A Song Called Youth (73 page)

“They took it out. You got to use the public down the hall. Go ahead, babe, I’ll be there in just a minute.”

She moved across the mattresses toward the way out, staggering a little on the soft and uneven walking surface, went through the door. Bitchie was sprawled in the next room, alone, his makeup smeared, his paper dress in dingy tatters. His face was drawn, hollow-eyed, pasty with pancake. His hair was a stack of dirty yellow coils. He was loading the little medinject unit attached to his leg with his black market Demerol-amphetamine mix; she could see his genitals, like a droopy white snail, under his printout skirt. He’d been a pilot, once; he had this place by contract for two years, and his two years were almost up. He hadn’t worked at anything but collecting rents from whores for a year. He couldn’t stay off the drugs, and when he was on them, he couldn’t stay out of drag. Drag queens are not generally considered the Right Stuff.

She looked away from him—the sight of him made her stomach writhe even more—and went out the half-open door into the back hall. Chu hadn’t even closed the door. Kitty’s stomach contracted again, and she nearly threw up on the floor of the narrow metal hallway.

She was running by the time she got to the bathroom. She went in and, with not a second to spare, threw up in the vacu-flush.

She felt better almost immediately, then embarrassed. God, she must be unattractive this way, all puffy, throwing up half the time. No wonder Lester was ready to—Oh, don’t be silly, that’s not why he’s doing it.

But she went to the sink, looked in the mirror, grimaced, tried to pretty herself up a little.

Five minutes later she gave up. She rinsed out her mouth and went out into the hall.

And saw two SA bulls dragging Lester away, down the hall . . . up ahead of Lester, three other bulls were shoving Vreeland along; he was resisting, and they jabbed him with shock-prods, making him tense up and stagger. Where was Shood?

But . . . Lester. They had Lester.

His hands were trapped behind him in permaplastic handcuffs, and he was bleeding from the back of his head, and she thought,
Chu was right.

She started after them, but the bulls stepped into an elevator. The doors closed on them, and on Lester.

And that was it, that was all: he was gone.

New York City Jail.

Charlie was alive and Angelo was dead.

Angelo was gone. Charlie had sweated him out, metabolized him out, pissed him out. Burned him out.

But Charlie was here because the neurological Angelo, using Charlie, had stabbed a cop. Dead, Angelo had put him here.

It was an autonomic cell, robot-guarded, one of the newer cells; Charlie didn’t rate a human guard. He was in the cell with another guy, a short, taciturn, spike-haired Chinese in a bloodied JAS who’d come in that morning from an AntiViolence beating. His face all patchy with red welts, bruises.

Charlie had been in the cell alone, awake all night, till just after the pathetic breakfast, when they brought in the Chinese. Charlie tried not to stare at the Chinese when the trash-can escorted him in. But he couldn’t help looking at his battered face, wondering what they’d leave of Charlie Chesterton’s face if that cop died. Or even if he didn’t . . . Stabbing a cop. Great.

You’re screwed to the max, Charlie.

The place was cold and echoey and unyielding. It was a great, slow-moving mower machine you were caught in.

Charlie paced around the little plasticrete cell. There was just enough room for pacing to
be
pacing. Moving around hurt, because when the cops saw he’d stabbed one of their buddies, they got him down and kicked him, maybe ten times; Charlie had just managed to cover his head with his arms. Before they did anything more than bruise the hell out of him and crack a few ribs, the sergeant came in and stopped them, told them, “He’ll get all that’s coming to him.” So, right, it hurt to move, but he was too restless and scared to sit still, and anyway, it was cold in there.

The Chinese guy was sitting sullenly on a bunk and following him with his glare as Charlie paced. Past the two thin bunks, ripped-up platforms coming out of the wall; past the seatless toilet. Naked white walls on three sides marred only by dinge and a word someone had smeared in feces:
ShitPigs,
in ocher.

On the fourth side were bars floor to ceiling. Square-edged bars, not even comfortable to put your hands around. Some drugged jackass about two cells down was braying with maddening regularity, about every ten minutes, “
Yermasuxen sh’piz’n’hurb’d!”
Technicki, over and over. Your Mama sucks everyone, shit-pigs, and I hurt bad, your mama sucks everyone, shit-pigs, and I hurt bad, your mama . . . 

