One Way

2

It had taken all day. Ten hours in an unadapted minivan, with him sitting in the back seat, handcuffed but otherwise free to move around, just one man in with him to nominally drive—once out of the prison gates, the autopilot had dealt with most of that—and frequent stops for him to use the restroom or just stretch his legs, and be asked what he wanted to eat.

Tosh, the driver, wasn’t even armed. He was just a guy who punched buttons on the dash and sat behind the wheel in case something happened that the car couldn’t cope with. Most states had done away with that requirement. Not California.

The men in the other two cars were armed, though. The black SUVs went in front and behind in a linked convoy, always pulling in and driving off in a synchronized ballet of speed and direction. Tosh had warned him that if Frank had it in mind to jump him and try to redirect the car, he’d be rammed off the road, dragged out, and unceremoniously shot in a ditch. Otherwise, Tosh was good enough company. He knew when to speak, and he knew when to shut up.

Once they’d left the prison behind and crossed the bay on the snaking, uppy-downy Richmond Bridge, they’d headed east, into the mountains, where there was still snow piled up by the sides of the roads from plowing. The blue sky of the coast, with its salt smell and warm breezes, was exchanged for low cloud and a gaspy, blustering wind.

Frank watched the landscape slip by. The cars, the houses, the side-roads—especially those, because he was left perpetually wondering what lay along them. He’d never know. This was the free world, just outside the tinted windows of the minivan. He could reach up and open the door and throw himself out into it. Or, if the van had central locking, his window was electric and he had the controls; he could probably squeeze through it, though he’d end up head first over the roadway. If he’d wanted to kill himself, there’d been opportunities before, and he hadn’t taken them. No reason to get fixated on it now. Plus, assuming he survived the fall, he’d be shot for his efforts.

And it was the built environment that held his attention, not the rolls and folds of the land. He was disappointed that not much had changed since he’d gone inside. He supposed it hadn’t been that long, objectively. It had just felt like it: prison had started as a novel experience, then had blurred into an endless rhythm of incarceration. Next to him on the seat was a brown cardboard box, containing the few items he’d salvaged from his former life that time, other prisoners and vindictive guards hadn’t whittled away. He didn’t open it on the journey, not once; he knew everything that was inside it. But he did touch it every so often to make sure it was still there.

The road had started to rise at Roseville, flattened out briefly at Reno, then wound its way along cold, high river beds between the ridges. The sky cleared once more, and long ribbons of cloud tore themselves out above the gray-brown earth. At some point, trees made a comeback, and the road tilted gently downwards.

The I-80 was bounded by extraordinary areas of just nothing, punctuated by places that appeared to have little reason to exist, except to serve the travelers along the road and the few people who lived in the hinterland.

And he was going—hoped to go, intended to go—to a place that, even with his presence, would be essentially uninhabited.

They stopped for the last time at a tiny rest area placed at the highest point on a pass. It was late in the afternoon, but the air was cold. Frank’s shirt wasn’t enough, and Tosh had simply draped his own coat over Frank’s shoulders before he escorted him to the john. The other two cars in their convoy had pulled over together, a little way away. A man stood by one of them, mirror shades glinting, watching them make their way towards the neat wooden building where the stalls were.

As before, Tosh didn’t go in with him, didn’t harass him to hurry or denigrate him in any way. While Frank went in and did his business, he just sat down on a white concrete wall outside and took in the scenery. There wasn’t much to look at: the road and its sparse traffic, the communications tower on one of the adjacent peaks. A narrow glimpse into the valley beyond and the valley behind. Drifts of shrinking white snow.

It wasn’t a taste of freedom. What Mark had told Frank all still held: no reprieve, no parole, no license. His cuffed wrists were an honest reminder of that. But he could get used to being treated like a human being once again. That wouldn’t grow old.

He washed his hands in the cold water, and splashed some on his face. His skin felt waxy, preserved, like he’d been dipped in chemicals. He scrubbed harder, using his nails, and it took effort to stop before he clawed himself raw. There were a lot of feelings hanging in the air around him. He’d better keep them in check, or he’d find himself heading back this way.

He dried his hands as best he could, and unlocked the door to the outside. Two of the men from the convoy were talking with Tosh, but the moment he emerged, they separated from him and stood well back.

Frank walked straight back to the minivan and leaned against it. Tosh, approaching, used his key fob to unlock the doors.

“Your friends seem to think I’m contagious,” said Frank.

“It’s SOP,” said Tosh. “Nothing personal. They figure if they’re far enough away, they can draw, aim and shoot in the time it takes for you to rush them.”

“You could just chain me, or fit me with a shock collar. That’d work too.”

“It’s also a lot more work for us. You’re a straight-up kind of guy. I trust you, at least as far as this is concerned anyway.” He opened the door for Frank, and lifted his coat off Frank’s back as he got in. He waited for him to be seated. “Less than an hour now.”

“Thanks, Tosh.”

“My pleasure.”

They started off again, the three vehicles falling into line, still on the I-80, but angling south-east. They crossed the flat land, and just as they were approaching the Utah state line, they left the freeway.

Then it was south, bordering the luminous salt flats, and up into yet another line of hills, going deeper into the wilderness.

