All the same, Blundy knew how the kid felt. Petoyne wasn’t just afraid of dying-well, of course she was afraid of that. Who wouldn’t be? But worse than just the normal fear of dying was that nobody, not anybody, least of all an almost-one-year-old like Petoyne, wanted to be left out of that special once-in-a-lifetime excitement, both thrilling and bleak, that only happened when some wandering spaceship came along. And even “once in a lifetime” was an exaggeration. It wasn’t that often; ships didn’t usually happen along even once in a normal lifetime. There was hardly a soul alive on Slowyear who remembered the last time a ship had called, apart from the tiny and dwindling handful of five- and six-year-old dodderers.
You got to the summer execution chamber by a pebbled walk through a garden. Ribbonblossoms and roses were in bloom, thousands of them, already halfway up their two-meter trellises though spring was only five months old. The flowers didn’t quite hide the chamber from people going by on the summer town’s streets, but they at least kept it decently remote. Most people didn’t look, though a child of thirty months or so stopped as they passed, leaning his bike against the gate to follow them with his fascinated eyes.
The marshal at the door nodded respectfully to Blundy as they entered the hall. Inside, generic music was playing in the waiting room for the execution chamber, the kind of low-pitched whispery strings Blundy associated with funerals and his almost-wife, Murra. (Funnily, at first he had loved Murra’s taste in music.) The waiting lounge smelled as flowery as the grounds outside. There was a pot of babywillows in the center of the room, honey-sweet, and minty greenflowers hung from ceiling baskets.
Blundy and Petoyne weren’t the only ones waiting. There were four couples ahead of them, sitting quietly on the comfortable benches or pretending to be conversing with each other. They would have to wait, Blundy saw with resignation. The waiting was an extra burden, because Petoyne was getting nervouser and nervouser as she came closer to the deed itself, gripping tight Blundy’s hand even though she was still technically short of her first birthday, and thus was only going to take from the children’s jar.
They sat down in the waiting room, nodding politely to the ones ahead of them. The execution clerk wasn’t at his desk, but almost as soon as they sat he came back in, looking around impatiently. Petoyne clutched Blundy’s arm and took a quick breath, trying to read the man’s face. There wasn’t much on it to read, though, because the clerk was a hard-bitten old guy, easily five, maybe more, had seen everything and was surprised at nothing.
He did blink in recognition as he saw Blundy there, and quickly glanced at the monitor on his desk. Then he called a name and read a sentence: “Mossriker Woller Duplesset, for falsification of taxtime records, one in fifty.” A man not much older than Petoyne stood up, hanging his head. The woman with him was nearly three-his mother, Blundy supposed-and she was the one who was weeping as the executioner escorted them out to a chamber. He paused in the doorway to give Blundy a friendly nod, then closed the door behind them.
There was a moment’s silence, then the ones left began to talk. The old man got up from beside the woman who seemed to be a daughter. Wandering around the room, he paused and absently stroked the soft, downy pods of the babywillow. Then he looked more closely and frowned at what he saw. He got a cup from the water cooler and carefully moistened the roots of the plant. “They should take better care of their plants,” he said severely, to no one in particular. Then his eyes focused on Blundy.
“You were just coming in this morning, weren’t you?” he asked politely, “I thought so. Those were nice-looking herds you brought in.” Blundy agreed that, for late spring herds, the sheep had fattened up nicely. Another-a middle-aged woman, there with a younger woman who could have been her daughter-what crime could she have committed to bring her here?-said, “They’ve started taking the shuttles out of mothballs,” and then a couple of them began talking about what their parents, or their grandparents, had told them about the way it was the last time a ship came to call. What they did not talk about was why they were here.
Petoyne didn’t join in the conversation, but she was obviously beginning to get her nerve back. “They’re all adults,” she told Blundy, looking around at the others in the room. “I guess they’ve really got something to worry about.”
“You’ll be an adult pretty soon,” Blundy reminded her.
“But I’m not now,” Petoyne said, managing a smile for the first time. “What I am is hungry. Are you?” And then, without waiting for an answer: “I bet you don’t want any more lamb chops, anyway. Listen, Blundy. Let me tell you what I had last night. I made myself a scogger-broiled; a big one, with plenty of melted butter, the way you like it. And I’ve got a couple more in the freezer, if you wanted to come over tonight-I mean,” she added, glancing at the door, “if everything, uh, if everything goes all right here.” He shook his head. “Well, Murra’s expecting you, I guess.” She might have said more but then, much sooner than any of them expected, the clerk was back for another condemned and escort. The charge was assault this time, one in forty, and, surprisingly, the convict was the middle-aged woman.
“Looks like there’s life in the old girl yet,” Petoyne whispered, almost giggling.
Two other couples were coming in, but Blundy didn’t get a good look at them because the old man was standing up and coming toward them. “I guess it’s my turn next,” he said apologetically. “I didn’t recognize you before, but-you are Irakaho Blundy Spenotex, aren’t you? I thought so. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your show last winter, and, well, I might not get the chance to tell you later on.”
“Of course,” Blundy said, professionally warm. “Nice of you to say it.”
The old man stood there, nodding like any fan who had made the approach and didn’t really know what to say. “My wife really loved it. It was about the only thing that kept us going, the last couple of months,” he said.
“Well, that’s what it was supposed to do,” Blundy said politely. “Do you recognize Petoyne here? She played Liv on Winter Wife. The younger daughter, remember?”
“Really?” The man seemed quite interested as he studied the girl up and down. “I wouldn’t have known her,” he marveled, “but then, I guess everybody says that, don’t they? The augmentation and all. Well, I’m sorry to see you here, Petoyne, but you’re still under age, aren’t you? So it won’t be so-oh,” he said in a different voice, as the door opened, “I guess it’s my turn. I hope I see you again.”
And as the door closed behind him, the executioner and his witness, Petoyne said, “Hopes to see you again! I bet he does! Did you hear that? He got a one in five! For murder. Do you know what I think, Blundy? I think it probably was his wife he murdered, don’t you think? Who else would an old guy like that kill? So maybe the show didn’t keep him going all that long, after all.”
Then there was another wait.
The wall screen was showing a musical group, which was getting on Blundy’s nerves. He got up. “Mind if I try to get some news?” he asked. No one seemed to care, though they all looked docilely at the screen when it came on. The oilwells on Harbor Island had been successfully uncapped, the pipelines to the refineries on the continent checked and reopened-but Blundy already knew that, because he’d seen the smoke on the horizon. The warmspring census, taken after the first crop ofpost-winter babies had had a chance to be born, showed a planetwide population of 534,907, the highest for that season in nine years. The water temperature in Sometime River was up to 3.5 C, and there was an 80% chance of rain-
And then the woman came back in. She was alone.
She looked very sober as she made a phone call to the crematorium. It only took a moment to arrange for the disposition of her father’s remains.
Then, long before they were ready for it, it was their turn.
Inside the room Blundy sought out the cameras and found them, discreetly inconspicuous in corners of the room; the carrying out of sentences was a matter of public record. Few bothered to watch unless some relative was at risk, but Blundy squared his shoulders and assumed a properly grave expression.
The clerk looked directly at Petoyne and then looked down at his charge sheet. “Larasissa Petoyne Marcolli, first year, for wilfully failing to destroy a surplus animal,” he read. “Sentence is one in thousand. Come on, and hurry up,” he said, “because I want to get home sometime tonight.”