I’ve had this piece sitting around in my Google Drive for a couple of years now and I’m trying my best to think of things to do with it. It might be part of a larger story, it might stand alone, I could go either way at this point but I decided to truncate it down a bit and put it out into the world to see what people think about it.
I’ve had a bit of a fascination with Venus ever since I came across the original concepts for colonization of the upper atmosphere (HAVOC) and realized that Venus, despite being closer and not having the radiation or perchlorate issues that Mars has does present not a stronger, then certainly a more interesting case for colonization than Mars does. It also occurred to me that while I’m not an expert on science fiction and haven’t read everything out there- there could be more involving Venus than I think there is- it certainly seemed like a place that not a lot of authors like to visit, so that intrigued me as well. This story (and more besides) resulted.
That knowledge, combined with listening to the Hardcore History Episode, Painfotainment, provided a lot of the inspiration for this piece. I hope you all have as much fun reading this as I did writing it, so without further ado, I’m very happy to present, The Executioner’s Daughter
~~~
It always seemed to be an hour past sunset in Lo Shen City. The city kept pace with the slow rotation of Venus, moving gently between an hour before sunset and an hour after sunset so that the residents of the city had some way to mark the passage of time.
The blue hour was always Ruth’s favorite, though. She would brew a cup of nutrient broth and take it out onto their balcony dangle her feet over the edge and just watch the sky darken to a brilliant deep shade of midnight blue. She was almost done with her nutrient broth when she heard the familiar sound of the doors to their quarters hissing open.
“Ruthie?” The deep, gravelly voice of her father called.
“I’m out here, Dad,” she called.
She heard his chuckle. “I figured you would be. Let me get cleaned up and I’ll be out to join you.”
“There’s a nutrient broth in the dispenser.”
“Thanks, Ruthie,” he replied. She heard the door to his bedroom hiss open and then there was the sound of the shower starting. Dad was all fastidious about leaving all traces of his job at work and tended to take a shower as soon as he walked in the door, just in case. Ruthie remembered once, when she was young before her mother had died, she had come to the edge of the living room just as her father had arrived home from a night execution. He was unrecognizable, covered in blood from head to toe and when he saw her mother, he had broken down in tears and her mother had reached up to touch his face and reassure him that it would feel better and hurt less in the morning.
That was the night she had learned what it meant to be the daughter of an Executioner.
She heard the shower turn off and then a minute or two later, her Dad came out onto the balcony to join her, a cup of broth in hand. He sat down next to her and dangled his legs through the railings, staring out into the sunset.
“Bad day at work?”
He took a sip of broth. “It was work, Ruthie.”
“Got it,” Ruthie said.
“How was school?”
“It was school,” she said in a mock deep voice.
Her Dad chuckled. “Smart ass,” he said. “Now, seriously. How was school?”
Ruthie smiled. “It’s school. Same as it ever was.”
“That good, huh?” Her Dad took another sip of nutrient broth. “I’m sorry Atarah moved away, Ruthie. I know you were close.”
“She was my best friend, Dad,” Ruthie said. The only friend I had, she had silently to herself. “I can always write to her. The links between Lo Shen City and Faravari are pretty good. At least this month.”
“It was a good move for her Mom,” her Dad said. “They needed a new executioner and there was just no reason for there to be two of us anymore.”
“I know,” Ruthie said. “It’s just... “
“Lonely,” her Dad finished. “I know, my girl.” He took another sip of nutrient broth. “This is a lonely job, I have,” he said. “I feel bad for dragging your Mom into it, because, well… you sort of had to come along for the ride.”
“Dad, it’s okay,” Ruthie said. “You didn’t make the law.”
“I know,” her Dad said. He drained the last of his nutrient broth. “But you have to live with it.” He stood up again and smiled down at her. “Don’t stay up too late, Ruthie. You’ve got school in the morning.”
“I won’t, Dad,” she replied.
“Good night, kiddo,” he said.
“Good night, Dad.” Then her Dad turned and went back inside and Ruthie was left alone on the balcony once more. She hated that her Dad felt so guilty about it, but the law was the law. There were a dozen cities under the control of the Council of the Elect and since they had taken over Lo Shen City, they had been very clear: executioners were unclean people in an unclean profession and it was forbidden to touch them.
