Unstable Prototypes (26 page)

When Michella reached the end of the single,
continuous line of thought that had carried her through the whole
of the evening, she leaned her head on Lex's shoulder, pulled his
arm around her, and released a soft, contented sigh. After a
moment, Lex curled a finger under her chin and tilted her head
until their eyes met. A seductive grin came to her face and she
stood, taking his hands and leading him toward the bedroom for an
activity that ranked in the top three for them both.

The application of Garotte's disguise was
complete, and the results were nothing short of uncanny. Most of
his features had barely changed at all, but taken as a whole, he
had been rendered unrecognizable. Where once had been a fairly
handsome man casually approaching middle age, now there was man at
least fifteen years older with a much stronger jaw, a slightly
sloping brow, and the beginnings of a double-chin. The
transformation was completed by a dye job to his hair that shifted
it from blonde to brown and introduced some gray into the mix, and
drops that shifted his hazel eyes to a distinctive green hue. None
of it looked the least bit unnatural, and anyone who hadn't
witnessed the transformation would scarcely believe that Garotte
and this newcomer were one and the same.

"Dr. Kenneth Cisco," he said, clearing his
throat and lowering the voice a few registers, "Dr. Kenneth
Cisco."

Dr. Kenneth Cisco, who had not existed at the
beginning of the flight, was well on his way to being a skilled but
somewhat unremarkable psychoanalyst on staff at the prestigious
Westmooreland Psychiatric Treatment Facility. Garotte's skill and
thoroughness in the realm of identity creation was at least a match
for that of Ma, and through various well-practiced and carefully
arranged means he had been able to install a lengthy and detailed
personal history in all relevant databases. He had been married and
divorced, graduated with a 3.3 GPA from a notable but not exclusive
college, and had a clean employment record stretching sixteen years
and spanning three mental hospitals.

"Dr. Kenneth Cisco," he repeated, now a bit
gruffer and with an accent a touch more American, "I'm here to
reevaluate one of your inmates. Dr. Kenneth Cisco. Kenny. Call me
Kenny. Yeah, that sounds about right."

He loaded his slidepad with the appropriate
documentation, then set about adding the little details that made
it Kenny's slidepad. The last step was the assembly of a gadget
he'd brought along from deGrasse. First a grip of some kind was
removed from the bag. It was bulky and vaguely ornamental, with a
brushed metal finish and bearing a mini-placard engraved with the
words "For exceptional service." It also had an inconspicuous pair
of buttons recessed on the underside, a threaded hole, and a clear
lens on one end. Giving it a shake produced a quiet rattle from
within. He removed a pair of threaded pipes from the bag next, each
metal with black enamel layered on top, and screwed them end-to-end
onto the grip. Once assembled, it was a sturdy and elegant cane.
The finishing touch was a non-skid foot for the end.

By the time they arrived at Millbrook Maximum
Security Penitentiary, Silo's current residence, all was in
readiness. It was on a floating hunk of rock called Manticore, a
place specifically chosen for its environment. Planets tagged for
human settlement are those as earth-like as possible. Planets
tagged for penitentiaries, on the other hand, widen that criteria a
bit. The only real requirement was the ability to build a permanent
structure. Beyond that, the less like earth it was, the better. The
reasoning was simple; we want these people to stay inside this
building, and the best way to achieve that is to make sure that
they
want to stay inside the building. A planet that has a
surface survivability expectancy of less than thirty seconds was an
excellent way to foster this attitude. Manticore had no surface
life, and no attempt had ever been made to terraform it. The
average surface temperature of its most temperate zones was just
below -30 degrees Celsius, the soil had exceptionally high arsenic
levels, the gravity was close to one and a half times that of
earth, and the atmosphere was almost entirely nitrogen. Without an
environment suit, any escape attempt would last just a bit longer
than a lungful of air. With a suit, it would last until the power
supply, oxygen supply, or food supply ran out. The only permitted
access to the planet's surface was via the space station and its
associated shuttles, which were not FTL-enabled, which meant that
even if you stole a ship, and managed to give security the slip, it
would be several decades before you reached anything with a
breathable atmosphere. As for how the facility itself got a name
like Millbrook, which sounded more like a country club than a
super-max prison, one can only imagine a cruel sense of humor was
involved.

