deaths.
âWhat kind of man do you think I am? Weâll bring him back to life in a minute anyway, I tell myself, but I didnât get into this business in order to find new, hideous ways of killing people.â
âYou donât like it? And yet you have such a natural talent for it.â
The prosecutor looked sharply at Crove. âIrony? Now you can joke? Doesnât death mean anything to you?â
Jerry did not answer, only tried to blink back the tears that these days came unbidden every few minutes.
âCrove, this is not cheap. Do you think itâs cheap? Weâve spent literally billions of rubles on you. And even with inflation, thatâs a hell of a lot of money.â
âIn a classless society thereâs no need for money.â
âWhat is this, dammit! Now youâre getting rebellious? Now youâre trying to be a hero?â
âNo.â
âNo wonder weâve had to kill you eight times! You keep thinking up clever arguments against us!â
âIâm sorry. Heaven knows Iâm sorry.â
âIâve asked to be released from this assignment. I obviously canât crack you.â
âCrack me! As if I didnât long to be cracked.â
âYouâre costing too much. Thereâs a definite benefit in having criminals convincingly recant on television. But youâre getting too expensive. The cost-benefit ratio is ridiculous now. Thereâs a limit to how much we can spend on you.â
âI have a way for you to save money.â
âSo do I. Convince the damned audience!â
âNext time you kill me, donât put a helmet on my head.â
The prosecutor looked absolutely shocked. âThat would be final. That would be capital punishment. Weâre a humane government. We never kill anybody permanently.â
They shot him in the gut and let him bleed to death. They threw him from a cliff into the sea. They let a shark eat him alive. They hung him upside down so that just his head was under water, and when he finally got too tired to hold his head out of the water he drowned.
But through all this, Jerry had become more inured to the pain. His mind had finally learned that none of these deaths was permanent after all. And now when the moment of death came, though it was still terrible, he endured it better. He screamed less. He approached death with greater calm. He even hastened the process, deliberately inhaling great draughts of water, deliberately wriggling to attract the shark. When they had the guards kick him to death he kept yelling, âHarder,â until he couldnât yell anymore.
And finally when they set up a screen test, he fervently told the audience that the Russian government was the most terrifying empire the world had ever known, because this time they were efficient at keeping their power, because this time there was no outside for barbarians to come from, and because they had seduced the freest people in history into loving slavery. His speech was from the heartâhe loathed the Russians and loved the memory that once there had been freedom and law and a measure of justice in America.
And the prosecutor came into the room ashen-faced.
âYou bastard,â he said.
âOh. You mean the audience was live this time?â
âA hundred loyal citizens. And you corrupted all but three of them.â
âCorrupted?â
âConvinced them.â
Silence for a moment, and then the prosecutor sat down and buried his head in his hands.
âGoing to lose your job?â Jerry asked.
âOf course.â
âIâm sorry. Youâre good at it.â
The prosecutor looked at him with loathing. âNo one ever failed at this before. And I had never had to take anyone beyond a second death. Youâve died a dozen times, Crove, and youâve got used to it.â
âI didnât mean to.â
âHow did you do it?â
âI donât
Laurice Elehwany Molinari