Unfortunately, that rule applied to their families as well. The law forced them to live apart- which had some benefits, Ruthie was forced to admit. They were on the far side of the arboretum, right at the edge of the city. There were no bad views from their house, which is why the balcony was her favorite place to sit. The rest of Lo Shen City contained millions, all packed into the towers, spires, and tenements of various shapes and sizes.
In public, they had to wear red at all times- that way people knew who to avoid. This too had its benefits, Ruthie had to admit. There were so many people in the city, it took normal people forever to make their way through the crowds that thronged the marketplaces and the bazaars- having an invisible bubble around you at all times had its perks.
The school was where it was hardest, though. Ever since Atarah and her family had moved to Faravari, she had been alone. It had been nearly a year. No one talked to her. No one sat with her at lunch. People avoided her in the hallways. She just had her books to keep her company. Books weren’t enough though.
Ruthie could swear that she could feel the city begin to accelerate as it moved across the terminator into its scheduled night. It was a common feeling among many residents of the skies of Venus, but it was purely her imagination Nevertheless, she turned off the screen on her reader, as she always did and just sat on the balcony, watching the sunset in the east and the light begin to fade. When she could almost see nothing at all, she sighed and stood up. “All I want is someone to talk to,” she told the sunset. Then, with a yawn, she stood up and turned to head back inside and go to bed.
~
The morning came too soon. The buzz of her alarm made Ruthie groan, but, knowing that her Dad had already left for work already- because the job of the Executioner in Lo Shen City began before sunrise and ended after sundown, she could only rely on herself to get out of bed. She hated mornings. Ruthie had never been a morning person, so she sat up with another groan and stretched her arms out toward the ceiling as far as she could stretch them.
Ruthie stood up and stumbled into the small bathroom just off of her room, still half-asleep. She quickly disrobed, jumped into the shower, and flipped the setting to sonic. Water was nice, but it was a luxury that Ruthie rarely allowed herself to indulge in. The sonic worked just as well and, she sighed in relaxation, the sensation was not unpleasant.
Having completed its cleaning cycle, the shower shut off. Ruthie stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel off of the nearby railing. Wrapping it around her, she moved to the medicine cabinet and the vanity, turning the sink on and grabbing her toothbrush. She brushed her teeth and then opened the medicine cabinet to grab the vitamin supplements that were the ubiquitous part of daily life for all of humanity’s colonies throughout the solar system. She swallowed her pills and then put them back in the cabinet and headed back out into her bedroom.
“Now, what to wear today?” Ruthie asked herself. “Red, red- or, I know! Red!”
Ruthie opened the closet door and sighed. Someday, she promised herself, someday when she wasn’t stuck in Lo Shen City, she would live somewhere, anywhere where didn’t have to wear the color red. But (and she told herself this every morning) that day wasn’t going to be today. So, she did what she always did: she picked out a simple red tunic pulled it off the hanger, and, dropping the towel, pulled it on over her head.
After that, it was easy enough to down a cup of nutrient broth, find her shoes and her satchel, and then she was out of the door, soaking up the pleasant walk across the arboretum and trying not to think too much about the day of unpleasantness that lay ahead of her at school.
Her school was named the Tereshkova Educational Institute. The Venusian Governing Authority exercised very little control over matters of governance, but they had, in the early days of the first city-states, named a ton of schools across the planet. As cities grew and the demographics and ideologies had changed hands over the years, the names had all remained constant. There was no real reason why people couldn’t change them, it’s just that… they didn’t. It’s why Lo Shen City was called Lo Shen City and not New Jerusalem or whatever the Council of the Elect secretly wanted to call it.
Lo Shen City was shaped like a large letter ‘V’ and the school stood close to the intersection of the residential and commercial wings of the city. The residential wing faced east, so it could see the sun rising and setting in the sky. The commercial wing faced west, away from the good views and toward the neighboring cities of Faravi and Samundra City, though the latter was considered an enemy of the Council of the Elect. There were two sides to the school, one was the primary school, which was a short, squat ziggurat made of steel and glass that was full of light and laughter and plants, and the young faithful of Lo Shen City.
