Read Online The Cast Stone by Harold Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

Entertainment is each other. Next to the ranges are the interview facilities, and finally the exit. With Greatwest Electric in charge, of course the exit is the chair, no fatal injection, or gas chambers at Dakota Max. It’s full current. Nothing cheap or chintzy about the exit.”
    Roland was about to step away from the spot where the sunlight washed the loft floor when Monica stood quickly.
    â€œRoland, a question please. You said that you didn’t think that GE used gas purposely to make room for new prisoners, but isn’t it true that DM is chronically overcrowded? That gas is used routinely? You were there. You are our best source of information. We’ve heard rumours that DM is mostly filled with Canadians, but the official reports suggest that DM only has about a forty percent Canadian population. You, yourself said that it’s estimated that the Canadian population there is about forty percent. What’s the real count?”
    â€œYeah, I was there.” Roland’s voice was softer. He was not listing facts now. The words came from a place deeper than the top of his mind. “That’s why I don’t think it’s intentional. I did two-and-a-half years. I was only sentenced to two. The judge was Canadian, Roberts, right over there in Saskatoon. He had to give me a two-year sentence instead of two years less a day where I would be sent to a provincial jail. The charge involved weapons. I did two and a half because Greatwest Electric gets paid by prisoner days. It was accounting that kept me there. Purposely killing prisoners is not good business. It doesn’t pay.”
    â€œBut you were gassed?” Monica continued to stand.
    â€œMore than once.”
    â€œWe know that. How many times? How many did you see killed?”
    Roland inhaled, he opened his mouth but no words came out when he exhaled. He raised his hands palms up. “I don’t know. I lost count. Gas is colourless, odourless. You’re talking to your buddy and your tongue gets numb and you wake up on the floor with a real bad hangover. You don’t know how long you’ve been gone, hours or maybe days and some people are missing. Sometimes you wake up in a different range, or you wake up and your buddy is gone. Maybe he never woke up, you hope he’s in another range, you even hope he’s gone for an interview.”
    â€œBut you have seen people killed by gas.”
    â€œYeah, a few.”
    â€œHow many? In two-and-a-half years, how many?”
    â€œEight, eight that didn’t wake up, that were still in the range. But I don’t know if they were brought back or not. We carried them to the door, stepped back behind the yellow line, and they came and got them. I hope some of them were revived, but I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
    â€œHow many Canadians? What’s the real count? Or do you know?”
    â€œTo be absolutely honest, I don’t know. It’s possible I was only in ranges of Canadians. Maybe they kept Canadian and American populations separate. In the ranges I was in, the population was eighty, ninety percent Canadian.”
    A woman in a dark denim jacket raised an arm in the air. “Were you tortured?”
    Roland took an unconscious quarter step back as though hit in his centre by the question. Looked straight ahead, his voice flat. “I was interviewed.”
    â€œWhat did they do to you?” the woman’s voice held a hint of intrigue.
    â€œThat’s not something I want to talk about.” Roland spoke direct, clear, purposefully blunt.
    â€œBut, do you know why you were,” the woman paused, “interviewed?”
    â€œTicking bomb. I was involved in a weapons offence. Maybe I knew something about the resistance. I can tell you that I told them every damn thing I knew. Everything, every name of every person I ever knew, everyone who ever spoke badly of Americans, every conceivable plot that I could