16

There were many days in which Istvan did not say a word; days, too, when he had no real sense of who or even what he was. Very quickly, as the small gray man began to manipulate his body, drawing tool after tool out of the cabinets around him, Istvan found himself withdrawing deep inside, trying to reach a place where he would be safe, where he could watch what was happening to him but not feel it. Each time a technique would fail to get results, the small gray man would change the drugs or bring out a larger tool and he would begin to feel it again. He would burrow deeper, and deeper, until at last he had nowhere else to go. His body was awash with pain and suffering; he crouched there within it, on a tiny speck that was not free of pain exactly but better than everything around it. What his mouth was saying, what his body was saying, he had no idea. It was as if it was operating without him.

And each time he thought he couldn’t stand it any longer, each time he felt like he might lose himself for good, the pain abated just a little. The small gray man would stand back and wipe the sweat off his brow, his lab coat now spattered with blood, and give him a moment to breathe. And then Istvan would feel himself stepping tentatively from where he was crouched inside, slowly starting to occupy his body again. But this was a trick, for soon enough it would start all over again and he would be forced deep into his corner again.

And then one day—how many days into the flight Istvan had no way of knowing—something happened. A twinge of frustration passed ever so briefly over the gray man’s gray face and Istvan was not hidden deep enough within his body to keep his own face from smiling. The man’s face darkened and he started in on Istvan again, harder this time that he had before. Either the drugs or the instruments that the gray man was sticking into him made him feel like his body was covered with ants, then like his body was not a body at all but just a swarm of ants. He retreated from the pain, going back to where he’d been securing himself, where he’d been hiding, and then felt the pain follow him, coming closer and then touching him lightly. This time, though, instead of receding just on the verge of becoming unbearable, it kept coming. He felt his footing eroding away, slowly crumbling around him, and suddenly he was thrust fully against his own skin, exposed all at once to all the pain his body was feeling. He screamed, and struggled, and heard the gray man laugh, but then the pain was too much for him and everything went dark.

*   *   *

For a long time, he simply wasn’t there. When he did start to come back, it was at first as a mess of sensations with nothing to filter or connect them. Then slowly he began to feel like he had a vague shape and form, but that that form was on fire. He tried to move but found he couldn’t. Then the fire faded to a low dull ache and he imagined it as a form of ash. He was, he momentarily thought, now a shadow man, but then his shape and form became sharper, clearer, and he could feel he was human. He could feel, too, that he was lying down on his side, one side of him pressed against something cold, flat and hard. He tried to open his eyelids and succeeded in getting them to flutter, light strobing vaguely into his brain.

He rested a little and then tried again. This time his eyes came open and stayed open.

He was in a small room, a cell of some kind, lying on a concrete floor. The walls behind him and to either side were concrete; the wall in front of him was made of iron bars, the metal door standing ajar. Next to his face was the dented metal underside of a toilet, and, a little farther away, a cheap cot. For a moment he thought he was back in the cell he had been in before, just after he had shot the politician. But no, he remembered, that cell had had a metal door, not bars. This was new.

It took him a while to pull himself up to his feet. He was weak, his muscles not at all like he remembered them, atrophied perhaps. It took some getting used to. Maybe they had changed his body, made him an inside voice and taken his body away and then given him a new one. How long had he been like this? Months? Days, maybe? He had blacked out before, it used to happen to him all the time when he was younger, but he had always woken up feeling pretty much like he had felt to begin with. This was new. This was different.

He stood there swaying, staring at the open cell door, and then went through it and out. It led into a slightly curving hall, lined on one side with cells, the other side a smooth metal wall broken at one point by a steel security door. If he followed the curve around, he suspected it would go on forever. All of the cells had their doors open. Most of them were empty, but in one a heavily tattooed man sat on the bed, legs crossed at the ankles, reading. In another a few cells down, a rail-thin man was doing push-ups. They were both dressed the same, pants and simple shirts with a number stamped on the sleeve and a name over the pocket, and he realized he was dressed the same way. Both of them looked up as he shuffled past, curious for just an instant before their eyes returned to what they were doing.

He was muttering he realized, and giving little strangled cries. He made a conscious effort to try to stop, and did for a moment, but before he knew it he had started up again.

He followed the hall around until there was a break in the cells, and an opening. Tentatively he went through it, found it gave onto a large open space surmounted by a dome. It was perhaps forty meters in diameter. Tables with built-in benches were scattered here and there, as well as a few vid screens. At the tables were seated several dozen men, all of them eating. He stood there watching, still mumbling, until one of them noticed him, a thick-lipped man with a scraggly beard.

“Madman’s awake,” the man said, shaking the shoulder of the man next to him. “Won’t have to be force-fed today.” He leaned to look at a man farther down the table. “That means you’re out of a job, Bill.”

Ambler, William it read over his pocket. He grunted. “Fine by me,” he said.

“Where am I?” Istvan said.

“Where are you?” said the first man. “You’re in hell, friend. Welcome.”

“Hell?”

“Last stop for all political prisoners,” he said. He stood up, came over to Istvan. “Only way to get out of here is to die. What’s your name?”

“Istvan Sato.”

“James Waldron,” said the man, holding out his hand. Istvan stared at it, waiting to see what it would do. It took him a moment to realize that Waldron intended for him to shake it. “Hungry?” Waldron asked once he did. When Istvan nodded, he led him over to a console set in the floor in the middle of the tables and showed him how to automatically dispense a meal. Once he had his food, he held Istvan’s arm and directed him back to the table, the other men scooting down to make room for him.

