Prisoner of Conscience (14 page)

So he could let people know if he was going to be late without the tedious necessity of sending Security all the way up one floor and across the garden to tell them so. Well, of course.

“I’m sure I shall find everything perfectly satisfactory. What about the next floor?”

Nodding, Belan started for the lift as Code stepped hastily out of his way. “Yes, sir. This way.”

The Interrogations area.

Sixteen cells, eight to a side; from the lift he could either walk through the restricted cell block or bypass it if he cared to go around. Andrej went through; sixteen cells occupied. He’d seen these people before. Their faces were unfamiliar; but their expressions were not — suspicion, fear, hatred. He knew these people very well indeed. And before their acquaintance was concluded they would come to know him; nor were they likely to take any benefit from that.

Through the restricted cell block to another area of closed doors, with a pair of prison guards who jumped to surprised attention as Andrej opened the communicating door. His work-rooms. Belan hurried past to open one, a middle room to Andrej’s right. Code posted himself to one side of the door in obedience to Andrej’s gesture, to wait while Andrej and Belan went in.

The room was clean and sweet-smelling; it had never been used — nor could it have been, in the absence of a Writ assigned. Standing in the middle of the room, looking around him, Andrej could not tell if he was more apprehensive or eager to be back here when the time came. He hated what he did, and he hated himself for doing it, but there was no denying the soul-shattering fact that while he was at it he could hardly get enough.

And, oh, Joslire was dead . . .

He was to be master in this place, the undisputed and absolute authority from working-floor to penthouse, with no check or requirement but that he gain confession from those criminals referred for his Interrogation.

He would gain confession.

He was good at this.

There was no question in Andrej’s mind but that he could perform his Inquisitorial function in such wise as to uphold his Writ in an exemplary manner. And someone had taken Joslire away; and would suffer for it. He couldn’t bring Joslire back, not even as the autocrat of the Domitt Prison with the Writ on site. No skill in surgery, no degree of rank, no amount of money could bring Joslire back into the world.

Since he couldn’t change the fact, it was clearly the idea to concentrate on changing how he felt about it. He knew that he would derive pleasure from the exercise of his lawful authority, pleasure more intense and addictive than that to be taken in the embrace of a woman.

Perhaps it wouldn’t make him feel any better, but he’d feel good, and that would be a welcome change from the state of anxious stress he’d been in since Captain Irshah Parmin had first told him that he was to come to the Domitt Prison and be Inquisitor here.

“Quite as it should be,”
Andrej assured Belan. “Let’s go on.”

He would be back here soon enough, to practice his revenge.

###

The officer’s briefing had stated that the Domitt Prison had been built on time, under budget, and its Administrator recognized by an impressed Bench for his good management accordingly. Code knew what to make of that: slave labor, and plenty of it.

The prison didn’t have to pay prisoners more than a token amount for the labor it could lawfully demand that they perform while they were awaiting trial. It was supposed to offset the charges to the Bench for lodging, clothing, food. And if prisoners were convicted — whether executed or not — the prison didn’t have to pay them at all.

“You have many work details, it seems, Administrator. One wonders what work there might be for so many, that they don’t run out of jobs.”

Code could read the question in the officer’s voice. They were sitting on a tracked-mover, touring cell blocks from the middle of the long side of the prison, where the lift through the far doors of the Interrogations section had placed them, three floors down, to the corner, where they would take another lift to the ground level.

And there weren’t more than four in eight of the cells occupied at all, let alone fully occupied.

Four-soul cells, and how many of them on a side, how many floors, how many sides, how many souls?

“No worry about that, your Excellency,”
Belan replied. Code’s place was at the back of the mover; looking down the length of the corridor, he tried to calculate the numbers. The officer’s briefing had said maximum occupancy was three times eight hundred souls. “We have enough to keep us busy for quite some time. There’s to be a new industrial complex built up on reclaimed land, the Domitt has title to the acreage.”

