Orson Scott Card - Flux - Tales of Human Futures

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FLUX -- TALES OF HUMAN FUTURES
by Orson Scott Card
(c) 1990 Orson Scott Card
STORIES INCLUDED IN THIS COLLECTION:
"A Thousand Deaths"
Omni, December 1978
"Clap Hands and Sing"
Best of Omni #3, 1982
"Dogwalker"
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1989
"But We Try Not To Act Like It"
Destinies, August 1979
"I Put My Blue Genes On"
Analog, August 1978
"In the Doghouse" (with Jay A. Parry)
Analog, December 1978
"The Originist"
Foundation's Friends, 1989
A THOUSAND DEATHS
"You will make no speeches," said the prosecutor.
"I didn't expect they'd let me," Jerry Crove answered, affecting a confidence he didn't feel.
The prosecutor was not hostile; he seemed more like a high school drama coach than a man who was
seeking Jerry's death.
"They not only won't let you, " the prosecutor said, "but if you try anything, it will go much
worse for you. We have you cold, you know. We don't need anywhere near as much proof as we have."
"You haven't proved anything."
"We've proved you knew about it," the prosecutor insisted mildly. "No point arguing now. Knowing
about treason and not reporting it is exactly equal to committing treason."
Jerry shrugged and looked away.
The cell was bare concrete. The door was solid teel. The bed was a hammock hung from hooks on
the wall. The toilet was a can with a removable plastic seat. There was no conceivable way to
escape. Indeed, there was nothing that could conceivably occupy an intelligent person's mind for
more than five minutes. In the three weeks he had been here, he had memorized every crack in the
concrete, every bolt in the door. He had nothing to look at, except the prosecutor. Jerry
reluctantly met the man's gaze.
"What do you say when the judge asks you how you plead to the charges?"
"Nolo contendere."
"Very good. It would be much nicer if you'd consent to say 'guilty'," the prosecutor said.
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"I don't like the word."
"Just remember. Three cameras will be pointing at you. The trial will be broadcast live. To
America, you represent all Americans. You must comport yourself with dignity, quietly accepting
the fact that your complicity in the Assassination of Peter Anderson--"
"Andreyevitch--"
"Anderson has brought you to the point of death, where all depends on the mercy of the court.
And now I'll go have lunch. Tonight we'll see each other again. And remember. No speeches. Nothing
embarrassing."
Jerry nodded. This was not the time to argue. He spent the afternoon practicing conjugations of
Portuguese irregular verbs, wishing that somehow he could go back and undo the moment when he
agreed to speak to the old man who had unfolded all the plans to assassinate Andreyevitch. "Now I
must trust you," said the old man. "Temos que conflar no senhor americano. You love liberty, no?"
Love liberty? Who knew anymore? What was liberty? Being free to make a buck? The Russians had
been smart enough to know that if they let Americans make money, they really didn't give a damn
which language the government was speaking. And, in fact, the government spoke English anyway.
The propaganda that they had been feeding him wasn't funny. It was too true. The United States
had never been so peaceful; it was more prosperous than it had been since the Vietnam War boom
thirty years before. And the lazy, complacent American people were going about business as usual.
As if pictures of Lenin on buildings and billboards were just what they had always wanted.
I was no different, he reminded himself. I sent in my work application, complete with oath of
allegiance. I accepted it meekly when they opted me out for a tutorial with a high Party official.
I even taught his damnable little children for three years in Rio.
When I should have been writing plays.
But what do I write about? Why not a comedy-- The Yankee and the Commissar, a load of laughs
about a woman commissar who marries an American blue blood who manufactures typewriters. There are
no women commissars, of course, but one must maintain the illusion of a free and equal society.
"Bruce, my dear," says the commissar in a thick but sexy Russian accent, "your typewriter
company is suspiciously close to making a profit."
"And if it were running at a loss, you'd turn me in, yes, my little noodle?" (Riotous laughs
from the Russians in the audience; the Americans are not amused, but then, they speak English
fluently and don't need broad humor. Besides, the reviews are all approved by the Party, so we
don't have to worry about the critics. Keep the Russians happy, and screw the American audience.)
