Red Cells

THIRTEEN: VISITATION

Klaus, the chief of maintenance, contacted Assistant Warden Conant on his wrist comp when he couldn’t get through to Warden Cirvik. After being apprised of the warden’s death, the maintenance chief said, “Oh my God. Well, sir, I wanted to tell the warden that I still can’t bring up the power to full. Ironically, there are firewalls up that were installed as an antiterrorist safeguard, so an enemy couldn’t gain access to our power systems. They’re seeing me as the enemy, so I haven’t got around those firewalls yet. But anyway, on my monitors I noticed some funny activity going on in the chapel. I sent a tech down there to look into it in person and… well, he said some scary stuff is going on in there.”

“What scary stuff?” Conant asked, peering down at his wrist comp’s tiny screen.

“Jesus was talking to him.”

Conant looked up at the others gathered close, and Ploss said, “I’m going there to have a look myself.”

“Let me come with you,” Stake said.

“Why? You should be back in your cell, I think.”

“I’m trying to help you out here, isn’t that plain? I saved your man Flaquita’s life, didn’t I? If this thing is a collective working together, then we need to do the same.”

“What’s in it for you, dick? No one’s paying your fee.”

“I could be paying soon with my life. All of us might.”

The Choom security chief nodded slowly. “All right, whatever you say, war hero – let’s go.”

The Trans-Paxton Penitentiary’s chapel was a single room, not very large, close to the prison’s recreation yard. Just as in the rec yard, every wall – but also the ceiling and floor – was a vid screen. Depending on a schedule, dictated by a relevant day of the week or time of day, the chapel’s screens could be changed to transform it into a Christian church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a place of worship for any number of nonhuman races.

When its door slid open and Security Chief Ploss, the guard named Hurley, and Stake stood at the room’s threshold, they found that currently it was in the semblance of the Sistine Chapel in miniature. The ceiling, featuring Michelangelo’s paintings God’s Creation of the World, God’s Relationship with Mankind, and Mankind’s Fall from God’s Grace, gave the illusion of being vaulted. Along with this artist’s The Last Judgment there were frescoes by other artists such as Botticelli, and mock windows along the walls, and the floor was mock tiled in marble and colored stone. The men stepped into the room with wariness more than reverence. The few rows of pews were all empty. The maintenance tech had fled long before they’d got there.

“Hello?” Stake called out. His voice echoed a bit. “Are you in here?”

A flicker of static interrupted the image all around them, above them, under their feet, and then in an instant a new reality had seemed to solidify. They felt they had been teleported, for now they stood in a Buddhist temple. There was much red and gold, gold dragons entwined around red support columns. Joss sticks, without truly giving off incense, appeared to smolder in the urns of sand into which they were poked. At the front of the room, beyond the pews, a huge gilded figure of Buddha sat on a blooming lotus, his ears long-lobed, eyes closed, smiling serenely. And then, without his eyes opening, Buddha’s lips moved.

Buddha’s voice was uninflected, crackling and a bit garbled as he said, “Where is the Director?”

“The who?” Ploss said.

“He’s dead,” Stake spoke up. “He tried to kill me and one of his own men. You have to understand… the Director as you call him, Warden Cirvik, was not a good man. He didn’t have anyone’s best interest in mind. Not the prisoners, not his own staff, and not you. He was not truly helping you. He was not your friend.”

“Not truly helping us,” Buddha echoed in his dead, static-distorted voice. “Not our friend.”

“He forced us to kill him. We had no choice. But now that he’s out of the way, the rest of us want to help you for real… help you somehow. None of us mean you any harm.”

“Harm,” Buddha said. “You harmed us. That unit.” One of Buddha’s golden arms lifted from his lap, and still without opening his eyes he pointed to Hurley. The guard who had fired upon the skeletal apparition that had killed the Dacvibese prisoner in Stake’s cell.

“Hey, you killed one of our prisoners!” Hurley protested. “You’ve killed a bunch of our prisoners!”

Another burst of static, and the scene again changed, this time to a more humble Christian church with stained glass windows and at the front of the room, a life-sized statue of Christ upon the cross. But though his head rested forward with his eyes closed, he had already pulled one arm free and it was pointing to Hurley as Buddha had done.

