Prisons (3 page)

Amu speaks with a sense of wonder, paying little attention to the boy. “My people were ready to die for me. Can you imagine that? Holding people so much in the palm of your hand—” Amu extends his fist across the table, opening it so that Dybathia can see the callouses from his hard life—”they were ready to die for me. And we almost succeeded.”

Amu lowers his eyes and pushes his plate away from him. “Almost.”

“I’ve had enough,” Dybathia says. He has eaten most of his pseudo-steak, but Amu stares at the wall, seeing in his memories the visions of burning grass and the bodies of his followers after the landholders had called in Federation reinforcements.

He doesn’t notice as Dybathia stands and slips toward the door. “I’m going to sleep,” the boy says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Amu nods and blinks his eyes. But they are filled with water and sting as if from smoke.

* * *

Theowane enters the control center alone. She moves with precise steps, as if stalking. She wants to know what is going on. She will catch the Warden. She will get the information together, and then she will take it to Amu.

The holographic Warden looks at her from his glass-walled cage. His expression remains dubious, fearful, with a layer of contempt. Theowane says nothing as she casually walks over to the panorama window. She gazes across the blasted ground. Though the diggers continue to reform the landscape, she never sees any actual improvement.

Theowane stares for a few moments longer, then turns to meet the Warden’s eyes. “You pride yourself so much in having human emotions and human reactions, Warden, but you’re naive. You don’t know how to hide things from other people. I can read your reactions as clearly as if they were spelled out on a screen.”

The Warden blinks at her. “I do not understand.”

“I caught you yesterday.”

He extends his hands forward until the image fuzzes near the edge of the forcewalls. “What do you mean?”

“The boy,” Theowane says. “You recognized him. It was painfully obvious. You know who he is. You know why he’s here—and it isn’t because of that crazy story he told us. Explain it to me now.”

The Warden hesitates a moment, then hardens his face into a stoic mask. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Theowane raises her eyebrows. She reaches out and caresses the control panel. “I can turn the worm loose and delete you.” That doesn’t seem to frighten the Warden; she has used the same threat too many times before.

“Then you will lose whatever information you imagine I have.”

“Perhaps I can find some way to make you feel pain,” she says.

The Warden shrugs. “I am not afraid anymore.”

In all her taunting, Theowane has taught the Warden as much about herself as she has learned from him. He knows exactly how to infuriate her.

“I’ll inform Amu,” she says, trying to regain her composure. “That will stifle whatever plans you are hatching.”

Theowane straightens away from the window and sees the Warden turn his head, flicking his glance to look outside. Sensing something, hearing a muffled sound too close, she whirls around—

The giant automatic digger rears up and plunges through the glass. With its great scooping and digging gears churning, it claws out the poured-stone and insulation, ripping girders and breaching the wall.

Theowane stumbles back, sucking in a breath to scream as the deadly, acid-drenched air of Bastille rushes inside.

* * *

 
“You’re quiet today,” Amu says as he leads the boy down into one of the lower levels. Smells of oil, dirt, and stale air fill the tunnels.

“Introspective,” Dybathia corrects. He thinks that word will better disarm Amu. He has not thought his silence and uneasiness would be so noticeable, but then he remembers that Amu is a master at studying other people.

“Ah, introspective is it?” Amu’s lips curl in amusement.

“I have been through a lot in the last few days.”

Amu accepts this and continues leading him down to where the corridors widen into larger chambers hewn from the rock. Amu spends hours showing him distillation ponds that remove the alkaloid poisons from the seawater. Like a proud father, Amu demonstrates the rows of plants growing under garish artificial sunlight, piped in and intensified through optical-fiber arrays stretching through the rock to surface collectors.

Other prisoners work at their tasks and seem to move more quickly when Amu watches them. Dybathia wonders how they can consider this to be so different from working under another kind of master.

Amu continues to talk about his grand vision, how they have made their colony self-sufficient. It has been difficult at first without supply ships from the Federation, but they have overcome those obstacles and now have everything they did before—except their prison.

