Carnifex

Finca Carrera, Guayabal, Panama, 5 January, 2091

Belisario Carrera shook with rage. "This land has been in my family for nearly five hundred years. What the fuck do you mean that the UN is taking half of it?"

The uniformed policemen, local boys all, escorting the executive assistant to the Deputy Special Representative for the Secretary General to the Republic of Panama, looked down at the ground, ashamed and disgusted. They understood that attachment to the land. But what choice had they? They had their own wives and children to think about.

"There is no call for profanity, Mr. Carrera," said the sweating, suit-clad bureaucrat, stiffly. His accent was strange to Belisario, his Spanish clipped and harsh. "No call at all. Your democratically elected government has agreed to allow the United Nations to assist it in better apportioning your nation's wealth for the betterment of mankind. That your ancestors stole this land for themselves does not mean, sir, that you own it. It is part of the common heritage of the Family of Man."

Belisario's thirteen-year-old daughter, Mitzilla, chose that moment to come out of the house to stand beside her father. "Get off our land, you bastard," she said.

The bureaucrat looked down at Mitzi's face and then continued on. When his eyes reached her chest they opened wide with surprise and desire. He tore them away, most reluctantly, and returned his attention to her father. He said, "Perhaps, for a suitable consideration, something can be worked out, Mr. Carrera."

Belisario said nothing. But he looked at the UN representative in a way that said, without words, You are a dead man.

* * *

It was a UN court that sat in judgment over Belisario. A national court simply could not be trusted to give a proper judgment. In neither case, though, would the sentence have been death.

"Belisario Carrera," said the judge, "you have been found guilty of the premeditated murder of Robert Nyere. We have no death penalty, as we have grown above such barbarisms. If we did, I would certainly have no choice but to sentence you to hang by the neck until you are dead. I would enjoy passing such sentence, Mr. Carrera, as the man you murdered, a flawless and faultless gem of mankind, was my nephew. As is, I sentence you to transportation for life to the colony of Balboa, on the Planet Terra Nova. May the planet kill you in a way I am forbidden from doing."

"Bailiff, take him away."