Impossible to know, she realized. For if she had come humbly, she would not have been herself and so who could then predict how she would have acted?
Beside her, Josif gasped. Kyaren looked closely at the vids again. It was just another man in the dock, one she didn't know. Who is it? she asked.
Bant, Josif said, gnawing at his knuckles.
In all their thinking, they hadn't thought of this-that Bant, of course, as head of Vitals, had to be involved. Kyaren had never met him, but felt that she knew him through Josif. Yet what she knew of him was his hilarity, his insistence that lovemaking had to be fun. Kyaren hadn't enjoyed imagining Josif making love with a man, but that much, at least, had been impossible for Josif not to talk about. Apparently Bant's greed for sex was just a facet of his overall greed; his unconcern for Josif's feelings was part of a general unconcern for anyone.
All those charged were convicted. They were alt sentenced to five to thirty years in hard labor, deported, and permanently exiled from Earth, permanently barred from government employment. It was a severe sentence. Apparently it was not severe enough.
The announcer began talking about the need to make an example of these people, lest others decide that a group scam on government funds might be worth the risks. As he talked, the vids showed a man from the back, walking toward the line of prisoners. The prisoners all had guards behind them; their hands were bound. They looked toward the man who approached them, and their faces suddenly looked alarmed. The vids backed off so that the viewers could see why. The man held a blade. Not a laser -a blade, made of metal, a frightening thing in part because it was so ancient and barbaric.
Ferret, Kyaren said, and Josif nodded. The vids didn't show the man's face, but they were quite sure they recognized him.
And then Ferret reached the first of the prisoners, paused before him, then moved to the next, paused. It was not until the fourth prisoner that the hand lashed out; the blade caught the prisoner at the point where the jaw meets the ear, then flashed to the left and emerged at the same point on the other side. For a moment the prisoner looked surprised, just surprised. Then a red line appeared along his throat, and suddenly blood erupted and spurted from the wound, spattering those to either side. The body sagged, the mouth struggling to speak, the eyes pleading for the act to somehow be undone. It was not undone. The guard behind the man held him up, and when the prisoner's head sagged forward, the guard grabbed the hair and pulled the head back, so that the face could be seen. The action also made the wound gape, like the maw of a piranha. And finally the blood stopped pumping and the ferret, his back still to the vids, nodded. The guard let the man drop to the floor.
Apparently the vids had shown this execution in detail because it was the first. As the ferret walked along, snicking the throats of every third, fourth, or fifth prisoner, the vids did not hold close for the dying, as they had with the first; rather the program moved quickly.
Kyaren and Josif did not notice, however. Because from the moment the blade first flashed forward, catching the prisoner in the throat, Josif had been screaming. Kyaren tried to force him to look away from the vids, tried to make him hide his eyes from the man's death, but even as he screamed piteously, Josif refused to take his eyes from the sight of the blood and the agony. And when the prisoner sagged forward, Josif wept loudly, crying, Bant! Bant!
Now they knew how the ferret unmade people. He must, Kyaren thought, he must have known how Josif felt about Bant, chose to kill him knowing that, as if to say, You can denounce the criminal, but you cannot do it without consequences.
Kyaren was sure that his choice of victim had been deliberate, for when he got to the last six people, he slowed down, looking each one of them in the eyes. The prisoners were reacting very differently, some trying to be stoic about their possible death, some trying to plead with him, some near vomiting with fear or disgust. With each person he passed, the next became more sure that he was the victim-the ferret had not skipped more than four people in a row before. And then he came to the last one.
The last one was Warvel, who was utterly certain that he would die--five had already been passed over. And Kyaren, her arms around Josif, who wept softly beside her, found herself inwardly pleased, sickeningly pleased, that Warvel would also die. If Bant, then surely Warvel.
Then the ferret snaked out his hand. But not to kill. For the hand now was empty, and he caught Warvel by the neck, pulled him forward away from the guard. Warvel stumbled, nearly fell, his knees were so weak. But the vids carried the sound of Ferret's voice. Pardon this one. The emperor pardons this one.
And Warvel's bonds were loosed as the announcer's voice began talking about how the emperor was to be remembered always-because when someone cheated or abused the people, the emperor would be the people's champion and carry out their vengeance. But always the emperor's justice is tempered with mercy. Always the emperor remembers that even the worst of criminals is still one of the emperor's people.
Warvel.
Bant.
Whatever the ferret wanted to teach us, Kyaren whispered silently, so that even she could hardly hear the thought as her lips moved. Whatever the ferret wanted to teach us, we have learned. We have learned.
And that was why Kyaren and Josif were in Babylon when Ansset was placed there.
4
For the first time in his life, Ansset lost songs.
Up to now, everything that had happened to him had added to his music. Even Mikal's death had taught him new songs, and deepened all the old ones.
He spent only one month as a prisoner, but he spent it songless. Not that he meant to keep his silence. Occasionally, at first, he tried to sing. Even something simple, something he had learned as a child. The sounds came out of his throat well enough, but there was no fulfillment in it. The song always sounded empty to him, and he could not bring himself to go on.
Ansset speculated on death, perhaps because of the constant reminder of the urn that had held Mikal's ashes, perhaps because he felt entombed in the dusty room with its constant reminders of a long-gone past. Or perhaps because the drugs that delayed the Songbird's puberty were now wearing off, and the changes came on more awkwardly because of the artificial delay. Ansset awoke often in the night, troubled by strange and unfulfilling dreams. Small for his age, he began to feel restless, an urge to grapple violently with someone or something, a passion for movement that, in the confines of Mikal's rooms, he could not fulfill.
This is what the dead feel, Ansset thought. This is what they go through, shut up in their tombs or caught, embarrassingly, in public without their bodies. Ghosts may long to simply touch something, but bodiless they cannot; they may wish for heat, for cold, for even the delicious-ness of pain, but it Is all denied them.
He counted days. With the poker from the fire he notched each morning in the ashes in the hearth, in spite of the fact that the ashes were of Mikal's body-or perhaps because of it. And, at last, the day came when his contract was expired and he could finally go home.
How could Riktors have misinterpreted him so? In all his years with Mikal, Ansset had never had to lie to him; and in his time with Riktors, there had also been a kind of honesty, though silences fell between them on certain matters. They had not been like father and son, as he and Mikal had been. They were more like brothers, though there was some confusion as to which of them was the elder brother, which the rambunctious younger one who had to be comforted, checked, counseled, and consoled. And now, simply by being honest, Ansset had touched a place in Riktors that no one could have guessed was there-the man could be vindictive without calculation, cruel even to the helpless.