The Eternal Prison (6 page)

 

“You sure it’s a good idea to be walking around?” he said in a low whisper. Victor whispered everything. He figured that by whispering and not looking at anything directly, he was sort of invisible—and the strange thing was, it seemed to work. Victor knew everything, because people forgot he was there and talked in front of him. “Word is you’re a dead man. Word is, you popped someone high up on the ladder, and the whole fucking organization has your DNA in their handhelds.”

 

I shrugged. “I have friends, too.”

 

He snorted derisively. Vic was shorter than me, but his torso was wider and deeper, and he lacked a neck. He was just naturally burly. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Vic’s first choice of self-defense was to run away and find a nice Dumpster to hide in, but he
looked
tough, and most people didn’t mess with him. “I don’t have your friends, man—why come here and make me be seen with you? The fucking Ivans sometimes get crazy ideas.”

 

My hands twitched at my sides, but I forced myself to be calm. I wanted badly to grab Victor’s nose and remind him what our working relationship was, but I needed Victor’s goodwill. I was on the Russians’ shitlist, and Victor was one of the few people who hadn’t just walked in the other direction when I’d shown up.

 

“I need a loan, Vic,” I said simply, trying to sound casual. “I need to get out of this shithole.”

 

Vic snorted again. “You’re loaded, man. I’ve seen your credit.”

 

I nodded, keeping my face a mask of good humor, everything pleasant. “No one wants my credit next to their name, Vic. I’ve been blackballed. Someone sells me a seat on a hover out of here, next week
they’re
being tuned up. I need insulation.”

 

Vic’s head was aimed toward the cracked, baking sidewalk. I was wearing my suit, stifling, so hot I was like an oven at night, radiating the day’s heat I’d absorbed. Vic was in a lightweight shirt that gave you a misty view of his hairy, blubbery chest and belly, and a pair of loose dark pants that had been cut off above the knees unevenly. He was a hairy man, coarse dark hair overflowing every part of him, and looking at him made me itch. His eyes flicked this way and that, and when he responded, he didn’t look at me or move his lips, pretending to ignore me.

 

“So
I’ll
end up getting tuned up.”

 

I shook my head. “Cover your tracks.”

 

“Shit, the Ivans hear you’ve skipped town, they’ll just find out everyone who bought a fucking trip out of the desert recently and have a chat with each of us.”

 

I nodded, keeping my cheerful mask in place even though he hadn’t looked at me. “I’m laying off the risk for you, so stop worrying.”

 

What the fuck. It was only yen. It cost 200 yen for a cup of coffee these days. I braced myself for his price while he considered, chewing his lip and pretending to read the strip-club ads pasted on the plywood wall between us and a deep, ragged pit where a building or buildings had once stood.

 

“Three and a half, then,” Vic finally said, flinching away from an imagined blow.

 

I clenched my teeth and counted three. “Three and a half,” I said slowly, stopping and letting him twitch a few feet ahead of me, “is fucking
murder,
Vic, and you know it. You’re gonna step on my balls, Vic? I’m in a jam, and you’re gonna charge me three and a fucking
half?
”

 

He flinched again, even though my hands were still in my pants pockets. I’d known Vic as long as I’d been banging around Vegas, ever since I’d crawled out of the desert mostly dead and burned to a crisp, my yen—linked to me by fingerprint scan no matter what else happened—the only thing that kept me alive. I’d twisted Vic’s nose a few times, so I didn’t blame him for acting like I was a live grenade next to him.

 

“Three, okay?” He turned away from me suddenly and stared at the ancient wall. “Come on—you’re making me a fucking target if I help you out. I’ve got to —”

 

We both stopped as hover displacement boiled up around us, like someone had turned a knob. We both twisted around to look over our shoulders and squint into the blast of hot air sent our way by the shiny silver hover—a small, compact model with military markings—that was sinking down into the street. The people on the sidewalks didn’t run or even look particularly concerned; they just watched blandly.

 

“Looks like you got a free ride, huh?” Vic said.

 

I nodded without looking at him. “Okay, Vic,” I said, turning to face the hover as it settled onto the street. “We’ll finish this up later.”

