Chapter Thirty-five
An Unexpected Change in Circumstances
Charles Tucker III
"Kneel before your Emperor!"
This time, I'm lying on my bed, so the bastard guards can't take my legs out from under me and make me slam down onto my knees on the concrete floor; but that doesn't stop them dragging me out of the bed and kicking me and smacking me with their impact batons until I rise to my knees and press my forehead to the floor with my arms stretched over my head in obeisance as befits a prisoner of the Empire. I suppose the job of prison guard is just about the only one in the Empire that can be simultaneously as dangerous as serving on the front lines and as dull as watching paint dry, so I guess it's understandable that roughing up a prisoner now and then gives them a sense of security and a little entertainment. Still, when you're the one being roughed up, it's kind of hard not to take it personally.
"That's enough." Emperor Burnell admonishes them as mildly as if he was telling them to stop pouring cream in his coffee, and I take a final blow to the back to make sure I'm as low as I can physically go. He may well be from the same county as my friend from Merry Olde England, but even to my American ears, it's plain that Malcolm was of a more educated class of people. For all that he is perfectly well mannered, something about his tone just lacks refinement.
I managed to bite my tongue against the yells and curses as they were beating me, but I can't contain the moan of pain when one of them deliberately treads on my outstretched fingers as he exits the cell.
"Cole?"
I can't control the smirk that comes to my face, either, when I hear the thwap of Amanda's hard fist sinking into a soft belly or the oof that follows it, and as I am still bowing face down on the concrete when I hear the thud of the offending guard hitting the floor after that, I allow myself a grin.
"The Emperor has already advised you that, with the exception of using his former military rank, this prisoner is to be treated with all the respect due his position prior to his arrest," she says. "Consider this your first warning."
There is a whisper of silk, which can only be the Emperor himself moving, and I'm shocked as shit to hear his voice only a few inches away. He's actually stooped to address the guard who is still moaning on the floor.
"Make no mistake," he says in a tone as smooth as soft butter, "you will not live long enough to receive a second warning."
I hear the guard shuffling around on the floor, and I'm pretty sure he's prostrated beside me when he responds. "My apologies, Your Majesty. It will not happen again."
"See that it doesn't," Austin tells him, still in that terrifyingly gentle tone. I hear another whisper of silk as he rises, and the quiet thud of his boots on the floor.
"When you leave this cell, your next order of business will be to spread the word among the other guards that compliant prisoners are not to be beaten, do you understand?" This is Amanda's voice, clear, confident, and commanding, and despite everything, I can't help being proud of her for the way she's matured.
"Yes, ma'am," says the guard, who's big enough to eat her for breakfast and still want seconds.
"You're dismissed," she snaps, probably at a nod from Austin, and then it sounds like the guard shuffles out of the room on his knees.
I hear the heavy metal door clank shut behind him, and then Amanda tells me, "You may rise, Mister Tucker."
I get to my feet, and the moment I look at her, I can tell she'd much prefer calling me 'Boss' or 'Chief' or 'Sir', but we both know that would be a dangerous, foolish thing to do in the presence of the Emperor, even if he isn't such a bad guy after all.
"Your Majesty," I greet the Emperor, and don't spare a second glance for Amanda. In her capacity as escort, she's little more than a servant and meant to be beneath even the notice of a lowly prisoner, at least when the Emperor is present. I guess he'd understand the one look her way, given our past, but I'm taking no risks.
"May we sit?" he asks, gesturing toward the table that is bolted to the floor in the middle of my cell.
"By all means, Your Majesty," I agree, as if there was any alternative, and the Emperor takes the chair with Amanda standing silently behind him while I sit on the bed, which is somewhat lower and appropriate to my status.
