Red Cells

FOUR: PROPOSITIONS

For a number of hours each day the red-tinted energy barriers that sealed the prisoners in their cells, in place of bars, were deactivated to give the men a period of free movement. So it was that as Stake reclined on his bunk in his second-floor cell in Red Block – watching a movie on the VT screen set into one wall – three visitors appeared in the open doorway. Fetch, and the two youths known as the Tin Town Maniacs, all three of them in orange uniforms. “Hey, Jeremy,” Fetch said.

Stake was sure it was no accident they’d come at a time when his two cellmates – one a black human named Kofi, the other a skeletal, dog-like Dacvibese – were out of the cell stretching their legs and jaws.

“I see you’ve reverted,” Fetch went on when Stake said nothing.

It was true. No longer poring over the holograph of Fetch he carried on his forearm, Stake had reassumed what he referred to as his “factory settings.” Stake’s natural hair color was dark, so there was no change there, but his skin tone was now slightly darker than Fetch’s. He’d shaved off the goatee he’d grown to imitate his client, too. Yet more importantly, his face had lost its hard definitions. If Fetch hadn’t known better, he would have thought Stake’s visage was still in flux, its transformation as yet incomplete. It was the mutant’s normal condition, however, to look vaguely unfinished.

“What can I do for you, Ed? You aren’t going to ask me for the money back, I hope.”

“Of course not! I’m the one who fucked up, right? But hopefully you’ll get a lighter sentence now. You talk to a lawyer yet?”

“Yeah. He’s not sure what I’ll get, but he’s guessing they might stick with the six months.”

“Lucky you. Clean record and all. Me, I don’t even want to think about what I’m going to get.”

“Not as much as us,” one of the Maniacs observed with a sneer.

“No, Jeremy,” Fetch said, “I’m not here to talk about money. I’m just hoping when you go on trial, you don’t get too detailed about me. You don’t need to say you knew I was dealing vortex. After all, did you ever see me selling an illegal substance? No, you didn’t. I just had that vortex for my own use. I’m going to fight my charges in any way I can, Jeremy, so I’d appreciate it if you don’t make me look bad.”

“Just like you didn’t make me look bad with Cirvik?”

“Hey, what could I do at that point? They had you, and they had me, and I needed to explain why there was another Edwin Fetch. No need to be bitter, man – like I say, you might get out of here with less time, now, while still keeping that twenty thousand.”

“But remember what Ed says,” warned the Maniac with blond hair cut in bangs like a little boy, pointing a finger at Stake’s face as if aiming a gun barrel. “Just watch your mouth, okay?”

“Kid,” Stake said, “you point that finger somewhere else before I bite it off.”

The youth chortled in delight. “Oh-ho-ho… the mutant wants to play! You want to play, mutie?”

“We know how to play with muties,” his friend joined in.

Stake swung his legs over the side of his bunk and sat upright. “Ed, you might want to remind your barking puppies that there’s a big difference between hammering drunken homeless guys, and being trained as a Colonial Forcer.”

“Oooh!” the boy with bangs said, exchanging grins with his friend. “Oh-ho-ho!”

“Come on, guys,” Fetch told them, clapping them both on the shoulder, “I think my pal Jeremy here understands what’s in his best interest.” He turned his companions around and urged them out through the doorway, looking back at Stake and saying in farewell, “If there’s anything I can do for you in return, pal, you know where to find me.” He added, perhaps with threatening significance, “Orange Block.”

Stake sighed, and had just stretched out on his back again to resume watching his movie when two new visitors appeared in the cell’s threshold. So much for seeing how the movie turned out. Once more he sat upright as the two men stepped inside uninvited. One was Hassan Billings, with that huge spud-like head. The other was the towering Null, his oil-slick skin glistening. Null: the leader of the gang known as the Muties.

“Hey, man,” Billings said. “So this is what you really look like, huh? Jeremy, is it? Man… I understand why you didn’t tell me you were a mutie, too, but I still wish you had.”

“But now we know,” Null rumbled in his dark baritone. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I saw those Orange fucks leave just now. Is the real-deal Fetch giving you trouble?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Oh, is that so? You aren’t afraid of the whole damn Orange Bunch? Biggest gang in this place? Their leader has a life sentence already, so that mad-dog fuck doesn’t care who he kills next. Seems to me you could use protection from those bastards, and anybody else here who might try to do you a dose of no-good.”

“So, you want me to join up with my fellow mutants, huh?”

“It would be in your best interest.”

“Everybody thinks they know my best interest.”

Null stepped closer to Stake, looming all the taller. “I’m not just here to recruit new members; I have a proposition for you. You help me, and I’ll protect you – not just from the Orange Bunch, but from another gang that could do you serious harm.”

“And what gang is that?” Stake asked.

“The Mutie gang,” Null said, glaring from under bony brows.

“I see,” Stake said.

“I hope you do.”

“So what’s this proposition?”

“We hear you’re a private eye. A good one.”

“I was. Once. I made a not-so-good private eye move, and here I am.”

“Well this would be a better move for you. I want to hire your services. The pay, like I said, is we take care of your skin as long as you stay here in T-P… however long that turns out to be.”

“But what do I have to do? If it involves me impersonating someone, forget it. I –”

“No, that’s not it. You’ve heard about the killings in this place, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The last victim was my cousin Chowder. We grew up together, like brothers. We got arrested for stealing from a warehouse one night. The job was my idea. If it wasn’t for me he’d be alive, and he’d be free.”

“So you… you want me to find out how these men have died. Chowder specifically.”

“Right.”

“And if it turns out they’re being murdered, say by a gang like the Orange Bunch, and you get revenge by killing the guilty party or parties, then I become an accomplice to murder.”

“That part doesn’t concern you. If there’s blood, we’ll keep it off you. But you will help me, Stake. You hear me on that?”

Stake lowered his face into his hands and kneaded its skin, as if to remold his features so thoroughly that he faded out of sight altogether. His voice muffled behind his palms, he said, “Tell me what you know about these deaths.”