FSF, July-August 2010

by Spilogale Authors

  "Most were fools, not monsters."

  "The fool kills just as dead as the monster."

  "True, but some fools are harmless. The audit has a perfect record, it's always death or mines for tippers, yet some deserve service, branding, or even pardoning."

  "Many audits are adjourned. Yours was."

  "And I'm eighty. I will probably die in the borderline backlog."

  "Would you abolish the World Audit?"

  "No. The Audit is all we have, but it must be seen to be fair, otherwise the auditors will look like a pack of Nazis."

  "The auditors think of themselves like the judges in the Nuremberg trials."

  "Perhaps, but to them, everyone born before 2000 is an eco-Nazi, guilty of climate crimes."

  Suddenly I was alone. I felt no chill on the night air, and when I put my hand up, I could see stars through it. I would have been convinced that I was dead, yet I knew I would awake alive.

  * * * *

  To everyone's surprise, I was called back to the audit the following morning. The Retributor said that I had commuted on a motorcycle when I could have used public transport. I quoted well-memorized figures proving that my motorcycle had a smaller carbon footprint per passenger mile than the public transport then available. Again my audit was adjourned.

  I was put on cart duty after the morning audits. Thirty of us were harnessed to a stripped-out Sports Utility Vehicle and made to draw it out to the north greenhouse fields. Death, first class, was performed here. Sector five was where we were going, but we had to pass through other sectors first. In sector two they were performing executions.

  Our team moved slowly. Ahead of us I saw a strong, fit-looking man of about fifty being forced to the ground by the wardens. With the skill of much practice they spread-eagled him on his back and chained him to a wooden frame in the shape of an X. All the while he was shouting about his rights, demanding a retrial, telling the wardens he had right of appeal, and calling for a proper lawyer.

  "Your turn will come. You'll pay for this!” he screamed. “This is a concentration camp."

  "You helped run the concentration camp called the global economy,” replied a warden. “You kept Mother Earth in there until she was a living skeleton."

  They took two large glass panels and clamped them over him in a tent shape. We were level with them as they fitted a pair of glass triangles over the ends.

  A greenhouse. For causing the greenhouse effect, death by greenhouse. It was a hideous way to die, roasted slowly in a glass oven. The unlucky ones lasted to evening, got the respite of night, then had to face a second day. As we trudged on, straining at our harnesses, we passed the glass tents that had already been set up. There were muffled screams and groans from these, but most were already weakening.

  The next sector was at stage two of the greenhouse cycle. Here teams of borderlines were slicing open the skin of the recently executed, so that the sun could evaporate their bodily fluids. We moved on through the sector where bodies were drying out within their little glass tents. In sector five the greenhouses were being dismantled, and bodies stacked in neat piles. We stopped. Service borderlines loaded the desiccated dead into our SUV. The bodies were quite stiff, as if carved out of wood.

  As we returned with our load, people began talking at last.

  "Remember the old days?” said the man beside me.

  "I've only been here two days."

  "Yeah? In that case, welcome to hell. I been here since the start. I got service, second class."

  "I didn't think tippers ever got off, except to be put in the backlog as a borderline."

  "I'm a victim."

  "Ah."

  "Fifteen years to go."

  "Fifteen years of this?” I said, shaking my head.

  "It's job security. I'll be fifty when I'm released. Then I'm back to work. “

  "Back to work. What was your work?"

  "Landscape gardening."

  "And for that you got service, second class?"

  "I drove a big off-roader. I got it free, so it seemed like a good deal back in twenty-nineteen."

  "That was after the tipping year. Bad time to be seen in an off-roader."

  "Yeah, but I was nineteen and stupid. The audit found that all my work was urban, so I should have driven a fuel-efficient utility."

  "You were lucky. Not many people who drove off-roaders get less than death."

  "I never drove mine recreationally, that was the trick. I love growing things, so gardening was all I ever did. Big demand for people who grow things now, so I got a future."

