He was holding a damp rag to the bruise on the side of his head. "You don't think I have to execute him?" "Stop twitching!" Diana was trying to get the lips of my wound to line up together so she could paint them shut. From the wrist down, the hand felt like a lump of ice. "Not by your own hand, you don't. You can detail someone. At random." "Charlie's right," Diana said. "Have everybody draw a slip of paper out of a bowl." I was glad Hilleboe was sound asleep on the other cot. I didn't need her opinion. "And if the person so chosen refuses?" "Punish him and get another," Charlie said. "Didn't you learn anything in the can? You can't abrogate your authority by publicly doing a job.. . that obviously should be detailed." "Any other job, sure. But for this. . . nobody in the company has ever killed. It would look like I was getting somebody else to do my moral dirty work." "If it's so damned complicated," Diana said, "why not just get up in front of the troops and tell them how complicated it is.
