"No. I don't. Do you?"
"Well, uh...no. But you can bet it won't be Peaceful!"
"Blue," Tane interrupted. "I have already informed Culture Leader Trevino of this. She is taking it before Council. She has probably already done so."
"HOW dare you, Rolan!" Blue turned on Tane. It was apparent to Grant that the administrator needed to show his power and Tane appeared to be a good target. "You know that she is not to be contacted without my knowledge! I could have you relieved of duty for this!"
Grant had seen enough of this man's theatrics, and stepped forward.
"Listen to me, you overweight sofa maggot, with your formal Standard bullshit," he said through clenched teeth. Everyone else in the room blanched at Grant's words. "We have a job to do, and we're going to do it. Now, you can be a part of the solution if you want, but if you even think about being any part of the problem, you'll answer to me.
"I did not get revived from six hundred years of blissful sleep to put up with your bureaucratic bullshit," Grant felt the lie about his sleep being 'blissful' well justified.
Avery stepped toward Grant and put out a restraining hand. "Be with Peace, Grant. This man is not your enemy. Save your violence for the Minith." The soothing tone of her voice and the softness of her hand calmed him.
"I have no intention of being violent to this man, Avery. Unless he tries to get in our way."
"Then say you are sorry, Grant. You have offended him with your behavior."
“No freakin’ way,” Grant growled.
Avery’s hand clamped tighter around his forearm as she stepped closer. The look on her face was calm but there was no mistaking the order in her voice.
“Apologize.”
At the mild rebuke, Grant took a deep breath, bit his tongue, and gathered his thoughts. He was blaming this man for more than he deserved. Sure, he was an overweight do-nothing who thrived on power, but that was no cause to threaten him. Especially when a threat was cause for a prison sentence.
Once again, he felt the harsh bite of his situation as his mind struggled to grasp reality. This was not his time. These were not his people. They were human, but their values and mores were very different. He had acted as if Blue was the cause of his being here, and knew that was wrong. He was here because another bureaucrat, six hundred years ago, had decided to send him and his team on a suicide mission. He had been unfortunate in that, but it was time to move on. Get with the program. He was alive now and he had something to live for, a goal, and he reached out for that now. He had to defeat the Minith and liberate their planet – his planet – from the bonds of slavery.
"Please accept my apologies, Mr. Blue. I intended no violence."
"It is nothing," the other man answered with a slight wave. He pulled his collar away from his neck and dabbed his forehead and neck with a square of silk from his pocket. "Be at Peace, Mr. Justice."
"I will." He was also ready to put the next part of his plan in motion. "Tane, did you get the material on Violent's Prison?"
"Violent's Prison? Why in the world would you care about that unholy place?"
Blue's intrusion annoyed Grant but he did not let the irritation show. He had gone through the same thing with Tane, and realized that the mention of the place struck a chord of terror in these 'modern' men and women. He looked at Avery and was surprised by the lack of fear on her face at the name of Violent's Prison. He briefly wondered why she did not flinch from the sound of that name.
"Because I need soldiers, Blue. Men who are not afraid to kill if killing is needed."
"You cannot be serious! I will not permit it!"
"Blue, I apologized for my earlier behavior but I meant what I said. If you stand in my way on this, I will see that you are relocated to a safe place until our work is finished. Do you understand?"
"Yes, yes, of course! I only meant--"
"I know what you meant, Blue. But that place… that prison… it doesn’t frighten me like it does you. You don’t have to go there. I do."
"Not alone," three heads turned toward Avery as she spoke. "I am going with you, Grant."
"I don't think so, Avery. It will be dangerous. I can't risk it." Avery laughed boldly, and he stared at the beautiful woman, unsure of what he was witnessing.
"Grant, I'm not asking you to risk anything. I know what awaits us inside Violent's Prison." Her words stirred something familiar inside Grant. She knew what she was talking about.
"What do you mean, Avery?"
“What I mean, Grant Justice, is this," he watched her lips move, entranced with each syllable. "I know Violent's Prison. I was there for two years before the Minith took me as their slave."
Silence followed Avery's matter of fact statement and the three men stared at her, too surprised to speak. No one was more surprised by the words than Grant.
"I'll be damned." Amazement coursed through his body. "Beautiful as well as violent. And I thought they didn't make 'em like that any more."
The disclosure did not change his mind, though. He needed her here, not in the prison.
* * *
For the next three days Grant learned everything he could about Violent's Prison. He studied the material Tane provided and had numerous conversations with Avery.
Used by all Cultures as a place to deposit their violent miscreants, the prison was huge. The four outer walls, each nearly a half-mile long, formed a giant square. The prison held upwards of twenty thousand inmates. Men, women and children were sentenced to life within the prison's walls for offenses ranging from rock throwing to mass murder. Outside of the mainstream social atmosphere of the rest of the world, the prison had its own laws and codes of behavior. In short, it was a brutal piece of hell among a world of Peace loving humans.
