consideration which need not be neglected.”
The peasant understood very little of this.
“There is a way,” she said, “to reduce the energy, the power, the unacceptable aggressiveness, of your nature.”
He did not understand.
“Too, you understand, of course, that genes such as yours, so antisocial, so dangerous, are not to be propagated,” she continued.
He did not know what genes were.
It was soon made clear to him however that he had two choices, one was to be smoothed, and then remanded for an indefinite time to the public fields, and the other was to be remanded to the arena. The judge, who hated and feared men such as he, in her pettiness and vanity, had thought it amusing to give him this choice, in order that it might be he, himself, who would choose his own unmanning. He would thus do her will, humiliating and demeaning himself, by his own will.
But he had said, “No.”
There had been gasps, whispers, consternation in the small court.
The judge herself had been for the moment struck speechless.
“You leave me no choice,” she had then said, in inexplicable fury. He was remanded to the arena, into the keeping of its master.
“Take him away,” she had said.
Then the officer of the court, her daughter, in her dark blue robe, had stepped forth, with the guards, and he had been conducted from the courtroom.
There was a cry from the crowd as the barang, gripped in both hands by one of the large, soft men, after some vicious, tentative feints, held back at the last moment, at last struck loose the first head, it flying from the body. One of the waddling dwarfs, comically exaggerating his gait, to the amusement of the crowd, rushed after it, having apparently missed catching it in his basket. He seemed much chagrined. He leaped up and down, as though in frustration. He hurried to the head, putting his basket down beside it. He picked up the head by the hair and wagged his finger at it, as though scolding it. He pointed to the basket. Then he put it in his basket. The body had remained kneeling, as they will, for a time, if the blow is swift enough, and clean enough. The arterial blood, stimulated by the terror of the victim, a terror artificially increased by the feints, spurts to an unusual height. If you have seen this, you will understand what I mean, what it is like. It is ugly to watch. It is a little like a fountain. It spatters about. If one is near, it is easy to be soiled. Dwarfs, with their measuring boards, marked heights on the boards. Other dwarfs, with their hooks, the body then fallen heavily into the sand, rushed forward, striking into the body with the hooks, then drawing it across the sand, in a bloody furrow, toward the dead gate.
Another head then flew away, even farther than the first.
A cheer rang out.
There was betting here and there in the stands, on the height the blood would reach on the boards, on the distance to which the heads might fly, on whether or nor a head would be caught. To be sure, the large, soft men, it was rumored, could control such things, at least the distance and direction of the projectile, by varying the angle of the blow, by turning the blade a little, just at the last instant. It was rumored there was collusion sometimes, between them and gamblers, in the stands.
The hymn to Floon, as thin, as frail, as pathetic as it might seem, was audible in the arena.
There were, of course, far worse ways to die, at least with respect to torture, to pain, and such. There was the rack and, the pincers, the tongs, the knives, the pegs, the skewers, the knotted cords, the stake, the burning irons, such things, such devices, and many others, which would only later, much later, be brought to scrupulous perfection by the adherents of Floon himself, usually for application to other adherents of Floon, heretics, schizmatics and such. Indeed, such devices, on the whole, were seldom employed by the empire, which commonly tended to exercise a certain restraint, or taste, in such matters, given pause, seemingly, by scruples which would seldom deter the later adherents of Floon, but then the adherents of Floon would always possess, it would seem to the peasant, a certain petty, low-class vindictiveness, that of the little person into whose hands suddenly comes power. The most common device of the empire was the rack. It might even appear in courtrooms, where it was commonly employed in the extraction of testimony from slaves. Indeed, a slave was normally fastened on the rack before his testimony was taken, it being assumed that the veridicality of his testimony might be best assured by such a device. But there were the beasts, however. The empire was fond of them. Doubtless because of the spectacle they could provide. These beasts, ravenous, tortured by hunger, released into the arena, driven wild by the scent of blood and flesh, would lose little time in attacking, and feeding.
No, decapitation was presumably, as such things went, a merciful death. It was quick. The head presumably did not think for very long, if at all, after it was cut off, and in the sand, or a basket. The stroke of the barang was doubtless superior to certain other deaths, such as those of the lingering, wasting diseases, or the cannibalistic diseases, in which parts of one’s body seemed to devour other parts.
Another head flew from a body. There was another cheer.
Most of the adherents of Floon in the arena were citizens of the empire, at least nominally. That was quite possibly why the barang was being used. It was thought to constitute an honorable death, one acceptable for citizens. Too, of course, beasts were expensive, and had to be kept fed between shows. Some entrepreneurs transported them from world to world, in menageries, for various games, various spectacles. Sometimes they escaped on shipboard. But such rentals did not come cheap. Floon had not been a citizen of the empire. He had died in an electric chair, or in what we have spoken of as an electric chair, in order to use a term which seems sufficiently appropriate. The actual device is a sort of burning rack. The crime, if one may think of it along those lines, of the adherents of Floon in the arena, was the refusal to place a sprig of laurel on the altar of the genius of the empire, on the porch of the town hall. This small ceremony was usually performed by civic officials, on behalf of the town. It would commonly take place on the birthday of the current emperor, and on certain holidays, the day set aside, for example, to commemorate the acceptance into the empire of the federation of the thousand suns. Once a year each citizen was expected to come to the altar and place his sprig of laurel, or a pinch of incense, or a flower, even one plucked from the wayside, on the altar. This ceremony, as innocent as it seemed to most, at least those who were not adherents of Floon, was repudiated, at that time, by many of the adherents of Floon. The townships tended to ignore this matter, but it was of some concern to the empire. Sporadically an edict would emanate from the Telnarian worlds pertaining to the enforcement of this ceremony, it normally being construed as a touchstone for allegiance to the empire. When the empire felt most threatened it seemed it took such things most seriously. It feared, you see, as absurd as these fears might be, given the solidity and eternality of the empire, internal dissension, and even sedition. There may have been troubles at these times, too, troubles not clearly understood by most in the empire, about the borders, and their security. Sometimes one even heard absurd rumors to the effect that they might have been breached, that there might actually be barbarians, dangerous barbarians, within the territory of the empire itself. It was not always too clear just what might be occurring, so much might take place, so far away. Information, you see, was not always available, or reliable. Things then, you see, were not really so different from now. When it became clear that imperial officials were quite serious about this matter, most townships would collect a small number of the adherents of Floon, and request that they perform the ceremony. Many of them, sensibly enough, or so it seemed to the civic authorities, would do so, but some, of course, would not. This placed the civic authorities in the unpleasant situation of either enforcing or ignoring imperial edicts. Accordingly, from time to time, on many of the worlds, a number of the adherents of Floon, usually a small number, were fined, or placed in prison, or even consigned to the arena. The great majority, who tended to be quiet, law-abiding, productive citizens, were usually left unmolested, and might even be left free to visit their fellow adherents in prison.
There was another swift stroke of a barang, and another head was lifted from its body, and this time one of the dwarfs caught it in his basket.
There was a cheer from the crowd.
Money exchanged hands in the crowd.
“You need not have been here,” she had said, earlier, having come across the sand, before the crowds, to point to him, to order him bound. “The choice was yours,” she had said. It was true. He had chosen death to castration. The judge had not understood that, or, perhaps, given her fury, she had understood it only too well. He
