Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  He need only plot out the necessary moves so that he could call on that witch power just one more time. Just once. Just long enough to clean out the violent, rooted resistance to the idea that people had powers--and could work miracles!

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  Contents

  THE EXECUTIONER

  By Frank Riley

  "... Continued fair weather and the unusual circumstances of the execution promise a turn-away crowd of more than 100,000 spectators by Court time. All unreserved tent space has been sold out for several days. Next news at...."

  Sir Jacques de Carougne, Lord High Executioner for the Seventh Judicial District, spun the dial on the instrument panel of his single-seater rocket, but the vidcasts were over for another hour. He cursed, without too much vigor, and wished he had troubled to look at a vidcast or faxpaper during his vacation. But then he shrugged his massive shoulders.

  What did it matter? After a thousand executions, everything was instinct and reflex. Some died hard; some died easy. Some fell to their knees, too paralyzed with fear to fire their own shots. Others fought daringly, even with a degree of skill, but always the end was the same: A broken body bleeding and twitching in the dust; the blood-happy spectators shrieking in the ecstacy of release from the humdrum of their pushbutton lives; the flowers, the scented kerchiefs and the shreds of torn garments showered on him by screaming women, who always seemed to find him more satisfactory in the arena than in his tent.

  As the skyline of New Chicago shimmered into view, Jacques flipped on the 'copter mechanism. His air speed braked, and the needle-nosed little craft drifted lazily down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, then veered westward over the tinted glass rooftops of the spotless city.

  Jacques stared glumly down at the city that had been so much a part of his life, from the long-ago years of his training and youth to the professional years of his most famous executions.

  Farther to the west, out beyond the eternally green landscaping and the precise, functional homes of the residential suburbs, Jacques saw the crude stone parapets of the Chauvency judicial arena, surrounded by acre after acre of colorful tents and pavilions.

  His powerful, jutting nose wrinkled with disgust, but his eyes widened at the number of tents. There must indeed be something unusual about today's execution. He hadn't worked before that big a crowd for years. The Federal Bureau of Internal Tranquility should be happy about this one!

  Jacques sighed, still struggling against the despondency that had been within him since the vacation interlude with the brunette government worker in Curaçao had ended as unsatisfactorily as all the rest. Someday it would be his body bleeding in the dust, smashed at last by the soft-nosed bullets from Le Pistolet du Mort. Then the flowers and adulation would go to the condemned man, and the Bureau would add his name to the plaque at the base of the towering statue on the Washington Mall. So be it. He had played a long roll of the dice, and the stakes had been high. But if only once, just once before it ended....

  The bell on his instrument panel told him that the servo-pilot in the tower below had taken over for the landing. He sniffed with disgust again, but this time the disgust was for himself. God, but he was in a foul humor today! He released the controls and stared at his strong hands, grimly admiring them. There was still speed as well as strength in these fingers. His lips twisted into a thin smile, cold and confident. Whoever he was to meet at joute à l'outrance, let him try to match twenty years of training and skill!

  His rocket cradled with scarcely a jar into the small landing space at the north end of the arena, between the two replicas of 15th century towers, reproduced so faithfully by 22nd century technicians. Jacques squeezed his huge frame through the door of the small craft and looked dourly around. A squire, in scarlet leggings and tunic, his long black wig slightly askew, came running toward him and knelt three paces away, as prescribed by the Judicial Code of Heraldry.

  "Oh, sire!" he panted, "Thanks be that ye have arrived! The hour is well past noonday, and we had begun to fear...."

  "Time enough," Jacques growled. He gestured impatiently, and the squire clambered to his feet, bowing again.

  "This way, your Lordship!"

  The squire led him to the lower room in the north tower. It was the usual room of monastic simplicity--whitewashed stone walls, a single window, two wooden benches and a low couch on which his garments for the occasion had been carefully arrayed. After the execution, he would be moved to his black silk tent in the center of the camping grounds.

