Fool's Run (v1.1) (3 page)

Jase grunted. “If I didn’t know better, I’d send you to New Horizon for observation.”

Nils tapped his temple. “That’s just it. It’s patrol work by the brain. Battling the forces of evil by computer.”

“A game.”

“I always did like those old video war-games. If I had your job—” He stopped, shaking his head. “I’ll never have your job.”

“I’d give it to you for breakfast if it were my choice.”

“I know.” He swallowed the last of his shake, brooding without rancor. “I watch you. You know that? I watch you a lot. To see why you’re sitting there and I’m here. You know what I think it is?”

“Some idiot in L. E. Central.”

“No. Well, maybe that too. But it’s something I don’t have. A feel for when to cut through the rules. An instinct that tells you how to get to the heart of things. You used it as a patroller, but you can’t use it here, that’s why you can’t stand the job. But that’s why you got the job. Because this place could easily be run by someone with a microchip for a brain; it could almost be run by robots. But it’s the Underworld, the only isolated, self-sufficient, armed and orbiting prison colony, and those bureaucrats on Earth needed to put somebody human up here to talk to.”

Jase considered him almost surprisedly. Then he shook his head. “It’s neat, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as the perversity of Fate. I like wind, Fate gives me purified air. I like action, I get a desk. I like people, I get thousands upon thousands of people I only know by number. I like solving crimes, I get the criminals, tried and sentenced. I like Earth, I get… well, maybe you’re right. Maybe if I start sounding like a computer, they’ll take my transfer requests seriously…”

His voice trailed away; he gazed at the carpet, not seeing it. For a moment, the silence seemed to have mass. He felt a curious sense of dislocation, as if a fresh breeze had stirred under his nose, or a patch of sunlight had just faded in the windowless room. Something absolutely familiar that shouldn’t have been where it was. A name surfaced in his head. He remembered his early years as a patroller, when a name, a chance word, a hair on a sleeve came into sharp and unexpected focus: a small detail that linked everything else he knew about a crime into an unbreakable chain. That was when he began cutting rules. At that moment of unassailable intuition. But why now? And—“Who the hell is Fiori?”

Nils rose, stretching. “You know. That doctor from New Horizon. I told him you’d call him before you even sat down.”

“You did.”

“A little PR between outworlders.”

“Oh, him. He wants a body?”

“A particular one. It’s in with your messages.” He tossed his cup down the wall-chute. “I’m off.”

“Sweet dreams.”

Jase found Dr. Fiori’s name among the dozen people on his message roster who required his immediate attention. The message itself was peculiar.

Request permission study prisoner Q92814HD2, use of experimental equipment patients New Horizon. Dr. A. Fiori. Project: Guinea Pig.

Trying to make sense of that, he pulled the records of prisoner Q92814HD2. A bald, thin-faced woman with startling eyes gazed out of the screen at him and he grunted. Terra Viridian. The list of her crimes against the FWG was endless. For murder by laser under broad daylight of 1509 civilians and FWG services personnel… for desertion… for raising a laser-rifle against her Commanding Officer… for firing said weapon against… against… An image from a newscast of the massacre flashed across Jase’s mind; his brain, for the instant, filled with light… the fire-seared skeleton of the stockade, the desert burning beneath the hot eye of the sun, bodies engulfed by light as if a solar flare had stretched millions of miles across space to kiss the desert and withdraw… For attempting to transform, under the broiling, blue noon sky, everything she saw into light, she was consigned for all her days, without appeal, until her final breath, to the Dark Ring of the Underworld.

She had walked away from the massacre and boarded a commuter shuttle to Suncoast Sector. For three weeks rumor had her everywhere in the world at once: running weapons to a secret rebel space station at the same time she toiled up a mountain in Dragon Sector to join a monastery for her sins. Then, in south Suncoast Sector, two patrollers arrested a vagrant rummaging through a jammed recycling bin for something to eat. They brought her in when she fought, charged her with resisting arrest, possession of an illegal weapon. Then they found out who she was.