  We trudged along in silence for a while. He had his sentence; mine was not decided. Because I was guilty until proved worthy of pardoning, I had to do service.

  "Do you watch those nostalgia shows?” I asked presently.

  "I just attend. All that toxic fast living, never liked it. I only watched renovation and gardening shows, and the environment docos. That counted when the audit examined me."

  "I saw a nostalgia show last night. It was bizarre."

  "You want a word of advice?"

  "I'm listening."

  "Go along, but try to look bored. You see, if you don't go, the borderlines will kill you for not being one of them. On the other hand, the wardens watch you too. If you seem to be enjoying the shows, they'll report that to the Retributor. That gets you a verdict of guilty-and-unrepentant. You know what that means?"

  "Death, first class?"

  "Wrong. Mines, first class. That's way worse than dying."

  * * * *

  Every morning the audit would call me up for the first hearing of the day, and I would spend ten minutes refuting a new charge. Normally the accused were made to bear the full force of the sun whose power they had enhanced so very much, but because I had established provisional doubt, I was now permitted to wear a broad wicker hat. This was also the source of much rumor among the borderlines and unaudited tippers.

  The second class executions were at noon and just before sunset. Until then there was nothing to do but listen to the Retributor accuse people of taking Sunday afternoon drives, having central heating, using leaf blowers instead of brooms, and flying to Europe for annual vacations. All brought Death. The really severe sentences were for the climate-change deniers. They got mines, first class.

  "You beat the Retributor again."

  I knew that I was asleep, I was always asleep when Death appeared.

  "You must love this place. Do you claim all the souls of the condemned in person?"

  "They are already mine."

  "Then why are you here?"

  "Because you call me, and you are important."

  "Me? Important? My life's work was predicting climatic catastrophe—you know, most of China, Australia, and Africa turned into searing deserts, U.S.A. and Europe snap-frozen because the Gulf Stream is screwed, accelerated polar melting, sea level up two feet, and force seven hurricanes. In case you hadn't noticed, that's all happened, so I'm out of a job."

  "You are important because you threaten the auditors, Jason Hall. The currency of the century is position and power. You threaten their power."

  "Me? Threaten the auditors? Get a life."

  "I get a great many lives. Do you know how very rich men used to become rich?"

  "By third-level greed and second-level squandering."

  "Not so. They just became good at gathering money. You don't have to earn money to accumulate it. Some means were legal, but few were ethical."

  "So? Thanks to lateralism, wealth and growth are unfashionable."

  "The Retributor is good at accumulating convictions, and he has a perfect record getting death or mine sentences. He is the new type of rich man, and the rich like to hold on to their riches."

  * * * *

  The audit of Peggy-Anne was over very quickly. Records showing seven hundred thousand dollars in cosmetic surgery and implants were presented. Although in her late nineties she looked less than forty, but when she moved she was slightly sti
ff. She was convicted of squander and display, and received a double death sentence, second class. Killing old people had once seemed abhorrent, but now it was considered just. The Earth had gone to the pack, and the victim generations wanted revenge on the squander generations for turning the pack loose.

  Peggy-Anne got the tipping-point gallows. As the pile of coal diminished and the plank began to teeter she started to cry. None of the wardens or auditors seemed moved. Moments before the end she began to pray. Hers were not formal prayers, just pleas to her god to end it all and have mercy on her. When the plank finally tipped it was profound relief for me.

  "She was a lot of fun,” said Chaz as we walked back.

  "Nine decades of being a party girl,” I observed. “It must have been like being immortal."

  Chaz had shared Peggy-Anne's bedding the night before. I tried to tell myself that in a real sense she had stopped living at some time during that night, in the arms of a man she had picked up during the show. The terrified, whimpering shell that had shuffled out onto the plank had not been Peggy-Anne.

