Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

and
further up a shaven skull, wide misshapen ears.
    She recognised him from those ears. He was a We-ku, one of a batch
of look-alikes who had come down from the Birthing Vat at the same
time, and had clung together ever since. If they had ever had their
own names, they had long abandoned them.
    She wasn’t about to be deathed by a We-ku. She pressed the heels
of her hands into his eyes and shoved.
    Her ankles started to slide out of his hands. The harder he
gripped, the more his clutching fingers slipped. She pointed her toes
and shoved harder.
    Then she was free.
    She pushed up to the surface and blew out a huge mouthful of dirt.
She prepared to take on the We-ku again, elbows and knees ready,
fingers clawing for the knife strapped to her thigh.
    But he didn’t come for her, not for one heartbeat, two, three. She
took the risk of wiping her eyes clear.
    The We-ku had already found another victim. He was pressing a body
into the dirt with his great fat hands. If he got his victim to the
floor, his piston legs would crack the spine or splinter the skull in
seconds.
    The We-ku was a surging monster of blood and filth. His eyes were
rimmed with blackness where she had bruised him.
    Something in La-ba rose up.
     
    At a time like this, a time of overcrowding, there was a lot of
deathing.
    You could see there were too many babies swarming out of the
Birthing Vat, the great pink ball that hovered in the air at the very
centre of the Observation Post. At rally hours you could look beyond
the Vat to the other side of the Post, where the people marched
around on the roof with their heads pointing down at you, and you
could see that almost every Cadre Square was overfull.
    Commissaries would come soon, bringing Memory. They would Cull if
they had to. The less the Commissaries had to Cull, the happier they
would be. It was the duty of every citizen of every cadre to bring
down their numbers.
    If you did well you would fly on a Shuttle out of here. You would
fly to Earth, where life un-ended. That was worded by the cadre
leaders. And if you hid and cowered, even if the amateur deathers
didn’t get to you, then the Old Man would. That was worded in the
dorms. Earth as paradise, as life; the Old Man as a demon, as death.
That was all that lay beyond the walls of the Post.
    La-ba had no reason to un-believe this. She had seen hundreds
deathed by others. She had deathed seventeen people herself.
    La-ba was tall, her body lithe, supple: good at what she was
trained for, deathing and sexing and hard physical work.
    La-ba was five years old. Already half her life was gone.
    She leapt out of the muck and onto the We-ku’s back, her knife in
her hand.
     
    The We-ku didn’t know whether to finish the death at his feet, or
deal with the skinny menace on his back. And he was confused because
what La-ba was doing was un-Doctrine. That confusion gave La-ba the
seconds she needed.
    Still, she almost had to saw his head clean off before he stopped
struggling.
    He sank at last into the dirt, which was now stained with whorls
of deep crimson. The head, connected only by bits of gristle and
skin, bobbed in the muck’s sticky currents.
    The We-ku’s intended victim struggled to his feet. He was about
La-ba’s height and age, she guessed, with a taut, well-muscled body.
He was naked, but crusted with dirt.
    She was aroused. Deathing always aroused her. Glancing down at his
crotch, at the stiff member that stuck out of the dirt there, she saw
that this other felt the same.
    ’You crimed,’ he breathed, and he stared at her with eyes that
were bright white against the dirt.
    He was right. She should have let the deathing go ahead, and then
taken out the We-ku. Then there would have been two deaths, instead
of one. She had been un-Doctrine.
    She glanced around. Nobody was close. Nobody had seen how the
We-ku died.
    Nobody but this man, this intended victim.
    ’Ca-si,’ he said. ’Cadre Fourteen.’ That was on the other side of
the sky.
    ’La-ba. Cadre Six. Will you report?’ If he did she could be
summarily executed, deathed before the day was out.
    Still he stared at her. The moment stretched.
    He said, ’We should process the We-ku.’
    ’Yes.’
    Breathing hard, they hauled the We-ku’s bulky corpse towards a
hopper. The work brought them close. She could feel the warmth of his
body.
    They dumped the We-ku into the hopper. It was already half-full,
of tangled limbs, purple guts, bits of people. La-ba kept back one
ugly We-ku ear