Dialogue continues:
"All for the sake of Mother Russia."
"Screw Mother Russia."
"Please do," says Natasha. "Regard me as her personal incarnation."
Oh, but the Russians do love onstage sex. Forbidden in Russia, of course, but Americans are
supposed to be decadent.
I might as well have been a ride designer for Disneyland, Jerry thought. Might as well have
written shtick for vaudeville. Might as well go stick my head in an oven. But with my luck, it
would be electric.
He may have slept. He wasn't sure. But the door opened, and he opened his eyes with no memory of
having heard footsteps approach. The calm before the storm: and now, the storm.
The soldiers were young, but unslavic. Slavish but definitely American. Slaves to the Slavs. Put
that in a protest poem sometime, he decided, if only there were someone who wanted to read a
protest poem.
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The young American soldiers (But the uniforms were wrong. I'm not old enough to remember the old
ones, but these are not made for American bodies.) escorted him down corridors, up stairs, through
doors, until they were outside and they put him into a heavily armored van. What did they think,
he was part of a conspiracy and his fellows would come to save him? Didn't they know that a man in
his position would have no friends by now?
Jerry had seen it at Yale. Dr. Swick had been very popular. Best damn professor in the
department. He could take the worst drivel and turn it into a play, take terrible actors and make
them look good, take apathetic audiences and make them, of all things, enthusiastic and hopeful.
And then one day the police had broken into his home and found Swick with four actors putting on a
play for a group of maybe a score of friends. What was it-- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Jerry
remembered. A sad script. A despairing script. But a sharp one, nonetheless, one that showed
despair as being an ugly, destructive thing, one that showed lies as suicide, one that, in short,
made the audience feel that, by God, something was wrong with their lives, that the peace was
illusion, that the prosperity was a fraud, that America's ambitions had been cut off and that so
much that was good and proud was still undone--
And Jerry realized that he was weeping. The soldiers sitting across from him in the armored van
were looking away. Jerry dried his eyes.
As soon as news got out that Swick was arrested, he was suddenly unknown. Everyone who had
letters or memos or even class papers that bore his name destroyed them. His name disappeared from
address books. His classes were empty as no one showed up. No one even hoping for a substitute,
for the university suddenly had no record that there had ever been such a class, ever been such a
professor. His house had gone up for sale, his wife had moved, and no one said good-bye. And then,
more than a year later, the CBS news (which always showed official trials then) had shown ten
minutes of Swick weeping and saying, "Nothing has ever been better for America than Communism. It
was just a foolish, immature desire to prove myself by thumbing my nose at authority. It meant
nothing. I was wrong. The government's been kinder to me than I deserve." And so on. The words
were silly. But as Jerry had sat, watching, he had been utterly convinced. However meaningless the
words were, Swick's face was meaningful: he was utterly sincere.
The van stopped, and the doors in the back opened just as Jerry remembered that he had burned
his copy of Swick's manual on playwriting. Burned it, but not until he had copied down all the
major ideas. Whether Swick knew it or not, he had left something behind. But what will I leave
behind? Jerry wondered.
Two Russian children who now speak fluent English and whose father was blown up in their front
yard right in front of them, his blood spattering their faces, because Jerry had neglected to warn
him? What a legacy.
For a moment he was ashamed. A life is a life, no matter whose or how lived.
Then he remembered the night when Peter Andreyevitch (no-- Anderson. Pretending to be American
is fashionable nowadays, so long as everyone can tell at a glance that you're really Russian) had
drunkenly sent for Jerry and demanded, as Jerry's employer (i.e., owner), that Jerry recite his
poems to the guests at the party. Jerry had tried to laugh it off, but Peter was not that drunk:
he insisted, and Jerry went upstairs and got his poems and came down and read them to a group of
men who could not understand the poems, to a group of women who understood them and were merely
amused. Little Andre said afterward, "The poems were good, Jerry," but Jerry felt like a virgin
who had been raped and then given a two-dollar tip by the rapist.
In fact, Peter had given him a bonus. And Jerry had spent it.
Charlie Ridge, Jerry's defense attorney, met him just inside the doors of the courthouse.
