by Greg Bear
Her expression didn’t change; a puzzled anger.
“But he isn’t there now. I’m not sure I believe in such things, but Goldsmith isn’t anywhere now—I can’t feel him at all. The Goldsmith I knew is dead, and that was the man I loved, the man who was good to me when things were very hard. I think he really is dead, Nadine.” Richard shook his head, aware he was talking nonsense.
She pushed past him. “So I suppose you’re all better now. No need for me. I can go away and you’ll get on with your life.” She whirled and leaned forward, face screwed into a contemptuous mask. “How many times did I ask you to make love to me? Four, five? And you refused. I suppose now that you’re feeling better, you’re up to some harmless thrusting, hm?”
Richard straightened, sobered by her reaction but with his inner joy still strong. “I’m feeling much better, yes.”
“Well, that’s wonderful, because I feel like a…” She thrust her fist up at the ceiling twice, could not find the word, spun on one foot and returned to the bathroom, slamming the door.
Richard peeled another tangerine and stood by the kitchen window, inspecting each slice, savoring the sugar and tartness. He would not let Nadine spoil what he had found.
When she came out of the bathroom she had dressed but none of her clothes seemed to fit properly. Her makeup caked her face, thickly and ineptly applied; she had attempted to accentuate puffy eyes swollen from crying and had succeeded in looking like a gargoyle. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she said, voice sweet, eyes avoiding him. She touched his shoulder and played with his collar. “I can go now, can’t I?”
“If you wish,” Richard said.
“Good. I’m glad to have my freedom, by your kindness.” She picked up her bag and walked quickly through the front door, closing it firmly behind. He listened to her footsteps down the walkway and stairs.
+ Where is he. Did he kill himself. Fly away to Hispaniola and commit suicide. Don’t feel a trace.
Richard shuddered.
+ Time to enjoy being alone.
58
Thousand Flowers Prison spread like a concrete cow patty over low hills in a dry brown and gray inland canyon. Its gently rounded white terraces were blank but for the occasional vent cover, narrow window or gate. A dry asphalt road led up to the prison and circled it.
Spaced through the hills were concrete blockhouses and towers commanding a view of every rock, bush, and gully throughout the valley. The walls of the canyon had been dug out to form vertical barriers. All around the canyon, on top of the walls and below, razor wire, steel spikes, and more blockhouses and towers completed the dismal prospect.
With a fearful pride Soulavier pointed out each of these features to her from the high point where the single road entered the canyon. “It is the most secure prison in North America, even more secure than others on Hispaniola,” he said. “We do not keep our people here. Only contract foreign prisoners.”
“It’s horrible,” Mary said.
Soulavier shrugged. “If you believe there is redemption it may look horrible. Colonel Sir does not believe in redemption in this life. And he knows that for a society to stay healthy you must satisfy those who share such a view…Else they grow restless and take justice into their own hands. That is anarchy.”
He extended his arm: time to return to the car. She did so, and after a few words with the canyon gate guards Soulavier joined her. The car slowly descended.
It took three minutes of conversation and confirmation for their car to pass through the prison’s main gate. Inside, they stopped in a well lighted garage. Male and female guards surrounded the car, showing more curiosity than vigilance. When Soulavier emerged, nodding and smiling, they wandered off, no longer interested. Not even Mary’s appearance attracted much notice.
The guards passed them through corridor after corridor, door after solid blank door, until they stood in the western wing of the prison. Mary noticed there were no windows anywhere. The cool air carried a faint but constant odor of musty staleness, as of something old stored away and unused.
“Goldsmith is in this wing today. The wing is called Suitcase,” Soulavier said. “Punishment is carried out here.”
Mary nodded, still unsure she was prepared to see what she must see. “Why do you call it Suitcase?”
“Each part of the prison is named after something a man might use while on the outside. There is Hat section, Shoe section, Walking Stick, Cigarette, Gum, and Suitcase.”
The main corridor of Suitcase was illuminated at eight meter intervals by strong yellow lights. The guards appeared greenish, eyes and teeth glaring yellow. In a cramped office at the end of the main corridor Soulavier presented the chief of guards with a paper. The chief was slender, almost elfin, with curled ears and upturned eyes. He wore a gray uniform with a red belt and black slippers that made no noise as he crossed the office floor. He examined the paper solemnly, glanced at Mary, passed the paper to a subordinate and removed an oldstyle electronic key from a box hung on the wall behind and above the well organized desk.
The inner sanctum of Suitcase was silent. No prisoners spoke. Few guards moved through the narrow halls between cells. Indeed, few of the cells were occupied; most of the doors stood open, revealing dark emptiness when they passed. Suitcase had a special purpose.
At the end of one short hall, a chunky guard stood with arms crossed before a closed door. The chief brushed him aside with a paternal smile, unlocked the door and stood back.
Soulavier entered first. From outside the chief switched on a light.
Mary saw a black man strapped on a couch. Her eyes flicked immediately to the hellcrown cylinder bolted to a concrete pedestal beside the cot. Cables reached from the cylinder to the clamp, which encircled the man’s head. The man’s face was tense but otherwise he appeared to be asleep.
