The Prisoner

by Carlos J. Cortes

  “Are you done?” she asked.

  “No.” Nikola stared into her eyes for a few heartbeats, reached into his jacket’s inner pocket, and drew out a flat device the size of a PDA. After flicking a switch, he waited for a line of red LED to flicker and slowly turn green before pressing a bar on its lower half. Satisfied, Nikola deposited the device with care on the table before the couch, where it continued to emit a faint high-pitched drone. She followed his movements and smiled but didn’t offer any comment. “I propose a trade,” Nikola began.

  “What have you got?”

  Nikola leaned forward and offered Mrs. Brownell a glassine bag with several snapshots inside.

  She reached over, glanced at the first photograph through the transparent cover, turned it over, and deposited it on her lap. If the uppermost print had shocked her, she disguised her feelings with such mastery that Nikola couldn’t spot any telltale sign. His respect for the old girl increased.

  “And in exchange?”

  “The life and miracles of Araceli Goldberg.” He raised a hand to still her reply and complete the specification. “Not the college records; I have those.”

  She nodded, and a fine-boned hand rested over the glassine bag with the photographs before returning to the wheelchair’s armrest.

  Nikola stiffened when she glanced down and pressed a red button by the wheelchair’s controls.

  As if on cue, the double doors opened and General Brownell stepped in, turned, and slid the doors closed.

  Mrs. Brownell handed over the photographs to her husband.

  The general extracted the prints and examined each one until the stack played out. “The lighting is wrong, as is the choice of lens. Good resolution in the center, but a tad blurred on the edges. The composition is passable, though.” After replacing the prints in the bag, he handed them back to his wife and stood still, as if at attention.

  Mrs. Brownell’s long fingers laced together over the photographs on her lap. “I fear this barter of yours is a little lopsided. You don’t have much to offer.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, I have exactly what you want.” She raised her face and eyed her husband, a smile, soft as candlelight, touching her lips. “Mr. Masek and I could do with a tot; would you join us, dear?”

  General Brownell nodded. From a shelf between bookcases, he picked out a decanter and poured the amber liquid into three whiskey snifters.

  Nikola relaxed, feeling suddenly at ease. He leaned back onto the tufted leather. The glass you drank whiskey from made a huge difference in its enjoyment. A tumbler was widely thought of as correct, and it was fine for ruining a good liqueur, in particular if one planned to desecrate it further with water and ice. He accepted the tulip-shaped glass and sniffed. Ambrosia.

  A jet flew overhead, leaving in its wake a deeper sensation of quietness, broken only by the occasional creak of leather and the soft ticking of a carriage clock over the drinks shelf.

  “Where did you get the prints?” she asked.

  Understanding bloomed in Nikola’s mind. He narrowed his eyes and sipped, letting the flavors develop over his tongue before swallowing. Life would be hugely pleasurable and so much easier with valid interlocutors. He opened his eyes and offered a small toast to Mrs. Brownell, ignoring the towering general back at his station by the door. A toast of recognition between equals. “Candace Bishop’s computer.”

  She pursed her lips, sipped her drink, and returned the compliment with an almost imperceptible movement of her glass. Then she closed her eyes slowly, her free hand cupped over the photographs on her lap. “If you can copy her files, you can also have them erased, correct?”

  Nikola nodded, enjoying the way she marshaled her thoughts along the line he’d surmised from her first question.

  “And, to even matters, other files could be substituted. …”

  Beloved, never avenge yourselves but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” “I can see that would bolster my bartering position. Of course, our trade would depend on what you can offer in exchange.”

  For a long time nobody spoke, but they shared a silence, quietly sipping exquisite malt. The sensation of mental cogs whirring was almost physical. Over the fireplace, the portrait of a red-haired young woman in white muslin holding a basket of flowers on her lap smiled down on them. Bernice, their oldest daughter, now married to an up-and-coming senator, Frederic Maass, old money.

