If they didn’t stay dead, what was the point! So she’d asked herself before. What was the point of living like this?
“You are at liberty to end it,” Kane had told her. “The fourth human right is the right to die.”
“Th’fucks that mean?” she’d screamed the first time she’d heard Kane on this subject.
Kane had explained it all. Kane had even escorted Snark to a disposal booth and explained the controls. “Simple, for the simple-minded,” Kane had said. “Enter, close door, press button. Wait five
minutes to see if you change your mind. When the bell rings, press button again. Zip. All that’s left are a few ashes. No pain, no blood, no guts, no untidiness whatsoever.”
So said Kane, but the last thing Snark wanted was a neat disposal booth and a handful of ashes. Where was the joy in no pain, no blood? Who got anything out of that? That was no way to kill anybody, not even yourself! God, if you were going to kill yourself, at least make it a real mess! Make ‘em clean up after you!
“Why you all the time wanting to kill folks?” Susso, one of her sometime sex partners, wanted to know.
“Get in my nose,” she’d snarled. “Push against me!”
“Everybody gets in your nose,” Susso said. “All the time. The only way you could be happy is if you killed everybody in the world and had it all to yourself.”
It wasn’t true. There’d been some good kids at the sanctuary when they’d first brought Snark there. Snark hadn’t wanted to kill them. She’d liked them. She’d been what? Nine or ten maybe? Old enough to tell them things. And to tell the supervisor as well.
“Where are you from, little girl?”
“From the frontier.”
“Don’t tell lies, little girl. Children don’t come from the frontier.”
“It’s not a lie! I did so!”
“Don’t contradict me, little girl. Don’t be a nasty, contradictory little liar.”
Her name hadn’t been Snark then. It had been something else. And she hadn’t wanted to kill people then. That came later, after they’d named her Snark the liar, Snark the thief. Not Snark the murderer, though. She’d never actually killed anybody, though she’d wanted to. Just her luck they’d caught her before she’d done it.
The judgment machines were clear about that: “You are sentenced to lifetime shadowhood because of your emotional need to breach the first and second rights of man.”
“They got no right,” Snark had snarled to Susso. “They got no right.”
“Why don’ they?” he’d asked. “As much as you.”
“They’re machines,” she’d told him. “On’y machines. I’m a person, a human. The universe was made for me!”
Susso had shaken his head. “You been listenin’ to some Firster godmonger on the newslink, girl. Some belly-sweller. Some prick-waver. Forget Firsters. They don’t talk for this world. Not for Alliance Central, they don’t. Too many Fastigats on Alliance Central. Fastigats don’t listen to Firsters. This world is different. This world has shadows, and most of the time shadows aren’t human. One third the time, shadows got the right to live like they want except they try an’ hurt somebody. The rest o’ the time, shadows got no rights. That’s the way this world is!”
Snark knew that. When the invigilators had dragged her before the huge, unbearably shiny robo-judge, they’d read her the words printed across its front:
EQUAL JUSTICE; THE SAME REMEDY FOR THE SAME CRIME, EVERY TIME.
“On Alliance Central, human rights are those rights our people grant one another and enforce for one another,” the machine said in its solemn, mechanical voice. “There are four human rights universally recognized. The first of these is the right of all individuals to do what they choose with an absolute minimum of interference. Man is not required to meet any standard of behavior so long as he is not adversely sensed by any other human. The second right is that of choosing one’s dependents. Persons may not be taxed or otherwise forced to support dependents they have not chosen, though they are absolutely required to care for those they have signed for. The third right is to be protected from those who would infringe upon the first two rights through interference or unlawful dependency. Thievery, of which you have been convicted, is a crime of interference and dependency. You have put others to inconvenience and you have supported yourself at others’ expense. You may be brought into alignment with social norms if you so choose. Do you so choose?”