by Kim Newman
He was losing, but hadn’t seen it yet. He kept going through the pack, three cards at a time, and nothing came up. Nothing changed. He played faster. The same five or six cards showed their useless faces. He bit through his cigar, but sucked it in, keeping it in his mouth, spitting the plug out into the gutter. The cards kept coming up the same. Disgusted, he shuffled the cards in his hand, cheating, and went through the pack again. There were still no cards he could use. I knew he should give up, but he kept playing, hands moving faster than a magician’s.
‘Please,’ I said.
The solitaire player dealt me a single card, and continued to play. It was the Queen of Spades. She had Veronica Lake’s face, sliced diagonally in half by bobbed hair. Veronica’s exposed eye winked at me, and I dropped the card onto the sidewalk. It fell face down on the wet, black slab.
I left the man playing and walked away, alone in the City. I angled my face up and shut my eyes. Pain throbbed in the dark of my head. Water ran down my face.
It was two thirty in the morning, and raining.
6
Vaclav Trefusis received Susan in his spacious office. He evidently took seriously his position as governor. Behind his antique, formica-topped deskslab, he sat in a swivel throne, kitted up like the stereotypical New Carolian: mutton-chop whiskers, starched collar, frock coat, mirror shades and medal ribbons. One wall was decorated entirely with pics of Princetown jail from the 1800s to the present day, an evolving monolith, and portraits of past governors. Another was hung with the black-framed trids of the various notable felons who had been incarcerated here. Of course, the governors looked far less trustworthy than the felons. Life doesn’t believe in typecasting. Through a huge, one-way view, Governor Trefusis could overlook his charges. Currently the scene was a hydroponics plant.
‘Food for the refugees in Kansas, Ms Bishopric.’ Trefusis pulled a cigar out of a recess, chopped it in a miniature guillotine and sparked it with a tiny zapgun. ‘We find that forgers and stranglers make the best viviculturalists. Assassins and rapists get the reclamation duties. Black economists process DHSS forms, meatleggers work the kitchens, and ransackers still break up rocks with picks and sledgehammers. This institution is a machine. Its function is to punish trespassers, but I have streamlined its workings. There are side effects profitable for all society.’
Trefusis exhaled a cloud of scented smoke. Susan sipped her green tea and nodded. She still had no idea what was going on. Trefusis tapped his slab, and the toilers among vats disappeared. A tridvid mugsnap appeared in the view, full face, revolving to left profile, back of head, right profile and full face again. And the face was indeed full. Not flabby, but full. The face of a general regarded as a homicidal maniac in his time but reassessed as a national hero after he was safely dead for centuries; the face of a great technician hailed as an artist of genius by his peers and contemporaries, but contemptuously forgotten by posterity once he was no longer around to fuel the vogue with his personality; the face of an emperor – a Nero, an Alexander, a Napoleon, a Heseltine, a Dweezil.
Susan whistled. ‘Truro Daine.’
‘You’re familiar with the man?’ asked Trefusis, holding the dopesmoke in the back of his throat.
‘I’ve heard of him.’
‘The world has heard of Truro Daine. In an era when criminals are largely imbecile sociopaths, politico-religious fanatics, disadvantaged simpletons or overenthusiastic executives, he is unique.’
‘Fu Manchu.’
‘I beg pardon?’
‘Fu Manchu, the Great Enchanter, Professor Moriarty, Captain Nemo, Zenith the Albino, Dr Mabuse, Lex Luthor, Ernst Stavros Blofeld, Dr Doom, Eugene Smedley, Cardinal Synn. A master criminal.’
‘Quite. Popular culture is, of course, your field. I was misremembering. That’s why you’re with us. Truro Daine is indeed a master criminal. Even in this place, his fluence remains. He remainders more people annually than motorways. When he commenced his career, some of your colleagues in the mediocracy chose to project him as a romantic figure, a swashbuckling throwback to an earlier, somehow more exciting, age. Naturally, I cannot be expected to share that opinion.’
