by James Morrow
The gasps faded into the rumble of the question What? in fifty languages.
‘Legal proceedings against animals have a long history. Plato’s The Laws includes the directive that “if a beast of burden shall kill anyone, the relatives of the deceased shall prosecute it for murder.” The Book of Exodus tells us that “when an ox gores a man to death, the ox must be stoned.” However, until today no one has indicted the animal that my assistants will now bring forward.’
A loud, high skreeee filled the courtroom – the shrill protestations of wheels turning on axles. Dennie and Parkman were pouring all of their youthful, unadmitted energy into pushing a large wooden cart toward the bench.
On the cart was a metal cage.
In the cage was a gigantic vulture.
‘The first day of the war found me on a vulture hunt,’ Bonenfant explained, ‘chasing this creature from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts. I captured it not far from George Paxton’s hometown and then made my rendezvous with the City of New York.’
Aquinas boiled over like neglected oatmeal on a hot stove. ‘Your Honors, this is a courtroom, not a zoo! Whatever relevance Mr Bonenfant’s fat bird may have – and I see none – its arrival comes much too late to be considered admissible.’
‘I beg the court’s indulgence,’ said Bonenfant, gently lifting the solitary document from the defense table and handing it to Dennie. ‘Two days ago my chief assistant began an arduous trek up the glacier. She was searching for someone. This morning she found him. Your Honors, the defense is pleased to offer the deposition of one Dr Laslo Prendergorst – resident of Ice Limbo 905, unadmitted ornithologist, hypothetical Nobel laureate, and Antarctica’s most illustrious vulture expert.’
‘We didn’t have time to copy it,’ said Dennie, placing the document before Justice Jefferson.
‘Dr Prendergorst has examined the specimen in question,’ said Bonenfant, ‘and he has confirmed our suspicions. During the late Pleistocene era, a swift-flying, migratory species of vulture inhabited North America – the Teratornis, one form of which, Argentavis magnificens, was the largest bird ever to have lived. Twentieth-century scientists assumed that all the teratorns, including the gargantuan Argentavis magnificens, were extinct. The scientists were wrong. A small breeding population of Argentavis survived. In his deposition Dr Prendergorst draws an analogy with a fish called the coelacanth, believed to have vanished during the Cretaceous period. In 1938 a live coelacanth was found off the southern coast of Africa. Rumors of its extinction had been greatly exaggerated.’
Justice Wojciechowski smiled. The teratorn chewed the cage bars with its steam-shovel beak, shook them with its chipped and twisted claws.
When Bonenfant snapped his fingers, Parkman pulled some papers from the chief counsel’s briefcase and delivered them to the judges.
‘Your Honors, we are now offering a fresh copy of the prosecution’s own Document 318, a NORAD computer printout indicating the sizes, velocities, radar signatures, and trajectories of the objects that triggered this war. Were these objects heading across Canada on a line with Washington? Yes. Were they shaped like Soviet Spitball cruise missiles? Yes.
‘But’ – Bonenfant paused, weaving his hand through the air as if it were in flight – ‘were they Soviet Spitball cruise missiles?
‘No! They were a flock of admittedly hideous but completely unarmed vultures pursuing their annual one-day migration from Newfoundland to the Yucatan Peninsula. If you doubt my claim, turn to the last page. You will see one of the satellite photographs taken to corroborate the NORAD sighting. This is not a cruise missile, your Honors. You can even see the bloodstains on its beak.’
Aquinas leaped up. ‘Your Honors, how much longer must we endure this ludicrous presentation?’
Justice Jefferson seesawed her glasses on the bridge of her nose, looked at Document 318, and said, ‘Your findings are most unusual, Mr Bonenfant, and the court considers them admissible, but what is the point?’
‘Just this. Armed deterrence did not fail. The war happened through a freak of nature. If the teratorns had taken a slightly different flight path on that particular Saturday morning, they would have eluded the NORAD early warning systems, as they had done so many times in the past, and the nuclear balance would have remained intact. My clients planned no crimes against peace, nor did they carry them out. Armed deterrence worked, your Honors. It worked.’
