Chapter One
"THE BORDERS OF INFINITY"
How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing
the transition?
The opalescent force dome capped a surreal and alien
landscape, frozen for a moment by Miles's disorientation
and dismay. The dome defined a perfect circle, half a
kilometer in diameter. Miles stood just inside its edge,
where the glowing concave surface dove into the hard-
packed dirt and disappeared. His imagination followed the
arc buried beneath his feet to the far side, where it
erupted again to complete the sphere. It was like being
trapped inside an eggshell. An unbreakable eggshell.
Within was a scene from an ancient limbo. Dispirited men
and women sat, or stood, or mostly lay down, singly or in
scattered irregular groups, across the breadth of the
arena. Miles's eye searched anxiously for some remnant of
order or military grouping, but the inhabitants seemed
splashed randomly as a liquid across the ground.
Perhaps he had been killed just now, just entering this
prison camp. Perhaps his captors had betrayed him to his
death, like those ancient Earth soldiers who had lured
their victims sheeplike into poisoned showers, diverting
and soothing their suspicions with stone soap, until their
final enlightenment burst upon them in a choking cloud.
Perhaps the annihilation of his body had been so swift,
his neurons had not had time to carry the information to
his brain. Why else did so many antique myths agree that
hell was a circular place?
Dagoola IV Top Security Prison Camp #3. This was it? This
naked ... dinner plate? Miles had vaguely visioned
barracks, marching guards, daily head counts, secret
tunnels, escape committees.
It was the dome that made it all so simple, Miles
realized. What need for barracks to shelter prisoners from
the elements? The dome did it. What need for guards? The
dome was generated from without. Nothing inside could
breach it. No need for guards, or head counts. Tunnels
were a futility, escape committees an absurdity. The dome
did it all.
The only structures were what appeared to be big gray
plastic mushrooms evenly placed about every hundred meters
around the perimeter of the dome. What little activity
there was seemed clustered around them. Latrines, Miles
recognized.
Miles and his three fellow prisoners had entered through a
temporary portal, which had closed behind them before the
brief bulge of force dome containing their entry vanished
in front of them. The nearest inhabitant of the dome, a
man, lay a few meters away upon a sleeping mat identical
to the one Miles now clutched. He turned his head slightly
to stare at the little party of newcomers, smiled sourly,
and rolled over on his side with his back to them. Nobody
else nearby even bothered to look up.
"Holy shit," muttered one of Miles's companions.
He and his two buddies drew together unconsciously. The
three had been from the same unit once, they'd said. Miles
had met them bare minutes ago, in their final stages of
processing, where they had all been issued their total
supply of worldly goods for life in Dagoola #3.
A single pair of loose gray trousers. A matching short-
sleeved gray tunic. A rectangular sleeping mat, rolled up.
A plastic cup. That was all. That, and the new numbers
encoded upon their skins. It bothered Miles intensely that
their captors had chosen to locate the numbers in the
middle of their backs, where they couldn't see them. He
resisted a futile urge to twist and crane his neck anyway,
though his hand snaked up under his shirt to scratch a
purely psychosomatic itch. You couldn't feel the encode
either.
Some motion appeared in the tableau. A group of four or
five men approaching. The welcoming committee at last?
Miles was desperate for information. Where among all these
countless gray men and women-no, not countless, Miles told
himself firmly. They were all accounted for here.
The battered remnants of the 3rd and 4th Armored All-
Terrain Rangers. The ingenious and tenacious civilian
defenders of Garson Transfer Station. Winoweh's 2nd
Battalion had been captured almost intact. And the 14th
Commandos, survivors of the high-tech fortress at Fallow
Core. Particularly the survivors of Fallow Core. Ten
thousand, two hundred fourteen exactly. The planet
Marilac's finest. Ten thousand, two hundred fifteen,
counting himself. Ought he to count himself?
The welcoming committee drew up in a ragged bunch a few
meters away. They looked tough and tall and muscular and
not noticeably friendly. Dull, sullen eyes, full of a
deadly boredom that even their present calculation did not
lighten.
The two groups, the five and the three, sized each other
up. The three turned, and started walking stiffly and
prudently away. Miles realized belatedly that he, not a
part of either group, was thus left alone.
Alone and immensely conspicuous. Self-consciousness, body-
consciousness, normally held at bay by the simple fact
that he didn't have time to waste on it, returned to him
with a rush. Too short, too odd-looking-his legs were even
in length now, after the last operation, but surely not
long enough to outrun these five. And where did one run
to, in this place? He crossed off flight as an option.