As it turns out, things did start to change for me, and a hell of a lot faster than Amanda said they would when she brought me back here immediately after my court martial. Isolation and a steady diet of Nutriloaf, I was told, were considered 'special conditions' that were lifted from my sentence with the commutation. I never went back to that featureless duranium cell again, and as long as I mind my ps and qs, I never will. That very night I was moved to this new cell block where every cell has a window in the door with a shutter on each side so we can close it from our side for privacy or the guards can close their side to isolate us. Amanda has closed it from the inside to block the prying eyes of both the guards and the other men on the block, and I can tell at a glance that the camera that is always watching me has been turned off.
The door to the cell opens (and is allowed to stay open up to sixteen hours a day, if we want) onto a common area with tables and chairs and multiple tv screens playing different programs. There's a mattress on the cot, which has springs, and sheets and a blanket, too, making my new bed infinitely more comfortable than the shelf in the old cell. There's no shower here in the cell, but I still have a toilet, sink, and a mirror because we're locked in overnight and only get to use the communal shower room every other day, but we're still required to keep ourselves presentable. Meals, taken together in the chow hall, are still bland and mostly vegetarian, but at least they're recognizable as food with chunks of real fruits and vegetables, whole grains in the bread, and whoever's doing the cooking knows how to make scrambled eggs just right. We even get meat once a week, at least those of us who manage to stay out of trouble, but though I still haven't had my pan-fried catfish and collard greens, the scale of the rest of the improvements makes that practically immaterial.
"How are you finding your new accommodations, Charles?"
I resist the urge to smirk. He's not tripping over my old rank anymore, and it appears that I no longer merit the respect of being called Mister Tucker, but I never did get around to inviting him to call me Trip.
"Well, it's a far sight better than where I was before, Your Majesty," I admit, very carefully pronouncing the honorific each time. I swear there's an evil little imp inside of me, because I know I'm being deliberately uncooperative. He wouldn't be here if all he wanted were simple answers, but for some reason, I'm feeling pissed off and don't want to make it easy for him.
There's a long pause. Is he waiting for a thank you? If he is, he can just go fuck himself. The scroll that the messenger gave me as a record of my commutation lives alongside a few sets of clean underwear and socks in the footlocker bolted to the floor at the end of my bed, and it says the decision to commute my sentence came from Hoshi. If she ever comes to visit, I'll thank her, but as far as I can tell, Austin just signed off on it.
"And how are you finding the other inmates?" he asks.
"Oh, you know me, Emperor," I say with mock cheerfulness. "I could talk the ears off a cornstalk, so I appreciate the company."
There are forty single cells on the block, ten on each side, and I was the first man they moved in here. It was strange having the whole, empty, echoing place to myself for the first couple of months, but then they started bringing new men in.
"No conflicts? Everybody's getting along?"
"Oh, we've all been gettin' along just like peas an' carrots, Yer Majesty." Why the hell did I say that? And why am I playing up my accent? It's a line from an old movie about some idiot who's as dumb as a brick and as broke as a joke with no daddy in sight and a crooked spine that means he has to wear braces on his legs to straighten it out. Then he gets drafted into some war, inherits a shrimp boat from one of his buddies who's killed in an ambush, and winds up a millionaire when his is the only boat to survive a hurricane. His whole life, he's so lucky you'd think he was born with a rabbit's foot up his ass despite all the problems he started out with, but that line about peas and carrots is about the little girl who was his best friend in grade school. Why am I using it to talk about the degenerates on the cell block?
"Charles," the Emperor says, and oddly, he doesn't sound especially irritated with me, "you've had access to news broadcasts for the past several months. If you've been watching them, you know I've been making changes in the way things are run, and that some of those changes have cause quite an uproar.
"One of the changes I've been trying to make behind the scenes is prison reform. That's why you are here and not back in your original cell. Now, some of those men," he jerks his thumb in the direction of the common area, "could be walking around free in society again one day. I'm here hoping you'll have some suggestions for how I can make that happen safely."