  The general glanced in turn to Nikola and then his wife before nodding behind his glass. She turned to Nikola and cocked her head in mute interrogation, her eyes alive.

  Nikola sighed. With a nod, he closed the deal and leaned farther back on his seat. To strike a civilized bargain in a civilized setting and with civilized people was almost too pleasurable to bear.

  “Araceli Goldberg was a fine young woman,” Martha Brownell stated, her head high and proud.

  General Brownell, obviously weary of standing up, rescued the decanter and neared the sofa to attend the performance by Nikola’s side.

  “She was beautiful, and bright, but paled before the raw intelligence of her lover, Odelle Marino.”

  chapter 37

  11:22

  Everybody was free to take a walk, Tyler had said—keeping to the area framed by the cluster of buildings—as long as they donned blue overalls, wide-brimmed hats, and refrained from looking upward. The chances of being photographed by satellites was slim, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

  Floyd stepped outside the house, his feeling of uneasiness increasing. He breathed deep and dug his hands in his pockets. Lucky Laurel. She was still asleep after her night shift by Russo’s side, but he hadn’t managed a wink. Although Russo had recovered consciousness for only a few minutes, it was obvious his mind was in one piece. That could only mean Tyler and the others would make their move soon. The city had been sealed tight; that much he’d gathered from the stream of news blaring from the radio and frequent interruptions on TV. whatever the plan, when they left the estate they’d run straight into the gauntlet the DHS had thrown nationwide.

  He glanced around. Tyler had sworn they would be reasonably safe at the farm unless the DHS launched a house-to-house hunt. But Floyd shook his head in frustration. Going it solo would be tantamount to suicide; his biometric data would by now be lodged in the hardware of every officer’s pad and squad car.

  He stopped, glanced around, and tried to get his bearings by studying the different structures. A diagram set on a glazed frame by the house’s entrance displayed a large property, almost two hundred fifty acres, ten times larger than when Tyler had bought it more than fifteen years before. It seemed the government had contributed a large tract a few years ago, but Tyler had not offered more explanations. Shaped roughly like an 8 and divided by a small river where the circles met, the business end was centered in the middle of the lower circle. Although most operations were automated, the farm was the livelihood of many people. But only Tyler and Antonio and his family lived within the compound enclosing the farm buildings. The workers, mostly from Chile, lived on the other side of the river, on the farthest edge of the upper part of the 8, in a row of cottages nestled by a two-story building, with labs built with subsidies from two universities. According to Tyler and Antonio, the farm was a “clean” address, widely known in farming and husbandry circles as a test bed of innovation, connected with ecological energy sources and autosufficiency—a good background to justify movements in and out of the area, and a sound alibi when stopped at roadblocks.

  He took another breath and let it out, long and slow. Other than a cup of coffee, he’d had no breakfast. Dread gripping his stomach had prevented him from eating anything solid.

  As Floyd breached the gap between two barns, he nodded to a man in overalls leaning against a wall with what Floyd thought was a knapsack strapped over his shoulder. Then he did a quick double take when he identified a mean-looking semiautomatic carbine attached to the str
ap. To defend them or keep them in? Floyd guessed it was the latter. Tyler was taking no chances and, in his shoes, Floyd wouldn’t have either.

  And then there was Laurel.

  His marriage had been a fiasco from the outset. So, what happened? his mother had asked on one of his rare visits to the family home in California. Nothing much, Floyd had answered, but his mother had waited, hands on her hips. But there had been no real reason. No major drama, no yelling, just the feeling that the relationship had run its course. He could never picture Carol, his ex-wife, starting a family. The author of a syndicated column on high cuisine, she spent most of the year traveling to competitions and chasing the latest recipes from French gurus. True to form, she set memorable food on his plate when she happened to be around, but other than in her career, she didn’t seem capable of taking responsibility. The loose relationship had suited him for a while, but one day he discovered he missed having children in the house and a dog in the yard. Whenever he tried to broach the subject, Carol would shrug. One day she walked away. The morning after, Floyd fielded a call from a woman with a beautiful suave voice, who introduced herself as Carol’s lawyer. Between the two of them, they took him to the cleaners.