 

I glanced over my shoulder, but he was already gone, ten steps away from me and hustling, head down and eyes everywhere. I watched the hover come to grips with gravity, settling into an impressive hold about one foot off the street, the ground under me vibrating with a rapid, subtle rhythm. The three massive turrets mounted on the hover’s chassis were aimed at me, each one firing an armor-piercing shell about the size of my fist. I decided not to move. For a few moments it was a still life, me standing there and the hover just floating a few feet away, and then it slowly set itself on the street, neat as a pin, impressive flying. There was an electric sizzle in the air and a curt, electronically filtered voice boomed out in a low, reasonable volume that pinned my ears back against my skull.

 

“Approach the vehicle,” it suggested.

 

I sighed, looking around. As I walked over to the hover, I shook out a cigarette and put it in my mouth. I had the lighter in my hand when the hatch slid out and up, revealing a tiny cabin, big enough for maybe three or four people if they didn’t mind touching knees. In the tiny cockpit, separated from the cabin by a half wall, there were two men in the bright white uniforms of the shiny new System of Federated Nations Army. They looked like twins with their shaved heads, big mirrored sunglasses, and humorless expressions. You couldn’t tell by looking at them, but they were both Augmented to the hilt—night vision retinal grafts, ultrasonic auditory implants, bone-strengthening DNA treatments, Sleep-Deprivation Neuron Stimulators—shit, they were more gadget than human. The SFNA spared no expense, but they’d had to get up and running fast, and they’d skipped training in favor of the best Augments yen could buy, even though almost all those Augments were still illegal for regular citizens.

 

I leaned in and lit my cigarette, putting one hand on the hull for balance. You couldn’t afford to look weak, especially when every other person you saw on the street was probably plotting to kill you for reward money. “What can I do for you, buddy?” I said with a puff of smoke.

 

The copilot turned his head toward me for a moment, held those mirrors on me, and then looked straight ahead again. “Ruberto,” he said tonelessly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. Sometimes I actually preferred the psionic whiz kids who made up the high bureaucracy of the civilian government. The Spooks were creepy with their ability to Push you into doing things or lift you off your feet with just a thought, but at least they weren’t half-robot and crammed full of designer DNA.

 

I took my cigarette from my mouth and squinted down at it. I didn’t have any choice, of course; Ruberto was sitting on top of the pyramid these days, and the turrets, I reminded myself, fired shells that would turn me into something resembling powdered milk. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to resist—I needed out of Vegas, and here was the safest ride you could get.

 

Taking a deep drag from my cigarette, I flicked the butt into the air and swung myself into the rear of the cabin. “He have you flying all over the goddamn city this morning looking for me?” I said with a grin. Neither one responded. The hatch slid shut with a hiss of pressurization, and the hover immediately powered on, lurching up into the air.

 

I settled back in my seat and studied the symmetrical backs of their heads, a hole opening in my stomach as we rose into the air and then the slight push backward as the little hover leaped forward, cutting through the overheated air. It was cool inside the cabin, and I was about as safe as it got as long as we didn’t cross paths with any cops. The whole System was a patchwork of authority now, with things shifting slowly one way or another. New York had changed hands five or six times in the last year, from what I’d heard.

 

Ruberto was Undersecretary for the North American Department, of course, which was a lot of territory, but the front line in this hemisphere was pretty much Mexico and the Southwest, so he’d set up camp near Vegas, out in the desert. It was a short, quiet flight, and when my two new friends wordlessly opened the hatch again, we were on the roof of Ruberto’s temporary Southwest headquarters, a six-story building in the center of a Second Army encampment, powered by sixteen generators. It was airtight, climate controlled, earthquake resistant, and rumors said it had been built with walls thick enough to withstand a direct missile hit or two. They’d built it in six weeks, prefab.

 

I pulled myself out and stood on the roof for a moment, looking down at the camp, ringed by a tall chain-link fence. Ten thousand troops, divided among armored units and hover squads, all at Ruberto’s command. The camp went on and on, tiny people moving this way and that. I lit a fresh cigarette and contemplated having the power to just summon something like this out of thin air. Two years ago when I’d been scooped up and sent to Chengara, there hadn’t
been
a System Army—Earth was unified, after all. Ruberto and his fellow Undersecretaries waved their hands, and here the army was, as if it had always been.

