Red Cells Read Online Free PDF Page B

unit’s overhead lights flashed as if they might extinguish, fluttered precariously for a beat or two, then regained their full strength. Static shot through Stake’s holographic image, which Zaleski hadn’t banished yet, and it blinked out of view a moment before returning as before. Stake noticed how the physician flinched as if startled, and glanced nervously toward the ceiling.
    “It’s been doing that since I got here,” Stake said. “Is that natural?”
    “Nothing is natural about this place,” Zaleski muttered, as if only to himself.
    Of course Stake picked up the physician’s unhappy vibe, and ran with it. “I’m a little concerned about the stability of this pocket we’re in.”
    Zaleski said, “Well, I’ll tell you this…we do have some strange ‘weather,’ if you will. Activity in the interstitial matter that we call storms, for lack of a better word. Disturbances.”
    “Are these storms responsible for the power fluctuations, then?” Zaleski didn’t answer, so Stake jumped to another question. “Do you think what’s happened to these men might be linked to the anomalies? If the disturbances affect electrical sources, might they be attracted to the electrical activity in a living body? Reach out and…I don’t know…disrupt the victim violently?”
    “That’s a wild and unsubstantiated theory, Mr. Stake.”
    “Better than no theory, which is what you claim your stance is, Doctor.”
    Finally Zaleski dismissed the holograph of Stake’s head. “You’re all better, Mr. Stake. You can return to your cell now.” He looked over toward the door to the medical unit, where the two guards who had escorted Stake here had stood waiting all the while, and motioned for the man and robot to come forward to get their charge. Then to Stake he said, “I suggest you try to avoid getting into any further fights. It isn’t wise to make enemies here.”

 
     
     
    Six
    The Looking Glass
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    In the cell in which his cousin Chowder had recently died—now thoroughly cleaned, and repainted besides—Null said to Stake, “Be careful, friend…everyone in Orange Block gets pressed into the Orange Bunch gang, but a couple of the mutie members work for me as inside informers, and the word from them is Mr. Fetch is getting more nervous about you testifying against him. Apparently he wants his new friends to eliminate the threat.”
    “Great.”
    “Just stick close to us and they’ll be less likely to make a move. You’re doing the right thing, working for us. So tell me what you think the doctor knows.”
    “I don’t know what he knows, but he sure seems to know something…enough to threaten me before I left. The deaths are an uncomfortable subject to him.” Stake related how the conversation had gone, even to the point of describing their discussion about the anomalous power fluctuations. Null said everyone had taken note of these disturbances, which had become more frequent in the past few months, and they didn’t inspire confidence. Then Stake told the mutant, “A funny thing happened when I was leaving the med unit. The robot guard suddenly stopped dead and wouldn’t budge; he kind of just stood there staring at me. And his eyes—you know how their eyes glow red? Well, his eyes were flickering. So I asked the thing, ‘Are you all right?’ And he spoke to me.”
    “What’d it say?”
    “He said, ‘Your kind are not the only prisoners.’”
    “Huh,” Null said. “What did it mean?”
    “I don’t know. An existential robot?”
    “But you think it was having one of these power disturbances.”
    “Yeah…for a second. Then he seemed to snap out of it and acted normal again.” Stake shrugged. “Something’s in the air.” He turned to face the other two occupants of the room, both seated on the edge of a bunk: Billings, and the mutant called Blur, who of course was convulsing and whipping his head madly.
    Billings smiled apologetically. “So how’s your