"Jerry, old boy, looks like you're taking all this pretty well. Haven't even lost any weight."
"On a diet of pure starch, I've had to run around my cell all day just to stay thin." Laughter.
Ha ho, what a fun time we're having. What jovial people we are.
"Listen, Jerry, you've got to do this right, you know. They have audience response measurements.
They can judge how sincere you seem. You've got to really mean it."
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"Wasn't there once a time when defense attorneys tried to get their clients off?" Jerry asked.
"Jerry, that kind of attitude isn't going to get you anywhere. These aren't the good old days
when you could get off on a technicality and a lawyer could delay trial for five years. You're
guilty as hell, and so if you cooperate, they won't do anything to you. They'll just deport you."
"What a pal," Jerry said. "With you on my side, I haven't a worry in the world."
"Exactly right," said Charlie. "And don't you forget it."
The courtroom was crowded with cameras. (Jerry had heard that in the old days of freedom of the
press, cameras had often been barred from courtrooms. But then, in those days the defendant didn't
usually testify and in those days the lawyers didn't both work from the same script. Still, there
was the press, looking for all the world as if they thought they were free.)
Jerry had nothing to do for nearly half an hour. The audience (Are they paid? Jerry wondered. In
America, they must be.) filed in, and the show began at exactly eight o'clock. The judge came in
looking impressive in his robes, and his voice was resonant and strong, like a father on
television remonstrating his rebellious son. Everyone who spoke faced the camera with the red
light on the top. And Jerry felt very tired.
He did not waver in his determination to try to turn this trial to his own advantage, but he
seriously wondered what good,it would do. And was it to his own advantage? They would certainly
punish him more severely. Certainly they would be angry, would cut him off. But he had written his
speech as if it were an impassioned climactic scene in a play (Crove Against the Communists or
perhaps Liberty's Last Cry), and he the hero who would willingly give his life for the chance to
instill a little bit of patriotism (a little bit of intelligence, who gives a damn about
patriotism!) in the hearts and minds of the millions of Americans who would be watching.
"Gerald Nathan Crove, you have heard the charges against you. Please step forward and state your
plea. "
Jerry stood up and walked with, he hoped, dignity to the taped X on the floor where the
prosecutor had insisted that he stand. He looked for the camera with the red light on. He stared
into it intently, sincerely, and wondered if, after all, it wouldn't be better just to say nolo
contendere or even guilty and have an easier time of it.
"Mr. Crove," intoned the judge, "America is watching. How do you plead?"
America was watching indeed. And Jerry opened his mouth and said not the Latin but the English
he had rehearsed so often in his mind:
"There is a time for courage and a time for cowardice, a time when a man can give in to those
who offer him leniency and a time when he must, instead, resist them for the sake of a higher
goal. America was once a free nation. But as long as they pay our salaries, we seem content to be
slaves! I plead not guilty, because any act that serves to weaken Russian domination of any nation
in the world is a blow for all the things that make life worth living and against those to whom
power is the only god worth worshiping!"
Ah. Eloquence. But in his rehearsals he had never dreamed he would get even this far, and yet
they still showed no sign of stopping him. He looked away from the camera. He looked at the
prosecutor, who was taking notes on a yellow pad. He looked at Charlie, and Charlie was resignedly
shaking his head and putting his papers back in his briefcase. No one seemed to be particularly
worried that Jerry was saying these things over live television. And the broadcasts were live--
they had stressed that, that he must be careful to do everything correctly the first time because
it was all live--
They were lying, of course. And Jerry stopped his speech and jammed his hands into his pockets,
only to discover that the suit they had provided, for him had no pockets (save money by avoiding
nonessentials, said the slogan), and his hands slid uselessly down his hips.
The prosecutor looked up in surprise when the judge cleared his throat. "Oh, I beg your
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pardon,". he said. "The speeches usually go on much longer. I congratulate you, Mr. Crove, on your
brevity."
Jerry nodded in mock acknowledgment, but he felt no mockery.
"We always have a dry run," said the prosecutor, "just to catch you last-chancers."
"Everyone knew that?"