“
Fuck off!”
Charlie screamed back after an hour of it. Adding in technicki, “
Yotta basherbruh awl cuzzabrufugznay!”
You ought to bash out your brains on the wall, ’cause your brains are fucked, anyway. The jackass paused his braying to laugh cretinously, then went back to “
Yermasuxen sh’piz . . . ”

“Shit pigs,” Charlie muttered as the brain-damaged jackass bellowed for the three-hundredth time. “Now we know who was in this cell before us.” Nodding at the smear on the wall. “You take the wrong designer drugs, mix ’em with video-direct, and you end up like the shit-pigger over there.”

That’s when the Chinese guy said the only thing he said the whole time he was in with Charlie.

“More likely,” the Chinese said hoarsely, “he got brain damage from the beatings.”

Charlie winced and closed his eyes.

How long before they came for him? According to the AntiViolence laws, he had to be in front of a judge and sentenced within seventy-two hours because he was charged with assault with intent to kill. A couple days left till the deadline. But he’d stabbed a cop. Hurt him bad, maybe killed him. In a case like that they’d give him priority. And because he’d attacked a cop, they’d probably sentence him to death, with the new laws, even if the guy lived.

Sure, maybe since the senator had gotten himself snuffed, and since the NR was going to make sure the public knew the senator had been railroaded, Congress would have to re-examine the AntiViolence Laws. A few months down the line, they might even suspend them.

But it’d be too late for Charlie.

They’d given him his one call. He’d tried to call his NR contact—but the fucking fone had rung buzzed times before someone had answered, and before he even had a chance to tell them where he was the operator cut in with “Please recredit fifty newpence,” and his time was up and the cops were dragging him away from the fone and . . . 

The NR didn’t even know where he was. Didn’t know what had happened to him.

He heard the squeak of the trash can’s wheels at the bars.

Charlie looked over, thinking that maybe the Resistance had sent a lawyer in for him, or maybe they were going to bribe his way out, or . . . 

But the trash can said, “Charles Chesterton, you are required for arraignment, judgment, and sentencing. Come with me.” Its polite, characterless male voice was a little warped from wear.

The robot was about the size and shape of a standard street-side trash can, except it was on wheels, and it had the camera eye and the speech grid and the two nozzles. One nozzle for tear gas, the other for some kind of of knockout shot. The robot guards were heavy little fuckers, and even if you managed to knock one over before it put you under, the gates to the hall outside the cell block were always locked, and there were flesh-and-blood guards out there with guns and RR sticks and prods. And if anyone fucked with the trash cans, the devices instantly transmitted an alert to Control, and alarms went off, and your ass was on its way to being shredded.

So when the robot transmitted to the lockbox on the cell and the barred door swung open, Charlie did as he was told.

“Come out of the cell, proceed to your left at a brisk walking pace,” the trash can said.

Charlie went out of the cell, his stomach twisting as he thought about sentencing. The trash can backed away, whirring, till Charlie turned left and walked on. It followed, out of arm’s reach, behind him. The cell door rang shut.

A camera on the wall, near the ceiling, swiveled to follow his progress as he walked to the gate. A guard let him through, and Charlie screwed up his courage and asked, “Uh—did he die?”

“Not yet. But it don’t make no never mind to you, asshole. Come on, turn around, bracelets time.”

Not yet.

Twenty minutes later he was in the bedroom-size courtroom and they were showing the video of his attack on the cop, whose name turned out to be Arthur Anthony Gespeccio. The camera in the ceiling over the arrival chute for the prisoner capsule had been whirring away, and they hadn’t had to enhance the images. But at first Charlie couldn’t believe it was him on the video, sitting up in the capsule like a vampire in a coffin. Stabbing in that convulsive movement. Looked like, well, like somebody else. Moved like Angelo.

Physically it was Charlie Chesterton, and the judge knew it. A dyspeptic, matronly judge whose wrist was probably sore from banging the gavel,
the court so orders,
she sighed and shrugged when he tried to explain he’d been out of his mind; she murmured barely loud enough to hear—as if he weren’t worth the breath—that the law no longer recognized insanity pleas no matter what the insanity was “by reason of.” And she gave him the standard sentence for assault with intent to kill, compounded by a drug felony. Adding that he was also culpable for complicity with Angelo’s death. Something he’d never thought of. The gavel said
bang.