"Hailing Millbrook, vessel code MAC-8787
requesting permission to dock," Garotte, or rather, Kenny said over
the radio.

"State reason for unscheduled docking,"
replied the landing coordinator.

"I'm afraid you're wrong there, son. Refresh
your landing orders."

"Standby... Apologies, MAC-8787. Last minute
schedule update just came in. Continue to dock 9 and await security
team."

"Affirmative."

Garotte clicked off the communication and set
the ship to dock automatically.

"As I imagine you're aware, this is not a
pet-friendly establishment," Garotte stated, in character, "So it
is probably best we get you out of sight before the security boys
sign me in."

He unhooked himself, unstrapped Ma, and
grasped her by the nape of the neck. The AI did not struggle,
merely keeping Garotte in her even, measuring gaze, as though
logging this injustice for future reference. An overhead
compartment was opened and she was stuffed unceremoniously inside.
After clicking it shut, Garotte paused, then pulled her slidepad
out of his pocket and opened the compartment a crack.

"To keep yourself busy," he said, slipping it
inside.

A few moments after he clicked it shut again,
a muffled digital voice could be heard.

"You now occupy the foremost position on my
S-List," she said.

"You may update my intimidation accordingly.
Now hush up. Time to get to work."

He opened the side door of the Armistice and
drifted into the dimly lit interior of the docking bay, closing the
door behind him. After a few moments, a crew of three lightly armed
security officers opened the door to the bay. They were wearing
jumpsuits, armed with stun rods, and equipped with hands-free radio
sets on their heads.

"Welcome to Millbrook Super-max, Dr. Cisco,"
said the ranking security officer, a man with the minor paunch and
graying crew cut of a retired member of law enforcement.

"Kenny," Garotte said, extending a hand.

"I'd like to apologize again for any
misunderstandings," he said after a firm shake, "We don't get late
authorizations like that very often. Any idea what that was
about?"

"We've got a pilot program going. The
bureaucrats haven't got themselves sorted out yet. No dedicated
manpower, no dedicated budget, so they've just been sending anybody
with a spare minute. I had a consultation on Tessera canceled, so
they rushed the paperwork and rerouted me here."

"Pencil pushers," the man replied with a
shake of his head, illustrating that a catchy phrase tends to
persist despite the fact that in this case it had been centuries
since the pencil had been the preferred tool for the proliferation
of red tape. "It says here you'll need to conduct some
interviews?"

"Psych evaluations," Garotte said with a
nod.

"You'll need to talk to Warden Menlo then.
And we'll need to give you the standard security screening."

"Of course," Garotte said, handing over the
cane and slidepad, then grasping the hand grips to be patted down
and swept with hand scanners.

The security lead inspected the cane,
unscrewing its segments and looking through the pipes. Satisfied
they were harmless, he rattled the handle.

"What is inside of this?" he asked.

"Mmm? Oh, sorry 'bout that. Press that first
button on the underside there," Garotte explained.

Doing so clicked open the top half of the
grip, revealing a small compartment filled with pea-sized capsules
which drifted out into the weightlessness of the docking bay.

"What are these?" asked the security lead,
scooping them up with a deft swipe of his hand.

"Tranquilizers. Interviewing mentally
disturbed inmates tends to do a number on your nerves. Sometimes I
need something to take the edge off."

"I'm afraid we can't allow outside
medications."

"That's fine. Haven't needed 'em lately.
Those are probably a couple years past the sell-by date anyway. Go
ahead and ditch 'em."

He shoved the pills into a pocket of his
jumpsuit and zipped it shut.

"And what does this other button do?"

"Flashlight," Garotte said, "Give it a
try."

A tap of the button triggered an impressively
powerful, moonlight-white beam of light.

