by R. E. Vance
Preparations, Help and Hope … Nah! Just Kidding!
Mr. Cain’s office wasn’t what you’d expect to find in a maximum security prison. Once-upon-a-time, the Hawar Island was a giant lighthouse that acted as a beacon for sailors to make their way up and down the Eastern coast. It was the largest lighthouse ever built, its lamp casting a light that could be seen all along the eastern shoreline. And until sonar and radar made it obsolete, its lights helped thousands of ships navigate the waters that divided Paradise Lot from the mainland, saving them from crashing into the rock bed and coral mountains that sprung from the depths.
Mr. Cain took the lantern room as his office, and I had to admit—it was way cool. For one thing, it was completely surrounded by windows. Its old wooden floors had been replaced with marble on which fine silk Persian rugs lay. An immaculate oak wood desk with numerous lacquered panels sat at the north end. Clearly Mr. Cain had full control of the entire area from there.
But beyond control, he also had style. An antique mobile liquor cabinet sat within easy reach of the desk; four coin-operated brass telescopes stood sentry in the circular room—one for each point on the compass (and, presumably, no longer needing coins to operate); the spiral stairwell opened up by the eastern telescope; and in the center, where the lamp once stood, was a detailed model of not only the prison, but also Paradise Lot.
I walked over the model and found the Millennium Hotel standing proud on the hill in the center of downtown Paradise Lot.
“Wow,” I said. “Detailed.” I lightly touched the piece that represented my hotel. It toppled over, rolling down the hill before replica trees acted as a net and stopped it from going farther.
“Fallen fruit,” Mr. Cain said, hurrying over to rescue the fallen hotel. “It’s a model of Paradise Lot. Nothing is glued down. The city is constantly changing, so I found it easier to have everything ready to move or be replaced as needed.” He carefully placed the hotel back on its hill and gestured to the leather seats in front of his desk. “Why not have a seat?”
“OK,” I said, silently admonishing myself for being a klutz on my first day. Without another word, I walked over to one of the two leather seats (which had to have been more expensive than everything I owned combined) and sat down, its soft leather welcoming my weary frame with a whoosh.
Everything about this room projected a sense of wealth and its owner’s overwhelming desire for you to know it. I ran my finger over the smooth surface of Mr. Cain’s desk. Two rapiers were pinned to its front, and just underneath was a large emblem of a tree with a snake coiled around its trunk. The Adam-and-Eve family crest, I guessed.
Mr. Cain went over to the liquor cabinet and poured two neat Scotches in crystal glasses so fragile that I feared I’d crush them if I wasn’t careful with my grip. “Thank you,” I said.
“Let us skip the niceties, Mr. Matthias, and allow me to start. We here at Memnock Securities are a state-of-the-art facility, with multiple layers of defense—and offense, if necessary. Besides our standard anti-assault, anti-magic protocols, we also have some … extras. Little things like surface-to-air missiles, sea nets and electrified shores.”
“Electrified shores?”
“The rock bed that surrounds the island isn’t made of rocks. It’s a highly conductive material that is made to look like rocks. Anyone trying to get on or off the island can be electrocuted. Should I choose to activate it.” He nodded to his desk, where the activation codes to that particular “extra” no doubt hid.
“Oh,” I said. “Good to know.”
He lifted his glass in my direction as he leaned on his desk. Evidently he wasn’t going back to his own chair—more of a throne, really. I guess he wanted me to feel like his equal, his friend. Buddies that were about to embark on a lucrative business venture together.
“So,” he said. “What changed your mind?”
“Changed my mind?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “I never made up my mind to change it in the first place.”
“Yes, you did.” His grin touched his eyes. “After thousands of years observing my fellow humans, I’ve learned to read them quite accurately, Mr. Matthias. You may have been debating taking my offer, but make no mistake—eventually that debate would have ended in your refusal.”
I thought about that day at the Other Place and how impressed I was by his proposed salary. I really was tempted, but still, he was right: hemming and hawing as I was, I probably would have turned him down. Eventually. And with great discord in my heart.