Almost too great a temptation to exploit prison labor to its fullest, then. But the Bench would just as soon recycle Nurail into something useful, like public works, as stand the expense of relocating them. Code didn’t like the idea.

“How long have you been receiving prisoners?”

Yes.

The prison had been a collection site until the displacement camp had started up; and not all of the souls it had collected had been prisoners per se, but refugees of one sort or another. Bodies the prison could put to good use on construction.

“We’ve been authorized to process only for six months, your Excellency.” And did the Assistant Administrator sound a little uncomfortable? “Unfortunately we had a bad outbreak of parlic fever. Just two months ago. We lost nearly half of the prison population.”

As an explanation it was a reasonable one, Code supposed. Being condemned to the Bond carried with it some benefits, after all; Code knew more about epidemiology than he’d ever thought to learn.

Associating with medical staff for the fifteen years he’d been a bond-involuntary, Code knew that there were any number of prison illnesses that could create a problem if they once got out of control. And they could spread particularly rapidly on work-crews because of the contact and redistribution of souls between exposed and unexposed work-crews from day to day.

Two months ago?

The relocation camp had been established two months ago.

Was it just that fraction too convenient that there’d been an epidemic, mass death, mass burial, just at the point at which the Domitt Prison was faced with accounting for the people that it held?

But if he didn’t like it, that meant the officer was four laps ahead of him already. Code knew he could rely upon the officer’s judgment.

Down a lift at the elbow of the building to a ground-floor corridor, mover and all. Thence to the exit, halfway down the length of that corridor, administrative offices by the looks of them; and out into the courtyard. Across to the nearest building, and the mover carried them to the entrance on the short side nearest to the dispatch building that faced the gate.

Mess hall.

The serving lines were empty now, sterile and featureless between meals; there were five in all, and once Code had followed his officer through one of them, he could see row upon row of ledges set at elbow-height that stretched nearly to the back of the building. People didn’t sit down to take their meals, then, but stood with their dishes on a serving-ledge and ate as best they could. Efficient, Code supposed.

Downstairs to the kitchen to admire the lifts that carried food up to the serving lines in series.

It was warm in the kitchen. It hadn’t been very warm outside. But the furnaces were running, they’d all seen the thick plumes of smoke from the smokestacks, both on the roof and from the ground level. So the kitchen was harvesting some of the heat from the incinerators to use to cook the prisoners’ daily rations.

That made sense. There were a lot of prisoners. Every day was baking day at the Domitt Prison, obviously, too obviously to have to comment on it, except that Code didn’t smell any baking. Not that he was hungry. He’d had enough to eat at fast-meal just this morning to last him well into the week to follow, if need should be.

Baking day or no, the officer was satisfied with the preparations under way for the evening meal, the long rows of cold loaves set out, the ranks of soup-vats with their broths simmering. Code shrugged it off, following his officer and Belan through the kitchen to the back of the building where the wash-house was.

The officer wandered through the great cavernous vault of the communal showers, turning every ninth or fifteenth spigot on to test the temperature of the water. Not scalding, no, and it was not supposed to be. But adequately warm, to judge by the temperature of the mist and steam that the officer kicked up in passing.

The furnaces must be heating water for the communal showers as well, Code decided. He was glad that there was at least plenty of good hot water in the showers. Prisoners on work detail deserved a little comfort at the end of their day.

Pausing at the far end of the showers, the officer took a bit of toweling from the nearest stack of linen on the shelves to dab at his boots. Code appreciated the gesture on Koscuisko’s part, even though it wasn’t his week to see to that detail of the officer’s uniform. Water spots on boot-leather were to be avoided.

Looking around for the soiled linen hamper, Koscuisko caught Code’s eye, and smiled, a quick grin that demonstrated Koscuisko’s appreciation of just that fact. Code bowed, the only response expected or allowed in so public an environment. Which was to say, in the presence of another soul, beside Koscuisko and bond-involuntaries assigned.

Yet all the while he knew that there would be worse things to clean from Koscuisko’s uniform than mere water-spotting, in the days to come.

