A, B, C: Three Short Novels
Page 24
“Captain Alva, this is most—”
And above even this the captain’s voice came sharply: “I make this request, not only in my own name, but with the full consent and encouragement of the Captains of every other City in the Nation. We have been in radio contact with one another constantly since the tragedy of Epsilon-7. Captain Vlyon of Alpha-8, Captain Leela of Beta-2, Captain Riche of Epsilon-6—every single Captain of every City in the Nation has begged me to make this request, Your Honor, and they are all making similar requests of the courts of their respective cities.”
The crowd sounded chaotic. The gavel pounded again. When something like order was regained, the judge’s leveling voice led over the noise: “Captain Alva, may I remind you that, as Captain of this City, you are in charge of its physical welfare. But there are other issues involved here; and as the Spiritual Head of the City, as the repository for moral cleanliness, and as representative of the Norm, I must certainly, in the name of the City, refuse your request. I most certainly must refuse!”
The murmur rose again, this time an inrush of relief. Not so heavily the gavel sounded; more responsively, silence came.
“To continue with the formal opening of the trial: Case 2338-587 Jackson O-E-5611, physical and mental deviate of the first magnitude, alias One-Eyed Jack, versus the Norm. Are you in Court, Jackson?” Momentary silence. “Are you present at court, Jackson?”
A voice came back, curtly, shrill, yet with the same tiredness Joneny had heard in the Captain’s words. “You have eyes. Can’t you see I’m here?”
“I must ask you to follow the forms prescribed by the Norm and not to ask impertinent, irrelevant questions. Are you present at court?”
“Yes. I am present at court.”
“Now, will you describe, please, your deviation from the Norm as you understand it.”
A hiss of air drawn quickly between teeth. “This is not an irrelevant question. It is a declarative statement—you have eyes and you can see.”
“Jackson O-E-5611”—a defensive listlessness oozed into the judge’s voice—“the code of the Norm requires that a deviate, to be held responsible, have understanding of his deviation. Now, will you please describe your deviation as you see it to the court.”
“I had the misfortune to emerge from the Market with a full set of brains in my head. That’s not normal around this place. Or perhaps I’m a deviate because there was a certain amount of information about Earth and our goals that I felt was important to study without the permission of the Norm. Or because I decided it was worth joining others like me to pursue these studies. But to you that makes me a One-Eyed monster who’s got to be exterminated before he thinks in the wrong direction and corrupts somebody.”
“Obviously Jackson is not aware of his deviation. That relieves him of having to sign his own reconversion certificate. There will be no difficulty now in returning you to the Death’s Head.”
“For God’s sake, I’ve got arms, legs, hands, feet. My eyes see, my ears hear. All right. You tell me what’s wrong with me.”
“Will the medical examiner please make her comparative Norm report?”
There was a rustling of papers; someone rose to standing. A contralto voice said, “Medical report, taken two days ago, of Jackson O-E-5611 correlated with the Norm of the City of Sigma-9.”
“Go on, Dr. Lang.”
“Thank you. Jackson O-E-5611, height six feet, one and a half inches: the Norm for the City of Sigma-9 is five feet nine and three-quarter inches. Of course this discrepancy does not indicate anything definite, but it is a deviation, nevertheless. Jackson O-E-5611 is a chronic nail biter and has been so since early childhood. This is quite far away from the Norm, a condition that exists in less than 5 percent of the population, definitely marking him for consideration.”
“I notice you are skipping the more standard criteria, Dr. Lang,” the voice of the judge interrupted.
“Yes, your Honor. But, as you advised me earlier, in view of the destruction of Epsilon-7 so short a time ago, I thought I might skip to the more drastic deviations.”
“Very well. I just wanted it on record that I did so advise you. I saw Captain Alva about to raise an objection.”
The Captain’s voice: “Not an objection, Your Honor. I only wanted to say that the destruction of the City of Epsilon-7 is exactly the reason why I and the other Captains believe that—”
“Very well,” interrupted the judge’s voice, “then Dr. Lang will give a thorough report on the deviation.”
“Your Honor, that wasn’t my object—”
“I have requested a thorough report from Dr. Lang. I can see no other reason for you to object. Proceed, Dr. Lang.”
“But, Your Honor—”
“Dr. Lang, if you will.”
A murmur in the audience again, then the contralto voice went on. “Weight, 169 pounds as compared to the Norm of 162. I might well mention that this difference is only significant when looked at along with the height, where it becomes apparent that the subject, though above the Norm, is still underweight for his own physical development.”
Jackson’s taut voice jutted in, “Isn’t that a hell of a complicated way of saying I haven’t had a decent meal in three months, thanks to the hounding of your goon squad?”
“Jackson!”
Dr. Lang went on, “He conforms quite well to the Norm in dexterity. He’s right-handed, and the Norm is 89 percent of the City’s population also right-handed.”
Again Jackson’s voice, sharp and darting: “I notice you hold your stylus in your left hand, Dr. Lang. Would you say that marks a significant deviation?”