Fight? Get serious.
This isn't going to work, he realized sadly, even as he
started walking toward them. But it was more dignified
than being chased down with the same result.
He tried to make his smile austere rather than foolish. No
telling whether he succeeded. "Hi, there. Can you tell me
where to find Colonel Guy Tremont's 14th Commando
Division?"
One of the five snorted sardonically. Two moved behind
Miles.
Well, a snort was almost speech. Expression, anyway. A
start, a toehold. Miles focused on that one. "What's your
name and rank and company, soldier?"
"No ranks in here, mutant. No companies. No soldiers. No
nothing."
Miles glanced around. Surrounded, of course.
Naturally. "You got some friends, anyway."
The talker almost smiled. "You don't."
Miles wondered if perhaps he had been premature in
crossing off flight as an option. "I wouldn't count on
that if I were-unh!" The kick to his kidneys, from behind,
cut him off-he damn near bit his tongue-he fell, dropping
bedroll and cup and landing in a tangle. A barefoot kick,
no combat boots this time, thank God-by the rules of
Newtonian physics, his attacker's foot ought to hurt just
as much as his back. Fine. Jolly. Maybe they'd bruise
their knuckles, punching him out....
One of the gang gathered up Miles's late wealth, cup and
bedroll. "Want his clothes? They're too little for me."
"Naw."
"Yeah," said the talker. "Take 'em anyway. Maybe bribe one
of the women."
The tunic was jerked off over Miles's head, the pants over
his feet. Miles was too busy protecting his head from
random kicks to fight much for his clothes, trying
obliquely to take as many hits as possible on his belly or
ribcage, not arms or legs or jaw. A cracked rib was surely
the most injury he could afford right now, here, at the
beginning. A broken jaw would be the worst.
His assailants desisted only a little before they
discovered by experimentation the secret weakness of his
bones.
"That's how it is in here, mutant," said the talker,
slightly winded.
"I was born naked," Miles panted from the dirt. "Didn't
stop me."
"Cocky little shit," said the talker.
"Slow learner," remarked another.
The second beating was worse than the first. Two cracked
ribs at least-his jaw barely escaped being smashed, at the
cost of something painfully wrong in his left wrist, flung
up as a shield. This time Miles resisted the impulse to
offer any verbal parting shots.
He lay in the dirt and wished he could pass out.
* * *
He lay a long time, cradled in pain. He was not sure how
long. The illumination from the force dome was even and
shadowless, unchanging. Timeless, like eternity. Hell was
eternal, was it not? This place had too damn many
congruencies with hell, that was certain.
And here came another demon.... Miles blinked the
approaching figure into focus. A man, as bruised and naked
as Miles himself, gaunt-ribbed, starveling, knelt in the
dirt a few meters away. His face was bony, aged by stress-
he might have been forty, or fifty-or twenty-five.
His eyes were unnaturally prominent, due to the shrinking
of his flesh. Their whites seemed to gleam feverishly
against the dirt darkening his skin. Dirt, not beard
stubble-every prisoner in here, male and female, had their
hair cut short and the hair follicles stunned to prevent
re-growth. Perpetually clean-shaved and crew-cut. Miles
had undergone the same process bare hours ago. But whoever
had processed this fellow must have been in a hurry. The
hair stunner had missed a line on his cheek and a few
dozen hairs grew there like a stripe on a badly-mown lawn.
Even curled as they were, Miles could see they were
several centimeters long, draggling down past the man's
jaw. If only he knew how fast hair grew, he could
calculate how long this fellow had been here. Too long,
whatever the numbers, Miles thought with an inward sigh.
The man had the broken-off bottom half of a plastic cup,
which he pushed cautiously toward Miles. His breath
whistled raggedly past his yellowish teeth, from exertion
or excitement or disease-probably not disease, they were
all well immunized here. Escape, even through death, was
not that easy. Miles rolled over and propped himself
stiffly on his elbow, regarding his visitor through the
thinning haze of his aches and pains.
The man scrabbled back slightly, smiled nervously. He
nodded toward the cup. "Water. Better drink. The cup's
cracked, and it all leaks out if you wait too long."
"Thanks," croaked Miles. A week ago, or in a previous
lifetime, depending on how you counted time, Miles had
dawdled over a selection of wines, dissatisfied with this
or that nuance of flavor. His lips cracked as he grinned
in memory. He drank. It was perfectly ordinary water,
lukewarm, faintly redolent of chlorine and sulfur. A
refined body, but the bouquet is a bit presumptuous....
