Flux Read Online Free PDF Page B

deaths.
    â€œWhat kind of man do you think I am? We’ll bring him back to life in a minute anyway, I tell myself, but I didn’t get into this business in order to find new, hideous ways of killing people.”
    â€œYou don’t like it? And yet you have such a natural talent for it.”
    The prosecutor looked sharply at Crove. “Irony? Now you can joke? Doesn’t death mean anything to you?”
    Jerry did not answer, only tried to blink back the tears that these days came unbidden every few minutes.
    â€œCrove, this is not cheap. Do you think it’s cheap? We’ve spent literally billions of rubles on you. And even with inflation, that’s a hell of a lot of money.”
    â€œIn a classless society there’s no need for money.”
    â€œWhat is this, dammit! Now you’re getting rebellious? Now you’re trying to be a hero?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNo wonder we’ve had to kill you eight times! You keep thinking up clever arguments against us!”
    â€œI’m sorry. Heaven knows I’m sorry.”
    â€œI’ve asked to be released from this assignment. I obviously can’t crack you.”
    â€œCrack me! As if I didn’t long to be cracked.”
    â€œYou’re costing too much. There’s a definite benefit in having criminals convincingly recant on television. But you’re getting too expensive. The cost-benefit ratio is ridiculous now. There’s a limit to how much we can spend on you.”
    â€œI have a way for you to save money.”
    â€œSo do I. Convince the damned audience!”
    â€œNext time you kill me, don’t put a helmet on my head.”
    The prosecutor looked absolutely shocked. “That would be final. That would be capital punishment. We’re a humane government. We never kill anybody permanently.”
    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, “Harder,” until he couldn’t 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 heart—he 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.
    â€œYou bastard,” he said.
    â€œOh. You mean the audience was live this time?”
    â€œA hundred loyal citizens. And you corrupted all but three of them.”
    â€œCorrupted?”
    â€œConvinced them.”
    Silence for a moment, and then the prosecutor sat down and buried his head in his hands.
    â€œGoing to lose your job?” Jerry asked.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œI’m sorry. You’re good at it.”
    The prosecutor looked at him with loathing. “No one ever failed at this before. And I had never had to take anyone beyond a second death. You’ve died a dozen times, Crove, and you’ve got used to it.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to.”
    â€œHow did you do it?”
    â€œI don’t