‘It worked,’ said Brat.
‘It worked,’ said Wengernook.
‘It worked,’ said Overwhite.
‘It worked,’ said Randstable.
‘Amen,’ said Reverend Sparrow.
‘And that is all I have to say,’ Bonenfant concluded.
Justice Jefferson cast a thoughtful glance toward the foulsmelling bird – a glance into which George read vast volumes of wisdom and compassion – and announced that the court would withdraw to write its verdict.
And so the ice continent became a kind of physician’s office, humanity’s final remnant fidgeting in the anteroom, waiting to learn whether its collective case was terminal.
In George’s brain vicious and sadistic memory cells played his testimony over and over, torturing the guilt areas with snatches from speeches he might have made. Should I have spoken of Justine – of how she instinctively knew the suits were no good? Said more about Holly? Mentioned the Giant Ride horse, the Big Dipper, or the Mary Merlin doll back home in the closet? Certainly I could have put more stress on my co-defendants’ positive points . . .
He paced his cell, wearing a groove in the ice.
Why doesn’t your future wife come to visit you? his spermatids asked.
If word got back to the judges, he explained, they’d know she cared about me.
Of course, said the spermatids. Yes. Naturally. Why doesn’t she come anyway?
I don’t know, he confessed.
On the witness stand, she said she didn’t love you.
That was just to help our case.
JUSTICES STILL DELIBERATING, the slopes of Mount Christchurch declared to the assembled legions.
‘This game is seven-card stud,’ said Overwhite.
‘They’re probably hung up on Paxton’s testimony,’ said Brat. ‘All that talk about bad ideas – it must have thrown them.’
‘For a loop,’ said Wengernook.
‘I told the truth,’ said George.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Overwhite. He squeezed George’s hand. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that stuff about your kid.’
‘It’s all right,’ said George. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he added.
‘War always has its human side,’ said Brat.
‘Do you suppose Jefferson and company were favorably impressed by that vulture?’ asked Overwhite.
‘Definitely,’ said Wengernook.
‘An excellent move by Bonenfant,’ said Randstable. ‘Very pretty.’
‘It proves that you don’t get into a war by being too strong,’ said Brat.
‘Ace bets,’ said Randstable.
‘One egg,’ said Wengernook.
‘Two,’ said Overwhite.
‘We should be glad,’ said Brat. ‘It’s a good sign when a jury is out for a long time.’
‘That’s just in the movies,’ said Wengernook.
‘There is no jury,’ said Overwhite.
‘There are no movies,’ said George.
‘Raise,’ said Brat.
JUSTICES TO ANNOUNCE VERDICT TODAY, said Mount Christ-church.
The final week of school, the final day of a summer by the sea, the final hour of a long train trip – George could recall all of these experiences. In each case the space in question had changed, abandoning him even as he attempted to abandon it. For nearly a month the Ice Palace of Justice had been his home, but now it was regaining the aloofness and unfamiliarity it had worn on the first day.
The judges entered slowly, their black robes soaking up the oily gloom, each wearing a face that could have bluffed its way through a thousand losi
ng poker hands. Shawna Queen Jefferson, who carried a ream of paper and a biography of Abraham Lincoln in her arms, was mumbling to herself. Theresa Gioberti seemed worried, Jan Wojciechowski bemused, Kamo Yoshinobu sad.
They sat down.
The cold, muffled stillness of a planetarium seeped through the palace. George scanned the gallery – the faces, the signs. Yes, there she was, between LET US IN and GIVE THEM A VOICE: Aubrey’s mother. His spermatids longed for the South Pole and the strength they knew they would find there.
At the defense table Bonenfant, Dennie, and Parkman held hands.
Justice Jefferson took her whalebone glasses from her scopas suit and put them on. She spread out the papers, selected one.
‘I shall begin by stating that, in the opinion of the tribunal, the doctrine of armed deterrence remains vigorous, credible, and intact.’
