Hidden Faults (15 page)

I patted her hand. “It’s all right, Ajeile. I’m not angry. And then he told you...?”

Her breath hitched. “He said you’d been imprisoned and that I’d never see you again.”

“Did he say why?”

“
Terrorism. That
can’t
be true!” She looked at me with wide-eyed certainty. “I don’t care what any of them say!”

I wondered what had been said, knowing the rumour mill that was our department. “It’s not true. But I’m a paranormal.”

She covered her mouth with her hand in shock. “How can that...you were hiding it?”

“No. I didn’t know, I swear. The power just...appeared. I wasn’t hiding a thing. I didn’t know there was anything to be hidden.”

“I believe you,” she said firmly, reaching for my hand. “But it explains why they made it so hard for me—they threatened my job if I tried to contact you, but I got in touch with one of the prisoners’ rights charities and they helped me. It took me three days to get here.”

“But, Ajeile—why? I’m glad to see you, but not if you lose your job....”

She tilted her chin up. “I don’t care. I wanted to know what happened to you. Because I love you.”

I stared at her. Was this all some dreadful joke? “
Love
me? Ajeile, I never—”

“I know, we only went out those few times, but...I can’t help how I feel. I...wanted to tell you.”

I couldn’t answer. It was as much a shock to me as when the flames had started to come out the end of my fingers, and every bit as unwelcome. While I sat dumbstruck, she discreetly wiped away a few tears and blew her nose.

“Uh...are you really never going to be released?”

“Unlikely,” I murmured, patting her hand.

“Jodi, that’s...no, it’s not fair.”

She began to cry in earnest, quietly and brokenly. I patted her back, helpless and ashamed at not knowing the way she felt.

“Ajeile, my dear girl...you...shouldn’t have taken such a risk for me. I can’t believe you did—even my parents—”

I shut my mouth. We didn’t have that close a relationship, whatever fantasies she’d woven around a few dates. I was suspicious, suddenly, of her appearance, this previously unsuspected adoration. Was this some kind of trap? Had she been sent to find out who’d been helping me? I wished my brain would work faster because I felt I’d missed some important clues here.

She lifted her head and sniffled. “I went to see them. Tried to. Um...your mother.... She wasn’t very sympathetic.”

“No.” I pushed back in my chair. I needed her out of here. “You shouldn’t have come, Ajeile. You’re risking everything on a relationship that’s a lie. We’re not really engaged, you know that.”

She blinked at me, tears still on her lashes. “I know...but I lo—”

“Yes, you said. But I’m homosexual. A deev.” Her mouth snapped shut, her eyes big with shock. “I went out with you and the other women to hide that. So you don’t need to feel guilty about me. I deliberately deceived you.”

“You’re just saying—”

“No, I’m not. When I wasn’t going out with you, I was down by the river sucking off handsome strangers.” I hated myself with every word, but I had to end this farce. “The man you claim to be in love with doesn’t exist.”

Her reaction was less than I expected. “I always thought you were hiding something,” she murmured, using her handkerchief again to mop her eyes. “When I heard...I assumed it was your powers.”

“I didn’t know about them. I have no idea why they suddenly emerged. I’m a deev, Ajeile. That’s what I was hiding. So you need to go away and forget about me.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, you know.” She looked up. “I can’t help being in love with you. I understand why...you can’t...you really felt nothing? Nothing at all?”

Even though I remained suspicious, her broken words tugged at my heart. “I was...am...fond of you. As a friend. But sexually.... I’m sorry.”

She laughed, the sound breaking off into a sob. “You fake pretty well. I was completely fooled.”

“I had a lot to lose.” She looked as if I’d struck her. “Ajeile...what I did was wrong. I never meant to hurt you or any of the others. You were never meant to find out. I didn’t...I never expected you to develop feelings for me.”

“And why not? A lovely, polite, intelligent man, who’s great in bed and—” She covered her mouth again. “I’m such an idiot.”

