Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  It made no difference.

  Or at least these men, these two tortured dead, were as dead as if they had been killed under the exercise of the Writ to Inquire; so what difference did it make?

  It made a difference.

  As indefensible as the tortures Andrej had to hand, they were still ruled by Jurisdiction, subject to the Bench. Lawful, if intolerably unjust.

  And the torture that had killed these men was not even that.

  All right, he had been wrong to think that the detention block had ceased to operate outside of the Law on his arrival. Darmon had told him that, if not in so many words. Andrej himself had all but realized that it had to be the explanation for the story of Shopes Ban; but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. All of these months. Should he have kept a closer watch on things?

  How many had been brutally tortured by Pyana for no reason and with less authority while he had kept to the comfort of his penthouse, and indulged himself in the long drawn-out agonies of the punishments available under Protocol, and ignored any questions that might have come to mind about where the referral information was coming from in the first place, or how it had been obtained?

  He’d sat still in one place for too long, staring at the wounded face of one of the dead. The overseer had taken notice: would be wondering. “It is always satisfying, to see a thing thoroughly done.” Rising to his feet, Andrej kept his voice as light and cheerful as possible. It was easier than he had expected: There was part of him that meant every word. “And now I have made more work for your crew, but I have seen all that is needful. What happens next, furnace-master?”

  As if he didn’t know. He didn’t need to number every one; he had the information he’d wanted to gain, from the bodies that he had examined. Both in their number and the manner of their deaths, the Domitt was condemned.

  “His Excellency will have noticed that three of the furnaces are on line. Two of them off.” The overseer was a little more reserved; Andrej walked with him, smiling and attentive, to soothe what suspicion might have started to arise. “Two, here, was fired yesterday. It takes each of them six shifts to run a cycle, and then we do preventive maintenance once the oven has had time to cool, that takes another shift.”

  Raking the ashes. Recycling stubborn matter to the next firing. The body-mill at the hospital had been much more efficient, but had only been intended to take one body at a time. To burn as many so quickly would represent too great a cost in extra fuel and in heat-shielding: and there was no way in which the Domitt could have been designed from the start to bum so many dead so regularly.

  Could there be?

  “The fire feeds itself, furnace-master?” Andrej asked, to keep up his part of the conversation. To the far right of the furnace room, the work-crew were piling the bodies back up on a low sort of a trolley. There were tracks, from the furnace gate out into the middle of the room. Andrej hadn’t noticed them before: but now that the overseer opened one of the cold furnaces he could see that the whole floor of the furnace was on rollers.

  Gridded.

  A complicated apparatus, the furnace, with a false floor and a pit beneath as deep as his arm was long, nozzles and floor-vents and thermal gridding above. To capture the heat and inject oxygen, perhaps.

  “Nothing wasted,” the overseer agreed with a cheerful grin. “Any melt-off collected and added back. A beautiful piece of work if I say so myself, your Excellency, not that I had a hand in its design.”

  He couldn’t grasp the implications of those words. He couldn’t. He knew what the man was saying. His mind fled from the understanding: Andrej turned away, to walk back to the second cold furnace, before whose now-open door the work-crew were waiting with the loaded trolley.

  “Such a conservation of resources can only be commended. Really, it takes one’s breath away, furnace-master.” If not in the sense it might be taken to mean. “They will fire this furnace for me now?”

  The one prisoner who had been beaten had stumbled to his feet at last, and joined the others on work-crew. Pale and shaking, and bloodied on his face. The others tried to support him as best they could without being too obvious about it.

  “Yes, your Excellency, we’re going to put today’s trash in the fire.” The overseer had raised his voice so that it carried clearly; and his tone had become overtly threatening. Directed at the work-crew. “And if it wasn’t for respect of his Excellency’s presence, Mivish would go too. Right on top. Lazy. Filthy. Nurail.”

