Prisoners of Tomorrow (13 page)

More voices filtered through from the next section beyond the partition. They sounded like Siberian dialects from Soviet Central Asia. The gambling had begun immediately after the evening meal, the squabbling soon thereafter, and the aroma of strange substances being smoked was wafting around the partition. Rashazzi had warned McCain that this went on all the time, but not to worry about it. From others who had crossed through on their way between the rear of the billet and the mess area outside, McCain had caught snatches of Czechoslovakian and recognized several Russians. The bunk above creaked as Mungabo shifted his weight. McCain stared up at it. Escape was surely out of the question. Finding something purposeful to focus on in this place could get to be a problem, he decided.

A figure came along the center aisle from the far end of the billet and stopped near the bottom of the bunk. “No, we don’t want none today,” Mungabo’s voice said from above. The figure ignored him. McCain looked out when he realized that the figure was staring at him. He was tall and lean, thirtyish, perhaps, with waves of blond hair flowing to the base of his neck, a yellow mustache, and clear, penetrating eyes set in a hawkish face. The addition of a beard would have made him a natural for the lead role in any Bible movie. “Hello,” he said. “I guess we should get acquainted.” He spoke in even, measured tones, with what sounded like a Midwest accent. McCain swung his legs off the bunk and sat up. The other stretched out a hand. “Paul Nolan, Springfield, Illinois.”

“Lew Earnshaw, just about everywhere, but Iowa originally.”

Nolan sat down on the edge of Scanlon’s vacant bunk opposite. “So, how did you manage to get yourself in here?” he asked lightly. When McCain didn’t reply immediately, he went on, “I heard a rumor going around that a couple of American journalists were arrested a while back, during the May Day tour. Were you one of those?”

McCain’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure I want to start answering questions like that,” he said.

Nolan smiled condescendingly, as if he had been expecting as much. McCain didn’t like people who smiled too easily. “That’s wise. I started out training to be a lawyer, you know. It’s not all the way people think. It’s vicious and competitive, like going back to the jungle. There’s no sense of decency or ethics left anymore. Just money. They all sell their souls to the corporations. So I got out. Ended up in government, with the IPA in Washington—on their legal staff.”

“The Industrial Policy Agency was scrapped years ago,” McCain said.

“Yes, well, that was a while ago . . .” Nolan seemed to be about to say something further, then changed his mind. “Anyway, what I came to tell you was that Luchenko wants to talk to you. He’s down at the other end.”

McCain raised his eyebrows, wondering momentarily what the American was doing running errands for the Russian foreman. Then he dismissed the thought with a shrug and stood up. “Okay. Let’s go.”

They walked past the torrent of varied suidian insults still flying prolifically from the game in progress on one side, and through into the section beyond that. A bearded man at the center table was making tea from a hot-water pot that seemed to have a permanent place there, while another talked as he watched: “She never believed anything anyone said. She’d call on the phone and ask if her daughter was there. I’d tell her, ‘No, she’s out.’ And then five minutes later the woman would call again and ask the same thing. She’d try to disguise her voice, but I could tell it was her because . . .” The next section contained more Asiatics on one side and empty bunks on the other, except one in which a pink-faced man with a high forehead was lying reading.

Passing through the next section, McCain caught snatches of a man who sounded Polish talking to a group. “They stopped short of Warsaw and sat there for two months to let the Germans wipe out the Polish Resistance for them. It was deliberate.”

“That’s a lot of rubbish,” someone replied. “They couldn’t go any farther. Look how far they’d advanced all through July.”

The first voice dropped to a murmur. “Hey, Smovak, who’s he?”

“New arrival today—in the front section.”

An older man sitting with them threw in, “My father was there, you know—with Konev’s army. . . .”

“An American,” Smovak said.

There was a man lying on a bunk, staring morosely at a photograph of a woman on the locker beside him. . . . Finally they arrived at the end section. Five sections, eight men per section. Space for forty in the whole billet.