“So, what changed your mind?” he repeated.
“What’s coming,” I said, giving it to him straight. There was no point in pretending that things were different than they were.
“And what exactly is coming?”
“War,” I said.
Mr. Cain nodded, and I noticed he didn’t even attempt to refute my claim.
“A lot of innocent Others are going to be coming here. Guilty by virtue of not being human. So I thought about my options and where I could do the most good, and every road pointed to Memnock. Most of those Others will wind up in this prison and I wanted to make sure that they were treated right.”
“The innocent ones, you mean?”
“The guilty as well,” I said. “Just because they are convicted of a human crime doesn’t mean they even understand what they did wrong. There’s going to be a lot of pain … a lot of struggle … and I figured you needed someone more empathetic to their ways to be here to keep you and your guards on the straight and narrow.”
He leaned forward and clinked his glass against mine. “Exactly why I approached you in the first place.”
“I know. And since we’re starting this thing together, I need to come clean on something.”
“And what’s that?” he asked, sipping from his glass.
“I was helping Paradise Lot PD investigate the kidnappings. I was behind the glass mirror when Officer Conner and Captain Michael were interviewing you. I heard what you said, about keeping this out of the news, about suppressing the fear. I tried. And I failed.”
“We failed,” he said, the word we coming out hard and sudden. “We failed … try as I might to figure out how those—those villains got past our security systems, I just couldn’t do it. There was no way, and yet, somehow they did.”
Now it was my turn to nod. “Stopping this wasn’t possible. But maybe making this less painless will be.”
Mr. Cain shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s gone too far for that as well. There will be a lot of pain. A lot of suffering. The humans will demand we employ … um, advanced … interrogation methods. They will demand results, even if those results are fabricated. I fear humanity will trade comfort for the truth—that is how far things have gone.”
“I won’t go along with torture,” I growled.
“Nor will I. But there are other ways to extract information other than waterboarding. Sleep deprivation, playing on specific Other fears … magic.”
I didn’t like what he was saying, but I didn’t interrupt. I’d seen the news. Everything I’d seen on that little TV told me that things were too far gone now. The best I could do was to minimize such techniques as much as possible.
Mr. Cain sensed my hesitation, but he also knew that I didn’t really have a choice. He continued, “Minimal torture. That is the best you and I can hope for … and that is what you and I must work toward.”
“Humph.” I shook my head. “And one more thing. I will need flexibility. I haven’t given up on the kids. I will continue my investigation from here and may need to leave to pursue a lead.”
“Absolutely. And what’s more—our facilities are at your disposal.”
“Thank you,” I said.
We settled into an awkward silence before Mr. Cain sighed, downed the rest of his Scotch and slammed his glass on the table. “Damn it,” he said. “I had hoped that things would not get to this point.” He walked over and grabbed the bottle from the cabinet. He brought it back with him and topped up my glass—which was t
o say, filled the tumbler I had only sipped at to the brim. Then, filling his own glass, he picked it up and said, “A toast—to Hope. She’s a fickle bitch, so willing to spread her goodwill over us all even when she knows that the promises she offers will never be fulfilled. And what do we do? We believe her, because to not believe in Hope is to sacrifice the part of us that is our humanity.” He raised his glass and I did the same, then the two of us downed our drinks in one harsh gulp that burned all the way down to my stomach.
↔
Mr. Cain walked to the eastern window. “See that over there?” He gestured toward a building that looked more like a gray concrete apartment yet to be painted than a prison. “The guards’ living quarters. We will, over time, make that place more pleasant to look at, but for now it will have to do. Like I said, I had hoped it would never come to this. And if it ever did, I hoped it would be years until my prison needed to be opened. But we must play with the hand we are dealt, mustn’t we?”
He gestured for me to follow him to the western window, where a three-storey building longer than ten football fields stretched out into an O shape. If it wasn’t gray, its roof covered with vents and chimneys and generators and four massive clock faces that stood on each point of the compass, I might have thought I was looking at the largest field track in the world.