  While the squire fluttered around him, eager to be of help, Jacques removed his short-sleeved dacron shirt, kicked off his sandals and stepped out of the comfortable shorts he always wore for traveling. The squire gaped with awe at the sight of his muscular body.

  "M'Lord, truly thou art a powerful man!"

  Jacques looked down at him with mixed contempt and amusement. The squire was a thin, pale little man, with the pinched look of nearsightedness about his eyes. His wig and tunic were much too big for him.

  "What do you do, Squire?" Jacques inquired, not unkindly.

  The man looked hurt, as if the question reflected somehow on his ability to serve as a squire to the Lord High Executioner.

  "Computer development," he muttered. "Resonating pentode circuits." Then he drew himself up defensively, with not a little pride. "But I placed at the top of the list in the Bureau's test for squires!"

  "That's fine," Jacques commented drily. "Now hurry, let's see what you learned...."

  "Dress him handsomely, Squire!" boomed a taunting voice from the doorway. "Our Lord High Executioner faces a rare challenge this day!"

  Jacques recognized the voice of Guy de Archambault, the Court Bailiff, whose bilious nose he intended to grind into the dust one of these fine days. But his anger at the Bailiff's intrusion was overbalanced by curiosity.

  "What's all the excitement about?" he demanded. "Who's on the docket, anyway?"

  The Bailiff grinned mockingly.

  "Forsooth, M'Lord, restrain thy impatience! In the Court's good time wilt ye learn...."

  "Oh, knock off that drivel, will you! Court's not in session yet...."

  The Bailiff's huge belly shook with laughter.

  "Have it your own way, Jacques, m'boy! But in any vernacular the meaning's the same--you're in for quite a surprise, if rumor has it right!"

  "Out with it, then! I can see you've been waiting to tell me."

  The grin broadened on the Bailiff's puffy lips.

  "You can bet your last sou on that! It would have broken my heart not to be the first to tell you...."

  Jacques took a threatening step toward him.

  "I'll break more than your heart if you don't answer my question...."

  "Patience, pa--Oh, all right!" the Bailiff hastily interrupted himself as Jacques took another step in his direction. "You've got a woman to shoot down this time--and that's just half the story!"

  Jacques' craggy features hardened into immobility.

  "What's the rest of it, fool?"

  "There's gossip going around that she's a page out of your past--maybe several pages, or even a whole chapter!"

  Jacques leaped the rest of the distance to the door and grabbed the Bailiff by his lace collar, twisting it until his round, fat cheeks swelled and reddened.

  "Who is it?"

  "L-Lady Ann--of--Coberly!"

  Jacques thumped his head against the side of the doorway.

  "I told you to knock off that drivel."

  "But--but that's all I know--I swear it! I just got here this morning, too, and took a quick peek at the calendar when I heard all the rumors out among the tents...!"

  Jacques shoved him out into the hallway, and stalked back into the room. The Bailiff straightened his collar, but made no move to leave.

  "M'Lord," he jibed, breathing heavily, "there's also a rumor that you have no stomach for executing any woman. Can that be true?"

  Jacques only scowled in reply, but he knew that this rumor, at
least, was true. The last woman had been back in the Fifth Judicial District. A flint-faced murderess with the shoulders of a man. But the horror of firing the coup du mort into her naked, contorted body still came back to haunt his dreams. For weeks afterwards he hadn't been able to touch the women who came so eagerly to his tent during the wild execution night Festivals.

  The Bailiff's coarse voice continued to prod at him:

  "I'm sure you'll remember this one, once you see her! I've just come from watching her being dressed for Court!" The Bailiff's bloodshot right eye winked suggestively. "My duty, y'know, to protect their Judicial Highnesses by checking for concealed weapons."

  "Get out of here!"

  The Bailiff fell back a step, but continued talking.

  "I'd say she's your type all right--full of fire! Too bad you have to kill her instead of...."