The social pecking order within the walls of Violent's Prison was established by the not-so-complex method that Grant labeled “King of the Castle”. The strongest, smartest, most feared inmate was king. Fights for dominance inside the prison were constant as inmates sought to improve their standing within the hierarchy. Most of those sentenced to a life within the walls of Violent's Prison were not generally violent, at least not when they first entered the walls of the prison. They were mostly victims of their own inability to conform to the rigid social norms of the world and its strict pacifist code. Once inside the cold gray stone walls, however, they were forced to fight for their lives or submit to the dominance of those around them.
In all of their conversations, Avery never said why she had been banished to the prison and Grant, sensing her discomfort, did not ask. She was adamant, however, that life inside the Prison’s walls was preferable to living with the Minith.
After much debate Avery relented to remain at the hospital while Grant went to the prison alone. Two of Grant's arguments won her over: her blindness and his need to have the Minith language recorded onto one of the transference educators.
"I am staying here because it is needed to defeat the Minith, Grant," she told him, still unsure if she was doing the right thing by not going with him. "But you must promise me you will be careful! It is dangerous there."
"I promise, Avery. Believe me. I don't have a death wish. But I’ve gone over this a hundred times. The only chance we’ve got of defeating the Minith requires the help of the people in Violent's Prison."
Avery sat on a bench in Grant's workout room while he pushed iron plates over his head.
"When do you leave?"
Grant stopped lifting, his breathing heavy from pushing his new body to its limits. So far, it had not disappointed him in its capabilities, though he still grieved the loss of his own arms. His own legs. The initial pain, which had been every bit as punishing as Tane had promised, had dulled. He ached constantly, but it was the ache of sore muscles after being pushed to the limit. It was no longer a pain inflicted by recuperation. It was pain inflicted by muscle growth.
"Tomorrow morning, Avery. I'm going in just like a new prisone
r would."
"But Grant! That is the most dangerous way! The new ones are always treated harshly and must fight well or be made a slave!”
"Then I will fight well," he told her calmly. Her concern was moving, but Grant was not overly worried. He knew his own capabilities and had over six hundred years to mentally perfect his fighting techniques. What concerns he did have about entering the prison were wiped away by one stark reality: If he was to win the support of the inmates of Violent's Prison he would first have to win their respect. It was a soldier's rule.
"I hope you know what you are doing, Grant Justice," Avery said. She reached for his hand and brought it to her cheek. "Since you do not leave until morning, would you spend the night with me?" She cast her sightless eyes toward the ground and her cheek flushed beneath his hand. Her sudden shyness disguised the courage it had taken for her to ask the question and Grant pulled her close to his chest.
"How could any man resist, Avery?" He wrapped his arms around her and held tightly, the closeness of her body doing marvelous things to his.
"I was afraid my blindness would...would..."
"You are beautiful, Avery," he reassured her. He understood her feelings that her handicap might put him off but there was nothing farther from the truth. She held an inner as well as an outer beauty that astounded him. Had astounded him since he first saw her.
"But my eyes are disfigured. The Minith had the lids removed when--"
"Shhhh. It's okay, Avery. I don’t have secondary lids, either," he explained. She drew away slightly and turned her face up to his, unsure of what he meant.
"But you are not blind, Grant! Even in the light you can see!"
"It is a long story, Avery. Tomorrow, ask Tane to explain it to you." Grant bent forward and kissed her. The light touch was fire upon his lips. "Tonight, we have better things to do than discuss our eyes."
He led her to his small room and they turned out the light.
To his surprise Avery could see as well as he could in the dark. "Yes, I can see when the lights are low. The secondary lids only work to filter out bright lights."
"Well," he asked her, afraid she would find some fault with his features now that she could see him, although dimly. "Do I look anything like what you'd imagined?"
"Oh Grant," she whispered, nuzzling her face into his chest, “you are handsome as well as brave. I did not think they made men like that anymore."
They laughed, then turned to other pleasures.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Grant watched farms and cities pass as the carrier sped westward across the morning sky. From the carrier’s height of two thousand feet, the people below looked like ants. How many were toiling away, trying to keep up with their work, just so their fellow humans would not starve? Grant didn’t know for sure, but there were not enough. The Minith quotas had forced millions to redirect their work efforts away from farming and towards the mines of Africa, South America and Asia. Old names now.
He thought about the Minith. He thought about his past. He thought about Violent’s Prison. And he thought about Avery. Their night together had been wonderful. Sensual. Better than he deserved. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever known and he wondered if he was in love. He had no experience with that particular emotion. His previous life as a soldier had never allowed him the luxury of a close relationship. Sure, he had encounters with women but nothing left him feeling the way he now felt. A warm kernel burned in his stomach. It popped when he saw her. That had to be love. If not, what would the real thing feel like?
"The prison is just over the horizon, Grant. We will be there in ten minutes." Tane brought him back to Earth. The young scientist sat in the back of the carrier with Grant. One of Tane’s junior scientists was at the controls of the carrier
“Tane.”
"Yes, Grant?"
"The surgery that you did to me -- the regeneration of tissue?"
"Yes, what about it?"
"I've been thinking. If it worked for me, do you think it might work for others as well? I mean, if it was required?"
Tane nodded his understanding. "You mean Avery? Her eyes?"
"Yes. Can it help her?"
Tane smiled.