The tears fell unhindered as she shuddered. If she was acting, she had a world-class talent.

I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Not an idiot. But you shouldn’t get involved in this. I want you to do something for me, if you can.”

She hiccupped, but her eyes met mine unflinchingly. “Anything. I want to help you.”

“Then if that’s true, go back to Kregan, tell him what I said, that I’d been lying, that I’d deceived you. Tell him that you hate me and never want to see me again. He’ll understand—and he’ll protect you.”

“But I don’t hate—”

“Then lie, Ajeile. My life’s ruined, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I don’t want yours on my conscience. Will you?”

“But that doesn’t help you—”

“It will. I’m asking it of you. Please.”

“Don’t you want me to take any messages to anyone?”

I stiffened—was it a trap, or the act of a generous woman? I couldn’t take the chance.

“No.” I told the bare truth. “I don’t want my friends involved in this through no fault of their own. Go home, forget about me.”

She shook her head, her perfect glossy hair swinging across her face. “I can’t. Even though...it’s not real to me. Do you really prefer men? Is it better for you here?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Oh, it’s great. You have no idea. Cocks down my—”

Her eyes widened in horror.

“Sorry. I’m being vulgar.” I set her hand free, and got up. “Go home, Ajeile. Think of me as dead.”

And then I walked to the guards. “Done here.”

I didn’t turn to look, but I heard a chair scraping and the quick clack-clack of women’s shoes. I hoped I’d convinced her. If she was a spy, she’d learned nothing. If she wasn’t, then I could only hope she would forget her foolish delusion.

The guard grabbed my arms and marched me out of the room, and back to the hydroponics garden. As I pulled on my boots and coat, Ganwe came up—checking his property.

“Who was it?”

“Just a silly twit,” I said coldly. “Got rid of her.”

“Good. Nugiwe’s been waiting for you,” he said, jerking his thumb over at one of my ‘regulars’.

“Good for Nugiwe. My life’s so much better now everyone knows what I am, don’t you think?”

Ganwe frowned. “You okay, Jodi?”

I sneered at him and stalked over to Nugiwe, who turned and led the way into the storeroom, a place rapidly becoming the setting for all my nightmares, but which right now offered the only distraction against thinking about what had happened.

Ganwe left me mostly alone the rest of the afternoon, and didn’t press when we returned to the cell. Even before lights out, I lay on my bunk, arm over my eyes, trying to get to sleep. There wasn’t much else to do. Ganwe had offered me books if I wanted them, but I’d found what that volunteer, Mis Kolmi, had said was true—it was impossible to read for any length of time under the influence of naksen, even if I’d been fascinated by the lurid trash that was all the prison had to offer.

I wished Ajeile hadn’t come. Even though I was unsure of her motivation, she’d still given me a glimpse of my old life I didn’t want. And now I had the additional crime on my conscience of having toyed with her emotions. I could say all I wanted that I hadn’t meant to. I should have thought about it. I’d treated those women—good, decent, kind people—as disposable props in my life. Just as I’d treated the para volunteers as foot soldiers while I played the great general, sending them off to suffer and die for my glory. I deserved what had happened to me. I’d been kidding myself that I was an innocent victim, but my hands were bloody.

“We get more visitors in a bit.”

Ganwe’s tone was matter of fact as if in continuation of a conversation we’d been having, instead of coming out of the blue after nearly half an hour’s silence. “Them Marranite Brethren people, every six months, regular. Government lets them come in, visit prisoners, make sure there’s no abuse going on. It’s a joke.”

“Yes, I’m sure. You don’t get any other visitors, then? Not real ones?”

“No one around to come. Family’s dead. Wife buggered off years ago. Don’t care. What would I say to ‘em, huh? Nothing to talk about—nothing changes in here. Some blokes, they get visitors the first year or so. Not many do after that. ‘S what I mean. You gotta look after yourself in here. No one else gives a shit.”