  Jacques ripped the white tunic from his squire's trembling hands and hurled it into the Bailiff's face. Guy de Archambault waddled back out of danger, then finding that he was not followed, poked his head around the edge of the door.

  "Prithee, Sir Jacques, have ye any message for their Judicial Highnesses?"

  "Yes, damn you! Tell them to get someone else for this infernal execution--and be quick about it!"

  With a gleeful chuckle, the Bailiff disappeared again. The little squire picked up the white tunic and brushed it off dejectedly. If he missed this opportunity to serve as squire to the Lord High Executioner, his name would rotate to the bottom of the list and he might not have a chance to serve again before it was time to make up new lists.

  Jacques strode to the window. Lady Ann of Coberly. The name could mean anything or nothing, according to the whimsy of the lower courts. Lady Ann.... Ann! But it couldn't be her--Or could it? Jacques looked far down the years to a youngster just out of training, eager to prove himself in the execution arena. There had been an Ann then, and she had left one morning taking a young man's heart with her, leaving behind only the unfathomable look of reproach and disappointment that he had come since to know so well.

  But it couldn't be that Ann! He tried to create the image of her face, but saw only the acres of spectator tents, their bright pennants snapping in the wind, and the open squares teeming with spectacular costumes copied from medieval history books by an atomic age which found in the pageantry of execution-day its one escape from safe, sanitized, prescribed living. The Arthurian song of a strolling minstrel drifted up to him....

  "To the fairest of all maidens,

  To Argante, the Queen, most beauteous elf,

  She will make my wounds all sound,

  And with a healing draught make me full well...."

  Jacques clenched his great fists. No, he wouldn't do it. Seniority entitled him to some consideration. If necessary, he'd put a call through to the Bureau. They'd understand. His record was good. He'd always performed faithfully, meeting death every session, dealing it out to young and old alike.

  But not to a woman; certainly not to a woman who might have meant a great deal to him! During the long spartan years of his training, the isolated years of monastic living at a time when youth burned strongest in him, the image of woman had become a haunting dream, unreal as the moonlight streaming through his curtainless window, untouchable as the mist of a summer morning. A sense of that image and unreality still persisted, even after all the women who had come to him so willingly and had left with that undefinable look of unhappiness deep in their eyes.

  Since that woman back in the Fifth District, he'd been lucky with his executions. Not too many women drew the death penalty, and the few times women had been on his docket he had learned of it sufficiently in advance to pretend illness or make up some plausible excuse for emergency leave. But today had taken him totally by surprise.

  The squire shuffled up behind him, and begged,

  "Please, your Lordship, shall we not don these garments now?"

  Jacques shook his head so impatiently that the squire scurried back in fright.

  And then the Bailiff's voice intoned sonorously from the doorway:

  "His Highness, Chief Justice of the Seventh Judicial District!"

  Jacques turned in time to see the Bailiff bow low. The Chief Justice entered with a swish of ceremonial robes. He was followed by a tall, thin man, dressed in knightly costume. The Bailiff made a second bow, and spoke again:

  "His Excellency, Sir Mallory, representing the Federal Bureau of Internal Tranquility!"

  Jacques felt suddenly relieved. It was good to have someone from his own Bureau here. These judges were too cold, too impersonal.

  The Chief Justice was carrying his wig, which was not yet fully powdered. His heavy jowls quivered with indignation.

  "What's this nonsense, Sir Jacques?" he demanded imperiously. "Court is ready to convene--We have no time to get another executioner!"

  "I'm sorry, your Highness, but I must ask your indulgence this one time."

  "Impossible!"

  Sir Mallory stepped forward and smiled in a conciliatory manner.

  "Perhaps Sir Jacques does not understand all the circumstances," he said soothingly. "You see, Sir Jacques, this execution is very important to FBIT. There hasn't been a first-rate execution in nearly three years, and this is the only release we've had to offer the public in all that time. Of course, the Court still must decide in its own wisdom whether there are any grounds for setting aside the verdict, but we would not want any of our Bureau personnel to be responsible for disappointing the public."