Trefusis’s fingers did a little dance on his slab, and a montage of tridvid clips passed through the view. Ruined banks, sundered museums, devastated cities, blasted heaths. Trefusis gave her a series of corpse close-ups, one dead face after another. Men, women, children, animals. ‘For Truro Daine, human life is a poor commodity. Like many great men – and I do not begrudge him that epithet – he has a deep-seated belief that other people aren’t real. In his solipsism, he has experimented with murder on an unprecedented scale, convincing himself with each zilched life that he alone is truly sapient. That is a crucial insight. Tag it well.
‘Of course, his basic problem is common or garden homicidal mania. It’s been treatable for fifty years. It would lead another man to become a mercenary or a serial killer, but Truro Daine is not another man, he is perhaps the third or fourth loftiest intelligence in the world. Had he chosen to live within the fold, he would undoubtedly be richer through the income on his patents than he was through theft, extortion, terror-for-hire, blackmail and the black economy. He could have been very high in the Gunmint. But that would have bored him zoidal.’
‘B-b-bad to the B-b-bone.’
‘I beg pardon?’
‘A song, Governor. Pardon me. It’s a pash of mine. Old songs.’
‘Harrumph.’
Daine’s face came back, frozen. His serial numbers hung solid in front of his chest. Being under arrest hadn’t fazed him. Perhaps he had tried everything else and thought punishment might be less boring than trespass. Yggdrasil knows, Truro Daine was brainier than the Gunmint.
‘Do you know,’ said Trefusis, clearly enthused on his favourite subject, ‘when he finally came to trial, he was found guilty on 8,921 counts of first-degree murder alone, excluding his various thermonuclear adventures. Before they gave up, the international courts found him culpable in enough instances to entail a mandatory sentence without remission that would take a significant chunk out of the lifespan of a continent. If he were to live out his stretch, it is likely on the current evidence that the human race would have evolved beyond all recognition by the time he was eligible for parole. When it came to the vote, lamas who refuse vaccines on the grounds that even microorganisms have a right to life endorsed a revival of the death penalty just this once.’
Susan remembered the controversy. It had got as far as Yggdrasil, and the machine had taken longer to debate the issue than any other she could remember. When, after a full two hours, it had decreed that, even in the case of Truro Daine, capital punishment was not an option, there had been riots from Peiping to Valparaiso. A few more decisions like that and the Gunmint would have to find itself another A1 demagogue. Behind Trefusis, Daine was still at ease in his tridvid clip, smug as Prime Minister Dies, calm as Chillmeister Freaze.
‘You’d think that the one place Truro Daine would be accepted was right here, wouldn’t you? All trespassers together. But child molesters, corpse violators and religion pushers refuse to share a field with him. He has a phantom zone of his own to keep the other prisoners away from him. He remaindered too many of his associates to retain the loyalty of the trespassing classes.’
‘This is all very interesting, but…’
‘Where do you come in, Ms Bishopric? You must forgive me for being prolix. You see, Truro Daine has escaped.’
The view blanked. Susan saw that Trefusis was crying. He reached for a face-dab and touched his cheeks. She looked around, nervous, and was embarrassed by the nerve-twitch reaction. Did she think Truro Daine was hiding behind the Yggdrasil banks in the corner, clutching his straight razor?
‘That’s not supposed to be possible, Governor.’
Trefusis blew his nose, and ordered himself. The pomp came back and he inflated again. ‘It isn’t. Do you understand our system?’
‘Only what I scan in the newsbreaks.’
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br /> ‘It’s perfect. Humane, but escape-proof. There are no bars and locks. Structurally, this building could be a school or a hospital. Our only security comes down through the Yggdrasil terminal. It broadcasts a variable energy field. At night, it shrinks to encompass just the main building. During the work periods, it bubbles significantly to allow the prisoners to their assigned toil areas. Upon conviction, each trespasser is implanted with a pacemaker. If he or she should wander beyond the field, the pacemaker gives out and their heart stops. If we find them within five minutes, they can be resurrected. If not… well, they knew what they were doing. Aside from clear-cut cases of suicide, no one has even tried to escape since we introduced the system.’
‘So, what did Daine use? A deal with the Devil? Do-it-yourself open-heart surgery?’
‘He found a loophole. A loophole which can be noosed only by someone with your qualifications.’