"Well, everyone but you, of course, Mr. Crove. All right, everybody, you can go home now."
The audience arose and quietly shuffled out.
The prosecutor and Charlie got up and walked to the bench. The judge was resting his chin on his
hands, looking not at all fatherly now, just a little bored. "How much do you want?" the judge
asked.
"Unlimited," said the prosecutor.
"Is he really that important?" Jerry might as well have not been there. "After all, they're
doing the actual bombers in Brazil."
"Mr. Crove is an American," said the prosecutor, "who chose to let a Russian ambassador be
assassinated."
"All right, all right," said the judge, and Jerry marveled that the man hadn't the slightest
trace of a Russian accent.
"Gerald Nathan Crove, the court finds you guilty of murder and treason against the United States
of America and its ally, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Do you have anything to say
before sentence is pronounced?"
"I just wondered," said Jerry, "why you all speak English."
"Because," said the prosecutor icily, "we are in America."
"Why do you even bother with trials?"
"To stop other imbeciles from trying what you did. He just wants to argue, Your Honor."
The judge slammed down his gavel. "The court sentences Gerald Nathan Crove to be put to death by
every available method until such time as he convincingly apologizes for his action to the
American people. Court stands adjourned. Lord in heaven, do I have a headache."
They wasted no time. At five o'clock in the morning, Jerry had barely fallen asleep. Perhaps
they monitored this, because they promptly woke him up with a brutal electric shock across the
metal floor where Jerry was lying. Two guards-- this time Russians-- came in and stripped him and
then dragged him to the execution chamber even though, had they let him, he would have walked.
The prosecutor was waiting. "I have been assigned your case," he said, "because you promise to
be a challenge. Your psychological profile is interesting, Mr. Crove. You long to be a hero."
"I wasn't aware of that."
"You displayed it in the courtroom, Mr. Crove. You are no doubt aware-- your middle name implies
it-- of the last words of the American Revolutionary War espionage agent named Nathan Hale. 'I
regret that I have but one life to give for my country,' he said. You shall discover that he was
mistaken. He should be very glad he had but one life.
"Since you were arrested several weeks ago in Rio de Janeiro, we have been growing a series of
clones for you. Development is quite accelerated, but they have been kept in zero-sensation
environments until the present. Their minds are blank.
"You are surely aware of somec, yes, Mr. Crove?"
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Jerry nodded. The starship sleep drug.
"We don't need it in this case, of course. But the mind-taping technique we use on interstellar
flights-- that is quite useful. When we execute you, Mr. Crove, we shall be continuously taping
your brain. All your memories will be rather indecorously dumped into the head of the first clone,
who will immediately become you. However, he will clearly remember all your life up to and
including the moment of death.
"It was so easy to be a hero in the old days, Mr. Crove. Then you never knew for sure what death
was like. It was compared to sleep, to great emotional pain, to quick departure of the soul from
the body. None of these, of course, is particularly accurate. "
Jerry was frightened. He had heard of multiple death before, of course-- it was rumored to exist
because of its deterrent value. "They resurrect you and kill you again and again," said the horror
story, and now he knew that it was true. Or they wanted him to believe it was true.
What frightened Jerry was the way they planned to kill him. A noose hung from a hook in the
ceiling. It could be raised and lowered, but there didn't seem to be the slightest provision for a
quick, sharp drop to break his neck. Jerry had once almost choked to death on a salmon bone. The
sensation of not being able to breathe terrified him.
"How can I get out of this? " Jerry asked, his palms sweating.
"The first one, not at all," said the prosecutor. "So you might as well be brave and use up your
heroism this time around. Afterward we'll give you a screen test and see how convincing your
repentance is. We're fair, you know. We try to avoid putting anyone through this unnecessarily.
Please sit."
Jerry sat. A man in a lab coat put a metal helmet on his head. A few needles pricked into
Jerry's scalp.
"Already," said the prosecutor, "your first clone is becoming aware. He already has all your
memories. He is right now living through your panic-- or shall we say your attempts at courage.
Make sure you concentrate carefully on what is about to happen to you, Jerry. You want to make
sure you remember every detail."
"Please," Jerry said.