Istvan at first ate with vigor. “Don’t overdo it,” said Waldron. “That’s your first solid meal in days.” Istvan nodded, slowed down. A moment later he was glad he had: the little he had eaten weighed heavily in his stomach. He pushed the tray back a little. Waldron and the others were watching him.

“Where am I?” he asked again. “What am I doing here?”

“I already told you, it’s hell,” said Waldron.

“It’s a penal colony,” spoke up Bill, from the other end of the table.

“A penal colony?”

“For political prisoners,” said Bill. “People that will never get out of the system and that they’re not prepared to have killed. At least not yet. James is right: this is the end of the line. You’ll be here until you die.”

Istvan tried to take it in. Was all this real? What had happened between the gray man torturing him and this moment? His body had been present but somehow he himself had not. Where, then, had he been?

“So, what did you do?” asked another man, clean-shaven and with a haircut.

“Do?” asked Istvan.

“To get here,” said the man. “You must have done something.”

“Oh,” said Istvan. “Yes. Shot someone. A politician giving a speech.”

“That’s a hell of a way to express your disagreement with someone’s political views,” said Bill.

“I don’t know what his political views were,” said Istvan. “I’m not quite sure why I shot him.”

The others stared at him for a moment. “But you’re a political prisoner,” said one of them. “Don’t you have a cause?”

“I don’t know,” said Istvan.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I think there might have been some kind of mistake. It was supposed to be a funny joke.…”

“What’s funny about it?” asked Bill.

Istvan stared at him, didn’t seem to know how to respond. “It sounds like you were a patsy,” said Waldron. “A pawn. A fall guy. Somebody wanted the man dead and figured they’d trick you into doing it.”

Istvan hesitated, then shrugged.

“But now you’re here,” said Waldron.

“Too late for explanations,” said Bill.

“What?”

“Bill’s right,” said the man who had originally asked him what he’d done. He held out his hand. Again, it took Istvan a moment to realize that he was expected to shake it. “Michael Stewart,” he said. “Once you’re here, there’s no talking your way out of it. Whether it’s a mistake or not, this is where you’ll die.”

“Where’s here?” asked Istvan again.

“We don’t know,” said Michael. “Somewhere off the beaten track. Some desolate planet out in the middle of nowhere that nobody is likely to accidentally stumble onto.”

“The guards and technicians probably know,” claimed Bill, “but maybe they don’t, either. We hardly see them anyway.”

Istvan looked around for the guards and technicians. He didn’t see any, unless they were disguised. He looked suspiciously at the men around him. Were they guards? Were they technicians?

“You know where the cells are?” asked Waldron. Istvan hesitated, nodded. Waldron dipped his spoon in the gravy left on his plate, used it to trace a circle in the plate’s center.

“Here’s where we are,” he said. “Right now. This is where we eat, we can walk or talk or play cards here most of the day.” He drew a circle around the circle. “This is the corridor for the cells. That’s where we go at night.” He dipped the spoon again, drew a further circle around this. “The guards and technicians and anybody not a prisoner is out here. It may not look exactly like that—hard to say. They watch us through cameras hidden in the cells and on the struts of the dome. None of us really knows how many guards and technicians there are. Maybe just a few, maybe a lot. We hardly ever see them. When we do, they’re in riot gear and we can’t see their faces. If it’s really as isolated a location as Michael thinks, they’re almost as much prisoners as we are.” He licked the spoon clean, smiled. “That’s all we know.”

Istvan waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, he asked, “What is the spoon?”

“The spoon?” said Waldron, surprised. He stared at it. “The spoon’s nothing. What’s wrong with you?”

Istvan nodded. Yes, now he understood, the spoon was nothing. “How do we get out?” he asked.

Waldron’s smile faded. “We don’t get out,” he said. “Haven’t you been listening?”

“There must be a way out.”

“Only dead.”

“We could use the spoon to overpower the guards, take over.”

“Forget the spoon. Haven’t you been listening?” said Michael. “The guards are probably nearly as much prisoners as we are.”

Bill nodded vigorously. “So we take over the outer ring, assuming that’s what it is. Then what? Where do we go from there?”

“Out,” said Istvan. His head was beginning to throb.

“There is no out,” said Bill. “We’re on a planet without a breathable atmosphere. Outside of the rings of the colony is death.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” said Waldron.

“No, we don’t,” said Bill. “But we’re certain enough. Why would there be a dome otherwise?”

“Maybe the dome’s a trick,” said Waldron, “to make us think we’re on a planet with nonbreathable air.” But the way he said it made it clear that it wasn’t something he really believed.

There was, Istvan noticed staring down at his feet, something near the base of the table leg. A little something that looked plantlike at first, but strangely tentacular as well, a kind of weird mold or something. He prodded it with his boot. For a moment he thought he was imagining it, seeing something that nobody else could see, but then realized Bill was watching him.

“Don’t worry about that,” Bill said. “It’s everywhere. It doesn’t seem to be harmful, but when we try cleaning it up, it just keeps coming back.”

Everywhere, he thought, everywhere. He looked around, and yes, there it was a little bit here, a little bit there.

Suddenly Istvan clutched his head. There was something wrong with it, like a tone or sound going off somewhere within it, but in a way that flattened everything. Next to him Waldron was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it, could only see his lips move, no sound coming out. And then he was lying flat on his back on the floor, staring up at the dome. Something was strange within his vision, shadows darting back and forth before his eyes where no shadows should be. A roaring in his ears, inarticulate but yet somehow still human, still sentient. And then, suddenly, nothing.