Red Cells (2 page)

“Wow,” Billings said. “I think the other muties just feel sorry for that one.” Even from here, over the loud chatter that reverberated off the cafeteria’s ceiling, they could hear the shapeshifter’s stream of incoherent babbling punctuated with barking outbursts. It was as though he were possessed by a whole legion of ghosts.

“I don’t know what he could have done,” Stake said, “but I’ll bet he should be in a mental hospital, not a jail.”

They had been studying the mutant so blatantly they neglected to recognize that another of the men at the table had noticed them, until he called over, “Hey—virgins! You want to fuck my friend Blur? You want him to turn into a woman for you? He can’t lock it in, you know.”

“Sorry, friend,” Billings called back, twisting his lipless mouth into a nervous smile and lifting an open hand of peace.

“I’m not your friend, freak,” the man snapped, though he himself was afflicted. The mutant was hairless, his skin a metallic bluish black, shiny and crinkly like crumpled foil. Tall and powerfully muscled, besides.

Billings lowered his head and whispered, “Dung! I may need these boys…I don’t want to alienate them!”

“Sorry,” Stake said, turning away from the mutant gang, too. “He must be the leader. Chip on his shoulder, huh?”

“Lot of us mutants do,” Billings said.

“Mm,” Stake grunted in agreement.

“Is there a problem?” a flat voice asked behind them. Both men turned in their seats again to find that one of the robot guards had approached them, having witnessed the exchange. The automaton had flexible segmented lengths for its four limbs, neck and waist, while its head, torso and pelvis were of black metal. Perhaps to give the flat face a more fearsome aspect, its eyes glowed red, matching the red identifying number on its chest.

“Everything’s okay here,” Billings told the machine.

“Be advised not to agitate the seasoned inmates, newcomer,” the guard chastised.

In their orientation upon arriving at Trans-Paxton Penitentiary, they had been told that half of the guards here were robots. The reasons for the balance between organic and inorganic guards were numerous. For one, fewer living guards meant fewer potential victims of violence from inmates. Robots could not be bribed, corrupted, or show favoritism. Their implacable nature was intimidating, but neither could they be sadistic. Robots didn’t require on-site housing, rest periods, off-weeks in which to go home to family. Prisoners feared their physical strength and relative invulnerability, and yet it was still useful for the inmates to fear the harsher minds of living men. Plus, robots might almost be considered innocent in a sense, whereas a crafty human (or other such sentient being) could be more difficult to fool. At the end of the day, just as in manufacturing facilities, labor laws prohibited prisons from utilizing automatonic guards exclusively, lest too many living beings find themselves without employment.

The robot wandered away, sweeping its glowing eyes toward other tables. When it had left, another prisoner—a Choom, the native race of Oasis, remarkably human in appearance apart from their vast Jack-o’-lantern mouths—said to Stake, “Careful, boys; things have been on edge here lately, and I bet they didn’t tell you that in orientation. I’m not so sure it’s even made the news back home.”

“What’s that?” Stake asked.

“A few prisoners have been killed in their cells. Seems like it’s three, though some say four. Could be a gang doing it, but people are pointing fingers everywhere, not just at one group. Makes for paranoia.”

“The victims aren’t all from one gang? Or enemies of a certain group?”

“If there’s a pattern, I don’t know it.”

“So how are they being killed?” Stake asked. It wasn’t hard to pique his interest. It was his nature, and his vocation.

“Dung!” the Choom chuckled, wagging his head. “I heard the dead guys were absolutely demolished.”

“Demolished? What do you mean, demolished?”

“I haven’t seen the aftermath myself, but I mean like…exploded. Like there’s nothing left of them but blood. Blood everywhere.”

Two

Recreations

Over the next few days, Hassan Billings had gingerly nudged closer to the mutant gang—called the Muties—until it looked like they were going to accept him into the fold, which meant that Stake now sat alone at one of the picnic-style tables scattered across the floor of the sizable recreation yard. He’d never learned to play chess, though he could have played against the computer, so instead he traced his finger across the table’s vidscreen surface playing solitaire. Technically he wasn’t alone at the table, but the man on the other bench lay on his back with his shirt off and draped across his eyes, as if to tan himself in the mock sunlight beaming down from the room’s ceiling—which was in truth one immense vidscreen displaying a crystal blue sky. Similarly, the rec yard’s vidscreen walls portrayed a high white barrier, over the top of which more blue sky showed, and against that a bristling cityscape of uncountable towers, many of which soared so high their tops were lost in blue mist. It was a vid of Punktown, taken from the recreation yard of a different prison: Paxton MSP. Stake figured it was meant to be a less depressing view than this prison’s own enclosed ceiling and walls, but he wondered why in that case they didn’t show a vid of a surrounding forest or sandy beach instead. He supposed they didn’t want the prisoners to forget their status.

Atop another table not far away, a ladyboy danced. She was Asian, petite, and very convincing, having knotted up the front of her red top to bare her smooth midriff. The men who had gathered thickly around the table cheered her on in her wild gyrations. Though Stake was sure some of the prison’s transgendered inmates were at the bottom of the food chain, he’d learned that several of the prison’s gangs actually boasted leaders who were either transgendered or else mutant hermaphrodites. Being very attractive and very much in demand, they had used that to their advantage, bestowing favors until those who hungered after them went from mere protectors to full-on underlings. Stake found this interesting, and joked with himself that he should drop his current guise, morph into a beautiful female and do the same. It was the bestowing favors part that brought him back to reality.

Slowly, and without any real anger, one of the human guards with the name HURLEY printed in white on his left breast strolled toward the table, and via his helmet mic called, “Hey, Lee, get off that table.”

“I’m exercising, baby,” the ladyboy called back. “This is the exercise yard, right?”

