INFINITY HOLD3

by Longyear, Barry B.

  The vids even got into it when the matter of pregnant prisoners came up. Why should the offspring suffer the punishment of the parent? Didn't that make the sins of the parent the sins of the child? I suppose the two-for-one reduction in the population totals helped the argument some, but the clincher was what it had always been: the children have been suffering for the sins of their parents since man invented sin. Why change now? Pregnancy was no ticket off of Tartaros. The womb brooms did a clean sweep.

  I heard some of the don goomba kingpinners were talking about hiring private raiders to come and lift them off the big T, as some of them began calling the planet. But the mob chiefs usually found their money was all dried up. That number two suit in the brotherhood got real assertive when he found out that number one was on his way to infinity hold.

  The yard monsters kept pumping iron, but there were lots of furtive conversations between Nazzar and some of the others like Ow Dao, Steel Jacket, and The Match. For a time, security at the Crotch was maxed. The front office expected the hotel to entropize after getting the streak, and the stains were powered up to where they probably could have taken on the army of a medium-sized planet. I had no complaints. It kept the streets clean for a bit. But the man should have saved the taxpayers the change. The Crotch wasn't ready to rock. Instead, we were stunned. Thinking about change did that.

  Straightmeats fear change; the unknown. But you sit in the crowbars long enough and change is something you pray for. Even a move to another pit looks like a holiday. The thing that made the T look good to the sharks at Greeneville was that none of us knew anything about it. None of us'd ever been there, and none of us knew anyone who had been there. Not even the stains knew anything. The only ones who knew the real story were on Tartaros. There was no trouble, and, after a few days, the stains went back to business as usual.

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  Watching. It was a tickle the way the sharks packed up the few things they were allowed to bring. Rads and vids, photos of Mommy and Fido, feelthy peektures, some health pills packed with classified vitamins and minerals. The tobacco addicts were jamming as many nails as possible into those tiny metal boxes. They were jabbering away, grinning like they were going off to grandma's for a holiday. I wondered what would happen when the pills, the weed, and the little vials of alk, powder and other stuff runs out.

  There's something invigorating in thinking about being smack in the middle of fifteen thousand freaked out sharks who are all fighting rats, bugs, snakes, and giant squids in their imaginations. But the deadhead puffs can always find a way to continue being a loser. Hell, you can grow alcohol anywhere. When they can't get anything else, some of the powder-puffs even get high by cutting off the blood to their brains until they pass out.

  Me? I found myself—for the first time in my life—staring at the concrete walls of my cell, wondering about me, my life, the things I had done, the people I had done them to, the things that had been done to me. What about that teacher I punched out in high school that bought me my trey in Lancaster? You punch out people that have a mouth on them, and that bundle of wimps had a mouth on him. I got my trey, but at least that smear got his mouth wired shut. I was told he quit teaching. I did some good, then.

  Good. All my life I was good. Never thought of myself as bad, although there was a lot of opinions on the other side of that. It had something to do with the definitions used by the straightmeats against the ones used by the sharks.

  The straightmeats told me I was no good, but good was living up to your buddies. Loyalty. Good was never growing feathers on a job, pulling out and leaving your partner to entertain the stains. Good was keeping your blowhole shut when the man wanted you to roll over on a brother to keep the numbers down when the clock was dumped in your lap. Good was stealing enough to keep your face fed and food on the table for your mother and kid sister. That was good. Good was walking down the street swinging, knowing no one would tangle with you because if you didn't stripe his ass, your gang would.

  That five I did in Binghamton and Jordonsville for liberating that mom and pop grocery. I thought about that judge—wheezy old smear in the black rags—lecturing me on the "right to property."

  The right to property. The judge he said, young man, he said, I don't think you will learn about this any other way. Five to eight in the Binghamton Crowbar Hotel where you will be denied your "right to property." I never had any bloody damned property in the first place. Some lesson.

