Cormac 3 - Brass Man by Asher Neal

Author:Asher, Neal
Language: eng
Format: epub

Cormac 3 - Brass Man

13

There was a time when the death penalty for murder was considered barbarous. It was argued that it was not a deterrent, but judicial murder, that made those who sanctioned it as bad as, if not worse than, those they passed sentence upon. And what if you got it wrong, executed the wrong person? Views like this had been espoused by gutless governments frightened of responsibility, or by people unable to face up to hard facts. A hanged murderer will never kill again. The death penalty is a response to a crime, not a crime in itself. Yes, you may in error put innocents to death. However, their number would not be a fraction of one per cent of those innocents killed by murderers allowed back into society by softer regimes. It is all rather simple really, and the urge to understand and rehabilitate such criminals is merely the product of cowardice. Now, of course, its even simpler: you commit murder and you are mind-​wiped; you commit other crimes repeatedly and you are adjusted, re-​educated; and if that doesnt work, you are then mind-​wiped, and someone in storage gets to inhabit your body. Our view now has a more evolutionary aspect: these are the laws; if you break them, these are the penalties. No excuses. We will be tough on the causes of crime: criminals.

- Excerpt from a speech by Jobsworth

They led him out of darkness, but it was no transition. Arian Pelter could look through his eyes, control his movements directly, or indirectly by programs instantly fashioned in the mans military aug. But the cycle of travelling from place to place, slaughter to slaughter, would have been banal if it were not so horrific. In fractured memory, Crane remembered men in uniform dying, men rendered limb from limb, and one surviving just because he possessed a pair of antique binoculars. Later, another survived because he possessed a beautiful Tenkian blade. There was a rainy place, and a Golem he had fought and destroyed there. Another place, a battle, and two Golem tougher even than he, ripping him to pieces, and sending him where nothing hurt any more. And back, and again . . . and one of those Golem again, traded for a piece of crystal. And on still, but with shape-​forming, ill-​understood possibilities, if only he could take the time . . .

On spotting the two creatures waiting in the canyon, Mr Crane halted and watched. He was not to know how unusual it was to see intact second-​stage sleers together, only the trysts of their mating segments, for such animals were usually savagely territorial. Nor did he know that the albino form was rarer than his own tears, and ones with sapphire compound eyes rarer still. All he did know was that he had been ordered to a particular location, and that while under orders he could not stop to place in sequenceand resequencehis collection of ersatz deaths.

He also guessed that these creatures

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