Heat (51 page)

“That he killed a woman ten years earlier. Tortured and raped and then killed her.”

Tagen nodded once, slowly, almost to himself. “His crime was not discovered?”

“Sure it was. He was even sent to prison. For about three years.”

Tagen’s brows knotted with the same hesitance he showed when he suspected his English wasn’t keeping up with hers. But when he spoke, he astonished her by saying, “Not guilty…by reason of insanity?”

Daria gaped at him, and then laughed a little. “I forget, you watch
Law & Order
all day. But you’re right, that’s what they said.” She started to pick up the thread of her monologue, but dropped it to ask, “What would have happened to him on your planet?”

Tagen’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment she didn’t think he would let her escape from her story. But in the end, he said, “Our doctors have ways of determining whether or not mental defect is present, and our people are tested routinely in their youth. It is unlikely Traynor Polidori could have escaped detection for so long, but it does happen…although never more than once. Traynor Polidori would have been chemically corrected and fit with a monitoring device for a probationary period after his first victim. If no such mental defect were found, he would have been imprisoned.”

“Forever?” she asked.

“For a crime of such violence, yes. There is an option given for self-termination at any time.” Tagen shrugged. “Seldom employed at first, but I am told it becomes popular after forty years or so.”

“No one ever comes out of jail?” Daria asked. “No time off for good behavior? Ever?”

“It is the behavior prior to prisoning that our judges concern themselves with.” Tagen shifted in his chair. “We do not permit what you call appeal. Trials are swift and exacting. Prisons are constructed around lifeless worlds which provide the prison’s only heat and light. The prisoners are responsible for maintaining the growth of their own food, and unmanned supply ships are sent on a regular schedule to make up for any inadequacies. The supply ships irradiate their interior upon leaving the prison, making escape by that route impossible. Sentry-satellites monitor the prisons at all times for disturbances and wardens stationed in synchronous orbit keep watch over the readings. Their main function is to implement repairs when necessary, but they are all well-armored and armed. Our policy is that any prison forced to lock down by riot must be destroyed immediately. We have never needed to do so, I think, because it is so well-known, but there stands the sum and substance of our attitude toward violent criminals.”

Now it was Tagen’s turn to drop his eyes. He looked away toward the window, but not through it. His claws tapped lightly over the table. “I have heard a thing said on this video program you so despise. It was said, ‘Our system is based on the principle that it is better that twenty criminals go free than send one innocent man to prison.’” His voice softened as he recited, but strengthened, as though he paid tribute to the words with the speaking of them.

“I admire that,” he said, and turned back to her, his eyes burning with emotion. “I would like to make these words my own. I feel the power of them, the virtue. It is a good, honorable thing to take for principle. It has given you a world of freedom and liberty…and Traynor Polidori. And so I admire those words, but I will not take them back with me to Jota. In our prisons, there must be many innocent men…but there are few criminals on our streets.”

“E’Var and his crew excepted, of course,” she said, almost smiling.

He almost smiled back at her. “I did say ‘few’, did I not? Not none, but few. And it is perhaps worth observing that E’Var did not operate his crimes on-world.”

“Have you ever had a jailbreak?”

Tagen paused again before answering, and this time, the pause was longer. Finally, he said, “I think I take your meaning, and the answer is no. There are no…what your media call escape pods on prisons, and no tools for the building of one. There have been many escapes by the condemned, such as E’Var, and like E’Var’s, all occurred in transit. Transport of prisoners is a dangerous, unstable business, especially when the use of a Gate is required. And for lesser crimes,” he added, looking thoughtful, “certain behavior modification and monitoring, although less effective at preventing repeat offenders, has sufficed. There is crime on Jota. There are killings and there are many chemists and smugglers who deal in violence as part of off-world trade, but there are none on Jota like this Traynor Polidori, who kill and are imprisoned and released to kill again.”

Mechanically, Daria said, “Polidori didn’t kill me.”

Tagen looked at her, his eyes tinged for the first time with pity. “You think not?” he said.

