by Holly Lisle
Shay
“WE’RE LOOKING FOR THE FOLLOWING criteria: public execution with paid observers present; subject awake and alert until the moment of death; subject able to speak clearly until the moment of death; no face or head mutilation because she still has to be beautiful when she’s dead; process of execution causes visible pain and suffering sufficient to cause distress to a significant portion of the observers; process of execution lasts at least twelve hours and up to several days,” Shay told Charlie, and watched her eyes go wide.
“Days! That’s horrible,” Charlie said. “Why do we need to make it so… awful?”
The two of them were going to be studying case histories of all the high-profile executions of Pact Worlds citizens, looking into the setting up and marketing of the ones that had been carried out directly by Death Circuses instead of being sold to third parties.
“We’re going to make sure people can see it’s horrible because it is horrible,” Shay told her. “Because Suzee Delight is a celebrity even outside the Pact Worlds, and there are people from all walks of life who know who she is, and who will watch her execution.
“And many of those people know her in a way they have known few other human beings—they have been her through her Sensos.
“Those Sensos, and her music and dance and paintings, and her famous clients from everywhere in Settled Space, they all create a connection. Her death will command the attention. And we need to prolong the execution in order to make room for sponsor messages, and keep Suzee awake and alert and able to communicate for the entire conclusion of her life, in order to keep the audience connected to her for the longest possible time. Minutes are money.”
“You’re talking about torture.”
The look on Charlie’s face as she said that told Shay that Charlie was closer to breaking than she had suspected. The average tour of duty of a Pact Covenant Observer on the Longview was about three years, after which they started hunting around the ship, looking for ways to kill themselves.
Charlie had already lasted twice as long as the average PCO, but Shay knew that Charlie had a sharp and clever mind, and hope. And most importantly, a secret plan. Shay liked people who had secret plans.
She said, “There might be other alternatives, which is part of what we’re looking for. But it’s probably going to come down to torture. Mado Keyr did not open his bid at one billion rucets to kill Suzee Delight in one minute. If he wins the bidding, he needs to recoup his enormous investment, and make a profit on top of that. This has to be huge.”
Charlie closed her eyes. She looked both sick and exhausted.
“Consider,” Shay said. “Her many fans and admirers will want a spectacle because they imagine that they loved her, and they’ll want to understand how she could have done what she did, and then see her come to a memorable end for doing it. If we can figure out a way to give them Suzee’s life in a meaningful way, they’ll want to participate. To have their say in what’s happening.
“Meanwhile,” she continued, “the Pact Worlds’ many governments will want a frightening spectacle with moral overtones, because Suzee Delight held a position of deep trust, and used it to slaughter five of their top men. Nearly every Pact Worlds Administrator or high-level official uses women or men like Suzee, and some of them will have used Suzee herself. They’ll want to be sure no consort or courtesan or citizen will ever consider doing what she’s done. They’ll want their citizens to see what happens to pretty young women who do such wicked things—and they’ll hope to make sure that what their people see will deter future murders.
“Finally,” she said, “Mado Keyr will want a spectacle because he’s already hired a major production company at considerable expense in order to tie them into an exclusivity deal. For the money he’s already paid, as well as the money he’ll pay if he wins the bidding, he’ll be getting 90% of the proceeds on every minute of every subscription sold to the locked data-stream feed of her execution. Plus income from the after-death marketing of any private holos, Sensos, or other materials found by his investigation team before her death and published afterward.”
Charlie shuddered. “You’re so calm about this. So… unbothered.”
Shay sighed. “I’m not. I have my own thoughts about this, and my own issues. But the owner didn’t hire me for what I feel. I’m going to make sure he gets his money’s worth out of the execution, because that’s part of what he pays me to do. Suzee Delight has to be executed. She chose to be executed via Death Circus. In order to keep its franchise, whichever Death Circus wins her is going to have to kill her publicly, and is going to have to have one of you folks in place to verify her death. All we can do within those limits is the best job we can do.”
“You mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“No.”
“What is your definition of the best job we can do?”
Shay gave her a sidelong glance. Charlie was a thinker, a closet subversive who hated the Pact Worlds. Charlie hid this, because she didn’t know whom onboard she could trust—but at some point, she’d started to trust Shay a little. So Shay gave her an honest answer. “I think the best job we can do is to let people see who the real Suzee Delight is during the execution—and give her an opportunity before she dies to say everything she wants to say in a forum that the Pact Worlds cannot manipulate.”
Charlie stared at her own hands, considering that. And then a broad, startled grin spread across her face. “The locked feed. Everyone pays to see it, and everyone sees the same thing.”
She was, Shay thought, a bright woman. “Exactly.”
“So the Pact Worlds won’t have any official feed. They’ll be able to cut off transmission, but they won’t be able to manipulate what’s sent.”
“The contract between Death Circuses and the Pact Worlds goes two ways,” Shay said. “If they sell a prisoner to us, and then interfere with our profit from the sale, they will be in breach of contract, and will become liable for every rucet we lose because of their actions. The Pact Worlds aren’t rich. They cannot afford to cut transmissions.”