I shouldn’t get into these conversations, I thought. They made prison seem even bleaker. “But you’ll get out one day. You’re only serving eight years.”

“Yeah. Probably be back inside within a couple of months. Always happens.”

“
You
plan
it that way?”

“No. Just happens. Like life. I ain’t got big plans, Jodi. Just want to survive. Don’t make much difference where I am.”

“I wanted to change the world.”

“I think it changed you. ‘S how it works.” Silence for a few moments, then, “So she wasn’t your girlfriend or nothing, eh?”

“She was a fool who fell for a fool. I’m going to sleep.”

The lights went off then, and Ganwe said nothing more. I didn’t know why I’d been so harsh about Ajeile, but I did hate her a little bit. For loving me, for being brave when I didn’t deserve it, for maybe being a spy, or maybe someone’s pawn. I decided then and there I wouldn’t call anyone else next time the calls were allowed. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, or to hear pathetic desperation in my voice, or to know how frightened and lonely I was. Bad enough to go through it myself. No one else had to share it.

Time became measured by the periods of withdrawal, and my daily routine varied so little that one day tended to blur into another, even when I wasn’t sick and mostly unaware. I tried to pay no attention to the men I had to service, though I couldn’t help but notice that not all of them were prisoners. Ganwe had cast his net wider. I apparently did my job too well, and the guards wanted a piece of me too. I wished they’d trade blowjobs for the drug, but I never got a reprieve. Every seven days or so, the guards took me to the medical wing to have the reservoir filled—almost filled—and every time, Ganwe meticulously took his cut. No more, no less.

He refused to talk about what would happen when he’d paid off his debt. I suspected the naksen was too profitable for him to give up. He offered to cut the naksen in my arm with water, but that was a risky business, and with the quality of the water available, I could easily end up losing my arm altogether to infection. I began, very slowly, to get used to the withdrawal symptoms, but they never dropped in severity, and probably wouldn’t do so now. Ganwe had worked out a way of coaxing me to taking fluids at least, and from somewhere had managed to get hold of fruit juice—more bribery, no doubt. That lessened the impact of the days when I simply couldn’t eat, but couldn’t remove it altogether. If my duties on the farm had been any more arduous, then I’d have been in trouble already.

Ganwe was always solicitous of my wellbeing, insisting I rest if I looked pale or tired, though that didn’t extend to turning away customers. Business was always the most important thing with him, whatever his personal feelings. I didn’t think those extended past being worried about losing a valuable commodity. The only thing that stopped me hating him more than I did was the strong suspicion that Ganwe had himself been bought and sold in the past, and that, for him, this was the way the world worked. We didn’t talk about it. I had my own troubles to bear, I didn’t want his.

No one called, and Ajeile didn’t attempt to visit again or write. It made me glad, but also irrationally disappointed. Unfair of me to blame her for doing exactly what I’d told her to do, but I wasn’t in a mood to be fair to anyone these days. It shocked me sometimes to realise how much of my life I spent in dull resentment, but I had so little else to occupy my thoughts, and so much to be resentful about.

At least it made a change from being terrified all the time. Ganwe’s protection insulated me from the worst horrors of the prison, though I saw them. The constant undercurrent of violence in the place directly threatened me twice. Once, in the exercise room, when Ganwe had gone to use the toilet, two men decided they’d like to take for free what Ganwe charged for, and forced me up against a corner. But the guards stepped in with suspicious speed, and dealt brutally with the offenders. I didn’t have to say a word.

When a ‘customer’ let his homophobic disgust at what he forced me to do, spill over me in a violent rage, Ganwe himself was on him so fast I barely had time to get out of the way. Without even breaking into a sweat, he left the man with a broken jaw and, most likely, internal injuries. He checked I wasn’t hurt, told me to get back to work, then strolled back to his own tasks as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, while the guards dragged out the man he’d brutally beaten. Ganwe didn’t have to worry the assault would be investigated. The guards knew to keep him happy.