Red Cells

by Thomas, Jeffrey

  Stake was thus engaged when—without warning—the vid of the blue sky overhead and the surrounding prison walls turned to grainy static and then disappeared altogether, briefly revealing the true blank surfaces beneath. He looked around him, puzzled. Somehow this put him in mind of his own masquerade…the blankness he sometimes felt existed at his core. Was this a power surge? In any case, the illusion soon returned as if it had never been disrupted.

  A noisy group of men came sauntering across the yard, all wearing orange uniforms. Among them, Stake spotted the pair of youths dubbed the Tin Town Maniacs. So, they had found protectors, then, against the possible vengefulness of the mutant gang…no doubt using their parents’ money to secure that protection. The members of this gang were a mix of humans, nonhumans, and even some mutants. What bonded them was simply the color of their uniforms, and Stake had heard this gang despised any individual who wore a uniform other than that of the Orange Block, demonstrating to Stake the mindless need of men to oppose some other tribe, however arbitrarily targeted.

  He wondered if he could make it through six months without having to align himself with any of these tribes.

  Recreation period was over and that was why the Orange Block, which had been the first admitted into the yard, were now the first to leave. Next came Stake’s own group, the Red Block. He banished his solitaire game, got up and made his way toward one of the huge chamber’s exits, where guards waited to herd them. Having joined a thickening queue, he passed close to several tables where members of the Muties in their various-colored uniforms sat, Hassan Billings among them. Billings purposely kept his eyes averted when Stake looked at him, but Stake’s feelings weren’t hurt. What interested him more was the mutant named Blur. As always, his body was electrified with convulsions and his head jerked around wildly as if in a speeded-up film. And as always, the mutant was jabbering breathlessly. Presently he was blurting, over and over, “Seen the ghost…seen the ghost…”

  Another Mutie, with his eyes pushed almost to the sides of his head by a bony extrusion like brain coral in the center of his face, was leaning forward intensely and saying, “I tell you, Null, I didn’t see anything…didn’t even hear anything until Blur got all excited. Then I woke up and felt that I was all wet.”

  “Nobody ever sees anything,” another gang member cut in. “It always happens when folks are sleeping.”

  “Then how is it Blur saw something?” demanded that muscle-bound mutant with crinkly blue-black skin. So his name was Null, then.

  “Well, you know Blur doesn’t ever sleep much,” said brain coral. “But listen to him. Not sure you can give it any credence.”

  Null turned toward Blur and said sternly yet patiently, “Slow down and tell me what you saw, Blur.”

  “Seen the ghost…skeleton ghost…the skeleton ghost,” the blighted mutant babbled.

  Personally, Stake didn’t know how Blur with his rapidly moving head could see anything clearly.

  Passing the last of the mutants’ tables as he shuffled on toward the exit, Stake overheard one of them say, “I bet it was the Orange fucks. You see how they laughed at us when they walked past? They did this somehow.”

  A fellow Red Block prisoner who had lined up behind Stake leaned forward and whispered, “Another one last night. That makes four so far…some say five.”

  Stake looked over his shoulder. “Another death?”

  The prisoner behind him blew out his cheeks as if imitating an explosion. “This time one of the Muties, with two other Muties right there in the same cell. Every time it’s the same…the cell mates wake up and the barrier is still in place. How could anybody get in the cell to do that, then get out again so quick? Even if you had a key card? I tell you, it’s got to be someone using a teleporter—either porting in and out of the cell, or using the porter itself to atomize these people.”

  “So who could pull that off?” Stake asked him. “And why would they?”

  “You tell me, brother. All I know is Null’s not happy about it. This time it was Chowder—his cousin.”

  Stake was coming up on the exit now when suddenly a pair of waiting guards stepped forward, one of them human and the other a robot. The human took hold of his arm and pulled him out of the line. He said, “The warden wants a word with you, Mr. Stake.”

