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Ch. 15

Around him, other condemned talk about why they hang.

“I was at the battle for the cook.”

“Me too.”

“Picked up for breaking curfew.”

“Others say the same.”

But Uh’ knows that none of them are truly guilty of anything except being a danger to the Elders. He, a link to the past. A surrogate for what they would have liked to do to her. And now he and all the rest of them wait to be executed for their crimes. But he won’t be singled out until after. Proof that Soya was dead and her thoughts should die with her. But for him, used only as a moment of punctuation for the history books.

He doesn’t have much more time to consider it as the 12 condemned in his lock are shoved forward into the one in front of it. He is in a funnel system and the system seems to be moving them ever closer to the gallows. The clunk-clunk and jerking drop and then a wet splat a moment later.

Efficient.

They are pushed through a new gate by the force of the Upu behind them and the band through their wrists. Pain, the ultimate motivator, they would all avoid it right into death. Uh’ does the only activity he is offered, he shuffles along the worn floor between two walls filled with cells and barred doors filled with thousands of haunted faces leering down waiting their turn in this death march, or to be freed as witnesses. A Soya tactic.

Maybe they have been promised they too will end up like this so when they are freed and offered jobs they’ll crack heads with gusto to avoid the outcome they’ve already witnessed over and over again. Not him though, soon the whole world will be privy to his death. It almost makes him proud. Recorders are high above and he remembers the most ludicrous thing to have forgotten. The reason they kill them like this. The citizenry demand entertainment, those not in open revolt. Those who will follow whomever wins. He never assumed one glimpse it would be his turn under this spotlight. His beckoner pulls him closer to the noose that will punctuate his life by another paddock and, like everyone else, he’ll be executed live for all Grotto to see.

He stops and watches a group of twelve Naht-do inmates perform an ancient wing lifting ceremony. Long ago, the Naht-do lost most of their Upu like qualities, being their planet was much warmer and much more hospitable for predators, their vestigial wings became a hindrance. Fluttering uselessness. Nature eventually made not having them a quality potential mates sought. This ceremony was a celebration of the flight their shared ancestors had. It could take a lifetime to get the motions right, but when done perfectly the worshipper seems to be soaring through the air. Some of the prisoners Uh’ watches, seem to have been practicing most of their lives, likely in secret. This religion, like all religions, was deemed illegal. Many collected here seem to have also taken solace in the ancient ways denied them at the twilight of their existence. It was interesting to watch the more traditional Naht-do prepare to end their lives. Considered barbarians they preferred sleeping the traditional way, upside down and only consumed insect proteins. Owning a Naht-do was expensive.

“A slave's discipline is astounding, no?”

Shuhp is startled by the voice in his ear.

He turns and a Naht-do is standing next to him. His hide is thick and blue from scarring. Veins crisscross his labor strengthened muscle. His mouth smiles but his eyes do something else. Uh’ suddenly feels very close to urinating out of fear when he notes the correction center logo, bars with a bolt of electricity running through them, branded into his chest.

“Almost like they should be running the planet, wouldn't you say?”

Uh’ keeps quiet. Soya would rant at times about the possibility of a slave revolt and how dangerous the situation on Grotto was. Millions of Naht-do were owned by a second or third generation within the same family that originally bought them.

“I recognize you. You are the famous Soya property, yes?”

He nods, because it doesn’t matter who knows but regardless his heart pumps even harder, because others have been made aware he is in the queue to be hanged. Somehow that makes it more real. Hanged. Him. And then the moment of anxiety passes, because what can he do about any of it? Soya is dead and he did what he said he would do. He gave her Spatial Folding. And she is both alive and dead now forever.

“I saw the great-mathematician once.”

The slave-jaoler stares hate into him, “I was repulsed by her and awed all at once. I realized, when I heard you were here to hang for her crimes, I had to come pay my respects,” he says working his eyes up Uh’ from his toes to the crown of his head, “you must have been there also.”

“I never left her side,” Uh’ replies.

“And now you die here in front of the people that wanted to crown her empress.”