"I've already begun the process."
Their discussion was interrupted by the pilot. “Violent's Prison, straight ahead!"
Grant recognized the fear in the pilot's voice and turned to look. The gentle greens of the sub-farms were gone. They had been replaced by the dead tans and browns of scrub and desert. The land below was flat, but mountains were visible in the distance. The prison was located in the southeastern part of what Grant had once known as Idaho. He did not know if the name still held.
At first a speck in the distance, the prison grew larger and more imposing with each passing moment. It rose from the desert rapidly – an immense stone structure. Grant knew the outer walls of the prison were a hundred feet high and ten feet thick. There were no guard towers, no guards. Instead, there was The Channel.
The Channel was a hundred-foot-wide man-made moat that surrounded the entire prison. Filled with a thick soup of deadly acid, the channel provided an effective barrier against escape. According to the records he had seen, no one had ever escaped the prison and, seeing the width of the deadly moat, Grant believed it.
The carrier pilot circled the prison at a height of three hundred feet and Grant studied it from above. The giant structure was actually a series of five stone buildings set within the outer wall. Inside the outer wall and courtyard, the five squares of the prison formed a box-within-a-box design and Grant thought of the Pentagon in what used to be Washington, D.C. This prison, although only four-sided, was set out in a fashion similar to that ancient structure, except that there were no corridors connecting the separate buildings. Instead, there were merely four doorways on the inner and outer side of each building, leading to the next courtyard. Each building was separated by a courtyard of hard-packed dirt. Grant saw thousands of inmates in the outermost space between the outer wall and the first building. Some looked up at the circling carrier, others seemed oblivious or unaware of the vehicle.
Grant directed the pilot to fly over the center of the prison. The pilot groaned, but complied. In each successive courtyard, there were fewer people visible. At the innermost courtyard that made up the center of the prison, Grant saw only four men, one at each door of the innermost side of the Fifth Square. Grant knew that food, clothing and supplies entered the prison through that inner courtyard on a regular basis. From there, it was distributed to the outermost squares. Grant also knew that the farther a prisoner was from the inner square, the less of those supplies he or she would ever receive.
Unlike supplies, new inmates were dropped into the prison near the southern door of the outermost, First Square.
Grant gave a nod to the pilot. He was ready.
The carrier left the prison and circled around to the south. As they approached the southern wall, Grant checked his communications gear a final time. He would use the small transmitter and receiver to contact Tane only when he completed his mission inside the prison. He carried no weapons.
He stretched his muscles as the carrier vehicle crossed over the outer wall and swept down toward his destination – the courtyard that separated the outer wall from the First Square.
Grant looked down at the crowd gathering around the space where he would be dropped and got ready. New inmates were dumped unceremoniously from an open cargo door and the pilot paused briefly at a height of ten feet. Grant hung from the open door as he had been instructed, then dropped to the hard packed earth below.
It was a fall of less than four feet, but the pilot was pulling away before Grant hit the ground.
Several forms rushed forward and Grant rolled, ready for what was to come.
He narrowly dodged a vicious kick aimed at his head and leapt to his feet as another, weaker kick caught him in the s
tomach.
Grant easily grabbed the offending foot and twisted sharply. The bone snapped and the man, dirty and dressed in little more than rags, fell to the ground screaming. Grant spun around, prepared for another attack and found himself facing dozens of raggedly dressed men. They circled him warily, unsure. He saw no women or children.
The outer courtyard, he had been told by Avery, was occupied by the weakest of the inmates. Those who were not strong enough to fight their way into one of the inner squares lived here. These men were restricted to the outer courtyard, denied even the small pleasure of a roof over their heads.
He crouched in a defensive stance and waited patiently for the men to decide on how to proceed. Grant thought his initial effort might be enough to scare the others away, but it was not to be. Two of the men rushed him at once, from opposite directions. He stepped quickly toward the man coming from his right, dodged a looping punch and delivered a clothesline blow that slammed the attacker to the ground.
Grant spun toward the other attacker and barely managed to snap his head back, dodging a quick slash from a small bladed weapon. He grabbed the man's wrist and twisted as another of the prisoners rushed from his left. The man holding the knife howled. Grant quickly twisted the arm a second time and snatched the blade from the air as it dropped from the man’s grasp. He flashed the small knife to the left and the attacker pulled up short, suddenly afraid to press his rush. The knife's previous owner lashed out with a weak knee strike that Grant easily blocked. The man hesitated, his right wrist still held tightly in Grant’s right hand. Grant saw that he was unsure of whether to keep up the attack or give up.
"Better not try it," Grant cautioned the man in Earth standard.
He let the man's wrist go as a sign of good faith and rose to his full height. He dropped his arms to his side and hoped the other would take the hint and back off.
The dirty convict looked right and left at the other men around them. He was obviously judging the level of support he had against Grant but no one rose to the invitation. Angered by the turn of events, and the loss of his knife, the man roared at Grant and rushed forward once again. Grant stepped easily to the left and stuck out his foot. The man tripped and landed face first next to clothesline guy, who was gasping raggedly for breath. Nearby, one of the observers was helping the man with the broken leg.