by Holly Lisle
Suzee had not been exaggerating in the least when she’d described the five men she eventually murdered as friends. From her perspective they had been, though it was clear from conversations recorded in their private suites in the Diamond Dome that they did not hold her in the same high regard.
Shay pushed through half a dozen of these looks into the secret life of Suzee Delight, going ever deeper into her past, showing her as a young woman, and then a teenager, and then a young girl—showing what had been done to her every step of the way.
Outside government buildings across the Pact Worlds, mobs were trying to stop the tragedy of the death of someone who had earned a better life.
Shay had the Longview’s shipcom feeding her constant updates—and events were happening far faster than she had anticipated.
For the first time, Suzee Delight was being made truly human to billions of viewers across Settled Space. No one could see her any longer as the pampered whore the Administrators had claimed her to be.
In the hours since the start of her execution, she had become the daughter, friend, confidante, or lover that people of both genders and all ages discovered they’d always yearned for.
And they were determined to make those in charge of the Pact Worlds pay.
Pact Worlds officials had wanted to make sure everyone everywhere knew the cost of killing a Pact Worlds government administrator.
It turned out it was nowhere near the price of publicly executing a whore.
Now, with riots in the streets, with every world that had previously threatened to boycott the Pact Worlds making good on that promise, along with hundreds of worlds that hadn’t even considered boycotting before, the Administrators who had not attended the execution of Suzee Delight were fleeing their worlds if they could, or hiding if they could not find the means to escape.
And the twelve Administrators who remained in the celebrity box directly in front of the execution frame cowered, silent.
Shay had feared Suzee would have to suffer through the whole five days and the whole hundred knives for the mood of the majority of the inhabitants of Settled Space to reach this point.
But the rage of a few had become the rage of all of free Settled Space.
The time had come to show the beginning of the story in order to bring about its end.
Shay selected the recording she’d deemed the most important in Suzee’s history, and placed it in the queue, so it would show immediately before the next knife. She could not tell the Deathmasters how to do their jobs.
She could only present them with reasons to do it differently than they had planned.
Transcript (excerpted, nineteen hours from execution start): Danyal Travers Reports on the Execution of Suzee Delight
Danyal Travers: Not a single person in the stands cheers as the Deathmasters convene. An ugly mood has taken the crowd as we wait for the next knife. A silent mob has now surrounded the private box occupied by the Administrators and their friends. They have not yet done anything more than whisper, “Pardon her, pardon her,” in the intervals between each recording of her life.
So far, the Administrators have made no move to take their suggestions—which to this reporter seems an error in judgement.
We have a short time to go before Suzee takes the next knife, and we are now being shown her classification interview, recorded when she was nine years old. We see a little girl, dark-eyed, pretty, and cheerful, who has cut her hair very short and is wearing the uniform of a boy. She looks happy as she walks into the classification chambers.
From Recording: Educational Selector Veral Timothy:
You are Order E, ungraded, age nine, Bellowary-Mews-K-42G85N. Is that correct? Your ident says you’re female, nicknamed Tikka. Why are you dressed in a boy’s uniform?
From Recording: Suzee Delight, age 9:
The olders in the Mews say that girls always stay here, but boys are sometimes classified for space stations and other places far away. I want to do science. In Bailey’s Irish Space Station, GenDaring scientists make new kinds of people, and I want to do that. So I want to be a boy.
From Recording: Educational Selector:
We don’t change people’s genders so they can chase after nonsense. You were born to serve your world, and you will be classified where you are most needed. Science—no. We don’t need scientists here, and science is the work of men, anyway. But we always have work for pretty girls. You can sing?
From Recording: Suzee, age 9:
I am second in my group in singing and dancing, and fifth in drawing and painting. I am learning the guitar, though it hurts my fingers. But I am first in math and science. Those are much more fun than dancing or painting.
From Recording: Educational Selector:
No one is going to waste an Order E girl on science. You have good thick hair, and when it grows back out, you’ll be popular enough. You have bright eyes and a pretty mouth. You’ll learn how to please your betters, and if you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll like it. I’m placing you in Introductory Arts and Pleasures, and starting you as a consort-trainee.
From Recording: Suzee, age 9:
What is that?
From Recording: Educational Selector:
It’s the only kind of work your sort should do. (Speaking to someone offscreen) See that she goes to House Tarleymin. In Stonehill Corners. Right. (Speaking to Suzee again) I’m naming you Tawny Girl. I’ll drop in on you from time to time to make sure you’re learning your work.
From Recording: Suzee, age 9:
You’ll come visit me? You’ll be my friend?
From Recording: Educational Selector:
(Laughing) Yes, pretty child. I’ll be your friend.
