After proto gets his uniform issue, he walks onto the block, and the first thing that greets him is a fist in his face. When the birds stop chirping, the new shark sees that the guy who decked him was the same guy who had been standing in front of him in the issue line.
"Why'd you do that?" protomo demands.
"You're new," he answers, then the slugger walks off.
Old protomo goes into a blind rage about this treatment, and he looks around for something to smash. The first thing he sees is a face and he drives his fist into it. With his anger cooled a bit, the new shark sees that the guy he punched was the guy who had been standing behind him in the issue line.
The fellow on the floor holds his jaw and asks, "Why'd you do that?"
Sharky answers, "You're new."
Thus endeth the lesson.
▫
▫
It used to be a tickle watching the protos being led to their cells. The oh-seven thousand door slammed open, then in came the cherry following the lime green directional lights. He'd be all wide-eyed, dressed in stiff new crowbar blues, carrying a double armload of sheets, blankets, underwear, and his second uniform. You knew what those wide eyes were seeing. You knew what those new ears were hearing. You knew what proto was feeling because you been there once yourself.
Protomo was seeing cage after cage of trapped sharks—vicious, unpitying animals, his new peers. You picked up that word "peers" if you collected some breaks and worked the clock in one of those rehab hotels where all you did was put on the heads and put in your time. It's a soft clock and it's something to do. I was in one of them for a short stretch. Williamsburg Rehab. Then I got transferred to Old Miss; the joint with the view of the big runny; the Union of Terran Republics' Penal Center at Greenville. We called it the Crotch.
The proto who came to the Crotch faced the rock clock: hard time. And after his eyeballs soaked up all those bars and cruel faces, his ears got pounded numb by the combination of a thousand rads and vids all on different stations, each one going full-blast, trying to drown out the rest. Then the sharks shouting at the top of their lungs trying to talk and be heard over the racket. The constant rumble of bars moving, the dit-dit-dit of warning alarms, then the slam after slam of barred doors closing, the stains blowing orders and watch calls into their little hand rads.
▫
Jeez, man, she was slinky-y-y—
—block twenty-seven secure—
—turn down that damned thing, man—
—just a little-bitty powder, man, I'm sick—
—fool got over to the women's side, and he—
—dit-dit-dit, rum-m-m-m-mble-SLAM.
Hey, and he said—
—open the oh-eight thousand gate—
—turn it down, man, or I'll slice your ass'n the yard—
—you're dead if you ain't got the bread—
—once he got there, hell they was uglier'n you—
—dit-dit-dit, rum-m-m-m-mble, SLAM!
▫
Then there's that whiff: A blend of locker room, hospital, discount drug store, garage, and underground toilet. Stale sweat, dirty clothes, disinfectant, sixty different kinds of after-shave, perfume, and deodorant, all overpowered by the constant smell of machine oil. The stuff that keeps those bars rolling, the locks turning, all that steel from rusting.
They say that after they were finished building Hell, the Devil loaded up an illegal hauler with the construction clean-up trash, and the hauler nosed around until he found a deserted place that no one would ever want. He dumped Hell's trash there, and they called it Mississippi. Then they found a fever swamp on the flood plain, they built a cesspool right in the middle of it, and they called it Greeneville. When it came time for the Union of Terran Republics to build its maximum security facility for recidivists, incorrigibles, and unrehabilitatables, it seems the Minister of Corrections selected the site after accidentally getting knocked into a vat at the sewage treatment plant in the El Segundo Home for the Intestinally Gross.
Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, the air at Greenville was so heavy, every time a breeze blew, you could hear the splash. That's what proto was breathing when he took in the sights at Hell's Shitcan.
Protomo absorbed that atmosphere, his chin trembled, and his buns started getting tight. He had been dropped straight through the floor of the candy store right down into the heart of Hell. God but it made your guts twitch.
Proto wasn't thinking about that little thing he did on the block that bought him his room at the Crotch. He wasn't thinking about that little old lady he tapped but just happened to thin in the process, or that cute little teller he yellowed as he shoved that note across the counter and aimed that greasy, black gun muzzle between her breasts, or that jury of his "peers" that never had to grow up where you stole and killed just to work your way out from under the bottom of that mountain of bodies, despair, and garbage called "home." He wasn't even thinking about that judge who sat there, man, like he had to explain away the five-to-ten rock he was dropping on you.
Hell, proto wasn't even thinking about that lawyer of his, that cockroach cash register in the money threads who collected maximum court fees by running him through the juicer with a minimum of effort. No, that's not what protomo was thinking. All that was over. Done past. Ancient history.
What the new boy did is what we all did. He stopped thinking. Kept a numb skull. You think, man, and there's only one thing to think about: time. Time and where you're spending it. You think in Greenville, or in any other pit, and you buy yourself infinity in the white rubber room.
When protomo climbed those stairs and followed the lights down that gallery toward his cell, the sharks whistled at him, made smacking sounds with their lips, said things. You know what kind of things. A lot of them were kidding; a lot of them weren't. Then you knew what pro is feeling: chicken feathers. Running down the legs terror, man. Like, if proto can't get to a white throne in the next five seconds, his brand new blues won't be brand new no mo'. If proto knew anything, he'd start counting up the colors on those sneering, smirking faces, then check his own leather and pray like hell his skin resembled the sharks in power.
