The Omega Cage

by Steve Perry

  Berque disgusted him even more, possibly, than did the Mindfucker, but Stark wore a smile for the fat man. For whatever reasons, Berque had contacts both in and outside of the Cage. And he was one of Stark's best dips. Besides, what Berque had just told him was worth a hundred smiles.

  "You're sure about this?"

  Berque flashed one of his own toothy grins. "Yes, Warden. We got to talking, you know how it is, about things that went down. So I asked him, 'What's all the static about you and the Confed ghoul?' He didn't want to say, at first, but I told him some stuff about me, and after a while, he opened up."

  "You don't think he was just bragging?"

  "Negative. I can tell when somebody is pumping sewage, believe me. I've given you some first disk material, haven't I?"

  "Yes. You've been very helpful to me."

  "Anyway, so after awhile, he says, 'Yeah, all he wants is to know the Black Sun dogs and whips and how the scramble runs. I can't believe they don't know about Tweel and his curs, and the bankers from Muto Kato.'"

  Tweel. Muto Kato. Somebody's name, and a world in the Bruno System. He had it! "He say anything else?"

  "Not anything you're interested in."

  "I'm interested in everything he says. Listen, Berque, I want you to stay with this. Get everything you can from him. You do this right and your perks will triple."

  Berque leaned back in his chair, his exopthalmic eyes almost exploding from his face. "Ah, Warden, you're too kind. Have you thought about what I asked you last time we talked?"

  Stark felt his teeth grind together. He forced the smile back to his lips. "Yes, I have given it some thought. And if you get this for me, Berque, I'll see that you get the job of morgue attendant."

  The fat man's smile was radiant. It made Stark's stomach turn. What Berque wanted to do with the bodies… well, it didn't matter. If some parts of them didn't get cremated, who would care?

  When the dip left, Stark punched the names into his computer and instructed the unit to begin a search over the InfoNet. If the names looked as though they might be legitimate, he would be sitting in the pilot's seat when Karnaaj returned. Stark would make very damned sure that the Confed knew that he had gotten the information and not that zombie Karnaaj. He smiled at the thought. Try to steal my woman, eh? We'll see about that. Commander Karnaaj.

  * * *

  "What about your parents?" Juete asked.

  In his cell, Maro smiled into the darkness. "What about them?"

  "Were you happy at home? Brothers, sisters? Extended family or nuclear? Traditional or open marriage? Did you feel loved and wanted? Were your—?"

  "Wait, hold it. One question at a time!"

  "I'm sorry. It's only that I want to get to know all about you."

  "Why? It's not that important who I was."

  "Yes it is. Who you are comes from who you were. You can't escape your past; it follows you like a shadow."

  He listened to the soft tones from the compatch, and smiled again. There was a lot more to this woman than met the eye. You looked at her and all you saw was the body and flawless skin, the shock of white hair and the pale eyes. And when her pheromones reached you, your own hormones stirred in response. But there was more there. She had a mind, and Maro found that more intriguing than her looks or even her enhanced sexual appeal.

  "I suppose you're right. Okay. Let's go back to the first question, then. My parents…"

  In the quiet of his cell, separated by thick walls and distance, he told the lonely woman about himself. And found that, much to his surprise, it did not hurt at all.

  When the com clicked off, Juete rolled over onto her back and grinned foolishly. It was probably too soon to tell, but she thought she loved this man. He talked to her like she was a person and not just a sexual toy. That meant more to her than she would have believed. If they were together, it would be physical—she knew that. But it would also be more. She felt a connection with Dain that she had never felt with anyone before. She liked the feeling.

  Maybe his plan to escape would work. Maybe it would not. At this point, it did not matter so much. If they could be together, even briefly, that would be worth it. She was being romantic, she knew, but she could not help the giddy feeling she had. Had anyone ever made this kind of connection long distance before? Surely someone must have. There had to be people who lived worlds apart, who talked only over White Radio or by recordings, who had come to appreciate and even love one another. Even so, it felt no less magical to her. He did not have to come for her when he escaped. But he wanted to, and that made all the difference. Dain would not use her; he would love her and respect her, she was sure of that.