“Oh, my…” Charlie whispered. “Then… what does she have to say, do you suppose?”
Shay leaned back in her seat and locked her hands behind her head. “She killed five of the richest and most powerful men in not just the Pact Worlds, but all of Settled Space. I think it would be interesting to hear her tell everyone why.”
Charlie was watching her with narrowed eyes. “And the owner… what does he want?”
“Much the same thing. For his own reasons—controversy sells, and is immensely profitable; he does not like the Pact Worlds or the slavers or the fact that executions are an entertainment business; and—this goes no farther than you and me—I suspect he knows Suzee Delight personally, and was in love with her at one time. May be in love with her still.”
Charlie murmured, “Oh. I’m so happy to hear that. He loves her, so we’ll pretend to execute her. I’ll verify her faked death. I’ll be happy to do that. Though if you can hide me afterwards, I’ll be grateful.”
Inwardly, Shay smiled. “I wish we could do that,” she said. “But, no. We have to execute her. She has to die, and die for real. Her death cannot be faked. The people who buy tickets to see her execution live at the execution site must know that she is truly dead. And the people who ordered her execution must know she’s dead as absolute and inarguable fact.
“So she will die, and you will certify her death by the method required by Pact Covenant law, and she will be gone from this world in all but memory. What we have to do in order to make her death meaningful is make sure that her memory lingers.”
Charlie froze, staring for a long moment at Shay. Then she hung her head. “I’d hoped that we could save her somehow.”
She gave a good performance, Shay thought. Woman Whose Hope Has Been Crushed By An Ally. But Shay’s instincts told her Charlie’s hanging head and crushed expression was just a performance. “She’s an incredible human being,” Shay
said. “She deserves better.”
Charlie nodded, still not looking Shay in the eyes. “Killing her would be the real crime.”
Suzee Delight
I WAS AMAZED WHEN THE BIDDING hit a billion rucets two days ago—an enormous jump from the twenty-four million rucet previous bid.
At that point, the Pact Worlds announced that the new bid forced a rule change. All bidders from that point on had twelve Standard hours in which to present their next bids, and each would present them at the same time—2400 Standard.
All bids would show on the board, each marked with the name of the Death Circuses bidding. From the hundreds competing when the auction opened, only eighteen were still in the race once the bid hit one billion.
But I no longer cared. His bid was the billion-rucet bid. I didn’t know why he waited so long to bid, but knowing that he was coming for me, I could breathe again.
Only, the situation has changed again.
Two days later, I’m watching five remaining circuses. They’re Rage Of Angels, Bone King, Joy of Vengeance, Slaughteress, and Longview.
The next bid is due in two minutes. The current bid is over three billion. At this moment, I’m trying to imagine what the bid winners can do to me that will be worth an investment of more than three billion rucets.
I’m not naïve. I know the Death Circus that wins the bid will gain tremendous promotional opportunities from broadcasting my death.
My imagination is good, and well practiced in going into dark places. My life has taught me to foresee horror and understand how events can always be worse than the worst I could imagine. I’ve been trained to endure pain, and have endured worse than my training many times. I’ve been pushed past my breaking point more than once.
And I cannot imagine I will comport myself well when enduring more than three billion rucets worth of pain.
At this point, knowing that I have a friend aboard the Longview becomes increasingly less valuable. The price is too high to give me a clean escape. I’ll have to suffer publicly and greatly to repay my benefactor for saving my life.
So I wait for the next bid, hoping that this time it will be over—and that the Longview will win.
The board goes dark, and the new results start to appear, one each minute, from the lowest bid to the highest. The first bid lights up, only it is not a bid.
Slaughteress: DISQUALIFIED
I wonder what that means. What could someone offering to spend fortunes do to be disqualified from spending them? This is something I may never know. I have one full minute to consider it, and cannot even come up with a theory.
The next bid appears in the top slot, pushing Slaughteress and its mystery down.
Bone King: R4,250,000,000
That’s a high bid. Far higher than I’d anticipated. It might be the last bid. I might be going to the Bone King. I have no friends there.
But a minute later, Bone King is pushed down the board, and the next bidder lands.
Longview: R4,500,000,000
It is an extraordinary bid. I hope it is the winning bid. I find myself standing, my knees locked, unable to move. I breathe shallowly, clench my fists, stare at the board, will it to remain unchanged for the next minute.
But no.
Longview slides down one space, and the next bid appears.
Rage of Angels: R6,735,800,000
I shudder. And wait. The next minute rolls past, but Joy of Vengeance does not appear.
Only three bidders remain in this round, and Rage of Angels has made an all-out bid—nearly seven billion rucets. It is unprecedented. In the next round, I expect to see only one bidder remain.
The same one. The wrong one.
Kagen
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO ESCAPE Suzee Delight in the City of Furies. Feeds in every quick-eat and business lobby carried stories of the three Death Circus franchises that were still in the bidding to get her.