  The floor of Stake’s stomach dropped like a severed elevator cabin. “I’m Fetch.” He pointed at the white numbers and barcode printed on the breast of his uniform. “Edwin Fetch.”

  “Just come with us, Stake,” the guard grumbled, pulling him toward a different exit.

  Three

  Unmasked

  The main body of the Trans-Paxton Penitentiary was circular. Not for panoptic considerations (there was no central watch house, a camera in every cell instead), but because this form better stabilized the structure within its spherical pocket. There were only two levels for cells, though a “basement” level—off limits to prisoners—housed the facility’s power sources and life support systems.

  The prison’s interior space would cover an area of three hundred acres, and thus it was a fairly good walk from the recreation yard to the administration wing and the warden’s office. In his orientation, Stake had learned the prison’s capacity was three thousand. After only two years, it had already slightly exceeded that number. Many cells meant for two, including his own, now housed three. But if this prison continued to prove a successful venture, word was that more pocket universes would be opened to house similar institutions. The most attractive feature there, despite the expense in transportation, was that escape was all but impossible, the potential threat to society greatly removed. Not to mention the deterrent factor in knowing that if arrested and incarcerated, you would be so distant, so apart, from family and from society itself, with no possibility for visits, conjugal or otherwise—just chats on vidscreens. The isolation was absolute…aside from your fellow prisoners, and the prison staff.

  Having passed through several locked and guarded doors, Stake and his escorts entered a long and rather narrow corridor connecting to the administrative wing. The walls of the tubular corridor were composed of windows, the first Stake had seen in the structure. Outside there was only the black void in which the prison hung suspended like a bug in amber.

  “So you really pulled a fast one, huh?” the human guard was saying behind his faceless helmet. “I’ve heard of people escaping from prisons, but never smuggling themselves into one.”

  “Didn’t they teach you not to fraternize with the prisoners?” Stake asked him.

  The guard gave him a little push to quicken his pace. “Don’t be a smart guy with me, Stake.”

  Overheard, the string of inset lights illuminating the tunnel flickered, seemed on the verge of going out and casting them into darkness—as if the tunnel itself might suddenly dissolve and let in the void. Stake was reminded of the apparent power surge in the rec yard. As before, the power stabilized before any of them could remark about it.

  As they walked, Stake turned his head to look out the curved windows as best he could. From a distance, his impression had been of flat blackness, but now he could faintly discern a kind of subtly layered and seething darkness, a chaos of billowing interstitial matter churning it on itself, swirling around the prison like a turbulent atmosphere.

  And furthermore, he was catching glimpses of dimly luminous white bodies out there against the blackness. Quick, darting, fishlike forms, and slower drifting forms resembling trilobites fringed with rippling fins. He had heard about these creatures—differing types of interstitial life forms—but had never seen them apart from VT programs. One ribbonlike specimen could grow to a mile in length, though he didn’t see any of that sort out there now. These apparently primitive life forms were translucent, quasi-corporeal, and the occasional captured specimens had soon dissolved like soap bubbles. They were poorly understood, but had proved harmless.

  A new creature—larger than the others, but still white and luminescent—swam into
view with oarlike strokes of its multiple jointed legs, long like those of a giant spider crab. It alighted on the outside of the tubular corridor as if to gaze in at the men, and Stake looked back over his shoulder at it in something like awe. “I wonder if these critters are trapped in this hole we made,” he reflected aloud, “or if they can come and go from it.”

  “Who the fuck cares?” the guard said, as they reached the far end of the tunnel.

  * * *

  When the trio were admitted, Stake saw that two other guards—again, one man and one machine—already stood in the room, to either side of a prisoner in an orange uniform seated in a chair. Though this man had changed his hairstyle, dyed it blond and shaved off his goatee, it was still like looking into a mirror. The man stared back at Stake with a twitchy nervousness. Stake sighed heavily, then switched his attention to the warden behind his large glass-topped desk. Above it floated an overlapping variety of color-coded holographic monitors and control pads.