  Feeling that sense of newfound power, Juete no longer was afraid. She might be locked away in solitary, but she knew that she was no longer alone. She clutched that thought to herself as she fell into a peaceful sleep.

  In the yard the next day. Scanner pulled Maro aside. "It's done," he said. "I don't know how long it will run, or even if it'll run, but it's as good as it's gonna get with what we've got."

  "Can you get it to my cell?"

  "Your cell? Why?"

  "For the test."

  "Hey, I built this twinky; I test it."

  "It's liable to kill you, Scanner."

  "Oh, and it won't kill you? What makes you immune?"

  "Remember the Zonn Chamber?"

  Scanner looked exasperated. "I was afraid you might say that. You think you'll need whatever you did in there to make this work?"

  "I don't know. But it's better to have it and not need it—"

  "—than to need it and not have it. I've heard the argument before."

  Maro grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. "If it works, you'll be the first to know."

  "And if not, you will."

  Maro shrugged. "It's a risk. Somebody's got to take it, and it was my idea."

  The thin man made a gesture of capitulation. "Okay. I'll get it into your cell. But Maro—if you blow us all up I am really going to be pissed at you."

  "Just tell me what I need to know to work it."

  "Right. The confounder first. There are two circuits, and an automatic synch mode that trips back and forth…"

  Maro listened carefully as Scanner explained the workings of the Bend unit. He felt a fluttery sensation, as if something was confined in his belly and was unhappy about it. After lights out tonight, he was going to do something no man had ever done before, and if it didn't work, he would never see another sunrise.

  It was a very sobering thought.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "There's something else going on," Stark said to Berque. The fat convict stood in front of the warden's desk, looking very uncomfortable.

  "Something else?"

  "Yes. I don't know what it is, exactly, but my sources say there's some kind of tension in the air."

  Outside, as if to punctuate the comment, lightning struck one of the main wall arresters with a canvas rip and boom! The afternoon storm continued to pour rain down upon the Cage.

  "I haven't heart anything unusual," Berque said.

  "Have you gotten anything else from Maro?"

  "No, but he's on a different shift, so I don't see him as much."

  Stark drummed his fingers. "Okay, starting now you're on the same shift. And I'll see that you get a hall pass. Stick close to Maro; I want to know everything he does."

  "Copy, Warden."

  Juete sat on the edge of her bunk, listening to Maro's voice over the comset, her belly tight with fear.

  "Tonight," he said. "If we've put it together right, there'll be no problem."

  "And if you've made a mistake?"

  He hesitated just a moment. "I'll call you afterward."

  "Dain—"

  "What?"

  "I'm afraid for you."

  "It's okay, hon. Really. Once we know the Bender unit works, then all we have to do is set up the rest of it."

  "Dain, I—I…"

  "Listen, it'll be okay,
Juete—"

  "I love you," she said softly.

  There was a long silence. Then, "Yeah. I think maybe I love you, too."

  The storm was in full strength now, and the tropical fury of it vented against the Cage with wind, rain and occasional flashes of lightning. A bolt hit one of the big softwood trees a hundred meters from the wall, and the superheated sap boiled almost instantaneously, causing the wood to explode.

  Under the overhang of the tool shed, Maro and Scanner were effectively hidden by a waterfall of runoff.

  "You sure you've got it?" Scanner asked.

  "Positive."

  "I'm worried about the power supply. This thing is going to draw a lot of voltage from the broadcast unit. I've rigged a series of high-storage capacitors to give you the jolt you'll need, but it's still going to show up on somebody's board when you power up. I don't think they'll have time to trace it, but—"

  "Don't worry about it. It'll be late. Probably nobody will even notice it."

  "Let's hope."

  "Listen, Scanner, you've done a hell of a job. It'll work."