Susan had that deep-down doom feeling again. She precogged all her Dreams being reissued in black-trimmed boxjackets as a memorial set. ‘Governor, please don’t confuse me with one of my characters. I’m not especially qualified for anything apart from Dreaming. I’ve never done anything heroic awake. Most of the time I need a nerve enhance and an armoured andrew guard to cross the road.’
Trefusis ignored her protest. ‘Our prisoners are confined in mind as well as body. Containment is the essence of the penal system. They do not have access to Dreams. But this isn’t Devil’s Island. We do have an extensive vid library. Tridvid, mostly, but we stock much other material. Soon after his arrival, Truro Daine developed a pash for flatties. Specifically, he made an exhaustive study of the North American cinema of the 1940s and ’50s. Are you familiar with the period?’
‘I did a term paper on film noir at Eton.’
‘Excellent. I’m not stimmed by twentieth-century arts myself. I have it tagged as an enormously banal period. Our great-grandparents must have been such nasty little people. Truro Daine requested an increasing number of vid tapes. I have a printout.’
Trefusis handed her a curl of silver foil. Red letters stood out. Susan skimmed the list of titles. ‘The File on Thelma Jordon… I’ve seen that. Barbara Stanwyck is in it. Dark Passage… that’s a seminal pre-Dream, lots of subjectivity. Between Midnight and Dawn… that I don’t know. I Wake Up Screaming, In a Lonely Place, Cry of the City, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, The Big Combo, While the City Sleeps. All good stuff. In a Lonely Place is rare. I didn’t think even BritLib had a vid. I wouldn’t mind cloning it some time. It’s out of copyright, so I wouldn’t be trespassing against the reproduction laws.’
The governor took the strip back and cracked it in the air. The red dispersed. ‘It seemed a harmless pastime. And it kept him quiet. We’d been expecting more trouble.’
At another slab touch, the door slid open and an andrew warder came in. It wasn’t armoured, but its transparent right hand was set to deliver a disorientation zap. It had a pretty girl’s face. ‘We’d better get down to Daine’s field,’ explained Trefusis. ‘Dr Groome is waiting for us.’
In the corridor, Susan noticed convicts in fleshtex skinsuits performing menial chores. They were, as far as she could tell, unsupervised. Trefusis had an unnerving habit of referring to each prisoner as they were passed, identifying them with their trespasses, snapping ‘cat burglar’, ‘credit creeper’ or ‘information embezzler’, like a tour guide pointing out items of interest. The convicts themselves took this habit as a salute, and returned it with a noncommittal ‘Morning, sir’. For the most part, the prison seemed unfurnished. In cells without doors, Susan saw GP couches built into floors, covered foodholes, excrement apertures and little else. There were no views on the walls, no personal possessions, nothing with any character whatsoever.
It wasn’t at all like the dank and dripping dungeon she had had Vanessa Vail escape from with only a facestick and a sitar plectrum. That had been her idea of the Worst Place on Earth, this was more like a very large DHSS waiting room. The only way she could tell the andrews from the prisoners was that the mechanicals were smiling. On a lower level, a short, fat convict – ‘pain peddler’ Trefusis called him – was abrading a graffito from the wall. ‘Hang Truro Daine’, with a stickman on a scaffold. ‘Here we are,’ said the governor.
Dr Helena Groome turned out to be a small woman with grey scalplocks, green lips and a floorlength white coat. She sucked slickorishe capsules, perfunctorily offering a squirter around but taking it back before anyone could accept or refuse a jet. Susan noticed Dr Groome had included the andrew in her indian offer. The doctor and Trefusis each palmed a wallslab and recited a meaningless but suggestive phrase into a vivicorder outlet – Dr Groome’s was ‘Home is the Hangman’, the governor’s ‘Pease Porridge Hot’. After some silent processing, an aperture appeared. Susan was shown through, and the andrew remained behind. ‘Welcome to Maximum, Ms Bishopric,’ said Dr Groome. ‘It’s a homey but it’s hell.’
