A bottle of water was put before me. Once again, I was glad—but only momentarily. The instant the first sip touched my lips, I suddenly knew exactly where all that missing moisture had gone to, where all the moisture in my body had gone to.
Use of his honorific had pleased Lieutenant Bruce. “Do you mind if I ask why, Dr. Short?”
“He plays the saxophone, sir.”
This response clearly baffled Bruce. He wanted to find it contemptible—but even he couldn’t be contemptuous of a Relativist.
Dr. Will cut in, and again it was one of those glad-but-only-for-a-second deals, because with her first words, I realized she was speaking in courtroom tones. “Joel, we’re here to adjudicate the events that occurred in your quarters earlier this afternoon. First we will establish what facts we can. You will have an opportunity to explain, interpret, argue, or rebut, afterward, but please reserve your comments if any until we’ve finished examining the record. The Sheffield’s AI began saving this recording when one of you spoke one of its trigger phrases, ‘gray market.’ Under the terms of the Covenant, the recording was brought to official human attention only upon the observed commission of a breach of harmony which occurs several seconds in—”
Oh, shit, here we go, I thought. Okay, okay: when it gets to the crucial point in the playback, they’ll all hear how close it sounded like “poppy flower.” They’ll see how it was an honest mistake.
The playback began on the monitor before me, with a peripheral echo over on Prosecutor Dooley’s table.
And of course they’ll agree that if somebody had been trying to peddle poppy products in a small society like this one, they should have been spaced. Anybody might take a poke at guys like that, before getting control of their emotions.
Reluctantly I admitted to myself that onscreen, they did not look particularly like villains. They looked like idiots—somehow still optimistic enough to think they might put one over on The Man despite a consistent record of failure. Worse, they were clearly harmless idiots, not nearly as menacing as I remembered them.
Richie said his High Japonics line again, and Sol brayed with laughter, even though he’d heard it already, outside in the anteroom.
Then the recording reached the point at which I’d heard “poppy flower,” and what Jules said onscreen now sounded nothing at all like “poppy flower,” it was clearly and unambiguously “happy hour,” and nothing else.
And then nothing that followed was as I remembered it. I watched in growing dismay at what resembled nothing so much as a performance by an ancient comedy team called The Three Stooges.
I did not land a single punch. Nobody did. I was the only one who even tried very hard.
The me onscreen cussed Richie and Jules out, and told them to get out of his room or he’d call a proctor. Richie jumped up indignantly, shouting, “Hey, fuck that, I’m on probation, okay!” He put a hand on my shoulder—to turn me around to face him, so he could argue more effectively; it was quite clear he wasn’t attempting a sucker punch. And I tried to spin on my heel and punch his face in. And tripped over my own feet and missed by a kilometer and fell heavily into him, staggering him a little. And behind me, Jules tried to step forward and pull me back by the collar, except the place he planned to put his foot turned out to be full of my tangled ankles, so he tripped and fell into me. That tipped Richie the rest of the way over backward, and we all crashed onto Pat’s bunk together, tearing it right out of the wall and dropping us to the deck. Richie and I both got the breath knocked completely out of us, but Jules was able to rise far enough to reach a musclebound arm up and grab hold of my bunk, which promptly also tore out of the wall and whacked him hard enough on the head to knock him cold. It drove his head forward and down, so it slid off the front of his head, and landed edge-on on the middle of Richie’s contorted face, smoothing it out completely, at just about the same instant that Jules’s kneecaps impacted both of my kidneys. Then it fell over onto the back of my head, and Jules’s face landed on it. And then we all were very quiet and still…
“Do you wish to see the recording again, Joel?” Dr. Will asked.
My mouth had once again become dry as a balance sheet. I shook my head no, reached for my water, and allowed myself the tiniest possible sip.
“Is there anything you wish to say on behalf of the colony, Prosecutor Dooley?”
“No, Doctor. I believe what we’ve seen twice now speaks for itself.”
