CHAPTER 3
This Criminal
THE SKY SHIP DROPS toward this criminal, silent. Speakers say the burning flesh of the Apart feed it, which may be true, but nothing else the Speakers say has proven true.
No. This criminal lies. Truth of We said this criminal would be sold to the Death Circus, which must guarantee that each criminal it purchases will have the Sentence of Death carried out. This criminal was sold. Death will come now.
Still, the ship touches the ground, noiseless. The ship does not smell of burning flesh, which is a smell that will haunt this criminal until his last thought. This criminal tries to find comfort in the absence of a scent.
In the darkness, in the silence, this criminal stands shivering, for no matter how the Evils do not seem cruel, the ship has arrived, and life now ends.
This criminal thinks—which is its first crime—of what life might have been if We-42K had remained criminal. If it had not brought the Speakers and the Guards to the hiding place. This criminal imagines a life without Truth of We.
But if such life exists, it will not exist for this Apart.
The sky ship’s doors are open, and the line moves. The unseen hands behind push Each Apart through the tall wire corral, into the next gate.
The first criminal steps through the gates, up into the ship. The Apart does not run.
This criminal thinks when it steps through the gates, it will run. It is not ready for Death.
There is no sound as the ship doors close behind the first Apart. Just a moment later, the doors re-open and the Apart is gone. It was big, tall and strong-looking, clean and fierce, and it had shouted anger at the Evils when it waited.
The Evils have a quiet Death. It is not like the death of Return to Citizenship, which is screaming and writhing, body arcing long, then curling inward, arms and legs twisting, with skin peeling away from flesh, with flesh peeling away from bone, with bone blackening until it bursts into flame and at last is gone.
The quiet Death may be quick.
But this criminal wants to live.
The line moves too quickly. Each Apart moves forward without resistance, steps up to the ship and through the doors and is gone.
Each Apart, and then this criminal is two places away from the final corral, and it feels a sharp, quick, bright pain in its arm, and looks to see a tiny ice dart melting into its flesh.
And all its fear goes, and its anger, and its desire to live. The face of We-42K fades, and the solemn gaze of the born disappears. This criminal is washed empty inside, and steps up into Death.
Kagen
KAGEN AND BURKE lifted the last body into its private suspended-animation unit and sealed the unit.
Kagen said, “You do the paperwork this time.”
Burke nodded, took the papers from Kagen, and started to shove them into the unit’s feeder slot.
Kagen said, “You weren’t watching what I did. Learn to watch. If my head didn’t already hurt, I’d have let you put them in that way. And then I’d have let you deal with the alarm and trying to get the papers sorted out on your own. Because you’ve watched me do twenty of those, but you evidently didn’t see a thing.”
Burke said, “What did I do wrong?”
“The sheets go in numerical order, print side up, all facing the same direction. If you put them in any other way, the unit alarm goes off loud enough to wake the dead.”
“Why? I don’t even understand why we use paper,” Burke grumbled. “This whole process could be shortened to minutes with a single data thread.”
“Paper can’t disappear when a unit shorts,” Kagen said, “and the hermetically sealed document compartments resist tampering. You should have had that information in your Preliminary Crew Three study guide.”
“I skimmed that,” Burke said. “I still tested high enough to be here.”
Which marked Burke as exactly what Kagen had thought he was. Light crew. Barely above deadweight. Kagen decided he would pass on Burke’s application and see if he could find someone better from the passenger ranks.
Annoyed, he said, “For a ship to maintain its lucrative Death Circus license in the Pact worlds, the status of every Condemned must be available to the Pact licensing body at all times. The instant the Longview passes a Spybee or comsat, the ship’s Pact module sends a burst packet that relays our Condemned update to the Pact Core, who then distributes our list of available Condemned to all subscriber worlds. If you in any way screw up the unit’s ability to identify the Condemned in the box, you screw up the system that keeps the Longview in the air.”
Burke watched Kagen with puzzlement. “Wait. They’re not dead?”
Kagen was pretty sure at that point Burke had done less than skim the study guide. While he sorted the paperwork correctly, making sure Burke watched him, he said, “No. Sometimes the owner decides to carry out Final Sentencing on the ship as soon as we’re beyond the Pact World borders. But there’s no real profit in that. And the Longview is the most profitable Death Circus registered.”
“So we make a good living from killing people.” Burke frowned. “If I hadn’t managed to get passenger status on the Longview, I could have been one of the people in the boxes.”
Kagen shrugged. “Everyone on the Longview has a story like that. We all have ugliness behind us. The trick is to not let that ugliness get back in front of us.”
Burke raised an eyebrow.
Kagen had decided Burke was one breath above worthless, but gave him the same spiel he gave every potential member of Crew Three. “If you don’t screw up on the Longview, you can get training all the way up to captaining your own ship. You can earn more money with us than with any other ship crew I know of. But if you want it—and I want it—you have to keep your record spotless, work hard, and study hard. And you can’t make enemies. Or mistakes. It’s a small crew, and almost everyone is trying to stay on it.”
“Why? Because you all love the smell of burning bodies? Love taking people to their deaths?”
“We transport people who have already been categorized Dead, Still Breathing to places that have uses for people like that. If we didn’t, someone else would, and we keep all our Condemned clean and safe and healthy until they get where they’re going—which cannot be said for any other Death Circus out there. The Longview is different.
“When we hit some of the big buyer worlds, you start talking to crew from other Death Circuses. Most of them just shove Class B prisoners out the airlock as soon as they hit the Pact perimeter, because all Death Circuses have to buy at least 10% Class Bs, and feeding what you can’t sell costs money. Class Bs are just about impossible to sell. Every other Death Circus out there buys 90% Class A Condemned and 10% Class B Condemned.”
Burke said, “And Class A Condemned are the rapists, pedophiles, murderers, and... one other...”
“Thieves,” Kagen told him. So Burke had at least read something in the study guide.
“Right.” Burke considered that for an instant. “And the Class B prisoners are basically the ones who just pissed off somebody important.”
Kagen nodded. “You. Me. Half the damned universe, it seems.”
“And worlds want to buy rapists, and pedophiles, and murderers, and thieves, but don’t want to buy people who didn’t actually commit real crimes...”
Kagen said, “Have you ever heard of gladiators? The Shorgah Arena?”
“No.”
“It’s big on slaver worlds. Slave owners buy men other people want to see die, and they pit them against each other in a ring. They get rid of problem slaves that way, too, but there have been a couple times that policy turned around to bite them. So they like to get bad guys from much tenderer worlds. Pact worlds breed tender bad guys because they never come up against any real resistance.”
“That’s vile.”
“It’s a polite way for the Pact worlds to get rid of their worst citizens without ever having to get their own hands dirty. The slaver worlds buy women, too, of cours
e. Women are easy to sell—the younger and prettier, the better, but slaver worlds usually have reju, so they can turn and old woman into a young woman, and keep her young and healthy and unmarked as long as they want.”
“And we’re a part of that. I’m not sure I want to go for Crew Three. I might just get off on the next non-Pact, non-Slaver world we come to.”
“Always an option,” Kagen said, shrugging. “There’s more to this than you’re seeing, I think—but there are also plenty of other people desperate to get the job you don’t think you want.”