Born from Fire: Tales from The Longview - Episode 1 Page 2

  This criminal finds the process of its death at the hands of the Evils increasingly less alarming. It listens to them talk together, easily, in terms it does not understand. As they talk, they laugh, and do not look over their shoulders to see if they have been overheard.

  It thinks if it must die today, it would rather die at the hands of these.

  They are Apart. Not We. They do not carry the mandatory posture of Submission to Duty in their backs and shoulders. They do not have the cautious speech or wary eyes of We Report Or Are Reported. They act in a fashion this criminal can barely comprehend—they carry themselves as this criminal did when it was Apart secretly with We-42K, except without the constant fear.

  Fear justified, in fact, for We-42K finally reminded itself of the requirements of Submission to Duty and We Report Or Are Reported, and brought this criminal’s time with it to an end. It rejoined the We in death by choice.

  This criminal cannot choose death.

  Duty is life.

  Life is dying.

  Dying is duty.

  That is part of the Truth of We. It is the Truth this criminal failed in its every thought, in its every dream, in its every waking moment.

  This criminal dared to imagine some other better truth might appear. That was its first and worst crime.

  On this, the day of its death, this criminal thinks somewhere else must exist, where people stand with shoulders and backs straight, with eyes forward, where they laugh aloud and don’t look around to see who might have heard. This criminal thinks in the place that gave these Evils birth, a different truth already lives.

  When all are washed, this criminal is led to the front of the tent with the other criminals. It can read the sign painted above the flap:

  Welcome to the Death Circus.

  Enter and be judged.

  This criminal and all with it have already been judged and sentenced. All that remains, it thinks, is the form its death will take.

  “We who are about to die enter the Death Circus,” this criminal murmurs, and realize it has committed Blasphemy by naming itself We.

  That is another crime for which it will never be charged or sentenced. This criminal can only die once.

  It laughs and steps through the tent flaps.

  The tent is not filled with torture devices, with spears or knives, with huge Evils crouched over criminals, ripping out the insides of their still-living victims with their filed teeth. The stories are lies, then. The tent contains a mesh-sided walkway with one-way gates that will fit Each Apart singly. When Each steps forward, a handless touch at the back pushes all forward. The gates swing open. The gates snap closed. This criminal stands always alone, as fits the nature of its crime.

  But this criminal sees that not Each Apart bears scars. The criminals far in the front of the line are all healthy and well-fed and dry. And clothed in a blue version of the clothes worn by the We. Those in front of this criminal, as well as all those behind it, are gaunt and beaten and dripping from being cleaned, and they are dressed in the clothes of the Evils. Otherwise they would have been naked.

  Each Apart moves through the walkway—a step, a pause, a step, a pause—and then this criminal stands before the first of the Evils. The Evil presses something white and smooth against the arm of this criminal and holds it in place for an instant.

  “No diseases,” the Evil says, and marks something on a white, rectangular sheet. The texture of the sheet is exquisitely smooth, its color is unblemished. This criminal recognizes the markings on the sheet as words, though they are not words from the Truth of We. The evil holds the sheet out and this criminal takes the sheet and holds it carefully, and the line moves again.

  “Paper,” the one at the next station demands. This criminal has seen all criminals before it pass the white sheet through the small opening in the mesh. It passes its sheet through.

  “Hand through the opening, hold this ball.”

  The ball is smooth and gray, strangely cold, slightly damp. Holding it makes pulling this criminal’s flesh back through the opening impossible.

  This criminal finds holding the ball and having its hand trapped in the grate uncomfortable and frightening.

  “You are accused of the crime of Willfulness, with the specific charges of being alone; of sharing aloneness with another; of making an unlicensed infant; and of failure to volunteer to rejoin the We. Are you guilty?”

  This criminal glares at the Evil, and says, “Yes.” The ball in its hand glows the yellow-gold of summer sunlight.

  The Evil looks from the ball in this criminal’s hand to its face, and smiles. “Good for you. Is the other who shared your crimes here?”

  This criminal does not understand the smile or the words that accompany them. This criminal has heard mockery before—if the Evil mocked, the Evil did it wrong. This criminal says, “The unlicensed born died. We-42K volunteered to rejoin the We in Return to Citizenship.”

  The smile leaves the face of the Evil, and the Evil shakes its head. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

  “Why? This criminal is guilty. We-42K did what the We say is right.”

  “Do you think the We is right?”

  “This criminal does not know ‘you.’ This criminal does not believe the Truth of We. But that is because this criminal is criminal. It is broken and evil. It thinks Apart, it thinks Willful, it denied We in word and deed. When it was We...”