  * * * *

  There were car races at the camp that evening. Many wheelchairs had accumulated there, now superfluous to the needs of their owners. Names of famous models of cars were written on the sides, along with brand names of long-defunct sponsors. Cardboard clappers were attached to make engine noises against the spokes, and with one man to drive and another to push, they were a faint but distinct echo of the squander decades.

  The entire company of tippers and borderlines watched, most tippers cheering and clapping, as the fifteen wheelchairs were driven around an improvised track. There were pit stops for pusher changes, crashes, and even aged cheer squads. A few of us had the sense not to cheer. The wardens looked on, scanning the audience for signs of enthusiasm among borderlines. The wheelchair pack rattled past, raising dust and cheered mightily by the crowd, then a pusher collapsed and fell dead in the dust. There were five such deaths from cardiac arrest during that race. Most participants were probably hoping for death on the raceway, because they were tippers facing serious charges. Dying of a heart attack was vastly preferable to death in the greenhouses or life in the mines.

  The race ended with the winner and place getters being presented with double rations of water in bottles that had held champagne decades earlier. This they splashed on each other and the onlookers in a defiant show of squandering, then there was a concert of Jan and Dean driving and surfing songs by various singers and a humming band. It was all pale and tenuous ghosts of cultures past, rude but futile gestures against the victim generations. I concluded that most of these people were actually beyond hope, help, or reason. They were not ashamed of what they had done, and they probably thought it very unreasonable of the Earth for running short of resources and warming so alarmingly fast.

  * * * *

  By the end of the second week of my audit I had broken all records for survival. The Retributor had exhausted any scope for finding serious climate crimes in my past, so he was pursuing me for minor neglect.

  "Now explain why you did not do more,” he said as the sun appeared on the eastern horizon for the fifteenth time.

  All he could ask for now was branding, second class. I was holding out for pardoning.

  "More relative to what?” I asked.

  "More as in driving spikes into logs to be woodchipped, sabotaging oil rigs, smashing car windscreens, or spraying oil on auto race tracks?"

  "I believed that such extreme actions alienated the public of the time from the message of climate change. Instead I lived the sort of environmentally correct life that everyone could have managed. I turned off my television, DVD, microwave, stereo, and computer at the wall sockets when I was not using them, installed energy-efficient light globes, used solar cells and rechargeable batteries where I could, had two-minute showers, and washed my clothes in shower water. If everyone had lived like me, resource use would have dropped by sixty percent."

  "That would not have saved the Earth."

  "Not by itself, but it would have postponed the tipping year."

  "You should have publicized what you were doing."

  "I did! Whenever I spoke in conferences or to the media about climate change, I always talked about how I was moderating my personal behavior."

  My trial was adjourned for the fifteenth time. The Retributor would check on everything I had said. He would send his research assistants to their solar-powered web portals to twitter, tweet, gryp, snatch, surf, scan, riffle, and drill for old power bills, conference proceedings, and even photographs taken in my apartment. I knew what they would find, so I was not worried.

  * * * *

  Those who died while awaiting audit were declared guilty post mortem. There were many such deaths, mostly from exposure. We slept in the open, with blankets made from the discarded clothing of the dead. There was never a shortage of blankets. Aside from the big shows and races, we had to amuse ourselves without gadgets, so singing, storytelling, gossip, and dancing were very popular. By a couple of hours after sunset the activities were reduced to sex, for those who could manage it. The wardens made no attempt to stop any behavior that did not involve trying to escape.

  "Way I see it, the woodlands near the coast been gettin’ back to normal,” said Chaz as we lay looking up at the stars on the moonless fifteenth night.

  "They were national parks before the tipping year,” I replied blandly, ever wary of saying anything that might incriminate me.

  "Full of game, as I hear."

  "Probably due to the ban on hunting."

  "You know, I saw this coming."

  "So did I. I wrote a lot of articles about it."

  "No, I mean I prepared. I buried some guns and three thousand rounds in the woods, all wrapped in grease and plastic. Old M16, a couple of Glock pistols, and a great hunting rifle. Figure we could live pretty well in the woods."