She could not look at him, or think of any way to answer.

She heard him sigh. “Daria…”

She didn’t want to hear anything that came after that. “He started to follow me,” she said loudly. “Polidori. He found out where I lived and what I did, where I went and on what days. He got ready, and on the day Dan and I used to go to dinner, he followed us. I had clams that night,” she remembered suddenly, and sat back, surprised at herself. “They tasted like they came from a can. I tasted it all night. I’ve never been able to eat them since.”

They really had been terrible clams, tinny and rubbery, made bitter by too much wine in the sauce. She’d eaten all the breadsticks and most of Dan’s pilaf, trying to make light of it, teasing each other about picking up some burgers on the way home, and the whole time, Polidori had sat in his car in the parking lot, watching through the tinted window.

“There was a place we used to go to, after dinner,” she continued. “We’d make believe we were still dating. You know, drive up to the Point, sit in the car, look at the lights of the city. Sometimes…Did you ever used to go places like that with a girl, Tagen?”

“We do not date,” he said simply.

“Why not?”

“Mathematical logic,” he replied. “There are many, many more males than females. Monogamy is unrealistic and potentially damaging to the continuance of our species.”

“Yeah, but you don’t…don’t ever fall in love? Get married?”

He put his hand over hers. “What happened at the Point, Daria? When you sat in the car with your Dan?”

“Nothing, really. Except…” Daria looked away from Tagen’s piercing eyes and out the nearest window, frowning. “We were…making out a little. Like teenagers. It was stupid. But…but it was fun and…and anyway, these headlights came on. A car was parked right behind us. I didn’t even notice when it drove up, but the headlights came on while we were kissing and this car pulled out slowly and drove away. I remember thinking it was his car…Polidori’s. I couldn’t prove it at the trial, of course, but…but I’m sure it was his car. He saw us.”

“Yes.” Tagen’s voice was no more than a murmur of assent, serving only to keep her train of thought in place.

“And the next morning, I was at my desk at work and he came up to me. Polidori. He was smiling. He had a paper sack in his hand. He said he had a present for me.” Daria could hear herself speaking, her words coming mechanically and without emotion, but her mind was drifting off to other things. Her trees needed pruning. “It was a bag from a bakery. I thought it was a muffin or something. I didn’t want to accept presents from a guy when I was dating someone else, but I was kind of hungry and a muffin sounded good. I held out my hand. He reached into the bag. He took out a mayonnaise jar. There was clear liquid in it. He opened the jar and threw the liquid at me.”

Tagen’s eyes sharpened and he looked at the side of her face—the bad side—for the first time. Shock opened up on his alien face, and Daria realized that up until that moment, he had never even noticed how out of place and ugly her scars had been.

She could have kept talking, told him everything she’d said on the witness stand at Polidori’s trial—how it had hurt, how it had burned, how she had been blind in her left eye until the corneal transplant operation, her first shocked look in the mirror at that new and unnatural green eye—but it was an awful thing to see that shock on Tagen’s face, and to know that her one chance at having a normal conversation with someone completely unmoved by horror or pity had come and gone. She fell silent, her eyes dropping to the table top.

“He…did that to you.” Tagen’s voice was harsh. Wounded by comprehension.

Daria made herself nod so she wouldn’t have to speak.

Silence. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked away the minutes.

“He went to prison for
three
years?” Tagen demanded.

“Almost three.” Daria’s eye was wandering toward the window again. She wondered if she asked Tagen, would he help her prune the trees? “His first conviction was ruled inadmissible at my trial, and the defense managed to prove that since Polidori knew the acid wouldn’t kill me, it couldn’t be called attempted murder. They could only try him for aggravated assault. He was sentenced to five years in prison and three months in a psychiatric institution to undergo counseling.”

She didn’t know how much of that Tagen could follow, but he didn’t ask her to clarify and she remembered again his fascination with
Law & Order
and realized he probably understood more about the legal system and its frailties than she did.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, looking away to the window. “Another inmate stabbed him to death after almost three years. Do the inmates in your prisons ever kill each other?”