“Jackson, need I remind you that in several Cities, One-Eyes are not allowed to speak at their own trials, and occasionally not even allowed to attend them. I would dislike to find such an arrangement a temporary necessity.”
“Captain Alva…” The tautness had gone from Jackson’s voice; pleading replaced it.
“Jackson, I’m doing everything I possibly—”
“There is a slight difference in length of limbs, right arm nearly a centimeter and a half longer than the left. The Norm is a discrepancy of only a centimeter. Legs are identical length. Norm of Sigma-9 is a two-millimeter extension of left leg over right. Note the gauntness of his face, for which I have no figures, but it is definitely away from the Norm. His nose has been broken twice. The percentage of the population to break bones is 1.6 percent. This puts him quite definitely out of the Norm. A small birthmark on his right shoulder is completely away from the Norm. In situations of great strain, artificially induced, his perspiration index is 9.75 as opposed to 8.91 for the Norm. There is also a marked…” and the contralto voice continued to outline a list of glandular secretions, submetabolic functions, and tropal differentiations that sounded like the cataloguing process a modern biologist might go through in defining a newly discovered life-form; nothing less, mused Joneny, could merit such detail. After fifteen minutes she paused; then, in a staccato epilogue, in which Joneny could hear the lack of conviction, Dr. Lang declared: “And due to the extremity of our situation, I believe all this taken together is deviation enough to recommend reconversion in the Death’s Head.”
Approving whispers rose and fell.
“You may, if you really want to, question Dr. Lang on her findings,” said the judge. “If you want to take the time.”
“Yes, I want to.” The answer was quick and desperate.
“Go on. But the questioning is only a formality.”
“You’ve reminded me of a lot of things today, Your Honor.” There was an expectant pause, but the judge was silent. “Dr. Lang, you’re a woman of science. You deal closely with the biology staff and the Market Research staff; you’re friendly with many of the Navigation Officers.”
“That’s right.”
Dr. Lang’s voice was overriden immediately by the judge’s: “I don’t see what this has to do with—”
“Please let him go on,” from Captain Alva.
“Do you remember, Dr. Lang, two years ago when a thirteen-year-old girl named Tomasa was discovered to have the first case of carcinoma of the pancreas on record in the ten generations of the City’s history?”
“I remember.”
“And how was Tomasa’s life saved?”
“By an ancient technique of radio-microsurgery.”
“Where did you find out the existence of this technique and its application?”
“From an old woman named—”
“—named Mavle TU-5, who six months later was condemned as a One-Eyed deviate and executed in the Death’s Head!”
“I fail to see what this has to do with—” began the judge. Disorder had begun again and the gavel now covered the voice, rapping loudly. But the moment a sort of silence was restored, Jackson’s voice came again: “Captain Alva, when the gyroscopic centering for the multiple gravity distributor failed, didn’t you come to Ben Holden I-6 for a two-week cram course in general relativistic physics before you even dared to open the housing?”
From the judge: “This has nothing to do with your case! You were asked only to question Dr. Lang’s report on your deviation!”
“For the love of knowledge, I am questioning. I’m telling you we’re not a bunch of mutant monsters. I’m telling you we’re only people who are trying to guard what’s left of wisdom in this barbaric cave you call a City. Your beloved Norm! To close off twenty people in a section and gas them for their love of history; to chase a man out of hiding with a herd of specially bred twenty-pound rats because he knows multiple calculus; to inject a woman with half a dozen pathological viruses until she confessed Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and then sentence her to the Death’s Head as an unredeemable mutant; what Norm does this conform to? Does this meet any standard of human—”
“Silence!” The gavel thundered. Then, slow but mounting: “Our ancestors charged us with bringing human beings to the stars. And no deviation will be tolerated. How long ago was it that One-Eyed conspirators took over Epsilon-7 and destroyed it?”
Three voices attempted to interrupt—the Captain’s, Jackson’s, and Dr. Lang’s: “But your Honor, we don’t—”
“That the last communication came from One-Eyes is proof enough that they were the last ones in charge, and therefore that they must have overthrown the leadership of the Norm. Fifteen thousand people on Epsilon-7 all dead: the Sigma-9 will not be next. In view of the threat such deviation poses, I cannot but give my assent to Dr. Lang’s recommendation of death by—”
“Excuse me, your Honor!” It was Captain Alva’s voice, desperate. “I’ve just received a message from the communications gate. Static has blanketed our connection with Delta-6. Faint messages are coming through asking for assistance. They seem to have—”
A sound like an explosion, only it didn’t stop.
Joneny jumped. At first he thought the people in the court had rioted. Then he realized it was raging static. He punched the label again; the static stopped. Confused, with long rollings of terror in him, he stepped back from the trial index, pulling his thoughts to the present. The auditorium before him was no longer empty.
He started. Nearly a quarter of the seats were filled with azure-skinned youngsters, boys, all of whom had been paying silent attention to the record of the trial. As Joneny watched, openmouthed, several of the audience, now that the recording was over, floated from the seats and listed to one side or the other. Joneny looked around for his guide and found him at last, stretched out across the upper surface of the gell.
“What—what are they?” Joneny motioned again to the figures in the auditorium.