###

By the time they were finished touring the mess building there was a formation drawn up and waiting in the empty space behind the dispatch building, between the mess building to one side and the prison’s internal Security building on the other.

Approaching on foot, Andrej suffered himself to be led through the ranks and have shift and section leaders introduced to him. Standard procedure, of a sort; and very proper, too. It was in everyone’s best interest that prison staff know what ranking officers looked like.

Once through the formation, Belan, joined by the prison’s senior Security officers, escorted him to the Security building for a tour of the prison’s receiving area. This was where statements were taken and decisions made about release to the general prison population or referral to the Inquisitor for questioning.

There was a smell here that Andrej knew, the familiar stink of blood and terror, agony and abuse. But it was no longer fresh. If there had been violations committed it had been days since the last of them, and now that the prison had a Writ on site there would be no need for prison security to overstep their bounds. No sense in making any fuss about something that was no longer an issue.

At the back of the building Andrej found the holding area, where breaches of internal discipline could be evaluated and corrected.

Punishment block.

When people were in prison it was difficult to get their attention, because simply locking them up wasn’t much different from not disciplining them at all. Cells were shared, though, and the need for companionship was powerful; isolation could be an effective form of punishment. That was why there were blind confinement cells in punishment block.

Andrej looked into an empty cell, because it seemed to be expected of him. There were as many cells occupied as unoccupied; and at the end of the row of isolation cells he could see three or four square latched hatches cut at floor level, not very high, and a screened opening above each one near to the ceiling.

“Whatever are these for?” he asked Belan, who stood with the shift supervisor in charge of conducting this portion of the tour. They might be storage hoppers of some sort, he supposed. But what would storage hoppers be doing in punishment block?

“Er. Ahem. Lockboxes, your Excellency.” The shift supervisor sounded a little diffident. Perhaps a little uncomfortable. “For prisoners with self-discipline problems, sir. They go in through there.”

Lockboxes?

People crawled in, through those latched hatches in the wall?

“I’d like to see one.” Something in the idea tickled Andrej’s fancy. Crawling, through a confined space. “They don’t seem to open, or am I mistaken?” If a man had a fear of enclosed spaces, it would be difficult to do.

Part of him liked it to be difficult.

“Indeed not, your Excellency,”
the shift supervisor — Thamis — confirmed, readily. “If you’d care to have a look, though. We’ll fetch a stool. Only one occupied at present, sir.”

Someone was in one of those?

Oh, better and better.

One short moment, and someone came running with a stool to place it in front of a particular grate on Thamis’s direction. Andrej stepped up onto the stool to peer through the grate, realizing after a moment that he had to open a blinder-shutter in order to do so. The moment that he did, however, someone inside screamed; and did not stop.

“Please, please, don’t. I won’t. Not ever, not again. Ever. Please. I can’t bear it, oh, oh, please.”

Andrej stepped down.

It was hard to get a good look into the box with someone in it taking up space, soaking up the light. He could move the stool and look in another room, an empty room.

Or he could gratify a growing curiosity.

“Shall I?” he asked Belan, with a nod toward the trap near the floor. “I must admit. I would like to see how it is done, to get in and out of such a place.”

Belan and Thamis exchanged glances; then Thamis shrugged, good-naturedly. “I’m sure our Lerriback has learned his lesson, Administrator,”
Thamis said. “We’ll let him out for your inspection, sir. Just don’t expect the prisoner to show due respect. This is the third time this week he’s been confined, he won’t learn manners on work-detail.”

Thamis came forward as he spoke to unbar the catch securing the little hatch at floor level, and pull it open with the toe of his boot. “Come along, you dirty little Nurail beggar,”
Thamis called; his voice was more genial than his words, perhaps out of respect for Andrej’s presence. “Out.”

Wriggling with convulsive spasms that might have been funny, the man named Lerriback scrambled out, sliding on his rump into the corridor to huddle against the far wall and lie there trembling.