“Will I get bail?”
“I’m told no… not with your deceptive ways, Mr. Stake. You could impersonate someone too easily and escape from Punktown before your trial date.”
“They could implant a GPS chip.”
“Talk to your lawyer about it. You have the right to a lawyer, after all, so you’ll be given the opportunity to communicate with one via the ultranet. You can choose one after our meeting here is done. If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you. But what am I saying? You have twenty thousand munits, don’t you?”
Stake sighed again, and wagged his head. He had no idea whether his own sentence would be less than six months, or even considerably more. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he mumbled bitterly.
“It was. And so you can stop the ruse and assume your natural appearance now, please.”
“It isn’t that easy. Some people with my condition can control it more… they can change like that.” Stake snapped his fingers. “I need a little more time for it to fade once I let it go.”
“How long?” Cirvik asked dubiously.
“It varies… it’s not entirely predictable. Not too long. Like I say, my control over my gift is iffy. I can’t look directly at people too long in case I let my guard down and start to copy them. And to keep a hold on Fetch’s face, I was looking at a picture of him throughout the day.”
“Well you’d better not play any further tricks with your appearance during your time here, Mr. Stake, or I assure you you’ll regret it. If you’re thinking of masquerading as another prisoner… or a guard… or even me…”
“I can’t do Tikkihottos,” Stake interrupted. He gestured at his face. “It’s the eyes.”
“Anyway, no tricks. At the first sign of such activity I will put you in an isolation cell… are we clear on that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes sir. Good… I like that tone better. Spoken like a former soldier. You need to find your way back, Mr. Stake, to the man you were. Instead of imitating creatures like Mr. Fetch here, who not only corrupts his customers but has obviously done his best to corrupt you.”
Stake glanced at Fetch again. “I can assure you, Warden Cirvik, that my association with Mr. Fetch is finished.”
“Very good, Mr. Stake. Very good.”
This time Fetch looked up to smile at Stake, crinkled eyes sparkling, and shrugged his shoulders in a sarcastic kind of apology.
FOUR: PROPOSITIONS
For a number of hours each day the red-tinted energy barriers that sealed the prisoners in their cells, in place of bars, were deactivated to give the men a period of free movement. So it was that as Stake reclined on his bunk in his second-floor cell in Red Block – watching a movie on the VT screen set into one wall – three visitors appeared in the open doorway. Fetch, and the two youths known as the Tin Town Maniacs, all three of them in orange uniforms. “Hey, Jeremy,” Fetch said.
Stake was sure it was no accident they’d come at a time when his two cellmates – one a black human named Kofi, the other a skeletal, dog-like Dacvibese – were out of the cell stretching their legs and jaws.
“I see you’ve reverted,” Fetch went on when Stake said nothing.
It was true. No longer poring over the holograph of Fetch he carried on his forearm, Stake had reassumed what he referred to as his “factory settings.” Stake’s natural hair color was dark, so there was no change there, but his skin tone was now slightly darker than Fetch’s. He’d shaved off the goatee he’d grown to imitate his client, too. Yet more importantly, his face had lost its hard definitions. If Fetch hadn’t known better, he would have thought Stake’s visage was still in flux, its transformation as yet incomplete. It was the mutant’s normal condition, however, to look vaguely unfinished.
“What can I do for you, Ed? You aren’t going to ask me for the money back, I hope.”
“Of course not! I’m the one who fucked up, right? But hopefully you’ll get a lighter sentence now. You talk to a lawyer yet?”
“Yeah. He’s not sure what I’ll get, but he’s guessing they might stick with the six months.”
“Lucky you. Clean record and all. Me, I don’t even want to think about what I’m going to get.”
“Not as much as us,” one of the Maniacs observed with a sneer.
“No, Jeremy,” Fetch said, “I’m not here to talk about money. I’m just hoping when you go on trial, you don’t get too detailed about me. You don’t need to say you knew I was dealing vortex. After all, did you ever see me selling an illegal substance? No, you didn’t. I just had that vortex for my own use. I’m going to fight my charges in any way I can, Jeremy, so I’d appreciate it if you don’t make me look bad.”
“Just like you didn’t make me look bad with Cirvik?”
“Hey, what could I do at that point? They had you, and they had me, and I needed to explain why there was another Edwin Fetch. No need to be bitter, man – like I say, you might get out of here with less time, now, while still keeping that twenty thousand.”
“But remember what Ed says,” warned the Maniac with blond hair cut in bangs like a little boy, pointing a finger at Stake’s face as if aiming a gun barrel. “Just watch your mouth, okay?”
“Kid,” Stake said, “you point that finger somewhere else before I bite it off.”
The youth chortled in delight. “Oh-ho-ho… the mutant wants to play! You want to play, mutie?”
“We know how to play with muties,” his friend joined in.
Stake swung his legs over the side of his bunk and sat upright. “Ed, you might want to remind your barking puppies that there’s a big difference between hammering drunken homeless guys, and being trained as a Colonial Forcer.”
“Oooh!” the boy with bangs said, exchanging grins with his friend. “Oh-ho-ho!”
“Come on, guys,” Fetch told them, clapping them both on the shoulder, “I think my pal Jeremy here understands what’s in his best interest.” He turned his companions around and urged them out through the doorway, looking back at Stake and saying in farewell, “If there’s anything I can do for you in return, pal, you know where to find me.” He added, perhaps with threatening significance, “Orange Block.”
Stake sighed, and had just stretched out on his back again to resume watching his movie when two new visitors appeared in the cell’s threshold. So much for seeing how the movie turned out. Once more he sat upright as the two men stepped inside uninvited. One was Hassan Billings, with that huge spud-like head. The other was the towering Null, his oil-slick skin glistening. Nulclass="underline" the leader of the gang known as the Muties.
“Hey, man,” Billings said. “So this is what you really look like, huh? Jeremy, is it? Man… I understand why you didn’t tell me you were a mutie, too, but I still wish you had.”
“But now we know,” Null rumbled in his dark baritone. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I saw those Orange fucks leave just now. Is the real-deal Fetch giving you trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Oh, is that so? You aren’t afraid of the whole damn Orange Bunch? Biggest gang in this place? Their leader has a life sentence already, so that mad-dog fuck doesn’t care who he kills next. Seems to me you could use protection from those bastards, and anybody else here who might try to do you a dose of no-good.”
“So, you want me to join up with my fellow mutants, huh?”
“It would be in your best interest.”
“Everybody thinks they know my best interest.”
Null stepped closer to Stake, looming all the taller. “I’m not just here to recruit new members; I have a proposition for you. You help me, and I’ll protect you – not just from the Orange Bunch, but from another gang that could do you serious harm.”