"Buck up, my man," said the prosecutor with a grin. "You were wonderful in the courtroom. Let's
have some of that noble resistance now."
Then the guards led him to the noose and put it around his neck, being careful not to dislodge
the helmet. They pulled it tight and then tied his hands behind his back. The rope was rough on
his neck. He waited, his neck tingling for the sensation of being lifted in the air. He flexed his
neck muscles, trying to keep them rigid, though he knew the effort would be useless. His knees
grew weak, waiting for them to raise the rope.
The room was plain. There was nothing to see, and the prosecutor had left the room. There was,
however, a mirror on a wall beside him. He could barely see into it without turning his entire
body. He was sure it was an observation window. They would watch, of course.
Jerry needed to go to the bathroom.
Remember, he told himself, I won't really die. I'll he awake in the other room in just a moment.
But his body was not convinced. It didn't matter a bit that a new Jerry Crove would be ready to
get up and walk away when this was over. This Jerry Crove would die.
"What are you waiting for?" he demanded, and as if that had been their cue the guards pulled the
rope and lifted him into the air.
From the beginning it was worse than he had thought. The rope had an agonizingly tight grip on
his neck; there was no question of resisting at all. The suffocation was nothing, at first. Like
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being under water holding your breath. But the rope itself was painful, and his neck hurt, and he
wanted to cry out with the pain; but nothing could escape his throat.
Not at first.
There was some fumbling with the rope, and it jumped up and down as the guards tied it to the
hook on the wall. Once Jerry's feet even touched the floor.
By the time the rope held still, however, the effects of the strangling were taking over and the
pain was forgotten. The blood was pounding inside Jerry's head. His tongue felt thick. He could
not shut his eyes. And now he wanted to breathe. He had to breathe. His body demanded a breath.
His body was not under control. Intellectually, he knew that he could not possibly reach the
floor, knew that this death would be temporary, but right now his mind was not having much
influence over his body. His legs kicked and struggled to reach the ground. His hands strained at
the rope behind him. And all the exertion only made his eyes bulge more with the pressure of the
blood that could not get past the rope; only made him need air more desperately.
There was no help for him, but now he tried to scream for help: The sound now escaped his throat
but at the cost of air. He felt as if his tongue were being pushed up into his nose. His kicking
grew more violent, though every kick was agony. He spun on the rope; he caught a glimpse of
himself in the mirror. His face was turning purple.
How long will it be? Surely not much longer!
But it was much longer.
If he had been underwater, holding his breath, he would now have given up and drowned.
If he had a gun and a free hand, he would kill himself now to end this agony and the sheer
physical terror of being unable to breathe. But he had no gun, and there was no question of
inhaling-- and the blood throbbed in his head and made his eyes see everything in shades of red,
and finally he saw nothing at all.
Saw nothing except what was going through his mind, and that was a jumble, as if his
consciousness were madly trying to make some arrangement that would eliminate the strangulation.
He kept seeing himself in the creek behind his house, where he had fallen in when he was a child,
and someone was throwing him a rope, but he couldn't and he couldn't and he couldn't catch it, and
then suddenly it was around his neck and dragging him under.
Spots of black stabbed at his eyes. His body felt bloated, and then it erupted, his bowel and
bladder and stomach ejecting all that they contained, except that his vomit was stopped at his
throat, where it burned.
The shaking of his body turned into convulsive jerks and spasms, and for a moment Jerry felt
himself reaching the welcome state of unconsciousness. Then, suddenly, he discovered that death is
not so kind.
There is no such thing as slipping off quietly in your sleep. No such thing as being "killed
immediately" or having death mercifully end the pain.
Death woke him from his unconsciousness, for perhaps a tenth of a second. But that tenth of a
secdnd was infinite, and in it he experienced the infinite agony of impending nonexistence. His
life did not flash before his eyes. The lack of life instead exploded, and in his mind he
experienced far greater pain and fear than anything he had felt from the mere hanging.
And then he died.