Mary’s eyes widened. She examined the face carefully for what seemed like minutes.
“This isn’t Emanuel Goldsmith,” she concluded, her knees trembling. She turned on Soulavier, face twisted with indignation and rage. “God damn you all, this is not Emanuel Goldsmith.”
Soulavier’s expression went slack. He looked between the man on the couch and Mary, turned suddenly and confronted the chief of guards, speaking rapidly in Creole. The chief peered into the cell and defended himself vigorously in a high pitched voice. Soulavier continued to harangue him as they walked up the hall and around the corner. The guard outside the cell watched them leave, then peered into the cell in turn. He smiled in confusion at Mary and shut the door.
Mercifully the light remained on. Mary stood beside the couch, looking at the clamped prisoner, unable to imagine what he was experiencing. His face did not betray pain. This was truly a private hell. How long had he been under the clamp? Minutes? Hours?
She considered removing the clamp or shutting off the hellcrown but she was not familiar with the model. No control panel was visible. It might have been controlled remotely.
The door opened. Soulavier squeezed through. “This must be Goldsmith,” he said. “This is the man who arrived in the airport with Goldsmith’s ticket and luggage. You are mistaken.”
“Did Colonel Sir ever meet with this man?”
“He did not,” Soulavier said.
“Did anybody who knew Goldsmith meet with him?”
“I do not know.”
She examined the face again and felt tears flow. “Please take off the clamp. How long has he been here?”
Soulavier conferred with the chief. “He says Goldsmith has been here for six hours in low level punishment.”
“What is low level?”
Soulavier seemed puzzled by that question. “I am not sure, Mademoiselle. How do you measure pain or suffering?”
“Please remove the clamp. This is not Goldsmith. I beg you to take my word for it.”
Soulavier left the cell again and conferred with the chief for several endless minutes. The chief whistled sharply and said something to someone in th
e main corridor.
Mary kneeled beside the couch. She felt she was in the presence of something both horrible and inexplicably holy: a human being who had suffered for hours under the clamp. Could Christ himself have suffered worse? She might heap all her sins, all the sins of all humanity, on this man’s chest; he had suffered for hours. How many others were suffering, had suffered, in this prison, in the other prisons? She reached out to touch the man’s face, her insides tight as steel, tears flowing down her cheeks, dripping to the white sheet on the couch.
The prisoner bore some passing resemblance to Goldsmith. There were features that to an uncaring official eye might confirm identity; roughly the same age, perhaps a few years younger, high cheekbones, a generous well formed mouth.
An elderly woman in a white lab coat entered the cell, gently pushed Mary aside and opened a small door in the side of the cylinder. Whistling tunelessly, the woman tapped a digital display, made some notes on a slate, compared readings, then turned a black knob counterclockwise. Rising again, shaking her head, she snicked the door shut and looked up blankly, expectantly at Soulavier.
“He will need time to recover,” she said. “A few hours. I will give him some medicine.”
“You are certain this is not Emanuel Goldsmith?” Soulavier asked Mary, glaring angrily.
“I’m positive.”
The mulatto woman administered an injection in the prisoner’s arm and stood back. The prisoner’s features did not relax. If anything, away from the hellcrown’s inducer, the face revealed more anguish, more tension. Seeing that the prisoner was not about to start thrashing around, the mulatto woman stepped up again and slipped the clamp from his head.
“He needs medical care,” Mary said. “Please take him out of here.”
“We need a court judgment for that,” Soulavier said.
“Was he put in here legally?” Mary asked.
“I do not know how he was put in here,” Soulavier admitted.
“Then in the name of simple human decency get him out of this cell and take him to a medical doctor.” She stared at the mulatto woman, who looked away quickly and made a sign with three fingers crossed over her left shoulder. “A real doctor.”
Soulavier shook his head and gazed at the ceiling. “This is not a matter to call to the attention of Colonel Sir.” His skin glistened in the yellow light though the cell and hall were not warm. “Colonel Sir would have to order his release.”
Mary felt like screaming. “You’re torturing an innocent man. Call Colonel Sir and tell him this immediately.”
Soulavier seemed paralyzed. He shook his head stubbornly. “We need proof of your assertion,” he said.
“Did he have ID papers, cards?” Mary asked. Soulavier relayed her question to the chief, who lifted his shoulders eloquently; that was not his concern.
The tension had reached her gut. She worked to calm herself, imagining a leisurely War Dance in a grassy field away from everything. “You’d better kill me now,” she said quietly, looking straight into Soulavier’s eyes. She pointed to the prisoner. “You’d better kill him, too. Because what you have done here is more evil than even the wicked nations of this Earth will stand. If you allow me to return to the USA alive, my story will certainly harm Colonel Sir, his government and Hispaniola. If you have any loyalty to your leader or your people you will release this man now.”
Soulavier’s shoulders slumped. He rubbed his damp face with his hands. “I did not expect an error,” he said. He looked around the cell, eyes flicking over the details, moving his lips as if saying a silent prayer. “I will order his removal. And I will take it on my own shoulders.”