Then Amu speaks in a dreamier voice, explaining about the terraforming activities, how he has switched the diggers to mining materials useful for their own survival, rather than supplying ubermindist offplanet. The floater harvesters are spreading algae and Earth plankton that have been tailored to Bastille’s environment. They are resculpting the atmosphere of the planet, making it a place where humans will one day be able to walk outside and in peace. Amu’s long-term goals and his naive sense of wonder disgust Dybathia, but he keeps his feelings hidden. The boy will know when the time has come.

Amu says something he thinks is funny. Dybathia isn’t paying attention, but automatically snorts in response. Amu nods, approvingly.

When alarm klaxons belch out and echo in the tunnel, the noise startles Dybathia, even though he has been expecting it.

* * *

My life-preservation overrides force me to close the airlock on the other end of the corridor to keep Bastille air from penetrating farther into the complex. I do not resist the impulse. I know it will trap Theowane inside.

She sprawls on the floor, trying to crawl forward. The floor is smooth and slippery, and she cannot get enough purchase to move herself. Her eyes are wide with horror. Her lips turn brown, then purplish as she gasps, and the sulfuric acid eats out her lungs. I force myself to watch, for all the times she has watched me.

The digging machine, sensing that it has been led astray, stops clawing and churning, then uses its scanners to reorient itself. The big vehicle clanks and drops clods of dirt and shattered rock as it backs outside.

Theowane croaks words. “Open—open door!”

“Sorry, Theowane. That would endanger the colony.”

Before, I was afraid of the worm, which forbade me to do anything against Theowane and the other prisoners. But the worm, though deadly, is not intuitive and is unable to extrapolate the consequences of my actions. I will take the risk, for my son. I can do much damage, while doing nothing overt.

I have used an old sensor-loop taken from the archives of the digging machines’ daily logs. Broadcasting this sensor-loop along with an override signal to one nearby digger, I made the machine think it saw a different landscape, where the route of choice led it directly through the viewing window.

The chamber has filled with Bastille’s air, and I begin to see static discharges as the corrosive atmosphere eats into the microchips, the layers that form the computer’s brain, my Simulated Personality—and the worm.

But the auxiliary computer core lies deep and unreachable below the lower levels. Bastille’s acid atmosphere will destroy the main system here, where the worm has been added, but within a fraction of a second my own backup in the auxiliary computer will kick in. I should lose consciousness for only an instant before I am recreated.

My only wonder is whether the other Me will be me after all, or only a Simulated Personality that thinks it is.

Theowane lies dead but twitching on the floor, sprawled out in front of me. Blotches cover her skin. It is difficult for me to see anything now, with the images growing distorted and fuzzy, breaking up. I feel no pain, only a sense of displacement.

In the last moment, even the forcewalls seem to be gone. I have conquered the worm.

* * *

Dybathia watches Amu closely as the alarms sound. The leader stiffens and looks around. The other prisoners run to stations. Amu claps his hands and bellows orders at them. His face looks concerned: he doesn’t understand what is happening.

Dybathia gives him no time to understand.

Amu bends down to him. “We’ve got to get you to a safe place. I don’t know what’s going on—”

In that moment, Dybathia brings up the prison knife taken from Amu’s table, pushing all the wiry strength of his body behind it. He drives the dull point under Amu’s chin, tilting it sideways, and slashes across his throat. He has only one chance. He has no special training. Only his heritage.

Blood sprays out. Amu grunts, falling to his knees and backward. Scarlet spatters the silver of his beard, and the whites of his eyes grow red from burst capillaries. He reaches out with a hand, but Dybathia dances back, holding the dripping knife in his hand.

Amu’s expression is complete shock shadowed with pain and confusion. He tries to talk, but only gurgles come out.

Dybathia kneels and hisses. “How? Is that what you’re trying to say? How? Are you amazed because your psyche assessor detected no brainwashing? You forgot to consider that maybe I wasn’t brainwashed, that maybe I wanted to do this because I hate you so much. I am free to act. I have no special training.”

The light fades behind Amu’s eyes, but the confusion seems as great. Dybathia continues. “My father was a great man, an important man—a fleet commander. He became an ubermindist addict, and that was a great secret. Does that mean I am not supposed to love him? That I wasn’t supposed to try to help him? Do you know what happens when an ubermindist addict is cut off from his supply?”