“That is the prison. Sadly, we had to build over the original structure, an old Panopticon-style prison that once-upon-a-time was the very definition of ‘unescapable.’ But Others have special needs, as I’m sure you know, being a host of their kind yourself. This new prison’s walls are designed to suppress the burning of time. Those clocks you see are designed to be particularly sensitive to magic. And, of course, we have other counter measures. Shall we take a tour of the facilities?” Mr. Cain started for the stairwell.
I followed, mulling over his words. “You said ‘counter measures’ to magic. What do you mean?”
“Seems that burning time has some very physical properties that no one anticipated.” Our footsteps rang on the metal stairwell as we descended. “Magic, like most Laws of Nature, must obey certain protocols. Remove them and you remove the ability to use it.”
“Like what? Going to outer space to escape gravity?”
“Exactly like that. To carry the metaphor further, our protocols instantly get you to the moon.”
“Rocket ships to the profane.”
“Hah,” Mr. Cain chuckled. “I like that. ‘Rocket ships to the profane.’ I must use that the next time I meet the President and have to reassure him that our facility does, in fact, counter magic. It seems, Mr. Matthias, that you are already worth the investment.”
Chapter 2
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’m In …
We walked down the metal staircase. Every step Mr. Cain made with his hard, leather-soled, very expensive and extremely well-cared-for loafers shot out a high-pitched ring that echoed up and down the narrow descent. I accompanied Mr. Cain’s rings with my own, muted clangs made from soft leather-soled, very cheap, but extremely comfortable shoes that I got pre-broken in at a thrift shop in Paradise Lot. Our mismatched reverberations sounded our descent as we wound our way down the impossibly long stairwell of the once-upon-a-time lighthouse.
Mr. Cain, ever the host, asked me if I had everything I needed. I nodded, which was stupid of me. Unless Mr. Cain had eyes in the back of his head—and I was 98% sure he didn’t—there was no way for him to see my response. “Yes,” I said, several seconds too late for his question. “I had several hours until your ride came to pick me up.”
“Ahhh, yes. I sent you my favorite carrier … the Apache warbird—the Humvee of helicopters.”
Again I nodded, but this time I was quicker to respond. “No kidding,” I said. “Back when I was in the Army, they taught me how to fly those things. I was terrible, though.” We fell back into silence and, me being me, I broke it with, “That Apache has some serious firepower. I noticed you kept the chain gun in place.”
“And missile launchers,” Mr. Cain was quick to add.
“Yeah … a lot for a repurposed transportation vehicle, don’t you think?”
Mr. Cain stopped and turned to face me, looking up from three steps below. “ ‘Repurposed’? ‘Repurposed’? Fallen fruit, Jean-Luc … what a sad way to see things. That ‘repurposed transportation vehicle,’ as you call it, once ruled the skies. Just because its fighting days are behind it does not mean we don’t remember its glory days. Honestly, Jean-Luc, you think that the Apache helicopter sees itself as ‘repurposed’? Or does it still dream of fancy flights and dog fights from its glory days?”
“It’s a machine. Pretty sure it doesn’t think anything.”
Mr. Cain shrugged. “Perhaps. But as my father always said, ‘Just because your best days are behind you, doesn’t mean that your best deeds are, too.’ ”
Oh, wow—the original dad advice from the very first father. You’d think after thousands of generations of dads, they’d get more sophisticated with their platitudes, but I guess not everything evolves. “Yeah,” I said, “I take your point. My PopPop used to say something similar, except his was: ‘Getting older just means you’ve got to work harder at achieving your best.’ I think he was talking about his back, though. He was a carpenter, and the table saw wreaked havoc on his spine.”
Mr. Cain eyed me for a long moment before letting out a short, controlled but warm chuckle. “I think I would have liked your PopPop. Sounds like he had a saying for everything, just like my father.” Mr. Cain turned to resume his descent, and I followed.
