Prisoner 52 by S.T. Burkholder Read Free Book Online

snows and fierce winds the sprawling metal collossi that comprised the installation and how much they appeared the ruins of some dead race driven into oblivion by the freeze of their world. The Enforcer behind him roughly pulled him aright and he was taken through the doorway ahead.
    Within was a solitary chair, not unlike that which had bound him to Master Control only yesterday and upraised from one of a hundred hatches then sealed away across the floor. Before them all towered a great pulpit and upon which was emblazoned the Conciliatic Crest in the fullness of artistic embellishment. The many hands of a striving and dismal people latched onto the Chain of Unity and pulling them up from above those of the Great Conciliators, the faces of whom he knew the artist could only have guessed at. The Enforcers pointed with their rifles for him to sit.
    "Prisoner seated and restrained." Said the Enforcer who flanked him on his left. "Prisoner 1771, Hastur Victor Sejanus, present for summary punishment."
    "Thank you, Enforcer Girda." He heard a voice say from within the archway behind the throne upon the pulpit. "At ease."
    The Enforcers glanced down at him from behind their dark helmets and went away to either side of the judiciary hall. Above a figure resolved from the shadow thrown by the throne and then came into the pale cold light that streamed in through the glass walls and sat down. Sejanus could see little more than the white of his hair and the harsh lines of a harsh face, the uniform that he wore in the most military fashion without risking presumption.
    "This is your second day here on Cocytus, yes?" The man said and looked up at him from the display of a holorod that he had been carrying and now brooded over, squinted down at him but not for the light or the distance.
    "Yes." Sejanus said.
    "And I have it that you killed a man yesterday in ritual combat, and today you tried to kill another." He said and glanced back down into the glow of the hardlight screen. "But unprovoked, him unarmed. Is that also correct - inmate?"
    Sejanus said nothing and the guard at his distant left took a step nearer as if that one pace of the many between them could bring about anything at all and shouted for him to speak.
    "It's alright, Girda." The man said. "Very well. I remand you to two days isolation in your cell, isolation door and no meal or recreation priveledges. Your cellmates will be sharing your punishment."
    "Have him shoot me, then." Sejanus at last said and pointed with his head at Girda.
    "What's that?"
    "You do that, and I'll be dead in two hours. Not two days. You're wasting somebody's time, so," He said and nodded at Girda. "Have him shoot me."
    "It says here you fought in the wars. From before the Reclamation, even. Until you killed your commander – and deserted just before the declaritive victory."
    "I was a soldier."
    "Then you ought to be familiar with the discipline here. If a man breaks rank," The man said and opened his arms to him as he stood from the throne as though in welcome. "Then the rank breaks him."

Day 2
                 
    He was forced to marching, the second time that day and both of them a harrowing relapse into bygone days that had been the twilight of his self-ascribed importance. The part of a larger thing, now extricated, and so made the servant of something else as large and great and as terrible and which belonged to that unforeseen elseworld of the duality he had occupied all his life. That men such as he had been bred and trained to occupy. But amidst all these fellows in all its parts, he was alone. Apart from those who then leered down at him from the higher tiers and peered up from below and glared as he went past. The infectious element of a sole cellular body. Thus his cell appeared to him as though he had been headed elsewhere and was recalled to it as if by some sorcery and the guards at his back stopped with him, the agents of his fixed state.
    "Step inside." The Enforcer