Across the bridge that linked the two schools, of course, was the secondary school. It was brick. Red brick, covered in ivy and looking every inch the pretentious, stuffed academic institution it did its best to pretend to be. Ruthie paused at the edge of the school grounds and looked with distaste and the crowds of students heading toward the main entrance of the school. She took a deep breath, set her shoulders against the indignities and irritations that she knew were going to happen that day, and then started to walk toward the entrance.
People began moving out of the way as soon as they saw her. That, she was used to. There were the usual suspects: the popular girls who always seemed to hang around the entrance to the school instead of going into it. They did their usual routine of pointing and laughing and talking in what they thought were ‘hushed’ tones. Once she was inside the building, she headed down the long hallway to the stairs that would take her up to the second floor where her locker was. Here, she got the usual mixture of sidelong glances, people pointing and laughing, and the one or two jackasses that would always run away from her in mock terror. All of that, Ruthie had long since resigned herself too.
The glances of pity, however, still enraged her. Every morning, every damn morning, she would walk down the hallway to the back stairs to the second floor and there would be their Russian teacher, Mrs. Lomonosova, dressed head to toe in black, looking like an old, wrinkled bird of some kind who would make the sign of the cross and bow her head as she walked past. Every damn morning. It never failed to put a damper on Ruthie’s day. She wasn’t an object of pity. She didn’t want prayers. This was… her life. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was what it was and she was lonely but happy. And there was no reason to pity her.
She stomped up the staircase to the second floor and scowling at the few students who were lurking at the far end of the hallway made her way to her locker, unlocked it, opened and hung her satchel on the usual hook, and grabbed her tablet so she could head to the first class of the day. She closed her locker and was about to turn to head back down the hallway, when:
“Hi there.”
Ruthie turned around, confused. The second floor was usually quiet before the start of the school day. She liked it that way. The other students would congregate in the commons area or the cafeteria and Ruthie would sit cross-legged in front of her locker and sneak in a good ten to fifteen minutes of reading before the school bell rang to start the day. But today, where there was usually an empty hallway, there was a teacher she didn’t recognize standing at the entrance to one of the classrooms.
He didn’t look like a teacher. That was the thing that Ruthie noticed immediately. He was young, tall, and thin with short-cropped red hair and the scruff of a beard on his face. Instead of the more formal shirt, tie, neatly pressed slacks, and jacket that most teachers wore, he had a pair of corduroys, a blue shirt, a red tie, and a tweed jacket with patches at the elbows. It was almost as if he was wearing it ironically, even mockingly. He walked over to where Ruthie was standing and extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Mr. Svenson.”
Ruthie stared at his hand with a mixture of shock and horror. “You must be new here,” she said.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” he said. “Fresh off the boat from Terra.”
“You don’t know the rules yet.”
“There are rules against hand-shaking?” Mr. Svenson laughed. “I know this place is religious and all, but I’ve never heard of that.”
“My Dad’s… the executioner,” Ruthie said. “It’s forbidden to touch the executioner or any of their family members.”
“Oh,” his hand dropped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right,” Ruthie tried to smile, still trying to conceal her shock. “I’d also take off that tie as well.”
“You don’t think it goes with the suit?”
Ruthie chuckled. “No,” she said. “Only the executioner and their family are allowed to wear red. It… lets everybody know who we are.”
“Oh,” Mr. Svenson said. He reached up and began to undo his tie. “Learn something new every day, I guess.”
“Well, as you said, you’re new here,” Ruthie said. “Wouldn’t want to make your first day harder than it has to be.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate that.” There was an awkward silence between them for a moment before he asked. “So, do you like to read?”
“Yes,” Ruthie replied. “I do it a lot.”
“What are you reading right now?”
Ruthie reached into her locker and pulled out the book. “East of Eden, by John Steinbeck.” She handed it over to him.
He lifted the book and turned it over in his hands. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Looks like an old one.”
“It was my mother’s,” Ruthie said. “Her mother gave it to her and after she died and when she died, she left it to me.”
