An attack seemed possible. If the Wasters would go after a prisoner barge once for just a couple of their mates, wouldn’t they do it again for thirty-one? But they’d been routed, sent home to lick their wounds. And the barge was going straight to the zero-G maximum-security prison, deep in Barnard space. Special delivery. Not like the predictable route it was on before. It would come out of Xarp in the vicinity of the highly-protected prison. Even if the Wasters knew its schedule, which was unlikely, they’d have no window for an attack.
Runstom reminded himself of these details as he walked his round. The prisoners were unsettlingly quiet. Each one he passed was either lying or sitting on their cot. Dejected. Tired. There was a difference, he realized, a difference in the violence he’d witnessed the first time on this barge and the violence he’d witnessed most recently. The first was ruthless, to be sure. A cold-blooded assault on a Justice ship. A purpose of breaking prisoners out of custody. But the most recent incident, it was an attack, met by an ambush. He’d been lulled into thinking the Wasters’ purpose was theft. They thought there were weapons to steal. But the attack and the ambush, these things felt more like war than crime. And perhaps he should assume that the Wasters didn’t just want to steal from ModPol, they wanted to cripple ModPol. A move driven not by greed, but by strategy.
The main difference of the cells in this version of the barge was the addition of a sleep tube in each. It was part of Runstom’s job to ask each prisoner if he or she understood the directions for operating the tube. They were required to get in themselves when the signal was given. There was a timer. And then the tubes would close. Anyone not in a tube was going to ride Xarp in real time. Runstom had done it before. A slow, sick, painless torture. The human brain didn’t know what to do with it.
“Ain’tchu got any D?” A voice calling out from the level below Runstom. “I don’t wanna get in the tube, I just wanna ride with some D.”
He heard the young guard respond with practiced patience. “Do you understand the instructions?”
“Fuck the instructions, lady. I want some D. It’s inhumane to Xarp without D.”
“Please answer the question,” she tried firmly.
“How about you answer my question?”
“Listen, Waster – if you don’t get in the tube, you’re going to have to ride raw.”
Runstom looked into the cell in front of him, ready to recite his own questions. The man in the dark corner spoke first. “Waster. Always found that distasteful.”
“Aren’t you with Space Waste?” Runstom asked, then cursed himself for engaging.
“Aye, I know we’re prone to wastin’ stuff.” His voice was deep, and though it was soft, there was a strength to it. “Laying waste. But that’s what we do, not who we are.”
Runstom stood quiet. Watched the man step forward. He was tall, as tall as a B-fourean, but not nearly as skinny. And his skin was a rich, dark brown. An Earth-born. The lines in his face were obscured by scars, but the eyes showed age. Runstom glanced at his pad to read the name. Moses Down.
“What we are is waste,” he said. “The waste discarded by domes. And domes – domes are built for creating and discarding waste. They are systems of perpetual hunger and consumption. You weren’t raised on a dome.”
“No,” Runstom said, though it hadn’t sounded like a question.
“But your job has taken you to domes. Many times, I’ll bet. You ever approach the domes in a shuttle with windows?”
Runstom had. Shuttles rarely had windows or even screens that anyone but the pilot could view. But on occasion he’d seen the domes from an approach. Such as the time he was called to work on a case on Barnard-4. A multiple homicide. He’d watched the entire time, the way the storms swirled around the stacks that rose from the processors.
“Pollution,” Moses Down said, as though he were looking at the picture in Runstom’s mind. “Sometimes it looks natural, like clouds, like rain. But it’s unnatural. Corrosive. Toxic. Domes burn everything. Burn it down to molecules and blow it into space.”
“Those planets have no atmosphere,” Runstom said. His voice was weak. Making someone else’s argument.
“No, of course not,” Down said with a half grin and a shake of his head. “Don’t let my old Earth skin fool you. I could give a shit about what domers pump into the void outside of their domes. I just wanted to make the point. See there – the domes – there, the polluters win. There’s no environment to save, not like the doddering, fragile Earth. Domes sit on dead rock. That’s what allowed them to establish these systems.”
Runstom’s hand moved toward his handypad, trying to do the job that his mind and mouth wouldn’t. Trying to move him on to the next prisoner. “Systems,” he heard himself say.
“Intake and excretion.” Down made a motion with his hands, one waving in, one pushing out. Then he dropped them to his side. “Me, my family, we are not wasters. We are waste. Human waste. The unwanted byproduct of dome life.”
Runstom stared up at the dark man in silence. There was something about him, about those burning brown eyes. He swallowed and blinked. Flashes of the things he’d seen Space Waste do. The people that died. He felt his forehead crease when he reopened his eyes. “You’re murderers.”
Down’s smile faded and he nodded solemnly. “Ain’t nobody perfect.”
Runstom looked down at his handypad, staring through it. “Do you understand the instructions?” he mumbled.
“I ain’t trying to antagonize you, boy,” Down said. “I just wanted you to know where we came from.”
Without looking at him, Runstom felt a gesture in his direction. “What do you mean, we?”
The prisoner stared at him for a long, cold moment before turning away. “You’ve been shit out of the bottom of the system,” he said idly as he drifted to the back of the cell. “Just like the rest of us, Mr. Runstom.”
*
He finished his assignment and went to the center of the block to wait with the other guards. Most of them had gotten the point that the sour, green-skinned man wasn’t worth talking to. And only mildly worth talking about, in hushes.
The chief came around eventually, asking each to check-in with a report. “McManus,” she said about halfway down her list.
Runstom’s face grew hot. “With all due respect sir, would you please not call me that?”
The chief was as young as the rest of them, a tall B-fourean with short-cropped pale hair. She crooked an eyebrow at him. “Um. Well. What do you want to be called?”
“My name is Stanford Runstom,” he said through gritted teeth, tapping at the name badge just left of his sternum. “The chief of the watch should know that.”
“Oh.” She flicked at her pad for a moment, then looked back at him. Pointed a finger in the general direction of his chest. “Sorry, Runstom. Your badge says McManus.”
Runstom frowned down at the name affixed to his left breast. He hadn’t noticed it when he put the uniform on. A simple detail. Did he even care that he got stuck with McManus’s uniform? No. The disappointment came from missing the detail. He was drifting away from the goal of becoming a detective, both in title and in spirit.
“All prisoners checked in,” he said softly.
As soon as she dismissed them, he strode toward the door as fast as his legs could work in the half gravity. He could hear the voices behind him, a traditional pre-Xarp celebration being planned. The guards would be required to tube-up, but the sleep would be in shifts; a fraction of them would be in a semi-stasis, half-sleep, ready to be