  That one prisoner, the beaten man. His whole body jerked, as if in a spasm of pure terror. The others restrained him from falling to his knees, holding his arms to prevent him from covering up his face in an agony of fear. The overseer smiled with savage pleasure.

  “That’s better. Professional bearing, Mivish. None of your malingering. Load the furnace, Mivish can stay out. For now.”

  It could be only a threat, cruel but never to be implemented.

  And still it seemed too evident to Andrej that none of the work-crew took it for anything less than real, and near, and even commonplace.

  It was getting harder by the moment for him to breathe, why was he stifling in this place?

  The Nurail work-crew pushed the trolley from behind, guiding it forward with their hands against the bodies of their fellows. Fellow prisoners. Fellow Nurail. Family. Sons and brothers, fathers, nephews, cousins, brothers of mothers, husbands of daughters.

  The trolley groaned beneath its burden of dead flesh, coming to rest within the furnace’s oven with its rollers locking into place with a clearly audible report of metal against metal. The bodies had moved a little as the trolley tracked. The arms and legs were no longer as neatly stacked as they had been, although the work-crew had laid them down as decently as probably they dared.

  Just this one final demonstration and he could be out of here, Andrej promised himself. He’d said he’d come down to inspect the furnaces. He couldn’t really leave without standing to watch as the cycle was started with the day’s debris. Only a few more moments and he could get out, get out and get away, and write the orders that would shut these furnaces down for good and all before a single Nurail the more could be so horribly threatened as Mivish had been —

  But if the furnaces were on such a cycle, and if they had all the time they needed to cool down before they were opened up again for maintenance, why was a tool required to shoot the bolt?

  And what was that club-like wooden instrument beside the furnace door if it was not needed to knock the furnace bolt back while the furnace was still hot?

  Wondering, half-reluctantly, Andrej picked the wooden thing up from its resting place to examine it in the light.

  Blood on the club-end of it.

  Dried blood, and matted hair.

  So now he knew, and was he any the better off, for knowing?

  “There’s sometimes sport to be had, your Excellency,” the overseer called out. “Where’s my friend Mivish? Come here, Mivish, I want you to see this, it will do you good.”

  Andrej put the club back down and went to join the overseer in front of the now-closed furnace door.

  Secured and sealed, the furnace stood ready.

  The overseer coded its initiate sequence.

  There was nothing for a moment, except for a hissing sound — injection of oxygen, Andrej supposed, to fuel the fire.

  Then the furnace seemed to blossom, inside, into a great strange flower made of red-gold petals quivering in profusion over the flowerbed of fuel that gave it life.

  The furnace-window was wide, large and generous; there was room for more than one to stand and watch. The overseer had the hapless Mivish by his side, now, one arm around Mivish’s neck; and talked to him.

  “Take a good look, Mivish, how do you fancy being inside there? We have no use for boys who won’t do as they’re told, Mivish, but you’re a good lad, I like you. So I’m going to give you one last chance to learn better.”

  And Mivish was no more a boy or lad than Andrej was. Andrej
stared into the furnace, dazed with shock in the realization of how badly wrong it had all gone; how oblivious he had been to clues he should have pursued more aggressively, a long, long time ago. Blind and stupid with grief and lust. Blind with grief for Joslire, ever and always turning his face away from the furnaces, not willing to think about them. Taking pains not to think about them. Stupid with lust to make his prisoners suffer, and willfully unmindful of anything that might stand between him and the consummation of that destructive desire.

  Something shifted, within the furnace.

  Andrej sensed Mivish recoil in fear, but the overseer kept a good grip on the man. There was nothing to fear. Bodies moved in a fire. Muscle warmed and relaxed or contracted, joints worked as heat grew intense enough to stiffen tendons; that was why poultry was trussed for the roasting, after all. Bodies moved, but slowly, and there was no sentient spirit that motivated them, it was only the heat.

  Bodies moved, in the fire.

  But not like this.