Two men were waiting at the last table. The one at the end was roundly built and on the heavyish side, with thinning hair combed straight back from the forehead in typical Russian style, and a fleshy moon-face amply provided with chins. McCain’s first thought was that he’d have looked more in place in crumpled clothes at the front of a schoolroom, or fussing with rosebushes outside a house in the suburbs. The younger man sitting across the corner from him was his opposite: solidly muscled, with a mat of short, curly black hair, a chin of blue-shadowed battleship armor, and scowling eyes that were already weighing McCain as a potential adversary. The moon-face motioned for McCain to sit down. McCain did so, across the bouncer. Neither of them proffered a handshake, and McCain didn’t volunteer. Nolan, whom McCain had mentally dubbed “Creeping Jesus,” sat down two chairs away on the same side.

The moon-face had a buff-colored cardboard folder open on the table in front of him, containing papers. A clipboard with a chart of some kind lay next to it. “You are the new American, Mr. Earnshaw, two-seven-one-zero-six,” he said, glancing down. “From Pacific News, California.”

“That’s right.”

“It says here you are a journalist.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My name is Luchenko. I am the foreman of this billet. This is Josip Maiskevik.” McCain gave a curt nod. Maiskevik continued staring at him without moving. “You know how things work here?”

“They told me a little about it at the front desk when I checked in.”

“Do not think of Zamork as a punishment institution. Its purpose is to encourage socially desirable attitudes and behavior. It operates by incentives and privileges, not by coercion. But the privileges have to be earned. I am responsible for seeing that the rules are followed in this billet. If you wish to initiate any communication with the authorities or lodge any complaint, you do so through me. Also, I pass out the work allocations. You will be working in one of the machine shops in the Core, commencing tomorrow morning.”

Luchenko went on to explain about working hours, rules, and procedures. Next in line beyond him was a “block supervisor,” who was also an inmate. The supervisor was the means of access to the commandant in charge of the block, whom the captain had mentioned when McCain was admitted. In the case of Block B, the commandant was a Colonel Bachayvin. Then there was the governor, Fedorov, who reigned above the block commandants. But it appeared that he dwelt on a higher existential plane, from which he seldom descended to deal with prisoners in person. Incorrigibles who were unimpressed by the incentive process could expect a harsher time and solitary detention. The penalty system was more or less standardized, and everyone soon got to know how much time various infractions could be expected to bring. Failing to be back in one’s block an hour before lights-out was good for three days, and being insolent to a guard who was in a bad mood that day, a week. Fighting with other prisoners or sabotaging the work output put you in the month-plus class. Attacking a guard was worth three days at most— “Before they shoot you,” Nolan interjected, smiling.

“I believe in being reasonable,” Luchenko concluded. “You will find I deal fairly with those who deal fairly with me. Nolan can fill you in on other details. Do you have any questions for now?”

There was something about Luchenko’s manner that didn’t quite fit, McCain had been thinking as he listened. The Russian was trying to affect an air of brusqueness, but it wasn’t him. He was like a salesman trying to put into practice what he’d read on assertiveness, but without the force of character to pull it off. The appeal to reasonableness was for his own protection more than anyone else’s, McCain guessed. And what was the reason for Maiskevik’s brooding, silent presence at the table? A hint, maybe, of how the power structure really worked for anyone who didn’t buy the reasonableness line? That added up. Luchenko’s style would require a strong-arm man behind the throne.

“One thing,” McCain said. “When I was arrested, I was with a colleague, also from PNS. Her name is Paula Shelmer. I haven’t been told anything of her whereabouts or her condition. I want to talk to the block commandant or whoever I need to talk to for some news.”

Luchenko pursed his lips for a second, then leaned forward to scribble a note on one of the papers in his folder. “I can’t promise anything,” he said. “The request will be passed on.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Anything else?”

“I guess that’s it.”

“Very well. As I said, follow the rules, and you will find that life can improve rapidly. Play fair with me, and I will play fair with you. That is all I have to say for now.”

McCain walked back to the front section of the billet and sat down at the far end of the table from Rashazzi and Haber, who were still in the throes of their animated mathematical discussion. Nolan, who McCain hadn’t realized had followed him, pulled up the next chair. “It’ll be a change to have another American in here,” Nolan said.

“Are there many around?”

“Only a couple, in other billets. I don’t have a lot to do with them—too brash and loudmouthed.” Nolan had a habit of smiling all the time, as if he were anxious to avoid being annoying. McCain found it overplacating and as annoying as hell. But this was only McCain’s first day, after all. The onus was on him to show some willingness to fit in.