  Half way through my nickel at Binghamton, Eddie "The Whisper" got a modified spoon slipped between his ribs because he couldn't keep his blowhole shut. The stains knew that I knew, so it was go to the juicer and sing or go to Jordonsville. Jordonsville it was. Good. I goddamned well knew what good was. I didn't need a spoon between my ribs because I couldn't keep the wind out of my hole.

  But after I spent my nickel, the doors opened and I was back on the block. My mom was dead. My kid sister off with some deadhead. No job. The gang gone—jail, dead, or just plain out on juice or powder. Hell, even the tenement where I had grown up was gone. In its place was a big hole in the ground waiting for some agency and a lot of money nobody wanted to spend to fill it with another housing project designed to deal with over population by vertical filing.

  Nights I would go out to the plush quarters and do a little liberating to keep change in my pocket. I only did easy stuff. I learned to do locks in Jordonsville, along with a few other things like boxes and alarms. I learned all about the "right to property": if you leave it sitting around like a damned fool, it's mine.

  Half the time I didn't even have to do a lock. Doors left open, windows open, cellar doors open, fancy boxes on dressers shouting "Hey, look in here! This is where the good stuff is!", picture frames with shiny brass hinges on one side saying "Guess what's back here?" Then you open it up and find a "safe" that couldn't keep out a spastic with a hairpin.

  Then my kid sister, Danine, was found dead in some dump. She had taken a bunch of pills because her old man had gotten bored with her and split. Before he left, he had turned Danine's sweet face into an ad for a horror flick. His name was Kosta something and he was a powder puff looking for a bit with some ass left to sell. I found him and thinned his shadow. I was a little crazy after that.

  I still had the gun and I went into the first bank I saw and pulled it out. I didn't even need the money. But I needed to tap that bank guard, and that first stain with a badge that came through the door. When they laid the stripes and thumps on me, I guess I needed those too. The chaos, the broken bones, helped to kill what I was feeling inside.

  Then there was the rehab facility at Williamsburg where they decided I was beyond hope. I couldn't see what was wrong with thinning Danine's old man, and they figured that wasn't a plus. I had been sorry about the two stains who got broke up, but they shouldn't have gotten in the way of my pain. That was it for the rehab.

  Then they sent me to Greenville. But from there where? A place called Tartaros. The big T. Exile. Permanent sentence. Infinity hold.

  There would be no mail, no vids, no phones, nothing but a free, no frills, one-way ride. That was all corners with me. There wasn't a single body on Earth I wanted to write or call me. I thought about that for a long time, then I bought permission for a call and punched in the number of a bit I knew. It was the only number I could remember. She didn't remember me at all, but she wished me luck.

  When it came time to pack my belongings, I couldn't think of anything special I wanted to bring. I didn't have a thing that would be useful, and there wasn't anything I wanted to remember.

  I mentioned this to the yard guru in the cell next to mine. His name was Big Dave Cole. To keep me sane he had lent me the first book I had ever read all of the way through. Southey's Life of Nelson. It kept me sane, and started me on reading. So when Big Dave talked, I listened. He said to me that I should bring a book. If I didn't enjoy it myself, I could always trade it to the print addicts for what I did want.

  "There won't be many books o
n the T, Bando, and readers will pay almost anything to keep reading."

  I spoke through my bars. "What book should I bring?"

  He laughed. "Hell, anything. After a few days without reading, there'll be those who'll swap you mother, best bit, and cat for a seed catalog."

  "I don't know." I sighed. "It's almost like a point of honor not to bring anything. Taking something is like saying that I'm going along. It's like I'm thumbing my nose at the stains one last time if I don't bring anything."

  "That's like trying to get revenge on someone by punching yourself in the head, Bando. Real smart." I heard Big Dave move around in his cell for a bit, then he laughed and said, "Here. Bring this one."

  I saw the corner of an orange cover and I reached between my bars and pulled in the little pumpkin-colored book. Its title was Yesterday's Tomorrow: Meditations for Hard Cases.