  There was a man in the furnace, a living man, clawing his way out desperately from the middle of the pile of bodies. This was conscious movement, desperate beyond Andrej’s will to understand it, a living man inside the furnace scrambling across the top of the pyre right toward him. Screaming. Reaching for the window as the skin of his palms blackened before Andrej’s very eyes.

  Scratching frantically at the window with blackening fingers, his mouth stretched impossibly wide in horror and in agony while the hair began to shrivel on his head for heat; and then his clothes caught fire —

  The fire bloomed around him, all around him, flowing down his body like water as he screamed. Andrej knew that he could not be hearing the screams through the noise of the furnace. But he heard them regardless. The Nurail prisoner Mivish was retching now, in horror, and the Pyana overseer — chuckling indulgently — took Mivish’s head by the hair, forcing Mivish to face forward and look.

  “There, now. That’s nice and cozy, isn’t it? All of that could be yours, Mivish. And will be. The next time you give the least, I mean the very least, trouble.”

  He had not checked them all. Nor had he checked that they were all really dead. He had not thought. Darmon had told him; but he had not thought. It was his fault, that there was a living man inside the furnace.

  “Can you not do something?” Andrej asked; and knew it was the strangled sound of his own voice that startled the overseer into releasing Mivish at last. “Shut it down. Make it stop. There is a man alive, in there.”

  But even as he asked it, he knew the answer.

  “With respect, sir, can’t be done.” Once the man was burned like that there was nothing to do but to let him go. “It’s too much heat inside to vent out all at once, your Excellency. The secures can’t be forced.”

  Yes, and in such heat as that a man would not know how he was suffering. A man’s brain was soft tissue, vulnerable to heat, and with the fire roaring within there would be nothing for the man to breathe. There was nothing to do. He had put a man living into the fire —

  He was trembling, he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t speak; his words would not have made sense had he been able to. He could no longer see the furnace in front of him, and raised his hands toward his face to steady his head so that he could focus. He couldn’t focus. It was too much. He coughed, to drain the fluid in his throat before it crept in the wrong direction to his lungs; and his cough came out a cry, instead. Horror and dread.

  He had put a man still living into the furnace.

  He couldn’t stop the cries in his throat.

  Security tried to restrain him, hold him, but they could not begin to understand. It was even worse that people were put into the fire. He had put a man into the fire. If he had only checked them all, but he had thought that they were dead. How could he have imagined they would dare show a living man inside the oven, in the presence of an inspecting officer? He’d fooled them all too well — but it didn’t matter.

  It was his fault.

  He could have saved that man, had he but checked.

  Crumpling slowly to the floor, supported and protected in the arms of his Security, Andrej Koscuisko collapsed against the furnace-gate and howled with guilt and all-consuming shame.

  It was his fault.

  It was all his fault.

  He should have known that something was wrong, and much, much sooner.

  How many had been burned since he’d been here?

  How many of those burned had been alive?

  And why should he not go into the fire, here and now, and pay the price for all that he had done?

  ###

  “And so I came straightaway, Administrator,” Belan concluded, in utter misery. Administrator Geltoi hadn’t cared to be called back to the prison after dark. It interfered with the party his wife was hosting for their second daughter’s birthday: but there was no help for it. “Koscuisko has been down to the furnaces, I think he may have been counting the bodies. What are we to do.”

  He swallowed back his desperation. Geltoi would think of something. Geltoi was Pyana. Geltoi had everything under control.

  Geltoi was angry with him, drumming his fingers against the desktop irately. “I don’t know, Merig,” Geltoi said flatly. “You’ve really done this one. I’m sorry to say it. Couldn’t you have thought of any way to hold them off? Anything at all? Or were you only too happy just to do as you were told?”

  That wasn’t fair. He was supposed to do just as he was told. He was only Nurail. He didn’t have Geltoi’s brains. Geltoi would have come up with a way to avoid taking Koscuisko to the furnaces: but Geltoi hadn’t been there.

  Belan had no answer but to stand in silent agony, biting his lips.

  After a moment Geltoi sighed.