For an instant he hung in limbo, feeling and seeing nothing. Then-- a light stabbed at his eyes
and soft foam peeled away from his skin and the prosecutor stood there, watching as he gasped and
retched and clutched at his throat. It seemed incredible that he could now breathe, and if he had
experienced only the strangling, he might now sigh with relief and say, "I've been through it
once, and now I'm not afraid of death." But the strangling was nothing. The strangling was a
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prelude. And he was afraid of death.
They forced him to come into the room where he had died. He saw his body hanging, black-faced,
from the ceiling, the helmet still on the head, the tongue protruding.
"Cut it down," the prosecutor said, and for a moment Jerry waited for the guards to obey.
Instead, a guard handed Jerry a knife.
With death still heavy in his mind, Jerry swung around and lunged at the prosecutor. But a guard
caught his hand in an irresistible grip, and the other guard held a pistol pointed at Jerry's
head.
"Do you want to die again so soon? " asked the prosecutor, and Jerry whimpered and took the
knife and reached up to cut himself down from the noose; in order to reach above the knot, he had
to stand close enough to the corpse to touch it. The stench was incredible. And the fact of death
was unavoidable. Jerry trembled so badly he could hardly control the knife, but eventually the
rope parted and the corpse slumped to the ground, knocking Jerry down as it fell. An arm lay
across Jerry's legs. The face looked at Jerry eye-to-eye.
Jerry screamed.
***
"You see the camera?"
Jerry nodded, numbly.
"You will look at the camera and you will apologize for having done anything against the
government that has brought peace to the earth."
Jerry nodded again, and the prosecutor said, "Roll it."
"Fellow Americans," Jerry said, "I'm sorry. I made a terrible mistake. I was wrong. There's
nothing wrong with the Russians. I let an innocent man be killed. Forgive me. The government has
been kinder to me than I deserve." And so on. For an hour Jerry babbled, insisting that he was
craven, that he was guilty, that he was worthless, that the government was vying with God for
respectability.
And when he was through, the prosecutor came back in, shaking his head.
"Mr. Crove, you can do better than that.
"Nobody in the audience believed you for one minute. Nobody in the test sample, not one person,
believed that you were the least bit sincere. You still think the government ought to be deposed.
And so we have to try the treatment again."
"Let me try to confess again."
"A screen test is a screen test, Mr. Crove. We have to give you a little more experience with
death before we can permit you to have any involvement with life.
This time Jerry screamed right from the beginning. He made no attempt at all to bear it well.
They hung him by the armpits over a long cylinder filled with boiling oil. They slowly lowered
him. Death came when the oil was up to his chest-- by then his legs had been completely cooked and
the meat was falling off the bones in large chunks.
They made him come in and, when the oil had cooled enough to touch, fish out the pieces of his
own corpse.
He wept all through his confession this time, but the test audience was completely unconvinced.
"The man's a phony," they said. "He doesn't believe a word of what he's saying."
"We have a problem," said the prosecutor. "You seem so willing to cooperate after your death.
But you have reservations. You aren't speaking from the heart. We'll have to help you again."
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Jerry screamed and struck out at the prosecutor. When the guards had pulled him away (and the
prosecutor was nursing an injured nose), Jerry shouted, "Of course I'm lying! No matter how often
you kill me it won't change the fact that this is a government of fools by vicious, lying
bastards!"
"On the contrary," said the prosecutor, trying to maintain his good manners and cheerful
demeanor despite the blood pouring out of his nose, "if we kill you enough, you'll completely
change your mind."
"You can't change the truth!"
"We've changed it for everyone else who's gone through this. And you are far from being the
first who had to go to a third clone. But this time, Mr. Crove, do try to forget about being a
hero."
They skinned him alive, arms and legs first, and then, finally, they castrated him and ripped
the skin off his belly and chest. He died silently when they cut his larynx out-- no, not
silently. just voiceless. He found that without a voice he could still whisper a scream that rang
in his ears when he awoke and was forced to go in and carry his bloody corpse to the disposal
room. He confessed again, and the audience was not convinced.
They slowly crushed him to death, and he had to scrub the blood out of the crusher when he
awoke, but the audience only commented. "Who does the jerk think he's fooling?"