▫
—bay-beeee, will you look at ol' protomo. Not a hair on that sweet thing—
—close oh-eight thousand gate—
—you turn down that damned thing, man—
—I'll get the bread, man. You know I'll get the bread—
—o-o-h, will you scan the buns on proto, there. I'm giving up tryin' the women's side, man—
—Dit-dit-dit-dit, Rumble, rumble, rumble, SLAM, SLAM, SLAM!
▫
Like I said: it was a tickle watching the protos come in. And I laughed. You had to laugh at something. It killed the clock. But you laugh real quiet, man, because if you laugh too loud, you might never stop. Then it was back to the rubber room.
▫
▫
Sharks had ways of doing the clock. Some fools got books, took mail courses, and studied like maybe someday they'd become tycoons, scientists, deep space navigators, or teachers instead of muckshuckers and deadheads. Some of the brothers buttoned the clock by talking about breaking out; others just talked; others just sat and stared at the walls. Some escaped by numbing their heads with loud music, stroke sheets, religion, or happy powders. A few mentally left the crowbars by writing stories and books. Some of them were even published, too. Some killed the clock by killing each other.
Some thinned the timepiece by getting into group activities. The chappies would shuck around singing hymns, the perverts and deadheads would hold therapy meetings, and we even had a theater group. On the men's side they were producing Brother Crowbar, an in-house ripoff of someone else's play. On the women's side they were rehearsing Mob Cinderella another ripoff of an even older work. There was a tap on the pipes that Mob Cinderella was a spoof written anonymously by a genuine goomba wiseguy, but it never paid to believe the taps. After all, a lot of sharks shocked the clock by sen
ding out lies and rumors just to see how long they took to come back.
Whatever. It killed time.
Some killed the clock by killing themselves; taking a flyer off one of the upper galleries, a strip of trouser leg around the neck from the top of the bars, even drowning in a white porcelain throne. The young, pretty pros did that a lot. There used to be nets strung across the open spaces between the galleries to save the jumpers, but the nets were removed years ago. Like that one guard said, "Costs too much to keep you burr heads alive."
▫
When I wasn't prowling the library for something new to read, or listening to the yard gurus, I killed the clock by watching my fellow sharks at work, play, and destruction.
There were the yard monsters. They whittled on the clock by pumping iron for endless hours every day, cultivating the body grotesque. A black nationalist called Rhome Nazzar was their unofficial leader. Smart. Seen him in the library. But Nazzar had killed a lot of angel cakes, and when the haystacks walked by, you could see them give Nazzar that I-just-wanted-to-make-certain-where-you-were look as they gave the homemade cutters in their pockets a little squeeze for comfort.
We had lots of political filberts, like the anarchist Martin Stays who foamed at the mouth for his first year at the hotel. When he arrived, no one got a chance to see what he looked like, he was dropped into the black hole that fast. And every time they'd let him out, he'd rip, tear, and foam at the mouth again. Then it was back in the black hole. Out of his first year in the Crotch, he couldn't of had more than a month in the yard. When he finally stopped swinging from the treetops and they let him out of the black hole for good, he hung out in the library some. Most of the time, though, he spent the same as me: watching the zoo, but real quiet.
Another pistachio was Nkuma, and he only had the one name. He was a semi-yard monster who went around spreading "the truth." He had been a libertarian communist who discovered Jesus and was doing infinity for thinning the entire family he had been holding hostage when the stains finally cornered him. Seems they weren't quite down with the Savior, and it bought them a lot of edges.
One strange character was Ice Fingers. The name he used in prison was Herb Ollick, but he was really a middle management goomba, head of his own small family, out of some Jersey rathole. Whether that was the truth or a let's-stir-up-some-trouble rumor was one of the hotly debated topics on slow news days. However, after all of the bets had been laid, Herb would never say one way or the other. He'd just smile, write in his cell a lot, and polish his diamonds. That's how he got the name Ice Fingers. He wore five diamond rings, two on his right hand, and three on his left. Sharks weren't allowed to wear jewelry, but Ice had some guard captain on the cob. The rings were very valuable, but no one made a try for them. After all, it was just possible that Ice really was a goomba, and the Hand has long fingers.
We had a prize fighter staying with us. His name was Abner Pandro, but his fans knew him as Kid Scorpion. The wagering was that he could have captured the heavyweight title if he hadn't gotten offended by a vid reporter's question and turned the interviewer into roadkill the next day. The Kid probably could have gotten away with it, except that when the stains arrived on the scene of the crime an hour later, Kid Scorpion was still driving over and backing up over the flattened remains of the visual fourth estate.
We had some notables on the women's side, too, although it wasn't often there was an opportunity to observe. Bloody Sarah, the UTR commando officer who was working the clock for murdering one hundred and fifty-some Suryian villagers, was our most famous prisoner. The next most famous prisoner was Marantha Silver, the MJ agent who everybody knew was doing the clock on a bad rap.