Here being the bottom layer of the Penal Complex, an unfinished red rock cavern that once was a mine that yielded nothing but a hole straight down to the abyss.

It seems the 300,000 condemn quiet as the engagement continues, maybe it makes their death more meaningful to die with Soya Yee’s slave. Uh’ allows the silence to build. There's a constant drip. Wild red moss sprouts everywhere. A nightmare of a place to die made all the worse by the shadows walking around being prodded to their deaths.

“I’m past ready to die,” he says, relishing the gasp, like a sweet cliff-facing breeze.

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Then the clunk-clunk and the condemned seem to come alive again waiting for their deaths. The block of muscle next to him stiffens at Uh’s bravado and points his beckoner and hits the red button on its face.

Uh’ lets loose a painful grunt through gritted teeth. The giant slave-jaoler prods him into the next paddock closer to the scaffolding. He goes on stiff legs that he no longer controls. He is the thirteenth condemned in this paddock.

He watches as another group climbs the stairs he knows soon his own feet will abuse. They climb seven steps and are stopped under a dangling rope over trap doors. It is obvious they fight very hard to do the opposite of what the electricity flowing through their body compels. Stand still and wait for death.

On the scaffolding, an Upu in a black hood grabs and holds onto a dinge-colored section of woven rope.

Uh’ turns away as the executioner pulls the rope and his eyes fall immediately on the giant naht-do behind him laughing and waving the beckoner.

You’re next, he mouths.

Wielded by an expert the pain of a beckoner could motivate a body to do anything. Wielded by an amateur it could kill within fractions. The only thing in danger of killing Uh’ was a rope and he turns away from the slave-jaoler and watches the executioner wrap the necks of a new set of doomed on stage.

“The rope itches,” one begs, “please,” wiggling as if being tortured. Uh’ has seen a dozen executions during his life. The privilege of Soya being among the Elders. Some go smoothly, others go worse. In the next batch of condemned, an Upu slave fights so hard against the beckoner. Uh’ is sure he is about to catch fire. The harder he fights the deadlier shade of orange it glows, until, yes, he becomes engulfed in flames. He tries to run off the scaffolding as his screams echo and ends up running into the length of rope around his neck.

Clunk clunk and the rest of the burning Upu’s lock hang with him, twitching.

Which one will he be, the runner of the complacent? He has time to think about it as they replace the burnt rope.

Then a voice in his ear, “Uh’ is that you?”

He turns and looks up into a familiar grey-skinned Nahtdo face, “Rantira!”

The old cook is in dinge-colored coveralls and his ears droop like they were snapped in half at some point and never treated, just like he last saw him.

“Today I would serve him red-moss in puck form with a neon pink gravy,” his voice sounds forced and painful, but Uh’ appreciates the humor.

“And I would gobble it up. I thought you were dead!” He clasps his hand to the slave’s shoulder, missing the flinch of revoltion.

“Yes, soon you are dead.”

“We both are. Maybe you just don’t know it yet.”

“Very true Shuhp Yee, I will die here also.”

His voice raspy, it is broken. Uh’ diagnoses him as having throat cancer and judges the growth on the Naht-do’s long thick neck and thinks, yes, it might even be growing as he watches.

“I miss your neon gravy,” Shuhp says happy for another moment. And he really does, though in the end he could eat very little of it. He misses Rantira’s food and everything about his old life so much. He didn’t know it until just now. It was just one of those things best had when not available. The last decade had given him no desire for food. Everything felt like it was the driest, nearly inedible, versions of the ingredients one could have. He only seemed served red-moss farthest from its freshest point and just before what would be considered rotted. Likely cancer also. He never complained. And Soya never noticed.

They all longed for death.

“Neon soup, imagine if Rantira served such extravagance,” and then Rantira hocks blood up into his palm. “Sorry, happy they are killing me, us actually. Get this over with,” he says.

“Cruel, that’s what living with that is,” Uh’ agrees.

“I’ve been blessedly unnoticed and allowed to keep dying. Now we are here together,” he points to the cancer, “means I’m more profitable to the Elders by hanging. I guess.”

