I met up with slippery old Bully Daumerle at Cantina #3, which is where he lurks when human nature rubs up against the cold hard fact of the big prison ships. He’s a reporter who knows his beat: when verdicts are handed down, tensions in the cantina start to rise and the place fills up with beady eyes and clenched fists. Bully fits right in. Danger or not, big cases mean a shot at big stories, and no case was bigger that year than Rat Casper.

 

I don’t fit in, but when I stand by the portal with the galaxy spread out behind me I look imposing and people avoid me. That day it was standing room only at the holo-field, where protestors on all sides had been gathering to pretend like they could really interact with the wheels of justice. The rest of us watched the proceedings on the live viewing screens, sipping our drinks, while the mobs shouted at one another on the floor and occasionally checked the screens to make sure their impotent movements in the bar looked sufficiently impressive in the real-time feed where they were projected.

 

“I hate these people,” Bully said, feigning indifference. “Pretending they care so much but really just wanting to get their faces on that screen to impress their friends. They would never take the time to actually go to the piss-poor planets where these trials actually happen. They just come here and get wasted and brag about their commitment.”

 

“I like it. It’s passion. Without passion, the system is too cold and bureaucratic.”

 

“You would know, Lieutenant. Okay, so whaddya have?”

 

“Off the record, right?”

 

“Yeah, yeah — the usual deal.”

 

As always, I was struck by the contrast between the crazed populist rage on the holo-field and the serenity of the prison ship docked outside the viewport. The hugeness of space made human emotions seem petty. The stars don’t care what happens to people. Somewhere in the bowels of that ship Rat Casper would have just finished his final meal.

 

“They’re trying out a new drug. Supposedly it’s been designed to create maximum pain.”

 

Bully didn’t write anything down but just stared at me, then out at the holo-field.

 

“Why would they want to do that?”

 

I punched some instructions into the BarTendr and gave Bully the drink it dispensed.

 

“They say he’s a monster and they want him to suffer. He murdered a lot of people.”

 

“You ever meet someone who wasn’t a monster? We’re all monsters.”

 

The competing rhetoric on the holo-field was threatening to become violent, and the projections up on the feed indicated that the empty celebrities behind each side’s rhetoric had worked. No one up there knew anything — they just pretended that they knew and made a lot of noise.

 

Bully tasted his drink. “He’s been given seven death sentences. Seven. What’s the point?”

 

“I guess it sends a message.”

 

“Message. Give me a break. One death, two deaths, seven deaths — it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t mean anything.” He regarded his notebook, then again decided not to write anything in it. “This drink ain’t bad. What do you call it?”

 

“One and Only Jasmine. But don’t get attached to it; you won’t find it anywhere else. I gave the computer my personal secret recipe.”

 

Now the feed was showing Rat Casper’s face as they administered the new injection. Bully threw back the rest of his drink and stood up.

 

“I don’t need to watch a man die. But thanks for the tip. I’ll write up something and I bet even you will like it.”

 

The live feed now alternated between Rat Casper’s face on the prison ship and the virtual crowds that pretended to be there. Then they cut away from Rat, deciding apparently that the effects of a new injection designed to cause maximum pain were too much even for space media.

 

When it was over they cut back to his body on the stretcher and I looked at it, remembering Jasmine’s face and what that face must have looked like when Rat first grabbed her in a bar a lot like this one. For anyone else I might have agreed with Bully that seven death sentences was a redundant and pointless message to send, but you know how it is when you are personally involved: you suspend your ability to think rationally.

 

Now that Rat was dead the people on the holo-floor had nothing left to protest on either side of the issue, so they became silent and still and kept their eyes on the screen.

 

The cold metal arms of the Executioner reached out and tested the restraints holding Rat down on his gurney. In the old days — way back when I had come to a ship just like this one to see my first execution — the robot would now have the job of loosening them so the body could be processed. But now, of course, it was imperative that they remain tight.

 

Rat’s eyes suddenly flew open, and fresh sweat beaded his face. He worked his mouth frantically, as if he had forgotten how to speak. Death does that to a man. He gasped something that might have been “What — ” and then he saw the Executioner and his eyes bulged and his arms tensed against the restraints. He screamed, but on the video feed it was silent.

 

They had programmed the Executioner to sound as human as possible, but that never works. The voice that came from the voiceplate buzzed and crackled with cold mechanical disinterest.

 

“Execution Number One completed. Subject restored. Preparing second injection. Pain level increased.”

 

How many times can a man’s life flash before his eyes? I wondered as I told the BarTendr to make me a second drink.