↔
The stairwell was one of those tightly circular monstrosities. The spiral was tight—tight enough that, as I walked down the winding shaft, I had to stoop so my head didn’t hit the steps now acting as my ceiling. We walked down ninety steps or so and reached a metal landing with a door. I had to crouch to fit through its frame, which meant the door was really small, because—let’s be honest—I’m average as far as height is concerned.
Once through the door, we entered another stairwell and continued our downward climb. I tried to gauge how far down this thing went, but because of its cramped, coiling nature, I couldn’t see down the center to make any guestimate.
“And your affairs?” Mr. Cain asked, breaking our footsteps’ ringing and clanging with the soft tones of his voice. “I trust that your hotel will be looked after and that you have informed the necessary friends and family of your new situation?”
I took two more steps, the jagged metal of the staircase pushing through the soles of my shoes and massaging the bottoms of my feet with their unyielding hardness. “I don’t think there will be much need for a hotel—not with what’s coming. As for friends and family? I told everyone that needed telling. Lots of phone calls. Expensive, long-distance phone calls.”
“We’ll take care of that for you. Just send me the bill.” He reached a second landing and pulled on the heavy metal door. Beneath the landing was a third staircase that wound its way down into the Earth—except unlike the two landings above, the stairwell was blocked by a metal trapdoor with a digital padlock. “Think of it as a signing bonus,” Mr. Cain added.
“What?” I said, eyeing the trapdoor. “Oh, my phone bill. Thanks.”
“No bother.” Mr. Cain rested his hand on the door, waiting for me to join him.
“So,” I said, taking the last few steps in three easy strides. “Have you decided on a name for this place, yet?”
He yanked hard on the door and it opened silently on well-oiled hinges. “Oh, yes,” he said with an eerie smile that touched his eyes. “Welcome to … The Garden.”
↔
The metal door opened up into a large rectangular closed room that was big enough to house all the rides of Coney Island and still have room for a driving range and a half dozen batting cages. Although we were in a roofed area, the courtyard—if you could call a large rolling field that—was filled with such a diverse range of foliage it would have made botanical gardens
the world over green with envy. I don’t know my plants, so I won’t pretend that I recognized any of them. All I can say is that there were trees and bushes and flowers and generally greenish stuff that made it clear they came from multiple climate zones. All flourishing together, without the Sun.
“Empty Hell,” I said, using Penemue’s phrase because I couldn’t think of what else to say.
Mr. Cain smiled at my flabbergastedness. “Everything here is designed not only to suppress magic, but also to give our occupants something beautiful to look at as they pass their unburnable time. After all, happy prisoners are less likely to riot.”
“Yeah, but … how does everything grow so … so—”
“Perfectly? Let’s just say you have to use magic to suppress magic. Our Other security—mages, warlocks, witches and shamans—each burn three minutes of time per day. That, coupled with several efficiently placed talismans, maintains this place. And before you ask, they are well compensated for the minutes they give up.” He lifted both arms in the air, as if presenting this place as a gift to me and said, “I did warn you by saying ‘Welcome to The Garden.’ ”
“Yeah, The Garden. But I figured you were being ironic.” I looked at Adam’s eldest son. “I take it irony isn’t your thing? Also … ‘old prison,’ huh?”
Mr. Cain chuckled. “Our prison is not the old prison, Mr. Matthias. The Garden is built above the old structure. Directly above, in fact.”
I mentally stored that little tidbit away in the same place I stored an image of that padlocked trapdoor out in the stairwell. “Sure,” I said, “but it seems a bit dishonest to call this place a prison.”
“Oh, but it is,” said the first murderer of man as he pointed to the walls. My gaze followed his finger.
I had been so distracted by the spectacle before me that I didn’t notice the prison cells that lined the walls of this vast room. Given that the roof was at least five storeys high, I would have expected five balcony landings with evenly spaced cells lined up in a neat row. But that wasn’t the case.