Then their attention is drawn to the gallows.

“No! No!” a forlorn condemned bellows- attempting to run before being fitted with a noose, then a severe shock from his beckoner brings him to convulsions and prone. Uh’ again refuses to watch, but he can hear the poor creature’s head bouncing off the smoothed stone floor and the uhn, uhn, uhn sound he makes as his body fights against the electrical current flowing through it. Uh’ imagines the foamy puddle dripping from the property’s mouth. He doesn’t care enough about what remains of his existence to get violent, especially when that's the reward. He decides to just give them the death they seek, he is so close to his own anyway it really doesn’t matter. He can smile knowing his life was good and it shouldn’t matter about his present. Which births a conundrum, did he even ever care? But the curse remains, the reason his family sold himself into slavery as a child, and it still rings too strong to ignore.

Discovery.

And now that cycle continues. Death and what comes next. No more working on someone else’s dreams. Those dreams are what kept him from going crazy and wondering what will happen when his old Upu body ceases to work. Now he can wonder because he is moments away from finding out for himself, just on the other side of a jerking to death on the end of a rope. With no new epiphanies he has decided to breathe. Because he will find out soon enough. His hope is that he is wrong and there is something. He always felt that with Upu dominance over science and math that there would be nothing. That all magic could easily be explained. The difference is what allows Naht-do like Rantira to become so well behaved as slaves.

As Uh’ thinks about life and death, Rantira talks.

“I was owned by an aerosmith.” An aerosmith he claims to have killed through ineptitude. “I should have suggested Owner check the safety mechanism,” Rantira reports mournfully as they are shoved through the last lock and made to climb the stairs. Continuing a conversation as if from the glimpse before and not one started after just meeting. Without giving exact reasoning on how or why his owner died, he continues, “Safety was violated and my owner died.”

Uh’ glanced at the empty sleeve surprised under the circumstances that he missed it.

“I belong here, I know that. I killed Soya. And I wish I killed you also. But the Great Suffering is going to let us die together and Rantira is okay with that.”

The last group goes and all get noosed and dropped and dangle with no issues. But Uh’ thinks he has to have misheard the cook.

“I was picked to be a Soya Learner,” he says the words like it was the point behind the whole conversation. Like maybe it was the one thing he was most proud of in his life. Of course, Uh’ knew about Soya’s Learners and supposedly Rantira’s only regret was not being able to tutor under the great slave-mathematician, Shuhp Yee. “My master wasn’t rich enough to send him to apprentice,” he claims, noose being pulled over Uh’ ears to nestle on his thin collarbone. Maybe that, Uh’ surmises, but more likely his owner did not want to lose the profit of the cooks true blessings in the kitchen.

So, Rantira labored for Soya and Shuhp Yee. Just near enough to the brain power.

“A failed medical experiment poisoned my owners stump. Could never grow another arm. Lost everything. Me included.”

But as Rantira is forced back down the stairs to join the next group, Uh’ misses the next bit.

“No more nooses, you wait. Lucky lucky you,” the hangman grunts. Returning to his work. Then the floor drops and the other 11 condemned dance, then plop to the stone ground below. Naht-do laborers clean the bodies out from under as Uh’ realizes he is still alive.

He looks up and out at the crowd now still and watching.

The unblinking recorders doing their work.

“Shuhp Yee, partner and slave to the treasonous elder Soya Yee. Your end has come.”

Rantira smiles and Uh’ knows then he heard him correctly as the hangman continues, “And The Great Suffering blesses me by letting me end you.”

The former cook’s smile looms out from the crowd as the executioner returns to his simple pulley and with no fanfare pulls the final rope.

And Shuhp Yee smiles back at Rantira as he drops, the rope of rough redmoss vine tightening and then at the apex when his body weight pulls, his neck snaps. His wingless shoulders flutter briefly then activity ceases. Uh’ noticed, though, as he fell, the electronic scream echoing throughout the cavern. A scream loud enough to knock loose rock and jailors and condemned from their feet. Then the power flickers but Uh’ isn’t too sure about that, though, as his last moments of life finish almost at the same time.

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