Death, to be preceded by public beating.

He was led out of there dazed, his throat too tight even to yell at them . . . 

And then it sank in: He was to be beaten before being executed. That meant they’d give you a short rest in a hospital so you looked good, or anyway, so you didn’t look persecuted when it was time for your public execution the following week.

The hospital stay. Prison hospital. But maybe in transferring he’d see a chance for escape.
Grab that hope. Hold on to that. Flimsy, almost nonexistent, but grab it and hold it.

Hold on to that,
he told himself, as they took him into the videotaping room with its blank walls and its sear of lights; as they attached his cuffs behind his back to the metal ring in the wall. “Whatever you do,” one of the cops told him, “don’t puke. Makes him
real mad
if the guy pukes.” Then they left him there. He hated them, but he didn’t want them to go, to leave him there alone. They went out, closed the left-hand door behind them.

There was another door, directly across from Charlie. Charlie stared at it.

The door opened. The big man in the mirror helmet came in, hefting the rubber club. Charlie thinking,
Mirror helmet. I’II have to see my own face as the guy wrecks it.

“You fucking sick voyeurs!” Charlie screamed at the hidden cameras. Knowing they’d cut out anything he said that wasn’t penitent.

“Try to relax,” the guy in the helmet suggested softly. That’s all he said. And then he began.

Langley, Virginia.

Corte Stoner tried not to look around as he went into Records, Classified, with his access chit. Got to look like it’s all part of an ordinary day’s work . . . 

Records was a vault when the doors were shut and sealed, and despite the harsh lighting and cool waft of air-conditioning, the windowless place always felt claustrophobic to Stoner. There were two clerks behind the counter, Etta and Frank, and two lines. Shit. He wanted to put his request in through Etta. The line for Franklin was noticeably shorter. If he got in Etta’s line, it would look wrong. The people who watched through the ceiling camera noticed anything odd that went down. It was their job to look for things that seemed out of place. Little anomalies. Maybe Unger was looking over their shoulder right now . . . 

But it had to be Etta.

Stoner got in Etta’s line, behind fat-assed Springsdale in one of his imitation tweed suits. Franklin glanced over at Stoner. Franklin was one of those prissy young men who look old and wizened before their time; he wore a newly printed flatsuit and a gaudy gold watch. He’d noticed Stoner’s choice of lines. Maybe he took it personally. People who took little affronts personally made improportionate trouble for you. Snooty little bastard.

Stoner looked up the line to Etta. She was bent over her console, muttering to herself as she punched codes with arthritic fingers. She was eighty-four, had worked here since a ways back in the twentieth century. Stick-thin, pallid, silly excess of makeup; thick glasses; globe of blue hair. Quick, birdlike movements. Round-shouldered, almost hunchbacked from osteoporosis.

She was long overdue for retirement, but she was a tradition at Langley, the CINs concession to its roots. And she was still good at her job.

She was also one of those people who did favors for friends. She wasn’t afraid of the Company.

He had to get into the Blue Classification files on the SA. Lopez and Brummel wouldn’t take anything less. Class Blues couldn’t be accessed through the outside computer lines; they were issued in noncopyable chip that were to be read by top-clearance personnel only. He’d lost his top clearance, thanks to Unger, four days before.

“Hey, Kimosabe,” Unger had said, “you get my memo?”

“Sure. But, uhhh . . . ” Stoner had feigned obtusity. “I’m still not sure what it is you want me to look for. I mean, all you said was, ‘Keeping in mind our talk, look for evidence of Security Risks in these personnel’ and then there was that endless list . . . ”

“You don’t know whereof I speak, Kimosabe?” His oily gloss of humor rubbing thin now, the cold metal threat showing through. “I think you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about team players. Telling them from the others. And there’s an easy way to tell them apart.”

Stoner had lost touch with his common sense and replied without thinking. “Well, it looked like you wanted me to pick through the files and find excuses to downgrade and even prosecute everyone in government who was black, wog, Jewish, or liberal, but I know I couldn’t have read you right, that couldn’t be right, that isn’t our standard criterion for risk . . . ”