  “Hello, Doc!” In jungle-green work trousers and a T-shirt that clung tightly to his padded frame, Antonio stepped over from one of the warehouses with his springy gait. At close quarters, his T-shirt was soaked, as were his trousers, and his face was shiny with perspiration.

  Floyd nodded, marveling at the control Antonio had over his prosthetics. If his trouser legs weren’t a tad on the short side, most people would miss the detail. They talked a bit about the weather. Then Floyd asked, “Where did you have your legs fitted?”

  “At Brooke Army Medical Center’s amputee-care facility in San Antonio.”

  “What happened?

  “A rocket-propelled grenade.”

  “I’ve noticed the ease with which you move about. Those prosthetics are excellent.”

  Antonio nodded. “The army can be a bitch, but they pull out all the stops with amputees. These were the most sophisticated money could buy at the time. Ossur Power Knee, fused directly to bone. The limbs adjust their motion on signals from my brain and body. The feet have multiaxial rotation and anticipate movement.”

  “Powered?”

  “Knees and ankles both. I’ll race you.”

  “No way.” Floyd grinned. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

  Antonio sighed and ran a huge hand across his face, his skin ravaged by years of unprotected exposure to the sun. He was about fifty years old—perhaps older, given his high forehead, which was clearly visible beneath a baseball cap. His nose was kinked halfway down and set off at a tangent; broken and badly set.

  “Nice operation you have here,” Floyd said.

  “Yeah. These are the intensive piggeries.” He pointed to the row of warehouse like buildings.

  “What are our chances?” Floyd asked.

  Antonio breathed deep, as if to deliver a lengthy tirade, then clamped his mouth shut as he shook his head. “Not good.” Then he sniffed. “Let me show you the pigs.”

  Floyd nodded at the swift change of subject and followed Antonio to a twin set of doors that slid sideways when they approached, opening to a six-by-six cubicle with another set of doors ahead. Before entering; Floyd arrested his step. The floor was flooded with an inch of water.

  “Well, go ahead.” Antonio waved when Floyd looked back at him. “No other way in for visitors. You’ll have to get your shoes wet. We don’t want soil bacteria entering.” He gave Floyd a gentle push.

  Floyd splashed into the building. As soon as both men were in, the outer doors closed and the ones facing them opened with a gentle hiss. Obviously the setup worked like an air lock. The hangarlike building was enormous—endless concrete corridors flanked on both sides by steel pens and brightly lit with powerful lamps disappearing in a misty haze. The cacophony of grunts was deafening. Everything was wet.

  “These are our guests. The pigs are constantly monitored and fed automatically. We control temperature through ventilation and water spray misting.”

  “You keep them wet all day?”

  “At night we turn off the mist and douse the lights. They’re delicate—in particular, pink-skinned animals like these. Here they don’t have mud to wallow in and adjust their temperature, so we do it for them. Our systems are now replicated all over the nation, and I suppose the world.”

  The mist explained Antonio’s soaked clothes. Floyd ran a hand over his face and eyed his moisture-laden palm; it was shaking. He pushed his hands into the overalls’ pockets and fisted his fingers, the void in his stomach deepening. “What about dead animals?”

  Antonio cocked an eyebrow. “What about them? Fortunately we don’t have many.”

  “And the ones you do have?”

  “We’d better get out of here,” Antonio said.

  Once outside, Floyd raised his face to the sun. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Those other buildings over there house sow stalls and farrowing crates.”

  Floyd choked a sharp retort and glanced at three smaller sheds in the direction Antonio had pointed. So Antonio didn’t want to talk about dead pigs. “I thought those were banned.”

  “Only in Florida and Arizona.”

  “Why the crates?” Floyd tried to remember what he’d read about the cruelty of sow stalls, where the animals couldn’t move.

  “Sows will often crush their piglets. In farrowing crates, we separate them in adjacent compartments. The mother can feed her young but not harm them.”

