyes. A club smashed down and it was the Scorpion's turn to scream. Phaid looked away as the kid was dragged off to one of the side cells that were euphemistically known as 'conversation suites'. Five club welding guards went in with him, while the one with the damaged eye was led away to receive medical attention.