Prisoner of Glass (11 page)

“Still … he’s worth keeping tabs on.”

“He’s got leprosy.”

“Oh?
 
Oh.”
 
Card sounded almost panicked now.
 
She’d forgotten how much of a germaphobe he was.

“Relax, boy in the bubble.
 
He’s not contagious.
 
You can’t catch it.”

Still, she couldn’t help but stifle a laugh when she heard Card’s faucet come on — and run continuously for a full half hour.
 
He only stopped because Ione came by and hung around the front of his cell for a full hour, talking with him shyly, asking him if he liked his record player.
 
Elspeth watched this act of Ione’s suspiciously — she managed to pull off a completely different persona out here in the prison than in the tunnels.
 

Then later in the night, long after Ione left, Elspeth heard Card cursing up a storm.
 

“Goddamn!
 
The record’s got a
scratch
on it now!
 
How did that happen?”

SEVEN: SECOND ITERATION

IT WAS 3:00 AM.

Some kind of ruckus had broken out, Elspeth was clear on that immediately upon waking.
 
As she squinted through the smoke from the nightly in-cell campfires and the light from the blaring projected films, she saw immediately that the Latin Kings were loose from their cells, as well as some other random prisoners.
 
There were the two Africans that nobody could understand.
 
There were the four Chinese men and their five Chinese wives (how that worked, Elspeth had no idea).
 

Even the old woman in the wheelchair was somehow out and about.
 

All in all, it was about a hundred people.
 
This was basically a prison riot.

But the guards weren’t doing anything about it.
 
The Panopticon remained shut and curiously silent, apparently having no comment on the matter.
 

It wasn’t long before Elspeth saw where they were going.
 

“James! James! Wake up!”
 
Card muttered something at her about not being around at night anymore when he called out so why should he?

Milton’s cell.

“Come on out, dead man!” the Latin Kings howled.
 
Somehow they’d gotten his cell door open.
 
“This time, we’re going to make sure you stay dead!”

Milton did as he was told, defeat already plain on his face.
 
But he was also laughing.
 
“You think you’re badasses?
 
You haven’t been killed even once yet — let alone killed by fire monsters.
 
That’s a terrible way to go.
 
But you guys?
 
You guys are a walk in the park.
 
You guys are cake and ice cream.
 
C’mon!
 
Do your worst!”

The Kings grabbed him.
 
He raised his arms, exposed his vital organs, virtually saying,
Please!
 
I’m not kidding!
 
Kill me painlessly before those things do!

And the Kings did.
 
They stabbed him with shivs of all different kinds.
 
Then, they tossed his body back into his cell and slammed the door shut.
 

The prisoners howled their approval.
 

Jesus, Elspeth thought.
 
That was cold.
 

THAT MORNING, the mist was back.

And so was the earthquake.
 
The entire prison rattled top to bottom, just as it had a little over a week ago.
 
Card cursed like a sailor — but deep fear soaked every one of his little naughty words.
 
He hated earthquakes.

But when he played his record after breakfast, he was surprised to find that the scratch was gone.
 
Card replayed the same spot in the music several times to be sure.
 

“Well, if that ain’t the damnedest thing,” Card muttered.

“I WANT TO know what those goddamn things were,” Elspeth demanded of the Vizier.
 
“Those fire monsters or whatever.
 
The things that killed Milton before.”

This time, a guard had approached Elspeth and asked if she wanted a second visit.
 
That turbanned sonofabitch
, she breathed.
 
Clearly, he was able to make the guards his bidding.
 
He could even send them around as his errand boys, apparently.
 
And the Vizier must have sensed that Elspeth wanted to talk.
 
Damn him anyway.
 

She wondered if he was Al-Qaeda, and whether he was secretly the warden of the entire Prison.
 
It would explain a lot.

The Vizier shrugged.
 
“Everyone has their appointed time,” he said.
 

“What does that mean?’

“You are a physician.
 
You know that no man can escape death.”

“Well, it sure seemed like he was trying to escape, getting himself locked him up like that.
 
And what did he mean when he said, ‘you can’t throw me over the edge this time’?
 
What was with the
this time
?”

The Vizier stifled a laugh.
 
“A while ago, the guards decided that it would be amusing to drop Milton from the top of the Panopticon.”
 
Elspeth stared at him in horror.
 
In answer to her stare, he said.
 
“Oh yes.
 
They climbed the tower and tossed him off, sure as that.”

“Why did they do that?”
 
The Vizier shrugged.
 
“And that time — he lived then, also?”

“Evidently.”
 
Elspeth pictured the fall in her mind.
 
It would be like falling from a skyscraper.
 
Nobody could survive that!
 
“Don’t look so surprised.
 
You’ve seen how things can come back in this Prison.
 
Or have you forgotten your finger?”
 
She looked down at it involuntarily and wiggled it.
 
Impossible finger on her impossible hand in an impossible Prison …
 

Things can come back …
 

“So was he actually completely dead when the fire monsters came?
 
Maybe he was just wounded.”

The Vizier nodded slowly.
 
“Oh no.
 
He was dead.
 
My sources say they removed his body right after.
 
Well.
 
Shoveled and mopped him out, more accurately.
 
Poor Milton was no more than a pile of pulp and mash.”