“Give us this unit,” said Christ in that same emotionless voice, the voice of the chapel’s computer system.

“What?” said Hurley. He put his hand to his holstered gun, but Stake quickly laid his own hand over the guard’s wrist.

“No,” Ploss said. “We won’t do that! We won’t give you people to kill like Cirvik did.”

“We are angry,” Jesus said.

“So are we!” Ploss replied.

“We are angry,” the statue repeated, its pointing arm unwavering.

Stake eased Hurley’s hand away from his sidearm, whispering, “What are you going to do, kill a vid of Jesus?” Then, addressing the image of the crucified Christ again, he said, “There has to be a way out of this situation where nobody gets hurt any more. Not us, and not you. But you have to let us have our power back! You have to let us call home to our leaders so they can figure out a way to help you. We can’t do it on our own. You have to stop blocking our communications!”

In a blink, their surroundings were once more replaced. This time the men stood inside a gigantic metal head, one of the massive iron busts of the Choom god Raloom. Before them stood a white stone statue of Raloom’s wife, Lupool, her wide Choom smile benevolent. But she too was pointing one slender arm at Hurley, and despite her gentle smile, when her lips moved she said, “Your leaders would destroy us. Destroy us to protect this place.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Ploss snarled, trying to look sturdy, but Stake could tell the Choom was quivering with bottled up fear and rage of his own. “We can get them to sympathize with you if you will just… stop… killing… our prisoners!”

“Whatever he might have promised you,” Stake said, “Cirvik never tried to find a way to release you. He was only appeasing you one sacrifice at a time. Let us call our home office. I’m sure they’ll listen and can let you out of this pocket one way or another, even if they have to ferry all of you out in our transport pods!”

“The Director warned us about this unit.” Lupool shifted her alabaster arm. Now she pointed at Stake, as if she recognized him at last. “The Director warned us that you would tell your leaders to come here and kill us.”

“He only wanted to get you to kill me so I wouldn’t find out what was going on.”

“You would find out… and tell your leaders…”

“But our leaders are the only ones who can help you!”

“Lies… you are trying to trick us…”

“It was Cirvik who was the liar,” Stake told the ghost-like statue, “not us!”

Under his breath Ploss said, “I ought to give you to the thing to calm it down, make it back off and restore power.”

Stake looked at the man sharply. “You had better be kidding me, Ploss.”

The looming security chief glared at him. “What if I’m not? I have to think of the greater good.”

“There’s nothing good about sacrificing people to these things!”

“Chief,” Hurley said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

Ploss switched his glare to his underling, but said, “Back down, Hurley – I was only speaking hypothetically.”

“You aren’t like Cirvik,” Stake said, “I know you’re not. And neither is Conant. More sacrifices isn’t the answer. We have to keep reasoning with them. That’s why they’re speaking through the chapel right now. However angry they are, they’re fighting to be rational.”

Lupool suddenly snapped her head to one side, as if she had detected a sound the men couldn’t hear. In a flash the interior of Raloom’s head reverted to the Buddhist temple, Buddha seated on his lotus flower with his head turned to the side in the same way. Then static, and back to the Christian church, Jesus with his head turned in the same direction and his eyes now staring open.

Ploss’s wrist comp beeped and he lifted his arm to answer it. Over the Choom’s shoulder, Stake saw the prison’s head of maintenance systems, Klaus, smiling on the wrist comp’s screen as he announced, “I just called Conant, chief. Good news: I overrode the firewalls, and put up new ones of my own. Full power restored. Better than that, I’ve cleared communications. Conant is sending out a distress signal right now… help will be on the way. Colonial Forcers, and more pods to evac the prisoners if need be.”

“Shit,” Stake muttered.

“Good thing you kept the monster distracted in the chapel, guys.”

Jesus threw back his head then, his mouth elongated in a howl, but the three men only heard an ear-piercing screech like feedback. And then the vidscreen walls, floor and ceiling of the chapel turned entirely to grainy, hissing snow.