Twenty Sixty-Four

Chapter 1

He did not know where he was. He supposed it was HR, but there was no way to be certain. He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain. Concealed fluorescent lights flooded everywhere with cold orange light, and there was a low, steady hum which probably had something to do with the air conditioning. A bench, or shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran round the wall, broken only by the door and, at the end opposite the door, a lidless stainless steel toilet. There were four faceboogles, one on each wall. They blared loud distracting commercials occasionally relieved by strident news programs.

There was a dull pain in his stomach. It had been there ever since they bundled him into the windowless van and drove him away. He was also faint with a gnawing hunger. It might be twenty-four hours since he had eaten, it might be thirty-six. He still did not know, probably never would know, if it had been morning or evening when they arrested him. Since being arrested he had not been fed.

He sat as still as he could on the narrow bench, hands resting on his knees. He had already learned to sit still. If you made unexpected movements they yelled at you from the faceboogle. But the craving for food was growing upon him. What he longed for above all was a piece of bread. He had an idea there were a few breadcrumbs in the pocket of his jumpsuit. It was even possible—he thought this because from time to time something seemed to tickle his leg—that there might be a piece of crust there. In the end the temptation to find out overcame his fear; he slipped a hand into his pocket.

'Jones!' yelled a voice from the faceboogle. '7180 Jones B! Hands out of pockets in the cells!'

He sat still again, hands trembling as they rested on his knees. Before being brought here he had been taken to what must have been an ordinary prison or temporary holding cells. He did not know how long he had been there: some hours at any rate. With no clocks and no daylight it was hard to gauge the time. It was a noisy, evil-smelling place. The jail prior to this one had been a large auditorium. It was filthy dirty and filled with cages crowded with ten or fifteen people apiece. The majority of them were common criminals, but there were a few political and sexual offenders as well. There were even some cages filled with stunned children, turned in by Spy scouts no doubt. Bradley had sat silent against the bars, jostled by dirty bodies, too preoccupied by fear and the pain in his belly to take much interest in his surroundings. Despite himself, he couldn't help noticing the difference in demeanor between the Corporate prisoners and the others. The Corporate prisoners were always silent and terrified, but the ordinary criminals did not seem to care. They yelled insults at the guards, fought back fiercely when their belongings were impounded, wrote obscene words on the floor, ate smuggled food which they produced from mysterious hiding-places in their clothes, and even shouted down the faceboogle when it tried to restore order. On the other hand, some of them seemed to be on good terms with the guards, called them by nicknames, and tried to wheedle cigarettes from them. The guards, too, treated the regular criminals with a certain tolerance, even when they had to handle them roughly. There was much talk about the forced-work camps out west to which most of the prisoners expected to be sent. It was 'fine' in the camps, he gathered, so long as you had contacts and knew the ropes. There was bribery, favouritism, and racketeering of every kind, there was homosexuality and prostitution, there was even illicit alcohol and drugs. The positions of trust were given only to the regular criminals, especially gangsters and murderers, who formed a sort of aristocracy. All the dirty jobs were doled out to Corporate scapegoats.

There was a constant come-and-go of prisoners of every description: drug-dealers, thieves, mobsters, black-marketeers, drunks, prostitutes and addicts. Some of the junkies were so violent the other prisoners had to combine to suppress them. An enormous wreck of a woman was carried in, kicking and shouting, by four guards, who had hold of her one at each corner. Her thick coils of abundant white hair made her look about seventy and her forearms were scarred with puncture wounds. They wrenched off the boots with which she had been trying to kick them, and dumped her down across Bradley's lap, almost breaking his thigh-bone. The woman hoisted herself upright and followed them out with a yell of 'Fucken bastards!' Then, noticing that she was sitting on something uneven, she slid off Bradley's knees onto the bench.