Terra Viridian. The illegal weapon was the bent steak knife that had been jamming the recycling bin…

She had been in the Underworld for seven years. No incidents, no accidents. No communication from anyone outside the Underworld. She ate her meals, therefore she was still alive. Jase stared at the screen, remembering her sensational trial. The Madwoman versus the Free World Government. He had been disgusted when they sent her to the Underworld. She was so far out of her mind, she’d warped into a different universe. A woman who had no idea where she was had no business being in the Underworld. But Desert Sector was threatening to secede from the FWG, taking its oil, mines and commerce with it, so the FWG declared Terra Viridian sane and criminally responsible for her actions. She sat in silence in the Dark Ring, alone with her visions, as little disturbance to anyone as if she were buried. And now some Dr.

A. Fiori wanted to fiddle with her brain, make her realize exactly where she was. For the next fifty or a hundred years. The Dark Ring. No appeal.

He touched a com-light. “Outchannel. Klyos.”

“Voice ID 3. Identified.”

“Link New Horizon. Jason Klyos to speak to Dr. A. Fiori.”

New Horizon hovered appropriately in the shadow of the moon, a quiet place, privately funded and FWG supported, for the study of the criminally insane. “On-screen,” the com said a few moments later. “Dr. Fiori.”

“Chief Klyos,” he said. “Thank you for getting back to me.” A middle-aged man who ignored the latest fashion in faces, he looked as if he had been up for days. His thinning hair was tousled and there were shadows under his eyes. His smile seemed determinedly cheerful.

He rattled on without breathing, apparently, while Jase tried to pick out the salient points. He interrupted finally, to break the flow.

“Under no conditions may the prisoner leave the Underworld.”

“I know, dammit. It doesn’t matter—here or there she’s probably incurable. We’ll transport the equipment there.”

“You will, will you? Where are you planning to put it? In my bedroom?”

Dr. Fiori paused, puzzled. “Well, no. But it’s not that—surely you can spare a space the size of a cell.”

“Dr. Fiori, the Underworld is not a research center. People are sent here to be punished, not experimented with. I question the legality of this whole idea.”

“Legality—” Dr. Fiori gave an incredulous laugh. “She’s crazy. She shouldn’t even be in the Underworld.”

“She was tried and sentenced according to FWG law. The law didn’t say anything about experimentation.”

“Chief Klyos, we’ll treat her as carefully as one of our own patients.”

“Then why aren’t you using one of your own patients?” He caught Dr. Fiori with his mouth open, searching for words, and added ponderously, “Dr. Fiori, this conversation is being recorded for the Underworld log. I have no private conversations. All conversations concerning prisoners may be used as evidence for whatever purpose in a court of law.”

Dr. Fiori finally remembered to close his mouth. “Is that a threat?” he asked confusedly.

“Have I done something wrong?”

Jase leaned back in his chair. “No. I’m telling you something you didn’t know. We have specific instructions about how to treat prisoners here. The FWG doesn’t like those rules broken. The FWG doesn’t like much of anything to happen here that it hasn’t thought up first. Now. You want to use one of our life prisoners for a biocomputer still in experimental stages. I’m basically a simple man. Can you tell me in simple language what it does?”

“Well.” The glib flow of words gave way to a careful concentration. “It translates the chemical, neurological and electrical impulses of the brain into images on a screen. We named it the Dream Machine. Look. Suppose I show you a loaf of bread. Nothing is distracting you, nothing else is demanding a response from you but that loaf of bread. The Dream Machine makes a recording of your response. It shows you thousands of images and records your responses to them. Then, when you think or dream, the Dream Machine can match the patterns your brain produces with the images it has already stored, and it translates your brain activity back into images. Does that sound harmful?”

“It sounds fascinating.”

Dr. Fiori’s voice lost its faint wariness. “Language is of course hopelessly imprecise. You and I can’t even imagine the same loaf of bread. But we can’t refine the Dream Machine further to help our patients without using a patient. And at New Horizon, which, while it has some government support, is not an FWG institution—”

“You’re concerned about lawsuits.”

“Absolutely.”

His frankness surprised a smile from Jase. “So. You want to use a lifer with no legal status on earth. I’d be willing to bet many of the Dark Ring prisoners are borderline candidates for New Horizon. Why her?”

“She—I remember her trial. She used a private language that was remarkably rich in symbols, imagery. She’s perfect. And she has no family.”

“According to her status-sheet, she does have a sister on earth. With no record herself, and no known address. In seven years, nobody has tried to communicate with the prisoner. No letters, calls, no requests for visitors’ passes. Not even a Christmas card from her lawyers. Nothing.”