  "That sort of talk would earn you death first class for greed and squandering."

  "So you're not in?"

  "I've heard nothing."

  "But we'd be free."

  "They would hunt us down in a day. Probably less."

  "Hey, I'm a bushman. They'd never find us."

  "There's no bush! We're in the desert, a thousand miles from the coast. Besides, the ranger wardens have rifles, image enhancers, acoustic scopes, geopositioning, and satellite feed. Oh, and tracker dogs."

  "Those greenie ferals don't cut it."

  "Feral animals are great hunters, and they have a nasty bite. Victims still launch satellites and build weaponry gadgets, remember? They just do it with renewable tech."

  "I'm serious, and I'm armed. I got a dozen twenty-two rounds, kept ‘em up my arse during inspections. With all the metal scrap around here it was a no-brainer to rig up a zip gun and silencer."

  "I stay here."

  "Listen, this isn't a sus proposition. I got a girl coming with me, that warden with the brand."

  "No."

  "Why not?'

  "Because I want to beat the Retributor."

  "What planet are you on? Nobody's ever beaten him."

  "Nobody's escaped from here, either. You fight your way, and I'll fight in mine."

  He gave up on me around then. I knew he would be gone before dawn.

  * * * *

  I awoke to the silky silence of Death's presence, and as I sat up I saw the dark figure before me. I stood up uneasily, for I could never get used to the wardens not being able to see me.

  "I thought you would have been away, claiming Chaz,” I said as we began to walk between the rows of sleeping bodies.

  "I already have him."

  That did not surprise me.

  "Bushmen are so condescending about their enemies,” I said. “They forget that victims also know bushcraft. Where did he try to get out?"

  "A greenhouse desiccation field."

  "Makes sense. Nobody alive, so no wardens. Was he shot?"

  "It was the woman he chose to escape
with. She played along with him, then led him into a trap."

  "Olivia?” I gasped, remembering how friendly she had seemed.

  "Yes. She has been commended for preventing an escape without wasting a bullet. Do you really want to beat the Retributor?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "It will save lives."

  "Explain."

  "In the last century, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews was indiscriminate. The genocide of the Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda was indiscriminate too. Go back to the seventeen-nineties, and the French Terror guillotined aristocrats just for being what they were. The World Audit claims to be different. Everyone born before the tipping year is guilty, but everyone gets an audit. The problem is that the Retributors want tippers to get death second class even for buying their kid a battery-powered Buzz Lightyear toy. That looks ridiculous, so the case is adjourned and the tippers become borderlines."

  "There are millions of borderlines."

  "Yes, all of them doing indefinite service. If there were a precedent, many could be pardoned, branded, or at least sentenced to a fixed period of service. I want to be that precedent. My audit has already set precedents for service and branding sentences. Some tippers of good will can be saved, and the Earth needs all the good will it can get."

  "You are a hard act to follow, Jason Hall."

  "Thank you."

  When Death was with me there were no sounds but our voices. The farts and bodily reeks of those around me vanished, fleas and lice no longer bit and itched, and my muscles did not ache with fatigue. There was only the desert night, cloudless, windless, and brilliant with stars. In a way I enjoyed his visits, because I could step out of myself. Suddenly I was thirty years in the past, servicing a remote observing station in the desert, enjoying the serenity of the night.

  My companion's face was visible, even though there was nothing to illuminate it. One might have said that it was in daylight, while everything else was smothered in night. Until now it had been indistinct and unfocused, but suddenly it seemed to be resolving into clear lines. I noticed something very familiar about his features.

  "You look like me,” I remarked.

  "Thank you."

  It was true. Months ago his face had just been an oval that floated above a greater blackness. He now defined himself to wear my robes and dust cloak. His manner of speech and tone of voice were even becoming echoes of mine. The transformation should have made him more familiar and agreeable, yet I found it disturbing.