“Illinois, eh?” McCain said. “I knew a girl from Chicago once . . .”

“Women know nothing about politics.”

“She wasn’t into politics.”

“All they’re interested in is clothes, painting themselves up, and other people’s money. They’re not intellectual.”

“This one happened to be a doctor of recombinant engineering. She ran a company that remodeled plant DNA.”

“Mutating nature for profits.”

“It sounds like you disapprove. Have you got something against feeding people?”

“No, against greed and criminal corporate vandalism.”

McCain nodded. Suddenly he was losing interest in trying to be accommodating. “Now I’m beginning to see what kind of government lawyer you were. Or did you flunk that, too?” he said.

“I told you, I got out of the whole rotten system. I emigrated—to the Soviet Union.”

McCain regarded him distastefully. “You mean you defected.”

Nolan sighed, conveying the understanding tolerance of one who had heard this a thousand times, but whose eyes see farther. “I betrayed none of my principles,” he said calmly. “Americans are forever preaching about freedom and the right to choose. Well, I exercised my right and chose. Why is the choice wrong just because you happen to disagree with it?” He leaned closer. “None of you understand. It’s because of the brainwashing that you—all of us—went through. The USSR is a rich, strong nation. The people are happy with their leaders, and together they are building the world of tomorrow—a world based on equality and justice for everyone. Oppression and exploitation will end. It will be what mankind has been struggling toward for thousands of years.”

“And you’re calling
me
brainwashed?”

“I simply know what’s true.”

McCain waved a hand to indicate the billet around them, and by implication the rest of Zamork outside it. “Well, your faith’s been rewarded. Why did they put you in here? Was it what you wanted, too? Okay, good. Have fun.” He made to rise to go back to his bunk, but Nolan caught his sleeve.

“That was another story. I thought I understood the philosophy of socialism, but it wasn’t true. I was brought to realize that
I
, too, had flaws which I’d never suspected. But they are curable. Being here is part of the process, you see. As Luchenko said, it’s not a punishment. I don’t think of it as imprisonment at all.”

“What, then—a vacation resort?”

“A process of guided enlightenment, as in a monastery, I guess. Purification.”

“So why the gulag and the KGB? Why do you need land mines and barbed wire to keep the workers in Paradise?”

“That’s only temporary. When world revolution is achieved, it will change.”

“Bullshit.”

Nolan nodded as if he had been expecting it. “It’s possible that you may come to change your outlook while you are here,” he said, rising from the chair. “I just wanted you to know that I’d be happy to talk, whenever you feel like it.”

McCain watched as Nolan returned to the far end of the billet. Then he got up and went back to his bunk. Mungabo was beaming at him from the top tier. “I knew all Americans couldn’t be like him. It looks like maybe you and me might get along.” He thrust out a pink-palmed hand. “Name’s Abel.”

“Lew.”

“From Iowa—I heard you earlier.”

“That’s right.”

“D’you ever see the New York Bears play?”

“It’s the Chicago Bears. Or do you mean the New York Yankees?”

“Just testin’. You passed.”

“That doesn’t prove anything, Abel. A KGB plant would know things like that.”

Mungabo grinned. “True, but that wasn’t the test. You’d never imagine the horseshit those people believe. A real Russian, trying to pretend he’s American, wouldn’t have shaken hands.”

McCain grinned back. Actually, a real KGB man would have known that the horseshit was horseshit. The popular view of American racism expounded by Tass was purely for Russian domestic consumption. That told him that Mungabo was probably straight, too.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Metal shrieked on metal as whirling sawteeth bit into toughened aluminum alloy. The note dropped while the motor labored under the load, and then soared again as the blade broke through and the end of the length of L-section girder dropped onto the pile in the scrap bin. McCain released the vise and transferred the piece to the stack waiting behind him for Scanlon to drill and deburr. Then he lifted another uncut length from the rack and laid it on the bench to be marked and center-punched against the standard jig. If he ever got out of Zamork and back to normality, he decided, he’d buy himself a waterbed. He’d never want to see another metal bedframe. What the powers that ran
Tereshkova
thought they were going to do with so many bedframes, he couldn’t imagine. Did they plan on turning the whole place into a prison?