“Wow.
 
Yeah, it seemed like even the guards were afraid of that fire thing,” Elspeth mused.
 
“I don’t think they controlled it.”

The Vizier smiled.
 
“You might be right.”

“Maybe we could make an alliance with it,” Elspeth said.
 
“Maybe we could —”
 

But the Vizier shook his head.
 
“One cannot make an alliance with the wind.
 
Or the sea.”

“You know what this thing is, don’t you?” The Vizier remained silent, his dark, old, ancient eyes fixed on her with a stone gaze.
 
“And you’re not going to tell me.
 
For absolutely no reason at all.
 
Just because you enjoy being annoying and mysterious.”

“No.
 
It is because it is not in my interest to tell you,” he said finally.
 
“That would work cross to my purpose.”

“And what is your purpose?”

“To get back on The Road.”

“Ah.
 
So we’re back to that again.
 
The Road
.”

Silence.
 

“Okay.
 
What is it you want from me?”

At that, he fixed her with new purpose in his gaze: “I want you to be serious.
 
Here.
 
This will help you.”
 
The Vizier reached into a box nearby him on the floor.
 
He brought out a golden brooch pin.
 

It was made of gold — and shaped into a hieroglyph of a honeybee, framed in a hexagon.
 
It looked just like the one on her cell wall.
 
Black stripes were carefully hand painted on the abdomen of the insect, and the hexagon was likewise lined in black.
 

“Wear it,” the Vizier commanded.
 
“Don’t take it off.”

On the way back to her cell she fingered the brooch pin.
 
Should she?
 
Or shouldn’t she?

Oh hell!
 

She put it on.

Damn that leper.
 
Why did he doubt that she wanted to escape?
 
Or was he manipulating her somehow?
 

THAT NIGHT, when she slipped into the passageway behind her wall, she decided she would tell David about the Vizier.

But when she did, David reacted almost violently.
 
“Why did you even go see him?
 
Did you tell him about us?” David asked, apoplectic.
 

“What?
 
No!
 
Of course not!” Elspeth reacted like she’d been slapped.
 
“And I’m a doctor, David.
 
Even in here.
 
And I don’t discriminate when it comes to helping my patients.”

David shook with barely contained rage.
 
“You can’t tell him about us, you know.
 
Not ever.
 
He can’t know.”

“I know, I know.
 
I made a promise to you.
 
And you should know that I kept it.
 
It’s just that … well, he wants to escape also.
 
Shouldn’t that make him a friend?”

David become very intense, whirling her towards him by her elbows … which made him appear small and powerless, even to himself — which only fed his anger.
 
“Look.
 
Dr. Lune.
 
Elspeth.
 
We took a chance on you.
 
We extended our trust.
 
You cannot betray that trust.
 
This man who calls himself a ‘Vizier’ is up to his own games.”

She couldn’t disagree with that.

“What else did he say?” David asked.

“He said I wasn’t serious enough about getting out of here.”

David snorted a laugh.
 
“There.
 
You see?
 
He’s mad.”
 
She couldn’t disagree with that.
 
“Here.
 
There’s something else I want to show you.”
 
With that, David led her by torchlight through several of the rough-hewn tunnels.
 
After fifteen minutes, they come to a new tunnel that Elspeth had not seen before.
 
Unlike all the other tunnels, this one was immaculately cut and carved.
 

“Whoa … what is this?” Elspeth asked.
 
She ran her hands along the walls: they were wide at the bottom and narrower at the top, some twenty feet high.
 
At several places, squarish, stylized carvings of snakes were laid into the wall.
 

“Mayan,” David said.
 
“Those are Mayan hieroglyphs.
 
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god.”

Then she realized that this tunnel was curved.
 
In fact, it seemed to run around the circumference of the very Prison itself.
 
She snapped her head in both directions, trying to gauge the geometry.
 
“Yes, it does,” David said, confirming her appraisal with a smile, raising his torch higher to illuminate the distance.
 
“Goes all the way around.
 
It seems to be part of the original construction.”
 

“Original construction …?”

“What, you didn’t think those morons in the Panopticon carved this place out, did you?
 
No.
 
Whoever imprisoned us is using a construction that was here long before they were.
 
They just built on top of an older place they found.
 
I mean, the Panopticon itself, that’s a modern addition.
 
As are the bars and the locks.
 
But the original Prison was already here.”

“So the Mayans built it?”

“Looks that way,” David nodded.
 
“Oh, and we’ve had a look at the outside of this tunnel.
 
It’s carved up as well.
 
It’s made to look like a snake eating its own tail.”

Elspeth ignored this last detail.
 
“We’re in South America?”

“Probably, yeah.
 
Or Mexico or something.”
 
That was a shock to her.
 
David said it so casually.
 
Up until that moment, she had had no idea where on earth she was.
 
Now, should could imagine a map, a place, a geography where she was located.
 
Something about even that little sliver of information comforted her.

“So a Mayan prison.”

David crinkled his nose a bit.
 
“Well … I don’t think this was
originally
a prison.”

“No?
 
Then what?”

“I think it used to be a city.”

A city?
 
Elspeth had a hard time even imagining that.
 
Her mind reeled at the thought.
 
“You mean people lived here … voluntarily?”