“She’s a derelict. Nobody cares about her. She could be used to help other patients. Perhaps even cured.”

“I hope not,” Jase said bluntly. “For her sake. Incurable, cured, she’ll never leave the Dark Ring.” He paused. The tired face on the screen waited hopefully. “Well. If it were up to me, I’d say leave her alone. A crazy woman killed, a crazy woman was convicted—that’s the woman who should take the punishment. But it’s not up to me. I can’t give you permission.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t have the authority to make a decision like that. Another point. If you do get permission, we can probably find space for your equipment. But staff quarters will be limited and I can’t let you use our computer.”

“The Dream Machine is self-sufficient. But,” Dr. Fiori added rather plaintively, “who do I go to now?”

“Let me think… Someone in FWGBI. Ah.” He smiled thinly. “Ask Darrel Collins. He’ll know whom you should talk to. I’ll let him know you’ll be in contact with him. I think he’s about to owe me a favor.”

He muttered at Dr. Fiori’s thanks impatiently, and placed his next call to the Free World Government Bureau of Investigation. As he suspected, the investigator did want to owe him a favor. He requested lodgings for himself and three lawyers, and an hour’s private conversation in a closed room with one Harl Tak, LR, 49 yrs, no commuted sentence, ringleader of a silver sand connection. Jase gave him a dock-pass code, and Dr. Fiori’s name, and found, as Collins’ face vanished, that a dozen com-lights were flashing at him.

Half an hour later, he looked up to find Jeri Halpren standing in front of his desk.

“Oh,” he said without enthusiasm.

“It’s ten o’clock.”

“I’ve got—”

“You promised,” Jeri said inflexibly. “The call’s on the roster. It’s going through now.” He blinked once, nervously, and added, “Do you want to know who you’ll be talking to?”

Jase swallowed an expletive. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Sidney Halleck.” He paused. After a moment Jase sighed.

“Who?”

Jeri stopped smiling. “Sidney Halleck.” He leaned on Jase’s desk then, and began to babble.

“He’s the authority on Environmental Auditory Influences, recommended by the FWG Bureau of Arts as well as by the FWG Institute of Social Institutions. He’s a musicologist, composer, inventor, he’s got the world’s largest collection of musical instruments, and he designed the Constellation Club in Suncoast Sector, which he owns—”

“He owns Suncoast Sector?”

“No. The Constellation Club. People fly to it from all over the world. Twenty bands nightly and its own private smallcraft dock—”

“What the hell,” Jase said blankly, “do you want me to talk to a musician for?”

Jeri stopped. He took a deep breath and swallowed. “Musician.” He took another breath.

Then he tapped his ear. “Sounds.” For a moment Jase wondered if his tongue had gotten tangled up. Then he became coldly articulate. “I’m your Director of Rehabilitations. For prisoners to be rehabilitated into Earth society. There are noises on Earth. There are no noises up here.”

There’s you, Jase thought.

“Sidney Halleck has done studies for FWG committees on the effect of background noise on workers under all kinds of conditions. It’s his theory that a lack of familiar, natural sound is as debilitating as too much, too varied an input of sound. It’s my theory that the abrupt change from the nearly complete silence of the Underworld to the aural chaos on—”

“The what?”

Jeri sighed. “Racket on Earth might contribute to the sense of isolation and social withdrawal that ex-prisoners go through. The Underworld is only fifty years old. Most ex-prisoners were sent off-Earth for good reason, and they were here for an average of thirty years. We’re still getting the first wave of analyses of our Rehab program.”

Jase grunted. “I’ve never found it quiet around here. What do you want me to do? Send some prisoners down to his nightclub?”

“Please,” Jeri said stiffly. “Just be polite to him. Ask him if he’ll take a few moments to speak to me.”

“All right,” Jase said, “all right, all right. Sidney Halleck.” He was intrigued in spite of himself. “It almost makes sense. Do you know any experts on air?”

“Air?”

“Familiar, natural smells or the lack of them?” The call registered on-screen. A big, benevolent face turned toward him inquiringly, and in the instant he felt his own harsh, professional gaze. Sidney Halleck wore his life on his face—an unfashionable thing to do on Earth—and it seemed to Jase a life of intelligence, humor and goodwill.