  "Like I said—let's hope."

  "Okay. I'm going to check on Raze and Chameleon, to see how they're doing on the other part of this."

  "Watch out for Berque. He's been keeping you in sight all day, in case you haven't noticed."

  "I noticed. He's in the doorway of B block right now."

  "I won't see you again before tonight. Good luck, Maro."

  "Thanks, Scanner."

  It was nearly midnight. Maro sat up, slowly and quietly, on his bunk. He listened, but heard no movement in the hall. Directly across from his cell, Berque seemed to be sleeping.

  Time to do it.

  The equipment had been put into his mattress; it formed a hard lump under his feet. The interior of the cell was lit only from the corridor light, but that was more visibility than he wanted. The diodes on the equipment provided enough illumination to do what he needed.

  He fished the two pieces of electronic wizardry from his mattress. The smaller fit comfortably within his palm, a flat plastic rectangle with a single button control. That was the confounder, and according to Scanner, it did not need to be particularly good. The telemetry for the cells was, the circuit-rider had said, very basic. Strictly biochemical-electric, no EEG, MEG or ECG monitoring. What the simadam running the scope saw was nothing more than a basic life force pattern, and the tuning was very broad. As long as anybody was inside the cell, the scope would register the minimum. It was also open-ended on the top side, so there could be five people stuffed into the small room and the machine wouldn't know.

  Maro thumbed the toggle button; a red LED lit on the confounder, and he shoved the device under his blanket.

  He could leave now, and cell telemetry would show him still there.

  The second machine was also rectangular, but almost as large as a shoebox. The hard plastic was breached in places by biochip boards wired in at odd angles. On one end was a small cone, stolen from the dental X-ray machine in the infirmary; on the top, near the other end, were three knobs, three buttons, and a small screen for LED reads. The knobs controlled power balances; the red button powered up the unit; the yellow button built sufficient charge for it to work; the green button put the whole thing into operation. Simple.

  There was a third part, but it was too large to smuggle into a cell. Scanner had installed it as part of an osmotic filtering unit in the machine shop. That was the Bender unit, essentially a device to shift a small ship into hyperspace. It was linked to this box by microwave and VLF radio transceivers, and both were connected to a mainframe computer halfway around the planet. If ever a gadget was more jury-rigged, Maro did not want to see it. And he was about to risk his life, and maybe the lives of everybody on Omega, on it.

  Quickly, before he could lose his resolve, Maro took a deep breath, glanced across the hall at the supine form of Berque on his bed, then turned back toward the Zonn wall at the back of his cell. He stood carefully, facing the wall.

  He was, he knew, afraid. There had been many times in his life when he had faced serious injury or death, but in almost all of those cases, he had been in control. This time he was going to have to depend almost totally on the brains and skills of others. He could stop here. He could tell them that it didn't work, and nobody would ever know. He could pull a chip or twist a wire loose. They were dealing with very potent energies, and a mistake might be violently fatal. An unchambered Bender might vibrate itself into another dimension, leaving a smoking crater a klick across behind it. Or it might do far worse than that.

  For a brief moment, he felt paralyzed by the latter possibility. Did he have the right to take such a risk? There was a small but finite chance that the unit, instead of doing what they designed it for, might instead release all the bound energy of the Zonn material in a nuclear explosion that would decimate the planet. Who was he to put however many innocent people who lived on Omega in such jeopardy? The majority of them he did not know or care about, but there were his friends—and Juete. How could he risk her life—especially in light of what she was coming to mean to him?

  Maro closed his eyes and shook his head savagely. They would be better off dead than doomed to a life in the Cage. And if it happened, they would certainly not suffer, just as he certainly would not be around to regret it. He let out the breath he was holding and took another.

  He pushed the red button. The small flatscreen glowed into blue life, and a series of numbers lit in one corner. Power on. So far, so good.