The man squatted in studied politeness until Miles
finished drinking, then leaned forward on his knuckles in
restrained urgency. "Are you the One?"
Miles blinked. "Am I the what?"
"The One. The other one, I should say. The scripture says
there has to be two."
"Uh," Miles hesitated cautiously, "what exactly does the
scripture say?"
The man's right hand wrapped over his knobby left wrist,
around which was tied a rag screwed into a sort of rope.
He closed his eyes; his lips moved a moment, and then he
recited aloud, "... but the pilgrims went up that hill
with ease, because they had these two men to lead them by
the arms; also they had left their garments behind them,
for though they went in with them, they came out without
them." His eyes popped back open to stare hopefully at
Miles.
So, now we begin to see why this guy seems to be all by
himself.... "Are you, perchance, the other One?" Miles
shot at a venture.
The man nodded shyly.
"I see. Um ..." How was it that he always attracted the
nut cases? He licked the last drops of water from his
lips. The fellow might have some screws loose, but he was
certainly an improvement over the last lot, always
presuming he didn't have another personality or two of the
homicidal loonie variety tucked away in his head. No, in
that case he'd be introducing himself as the Chosen Two,
and not be looking for outside assistance. "Um ... what's
your name?"
"Suegar."
"Suegar. Right, all right. My name is Miles, by the way."
"Huh." Suegar grimaced in a sort of pleased irony. "Your
name means 'soldier,' did you know?"
"Uh, yeah, so I've been told."
"But you're not a soldier ...?"
No subtle expensive trick of clothing line or uniform
style here to hide from himself, if no one else, the
peculiarities of his body. Miles flushed. "They were
taking anything, toward the end. They made me a recruiting
clerk. I never did get to fire my gun. Listen, Suegar-how
did you come to know you were the One, or at any rate one
of the Ones? Is it something you've always known?"
"It came on me gradually," confessed Suegar, shifting to
sit cross-legged. "I'm the only one in here with the
words, y'see." He caressed his rag rope again. "I've
hunted all up and down the camp, but they only mock me. It
was a kind of process of elimination, y'see, when they all
gave up but me."
"Ah." Miles too sat up, only gasping a little in pain.
Those ribs were going to be murder for the next few days.
He nodded toward the rope bracelet. "Is that where you
keep your scripture? Can I see it?" And how the hell had
Suegar ever gotten a plastic flimsy, or loose piece of
paper or whatever, in here?
Suegar clutched his arms protectively to his chest and
shook his head. "They've been trying to take them from me
for months, y'see. I can't be too careful. Until you prove
you're the One. The devil can quote scripture, y'know."
Yes, that was rather what I had in mind.... Who knew what
opportunities Suegar's "scripture" might contain? Well,
maybe later. For now, keep dancing. "Are there any other
signs?" asked Miles. "You see, I don't know that I'm your
One, but on the other hand I don't know I'm not, either. I
just got here, after all."
Suegar shook his head again. "It's only five or six
sentences, y'see. You have to interpolate a lot."
I'll bet. Miles did not voice the comment aloud. "However
did you come by it? Or get it in here?"
"It was at Port Lisma, y'see, just before we were
captured," said Suegar. "House-to-house fighting. One of
my boot heels had come a bit loose, and it clicked when I
walked. Funny, with all that barrage coming down around
our ears, how a little thing like that can get under your
skin. There was this bookcase with a glass front, real
antique books made of paper-I smashed it open with my gun
butt and tore out part of a page from one, and folded it
up to stick in my boot heel, to make a sort of shim,
y'see, and stop the clicking. Didn't look at the book.
Didn't even know it was scripture till later. At least, I
think it's scripture. It sounds like scripture, anyway. It
must be scripture."
Suegar twisted his beard hairs nervously around his
finger. "When we were waiting to be processed, I'd pulled
it out of my boot, just idle-like, y'know. I had it in my
hand-the processing guard saw it, but he just didn't take
it away from me. Probably thought it was just a harmless
piece of paper. Didn't know it was scripture. I still had
it in my hand when we were dumped in here. D'you know,
it's the only piece of writing in this whole camp?" he
added rather proudly. "It must be scripture."
"Well ... you take good care of it, then," advised Miles
kindly. "If you've preserved it this long, it was
obviously meant to be your job."