"Handy," the security lead said, handing it
back, "Mind if I ask what you need the cane for?"

"Bad hip. Rock climbing, when I was young and
stupid. I tell you, brother, we spend all of this time designing
vehicles to get us to hard to reach places, then we go off and do
damn fool things like rock climbing. I swear I don't know how we as
a species make it out of our twenties. Regardless, usually I don't
need it, but trust me when I say that one bad day is all it takes
to convince you to start carrying it around, just in case. Since
you folks have a little bit more gravity than you ought to, I
figure today is gonna be one of those days."

The security guard gave a nod.

"You're clean. They may take that away from
you if you'll be interviewing inmates."

"Naturally," Garotte said with a nod of his
own.

The four men drifted out of the docking bay
and down the claustrophobic corridor outside. A few twists and
turns brought them to the waiting area for a shuttle, which looked
like a slightly up-sized version of the Armistice. A few more
handshakes and folksy colloquialisms were exchanged, and Garotte
was loaded with one of the men onto the shuttle and taken to the
surface. Gravity reared its ugly head, making his fit frame feel as
though it was creeping toward the three hundred pound range by they
time they landed.

"Oof. I don't know how you boys do it,"
Garotte proclaimed as he tried to straighten himself out upon
landing.

"You get used to it," his escort replied,
beeping open the doors and leading him into the arrival processing
area.

"If the good lord is with me, I won't be here
long enough to have to," he said, putting the cane to use and
adopting a realistically stiff and unsteady walk.

Next came the gauntlet of checkpoints. He was
walked through a sequence of increasingly sterile and bland
hallways, past doors fortified with bars and fancy exotic plastics.
Periodically he would be stopped and asked some variation of the
same three questions: "Who are you? Why are you here? Do you know
the rules?" Regardless of his answer, his credentials would be
crosschecked, he would be interrogated, and he would be briefed on
security policies. Finally he found himself at the office of the
warden, a man named Christopher Menlo. Like most of the other
people that Garotte had been dealing with since he'd landed, Menlo
had a very distinctive look about him. The extra gravity had
prompted the development of a considerable amount of flat, hard
muscle, which on his already formidable frame produced an
individual who seemed like he should be led out on chains while a
smaller man beat a kettle drum. This appearance was in stark
contrast to his disposition, which was extremely academic. He was
dressed in a tweed suit with elbow patches, a vest underneath. His
hair was close-cropped and thinning. The walls of the office were
covered with diplomas and accreditation from assorted respectable
institutions. On the desk were a few more pictures and a candy bowl
filled with tiny mints. After reluctantly raising his arm to shake
hands, and being rewarded with a handshake that refreshingly did
not attempt to crush his hand to gravel, Garotte collapsed
gratefully into a chair.

"Oh my lord, I do
not
do hi-g very
well. Honestly, you would think the boys in charge would at least
do something about the gravity in the administrative areas," he
said.

"Some of the other prisons have compensators,
but I'm glad we don't around here. If you've got a facility of
inmates that have adapted to high gravity, best that the
administration is on even terms," Menlo remarked, "Now, I realize
that, if my staff has done its diligence, this will be at least the
sixth time you've had to answer these questions, but I'm afraid we
can't be too careful."

"Perfectly understood, Warden. This isn't my
first trip through a Super-max. Do you mind if I take a handful of
those?" he asked, pointing to the mints, "The ship they hooked me
up with is missing a few of the usual amenities, and my teeth
haven't seen a brush in... Well, in too long."

"Please. I can't stand the things."

Garotte scooped up a handful, tossed a few in
his mouth, and dumped the rest into his shirt pocket.

"Full name?" Menlo asked.

"Dr. Kenneth Marcus Cisco. Kenny, if you
like."

"Says here you've got a degree from MacCree
University?"

"I do."

"That's where I did my criminal justice
degree. Friedland still running things when you were there?"

"I didn't have him, they were still telling
stories about him."

"Yeah. Yeah, they would. About him, they
would. Now it says here you're looking to evaluate some of our
inmates? Care to expand upon that."