  This criminal begins to cry, then forces itself to stop.

  “When it was We, it called itself We-39R, and even then, it knew it was lying.”

  The Evil stands up and stares into this criminal’s eyes. The Evil’s skin sheens with sweat, and its expression is fierce. “I was once We. Things change.”

  It marks the criminal’s paper and adds a second sheet, hands both through the grate, and sends this criminal to the next station.

  This criminal, Apart and Alone, walks forward—step, gate, step, gate—and sometimes the line pauses, and this criminal turns to look back, and sees the Evil that was once We talking to another criminal.

  I was once We. Things change.

  This criminal cannot get those words out of its mind. There is We, or there is death.

  Things change.

  The Evil was We, but it lives.

  The final gate, and the final Evil, stand at last before this criminal.

  The final Evil takes the papers, reads through them, and says, “Your sentence of death is complete. Go to Door B. Stand on the identity plate. The door will open for you. Walk forward, go through the door at the back, step through the next door, turn to your right, walk through the paddock, and stand in the corral with the others who have been sentenced.

  “You have been purchased by the Death Circus.”

  Kagen

  THE LONGVIEW GROUND TEAM had already packed the Death Circus tent, and all the team members were waiting beside the landing pad for the last two shuttles. The final shuttle would pack the tent back to the hold.

  Before it returned, the shuttle Kagen and Burke waited for would remove the last of the Condemned.

  The Condemned stood in the corral. Each of them waited in a separate gated control cell within the corral—the last twenty-two men of a haul of over two hundred. Darkness had come, and the We who had shouted curses through the fencing at the Condemned and the Evil, as well as the guards and Speakers for We who had kept them shouting, were gone. In worlds lit only by fire, darkness brought monsters, but chased away mobs.

  The quiet around the landing pad was a pleasant reprieve from the grim work of the day, and Kagen was enjoying the silence.

  But Burke, who was new, wanted to talk. “No women. Why do we have no women Condemned?”

  Kagen said, “PHTF settlements almost never sell off women. Any place where people live beneath the Truth of We, young women go to the breeding factories as soon as they’re fertile. Once they lose their fertility, women can claim guilt for taking pleasure in their work in the breeding factory, and volunteer to throw th
emselves into the fires of Return to Citizenship, or if they swear they took no pleasure, they can volunteer for the Room of Release.”

  “Which is...?”

  Kagen shuddered. He closed his eyes and was back where he was born, on the last day of his freedom, where he and five other older boys—he guessed he’d been about fifteen at the time—were tasked with stocking the Room of Release.

  The first woman who came through was one he recognized, though she did not appear to remember him. She had been kind to him when he was small. Had sought him out, had smiled at him. She had not seemed terribly old when he was young, but a decade had aged her terribly. Her belly and breasts sagged, her face was etched with pain, and her body was scarred from repeated beatings. She looked at the boys who led her into the room and connected the chain on the floor to the collar around her neck and locked it as they had been instructed to do. She looked at them, but she didn’t seem to see them.

  The boys went to stand in the hall beside the door, and a line of twenty men filed into the room.

  Kagen told Burke, “They’re chained to the floor, alone, and packs of men who are not permitted to touch women at any other time are sent in together to Release themselves. The men are told they are experiencing the Filth of Apart, and that they must all stay together and do whatever they have to do together, so the Filth of Apart will not destroy them. What they do together is horrible.”

  Burke frowned. “That’s not right.”

  “No. It isn’t. When the first woman in the Room of Release dies, or when she starts screaming that she wants to Return to Citizenship, Speakers for We drag her out and throw her into the fires—alive, dying, or dead—and a group of boys not old enough to be required to Release chain a new volunteer in her place.”

  The morning after he’d finished his first day working in the Room of Release, he decided he would never do that again. During the recitation of the Truth of We, he’d looked over at the pretty girl who always stood next to him, at whom he had never directly looked before, because looking at girls and women was something the Apart did. She was a tall, slender girl with pale skin and dark, curling hair. He leaned over and pressed his mouth to her mouth, which one of the men in the Room of Release had done when he saw one of the volunteers. And he called her “Love,” as that man had done before the Speakers dragged him away.

  And one of the Speakers for We saw him do it, and two guards dragged him to the House of Fairness right then.

  The advantage of living on a Pact World was that the Speaker didn’t kill him right there.

