Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall

“‘Our life expectancy just doubled,’ she said. ‘From the towers, we’ll just be another couple of idiots running around trying to catch the horses.’ So we stood by the door, lit the straw with the flamethrower, and ran to watch from safety.

“The stables crackled, like the warning rattle of a snake, and seeped out smoke at every pore, and then at last put on a wreath of flame, like a woman tossing a red cape around her shoulders. And for all that I knew the futility of what we did, no other moment in my life has been as satisfying.

“‘Will it spread?’ I asked her, as the cry of fire went out.

“‘I don’t give a damn,’ she said bitterly. She was immune to the destructive joy that had seduced me. ‘Piotr wanted a fire, so there’s his goddamn fire. Whether the Guardians have to rebuild their library or not is all the same to me. Let’s get the generator and go find Piotr some roommates.’

“In the confusion, no one challenged us as we found and burned the generator. The searchlights went out all around the hill. We went down in darkness, to where the long narrow barracks lay side by side like rows of corn.

“One of the horses had found its way down the hill, and men in uniforms and nightshirts were trying to trap it in the narrow space between two barracks. It was an admirable plan, and might have worked, if only they could have agreed which aisle they meant to drive the poor thing into. Every time they thought they had him, he would find a way out, darting between two shoulders just in time.

“The prisoners, hearing the footsteps and hoofbeats and cries, must have thought the last extermination was upon them. A wailing would start in one barracks and be taken up at once by others, like an old song that everyone knows. Now and then an irritated Guardian would go along the rows, rapping a stick against the wood and then against the tin, to quiet the cries, but each time they only started up again. In such an uproar, no one would notice the two of us; but prisoners flowing from an open barracks would be seen at once.

“We stopped, pretending to gawk at the fire, as Katya checked the map on her drydisk. ‘There,’ she said at last, pointing up the row of barracks. ‘It says Terminal Isolation Cells. ’

“‘What’s that?’

“‘Something bad enough that being shot in an escape would be an improvement. Let’s go.’

“One guard had remained by the door of the square building, but she easily persuaded him that he was wanted in fire fighting. When he was gone, we shot the padlock off the door with a silenced pistol she had brought for just such purposes. Its sound surprised me: louder and more mechanical than the cat-sneeze sound effect you hear in the movies. I kept flinching, afraid of ricochets, so I had to keep shooting and shooting to hit the lock. But when I finally hit it, it flew to bits; it was a twenty-ruble padlock, nothing more. We were both surprised to find such token security; as I recall, she remarked that she’d seen bicycles better protected… until we opened the door, thrusting in our guns like policemen in a video.

“The smell of urine, feces, and decay was overwhelming. The building was packed solid with cubical cages, a metre on a side. They were piled three high, and filled the building wall to wall, so there was no corridor by which to reach the cages at the back. In each, a naked prisoner sat huddled, a food dispenser pressing into his arm. The muscles even of the ones in front were visibly atrophied, and in the cages at the back we could see corpses, rotting in the same position they had crouched in when alive.

“For a time we both stood mute. Then, feeling that something had to be done, I started toward the nearest cage. But Katya held me back. ‘Pavel, we can’t let those people go,’ she said. ‘They couldn’t walk across the room, much less make it out of here. And it would take days to move the cages around to get to them all. Pavel, there’s… is there nothing we can do?’

“‘Burn it,’ said a voice from the cages. We jumped, whirling around to see who had spoken. The prisoners’ condition was so bestial, we had not imagined them capable of speech. But one of them nodded his head, all the gesture that he could make, and said again, ‘Burn it all.’

“I had the flamethrower. But I was paralyzed, imagining the fire creeping from cage to cage. It would move slowly; nothing but the men themselves was flammable among the tin and steel. Each one, unable even to cover his face, would watch his neighbor’s long matted hair bloom yellow as he awaited his own turn.

“If Katya had turned to me, if Katya had given one of her sharp commanding nods, I would have done it. But she, even she, could not command such a horror.

“‘Then give it to me,’ the man said, ‘and I’ll do what needs doing.’

“Silently, not even needing to look at each other, we agreed. He could do it. He knew.

“I put in a new clip and aimed the pistol at the simple cage lock from above. But I could not fire so close to the man’s unprotected flesh, could not find an angle that did not risk a ricochet into arm or face or thigh.

“Finally Katya closed her hand over mine, and slipped her slender finger into the trigger guard, where mine, thick and clumsy, trembled against the steel. She squeezed once, firmly. The cage door burst open, and the man spilled out, uncurling. He should have been left to unfold on his own, as you give the hatched butterfly a chance to dry its wings; but there was no time. She helped him prop himself up against the side of the cage, and I put the flamethrower in his hands.

“Then we heard someone call out, in English, ‘Isolation is open!’ We heard running footsteps, and then a hand at the door.

“Without an instant’s hesitation, Katya shot the man we had just freed. He fell to the floor never having fully stood, his limbs slowly drawing themselves back into the posture of the cage, as a scroll, let go, curls back into its native state.

“As the door opened, she called out in her unaccented English, ‘We have shot the escapee! Hold your fire! We’re coming out!’

“The guards still looked suspicious, but she overwhelmed their doubts with anger. ‘Which one of you deserted this post? Well, I suggest you find whoever did and put him in that little hotel you’re running—I’ve just opened up a vacancy. While you people were watching the fireworks, someone went in there and started arming the prisoners. And from what I’ve seen of your security, I think a cripple with a .45 could have limped right out of here under all your noses. Do any of you want to argue with that?’

“Her tenuous invention hung a moment in the air. It would be challenged, I was sure; this was the end. A guard opened his mouth—

“And reinforced the fragile structure. ‘That’s a flamethrower,’ he said. ‘You think that’s the man that burned the stables?’

“Katya hesitated, tempted. But the idea was too ridiculous to hold up. She took a breath and blustered:

“‘No, I do not think a naked cripple made it up the hill, nor do I think he came all the way back here just so he could be discovered in the place he left. Are there any more stupid questions?’

“There were not. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then get on the radio and tell anyone who hasn’t already guessed that the light show you’ve been staring at was no accident. This Stonie didn’t do it, but whoever armed him did. And when you’ve done that, call up Commander Sinclair for me and tell him I’m done playing soldier. Tell him the girl he used to read Alice in Wonderland to is ready to go home.’

“ I had to, she said through our radio link as the guards stared. They would have killed us and put him back in that thing. I didn’t have any choice.