being the next member to count coup – pick a client, do! One whose crimes are
particularly offensive to you, Milady Johnson –
I admit that the listed miscreants were a scrofulous bunch over whom even their own
mothers would not be likely to weep but, like Mr Clemens’ favourite son, Huckleberry
Finn, I am not much interested in killing strangers. I am not opposed to the death
penalty – I voted for it every time the matter came to a vote, which was frequently
during the decline and fall of the United States – but in killing pour le sport I
need to be emotionally involved. Oh, forced to a choice I would rather shoot a man
than a deer; I can’t see the `sport’ in shooting a gentle vegetarian that can’t
shoot back.
But, given full choice, I would rather watch television than kill a stranger. Some,
at least.
I said, ‘I don’t see anyone on that list who is to my taste. Do you happen to have
in your file of better-deads someone who abandons kittens?’
The fat chairman smiled at me under his dark glasses. Now that’s a delicious idea!
No, I think no unless by chance there is someone nominated for other reasons who
also abandons kittens. I will have Research set up an inquiry at once. Madam, what
would be an appropriate termination for such a client? Have you studied it?’
‘No, I haven’t. But his death should involve homesickness… and loneliness… and
cold… and hunger… and fear… and utter despair.’
‘Artistic. But perhaps not practical. Such a death might stretch out over months…
and we really do not have the facilities to permit a deletion to last more than a
few days. Ah, Bluebeard! – you have something to add?’
‘Do what our sister suggests for as many days as we can afford the space. Then
surround the client by a halo of enormous trucks, giant holos, the way traffic must
look to a kitten. Have the images bear down on him, with overpowering sound effects.
Then hit him with a real truck – a glancing blow to maim him. Let him die slowly, as
is often the case with a road-killed animal.’
”Madam, does that appeal to you?’
(It made me want to throw up.) ‘Unless something better comes along.’
‘If we can find such a client for you, he will be saved and held at your disposal.
In the mean time we must find you someone else for coup, not let you sit among us
naked of proper pride.’
That was a week ago and I have begun to feel just a hint of the idea that if I do
not promptly find on their list a client I wish to terminate, then… just
possibly… we don’t want to hurry you… but still… if I don’t make blood coup
soon, how can I be trusted not to betray them to the Supreme Bishop’s proctors?
On that Time Corps mission I carried out in Japan in the 1930s, I wish I had
investigated those reports of another woman who might be me. If I had proved to
myself that I was indeed tripled for 1937-8, then I would sleep better here now, as
that third loop would hava to be further ahead on my personal time line… which
would prove that I will get out of this mess still breathing.
That’s the real trick: to keep breathing. Isn’t it, Pixel? Pixel? Pixel! Oh, damn!
Changes – in 1972 Princess Polly died in her sleep – heart failure, I think, but I
Page 231
Heinlein, Robert A – To Sail Beyond the Sunset.txt
did not have an autopsy. She was a little old lady who had lived a long life and, I
think, a happy one, on the whole. I said a prayer to Bubastis, asking her to watch
for the arrival in the eternal Catnip Fields of a little black and white cat who had
never scratched or bitten without just cause and who had had the misfortune to have
had only one kitten – by Caesarean section and the kitten never opened its eyes –
and then she had lost her kitten factory by spaying because her surgeon said that