  “Hey, guys!”

  Floyd turned to see Laurel hurrying down the lane. Dressed in similar overalls—two or three sizes too big and cinched at the waist by a piece of cord—she was far removed from the sorry figure he’d first encountered in the sewer. Even the wide-brimmed Stetson suited her.

  “Having fun without me?” She drew level and threaded her arm through Floyd’s, as if it belonged there. “I thought hog farms smelled.” Laurel gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re all scratchy.”

  Antonio smiled. “Most do, but here everything is controlled. We send the manure from the piggeries into a sealed underground concrete pit. From there we pump it to those green tanks over there. That’s a two-stage, low-solids digester. The smaller ones on the left are balance tanks, and the squat big guys are sequencing batch reactors.”

  Laurel gripped Floyd’s arm harder. “Sounds complicated. How does it work?”

  “It isn’t, really. In anaerobic digestion, microorganisms stabilize organic matter and release methane and carbon dioxide.”

  The green tanks, Floyd realized, were much larger than they seemed at first—huge metal cylinders pierced by a network of large and small pipes and tubes.

  Antonio continued his explanation. “The result is biogas—mostly methane and carbon dioxide, with a small amount of hydrogen and trace hydrogen sulfide.”

  “At Nyx we use plenty—” Floyd muttered, and then he could have kicked himself for his lack of tact at bringing hibernation into the conversation.

  “Hydrogen sulfide? What on earth for?” Antonio frowned. “It’s horrible stuff.”

  “It’s one of the gases we use to lower patients into torpor.”

  Laurel must have sensed his discomfiture. “So you send the animals’ waste to the digester and …?”

  “We pump pig shit and water into them, heat it, and leave it there to complete the process.”

  “You heat the shit?” Laurel asked.

  Floyd reached for her hand.

  “Right, to keep it around one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”

  They walked slowly around the vast concrete area of the digester installation. Floyd reached to one of the insulated pipes and touched a valve. It was warm. “How long does the process take?”

  “About two weeks.”

  Laurel laid her hand on the nearest tank. “So there is two weeks’ worth of pig shit in
those tanks?”

  “That’s about right.”

  Floyd followed Antonio’s gaze. Past the tanks, in an open field, a large machine trundled, raising a cloud of dust. Whatever the beast was doing, it must have pleased Antonio, because he rubbed his hands and smiled.

  “And the biogas? What do you do with that?” Laurel seemed genuinely interested to discover how the system worked.

  “Once cleaned, we store it in the gasholder.”

  “That sphere?” Floyd eyed a huge white ball on stilts, set on its own in the middle of a grass patch.

  “Right.”

  Through a passage between two piggery buildings, Floyd spotted Tyler limping toward them. He peered at his face, obscured by a large hat, but couldn’t detect any telltale signals of alarm.

  “Taking a guided tour?” Tyler nodded to Antonio. “I left a pager with Raul.” He patted his shirt pocket.

  “This is huge,” Laurel said. “I still can’t get over the lack of smell. I thought hog farms stank.”

  “We couldn’t have gotten away with odors so close to town. The digester reduces most odors from the livestock. Antonio’s spray system to keep the animals cool and clean does the rest. We contribute no odor, groundwater contamination, greenhouse-gas emissions, or pathogens into the environment.”

  Floyd glanced around. The void in his stomach had been deepening. He turned to Antonio. The man was staring at him, his eyes ablaze with a strange intensity.

  “The doctor wanted to know what we do with our dead animals.”

  Tyler looked down and scoured the ground with the tip of his boot. “They’re protein. We hack them to pieces and add them to the digester.”

  Laurel’s fingers dug into Floyd’s arm. The penny must have dropped.

  “Prices for farm hogs are stable at $7.40 a pound, deadweight. These animals,” Tyler nodded toward the piggeries, “weigh 270 pounds on average; that’s about two thousand dollars a head, and a small tragedy when we lose any.”