  “All right. I’ll help you out of this one, Merig. It’s our honor that’s at stake.” Geltoi toggled into the braid on his desk. “Administrator Geltoi. For the penthouse, please. And shut down all of the access routes first, the lifts, the emergency stairs, everything.”

  The penthouse?

  Why the penthouse?

  When the circuit cleared, it was the voice of Andrej Koscuisko. A little strained. Emphatically wary. Belan thought about the look he’d seen on Koscuisko’s face when he’d been watching through the window into the furnace-gate: and shuddered.

  “This is Andrej Koscuisko. And you are Administrator of a prison in which much fault is to be found. What is it, your word to me?”

  It was a voice-link; Belan was just as glad. He could hardly bear the sound of furious contempt in Koscuisko’s voice. To see it in Koscuisko’s eyes would be difficult: and yet Geltoi seemed unmoved.

  “And good-greeting to you as well, Koscuisko. It has come to my attention that you have declined to support your Judicial function over the past few days, preferring rather to construct specious arguments against this Administration. You are to be replaced as soon as orders come from Chilleau Judiciary.”

  Yes, well, but they hadn’t heard from Chilleau Judiciary. They didn’t know if Chilleau Judiciary was going to replace Koscuisko yet. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was getting Koscuisko out of there, with enough time to clean out the furnaces and clean up the work-crews before the next inspection. If there was a next inspection.

  “For the exercise of my Judicial function it is not my intent to even consider apologizing, Geltoi. What good do you imagine it will do, to send me to Scylla back? There is evidence to convict the Domitt of failure of Writ.”

  Geltoi smiled. Koscuisko had stepped foot into a Pyana trap, it seemed. “Which can only be cried by the Writ on site, Koscuisko. As of now I no longer consider you to be the Writ on site. You should be quite comfortable in the penthouse while you wait for orders. For your sake I hope it won’t be long. Geltoi, away here.”

  Grinning broadly with evident self-satisfaction, Geltoi pulled the braid. Belan stared, confused and worried; Geltoi rose and stretched, signaling for his car.

  “And tha
t’s — that. Security’s shut down the penthouse, Belan, there was a reason why we wanted to be able to control access.”

  Shut Koscuisko up on the roof.

  He could not cry for vengeance to the Bench if he could not gain access to the Bench.

  And once Koscuisko’s orders arrived from Chilleau Judiciary, he would have no standing to complain of the Domitt Prison; it would be only the new Writ assigned who could do that. By then they could be ready. This experience had been valuable, if too nerve-wracking for Belan’s peace of mind. They knew better how to comport themselves in front of Inquisitors, now.

  “Of course, Administrator.” Belan didn’t need to pretend, to be impressed and humbled. Geltoi had it all in hand. Why had he ever worried? “My instructions, sir?”

  Because he had been down to the furnace-room with Andrej Koscuisko. That was why he worried. He was the one who’d seen. Who’d heard. He was the one who’d been there.

  “Take the furnaces off line as they complete cycle, Merig, clean them out and let them stand. We’ll dump the leavings underneath the dike-wall when we’re ready to pour the next course, and in the meantime we can just get ourselves so sweet and fresh and pretty that there’ll be no proving we ever burned so much as a scrap of steak-bone in those furnaces.”

  “And in the penthouse, sir?” There were prisoners being held in the store-rooms by Koscuisko’s office, prisoners secured under seals only Koscuisko could lift. There was water in the store-rooms, which had been built for cells. But who was to feed these people, if Koscuisko was to be prisoned in the penthouse?

  “Oh, it won’t be but a few days.” Geltoi hadn’t forgotten about the extra prisoners, surely. Geltoi had been too angry about them at the time Koscuisko had called for them: because they diminished his work-crews, and he needed every available man on work-crew to make his ambitious construction schedule work. And because he couldn’t figure out why Koscuisko had called for these people by name.

  Belan knew.

  Belan knew that the fog had told Koscuisko.