Mr. Svenson opened the cover. “Arabella. Was that your Mom’s name?”
“Yeah,” Ruthie said. “She wanted me to have it after she died.”
“Well,” Mr. Svenson said, closing the book and handing it back to her. “You’ve got good taste in books… you know, I didn’t even get your name?”
“Oh,” Ruthie smiled. “It’s Ruthie.”
“Well, Ruthie,” Mr. Svenson said. “Nice to meet you.” Then the bell rang and he turned to head back to his classroom. “Guess that means it’s showtime.”
“Have a good day, Mr. Svenson,” Ruthie called after him.
He turned and favored her with a bow. “I’m in your debt, Ms. Ruthie. I hope you have the best of days as well.”
~
For the next few weeks, school became… well, not exactly enjoyable, but far less of a burden than it had been for Ruthie. Mr. Svenson actually called on her in class and made it a point to say hello to her in the hallways, not just in the quiet before school started, but where other students could see her as well.
Little by little, Ruthie found herself starting to actually look forward to coming to school. Her Dad must have picked up on her change in attitude as well because he seemed happier as well. However, she should have known it was too good to last because two weeks later, she had arrived at school at Mr. Svenson didn’t come out of his classroom to greet her. Ruthie didn’t think anything of it, at first. Teachers had meetings in the morning sometimes and Mr. Svenson hadn’t greeted her every day… just… most days.
Ruthie left her history class and walked down to English class, happy to go to a class that she enjoyed and looking forward to whatever Mr. Svenson was going to tell them about their reading. It had taken a fight with the education board and a vote of the Council of the Elect, but Mr. Svenson had insisted on adding a contemporary author to the curriculum, and the class was four chapters into Alistair Coney’s newest work. Illumination On Titan. Ruthie absolutely loved it and after reading the fourth chapter the night before, she knew that Mr. Svenson was going to have a lot to talk about today and-
She stopped dead as she walked in the door. There, instead of the friendly, smiling face of Mr. Svenson, the frumpy, disgruntled face of Mrs. Cavendish was there waiting for the students to take their seats. Ruthie couldn’t stand Mrs. Cavendish and the feeling was mutual, but the shock of seeing her there in the place of Mr. Svenson was too much for Ruthie and she blurted out, “Where’s Mr. Svenson?”
“Young lady,” Mrs. Cavendish said (Mrs. Cavendish never referred to Ruthie by her name), “Mr. Svenson no longer works here.”
“Why?” Ruthie said. “What happened to him?”
“That’s really none of your concern, young lady,” Mrs. Cavendish said. She pointed at Ruthie’s seat. “Now sit down.”
“Was he fired? What did you do to him?” Ruthie realized that she was almost yelling, but for once in her life she didn’t care.
“Young lady,” Mrs. Cavendish said, a little more severely now.”You need to modulate your tone immediately and sit down.” Ruthie suppressed a flare of rebellion and reluctantly did so. “But if you must know,” Mrs. Cavendish said. “I believe he took a shuttle back to Terra last night.”
“Oh,” Ruthie said in a small, quiet voice. “Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Cavendish.”
“You’re welcome, young lady,” Mrs. Cavendish replied. “Now,” she turned to the rest of the class at large. “Who can tell me about the reading for this week?”
Ruthie spent the rest of the day in a daze, trying not to cry. Mr. Svenson may have been a teacher, but over the past few weeks, he had become the closest thing Ruthie had to a friend. After Mrs. Cavendish had finished droning at them about the reading for the day, the bell rang and it was history class. Another bell and Russian class with Mrs. Lomonosova. Another bell and then it was lunch. Ruthie ate at her usual table, alone, near the windows that looked out over the arboretum. She ignored all the sideways glances and the snide remarks- she usually heard every one of them.
Another bell and lunch was over. Time for Astrophysics. Then, one final bell and school was over. She walked out of the building in a daze which was finally starting to lift. She no longer felt like crying and her grief and shock were evolving into a sense of angry resignation. She should have known better. It had always been too good to be true. It was always going to vanish or wither away. She was the executioner’s daughter and she wasn’t allowed to have nice things, like friends.
