Prisoner 52

by S. T. Burkholder

  “Welcome, welcome.” A voice said over the music. “How do you find my humble abode? My aerie in the stars. Is it not magnificent? Do you know the expense of such items out here in the void? You cannot. I have built this place. And built the place below, that you call home. Strange, is it not? That one capable of such boundless beauty could be capable also of designing so much pain.”

  “Why was I asked here, Sir?” Tezac said and moved further into the reception area, beneath the soft glow of the gravchalier and across the gems inset along the floor that it glimmered across, and then to the threshold of the atrium beyond that smelled everywhere of perfume enough to sting his nose.

  “This is certainly not any way to address your master, is it?”

  “Certainly a way to do your employer.”

  “Ah but you see that is where you are wrong.” The voice said and he knew then it was transmitted over the same frequency as the symphony, that its speaker was not within reach. “You would say a man who controls your fate is your master, yes? You would agree. You would say that I desired you here, so I had you fetched. Down below, I clothe you and I feed you. And up above, here, I decide who is to come and who is not to come.”

  “That what this is all about? You think I'm spooked by what I saw in maintenance? Hightailing it the first chance I get?”

  “Tezac Hotchkins. War hero and sole survivor of the Niflheim campaign. The only Lord-Knight to remain in the Outerverse. No, no. Of course you would not run.” The Overseer said and he could hear the sneer in the man's voice and trembled and clenched his fists at it. “Please. Come in, settle down. We have only a small item to discuss and then you may return to whatever sweating, stinking, menial recreation you on the planet surface have taken to.”

  He took his hand away from where he had laid it upon the back of the leather chair beside him and stepped full into the chamber beyond the high, broad archway that was filigreed with the gilded story of a merchant caravan. Another gravchalier buoyed near the tall ceiling, but greater and more elaborate than the first. Great mirrors hung upon the walls to either side of him and in them he could see his reflection duplicated endlessly, stretching away with him into the dark.

  There was a doorway ahead, beyond the marble columns that upheld the walkway that lay above it. He saw atop the walls there the edges of the mural that was painted across the domed ceiling and thus followed the ends of tendrils to their host in the great cephalopodan head that loomed above him, the ocular window that was its eye and that looked out on the stars. He stared long into its benighted regions and at length it forced his eyes downward again. The music continued, but there was no voice. He tested the sit of his boots upon the hardwood floor, frowned at the grease stains they left behind across its gleam.

  A man appeared upon the balcony overhead and he studied the straight posture and effete glide to his steps through to the balustrade. He was dressed up in some mockery of a captain's uniform, Tezac could see, but did not deign to wear the Colors. He stopped at the balcony's middle and leaned onto the rail so that his arms made a pyramid of him. They locked stares for but a moment, as though seeing some foreign entity for the first time. Clear bronze skin and groomed bronze locks set against the pale shorn ghost on the floor below. Rusted and battered armor against rich alien textiles.

  “I have a thing,” The Overseer said. “That I very much would like to show you.”

  “I'm standing here.”

  He clucked his tongue and shook his head and said, “You footmen.”

  The man straightened from the rail and turned away and made for the door behind him. His polished boots sounded across the floorboards of the terrace and then the corridor he disappeared into. Tezac glanced about the room and his eyes fell again upon his reflection in the mirrors. Alone with all of his selves, he did not recognize the man who he saw. The drawn, wan face. Bags beneath the sunken eyes and above the sunken cheeks. It was worse than he had looked months ago, yoked to the autohypos, for it was a new kind of fatigue that he faced and for which there was no simple remedy.

  “Come along.” The Overseer called, over the broadcast system again. “We should not tarry overmuch.”

  Tezac looked away from himself and started into the corridor ahead, into the deep shadows beneath the walkway. He traversed the short hall and came into an orbicular chamber, gloomy and as wide as it was tall. A figure navigated the stairwell that curved round the wall and so the Overseer descended into the light of the glowglobe that was set within a small ornate table between the two armchairs before him, them all before a great window that was the entirety of the far wall and which looked out on the space station as through the eye of some immense insect that preyed through space upon the dreams of mankind.

  “Please,” He said and gestured toward the chairs and navigated the last of the steps. “Sit.”

  Tezac glanced between the Overseer and the chairs he had indicated and set his features against them as hard as the stone. He nodded and then crossed to the chair nearest and sat down. His host circled round beside him and took up one of the glass flasks set upon the table there and took its cork out with a squeak and a pop. A sour and pungent aroma eked out into the air and Tezac watched the swill of the maroon liquid that gave off the stench.

  "Would you like a woman before we begin?" The Overseer said and started to raise his hand to whatever hidden odalisque presided over such requests. "Or a girl? Man, boy? There are many."

  "Why don’t we just begin."

  "A drink then?” He offered and Tezac shook his head.

  "I know," He said and poured enough for the both of them into a single goblet of crystal, etched with gold, and replaced the cork into the mouth of the bottle. "That you are not of the most temperate kind."

  “Is anybody?”

  “I have found it hard to trust a man,” The Overseer said and took the seat across from him, the cup into his fingers by the rim. “That does not drink with his enemies.”

