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.