Ruthie didn’t go home. She wanted some time alone, so she walked through the forest to her favorite tree. It was a sequoia, arching up high to the very edge of the dome that enclosed the arboretum. It was right on the edge of the forest and the views were perfect. You could see the docking rings that nestled underneath the city and the steady stream of ships arriving and departing. Ruthie liked to sit and watch, trying to imagine where each ship was coming from and where they were going. Anywhere would be better than here.
With a sigh, she reached into her bag and pulled out her book for English class. Normally, they were made to read dry and dusty religious tracts or whatever works the English department deemed to be important at the time. This book, however, was different. This had been Mr. Svenson’s suggestion and Ruthie found herself reading well ahead of the class, trying to figure out just what illumination Alistair Coney’s character was going to find all the way out on Titan.
“This is going to have a lame ending,” Ruthie said aloud to herself as she began to read the sixth chapter. She wriggled her back against the bark of the great tree and began to lose herself in the book, trying to find some comfort in worlds and sights and sounds that were far away from the lonely confines of Lo Shen City.
Before she knew it, the sun had set in the eastern sky ahead of her and the lights were beginning to flicker on in the towers of the city. She kept reading until she could barely see the words on the pages in front of her. Reluctantly, she finished the paragraph she was reading and then shut the book. It was time to go home.
When she got home, however, she was greeted with a surprise. “Ruthie? Is that you?” Her father came to the landing that overlooked the spiral staircase that wound up to their main living areas. “Dad!” Ruthie said. “I thought you’d be at work.”
“I have to go in tonight,” her Dad replied. “So I thought I’d come home, get some dinner, and watch the view for a while.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ruthie took off her cloak and hung it up on the peg by the door. She walked up the stairs and, on an impulse, walked over to her Dad and gave him a hug. She felt him freeze for a moment with surprise before returning the hug. “How was school?”
Ruthie shrugged. “The usual.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened, Dad,” Ruthie replied.
“Kiddo,” her Dad said, “For the past few weeks you’ve been almost… happy when you come home from school. Now, I haven’t poked you about it because I’ve just been happy to see you so happy, but-”
“The new teacher left, Mr. Svenson,” Ruthie said.
“The English teacher?”
“Yeah,” Ruthie said, “it’s silly, I know. But we were just reading new books and having great discussions.. And… “ she sighed. “He talked to me like a person, Dad. Just like I was a normal kid. None of my teachers have ever done that before.”
“Oh kiddo,” her Dad sighed. “I’m so sorry. And now he’s gone?”
“Mrs. Cavendish said he took a shuttle back to Terra.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah,” Ruthie said, “Just like that.”
“Well,” her Dad said as cheerfully as he could manage. “Let’s ditch the usual for dinner and watch the storm roll in before I have to go to work!”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I think we’ve got a pizza in the dispenser.”
Ruthie smiled. “That sounds good to me, Dad!”
“Okay, kiddo, I’ll get the pizza ready and meet you out on the balcony.”
Ruthie headed out to the balcony, eagerly. Storms on Venus weren’t exactly rare, but ones big enough for the Council of the Elect to schedule a night execution were always worth watching. The sky would light up for hours with bolts of lightning that would bounce off of the city’s atmospheric dome and send iridescent waves of color in every direction. It was incredibly beautiful, but of course, the Council had to ruin it all with an execution.
The Council called them, ‘God’s Wrath’ and officially reserved them for especially heinous crimes, like murder. Unofficially and where the religious police and the excessively pious were unable to hear, most everyone else called them ‘Thunderstorm specials.’ The condemned would be led to a great platform at the center of the city. The charges would be read, the sentence passed and then her father would pull a simple lever and drop the condemned soul through the platform and out of the city itself. The lucky ones were struck by lightning and fell into a cloud of acid or one of the other corrosive gases that swirled below them. The unlucky ones would fall further and further until the pressure of the atmosphere crushed them. Of course, The Council was generous: they had calculated that it would take a body roughly thirty minutes to reach the surface of the planet far below, so the condemned were flung out of the city in a minimal pressure suit with enough oxygen to keep them conscious enough to be aware of their surroundings.