Well, that gets my attention! I sit up straight and adjust my attitude, and at the same time a little voice in the back of my head says he's manipulating me. He's found the right button to push. He knows the chance to help people just lights my brain up like a Christmas tree and gives me all the feel-good chemicals my neurons can handle.
Then another voice in my head tells the first one to shut the fuck up. If I'm going to be here the rest of my life I might as well help him.
"Respectfully, Your Majesty," and he doesn't exactly roll his eyes at that, but something changes in his demeanor that says it's about time, "I don't think you'll ever be able to safely release most of those guys."
"You don't? It's not like you to be so pessimistic."
"I know, sir, an' I don't like sayin' it, but half of them are mean as snakes, an' the other half are crazy as bedbugs, an' damn near all of them have spent way too much time in solitary confinement to ever function in society again."
"'Mean' and 'crazy' aren't very specific, Charles," he says with strained patience. "What's wrong with them that needs to be fixed?"
"Well, it's different with every one of them, Your Majesty, an' I'm not remotely qualified to get into details about any one person. Generally speakin', almost all of them are traumatized an' sufferin' from PTSD. They need counselin' to learn how to trust the world an' their instincts again an' how to cope with – an' maybe prevent – the flashbacks an' panic attacks. Some of them are just plain mentally ill on top of that, an' whether they're schizophrenic or depressed or bipolar, they need qualified psychiatrists to sort them out.
"Then you have the guys that spent so much time in isolation they forgot how to be human. There's probably half a dozen of them out there. Some of them don't know how to use silverware any more. A couple of them can't or won't or don't talk. Most of them won't wear shoes. One of them can't stand to keep his clothes on for more than an hour. Another shits an' pisses himself. You can be sittin' there in the chow hall, an' next thing you know…well, the smell will put you right off your dinner. All of them are like some kind of cross between a zombie an' a giant infant, with the trauma an' the mental illness on top of that."
I hate saying all this, because I've always believed in giving anyone a chance who was fit to take it, but he won't thank me for lying to him. "As long as they're in here, they're never gettin' better, an' even in a proper psychiatric facility, I'd say the odds are damned slim."
He's quiet for a long moment. I respectfully keep my eyes down and look at his hands, which are folded on the table in front of him. He always kept his nails clean and trimmed on Jupiter Station, but they've been beautifully manicured and buffed to a high gloss, now, and don't really seem to fit the man I knew back then.
His right hand leaves my field of vision, and when it returns, it's holding a PADD. Amanda must have given it to him.
"I had been sincerely hoping to help those who had it the worst, first," he says, "but it doesn't sound like that's going to work."
"I'm sure you can make things less horrible for them, Your Majesty," I say, "but I don't think more than a couple of them will ever be fit to return to society, an' more than one or two of them will never be fully human again."
He's tapping the PADD softly on the table, as if he is thinking very carefully about something.
"This is going to be a tough nut to crack," he finally says. "And when my experiments become public knowledge, the uproar will be extreme."
"The only ones who care about Imperial Prisoners are their friends an' family, Your Majesty," I say by way of agreement. "As far as everyone else is concerned, you could just throw us all in a pit an' bury us alive."
He nods. "I know, and that's wrong."
There's another long silence. He still hasn't decided what he wants to do, or more likely, he has decided, had already decided before he came here, but still hasn't committed to it.
I sit still and wait. Even if I were still Commodore Charles A. Tucker, head of Jupiter Station, I'd just sit here and wait. He's His Most Imperial Majesty, Austin Robert Burnell, and in his presence, I don't dare speak again until I'm spoken to. Amanda doesn't even really exist.
Finally, decisively, he reaches across the table and puts the PADD down in front of me with a loud CLACK that makes me flinch.
"You offered to review the course Guns and Butter and provide me with suggestions and advice when you recommended me to undertake its study," he says. "I have loaded it, and its follow-up course, Peace and Prosperity, onto this PADD, along with notes from our study sessions of Guns and Butter.