“It certainly does,” Bruce muttered sotto voce.
“Joel, if there is anything you would like to say, now is the time.”
Oh. Oh. I was ready for this one. Thank you, Pat! I fumbled at my pocket, took out my lines, tried to unfold the paper under the table unobtrusively, so it wouldn’t be totally obvious I was using a crib sheet.
And when I had it open, the damned thing was blank.
I looked at Sol. Sol looked back at me. I looked down at that piece of paper. Then I looked back up at the judge and shook my head no.
She merely nodded, but her mouth changed slightly in a way that gave me the impression my response pleased her for some reason. “Anything to add, Advocate Short?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Sol said. He tapped a few keys on the table’s terminal. “You will all find my representation before you. It speaks to certain facts and circumstances which I hope you will agree are mitigational in this matter.”
As all three looked down at their screens and began to read, I looked at ours, but it was blank. I looked at Sol. Sol looked back at me. I faced forward and waited.
“I see,” Magistrate Will said after a few moments. “Thank you, Advocate.”
Coordinator Grossman was next to finish reading; she sat back, turned her head five degrees to the right, and studied me, frowning slightly.
When Bruce spoke, there was something odd about his voice. “You appear to have been under a great deal of stress lately, Colonist.” It took me a moment to identify the subtle change in his tone. He was addressing me with respect. It confused me so much, the interval into which I could have inserted a response passed before I could think of one.
Dr. Will polled her companions by eye. There was some brief silent communication I didn’t get. “Very well,” she said then, and fixed me with an eagle’s remorseless gaze. “Citizen Joel Johnston, physical violence aboard this ship is intolerable. You have damaged fellow citizens and colony property without cause. Examination suggests that you may have done so because of situational emotional imbalance, and possibly perceptual error, rather than from an unhealthy belief that you are entitled to correct the moral lapses of your fellow citizens with assault. Therefore, this matter will be held in abeyance indefinitely. You will not be required to accept remedial neurochemistry at this time. You are released in your own recognizance, on the conditions that, first, you enter treatment immediately, and satisfy all requirements of your chosen Healer to the best of your ability, and second, you either make peace with Transportees Bent and Rafuse, or mutually file a standard hundred-meter restraining order. In addition you are fined their medical expenses, and the cost of materials for repairing the physical damage to your quarters.”
“Do you understand all that, Joel?” Grossman asked. Her voice was deep, raspy, kindly. “Settle the score, bury the hatchet, do as your Healer tells you, this all goes away and you get to keep on being who you are right now. Otherwise your brain chemistry gets readjusted until you’re fit to live with people. It’s our only choice, I’m afraid: we have no Coventry aboard.”
I stood there listening to the blood in my ears until Bruce said, “Is there anything you wish to say for the record, Citizen Johnston?”
I looked at Sol. Sol looked back at me. I looked down at my crib sheet, and it was still blank. I looked up at the panel, and found that there was enough moisture in my mouth to permit speech, and that decided me.
I said, “Thank you,” to Magistrate Will, and “Very much,” to Coordinator Grossman, and “All of you,” to Third Officer Bruce.
All three
gave the same inclined nod of polite acknowledgment. All three stood up. So did Sol. So did Prosecutor Dooley. So, finally, did I.
“Hot jets, Citizen,” Dr. Will said formally.
“C-clear skies,” I responded automatically, but she had already spun on her heel and left, followed by her fellow panelists.
I turned to Sol, and found him beaming at me. “Some people are really hard to drag to a shrink,” he said. Then his expression changed slightly. “Whoa, now. Okay. Let’s sit down and have a nice drink of water. That’s better. Now a nice deep breath. Hold it for a moment. That’s it. Let it out. Wait. Deep breath again. Hold. Release. Hold. You’ve got it. A little longer each time.” The breathing thing was very hard to do, but soon it did start to clear my head a little. My heart was pumping a klick a sec. I felt like I was on the Upper Farm Deck: the temperature seemed to have shot up five degrees. I was pouring with fresh sweat from head to toe.