  “I find if a man's an enemy then he's an enemy.”

  “And you are here because I am your employer.”

  “Is there some point to this conversation we're about to have, or did you just want to show somebody all these nice things you got?”

  “You know what I know.” The Overseer said and sipped the drink he had poured and then leaned to set it down on the table again, returned himself to the deep cushioned back of the chair. “Perhaps you know more. Wisely you would like to leave; but you would like to bring with you the allegiances you have made in your short stay here and this is most unwise. I cannot let this happen, you understand.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I must tell you,” He said and crossed his legs at the knees and clasped his delicate hands atop them, looked on Tezac from within the warmth of the glow-globe. “It is sometimes a bad thing to be an honest man, and not have a drink with one's enemies.”

  “Put us under surveillance and it'll be just as suspicious. Keep us here and leave us alone and I'll let it slip to the whole installation before the week's out.”

  The Overseer cocked his head and smiled a smile that glimmered like ivory beneath the diffuse moonlight of a jungle land and was as sly and smooth as the rivers that run through such a place. He raised his bracer to his eyes and then looked to Tezac, then out the immense window and pointed slightly. A distant and cruciform shape of white floated through the void, out from the occlusion of the viewport's extent. He watched it move slumberous through the emptiness and its running lights blink distant and welcoming. The great cargo domes of a carrier vessel were arrayed along its awkward and cumbersome length and it was making to dock with the space station that hung dark and massive above the white of the planet surface. He saw in his periphery the Overseer enter into the holointerface of his wristband a series of commands and then it began to speak.

  “Hangar Control this is Arbitronix vessel 129-R, Hauler class, requesting permission to dock.” A tired voice said over the open transmission. “Over.”

&
nbsp; “You are a-go to dock, 129'er, prepping to receive.” Hangar Control answered. “Over.”

  “You are free to act.” The Overseer whispered into the channel, but the two men said nothing in response.

  The stars distorted briefly in three places and a curious assemblage of lights, looking more as distant characters than simple glows, flickering in and out of being. It was all that Tezac saw of the three ships that dropped out of a runic cloak. From where they idled a cascade of flashes burst small and large into the blackness of space and smothered that of the stars. He watched as the contrails of the mass drivers elongated, the projectiles that spawned them invisible with speed and distance, toward the carrier vessel that the Overseer's ship looked out upon.

  It rocked suddenly toward him and the flank of the hull shown to him was perforated along its length. Debris floated lazily from the gaping metal wounds and among them he knew, though could not pick them out, were the drifting carcasses of dead men not even yet awoken from hibernation. Its thrusters winked out, fell cold and silent, and the ship went on rolling toward and beneath the Overseer's vessel. The brightness of alien suns wavered once more, the queer diminutive symbols manifested and vanished, and whatever quiet death the void had risen from its hollows was gone.

  Tezac stood and cast aside the table and it struck the composite window, bounced harmlessly away, and he took the Overseer into the air with a great hand beneath the sharp angles of his jaw.

  “You want to kill me.” He said and held the pillar of Tezac's arm with both hands, but gave no struggle to dislodge it. “You would rip away my arms and my legs and then my head; but you would not leave this ship alive. Your allegiances down there on the planet surface, they would leave their world; but not in the way that you would like, yes? Take my life then, honest man. Take it. It is in your blood, eh? Do what all violence you are good for to me.”

  He hurled him away into the bookshelves that crowded beneath the spiral staircase of the chamber and around its doorway and the Overseer crashed into them, knocking the ancient leather-bound tomes to the ground with him. Tezac looked across them as the man wheezed and rubbed his throat and they down on him, and in his notice sought to beseech him.

  “You cannot kill me, and you cannot maneuver around me. For you see, the Maerazians have come. For the warlock that those soldiers deposited here in my prison. They have overtaken the station, yes? Our orbital defenses are adrift and in ruins and no one may leave but in death.”

  “Those were innocent people.” Tezac said and turned away to the window. “From the Collegia.”

  “Innocent people.” The Overseer said and got to his feet, but stood hunched over now as some animated thing of unassailable madness. “Innocent people. A soldier talks of innocents.”

  “They'll come to see about that ship.” He said and faced him. “And it won't matter about any damned Maerazians then.”

  “The transport that brought you here and cursed me with your breath made a journey of 3 months from whatever waste-world they deposited you onto. Yes come they may, but too late. By this time you pine for the troubles here will be ended and this installation will be a lost asset that nobody could care about. Much like yourself, Enforcer, but you are my investment and I cannot lose you. Not yet. Try to make yourself a toxic asset and I will punish you. I will make it known that the Maerazians are devious and walk amongst us in the skins of our friends and no one can be trusted that appears out of sorts. And you are so very often out of sorts. There are enough down there that would turn you over to me. Dead in that way you are of no consequence to me and anyone to find it suspicious will be treated just the same. You may go now. Return to that life you cannot escape, though you have traveled so far to escape it. I am the one who escapes. I go on. I am eternal. You are the earner, the honest man. So go and drink with your allegiances. Go guard your silly principles.”