  "I've always done my duty," Jacques protested. "But this one time--"

  "The FBIT is well aware of your splendid record," Sir Mallory interrupted, striking a hearty note of sincerity. "Your services have been deeply appreciated in these difficult times. Yet, we must always take the long view! Particularly 'this one time', as you say. Technology has rushed us into a world without need for strife or conflict, but man has not yet matured enough for such a world--and he needs release to prevent dangerous explosions. Believe me, Sir Jacques, it would not be wise to postpone today's execution!"

  The Chief Justice cleared his throat angrily.

  "And it's not wise to stand here talking while my court is waiting to convene," he snapped "Sir Mallory, can't you remind this man of his oath, his duty, and be done with it?"

  Jacques felt his own anger rising.

  "I know my oath," he growled, "but--"

  "Of course, of course," murmured Sir Mallory, "and the FBIT shares your feelings. We also deplore--naturally--the idle gossip that is circulating to build such interest in this execution. But circumstances are beyond our control, Sir Jacques. As public servants, we must serve...."

  The Chief Justice shook his wig in Jacques' face.

  "Your answer, man!" he demanded. "Are you or are you not going to perform your duty?"

  Sir Mallory stepped back, spreading out his hands as if to show Jacques there was nothing more he could do about it.

  Jacques stood tautly erect, impassive, while his mind reeled on a hairline balance between defiance and submission. He knew that more than this one issue would be decided by his next words. His entire professional life was involved, everything he had trained and fought for since he had been selected for the service at the age of thirteen. A wrong word, and he could be dismissed by the Bureau. The rest of his years would be spent in a cubicle in some atom-powered plant, where he'd have his own button to push for two hours every day. The monotony would be intolerable after the way he had lived!

  But to send his bullets smashing into the body of a woman who might be Ann.... Sweat trickled down the chiseled furrows of his cheeks. Beside him, the little squire was a study in still life, poised with one foot forward, the white tunic still draped on his outstretched arm.

  "Sir Jacques, we are waiting for your reply," prompted the cold voice of the Chief Justice.

  A turbulent voice within Jacques urged him to turn his back on all of them, but prudence counseled that he play for time. From Sir Mallory's oily man
ner, he could very well have made up and circulated the gossip about his supposed past relationship with this condemned woman. It might be wise to wait a bit before making a decision that could be so final.

  Jacques bowed, and said hoarsely.

  "I await the orders of the Court, Your Highness."

  If the Chief Justice noted that Jacques said "await" instead of the more correct "will obey", he gave no sign of it.

  "Very well," he said. "Court will convene in five minutes." He turned so abruptly that he almost bumped into the Bailiff, who was making a poor effort to cover his disappointment.

  Sir Mallory smiled at Jacques, and said warmly:

  "The FBIT is proud of you!"

  When they had left the room, the still frightened squire stuttered:

  "S-shall we d-dress, Sire?"

  Jacques walked without answering to the couch and sat down on the edge of it.

  "Get a move on!" he ordered. His feelings were in turmoil: He was desperately eager to see this Lady Ann, yet he dreaded the moment. If this was the Ann....

  Fingers trembling, the squire anointed each muscular shoulder with three drops of perfumed oil, after which he drew over Jacques' head and upper body the white tunic--white to symbolize the purity of motive in entering the execution arena. Next came the black breeches and hose--black for the eternal remembrance of death. Over the tunic came the flaming red jupon, blazoned on the sleeves with gules and on the back with a lion rampant argent. On his left shoulder, the squire fixed a lace of white silk, representing a deed not yet accomplished. Following the execution, a woman who had won the honor in her plant lottery would cut it off.

  After lacing on Jacques' boots, the squire stepped back, snatching an instant to admire his handiwork.

  "Well done, Squire," said Jacques. "Now, let's be off!"

  The squire flushed and beamed in gratitude. He picked up the silver case containing the two Pistolet du Mort, one for Jacques, one for the condemned person.

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