Frank watched the scrubland slide past. The only indication that they were going somewhere was that the road was broad and smooth, freshly tarmacked and well maintained. This wasn’t some dirt track in the wilds, marked out by two tire tracks.

There was nothing outside but bleakness. That, it had by the spadeful. And just when it didn’t look like anyone but the damn fool roadlayers had ever headed that way before, they rounded a corner on a small town. Identikit prefab housing was stacked up in neat, ordered rows, and there were people out on the slush-colored concrete, walking between buildings. Lights were on in the small, square windows.

“Is this it?” asked Frank.

Tosh consulted the satnav. “Zero point two miles to go. So it looks that way. This is where I leave you. Where you end up is a different thing.”

The convoy drove into the town, and flawlessly came to a halt in front of an anonymous impermanent structure. No one got out.

Just as the journey had started with a single phone call—Tosh had it on speaker, so that Frank could just hear the word “acknowledged”—so it ended with a repeat. The driver dialed a number, and told the soft breathing at the other end they were at their destination. “Acknowledged,” was all that was said again in response.

Both SUVs stopped so close they effectively blocked the minivan in. People walked by, close enough to touch, men and women. Frank hadn’t seen that much of women the last few years. It was difficult for him to tell if his perception of them had been recalibrated, but rather than finding them all clichédly beautiful, he discovered from the few minutes he was waiting there that the more feminine they looked, the more alien they were to him.

Nothing stirred. Not even his emotions. He frowned at himself, and looked out of the other window, across the street. The population could be roughly divided in three: the suits, the casuals and the overalls. Assuming this was a company town, then the casuals would be off-shift. The overalls would, depending on the nature of the work, do one of as many as three shifts. And the suits? They’d have it easy, as those in suits usually did. Get up, go to work, come home, kick back.

So where did a bunch of astronauts fit into all that?

Frank was blue collar. Proudly, unashamedly blue collar. He guessed he’d be with the overalls. They were going to work him like a dog, getting him up to speed on all the stuff he needed to know. And all the other things they had to do in order to get that prison pallor off him. Food with actual nutrients in. Sunlight. Exercise other than lifting weights or doing circuits.

How long did it take to train an astronaut? A year, Mark had said. He didn’t know if that would be enough, even though he wouldn’t be doing any of the flying-the-spaceship heroics. For him, the actual astronaut bit would be, what? Zero gravity? Maintaining the electrical systems and the pipework? A spaceship was just a complicated, compact building, with a big motor at one end, right? Spacesuit wearing, too. Mars had an atmosphere, though the guys he’d seen on the prison television kicking up the red dust were all wearing spacesuits.

They wanted him for the skills he already possessed. Using machinery to build buildings. Frank told himself not to overthink it. See what the job was, work out a schedule, assign the team, get the work done. Pretty much what he’d done his entire adult life.

There was a knock on the window, right next to his head. He didn’t jump, just looked round to see a couple of men standing there, one in a suit, one in overalls.

“Have a nice life, Frank,” said Tosh. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” He got out and walked to the car in front.

He left the door open, and all the warm air stole out. Tosh was replaced in the driver’s seat by the suit, and the other man threw the side door open and joined Frank in the second row. The car in front pulled forward, and driving-suit twisted the wheel so they drove around it and on down the road, fully manual.

Frank looked sideways at the man sitting next to him. The cardboard box was between them, but suddenly that didn’t seem quite enough distance or quite enough of a barrier. He pushed with his feet so that his back was against the door. This man seemed to trigger all Frank’s fight—flight responses, and he didn’t understand why. He strove to remain calm, despite his skin itching like it was about to slough. The man continued to stare at him.

“Making you uncomfortable?” he finally said. His accent placed him to the south and east. Texas, maybe.

Frank was struggling with his comeback. The other cons had mostly left him alone: old guy, nothing to prove. When he had been threatened, he’d usually blown them off and walked away. In the back of a car, he could do neither.

He had to rethink, work out a strategy. He wasn’t used to that. “Is that what you want?”

The man blinked. Perhaps he couldn’t work out what that meant. He shifted his position, from ramrod straight to a just-as-threatening lean against the upholstery. “Get used to it. I’m here to make your life hell from now on.”

Frank swallowed. This guy was going for his ribs: in prison, he’d have had to respond somehow, let the other guy know he wasn’t going to be a pushover. But this wasn’t a fight he could settle with his fists and his feet.

Instead, he said: “Does that mean you’re my new cellie? You taking the top or the lower tray?”

The man was again confused by Frank’s reply. “I don’t think you quite get it, Kittridge. I’m in charge of you. Everything you say or do from now on, you say it in response to something I’ve said, you do it because I’ve ordered you to do it. I tell you when to get up and when to go to bed. I tell you when to start and when to stop. You understand me, Kittridge? I own you.”

“I thought the company owned me. And unless you own the company, maybe they own you too.”

The man clenched his fists and his jaw, working it as if he was chewing gum. “You giving me sass? You?”

Frank’s hands were cuffed, but if it came to a fight, he could still use them. The chain between them might even be useful as an improvised garrote.