They disemboweled him and burned his guts in front of him. They infected him with rabies and let
his death linger for two weeks. "They crucified him and let exposure and thirst kill him. They
dropped him a dozen tirnes from the roof of a one-story building until he died.
Yet the audience knew that Jerry Crove had not repented.
"My God, Crove, how long do you think I can keep doing this?" asked the prosecutor. He did not
seem cheerful. In fact, Jerry thought he looked almost desperate.
"Getting a little tough on you?" Jerry asked, grateful for the conversation because it meant
there would be a few minutes between deaths.
"What kind of man do you think I am? We'll bring him back to life in a minute anyway, I tell
myself, but I didn't get into this business in order to find new, hideous ways of killing people."
"You don't like it? And yet you have such a natural talent for it."
The prosecutor looked sharply at Crove. "Irony? Now you can joke? Doesn't death mean anything to
you?
Jerry did not answer, only tried to blink back the tears that these days came unbidden every few
minutes.
"Crove, this is not cheap. Do you think it's cheap? We've spent literally billions of rubles on
you. And even with inflation, that's a hell of a lot of money."
"In a classless society there's no need for money."
"What is this, dammit! Now you're getting rebellious? Now you're trying to be a hero?"
"No."
"No wonder we've had to kill you eight times! You keep thinking up clever arguments against us!"
"I'm sorry. Heaven knows I'm sorry."
"I've asked to be released from this assigrunent. I obviously can't crack you."
"Crack me! As if I didn't long to be cracked."
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"You're costing too much. There's a definite benefit in having criminals convincingly recant on
television. But you're getting too expensive. The cost-benefit ratio is ridiculous now. There's a
limit to how much we can spend on you."
"I have a way for you to save money."
"So do I. Convince the damned audience!"
"Next time you kill me, don't put a helmet on my head."
The prosecutor looked absolutely shocked. "That would be final. That would be capital
punishment. We're a humane government. We never kill anybody permanently."
They shot him in the gut and let him bleed to death. They threw him from a cliff into the sea.
They let a shark eat him alive. They hung him upside down so that just his head was under water,
and when he finally got too tired to hold his head out of the water he drowned.
But through all this, Jerry had become more inured to the pain. His mind had finally learned
that none of these deaths was permanent after all. And now when the moment of death came, though
it was still terrible, he endured it better. He screamed less. He approached death with greater
calm. He even hastened the process, deliberately inhaling great draughts of water, deliberately
wriggling to attract the shark. When they had the guards kick him to death he kept yelling,
"Harder," until he couldn't yell anymore.
And finally when they set up a screen test, he fervently told the audience that the Russian
government was the most terrifying empire the world had ever known, because this time they were
efficient at keeping their power, because this time there was no outside for barbarians to come
from, and because they had seduced the freest people in history into loving slavery. His speech
was from the heart-- he loathed the Russians and loved the memory that once there had been freedom
and law and a measure of justice in America.
And the prosecutor came into the room ashenfaced.
"You bastard," he said.
"Oh. You mean the audience was live this time?"
"A hundred loyal citizens. And you corrupted all but three of them."
"Corrupted?"
"Convinced them."
Silence for a moment, and then the prosecutor sat down and buried his head in his hands.
"Going to lose your job?" Jerry asked.
"Of course."
"I'm sorry. You're good at it."
The prosecutor looked at him with loathing. "No one ever failed at this before. And I had never
had to take anyone beyond a second death. You've died a dozen times, Crove, and you've got used to
it."
"I didn't mean to."
"How did you do it?"
"I don't know."
"What kind of animal are you, Crove? Can't you make up a lie and believe it?"
Crove chuckled. (In the old days, at this level of amusement he would have laughed uproariously.
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Orson%20Scott%20Card/Card,%20Orson%20Scott%20-%20Flux%20T\ales%20Of%20Human%20Futures.txtFLUX--TALESOFHUMANFUTURESbyOrsonScottCard(c)1990OrsonScottCardSTORIESINCLUDEDINTHISCOLLECTION:"AThousandDeaths"Omni,December1978"ClapHandsandSing"BestofOmni#3,1982"Dogwalker"IsaacAsimov'sScienceFi...

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