‘I don’t want to hear anymore objections and I don’t want to discuss it further. There’s tougher duty needs doing if you insist on pressing the matter. You are to do this to help your fellow prisoners. You are to do this to prove your loyalty to me.
And I don’t want to hear another word about poor Golic.’
‘Yeah, but—’ Rains started to argue. He broke off before he could get started, staring. Boggs looked up. So did Golic.
Dillon turned slowly.
Ripley stood in the doorway, surveying the mess hall, which had gone completely silent at her entrance. Her eyes saw everything, met no one’s. Stepping over to the food line she studied the identical trays distastefully. The prisoner on serving duty gaped at her unashamedly, his manipulator dangling limp from one hand. Taking a chunk of cornbread from a large plastic basket, she turned and let her gaze rove through the room one more time, until it settled on Dillon.
Andrews and his assistant were as absorbed in the silent tableau as the prisoners.
The superintendent watched thoughtfully as the lieutenant walked over to the big man’s table and stopped. His knowing expression was resigned as he turned back to his food.
‘As I thought, Mr. Aaron. As I thought.’
His second-in-command frowned, still gazing across the room at Ripley. ‘You called it, sir. What now?’
Andrews sighed. ‘Nothing. For now. Eat your food.’ He picked up a fork and dug into the steaming brown mass in the centre of his tray.
Ripley stood opposite Dillon, behind Boggs. The four men picked at their meals, resolutely indifferent to her presence.
‘Thanks for your words at the funeral. They helped. I didn’t think I could react like that anymore to anything as futile as words, but I was wrong. I just want you to know that I appreciated it.’
The big man gazed fixedly at his plate, shoveling in food with a single-minded determination that was impressive to behold. When she didn’t move away he finally looked up.
‘You shouldn’t be here. Not just on Fiorina. . you didn’t have much choice about that. But in this room. With us. You ought to stay in the infirmary, where you belong. Out of the way.’
She bit off a piece of the cornbread, chewed reflectively. For something with a dehy base it was almost tasty.
‘I got hungry.’
‘Clemens could’ve brought you something.’
‘I got bored.’
Frustrated, he put down his fork and glanced up at her. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. There’s worse things than bein’ bored. I don’t know why you’re talking to me. You don’t wanna know me, Lieutenant. I am a murderer and a rapist. Of women.’
‘Really.’ Her eyebrows, which she had thinned but not shaved completely, rose. ‘I guess I must make you nervous.’
Boggs’s fork halted halfway to his mouth. Rains frowned, and Golic just kept eating, ignoring the byplay completely.
Dillon hesitated a moment, then a slow smile spread across his hardened face. He nodded and Ripley took the remaining empty chair.
‘Do you have any faith, sister?’
‘In what?’ She gnawed on the cornbread.
‘In anything.’
She didn’t have to pause to consider. ‘Not much.’
He raised a hand and waved, the expansive gesture encompassing the mess hall and its inhabitants. ‘We got lots of faith here. Not much else, it’s true, but that we got. It doesn’t take up much space, the Company and the government can’t take it away from us, and every man watches over his own personal store of the stuff. It’s not only useful in a place like this, it’s damn necessary. Otherwise you despair and in despairing you lose your soul. The government can take away your freedom but not your soul.
‘On Earth, in a place like this, it would be different. But this ain’t Earth. It ain’t even the Sol system. Out here people react differently. Free people and prisoners alike. We’re less than free but more than dead. One of the things that keeps us that way is our faith. We have lots, Lieutenant. Enough even for you.?’
‘I got the feeling that women weren’t allowed in your faith.’
‘Why? Because we’re all men here? That’s a consequence of our population, not our philosophy. If women were sent they’d be invited in. Incarceration doesn’t discriminate as to gender.
Reason there ain’t no women in the faith is that we never had any sent here. But we tolerate anyone. Not much reason to exclude somebody when they’re already excluded from everything else by the simple fact of being sent here. We even tolerate the intolerable.’ His smile widened.
‘Thank you,’ she replied dryly.
He noted her tone. ‘Hey, that’s just a statement of principle.
Nothing personal. We got a good place here to wait. Up to now, no temptation.’
She leaned back in the chair. ‘I guess if you can take this place for longer than a year without going crazy, you can take anybody.’
Dillon was eating again, enjoying the meal. ‘Fiorina’s as good a place to wait as any other. No surprises. More freedom of movement than you’d have on an inhabited world. Andrews doesn’t worry about us going too far from the installation because there’s no place to go. It’s hard out there. Not much to eat, rotten weather. No company. We’re all long-termers here, though not everyone’s a lifer. Everyone knows everyone else, what they’re like, who can be depended on and who needs a little extra help to make it.’ He chewed and swallowed.
‘There’s worse places to serve out your time. I ain’t been there, but I’ve heard of ‘em. All things considered, Fiorina suits me just fine. No temptation here.’
Ripley gave him a sideways look. ‘What exactly are you waiting for?’
The big man didn’t miss a beat. Or a forkful. ‘We are waiting,’ he told her in all seriousness, ‘for God to return and raise his servants to redemption.’
She frowned. ‘I think you’re in for a long wait.’
V
Later Clemens showed her the assembly hall, pointing out inconsequential he thought she might find of interest.
Eventually they sat, alone in the spacious room. Prisoner Martin quietly swept up nearby.
‘How much of the story of this place do you know?’
‘What you’ve told me. What Andrews said. A little that I heard from some of the prisoners.’
‘Yeah, I saw you talking to Dillon.’ He poured himself a short whiskey from the metal flask he carried. The distant ceiling loomed above them, four stories high.
‘It’s pretty interesting, from a psychosocial point of view.
Dillon and the rest of them got religion, so to speak, about five years ago.’
‘What kind of religion?’
Clemens sipped at his liquor. ‘I don’t know. Hard to say.
Some sort of millenarian apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist brew.’
‘Ummmm.’
‘Exactly. The point is that when the Company wanted to close down this facility, Dillon and the rest of the converts wanted to stay. The Company knows a good thing when it sees it. So they were allowed to remain as custodians, with two minders and a medical officer.’ He gestured at the deserted assembly hall. ‘And here we are.
‘It’s not so bad. Nobody checks on us, nobody bothers us.
Regular supply drops from passing ships take care of the essentials. Anything we can scavenge we’re