Danyal Travers:
(Under breath, but still clear) Someone needs to kill that bastard. Wasn’t anyone ever there to look out for her?
Crowd in the stands:
(Blocking out all other sounds) Pardon Suzee! Pardon Suzee! Pardon Suzee!
Danyal Travers:
Wait! Something is happening near the frame where Suzee Delight is bound.
The Deathmasters are all going to their knives. I’ve never seen this before. Each of them is taking up a knife. There is going to be no chance for a pardon. They’re getting ready to finish this!
Shay, Owner’s Representative for the Death Circus ship Longview, over the coliseum’s sound system from inside the Longview shuttle:
The following section comes from the execution clause in the contract between the administrators of the Pact Worlds and the owner of the Longview.
“Against the direct request of Mado Werix Keyr, owner of the Longview, the representatives negotiating in the interests of the Pact Worlds as regards the execution of Bellowary-Mews-K-42G85N, known as Suzee Delight, do hereby declare that no circumstances can exist in which a pardon can be granted for the aforementioned criminal, by anyone, anywhere, and that the condition of her death by execution must be met publicly and her death witnessed by a certified representative of the Pact Worlds. Any reversal of the death sentence by pardon, or any requested delay, if obeyed, will render forfeit the lives of Longview owner Mado Werix Keyr, every crew member of the Longview Death Circus employed at the time sentence was to be carried out, and any subcontractors hired by the Longview to assist in carrying out this sentence. This by order of the administrators, sub-administrators, and negotiators for the Pact Worlds Alliance.
“Three hundred seventy-two Pact Worlds representatives’ Gen-ID signatures follow this clause, and copies of the complete clause—along with the contact and location information for each of its signatories—are now being made public through this locked datastream.”
Danyal Travers:
(Whispering) There can be no pardon.
The Deathmasters have their knives in hand, and are approaching Suzee Delight. They’ve stopped. They’re pulling off their masks. Deathmasters never take off their masks, but each man present has removed his—
They’re crying
? Each man is kneeling to kiss her feet. Each is begging her forgiveness for what they must do.
They are confirming that they cannot save her. There can be no pardon. They must kill her.
The last one is asking if she has any final words...
She... does.
CHAPTER 10
Suzee Delight
I’M DONE. ALL HOPE IS GONE.
But Charlie is standing there, her fists knotted, her face the color of bone.
The unmasked Deathmaster holds his knife to one side, and through tears asks me if I have last words.
I do. They are only for Charlie.
I look into her eyes. “I lived...” I tell her. “I loved. And for every act I chose that I committed...”
Now I am afraid.
Now I have to fight for breath, and all the air has gone.
“...I have no regrets. I love you.”
The head Deathmaster looks at me, questioning, and I nod. I am finished. I have nothing else to say.
They surround me and draw their knives.
Transcript (excerpted, nineteen hours from execution start): Danyal Travers Reports on the Execution of Suzee Delight
Danyal Travers:
They’re…oh, god, they’re killing her. She’s... oh, god. Oh, please, no. There has to be some way—
I was wrong. I was wrong to say I would cheer her death. I was wrong to say she had betrayed her city, her state, and her world.
We were wrong, all of us who thought Suzee Delight deserved to die. She deserves to live. She deserves to be spared, healed, loved…
There’s been a signal, the Deathmasters have pulled back, they’re calling for the Pact Covenant Observer—Charlie—the one Suzee spoke to at the end.
(Audible whisper) Oh, god, I’m so sorry.
The Pact Covenant Observer faints as it looks like the execution has been… has been successful…
Three Deathmasters, still unmasked, kneel beside the Pact Covenant Observer and help her to her feet. They are bloody, they are crying.
The Pact Covenant Observer is heading toward the frame where the body of Suzee Delight will remain bound until her death is certain. The Pact Covenant Observer—Charlie, her name is Charlie—wobbles a bit, then steadies.
The crew from the Longview shuttle are walking toward the frame now, carrying a plain wood box, required so that there is no chance Suzee Delight can be revived by Medix.
The Observer runs her scanner over the body of Suzee Delight. The scanner readout is up on the screens…
There is a flicker. No. It’s gone.
It’s gone.
It’s gone.
Suzee Delight is dead.
The mob and the Pact Worlds Administrators’ own guards turn and attack the Pact Worlds leaders—
Charlie
SUZEE DELIGHT WAS DEAD.
Charlie did her job, certified the death, saw to the placement of Suzee’s bloody, lifeless body into the plain wooden box in which she would be transported to the disposal site.
The wood box was the Pact Worlds’ guarantee that Suzee could not be revived by Medix technology.
All hope was dead.
Charlie’s world and dreams died with it.