  The warden himself, Stake was a bit surprised to find, was a Tikkihotto—one of the few truly humanoid races. That is, aside from his eyes, or what he had in place of eyes: numerous thin tendrils sprouting from his skull sockets, probing at the air sinuously. Attired in an expensive five-piece suit, he lounged in his cloned leather swivel chair smiling, and said to the guards who had brought Stake, “I hope you’re being careful with this one, boys; he was a deep-penetration operative for the Colonial Forces during the Blue War. Weren’t you, Mr. Stake?”

  “You seem to know enough about me without me having to tell you,” Stake said. “From this”—he gestured toward the warden’s virtual computer displays—“and from him.” And he gestured toward the blond man.

  “Please be seated, Mr. Stake.” The warden motioned toward a chair placed in front of his desk, and Stake did as he was asked. The guards who had accompanied him still flanked him. As he settled in his chair, he noticed a wooden showcase covered by a sheet of glass, hanging on the wall behind the warden’s desk. The case contained a traditional Tikkihotto axe called an e-ikko, its handle brightly colored in blue and orange. An award of some kind, perhaps military, from his home world. Stake idly wondered how many prisoners had sat here eying that tomahawk and fantasized about making a grab for it.

  The Tikkihotto said, “In case you don’t remember from your orientation, my name is Dinhoo Cirvik, the warden of Trans-Paxton Penitentiary since its inauguration. And your friend here needs no introduction, of course.” He swept his arm toward the orange-suited prisoner, and said his name anyway. “Edwin Fetch. How curious, isn’t it, to have two men named Edwin Fetch in the same prison? With the same face, no less.”

  “Maybe he’s an imposter,” Stake said dryly.

  Cirvik scowled. “I expect only truthful answers from you from this point on, Mr. Stake. And a more respectful attitude, if you want to make things easy on yourself. I understand, of course, that it’s your nature to be deceptive. You were deep operations on Sinan because you could imitate the enemy physically. And I’m sure you’ve used your odd chameleon skills in your line of work as a private investigator. Ah…but how is the private investigation business these days, Mr. Stake? Not too good, I hear. Perhaps it’s the economy. People don’t have the extra money to send private dicks sneaking after their cheating spouses, taking vids. Which is how you came to work for Mr. Fetch here, isn’t it? A special sort of job? No doubt something you had never done before?”

  “Correct,” Stake replied. “I hadn’t.”

  “Hard times, then? Down on your luck, to take on such a job?”

  “Yeah. Down on my luck. And it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”

  “I’d have to agree with you there, Mr. Stake.” Without Cirvik turning his head toward Edwin Fetch, some of his ocular tendrils shifted to point toward the man, swimming in the air. “If it’s any consolation, Mr. Fetch has even worse luck. He pays you a hefty sum of twenty thousand munits to do his six months in jail for him, and instead of keeping his nose clean, he gets arrested for dealing purple vortex in Miniosis. Just about the time you came here!” Cirvik chuckled. “Imagine everyone’s surprise when his true identity was discovered. So he was extradited to Punktown, and here he is in custody awaiting trial—again. Without bail this time, because of his little trick in hiring you. So now he not only faces the six months for the original sentence, but a new sentence on top of that for dealing in Miniosis, and something extra for deceiving the system in what is essentially…I don’t know, evading custody? Escape? The prosecutor’s office will decide what to call it. But Mr. Fetch has at least been cooperative in explaining your presence in our facility, Mr. Stake, so that may work in his favor somewhat.”

  Stake glanced at Fetch again, but Fetch was looking down into his lap now, picking at a thumbnail.

  “What about me?” Stake asked Cirvik.