“Idiot,” Sol said, shaking his head. “Before, you sweat.”
“I don’t know why I hadn’t figured it out for myself, but I hadn’t,” I said. “I’m usually much quicker on the uptake, but it never occurred to me I was in danger of being put on neuromeds until she said I wasn’t anymore. It’s kind of a phobia of mine, having my personality altered by someone else. You probably think Ganymedeans are backward primitives in that regard, but—”
“It is precisely because I share your unconventional horror that I chose to act as your Advocate.”
“Sol—”
“Don’t thank me until you hear my fee. I want a new composition. It has to be at least fifteen minutes long. It can have anything you want in it as long as there’s a lot of sax, baritone. Theme, style, tempo, key—all up to you. And it has to have my name in the title. You have until we reach our destination.”
I looked at his goofy kindly smile for a long moment. “Sold,” I said finally. “Thank you, Solomon.”
“Don’t forget to thank Pat for writing your speech. You delivered it eloquently. I might almost say movingly.”
“I won’t. Which one of you put the other up to this?”
He was gone like the Cheshire Cat, leaving behind only a ghost of his dopey grin.
11
Life is painful;
Suffering is optional.
—Sylvia Boorstein
My Healer said, “Will you excuse me for just one moment, Joel?
“Of course, Dr. Louis,” I said, and she put her full attention on her screen for a few moments, keying in an occasional input. To pass the time I examined her office, a fairly large cubic, soothingly furnished, gimmicked so that no matter which way you looked, the light was never directly in your eyes.
Suddenly I burst out laughing. A small outburst, easily suppressed, but audible. She looked up and met my eyes again and smiled faintly. “You got it, did you?”
“Just now,” I agreed.
Behind her, a midsize image hung framed on the wall, a rather striking photo of a large lizard, of a breed that had adapted better than anyone had expected to Martian conditions and was now considered a minor pest there. I had noticed it when I’d come in, but it had taken until now for my memory to yield up the odd name of that odd creature: Gila monster. It was a visual pun. She was the Healer monster.
“That’s about how long we’ve been around,” she said.
“Healers?”
“Meddlers. Busybodies. Pains in the ass. Healing is merely one of the few remaining socially acceptable excuses for poking one’s nose into another Citizen’s affairs. Excuse me again for just one moment.”
She went back to her screen, and this time I decided to pass my time by studying her more closely instead of the room.
She was perhaps twice my own age or a bit more, I guessed, of average height and weight, and looked healthy, fit, and content with her life. In another context I’d have called her attractive for her age. She wore her brown hair short, so nothing obscured any part of her face. In its various contours and configurings I found evidences suggesting decency, kindness, patience, considerable humor… and beneath all these a strength, or perhaps simply a determination, so awesome even in repose I had the crazy idea that if she were ever to go out the airlock, get a good grip on the frame, and plant her feet on the vacuum, the Sheffield would slowly come to a halt. Her clothing, however, was slightly more casual and comfortable than many would have deemed appropriate for our situation, indicating that the strength was not the kind rooted in iron stupid discipline.
I glanced around again. A pair of flat images on the side of a bookcase caught my attention, precisely because they seemed so pointless. Each photo had been cut out of a magazine or other hard copy and put there with pins. The one on top was of a donkey, or burro. Below it was a medium shot of a golfer lining up a putt. And just below them both was a line cut from some advertisement: “For those who know the difference!” If there was a point to the arrangement, it eluded me.
“Thanks for your patience.”
“No problem, Dr. Louis.”
“Call me Amy, please. Joel, I think there are four questions you urgently need to consider.”
“That many?” I said sourly.
“I don’t think you’ve thought through any of them yet.” Perhaps my least favorite criticism; I swallowed a comeback. “And you must. They’re all very important.”
“Somehow, Amy, I have an idea you’re going to tell me what they are soon.”