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  Moving day.

  "Nicos, Bando, 3340792. Stand at the door." It was a couple of stains with screenboards with more stains behind them herding the processed sharks out of the block. I stood at the door, grabbed the top of the bars, and waited until the stain was finished feeling me up.

  "Any belongings, Nicos?" asked the short skinny one.

  "No."

  "You're not coming back from this one, sharkie. You sure you don't want to bring something with you from Earth? Some pressed flowers? A vid of your old gray-haired granny?"

  "I got my stripes, a back full of scars, and all the shit I can carry from you assholes. I got all I want from Earth." That book of Big Dave's was in my little box that would go in the cargo hold, but why should I tell him?

  "Suit yourself, tough guy."

  I always had.

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  To Grandmother's House We Go

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  They moved us in groups of fifty to the spaceport. It was another tickle to think about space, other worlds, stars. When you have your nose in the garbage, garbage is all you ever see or think about. Thinking about not being on Earth, about being out there in space somewhere, was a cruise.

  I used to dream about flying among the stars when I was a kid and could still dream. I would eat up the stories of UTR deep space pilots and explorers, imagining myself zipping past pink gas clouds and huge red stars. At least I was going to get to see some of those things on the way to Tartaros.

  On the bus I sat by the window. That way I got to see all those places I never saw in the daylight. Sure, I saw plush before when I used to do it for jewelry, cash, coats, coin and stamp collections. But that was work, and always at night. There were still neighborhoods like theirs, neighborhoods like mine; people like them, and people like us. All those big highways, glass office buildings, cozy little mansions saying bye-bye to old Bando Nicos. Can't use you, Bando. Time to put you away—far away from us good, good people.

  Hell, no one noticed the bus. It was just another vehicle in another rush hour parade whining down another road. Fifty human beings on their way to infinity hold, but the world, the city, not one soul paused to take notice.

  Maybe, somewhere in one of those glass office buildings, some government accountant was patting his fat belly and nodding over his backlit spread sheet. It took the Union of Terran Republics sixteen thousand credits a year to keep Bando Nicos locked up in Greenville. Now Bando and the whole joint were on their way to the spaceport and a place called Tartaros. Cost: the no-frills price of the trip. He'd pat his belly and nod again. Check, check, enter column, delete; the Ministry of Corrections was moving into the black.

  I turned from the window and went back to watching my fellow animals. Nkuma was seated next to me, and in the aisle seat across from him was a defrocked priest whose name I never knew. Everyone just called him Fodder and he was rocking the clock for raping a young girl and killing two parishioners in an alcoholic rage. He was the most guilty shark I ever saw, constantly mumbling prayers that might, somehow, plea bargain his way out of the big toaster. Nkuma leaned over and said, "Pack it, Fodder. There ain't no way 'round the red suit." With his cuffed hand Nkuma touched a finger against his own knee. "Ssssssss!" He lifted his finger, shook it and blew on it. "Hot. Hot!" Then he laughed while Fodder continued his mumbling.

  We never got to see the outside of the prison ship. The waiting pen had no windows, and there was nothing but a guarded corridor to the hatch. At the hatch I caught the whiff. It smelled like any other pit.

  "Nicos, Bando, 3340792."

  I shuffled out of the pack and made my way down the bare-metal aisle between the drab-looking seats. Whoever built that ship had saved a bundle on interior decorating. In the back of my head was an itch that wondered if I could keep sane doing nothing but sitting in one of those minimalist flight couches for the days it would take to reach Tartaros. When I imagined the ship, I expected to see windows. I thought I could kill the clock watching the stars pass by. But there were no windows. I felt panic gnaw at my edges. Close places make it hard to breath. I have to see the outside or I suffocate.

  I stopped before a stain who was carrying a bad look and a screenboard. After checking the number on my jacket against his board, he nodded, toward a half-filled row of seats. "In there, Nicos."