  The words of the Overseer followed him in this way, out of the door and then over the broadcast system when he had gone too far for the man to be heard and who would not dare pursue. He passed beyond the doors of the inner seal and then into the umbilical and looked out the crinkled drooping plastic of its walls to where the wreckage of the hauler still idly drifted through space. He wondered if the crew had had the time to begin a dash for the escape pods, if in their trust their sensors were even activated, and if there remained any chance that some of the men it carried were still alive.

  His eyes desired to search elsewhere and he knew what for and when he relented they combed the stars for a greater blackness amidst them and the putrid sphere the sight of it seemed to drop into his belly. He turned round to look for it in the void behind him and it remained hidden to him and he asked himself if he and the Overseer were alone in their insanity of it. For as great as his fear was for it, it was greater still that it should not be there at all.

  Day 30

  The gates opened and the heat struck him at once in rolling waves that felt to be cooking him. He breathed deep through the respirator of his mask and it rasped. He let the cooler, filtered air set in his lungs a moment and when he breathed it out again, felt the chill leave with it. Then the row of men before him started into motion and he marched forward with them.

  They spilled out onto the ramp privy them and Sejanus looked out over its railing at the newcomers that were flogged at that moment through the gauntlet that he had once passed through, going naked over the sediment and industrial detritus that covered the floor. He blinked lazily at them and their ragged cries, listened to the sound of the breathing apparatus and then looked away. Airborne debris and particulates made black splotches upon his goggles and he wiped them away.

  The rank and file splayed at the terminus of the ramp and the inmates went on to their appointed crews and it seemed to him as once when he had seen a river blown free of the boundaries of a gorge and was loosed to roam across the trench-filled plains beyond. But those plains had not been dead and their grasslands not filled with the skeletons of a pined-for age. And they themselves were no river, but a black slog of mire and chemical and that obeyed no law save that which was forced upon them. He made thus for the great, jagged shadow among shadows that waved to him from amidst the tributaries, for it was a thing he knew and trusted. The Jedezian approached as he neared and they met with the embrace which was reserved for comrades in old wars.

  "Welcome back." Jobaal said. "Master Control clear your head?"

  "Are we still on the walkers?" Sejanus asked and parted from him, but kept his hand.

  "Aircraft now. Atmospheric landers. It reminds me every time we put on a wing or lock in a cannon. The roar of the wind, the sound of the metal tearing free. The death cries of the soldiers inside when they knew they are doomed. It was glorious."

  "It's good you've got enough fond memories for two of us."

  "Come, come, Soldier." Jobaal said and put his arm round his shoulders and led him away. "Today we forget what came after, and remember only what it felt like to kill traitors."

  Sejanus heard through the grind and churn of the heavy machinery, the loud sparks of the welding cannons, a commotion. He looked in the direction of the laughter and the shouting and saw against the wall to his right, in the shadow of the walkway that rested high above, a group of prisoners gathered round another. Him in the center gave his hand to any who would take it and Sejanus studied the blue armbands upon those he offered it to, the chains tattooed there and the beard of one known to him. They caroused and pushed the man about, but did not strike him, and the man he knew for Androsius made a whirling motion and began to handle something on the front of his jumpsuit. Jobaal followed his gaze and then back to its source.

  "You go on ahead." He said to the Jedezian.

  "Sejanus." Jobaal said, but let go of him.

  "Go on." He said and broke away.

  "You were just released." He called after him.

  "Something I've got to do." He said and tossed his satchel of tools aside.

  He came upon them
as they laughed. He found the eyes of the man who had urinated in his NutriPaste and, though his face belied some new irregularity in their mirth, he was mute with terror. Androsius busied aligning himself with the man they had surrounded and in the intervening moments had been stripped and arrested, though he did not struggle. Sejanus approached the two men who were unoccupied and with their backs to him, rose his bootheel and put it into the side of the knee of him on the right. He collapsed sidelong to the left as his weight fell whole upon the leg that now draped uselessly in two and was held together only by the shreds of its sinew and flesh.

  At his cries the others turned and let go of the man they had accosted. Sejanus put his elbow into the orbit of the man who was beside him and upright still and then slipped a leg amidst his and ploughed him from his feet. Androsius fumbled still with his jumpsuit, stupid with fear and surprise, and the men who flanked him rushed forward to meet Sejanus. He maneuvered to his left that he might keep only the one man there in front of him and parried past the punch the same threw at him and gripped his windpipe and dug in his fingers, manipulated him thus to keep at bay the other who remained. This one struck round the man who he held and was beating into the side of his head when Sejanus collapsed the esophagus of his shield and kicked him away into the man behind and retreated.

  Hands came round his neck and tried in some way to get him into a hold. He at once bit down on the hand that passed near enough and put his elbow into the man's ribs until his grip weakened enough to throw off. Sejanus kicked sidelong at the man and drove him away and turned at the sound of sprinted steps behind him. He smacked the fist aside that came for him and stepped forth and put his hands to the temples of the Unionist who he found there, put his thumbs into the eyes. He screamed and flailed at his arms and the footsteps of the man he had left behind him faded away into nothing.