She shook her head. “Not if you’re going to get cranky right at the jump, just because I said you have some thinking to do. If you like, we can spend this whole session dicking around. But we’re going to get to it eventually. Suit yourself.”
I think if she had looked back down at her screen, I would have gotten up and left, then. But she didn’t. She just kept looking me in the eye, waiting, not offended by my antics, just waiting patiently until I decided to move on instead.
“Hell of a thing to say to a man, that he doesn’t think things through,” I grumbled. But it was clearly a backing-down grumble.
She nodded sympathetically. “It is an embarrassing thing to be caught at. But, Joel, face it: you’re caught. Your presence here is not voluntary, remember? Ergo, you have screwed up big-time. The embarrassment is one of the smallest things you’re going to have to deal with.”
She paused, visibly giving me a few seconds to see if I was going to jump salty again.
Well, God damn it, Joel, is she right or isn’t she? Can you face facts, or not?
“The majority of clients I deal with have been driven into this room by their own egos. You have not, for once, so I don’t want to waste as much time dealing with yours. Can we simply assume goodwill on both sides, and start with the basic agreement that you need help, and that I may have some?”
The stars themselves knew I needed help. And I knew she had some. I’d known that before I’d gotten from her door to the chair I sat in.
“I guess…” I began.
And a stuck switch somewhere in my brain went spung, and I burst out laughing—a hold-your-belly-and-fold-over guffaw.
She was not offended in the least, just surprised. And interested. I wanted to explain but was laughing too hard. But she was in no hurry. Finally I got enough air to hoot, “I do!… I do!… Honest!” which only further confused her until I was able to get one arm free and point to the clip art pictures on the side of her bookcase that had puzzled me earlier. “I do know!” At once she began to laugh, too.
I do know the difference. Between my ass, and a hole in the ground. “Sometimes, anyway—”
She had a great braying loon hoot of a laugh, and knew it, and was not at all self-conscious about it. So we had us a good one. By the time it was done, I was pretty sure I trusted her. It’s humorless people who frighten me, because I can’t begin to understand them.
At last I said, “I’m sorry, Amy. Please tell me the four questions you think I need to address first.”
She nodded. “Who. What. Where. Why.”
/>
I blinked. “Not ‘when’?”
She shook her head. “The answer to that is always ‘now.’”
I took a deep breath. “In that case, let’s do it.”
“First, ‘who.’ That’s almost always a good place to start. Who are you? Not, who did you plan to be, or who are you expected to be, or even, what would you like to be. Who are you? Who the hell is this Joel Johnston, when he’s at home? I don’t think you know. And I’m certain I don’t. It would be a useful thing to know, don’t you think?”
I was past sarcasm or irony. “Yes, Amy, it would.” My voice was hoarse. From the laughing.
“Next, ‘what.’ What led you to this place? To this ship, this twenty-year voyage to the back of beyond? What led you to abandon literally every single thing you’ve ever known except the concept of associating with other humans? Why did you leave the world, leave the rest of the race, leave the Solar System, for good? This is probably the question you think you know the most about, and I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. Or only part right.”
It was a broken heart! Wasn’t it?
Wait. Had I expected heartbreak to be permanent? Did I really intend to die a virgin? If my Jinny was not to be with me, nor I with her, how was it any better if she was eighty-five light-years farther away?
“The third question, ‘where,’ might actually be your best place to start. Where are you going? I mean that not rhetorically, but literally.”
I didn’t understand. “Literally? That’s easy. To Peekaboo Two. Brasil Novo, if you want to be formal. The second planet of Immega Seven-Something.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Huh?”
“Tell me about the planet. When it was discovered. Its physical parameters. Its atmosphere. Its geography, and geology. Climate. Seasons. Flora. Fauna. Most intelligent-seeming organism identified. Most dangerous-looking predator identified. Intended location of our First Landing site.” She paused expectantly.
“Uh… it’s real hot and damp, for… for extended periods, and there’s a whole lot of oxygen,” I said, and realized with dismay that I had shot my bolt.
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