The room was like a large hospital dormitory, with a double row of sarcophagus tanks. Only two were humming. The views above them flashed figures and readings Susan couldn’t follow. Printstrips piled on the floor by the tanks, waiting for the final check. Juliet stood by the tanks, vigilant. With her helm off, Susan could see her long, brown-toned hair. The marshal smiled and waved a greeting with her left hand. Seconds later, Susan realised why Juliet’s gesture appeared awkward: she was keeping her right hand free for the touch taser. Dr Groome fished a remote control pointer out of a pocket, and adjusted the master view. Daine’s face appeared again, a candid clip this time. The trespasser was deepsleep, his chin stubbled, REMming regularly. He had a laurel-shaped device twisted around his temples.
‘Recognise it?’
‘Of course, doctor. It’s a dreaming cradle.’
Dr Groome moved the image in on the view, revolving to get a profile. ‘Yes. Home-made, too. Some of the components must have been smuggled in. A young political was remaindered in the jail several months ago. Someone, not Daine, opened him up with their bare hands. We think the fixings for the dreamset were in his bowel somewhere. We’ve sampled the material. It’s some new synthetic, unremarkable but for one quality. It’s X-ray invisible…’
‘Another Truro Daine product,’ chipped in Trefusis.
‘Of course. Note these attachments here, Ms Bishopric. Behind the ear, through the cheek, and into the eye. It takes something quite considerable to insert a monofilament into one’s optic nerves by hand, don’t you think?’
‘It’s not a concept I’ve given much thought, doctor.’
Susan looked away from the view, and walked over to the active tanks. The face plates were opaque.
‘He’s in here, isn’t he?’
‘That’s right,’ said the governor. ‘Dreaming.’
‘Everyone’s a dreamer.’
‘No, Ms Bishopric. Daine’s Dreaming. Capital D Dreaming. Dreaming creatively. Like you.’
Susan looked at the view again, took in the smile. ‘I didn’t know he had the Talent.’
Trefusis stood by the left-hand tank, intent on the man inside. ‘Oh yes, one of his many Talents. He started young, you know. After he collected his parents’ insurance, he went into juvie porn. He was a star Dreamer on the black economy for several years. Up there with Elvis Kurtz and the Masked Mongoose. I believe his magnum opus was called Anal Explosions of the Young Debutantes.
‘I must have missed that one.’
‘All copies were purportedly wiped by the Jesuits during the Second Moral Crusade, but the Vatican’s file copies have skulked onto the market. The King couldn’t afford the asking price, I believe, but several muse consortiums put in acceptable bids. Under several pseudonyms, he produced docuDreams during his career. Do you want to know what it feels like to be a mass murderer, Ms Bishopric? Care to sample patricide, fratricide, matricide, uxoricide, regicide, filicide, philicide, canicide, Alcide, genocide?’
‘Governor Trefusis, there’s nothing I haven’t done in Dreams.’
‘Yggdrasil is merciful,’ cut in Dr Groome, ‘but it errored with Daine.’
‘So he’s Dreaming…’
‘More than that. We let him have the flatties he wanted. He used them in an unprecedented fashion, Ms Bishopric. He’s lodged himself into an Yggdrasil file and is Dreaming up his own private universe, furnished with the externals of those old vids. We’ve lost track of it. It expands as we tap in. Physically, he is still here, kept alive by the tank. But inside his head he’s free.’
‘More than free,’ said the governor. ‘He’s God.’
‘So, pull the plug.’
‘Strange as it may seem, we thought of that. Daine has done a good job of melshing with Yggdrasil. And with our fail-safe power plant. His body is in a coma. That dreaming cradle is bio-attached. It’s growing through his brain, through his body. It would take a team of andrew surgeons years to bum the filaments out, and we’d have to kill him in the process. If we just cut the power input and pull his master tape, his mind would be wiped like a printstrip. As you know, that’s legally murder.’
‘If jailbreaking is suicide, then surely he’s legally killed himself anyway.’
‘A good point, Ms Bishopric. Personally, I’d like to argue it after the fact with Truro Daine’s expensive battery of lawyers. However, the corpus is still in my care. The Gunmint has been up all night talking this out, and I’m their servant. They want him back.’
Susan could see it coming from a long way off, getting bigger on the horizon. There wasn’t any escape for her either.