  Maro pushed the yellow button. The screen jumbled and began to scroll a series of numbers and words too fast to read. Then the crawl slowed. A bar chart appeared on half the screen, showing power to be at 90 percent maximum. Better than they'd hoped. Sweat beaded on his face; he wiped at it with the sleeve of his coverall. He pointed the cone at the Zonn wall. Okay, Maro. This is it. Time to shoot it or rack it.

  He pressed the green button.

  There came a high-pitched hum that quickly shaded off into ultrasonics. The box vibrated in his hands, and he quickly dialed down the knob on the left. Scanner had said it might do that—Jesu Christo Jones!

  The wall ahead of him swirled. Like smoke in a slice laser, the gunmetal Zonn material moved. Maro watched as the hardest substance man had ever come across wiggled like current eddies on the surface of agitated water. Something was happening, that was for damned sure, but—what?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Maro stepped toward the wall. He half expected to have his nose smashed flat when he hit the metal—but instead he stepped into the wall itself.

  And into another world.

  Stark lay in his bed alone, wishing for the comfort of Juete next to him. Soon all this shit would be over, and he could have the albino woman back with him. Meanwhile, he would take care of business—and continue to sleep uncomfortably alone.

  The com chirped on the bedside table. Who would be calling him at this hour?

  "Stark here."

  "Tech First Ostental, Warden. I hate to bother you, but standing orders say to call you if anything unusual happens."

  Stark sighed. "Go ahead."

  "We just got a call from the Bogi Desert power station. They had a surge right about 2400. Something drew nearly nine hundred thousand watts from the main generator grid all at once. Almost burned out a substation between here and there."

  "So? How does that concern us?"

  "They think it came from around here."

  "Do we show any equipment running that would do that?"

  "No, sir."

  Stark sighed again. Did he have to hear about every dead fly that hit the ground? "Are there any thunderstorms on your radar, tech?"

  "Yes, sir. About eighty klicks southwest of here."

  "There's your answer. Probably lightning hit something and screwed up a reading. Tell Bogi station we didn't take their juice."

  "I copy that."

  "And don't bother me unless som
ething concerning prison security comes up, understand?"

  "Yessir!"

  "Discom." Stark dropped the comset back on the table and rolled over onto his back. He hated this place. If he didn't get out of here soon, he was going to be talking to the goddamn walls.

  By all human standards, the Zonn would have to have been insane. Maro found himself not on the other side of the Zonn wall, as he had expected, but in a world of madness. There was a wall behind him, to be sure, but it reached up out of sight. Ahead of him lay a landscape of twisted columns, moving hills, and glowing blue lights that surged and faded, bright and then dimmer, all overlaid with a swirling gunmetal blue fog. He shifted his feet, and sparks danced under his boots.

  He had not expected this. The walls were stable energy fields, that much he had surmised, holding the astral patterns of their ancient builders. He had expected to have to deal with them, as he had done in the Zonn chamber. But this… what—and where was it?

  His first reaction was to turn and retreat back into his cell. He held that feeling in check. No, this was supposed to be a test, and only the first part of it had worked.

  Scanner's cell was exactly sixty-nine steps to the right of his own. He had paced it twice, to be sure. He need only take the proper number of steps in that direction and he would be behind Scanner's cubicle. He should be able to walk through the Zonn wall in the back of the other cell just as easily as he had his own.

  Might as well get moving, he thought.

  He heard a voice cry out then, a ghostly yell, and he nearly dropped the dematerializing device. He caught it quickly. Wouldn't do to break that—it was his only way out of this nightmare. The voice came again, but fainter, and he felt a sense of relief. He had fought the Zonn demons before and won, but he wasn't sure he could do so again under these circumstances. He did not want to try.

  Moving with great care, Maro walked. He counted the steps aloud, his voice sounding hollow and far away.

  "… Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine."

  He stopped. This ought to be it. Scanner had said he would keep clear of the back wall. Maro pointed the device at the infinite cliff before him. The solid-looking wall swirled as it had before, and it was with a feeling of immense relief that Maro stepped through.