A vast and spontaneous ‘NO!’ thundered down from the gallery. The judge smashed her gavel into the bench, launching a spray of ice chips.
‘Even while undergoing certain disturbing variations during the last administration, the armed-deterrence doctrine continued to boast such resilience that it could be used to make as good a case for expanding America’s thermonuclear arsenal as for scaling it down.’
A smile jumped onto Dennie’s impossibly pretty face.
‘Hot damn!’ said Wengernook.
‘Guys, we brought it off,’ said Brat.
‘All they wanted was an explanation,’ said Overwhite.
‘We agree with Mr Bonenfant that armed deterrence might have lasted until the nuclear powers grew tired of maintaining their pointless stockpiles, subsequently scrapping them,’ said Shawna Queen Jefferson. ‘And we agree with the defendant Randstable that the warheads might also have disappeared through a kind of technological evolution.’
When the groans and catcalls finally subsided, the judge continued.
‘In his closing argument the chief counsel put a crucial question to us. What would we have done in his clients’ place? A fair question. A tormenting question . . .
‘Oddly enough, Mr Aquinas miscalculated when he introduced his scale-model weapons as evidence for the prosecution. For we learned that, whether carved from ice or from metal, such technology has a fearsome glamor. We found ourselves saying, “Yes, yes, give us these sensual missiles, these steel boats, these wondrous planes, these high-IQ warheads. Give us these things, and no one will ever dare to attack us.” So we too would have wanted that Triad, in all its completeness and power.’
Randstable and Wengernook exchanged thumbs-up signals. Transcending their differences over STABLE II, Overwhite and Sparrow embraced. Brat offered his bony right hand to George; the tomb inscriber shook it.
And then, after taking a drink of cocoa, Shawna Queen Jefferson removed her glasses and slammed them klack against the bench. ‘It is not we four judges who are on trial here, however,’ she said swiftly, tersely. ‘It is you six defendants,’ she added. ‘Thank God,’ sighed the president of the court.
She opened her Lincoln biography and, moistening her black thumb with a pink tongue, flipped back several pages. ‘In a message to Congress on December 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves . . .” ’ She slammed the book shut. ‘Gentlemen in the dock, you know as well as I that the vast record assembled in this courtroom admits of but one interpretation. It is true that your crimes had the outward appearance of legality. It is true that you committed them under conditions that made it difficult for you to feel you were doing wrong. It is even true that you tried to limit their essentially illimitable implications.
‘But you did not rise with the occasion. You did not think anew. You did not disenthral yourselves . . . And you failed to reckon on the vulture.
‘There will always be a vulture, gentlemen. History is full of vultures. When you booby-trap an entire planet, you cannot cry “Non mea culpa!” if some faulty computer chip, misfiled war game, nuclear terrorist, would-be Napoleon, unmanageable crisis, or incomprehensible event pulls the tripwire. You cannot say that you were simply obeying your constituents or leaders. To quote Hannah Arendt, “Politics is not like the nursery. In politics, obedience and support are the same.” ’
Bonenfant was shivering as if his scopas suit had ceased to function. Dennie’s exquisite face had turned ugly with anger and frustration.
‘Support,’ repeated Justice Jefferson. ‘There is where your guilt lies. For when all is said and done, what remains is this. Each of you in his own way encouraged his government to cultivate a technology of mass murder, and, by extension, each of you supported a policy of mass murder.’
George looked at Morning and realized that he had never before seen anyone weeping at a distance. He felt his spermatids shaking with dread.
‘Speaking personally,’ Justice Jefferson continued, ‘I would like nothing better than to say, “Gentlemen, there has been enough slaughter already, and we have decided to answer your crimes with love. You are free to leave this courtroom and survive as best you can here in Antarctica.” ’ She bent her head for a moment. When she looked up, tears were poised on her eyelids. ‘But I cannot say that, for the tribunal’s duty at this moment is to tell all creation that we loathe what you did, and we know only one way to accomplish this.’
