"Yeah," DeWayne added. "We were born innocent and got a little lost, is all. Roy stayed innocent clear through to today." He grinned in the gloom. "That's why he's gonna eat needle, and we're gonna sleep with whores tonight."
"Only if you follow me, and do exactly what I say," Remo said flatly.
"Can that finger get us past the guards?" Orvis asked.
"It got me in, didn't it?" Remo countered.
"Oh."
As Remo led them away, Sonny had a question.
"Where can I get a finger like that?"
"This is an ACLU-issue finger. You can't just go into a Walmart and buy it."
"Can a guy boost it, then?" No.
In the darkness, the faces of Orvis, DeWayne, and Sonny grew long with disappointment.
"Well, maybe I won't ever be back this way again," Orvis allowed.
"Guarantee it," said Remo, pausing at an area-control door.
There was a guard seated beside it. On the floor. His head was lolling to one side and he looked peaceful and contented sitting there on the shiny floor.
Sonny grunted. "Hey, I know that screw. He done me a bad turn once. Think I'll cut his face."
"You cut his face," Remo warned, "and my finger will turn off the red light in your eyes."
"Can your finger do that?"
"My finger can do whatever I want it to," Remo told the man.
The three dead men exchanged looks in the dark as Remo went to work on the lock.
As he tapped in the darkness, Orvis whispered to DeWayne. "Maybe we should just jug this guy and bite his finger off."
"What if it won't work after it's off?" asked DeWayne.
Orvis grinned broadly. "Then I'll swallow it down. That way it won't go to waste."
"You'd eat a man's finger?"
"Sure."
"Thought you only ate little girls."
Sonny backed away. "Yeah. You queer, or something?"
"No, I ain't no queer. You know that."
"I can hear every word you say," Remo called back.
"Your ears magic, too?" Orvis demanded.
"I can hear you fart before you do."
This impressed the trio. "Forget what we said about that finger, man," DeWayne said quickly. "That your finger. You just let it do its stuff and don't worry about us none."
"Much obliged," said Remo, and the green pinpoint light came on. They passed through.
Remo took point. In the gloom, he did something that would have astonished and frightened the three trailing convicts. He closed his eyes.
Remo could see fairly well in the darkness. But for what he had to do, his eyes would be less useful than the magnets in his brain.
For over twenty years now, Remo had been aware of the magnets. He never thought of them as magnets, but as pointers. Since learning to breathe properly through his entire body and not just his lungs, he had been able to find his way in complete darkness by paying attention to the pointers in his head.
Remo wanted to go north. By closing his eyes, he knew exactly where north was. He was walking north.
It wasn't until recently, after he had read a magazine article claiming scientists had discovered that the human brain was riddled with tiny crystalline biological magnets, that Remo realized the pointers were magnets. If he had thought about it at all, he would have realized they had to be magnets.
According to the scientists, the magnets were present in the brains of many mammalian species, including man. They explained salmon returning to their spawning places, bird migrations, and even how the lost family cat could find its owners, who had moved clear across the country. Remo couldn't quite make the leap of faith that last example required, but he could accept natural magnets, which the scientists had said also explained how people got brain tumors from living too close to high-tension wires and other electromagnetic sources. The magnetic fields screwed up the delicate balance of the magnetic webs, causing the tumors.
Remo had no tumors. He didn't need a CAT scan or an X-ray to tell him that. His own brain told him it was tumorless. And that the magnets were guiding him unerringly north.
Other things guided him, too.
He felt a faint breeze on his cruel face and exposed hands that told of air currents coming from under doors. Remo had memorized every door on the way in. And every twist in the path. He knew exactly where he was. All he had to do was escort the three suffering butchers to the garbage disposal area.
"This ain't the way to the front door," said Orvis Boggs, a trace of suspicion darkening his voice.
"We're not going out the front," Remo said.
"It ain't the way out back, either," DeWayne muttered uneasily.
"The front and the back are always the best guarded places in a prison," Remo explained with more patience than he felt. "My ACLU bosses made a careful study of this before sanctioning a dynamic extraction."
Sonny winced at the word extraction, and felt his bicuspids.
"You do this before?" he asked.
"Actually, this is my first time," Remo said.
"What if we get caught?" Sonny wondered.
"We blame my superiors, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the guards."