  His sentence, handed down minutes after that single kiss, however, and directly from the Speaker for We who’d heard him say it, had exiled Kagen to the Needle on his world to serve as a cargo slave. He was to live alone in the Needle, transporting cargo from spaceships docking at the Needle to the surface. He was to do this until he died.

  If the Needle worked the way the Speakers of We believed, he would have been up there with only the small supply of water and food with which they’d exiled him.

  His options, when he ran out of water and food, were to volunteer to die of thirst or starvation, or to volunteer to throw himself out the airlock.

  It was only because the Needles did not work the way Speakers for We believed that Kagen breathed as a free man.

  Burke said, “Rooms of Release. That’s rough. There are rooms a lot like that on the Pact pleasure worlds. I ended up in one when I ran up a gambling debt I couldn’t pay on Cheegoth. I was sentenced to work there until I had paid off my debt plus the interest—and the way it was set up, I would have never made enough money to pay off the interest. If I hadn’t pissed off one of the establishment’s clients and gotten myself dumped into the Indigent Lockup for the next passing ship to haul off, I would have been in there until I died or some client killed me. Cheegoth doesn’t have any fairness, or any Truth of We to protect people.”

  Kagen looked at him sidelong. “Fairness isn’t justice. Fairness is making a pretty girl volunteer to step into a lake of fire because not everyone else can be as pretty as she is. And there is no truth in the Truth of We. ”

  Burke shrugged. “What is it?”

  Leaning against the temporary shuttle gate, Kagen once again felt the cold dark before dawn, when shivering and hungry, shoeless and wearing his light cotton uniform, in rain or snow or blistering heat, he’d recited the Words with every other man, woman, and child in his block.

  “We speak the Truth, and the Truth speaks Us,” Kagen said, keeping his voice low.

  “We live by the covenants, We abide by the Words.”

  Nevertheless, more than Burke heard him. Unbreathing silence fell behind him. The Condemned had stopped their pacing and nervous fidgeting to stare at him, bodies frozen and faces suddenly slack with animal fear. The hope that had been in all their eyes before—hope for a chance of escape, or for a chance to fight, or just for a chance at a quick, merciful death—vanished with those two soft lines.

  Kagen kept going, though. He wanted Burke to understand.

  “That none may laugh until All can laugh,

  That All sleep on dirt until none sleep on dirt.

  Dirt is Our birthright. Hardship is Our glory.

  Hardship strengthens Us. Hunger feeds Us.

  The Known is All. The new is Willful.

  Welcome Pain. Pain is Knowledge. We are WE.”

  He realized the men in the line were whispering the Words with him. He turned and snarled, “Stop it. Now. You are not We. You’re men, and every single one of you will face the justice and the death you earned.”

  He turned to look at Burke again, and continued,

  “Self is selfish. One is none.

  All are All. We are We.

  Each flesh belongs to All.

  Each thought belongs to All.

  Children are duty. All tend All.

  Duty is life. Life is dying. Dying is duty.

  We die for Duty. We are WE.

  Within Each hides Evil. Be All, not Each.

  In Aloneness is Willfulness. We will never be Alone.

  We share, We do not own.

  Property is an abomination.

  Beauty is property. Property is crime.

  Passion is property. Property is crime.

  Love is property. We out love and lovers.

  Secrets are property. We out secrets and secret-keepers.

  All is Sharing. Sharing is Duty.

  We serve Sharing. We are WE.

  We speak the Truth, and the Truth speaks Us.

  We live by the covenants, We abide by the Words.

  The Will of All is all of Will. We are WE.

  Burke stood there frowning when Kagen finished. “None can laugh until everyone can laugh? Hunger feeds us? Beauty is crime? What sort of shit is that?”

  “That’s the Truth of We. If you laugh, you’re a criminal. If you want a single thing for yourself, you’re a criminal. The instant you realize you are not the same as everyone else—that you’re thinking your own thoughts inside your own head—you are a criminal.

  “And because sooner or later everyone realizes the thoughts in their heads belong to them, every single person in every single settlement is a criminal. And the Speakers for We, who do not live under the Truth of We, are the biggest criminals of all. They buy these marginal worlds and grubby moons and the franchise constitutions that make them PHTFs, and send out advertisements for new settlers to get a better life, all expenses paid.”

  Burke was staring at him. “How can these worlds be legal?”

  “The same way the world you were on was legal. As long as the people in charge of these worlds don’t ever try to claim the right that they can execute someone on a Pact world, or kill any registered citizen intentionally, they can do anything they want.”

  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 Speak
ers say has proven true.