  I looked toward the rear of the compartment. Rows and rows of cons. They looked like galley slaves in one of those old Roman ships. I glanced at the stain. "When do we get issued oars?"

  His eyes were covered by his cap's visor. The rest of his face was like brick. "Oars?"

  I shrugged. "Forget it."

  His cheek muscles twitched. "Don't make trouble Nicos."

  "What'll you do, stain? Put me in jail?"

  The tiny mouth beneath the guard's visor cracked into a humorless grin. "No more jails for you, burr head. But I might arrange for you to make the trip to Tartaros with a couple of broken knees. Maybe you'd like a little stroll outside after we take off? Maybe I just won't let you use the white throne for the trip."

  The man always has the power. I did what I should have done in the first place: shut my blowhole. Again the guard nodded toward the half-filled row of seats. "Put your striped ass in that chair and buckle up, tough guy."

  I moved in, sat in the last empty seat, and buckled the metal mesh belt across my upper thighs. Just for the laughs I tried to release the buckle.

  "No way."

  I looked and saw that my left-hand companion was one of the yard monsters from Greenville. One of the black gang that broke arms for Snowflake. Freddy something. I had done him a couple of favors. "Never hurts to try."

  Freddy something nodded once, then closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of his couch. I looked to my right as another yard monster, Dick Irish, dropped into the next seat and buckled up. I closed my eyes and swallowed. Dick Irish's arm was one of the many snapped by Freddy in the line of duty. Irish nudged me with his elbow, grinned, and talked in a low whisper. "Keep low, Nicos. I got a little present for that black bastard." He glanced at Freddy then opened his jacket just enough for me to see the handle of a home-made cutter.

  My gut knotted as I contemplated those two sweetmeats having a slash-and-snap contest in my lap. I glanced up at the compartment's overhead and whispered to Irish: "Up there, Dick."

  He looked up. "What?"

  "See those things that sort of look like air vents?"

  Irish frowned and nodded. "Yeah? What about them?"

  "Cameras. They're watching us every second."

  He glared at the air vent for a moment, shrugged, and leaned back in his seat. "How long's it going to take for the stain to work his way down a row full of sharks? I can make ground round out of Freddy before anyone gets here. I'm on infinity hold. I ain't got nothin' to lose."

  I moistened my lips and whispered again. "Don't be a jerk. They got comp-run light guns tied in with the cameras. You'll be cut in half before you can get that edge all the way out of your jacket." I glanced at Freddy, but the mo
nster still had his eyes closed. When I looked back at Irish, he was glowering at the overhead. He rubbed his chin, then clasped his hands over his belly and turned his face in my direction. "You sure, Nicos?" I nodded emphatically. He looked back at the overhead, then closed his eyes. "God damn stains."

  The knot in my gut eased just a bit. Cameras? Light guns? Computers? How long was it going to take for old sweetmeat on my right to figure out that those air vent-looking things were only air vents? I felt an elbow nudge my left am and I looked into Freddy something's smiling face.

  "Smart," he whispered. "Stay smart." He resumed his sleeping pose while that protomo feeling crawled all over me. Greenville was beginning to look better and better.

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  UTRPSS 1364

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  In the ship, we were stuck in rows sixteen across. A few sharks were cut loose long enough every now and then to hand out tasteless little box chows to the rest. You went to the white throne under escort, and when you stood up to make the trip, you got to see the whole compartment. It was a long trip, and I got to count the rows a lot of times.

  Fifty-four rows, and all were full. Eight hundred and sixty-four cons in that compartment. Twenty compartments in the ship. Seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty cons. Maybe. I never got to see the sizes of the other compartments.

  When the stains took you to the white throne, you were put through a zatz thing that cleaned you, clothes and all. You didn't feel clean at all, but it sort of killed the smell. I knew some of the happy-powder boys who had hollowed out heels, had sewed sweet death into their seams, and had even dissolved their shit and soaked their blues in a saturated solution. None of the stuff made it through the zatz.