“Go lift some weights, then,” Hurley persisted. “Come on, get down…and fix your damn shirt.”

Lee’s audience booed but parted to let her step down from the table. As she did so, she noticed Stake watching and wiggled her fingers at him. He dropped his eyes to the solitaire game. Better not to gaze at her too long, anyway, lest he start morphing into her likeness whether he wanted to or not. His grip on his gift was not always a firm one. In fact, he thought it best to roll up his sleeve, conjure the waiting image of Edwin Fetch and his girlfriend, and stare at Fetch’s face to ensure that his mask didn’t slip. Naturally, whenever he did this, he always avoided looking at Fetch’s albino girlfriend.

Stake was thus engaged when—without warning—the vid of the blue sky overhead and the surrounding prison walls turned to grainy static and then disappeared altogether, briefly revealing the true blank surfaces beneath. He looked around him, puzzled. Somehow this put him in mind of his own masquerade…the blankness he sometimes felt existed at his core. Was this a power surge? In any case, the illusion soon returned as if it had never been disrupted.

A noisy group of men came sauntering across the yard, all wearing orange uniforms. Among them, Stake spotted the pair of youths dubbed the Tin Town Maniacs. So, they had found protectors, then, against the possible vengefulness of the mutant gang…no doubt using their parents’ money to secure that protection. The members of this gang were a mix of humans, nonhumans, and even some mutants. What bonded them was simply the color of their uniforms, and Stake had heard this gang despised any individual who wore a uniform other than that of the Orange Block, demonstrating to Stake the mindless need of men to oppose some other tribe, however arbitrarily targeted.

He wondered if he could make it through six months without having to align himself with any of these tribes.

Recreation period was over and that was why the Orange Block, which had been the first admitted into the yard, were now the first to leave. Next came Stake’s own group, the Red Block. He banished his solitaire game, got up and made his way toward one of the huge chamber’s exits, where guards waited to herd them. Having joined a thickening queue, he passed close to several tables where members of the Muties in their various-colored uniforms sat, Hassan Billings among them. Billings purposely kept his eyes averted when Stake looked at him, but Stake’s feelings weren’t hurt. What interested him more was the mutant named Blur. As always, his body was electrified with convulsions and his head jerked around wildly as if in a speeded-up film. And as always, the mutant was jabbering breathlessly. Presently he was blurting, over and over, “Seen the ghost…seen the ghost…”

Another Mutie, with his eyes pushed almost to the sides of his head by a bony extrusion like brain coral in the center of his face, was leaning forward intensely and saying, “I tell you, Null, I didn’t see anything…didn’t even hear anything until Blur got all excited. Then I woke up and felt that I was all wet.”

“Nobody ever sees anything,” another gang member cut in. “It always happens when folks are sleeping.”

“Then how is it Blur saw something?” demanded that muscle-bound mutant with crinkly blue-black skin. So his name was Null, then.

“Well, you know Blur doesn’t ever sleep much,” said brain coral. “But listen to him. Not sure you can give it any credence.”

Null turned toward Blur and said sternly yet patiently, “Slow down and tell me what you saw, Blur.”

“Seen the ghost…skeleton ghost…the skeleton ghost,” the blighted mutant babbled.

Personally, Stake didn’t know how Blur with his rapidly moving head could see anything clearly.

Passing the last of the mutants’ tables as he shuffled on toward the exit, Stake overheard one of them say, “I bet it was the Orange fucks. You see how they laughed at us when they walked past? They did this somehow.”

A fellow Red Block prisoner who had lined up behind Stake leaned forward and whispered, “Another one last night. That makes four so far…some say five.”

Stake looked over his shoulder. “Another death?”

The prisoner behind him blew out his cheeks as if imitating an explosion. “This time one of the Muties, with two other Muties right there in the same cell. Every time it’s the same…the cell mates wake up and the barrier is still in place. How could anybody get in the cell to do that, then get out again so quick? Even if you had a key card? I tell you, it’s got to be someone using a teleporter—either porting in and out of the cell, or using the porter itself to atomize these people.”

“So who could pull that off?” Stake asked him. “And why would they?”

“You tell me, brother. All I know is Null’s not happy about it. This time it was Chowder—his cousin.”

Stake was coming up on the exit now when suddenly a pair of waiting guards stepped forward, one of them human and the other a robot. The human took hold of his arm and pulled him out of the line. He said, “The warden wants a word with you, Mr. Stake.”

The floor of Stake’s stomach dropped like a severed elevator cabin. “I’m Fetch.” He pointed at the white numbers and barcode printed on the breast of his uniform. “Edwin Fetch.”

“Just come with us, Stake,” the guard grumbled, pulling him toward a different exit.

Three

Unmasked

The main body of the Trans-Paxton Penitentiary was circular. Not for panoptic considerations (there was no central watch house, a camera in every cell instead), but because this form better stabilized the structure within its spherical pocket. There were only two levels for cells, though a “basement” level—off limits to prisoners—housed the facility’s power sources and life support systems.

The prison’s interior space would cover an area of three hundred acres, and thus it was a fairly good walk from the recreation yard to the administration wing and the warden’s office. In his orientation, Stake had learned the prison’s capacity was three thousand. After only two years, it had already slightly exceeded that number. Many cells meant for two, including his own, now housed three. But if this prison continued to prove a successful venture, word was that more pocket universes would be opened to house similar institutions. The most attractive feature there, despite the expense in transportation, was that escape was all but impossible, the potential threat to society greatly removed. Not to mention the deterrent factor in knowing that if arrested and incarcerated, you would be so distant, so
apart
, from family and from society itself, with no possibility for visits, conjugal or otherwise—just chats on vidscreens. The isolation was absolute…aside from your fellow prisoners, and the prison staff.