The mob behind her was making sure that the Administrators and their friends would not go home.
The innocent would live. Charlie had not murdered anyone.
She held that thought close.
She was not a monster.
She had not chosen to be a monster.
She stood beneath the hot field lights under a starless sky, exhausted and broken. She stared at that wood box, and at Suzee lying face-up in it, her body bloodied and punctured by the knives of her weeping killers.
Charlie had lived through the ordeal of watching the only human being she had ever loved die horribly, in pain, a spectacle for all of Settled Space.
She became vaguely aware of one of the Deathmasters standing beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that she’s dead, and I’m sorry that I was part of her death.”
“You did your job,” she said dully. “I did my job. We all did our jobs. It wasn’t our fault—but she’s still dead.”
He had pulled the knives from her body, had shoved them beneath the belt of his long black robe.
She turned her head to look at him, to offer him the same forgiveness Suzee had given her. But all she could do was look at those knives.
She thought of the feel of Suzee’s still-warm skin as she’d helped lower her into the box, and whispered to Suzee, “The only part of my life I don’t regret is you...”
...And pulled one of the knives out of the Deathmaster’s belt, turned it on herself, and ran herself through.
The pain devoured her. She screamed until nothingness claimed her.
CHAPTER 11
Kagen
HE’D RESIGNED HIS JOB TWO DAYS earlier, right after Suzee Delight’s execution ended, even though Anja had not officially accepted his resignation. He hadn’t gone back in to work, though, so he was pretty sure she now understood he’d meant it.
He had a week left on his rent on the room he’d never had time to live in, but he was once again unemployed, and since he wasn’t going to look for another job, there was no reason to pretend he was going to make rent, or to tie up the apartment Anja might need.
He would go back to the indigent center, and he would let them ship him wherever they wanted to ship him.
He’d started out using Suzee Delight as an excuse to get the stories of the lives of people like him in front of the rest of Settled Space, but by the end he was fighting for Suzee Delight with every bit of imagination and strength he had in him. He’d given his best, had run himself on nothing but air and water the last few days, had in the end brought most of the rest of space with him over to her side—he and everyone in the Furies who had made a stand for her.
He had come to believe in Suzee Delight herself, in her innocence, in the possibility of her pardon. He had watched the execution, and had seen that he’d been right to believe.
Suzee Delight had deserved to live.
And she had still died.
Innocence meant nothing. Justice meant nothing.
He was checking drawers to make sure he hadn’t left something in one of them when someone knocked on his door.
Might be Anja, he thought, coming to show someone through the place.
He opened it.
It wasn’t Anja.
It was Shay.
“You’re an idiot,” Shay said.
For an instant, he lost the power of speech. When he got it back, he managed to fake a calm he didn’t feel. “Nice to see you, too. What are you doing here? And why the hell did you dump me here?”
Shay raised an eyebrow. “I’m here because I’m a citizen of the Furies, and the city called a critical vote.”
Then she growled, “And dump you? In the City of Furies? Do you know how much people are offering to pay to come here? Dump you here? I put you where you fit, you moron—and you fit perfectly. You did something I don’t think anyone else could have done. You saw what it was about the City of Furies that made the people here special, and then you took their stories, and put them in front of the blind, complacent, oblivious masses of Settled Space and you showed those complacent drones that every single one of their lives mattered.
“You showed them that they had the right to live their own lives, no matter who they were and no matter where they were, and you gave them someone they never knew was like them. You made Suzee Delight a real person to most of Settled Space, and you did it by introducing Settled Space to the other real people who had lived her same pain.”
She pushed past his door, and moved closer, staring into his eyes. “You made them care—and you woke them up to see that the people they needed to care about and the people they needed to fight for were not strangers someplace far away.
“You made them see that they are Suzee Delight too.
“They don’t
get to choose their own lives, but they’d never noticed before. They don’t get to be the people they want to be, but everything in their lives was designed to hide that truth from them. Their governments and religions and schools and families and even their friends tell them everything they can’t do, and make them pay for the privilege of living out their lives in somebody else’s chains—and you’re the one who made them see that.”
Shay paused. Shook her head.
“And now they are finally fighting back—and doing it in numbers large enough that their religions can’t slaughter them and their governments can’t imprison them and schools can’t detain them and their families can’t guilt them.”
Shay took a deep breath and took a step back from him. “This was your vision, Kagen. This was your project. It worked, and people are fighting for their own lives and their own freedom to live those lives as they choose...and now you’re going to quit? When the citizens of the City of Furies voted you early citizenship with honors because of your magnificent campaign—your magnificent vision of how to give the people here their voice in what happened to Suzee Delight? Your magnificent appeal to all of Settled Space to wake up and live?
