Richard Kadrey: Metrophage

The boys in the back of the cell, the blonde and a tall, Mestizo with bad teeth, stared at the floor. Jonny guessed that they were about sixteen. The boy with the knife looked to be a year or two older. The insignia on his Committee uniform indicated that he was a corporal. That explained it, then. It had all been good, clean fun. An older boy out to show his young friends a good time.

The lieutenant made a curt gesture with his hand. "Get him up," he said.

The two younger boys moved quickly. Slipping their arms under Jonny, they lifted him easily, their steroid thickened muscles hardly straining. Then they set him gentlyon the cot frame and stood against the wall, trying desperately to blend with the peeling paint.

The older boy still held the knife, moving it uncertainly from hand to infected hand. The lieutenant faced him. "You're all on report", he said. "Return to your duties."

"I'm telling you, this man tried to escape," the older boy insisted.

"I understand," said the lieutenant, a flat-nosed young black who, Jonny could now see, was not much older than the boy with the jaw implant. That's how it was in the Committee. They worked mainly with teenage boys. Give them the right stimulants and guns and they would go anywhere, risk everything. Higher ranking boys kept them in line, while desk-bound old men ran the rest of the show. It was cheap and efficient. The Committee never had to pay much in the way of retirement benefits.

"Get out of here," the lieutenant said.

"But- "

One more word and you can explain it to the Colonel."

That shut the boy up. Reluctantly, he closed the switchblade, tucking it into the top of his boot. While adjusting his uniform, he gave Jonny a quick, accusing glance, and followed his friends out of the cell.

"So long, guys," called Jonny. "Keep in touch." He laughed and nodded to the lieutenant. The young man's identity tag read TAUSSIG. "Thanks for your help. I thought I was dog food for sure- "

"On your feet, pusher," said Lieutenant Taussig.

Jonny took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. "You mind if I catch my breath first?" he asked.

Taussig reached down to examine Jonny's face, turning it this way and that in the light. He did not look pleased.

"If anybody asks, tell them the anesthetic hadn't quite worn off and you fell on the stairs", the lieutenant said.

"Why? What do you care about those clowns?" asked Jonny.

"Just do it."

Jonny smiled. "Oh, I get it. Afraid someone'll find out you can't handle your troops?"

Taussig pulled Jonny up by his good arm. "Let's go," he said.

The lieutenant led Jonny out onto a rusted loading gantry, through a maze of small-bore piping and frozen transfer valves to the floor the old processing plant cum prison. Vague breezes and convection currents kicked up scraps of paper, fluttering them around the pylons of fifty foot cryogenic tanks.

The floor sloped; the air cooled. They entered a battered hydro-plunge service lift whose burnished walls reflected the harsh industrial lighting in jagged bolts and loops. As they descended, Jonny noticed that Taussig had punched a button in the Yellow Sector. Jonny was impressed. He had never received clearance to enter any of the restricted areas.

When the elevator doors opened, Taussig pushed Jonny to a jerry-rigged desk (a horizontal slab of tank cladding bolted athwart two enormous shock-coils) and handed a sheaf of documents to a pale boy whose eyes seemed to have no pupils at all. The red-faced boy motioned for a couple of pre-pubescent guards to follow them, and walked Jonny and the lieutenant down a short corridor. At the end, he unlocked a scuffed yellow door for them.

Inside, it was another world.

The light came from incandescent bulbs, a muted non-industrial glow. They stood in a small anteroom whose walls Jonny was sure were real wood, not plasti-form. Between two locked doors at the far end of the room was a low table, in the Kamakura style. On the table was a small bowl holding a single bonsai. Jonny coughed into his fist a couple of times. The sound was flat, swallowed up by the walls like water on sand. Sound-proofed, he thought.

Taussig walked to door on the right of the table and leaned over the eyepiece of a portable Haag-Streit retinal scanner. A moment later, a buzzer sounded. Gripping the ornamental brass handle, the lieutenant pushed the door open and motioned Jonny inside. Taussig did not enter. When Jonny turned to look at him, the lieutenant closed the door in his face.

"What the hell happened to you?" came a familiar, avuncular voice.

Jonny faced the room, seeing only a computer terminal on the far side of a mahogany table with four matching chairs drawn up to it. Dragons inset in some lighter wood coiled in battle or play on the table's surface. In the dim light, Jonny could not see the face of the man sitting on the opposite side of the table. But that voice. It made Jonny feel a little sick.

"I thought they cleaned you up in the infirmary," the man said.

Jonny could just make out the silhouette. It gestured for Jonny to take a seat.

"I tripped on the stairs," Jonny said. "The- uh- anesthetic." He sat in the chair as he was told.

Jonny could see the face now. It smiled at him. The short cropped hair was whiter than he remembered.

"What's the matter, Gordon? Not even a 'hello' for your old C.O.?" The officer, Colonel Brigidio Zamora, set a small pile of crumpled currency next to a collection of pills and Jonny's tagged Futukoro.

"Captain Zamora-" Jonny began.

"Colonel."

"Congratulations," Jonny said. He rubbed his wounded shoulder, reflexively. "Look Colonel, you're too late. I know this room and the ride down here were supposed to mind-fuck me, but you blew it. Three of your puppies broke into my cell just now and tried to slice me up. I'm exhausted and my shoulder hurts like hell." Jonny leaned his good elbow on the table. "So tell me, Colonel, what kind of deal are you prepared to offer me?"

For a moment, Zamora did nothing and Jonny found himself wondering if he had chosen the wrong tactic. The Colonel, he remembered, liked to have a good time. In a moment, though, Zamora relaxed, exhaling little bursts of air from his throat. His version of laughter.

"I tell you, Gordon, you kill me," said the Colonel, with good humor. "You beg for it; that's what you do. You beg people to smash you up. No wonder your life's such a mess."

"What's wrong with my life?" asked Jonny.

"Well for starters, look where you are."

Jonny could not argue with that one.

The Colonel, Jonny noticed, had put on some weight. The jacket of his uniform now fit tight across his belly. The creases around his mouth and eyes had taken on the exaggerated depth of cheap statuary. Colonel Zamora did not seem to be aging so much as fossilizing. In his presence, Jonny was always reminded of reptiles, slow, solid beasts of ancient bloodlines, all muscles and teeth.

"Is that why I'm here?" Jonny asked. You're a social worker now? Gonna fix my life?

Zamora shook his head. "No, Gordon; you're going to fix mine."

"What does that mean?"

"You really have no concept, do you?" Zamora asked. He spoke slowly, as if addressing someone of less than average intelligence.

"See if you can grasp this: you killed Captain Cawfly- one of my officers, and then just waltzed away. Do you know how that makes me look? And then you turn up with these smugglers. Selling their drugs; giving them Committee secrets. Working for terrorists, Gordon. I mean, just how much abuse am I supposed to take?"

Jonny started to say something, then met Zamora's tired gray eyes. Thin ice.

"The way I figure it, you owe me," said the Colonel.

"I don't owe you anything," Jonny replied quickly.

That seemed to amuse Zamora. "See, you're doing it again."