The women had their own yard monsters, too. There was a bull croc named Nance Damas who pumped a bit of iron and was there for torturing to death a rapist who had done a close friend of hers, and for torturing to death the six witnesses to the event who didn't do anything because they didn't want to become involved. As they say, not making a decision is making a decision. Bad choice, too, sometimes.
It was quite a place. As big Dave used to say, in the crowbar hotel you get to see the best of everything at its worst, and the worst of everything at its best. There was the Whacker. She was an ax-murderer from Washington who used to be a social worker. We had a police captain who threw the law books out of the window along with the untouchable sleaze he was after. There was the Soprano-maker, a pepper bit who used to geld her male friends with a razor when they disappointed her, and she must've had quite a crowd of disappointments, if you listened to the stories. But stories always grow hair in the crowbars. To live up to the in house yarns of her exploits, the Soprano-maker would have had to have been running through rush-hour crowds with a chain saw.
▫
Watching the sharks was entertainment, and it kept me on top of what was happening. I knew the gangs, who to steer clear of, who to do favors for, and how to pick up and use the little pieces of information that filtered through the grapevine or down the pipe from the front office.
I survived by becoming as valuable as I could to as many brothers as possible, and by being no trouble to the rest. I knew the score, the drill, the ropes, like any old hand at the game. I was twenty-seven; eleven of those years in the crowbar stacks. Three years in Lancaster Juvenile Rehab (assault), two and six in Binghamton with another deuce and a half at Jordensville (armed robbery), a deuce at Williamsburg Rehab with a move and another big one at Greenville (murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, resisting arrest) with, maybe, ten more on good behavior. Sixteen if I was naughty. I figured on doing the dime and walking through the door in the year 2125 at the age of thirty-seven. Then news of Tartaros came down the pipe. Brother Crowbar and Mob Cinderella were cancelled.
││││
││││
││││
▫
When You Wish Upon a Star
▫
The whole lodge had heard about Tartaros before—a planet where seventeen other planets dumped their worst sharks. It just had nothing to do with us. We'd heard Parliament blow wind at the subject, read the editorials against the penal colony, heard about the protests, saw the issue dropped time after time thanks to the bleeders and sobs. Earth wasn't one of the planets belonging to the Tartaran con cartel, so who worried about that? There were always more important things to worry about, like scoring a powder, spreading some corn, staying alive and disease free.
But there was a turn in the arguments: for every shark supported in the crowbars, eight new jobs could be created, twenty families could be fed, or another step toward finding that elusive cancer cure could be taken. That's what came down the pipes from the front office. Earth had joined the human landfill. There were too many humans in too little space to waste precious resources on the anti-social element. The bottom line was the bottom line.
We were all going to be protos. All of us were officially notified three weeks after we already knew. Anyone doing numbers on murder one, rape, child molesting, unclassified acts of terrorism, any felony involving more than ten thousand credits (including the cost of apprehension and prosecution), a second felony of any kind, the "unrehabilitatable", and anyone who they felt like sending, were to be dumped on the big T. Everyone in the Crotch had already been classified as "unrehabilitatable." That's why we were in Greenville. So, we were all notified. All of our sentences had been "commuted" to exile on Tartaros.
I went to the prison library and looked up Tartaros. The information on the planet, even its location, was classified. The information on the planet's name was not. According to the ancients, Tartaros was Hell's hell. What the Sibyl told Aeneas, as she took him on a guided tour of Hell, was that the gulf of Tartaros was so deep that its bottom was as far beneath their feet as Heaven was high above their heads. All in all, it did not sound as though being exiled to Tartaros had much chance of being a move for the better.
Exile. It sounded like something out of the days of feudal kings,
knights, and all that yore.
We waited, while I watched and listened.
▫
"I don't care where I put in my time, man. It's got to be better than this place."
"Bay-beee. You have obviously not gotten the word."
"What word?"
"Nobody is going to fetch you off that rock after your time is up, bay-beee. No way. Your sentence has been commuted, changed, you have been handed the sticky stick. Tartaros is for ever, bay-beee."
"What? Man, when my time is up, I go back on the block. That's what the smear in the black rags said. And, my man, that's just what I intend to do!"
"Sor-r-r-r-y, bay-beee. The man has changed the rules. Isn't that just like the little devil? Let me consult my crystal ball. I see in our futures a long voyage, and a long, long stay."
"You telling me, man, that we don't come back? No matter what our sentences are?"
"You got it, bay-bee."
"Don't we got some rights in this? What about appeals?"
"Sor-r-r-ry, bay-bee. No rights, no fights, no deals, no appeals. We are being put on infinity hold."
▫
Watching.
The family men began putting on the ants early. Cut off, no more contact, no more mail, no more packages filled with goodies some stain was paid not to notice. The coldest monsters in the crowbars would begin weeping at odd moments for no apparent reason at all. I listened to more than one sob story about Bud, Sis, Fido and the Little Woman. Even the patriots started to come out of the closet, pissing and moaning about purple mountains majesty and amber waves of silicon chips.
INFINITY HOLD3 Page 2