Parkman left the defense table and, throwing up his hands in a gesture of contempt, stalked out of the courtroom.
‘The defendant Overwhite will please rise,’ said Justice Wojciechowski. ‘Mr Brian Overwhite, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.’
‘I thought you just wanted an explanation,’ Overwhite sputtered.
‘The defendant Randstable will please rise,’ said Justice Yoshinobu. ‘Dr William Randstable, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.’
‘If I may say so, your Honors, that is the poorest decision I have ever heard,’ responded the former whiz kid.
‘The defendant Sparrow will please rise,’ said Justice Gioberti. ‘Reverend Peter Sparrow, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.’
The evangelist pulled the little Bible from his three-piece suit and kissed it. ‘I am with you always,’ he said with great dignity, ‘even unto the end of the world.’
‘The defendant Tarmac will please rise,’ said Justice Wojciechowski.
‘There’s a pattern developing here,’ muttered the MARCH Hare.
‘Major General Roger Tarmac, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.’ Brat pantomimed his opinion that Justice Wojciechowski should be subjected to an involuntary and unpleasant sexual experience.
‘The defendant Wengernook will please rise,’ said Justice Yoshinobu.
The assistant defense secretary did not move. His eyes looked packed in wax. His hands vibrated like chilly tarantulas. Gila Guizot entered the glass booth and hauled him to his feet.
‘Mr Robert Wengernook, the court finds you guilty on all four counts and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.’
Gila repositioned the defendant in his chair.
Brat is right, thought George. A pattern is developing here. But not for me. My luck is too good. Cancer? Nah, it’s only scar tissue, the family doctor had said. Yes, ‘I’ll marry you, Justine had said. Sure, I’ll give you a job, Arthur Crippen had said.
‘The defendant Paxton will please rise,’ said Justice Jefferson.
I’m a survivor, he thought. Nuclear war, radiation poisoning, human extinction – nothing can touch me.
George felt himself rising. He realized that he was standing, that Morning was studying him with moist eyes.
It’s positive, George! The pregnancy test
was positive!
‘Mr George Paxton, the court finds you . . .’
Nothing to worry about, folks, every baby gets ear infections.
‘Innocent—’
Innocent!
‘. . . on Count One, Crimes Against Peace. Innocent on Count Two, War Crimes. Innocent on Count Three, Crimes Against Humanity.’
Aubrey, Morning, we’ve done it!
‘On Count Four, Crimes Against the Future, the court finds you guilty as charged and sentences you to be hanged at sunrise tomorrow.’ Justice Jefferson winced violently. ‘I am sorry, Mr Paxton. We rather liked you.’ Her gavel hit the bench for the last time. ‘The International Military and Civilian Tribunal is hereby dissolved.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In Which Orange Trees Sprout Nooses and Our Hero Is Reunited with His Vulture
Even if George had heard the aphorism that nothing concentrates one’s mind so wonderfully as knowing one will be hanged at dawn, his mind would still have been woefully unconcentrated. A tribunal stenographer transcribing his thoughts would have produced only babblings, yipes, and the same chant he had improvised when the warhead was groundburst upon his home town. This cannot be happening, this cannot be happening, this cannot . . .
Like a cancer victim scanning a medical dictionary in hopes that the standard definitions have been repealed overnight in favor of good news, George reviewed what Justice Jefferson had said to him, seeking to find alternative meanings for ‘guilty’ and ‘hanged’ and ‘sunrise’ and ‘tomorrow.’ Futile. He picked up his Leonardo. His tears hit the paint, turning Aubrey’s dress to mud. I must face all this with dignity, he recited to himself. But where was the audience? In what history book would his courage be recorded? He returned the glass slide to the nightstand.
A discordant jangle of keys reached his ears, and then the door cracked open, sending a burst of torchlight across the cell floor.
‘Morning?’
But it was only Juan Ramos, bearing a large, hourglass-shaped object and a plate of food. ‘Your last meal, brave extinctionist. Also, if you want it, an ice clock.’
