Incarceron Part 67

When she let go, the pictures rippled again, hundreds of images of the same man, in a street, traveling, talking by a fire, asleep, his whole life catalogued there, his body growing gradually older before their eyes, bending, on a stick now, begging, leprous with some terrible sickness.

And then nothing. Finn said quietly, "The Eyes. They must record as well as watch."

"So how has this Blaize got all this?"

Keiro raised his head in sudden shock. "Do you think I'm in here?"

Without waiting for an answer he crossed to the shelf marked found a long ladder, and set it against the books, climbing easily up. He began to take the books out and shove them back, impatient.

Attia had crossed to the A section and Gildas was busy reading, so Finn found the letter F and looked for himself.

FIMENON FIMMA FIMMIA FIMOS FIMPOS FINARA.

His fingers shook as he turned the page, tracing down until he found it.

FINN.

He stared at it. There were sixteen Finns, but his was the last. The number was there, in all its black familiarity, the number that had been on his overalls in the cell, that he had learned by heart. Next to it was a small image, two triangles superimposed, one of them inverted. A star.

Feeling almost sick with anxiety, he touched it. Images rippled. Himself crawling in the white tunnel. He stopped it instantly. There he was, looking younger, cleaner, his face a mask of fear and tearful determination. It hurt him to look at it. He tried to turn back, but this was the first image; there was nothing before. Nothing. His heart thudded. He scrolled on slowly. He and Keiro. Images of the Comitatus. Himself fighting, eating, sleeping. Once, laughing. Growing, changing. Losing something.

He almost thought he could see it going, the ever-changing images showing himself becoming someone harder, watchful, scowling, always there in the background of Keiro's quarrels and schemes.

One image showed him in a fit, and he gazed in horrified disgust at his curled, convulsed body, his contorted face. Quickly he let the pictures run on, almost too fast to see, until he jabbed down and held them still.

The ambush. He saw himself frozen, half out of the chains, grabbing the Maestra's arm. She must have just realized what a trap she was in; her face was caught in a strange, hurt, almost bruised look, her smile already stiffening. If there was more he didn't want to see it.

He slapped the book shut, the sound loud in the silent room, making Gildas grunt and Attia look over.

"Find anything?" she said.

He shrugged. "Nothing I didn't know. What about you?"

He noticed she had left the A section and was up among the C's. "Why there?"

"What Blaize said about no Outside. I thought I'd look up Claudia."

He went cold. "And?"

She was holding the book, a big green volume. She closed it quickly and turned, shoving it back into the shelf.

"Nothing. He's wrong. She's not in Incarceron."

There was something subdued about her voice, but before he could think about it Keiro's hiss of wrath jerked him around.

"He's got everything about me in here! Everything!"

Finn knew that Keiro had been orphaned as a baby and had grown up in the gang of filthy urchins that always seemed to be hanging around the Comitatus; warriors' by-blows, children of women they'd killed, kids who n.o.body knew. It would have been a tooth-and-nail struggle to eat and survive and keep a face as unmarked as Keiro's in that ferocious rabble. Maybe that was why his oathbrother looked so alarmed. He too closed the book with a clap.

"Forget your petty histories." Gildas looked up, his sharp face lit.

"Come and read a real book. This is the journal of one Lord Calliston, the one they called the Steel Wolf. He is said to have been the first Prisoner."

He turned a page. "It's all here, the Coming of the Sapienti, the first convicts, the establishment of the New Order. They seem to have been relatively few, and they spoke to the Prison in those days as they spoke to each other."

Now he did sound awed. They crowded around and saw that the book was smaller than the others and the text truly handwritten, with some scratchy pen.

Gildas tapped the page. "The girl was right. They set the Prison up as a place to dump all their problems, but there was a definite hope of creating a perfect society. According to this we should have all been serene philosophers long ago. Look here."

He read aloud, in his rasping voice.

"Everything was prepared for, every eventuality covered. We have nutritious food, free education, medical care better than Outside, now that the Protocol rules there. We have the discipline of the Prison, that invisible being that watches and punishes and rules. "

And yet.

"Things decay. Dissident groups are forming; territory is disputed. Marriages and feuds develop. Already two Sapienti have led their followers away to live in isolation, claiming they fear the murderers and thieves will never change, that a man has been killed, a child attacked. Last week two men came to blows over a woman. The Prison intervened".

"Since then neither of them has been seen. I believe they are dead and that Incarceron has integrated them into its systems. There was no provision for the death penalty, but the Prison is in charge now. It is thinking for itself"

In the silence Keiro said, "Did they really think it would work?"

After a moment Gildas turned the page. The whisper was loud in the stillness.

"It seems so. He is not clear about what went wrong. Perhaps some unplanned element entered and tipped the balance, by just a remark, a small act, so that the flaw in their perfect ecosystem gradually grew and destroyed it. Perhaps Incarceron itself malfunctioned, became a tyrant-that certainly happened, but was it cause or effect? And then there's this."

He pointed out the words as he read them, and Finn, leaning forward, saw that they were underlined, the page grubby, as if someone else had fingered them over and over. "... or is it that man contains within himself the seeds of evil? That even if he is placed in a paradise perfectly formed for him he will poison it, slowly, with his own jealousies and desires? I fear it may be that we blame the Prison for our own corruption. And I do not except myself, for I too am one who has killed and looked only to my own gain."

In the vast silent room only motes of dust fell through the slant of light from the roof. Gildas closed the book. He looked up at Finn and his face was gray.

"We shouldn't stay here," he said heavily. "This is a place where dust gathers and doubt enters the heart. We should go, Finn. This is not a refuge. It's a trap."

A footstep in dust made them look up.

Blaize stood on the gallery that circled the skylight, gazing down at them, his hands tight on the rail.

"You need rest," he said calmly.

"Besides, there is no way down from here. Until I decide to take you."

CLAUDIA HAD been meticulous; scanners pre-placed in all the cellars, holo-images of herself and Jared sleeping peacefully in their beds, a hefty bribe to the under-steward to learn the duration of the debate, the number of clauses in the marriage treaty, the time it would all take.

Finally she had seen Evian and told him to argue about anything. As long as her father remained in the Great Chamber until well past midnight.

Slipping between the casks and barrels in her dark clothes, she felt like a shadow released from the endless banquet upstairs, the polite banter, the Queen's red-lipped cloying intimacies, the way she clutched at Claudia's hand and held it so tightly, thrilling herself with how they would be so happy, the palaces they would build, the hunts, the dances, the dresses.

Caspar had glowered at her, drinking too much wine and escaping as soon as he could to meet some serving girl. And her father, grave and poised in his black frockcoat and gleaming boots, had caught her eye once down the long table, a swift glance between the candles and flowers.

Did he guess she had some plan? There was no time to fret now. As she ducked under a snag of cobweb she straightened up into a tall figure and nearly screamed with shock. He grabbed her.

"Sorry, Claudia."

Jared wore dark clothes too.