Black Man / Thirteen

A shrug. “No reason. When I get on the suborb, I like to know where I’m going to be when I get off again.”

“Right.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, if we’re going to make that suborb, we should probably get moving. I imagine my colleague will have finished with the warden by now. There’ll be some paperwork.”

“Yes.” He hesitated a moment. “Listen. There are a couple of people in here I’d like to say good-bye to before we go. People I owe. Can we do that?”

“Sure.” Sevgi shrugged carelessly. She was already folding up the dataslate. “No problem. It’s a COLIN perk. We can do pretty much anything we want.”

The Guatemalan was still in his cell, flat on his back in his bunk and blissed out by the look of him on some of his newly acquired endorphin. A half-smoked New Cuban smoldered between the knuckles of his left hand, and his eyes were lidded almost shut. He looked up, dreamily surprised, when Carl strummed the bars of the half-open door.

“Hey, Eurotrash. Chew doin’ here?”

“Leaving,” said Carl crisply. “But I need a favor.”

The Guatemalan struggled upright on the bunk. He glanced up to the cell’s monitor lens, and the cheap interference slinger taped on the wall next to it. No attempt had been made to hide the scrambler, and it had hung there every time Carl had been inside the cell. He didn’t like to think what it cost the Guatemalan to have it overlooked on a permanent basis.

“Leavin’?” A stoned smirk. “Don’ see no fuckin trowel in your hand.”

Carl moved an African-carved wooden stool over to the bunk and seated himself. “Not like that. This is official. Out the front gate. Listen, I need to make a phone call.”

“Phone call?” Even through the endorphins, the Guatemalan was blearily shocked. “You know what tha’s go

“I can guess. And I don’t have it. Look, there are seven more twenty-mil caps taped in plastic up in the U-bend of my cell’s shitter. All yours. Think of—”

“That ain’t go

“I know. Think of it as a down payment.”

“Yeah?” The stoned look was sliding away from the other man. He put the New Cuban in the corner of his mouth and gri

Carl gestured impatiently. “Because I don’t trust the people who are walking me out. Listen, once I’m outside, I’m going to have juice—”

“Yeah, sounds like it. Juice with folks that you don’t trust.”

“I can help you on the outside.” Carl leaned in. “This is COLIN business. That mean anything to you?”

The Guatemalan regarded him owlishly for a moment. Then he shook his head and got off the bunk. Carl shifted aside to let him past.

“Sound to me, niggah, like you ridin’. You sure those seven caps still in that shitter bend, not inside you? COLIN getting you out? What the fuck for?”

“They want me to kill someone for them,” Carl said evenly.

A snort from behind him. Liquid coursing as the Guatemalan poured himself a glass of juice from the chiller flask he kept on a shelf. “Sure. In the whole Confederated Republic, they can’t find one black man do their killin’ for them, they got to come flush some high-tone Eurotrash outta South Florida State. You ridin’, niggah.”

“Will you stop fucking calling me that.”

“Oh yeah.” The Guatemalan drank deep. He put the glass down and made a gusty, satisfied sound. “I’s forgettin’. You the only black man in here don’ seem to noticed what color skin he got.”

Carl stared straight ahead at the cell wall. “You know, where I come from, there are a lot of different ways of being black.”

“Well, then you one lucky fucking black man.” The Guatemalan moved around to face him. His face was almost kindly, softened with the endorphins and maybe something else. “But see, blood, ’bout now, where you come from ain’t where you at. ’Bout now, you in South Florida State. You in the Confederated Republic, niggah. Roun’ here, they only got the one way of being black, and sooner or later that’s the black you go

Carl looked at the wall some more. He took the decision.

“Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong.”

“I’m wrong?” The other man chuckled. “Look around you, blood. How the fuck am I wrong?”

“You’re wrong,” Carl told him, “because they already got me in a whole other box. It’s a box you won’t ever see the inside of, and that’s why I’m getting out, that’s why they need me. They can’t get anyone else like me.”

The Guatemalan propped himself against the cell wall and gave Carl a quizzical look.

“Yeah? You got moves, trash, I give you that. And what I hear from Louie, you got some fucked-up wirin’ inside you. But that don’ make you no stone killer. Two hours ago you walk out of here with my boy’s best shiv-work up your sleeve, but what I hear is Dudeck still walking around.”

“We were interrupted.”

“Yeah. By the nice people from COLIN.” But there wasn’t much mockery in the other man’s voice now. He sucked thoughtfully on the cigar. “Shame about Dudeck, that birdshit coulda used some time in the infirmary. You want to tell me what that means, they can’t get anyone else like me?”

Carl met his eyes. “I’m a thirteen.”

It was like peeling a scab. For the last four months, he’d kept it hedged behind his teeth, the secret that would kill him. Now he watched the Guatemalan’s face and saw the final confirmation for his paranoia, saw the flicker of fear, faint but there, covered for quickly with a nod.

“O-kay.”

“Yeah.” He felt an obscure disappointment; somehow he’d hoped this man might be proof against the standard prejudice. Something about the Guatemalan’s patient con math realism. But now abruptly he could feel himself through the other man’s gaze, sliding into caricature. Could even feel himself go with it, let go, take on the old skin of impassive power and threat. “So. About this phone call. What’s it going to take?”

He found Dudeck in the F wing rec hall, playing speed chess against the machine. Three or four others inmates were gathered around: one tat-stamped and certified AC brother, a couple of late-teen wa

No one paid any attention to the black man as he came up the hall. Dudeck was too deep in the game, and with full audiovid monitoring systems webbed up in the nanocarb vault of the hall, the others were loose and unvigilant. Carl got to within ten paces of the gathering before anybody turned around. Then one of the wa

“Fuck you want, nigger?”

Carl stepped in and hit him, full force, with one trailing arm and the back of his hand. The impact smashed the boy’s mouth and knocked him to the floor. He stayed there, bleeding and staring up at Carl in disbelief.

Carl was still moving.

He closed with the tat-marked spectator, broke down a fumbled defense, and tipped the man into Dudeck, who was still trying to get up from the console. The two men tangled and went down sprawling. The second sycophant hovered, gaped. He wasn’t going to do anything. The older guy was already backing off, hands spread low in front of him to denote his detachment.