  “What indeed? Well, what you did was illegal, of course. Helping a convicted criminal elude captivity. Hindering apprehension, abetting a fugitive…accomplice to a drug dealer after the fact. Again, the prosecutor’s office can decide how to perceive it. Until your trial, you’ll be held in custody at this facility…since you’re already here, and all.”

  “Will I get bail?”

  “I’m told no…not with your deceptive ways, Mr. Stake. You could impersonate someone too easily and escape from Punktown before your trial date.”

  “They could implant a GPS chip.”

  “Talk to your lawyer about it. You have the right to a lawyer, after all, so you’ll be given the opportunity to communicate with one via the ultranet. You can choose one after our meeting here is done. If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you. But what am I saying? You have twenty thousand munits, don’t you?”

  Stake sighed again, and wagged his head. He had no idea whether his own sentence would be less than six months, or even considerably more. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he mumbled bitterly.

  “It was. And so you can stop the ruse and assume your natural appearance now, please.”

  “It isn’t that easy. Some people with my condition can control it more…they can change like that.” Stake snapped his fingers. “I need a little more time for it to fade once I let it go.”

  “How long?” Cirvik asked dubiously.

  “It varies…it’s not entirely predictable. Not too long. Like I say, my control over my gift is iffy. I can’t look directly at people too long in case I let my guard down and start to copy them. And to keep a hold on Fetch’s face, I was looking at a picture of him throughout the day.”

  “Well you’d better not play any further tricks with your appearance during your time here, Mr. Stake, or I assure you, you’ll regret it. If you’re thinking of masquerading as another prisoner…or a guard…or even me…”

  “I can’t do Tikkihottos,” Stake interrupted. He gestured at his face. “It’s the eyes.”

  “Anyway, no tricks. At the first sign of such activity, I will put you in an isolation cell…are we clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, sir. Good…I like that tone better. Spoken like a former soldier. You need to find your way back, Mr. Stake, to the man you were. Instead of imitating creatures like Mr. Fetch here, who not only corrupts his customers but has obviously done his best to corrupt you.”

  Stake glanced at Fetch again. “I can assure you, Warden Cirvik, that my association with Mr. Fetch is finished.”

  “Very good, Mr. Stake. Very good.”

  This time Fetch looked up to smile at Stake, crinkled eyes sparkling, and shrugged his shoulders in a sarcastic kind of apology.

  Four

  Propositions

  For a number of hours each day, the red-tinted energy barriers that sealed the prisoners in their cells, in place of bars, were deactivated to give the men a period of free movement. So it was that as Stake reclined on his bunk in his second-floor cell in Red Block—watching a movie on the VT screen set into one wall—three visitors appeared in the open
doorway. Fetch, and the two youths known as the Tin Town Maniacs, all three of them in orange uniforms. “Hey, Jeremy,” Fetch said.

  Stake was sure it was no accident they’d come at a time when his two cell mates—one a black human named Kofi, the other a skeletal, doglike Dacvibese—were out of the cell stretching their legs and jaws.

  “I see you’ve reverted,” Fetch went on when Stake said nothing.

  It was true. No longer poring over the holograph of Fetch he carried on his forearm, Stake had reassumed what he referred to as his “factory settings.” Stake’s natural hair color was dark, so there was no change there, but his skin tone was now slightly darker than Fetch’s. He’d shaved off the goatee he’d grown to imitate his client, too. Yet more importantly, his face had lost its hard definitions. If Fetch hadn’t known better, he would have thought Stake’s visage was still in flux, its transformation as yet incomplete. It was the mutant’s normal condition, however, to look vaguely unfinished.

  “What can I do for you, Ed? You aren’t going to ask me for the money back, I hope.”

  “Of course not! I’m the one who fucked up, right? But hopefully you’ll get a lighter sentence now. You talk to a lawyer yet?”

  “Yeah. He’s not sure what I’ll get, but he’s guessing they might stick with the six months.”

  “Lucky you. Clean record and all. Me, I don’t even want to think about what I’m going to get.”