 

I headed for the elevator, where a broad-shouldered black man with shiny, curly hair stood stiffly in a decent gray suit, deep sweat stains the only sign that he must have been suffering. I nodded at him, but he ignored me, gesturing the elevator doors closed and then just standing there with his big hands folded at his groin. We rode it down one floor in companionable silence. I studied him, and he studied the opposite wall of the cab, both of us sweating freely in the heavy air it had brought down from the roof, and when the doors split open again, admitting a blast of frozen air, I simply stepped into the foyer without a word.

 

Two soldiers with gleaming, polished sidearms stood on either side of the formidable-looking black door. They didn’t look at me or appear to move at all, even to breathe. I didn’t waste any time playing with them—I knew from experience there was nothing I could do to them that would get a reaction. I just blew smoke around and stepped up to the fingerprint scanner bolted in next to the door and jabbed my thumb onto it. After a moment it lit up green, and the door clicked open. I pushed it open just enough to slip through it.

 

It was frigid and white beyond the door, holographic projectors making the office appear to be snowbound, huge drifts of snow blown gently around by the wind. Springing up in the midst of this winter scene was a long white bar, without stools, that stretched off to my left, ruining the illusion. The wall across from me was a huge window, floor to ceiling, in front of which sat the only furniture in the room, a massive dark wooden desk, a plush-looking black leather chair gleaming behind it. Two deep upholstered chairs faced this, the sort of chairs you sank down into and never escaped. The sort of chairs you got killed in, struggling halfway up out of the pit before they got the wire around your neck, the knife into your belly, the gun against your skull.

 

There was no one else in the room. There was one other door off to the right of the desk, and I could hear water running. Ruberto loved his water. He had it hovered in every day from up north and used most of it in the fucking bathroom. Feeling gritty and suddenly chilled in the crank air, I reached over the bar and retrieved a bottle at random and one of Ruberto’s cube glasses, the glass thick and custom cut. I poured a few fingers of something brown into the glass and turned to lean back against the bar, swirling my drink around and enjoying the scene. If you stayed still and just used your eyes, the trick was pretty good.

 

The door opened, admitting a thick cloud of steam into the room, and then the Undersecretary himself emerged, a tall black man with a round head shaved close, his feet emerging from beneath a thick, white robe at a sharp angle to each other, duck feet. He was rubbing his head with an equally bright white towel, his belly jiggling impressively. I could smell him from where I was, like he was perfumed. The bit of chest exposed by the robe was puckered and scarred, an old wound that looked like it had taken years to heal completely.

 

“Ah,” he boomed, his voice deep, like it was coming up from the floor, like lava. “Good. I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

 

I pushed off from the bar as he headed for his desk. “I see you’re still a fat fuck.”

 

He laughed. Cal Ruberto’s laugh started in his belly and erupted upward until he threw his head back and let it burst out of him, his whole body shaking. He tossed the towel onto the desk and dropped heavily into the plush chair, sweeping his arm at the chairs across from him by way of invitation. I ignored him and sipped my drink: rum, it turned out.

 

“I enjoy that sort of ribbing,” the Undersecretary said, patting his midsection. “Keeps me honest. I started out in the force, did you know that? The SSF. I didn’t do well and mustered out. At any rate, I got quite used to friendly abuse. Police are a rough sort.” He glanced up at me. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, is there some sort of Gunner’s code that you can’t sit down?”

 

I shrugged, swirling my drink like I’d seen some of the swells in Vegas do it. “You going to tell me everyone who’s come into this office has walked out?”

 

His smile thinned out, and he leaned back, lacing his fingers across his stomach. “Someday we will have to teach you how to behave, my friend.”

 

I winked. “If I behaved, I wouldn’t be useful to you. Thanks for getting me out of Vegas.”

 

He looked down at his desk and began gesturing busily, the surface glowing softly with awakened data streams. “I didn’t do you any favors. I have a new assignment for you.”