The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pythias, by Frederik Pohl

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Title: Pythias

Author: Frederik Pohl

Illustrator: Mel Hunter

Release Date: November 3, 2009 [EBook #30399]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PYTHIAS

By FREDERIK POHL

Illustrated by MEL HUNTER

Sure, Larry Connaught saved my
life--but it was how he did it
that forced me to murder him!

I am sitting on the edge of what passes for a bed. It is made of loosely
woven strips of steel, and there is no mattress, only an extra blanket
of thin olive-drab. It isn't comfortable; but of course they expect to
make me still more uncomfortable.

They expect to take me out of this precinct jail to the District prison
and eventually to the death house.

Sure, there will be a trial first, but that is only a formality. Not
only did they catch me with the smoking gun in my hand and Connaught
bubbling to death through the hole in his throat, but I admitted it.

I--knowing what I was doing, with, as they say, malice
aforethought--deliberately shot to death Laurence Connaught.

They execute murderers. So they mean to execute me.

Especially because Laurence Connaught had saved my life.

Well, there are extenuating circumstances. I do not think they would
convince a jury.

Connaught and I were close friends for years. We lost touch during the
war. We met again in Washington, a few years after the war was over. We
had, to some extent, grown apart; he had become a man with a mission.
He was working very hard on something and he did not choose to discuss
his work and there was nothing else in his life on which to form a basis
for communication. And--well, I had my own life, too. It wasn't
scientific research in my case--I flunked out of med school, while he
went on. I'm not ashamed of it; it is nothing to be ashamed of. I simply
was not able to cope with the messy business of carving corpses. I
didn't like it, I didn't want to do it, and when I was forced to do it,
I did it badly. So--I left.

Thus I