Dybathia kneels beside the dying man to make sure his words come clear. “The withdrawal fried my father’s nerves. He lost all muscle control. He went into a constant seizure for eight days—his mind took that long to burn out. He went blind from the hemorrhages. His body was snapped and broken by his own convulsions. You caused that, Amu. You did that to him, and now I did this to you. My choice. My revenge.”

But Amu is already dead. Dybathia does not know how much he understood at the last. The only sound Dybathia hears is his own breathing, a monotonous wheeze that fills his ears. The boy stands without moving as several other prisoners shout and come running toward him.

* * *

Inside her office, the Praesidentrix has chosen a honey-colored sky with a brilliant white sun overhead. She finds it soothing. For the first time in ages, she feels like smiling.

The First Secretary stands at the doorway, interrupting her reverie. “You asked to see me, Madame?”

She turns to him. For a moment he wears a fearful expression, as if he thinks she has caught him at something. She nods to make him feel at ease. “I’ve just received word from the Warden on Bastille. We have two gunships in orbit and all prisoners are now subdued. Amu and Theowane are both dead.”

The First Secretary takes a step backward in astonishment. He looks for someplace to sit down, but the Praesidentrix has no other chairs in her office. “But how?” He raises his voice. “How!”

“I placed an operative on Bastille. A. . .young man.”

“An operative? But I thought Amu had equipment to detect any training alterations.”

The Praesidentrix pulls her lips tight. “The young man’s father died from ubermindist withdrawal after the prison takeover. I believed he had sufficient motivation to kill Amu. He was free to act.”

The First Secretary sputters and keeps looking for a place to sit. “But how did you know? What did you do?”

“He acted as a catalyst to spur the Warden into taking a more drastic action than he was likely to take on his own, with nothing else at stake. Remember, we built the Warden’s Artificial Personality. I knew exactly how he would react to certain pressures.” She waves a hand, anxious to get rid of the First Secretary so she can use the subspace radio again. “I just thought you’d like to know. You’re dismissed.”

He stumbles backward, unable to find words. He stops and turns back to the Praesidentrix, but she closes the door on him. The subspace projection chimes, announcing an incoming transmission. She sighs with a pride and contentedness she has not felt in quite some time. He has called her even before she could contact him.

The Warden’s image appears in front of her like a painful memory. It is as she remembers her consort when he was a dashing and brave commander, streaking through hyperspace nodes and knitting the Federation together with his strength.

The Warden is only a simulation, though, intangible and far away. But that would not be much different from their original romance, with her consort flitting off through the Galaxy for three-quarters of the year while she held the reins of government at home. She had rarely held him anyway; but they had spoken often through the private subspace link.

They greet each other in the same breath and then the widowed Praesidentrix begins catching up on all the things she has wanted to say to him, repeating all the things she did tell him while he writhed in delirium from his withdrawal, while she had concocted a false story about his fatal “accident” in order to avert a scandal.

But first she must say how proud she is of their son.

The End

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin J. Anderson is the author of nearly 100 novels, 48 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over 22 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the
SFX
Reader’s Choice Award, and
New York Times
Notable Book.

Anderson has co-authored eleven books in the D
UNE
saga with Brian Herbert. After writing ten D
UNE
-universe novels with Herbert, the coauthors created their own series, H
ELLHOLE
. Anderson’s popular epic SF series, T
HE
S
AGA OF
S
EVEN
S
UNS
, is his most ambitious work, and he is recently finished a sweeping fantasy trilogy, T
ERRA
I
NCOGNITA
, about sailing ships, sea monsters, and the crusades. As an innovative companion project to T
ERRA
I
NCOGNITA
, Anderson co-wrote (with wife Rebecca Moesta) the lyrics for two ambitious rock CDs based on the novels. Performed by the supergroup
Roswell Six
for ProgRock Records, the two CDs feature performances by rock legends from
Kansas
,
Dream Theater
,
Asia
,
Saga
,
Rocket Scientists
,
Shadow Gallery
, and others.

His novel
Enemies & Allies
chronicles the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s; Anderson also wrote
The Last Days of Krypton
. He has written numerous S
TAR
W
ARS
projects, including the Jedi Academy trilogy, the Young Jedi Knights series (with Moesta), and Tales of the Jedi comics from Dark Horse. Fans might also know him from his X-FI
LES
novels or
Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son
.

His website is
www.wordfire.com
.