No one, to the best of Ruthie’s knowledge, had ever made it to the ground.
Her Dad brought the newly cooked pizza out onto the balcony and placed it on the table between their two chairs. “I sliced it up already.”
“No plates?”
Her Dad shook his head. “I figured we could just eat it as is,” he said. “We’re outside you know.”
Ruthie chuckled as she reached into the box to grab a slice of pizza. “Sounds good to me, Dad.”
They ate their pizza and watched as the storm rolled in from the east. The clouds were boiling and they could see flashes of lightning flicker through them in the distance. Her Dad sighed. “This one should be a good one,” he said. “Damn shame I have to go to work.”
“Who is it tonight?”
“The guy who did the murders over on the West End,” her Dad said. “The evidence is pretty convincing and he’s not even claiming his innocence.”
“Dad,” Ruthie said. “Do you ever think about leaving?”
He said nothing for a long time and Ruthie was beginning to wonder if she had made him mad, until finally he spoke. “All the time, kiddo. All the time,” he said. “But you know the penalty for leaving. And you know how the free cities feel about refugees from the Fundamentalist League.”
“I don’t mean leaving Lo Shen City, Dad,” Ruthie said. “I mean leaving Venus.”
Her Dad snorted in amusement. “Kiddo, being an executioner doesn’t pay that well. Plus, where would we go? Earth? Mars? Emigration costs credits we just don’t have, I’m afraid.”
Ruthie sighed. “I know,” she said. “It’s just…”
“I know,” her Dad finished for her. “I’m sorry, kiddo, I really am. Maybe someday.”
“Sure, Dad,” Ruthie said. “Someday.”
They finished their pizza in silence, watching the storm creep closer and closer until finally, her Dad looked at his watch and sighed. “I should get going, kiddo.”
“Okay, Dad,” Ruthie said. They stood up and she picked up the pizza box and took it back inside to the disposal. Her Dad headed into his room to change while Ruthie washed the pizza grease off her hands. Soon enough, he was back out in their main living room. “All right,” he said. “I’m off to work. Don’t wait up.”
“I won’t,” Ruthie replied. “In fact, I think I’ll head up to the tower to watch the storm. I’ll probably fall asleep up there tonight.”
“Sounds good,” her Dad said. “I won’t bother checking your room then,” he said with a grin.
Ruthie came around the edge of the kitchen counter and gave her Dad a hug. “I would tell you to have a good day at work, but-”
“Understood, kiddo,” her Dad said, returning the hug. “You enjoy the storm now. I’ll be back late.”
“Okay, Dad.”
And with that, her Dad headed down the stairs to their front door and was gone. Ruthie made sure that the glasses and bowls from their breakfast that morning, clean in their dishwasher, were put away in their correct locations. Then, she carefully made sure all the doors and windows were locked before turning the lights off and heading up the long winding staircase to the tower.
They hardly ever used the tower anymore. When she was little, her Mom had used it as an art studio and some of her paintings still hung in the wide, round open room at the very top of it. Over the years, Ruthie gradually began to turn into her refuge from the world. Most of the books in the house were lining the walls and she had found the most comfortable, round couch that conformed perfectly to the curve of the room. She had placed it under the dome of the tower and always made sure there was a comfortable blanket somewhere nearby that she could curl up under.
Her Dad, recognizing her need to have a place of her own in the house had thoughtfully installed a small counter with a drink dispenser up there as well, so she could have a cup of tea as she read or enjoyed the view.
The view was incredible. Ruthie sighed in pleasure as she emerged onto the landing at the top of the tower. The storm was ready to break over the city and the lights in the residential towers were already starting to dim in anticipation of the show. The clouds they had watched at dinner were almost on top of them now, the lightning intensifying.
Ruthie thought for a moment about making a cup of tea, but the storm was coming in too fast now. She dimmed the lights walked over to the couch and settled into her usual spot, which gave her the perfect view of the city as well as the sky overhead. She settled back in the dark and watched as the storm began to break over the city.
Love that story, would be a great feature film. Appreciate your talents my friend!