"Per my instructions, the Empress has allowed you limited correspondence privileges so that you may contact Lieutenant Cole, my PA, Lieutenant Trainor, and myself with notes and comments. We will begin our study of Peace and Prosperity in two weeks' time. I hope that you'll participate."
Well, this is unexpected, and it pisses me off just a little, but I'm not even sure who or what I'm pissed off at or about. Strangely, it sets off a little train of speculation and regret. How would things have been different if I'd brought Austin into the fold back when he was still Major Burnell, Head of Security on Jupiter Station? What if I'd brought him in before the Project that turned Malcolm into a human incubator for alien spawn? Could he have still become Emperor, but with me as his right-hand man? What would have become of Malcolm then? What would he have become? And Liz?
In a way, I feel as though I missed my chance, but I wouldn't trade the friendship that eventually grew between Malcolm and me for anything, and I can't imagine how that would have happened if Austin had joined our little conspiracy first. And then, there's the small problem of never quite finding the right time to trust Austin with the truth and be able to count on him to either join us or walk away and pretend he never heard anything without turning us in. But the realization surfaces that I know, without having to be told, that his ascension to power would have meant Mal's death.
Nope, as badly as things went at the end, I think it all still worked out for the best.
And if I put aside all my anger and resentment for all the things that went wrong?
I'm just happy as hell to be able to go on making a difference, even if it won't ever do me a lick of good in here.
"I'll gladly join you, Your Majesty," I agree, and since I don't think I'll ever get another opportunity, I decide to take a risk. "May I ask a question?"
He inclines his head.
"Why are you hirin' old friends of mine? Billy Wainwright an' Matt Brice?"
He snorts at this, which really surprises me. I can't imagine what he could find funny about my question. "After Admiral Hernandez put her foot in it, I couldn't bloody well hire you, now, could I?"
I'll have to think about that for a while. I don't think this is a good time to ask him to explain. I stand when he stands and bow as low as the space between the bed and the table will let me. It's a good thing none of the guards are here and that they've been ordered to stop beating me, or they might have broken me in half trying to get me on my knees in the narrow gap.
"I'm proud of you, Austin," I dare to say just as Amanda is about to key open the door to leave my cell.
He freezes for a moment before turning to face me, and when he does, I'll be damned if that cold, unblinking stare doesn't make me feel somehow smaller, like a bug about to be stepped on.
"Mister Tucker," he says, placing a slight emphasis on the Mister as if to remind me that it's been a long time since I was anybody special and shouldn't feel so free to address the Emperor quite so casually now that our business is completed. "There was a time when we could have become…allies, but you could not bring yourself to trust me at the moment when it was necessary for that to happen.
"I do not bear you any ill will for that unfortunate lapse, nor do I hold a grudge; however, you must understand as soon as possible, that the time when I had any concern at all about earning your good regard has passed. I am simply using you now because you have knowledge and skills I need if I am to successfully administer my empire. Once I have fashioned a plan and am confident that I can effectively execute it without further input from you, you will be of no more value to me than the dirt on the soles of my boots.
"Do you understand?"
I don't suppose Fuck, yes, is in any way an appropriate reply to the Emperor. Even when he was just plain old Austin, my Chief of Security on Jupiter Station, he could be downright intimidating, even though he ultimately answered to me. Now, when he could have me executed with a single word, he's really fucking scary when he wants to be.
I bow my head, drop my eyes, find some way to lower myself to my knees and sprawl before him, under the table.
"Completely, Your Majesty."
So, Trip, who has always been confident, may have been just a little too confident this time. It isn't very often that we've seen anybody put him in his place quite so effectively. At least now, he knows where he stands. The question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing? What happens when the Emperor feels confident that he doesn't need Trip anymore? Will he be allowed to live out his remaining days in relative comfort now that Austin has initiated prison reforms, or will there be an accident or an assault by one of the emotionally disturbed prisoners that brings him to an untimely end? Will he be simply forgotten, or will he be eliminated?