“Frequently.”

“Is it considered a crime?”

“Yes.” Tagen shrugged one shoulder. “There is even a second trial of sorts, during which the prisoner may make some plea in the event of self-defense or other extenuating circumstances. If it can be proven the prisoner attacked and killed another prisoner without provocation, he or she is removed to a solitary cell for the remainder of his or her life.”

“I guess there’s no point in having two life sentences when your prisoners actually serve their entire life, huh?”

“No.”

Daria looked out the window at her too-scruffy trees. “Dan left me.”

She wanted to say more about that, but even now, years afterward, she couldn’t think of any way to express the horrible glut of baffled emotion she felt. They used to talk about getting married, maybe. Maybe having kids. Vacations in Hawaii. They had lived together three years. They had bought so many things together. They were friends, they were lovers. There were so many things they always meant to do with all the time they had left to do it in.

He’d come to see her almost every day at the hospital, for about two weeks. Then he’d started coming in only the weekends. And then she didn’t see him at all until after her new eye was installed. He’d brought her flowers for that. And told her he was very sorry, but he just couldn’t handle this. It was too much, he’d said. He’d called once or twice after that, but that was the last time she’d seen him. He left all the stuff in his room. She could do what she wanted with it, he said. Sell it or give it away or anything. And she’d boxed it, believing with her whole heart that he would come back someday and unpack it.

“I sued Kruegar and Lauder for not checking Polidori’s record,” Daria continued after a pause. “They gave me a lot of money. And I spend it,” she added, shrugging. “I order my groceries delivered. I order my clothes. I order…everything. I don’t work any more. In fact, before you came here, I hadn’t left this house for six years except to pick up my mail or drive around sometimes at night. But I don’t stop anywhere. I never stop the car.” She slid him a dry, unhappy smile. “What would your people do about that?”

He was quiet a long time. “I would like to tell you we would not have allowed it to happen to you in the first place, but I know too well that Jota’s forces do fail its people. I do not know, Daria. It is likely you would have gone to live at a recovery center for a time, but it is my experience that such places are difficult to leave once one arrives. Like your home here, it is easy to make a prison of security.” He studied her gravely in the morning light as coffee-maker hissed and clicked. “It is a terrible thing that happened to you, Lindaria Cleavon. I regret that I have caused so much pain to bleed back into your life.”

He stood up then and went to put the peas back in the freezer.

Alone at the table, Daria stared at her hands and marveled at herself. She hadn’t cried once in the telling of it and she hadn’t lied to him. It hurt, but like the pain of a lanced boil, it had lessened some as it poured out of her. He was a good man, she thought. And he deserved a hell of a lot better.

“Tagen,” she said suddenly.

He turned, one brow raised inquiringly.

“It’s going to be hot,” she said.

His face darkened and his jaw set. “I know.”

Daria chewed at her lip.

Slowly, Tagen closed the freezer and faced her fully. “What are you thinking?”

She took a deep breath, her heart hammering as the enormity of what she was about to suggest struck home. She smiled shakily at him. “Let’s go for a drive.”

*

The middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday when it was 100 degrees in the shade meant that there just wasn’t anything for a girl to do when she was manning the helm at Luv-A-Lot’s adult novelty store except to line up the contestants for that night’s Vibrator Races. Janey Foxx was just changing out the batteries on the eight-inch jelly slim-line she favored (ribbed for traction!) when, lo and behold, the door opened. She didn’t know it yet, but she was about to have the strangest customer experience of her adult store career.

Janey popped her head up over the counter long enough to make sure her customers were at least eighteen, as mandated by federal blah blah blah, and they sure appeared to be. A guy and a girl. That was refreshing. Been a long time since she’d seen a hetero couple shop in here together.

Janey tucked the battery box away again and hopped up, slapping her hands on the countertop and trying to look perky and efficient in a we-sell-sex-toys sort of way. “How you folks doing?” she asked brightly. “Hot enough for ya?”