“If we had a space fleet, we could wait until they finished bidding, then attack the ship that won her, rescue her, and bring her back here,” the man who processed one of his many work applications said, looking past him to the streamed discussion on the screen at the front of the lobby.
“If we had our own privateers, we could attack the world where she’s being held and break her loose before anyone purchased her,” one of the business owners who interviewed him for work remarked. The woman then added, “It would be more ethical that way, because then the government that is doing this to her would not be rewarded with billions of rucets for the evil it’s doing.”
“She killed monsters,” the man next to him in line at the Happy Hunan quick-eat said. “Those administrators were playing fast and loose with the lives of Pact Worlds citizens. What she did wasn’t a crime.”
“It wasn’t?” Kagen said, but the Happy Hunan diner had already moved on.
In any other place he’d been, Kagen guessed that the people around him would have been speculating on the manner in which she’d die, and cherishing the details of the spectacle to which they would be treated when she did.
But every citizen of the Furies who talked about Suzee Delight finished with some version of, “I wish we could get her here. She’d fit right in.”
She’d killed five men, seemingly without provocation, and the citizens of the Furies apparently approved. Nothing he’d seen suggested this was a city of happy killers.
Nothing anyone did suggested anything other than that these were the hardest-working people he’d ever met—excluding himself.
He knew the Pact Worlds were corrupt.
He knew that citizens could only be classified as Order A if each parent and grand-parent back four generations had also been Order A; that Pact Worlds governments were hereditary, run by the great-great-great grandsons of men who had once been elected; that each franchised moon and space station could be purchased by only an Order A citizen, or by a rich outsider who first had to pay an enormous kickback to the members on the Pact Worlds Committee of Finance to own that franchise; and all legal businesses were owned by Order A citizens and rented by people of lower orders who had to bribe the Committee to keep their doors open.
He knew that bribery and cronyism were the true laws of the Pact Worlds, and had been for a very long time.
But when a woman dancing on a table-top suddenly murdered all five men who were sitting naked around that table sharing a three-hundred-year-old bottle of Tooki Scotch, people generally didn’t say, “Good for her. I wish she was my next-door neighbor.”
Granted, the City of Furies had been built by Pact Worlds refugees and was exclusively inhabited by Pact Worlds refugees. This was the reason that only a few trusted ships were permitted to orbit the hidden planet that contained the City of Furies, and that the city offered no way for people to leave or arrive except via shuttles from those occasional trusted ships.
Kagen realized that, although he’d only been a part of the city for a few days, if he could not become the captain of his own spaceship, he would be happy becoming a transport captain for the Furies.
He didn’t know, then, what he thought about Suzee Delight and her confessed murders.
But he did know what he thought about the City of Furies. He wasn’t even a citizen yet, but he knew he’d come home. These were his people. They’d been persecuted on their home worlds—every single one of them. They knew what it meant to be punished for their thoughts, to be beaten for their actions, to be silenced, to be forced to work for the exclusive benefit of others, to be turned into people they had no desire to be.
Here, they worked for their own benefit, every single one of them. They did what they loved, what they were passionate about, what mattered to them—and whether they did it full time as their paid work, or on their own time while they were developing their skills, they were alive with their goals and their desires.
Breathing the air in the City of Furies was like inhaling energy. The question one Fury asked another was never, “Where did you study?” or “Who is yo
ur family?” or “Where do you come from?” or “What is your rank?”
It was always, only, ever, “What do you do?”
And in the lower city, filled with new immigrants like him, the answer was, “I program transport routes, but at night I’m working on a new self-terraformer—you drop it onto a moon or lifeless planet and it spins out its first dome, starts breaking down existing elements to create free oxygen, nitrogen, and water, builds another bubble, connects the bubbles...”
Or it was, “I teach new immigrants basic Standard, but on my days off, I’m developing a way to upgrade pingball data transfers to work with old-style Spybees, so that even people living in tech-blocked systems will be able to receive live datastreams using primitive equipment.”
Or it was, “I’m doing construction on new immigrant units on the periphery, but at night I write songs and on my days off, I perform at this little club over in Westside. Here’s my card. You should come hear me.”
For Kagen, as he walked from business to business through the crowded tech district, his answer to that question became, “I’m still looking for work, but at night I’m using my room terminal to continue studying and testing toward my spaceship captain’s license.”
But when he walked past the Anja Mayre Holographic Recording and Datastreaming building, he thought about the people in the Furies, and about their comments about Suzee Delight, and an idea flashed in front of him.
It wasn’t anything he could claim experience with, but it was... well, he thought it was magnificent. On impulse, he walked into the studio, where a young woman in casual clothes and with her arms full of papers took his name asked him what he did.
When he told her, she said, “I’m Anja Mayre. This is my place. How may I help you?”
“It occurred to me that most of the people in the Furies don’t want to see Suzee Delight executed, and that many of the citizens here are famous across Settled Space. And that someone might be able to make a real difference if he were to sit down with the people who want her to live and record interviews of them telling the universe why they want her to live.”