The boy stuck his head in and said, “I told you. They’re the rest of me…the Destroyer’s Children.”
“Then what are you?”
The boy slipped the rest of the way into the gell, shrugged, and when Joneny glanced at the auditorium again, it was empty.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to go to the Death’s Head?”
Joneny shook his head, not in negation but to clear it. He was still trying to figure out why the ending of the last trial record was so sudden, as well as make some judgment on the situation between the One-Eyes and the Norm. And there was no explanation for these green-eyed youngsters who seemed so capable of navigating in a vacuum.
“You said you wanted to see it.”
“Huh?” Nothing would resolve. “Oh, yes. I guess so.”
“You just follow me,” the boy said; then he added in what seemed a consoling tone, “You’ll see.”
The boy popped out of the bubble. Nervously Joneny propelled the gell after him.
chapter six
So this was what the ballad meant by “Death’s Head hill.”
The gell, with Joneny inside, had just entered a room larger than the auditorium. The walls curved toward a vaulted peak. The blue glow was replaced by crimson. The floor sloped upward; the ceiling came down and joined in an immense funnel that was stopped by a skull-shaped grate. The wide door at the bottom where the mouth would be increased the resemblance. Joneny stood at the bottom of the curved metal slope and stared for a full minute.
At last his gaze fell away from the heights and he caught sight of an alcove at the bottom. At the back of the alcove was a door. His sandals clicking on the plates, he started toward it. A moment later he pushed open the door and blinked as the light went again to blue. It was a living apartment; it had not been set up for free fall, which reigned in this part of the ship now. Books had drifted from shelves and settled like barnacles on the walls. A lamp had done the same. As Joneny stepped in, the bulb, disturbed after aeons, blinked on and went out again. Who had lived here? Joneny wondered.
His eyes roamed the books: Moby-Dick; Les Illuminations; Voyage, Orestes; The Worm Ouroboros. He had read none of them and had heard of only one.
Across the room was another door. He gloved the gell again and pulled it open. One instant he was terrified that the black thing billowing out was alive. But it was only cloth. Surprise still held, but he reached out and took the suit of clothing from the closet and spread it. There was something on the shoulder, and when he pushed back the black folds, he saw it was a rope—a rope had been coiled about one shoulder like an emblem.
Without bellying, the cloth waved and floated, and a part of the suit he hadn’t seen rose into sight from behind the collar. It was a black hood that would mask the entire face save two ominous eyeholes.
Joneny frowned. He put the suit back in the closet and shut the door. One sleeve caught outside and flapped slowly in the windless space like a truncated arm. Again he looked at the books quivering among the shelves.
One was large, black, and familiar. It was the same sort of book that Captain Hank Brandt had kept his log in. Joneny pulled it to him and opened the silvered pages. It was no diary. The entries were statistically terse. On the opening page the epigraph:
Lord, what do I here…
Then:
Executed today at 2:00 P.M….name and date. Executed this morning at 6:30…name and date. Executed this afternoon…
The book was only half filled. Joneny turned to the final entry: …this evening at 11:45, One-Eyed Jackson-O-E-5611.
The words that started in his mind were also sounding inside the gell. He turned to listen to the boy singing to an odd, bare melody:
“Another man stood on Death’s Head hill,
His eyes were masked, his hands were still.
Over his shoulder he carried a rope,
And he stood stock quiet on Death’s Head slope.”
Joneny let the book float away, went to the door of the executioner’s apartment, and looked toward the Death’s Head.
The Destroyer’s Children, several hundred of them now, all standing over the floor that sloped toward the skull, turned and looked at him. Their lean bodies cast thin shadows in the crimson vault.
Joneny turned back again. The boy was
outside the bubble now. The words What are you? came into his mind again, but before he said them, the boy shrugged again. Joneny thought about this for three whole seconds before he asked, “You can read my mind, can’t you?”
The boy nodded.
“Is that why you speak so well?”
The boy nodded again.
“And you say you don’t know what you are,” said Joneny trying to control both voice and thoughts.
A third time the boy nodded.
“Why don’t we try to find out?” He motioned for the boy, who came forward and stepped (pop) into the bubble. “Let’s go back to my ship, all right?”
“All right,” the boy said.
They made their way from the Death’s Head, along the blue corridor, through the courthouse, and out into the hollow wound of the starship in which Joneny’s cruiser hung against the girders.
The gell plunged through the open space toward the silver oblong. A few yards from the door, Joneny slowed. “I want you to stay outside the ship until I call you in.”
“Okay.”
Joneny moved the gell forward, and the boy popped out the back wall. The selector field passed the gell and Joneny felt gravity strike him again. He collapsed the bubble around him and kicked it into the corner like a pile of cellophane. Then he looked out the door again. In the light from his cruiser, some twenty feet away, the boy waved at him. Joneny waved back and went to the controls.
Once more he glanced at the boy before he jammed the ship into time stasis. Again he went to the door and looked out. Nothing in that blackness should be able to move now, reflected Joneny, for, relatively speaking, everything outside the ship was caught in time, though one could also say that it was Joneny’s cruiser that was caught.