He needed to calm that right down. That was prison Frank talking. He hadn’t always been prison Frank: he’d been someone else before, and he could go back to being that, if only he could remember how. The man was attempting to intimidate him, make him afraid, assert his authority, and the only entry in Frank’s ledger on the credit side was that they’d recruited him. They needed him. It had to mean he wasn’t going to get beaten, because who beats up an astronaut, right?

“Hey.” Frank raised his arms, bumped his wrists together with a clink. “You’re the boss.”

“And don’t you forget it.” The man unclenched his fists again, and continued to stare at Frank. “You want to go back to prison?”

Frank said nothing. It seemed like one of those questions that, whatever he answered, the response was already prepared, and designed to humiliate him.

The man leaned forward and straightened his finger like a gun at Frank’s head. “OK. Time for some truth, let you know what’ll happen if you crap out here, for any reason. Supermax. Pelican Bay. Security Housing Unit. You know what that is, don’t you, boy? For the rest of your sentence, you’ll never get to speak to another human being again. You’ll be buried. Do you understand?”

It took a moment for it to sink in. He wouldn’t be returning to his cell, to spend his life turning gray and desiccating like dust. He’d be in the SHU, the Hole, locked away out of sight and out of mind. The Hole sent men mad.

Frank stiffened in his seat. “That’s not the deal I signed.” He didn’t want to let his fury and terror slip out in his voice, but it did. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He’d been played and he was burning.

“That’s changed your tune, hasn’t it, Kittridge? That’s made you afraid of me. You remember that, now. When I tell you to jump, what do you say?”

His silence was all he had left. That and the Hole. The goddamn Hole.

“I asked you a question, Kittridge. When I ask you a question I require an answer, an instant answer, because I’m not asking twice.”

“How high?” said Frank, reluctantly, almost tearfully. Apparently, his decision to go to Mars, freely made, now left him on the precipice of a lifetime of solitary confinement. He wondered what would have happened if he’d turned Mark down in the first instance. Would he already be there, in a tiny, windowless cell, a ball of rage and regret knotting his insides?

He’d dodged that bullet. He had no way of knowing, no way of finding out, how many others they’d asked before him. Perhaps he was the last on the list. He might have been the first. Any feelings of being special, and somehow too valuable to kick to the curb, were gone.

His position was precarious. Yes, he’d remember that. And resent it. Always resent it.

His expression had slipped to briefly unmask his true horror. He tried to drag his impassivity back into place, but the damage had been done. The man had seen it all, and knew him now.

“Tell me you understand,” said the man.

Frank understood all too well. “Yeah. I got that.”

The man gave a giggle, and only belatedly tried to hide his smirk behind his hand. It was an act, nothing more, nothing less, even if the threat was real. Frank, who’d never really had much cause to hate anyone, even the man he’d shot, realized that he genuinely, viscerally hated this grinning malevolent idiot already.

“At least you won’t go forgetting.”

Frank was still churning inside. He’d never not be scared now, at least until he got on that rocket and was on his way to Mars. Then, and only then, would he be free of that particular threat.

He turned his head away, so he didn’t have to look at the man for a while. They drove around the side of the mountain peak. As the sun slipped westwards, the color leached away, and left a cold monochrome landscape.

The road went on, now turning southwards.

In the middle of precisely nowhere, a double fence barred their way. There were signs with dire warnings about dogs patrolling, of deadly force being used against trespassers, how secret the area was and how many violations an unauthorized person might clock up. But the fence was all that was needed, really. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet tall, topped with a coil of razor wire, and inside that, across a bare kill zone, another identical barrier. If anyone was looking for a hint, it was right there. This was where the world ended. Beyond was… there was nothing. No buildings, no people, just the single track.

They could do literally anything to Frank here, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The car rolled to a stop. “Out,” said the man.

He left the car without looking to see whether Frank would follow, presumably because he knew he would. Frank opened the door on his side, picked up his box, and stepped out. It was cool, rather than cold, but the air was dry and strangely thin and it tasted of salt and stone. The wind tugged at his shirt, swirling and directionless.

He pushed the door shut with his foot, and the moment it had closed, the car just reversed back up the road before executing a turn. As if it was afraid. The tail lights receded, and the headlights soon faded. They were left alone with the wire gate that rattled, singing and shivering in the desert breeze. A camera mounted on top of a pole, halfway across no-man’s-land, angled up, and whirred.

The first gate clacked and drew aside.

The man walked forward, and Frank trailed after him, looking backwards, clutching his box tight against his tightening chest. The gate behind them closed before the second gate opened in front. The wirework rattled.

This hadn’t been what he’d expected when he’d left Cali. Not welcomed with open arms, maybe. But not this. He’d been… he didn’t even know what the word was that described what had happened to him. Kidnapped didn’t cover it. Disappeared didn’t either.

Another vehicle was coming down the road, from the inside, to collect them. Dust rose from the tires and hung out the back like a silver cloud. It pulled up, and he was goaded in. They were driven away, further in, deeper and down.

Enslaved. That was it. He was their slave. They owned him, body and soul.

Frank clutched his small box of belongings. In the distance was the bright airglow of floodlights, growing closer.