Mary nodded, eyes still on his. “Thank you,” she said. She did not care how it was done, but she wondered if by her actions she had now condemned Soulavier himself to such a cell.
In the main hallway, following the mulatto woman and two guards carrying the prisoner on a stretcher, with Soulavier following behind, Mary tried to control her nerves, her fear, her disgust. She could not. She began to tremble and had to stop and lean against a wall for support. Her horror at the hellcrown had not diminished.
Soulavier waited a few steps behind her, staring at the opposite wall, Adam’s apple rising and falling above his stiff white collar. The procession went before them, not looking back. “Everything has meaning and has a place, Mademoiselle,” he said.
“How can you live here knowing these things are made by your people?” Mary asked.
“This is the first time I have been to Thousand Flowers or any prison,” Soulavier said. “My specialty is police diplomacy.”
“But you knew.”
“To know in the abstract…” He did not finish.
Mary pushed away from the wall and straightened with an effort. “What will you do if Yardley disapproves?”
Soulavier shook his head sadly. “You have made my life a shambles, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Whatever your purpose in coming here, that is the result. You can leave Hispaniola. I cannot.”
“I’ll never leave the memory of this,” Mary said.
59
LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “The disappointment is settling over AXIS Control like a shroud. AXIS has made another report on the towers and it is not encouraging. On the other hand, AXIS’s report may point to a very remarkable occurrence. For an analysis of this entire situation, we go to philosophical commentator Hrom Vizhniak.”
Vizhniak: “The images and data received from AXIS point now to a natural explanation for the rings of towers. AXIS has seen a migration of organic material from the sea, a huge and apparently undifferentiated green mass sliding across the landscape in many directed arms or pseudopods, though the scale suggests a more apt comparison to rivers.
“The images are startling, even grand, but as these rivers approach their destinations—the rings of towers—our own childlike disappointment dominates the awe we must feel at such a natural phenomenon.
“AXIS has not found signs of intelligent life after all; at least no signs we are capable of interpreting. The green migration washes around these formations, climbs up the towers in a matter of mere minutes and forms a glistening wall. AXIS is virtually certain that within days or weeks, these walls will produce sporing bodies and the reproductive cycle of B-2’s dominant life form will begin. Let us read AXIS’s report directly, as it was sent to Dr. Roger Atkins, chief designer on the AXIS and Jill thinker projects.”
AXIS (Band 4)> Roger, as you will see from the data I am sending along with this transmission, there is nobody to talk to on B-2, and that means in all likelihood there is nobody I can directly communicate with in the entire Alpha Centauri system.
The towers are very like tree trunks. Each year, at opposite times of the year in the north and south hemispheres, at solstice the green migration rises from the oceans and journeys overland to regions where circles of towers either already exist or have existed in the past. These green tides mount the towers or begin to create new towers and then prepare for the reproductive cycle. Incidentally, the coat of green organisms adds more material to the sides of the towers.
When the towers have aged through sufficient seasons that these accretions join them together, they form a hollow cylinder and the green tide bypasses them in search of other sites. The cylinders then are subject to the forces of nature and decay.
My nickel children and mobile explorers have found many partially and completely decayed ruins. The conclusion that the towers are not erected or destroyed by intelligent forms is inevitable.
It is clear to me that I have no prospect of meeting with intelligent beings. As a substantial part of my design and programming was preparation for this possibility, it becomes apparent that these routines within me will serve no purpose. But even more disappointing
(self referential word definition test meaning syncline 562-K)
is that I am now reduced to the role of a relayer of data and conductor of research on a basic biological level. While aware
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br /> (self referential word definition test meaning syncline 562-J) that this is an extremely valuable role, and that I will be utilized almost to my utmost in fulfilling this role, I nevertheless feel
(English-language deep structure context search, meaning syncline bypass)
a certain disappointment. I have tried to conduct analysis on these peculiar sensations, and in doing so have accessed stored thinker memories from voyage day 87, during the stage one biologic thinker system incarnation. I did not originate these memory patterns, but they seem relevant to my present situation.
Stage one biologic thinker expressed an aspiration or hope
(English language deep structure thinker routine 12 context search: confirmation of interpretation of stage one biologic thinker memory)
that at some time during this mission, contact with intelligent beings would lead to true communication. Your design for both stage one and stage two thinkers incorporates a desire to communicate with our designers and with others as a means of education and for reception of tasking commands. Early thinker design concentrated on creating an inherent desire to communicate. I have not lost these desires; they were also manifested in the AXIS stage one biologic thinker.
There is no longer any significant chance for practical communication with another intelligent being. Reception of years old commands from the solar system, the only likely source of such communication, does not satisfy my drive to discuss and compare present thinker states in realtime.
Roger, I experience decrease in efficiency whenever I attempt to analyze this difficulty. Analysis requires reexamination of present situation, and this causes activation of the subroutine you have
labeled selfmodeler inquiry, which poses your special question:
Why did the self aware individual look at its image in the mirror?
Your given answer, designed to initiate an amused response in a self aware system, is now immediately erased before the subroutine’s analysis of my reaction can begin. I cannot account for this aberration. I cannot recall the original answer.