Flesh and Gold

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  “Your attorney will appeal,” she said. Boudreau knew this well enough—sentences of more than one year were always appealed—and also that appeals made to assize courts took years, and he might well have finished his sentence before even the clerical work was done. He turned to Sama, opened his mouth and shut it again, and returned to staring at Skerow. His face was flaming, nearly purple.

  She looked at him for an anxious second before she faced the court and asked the formal question of its observers:

  “Is Justice seen to have been done?”

  “No! No!” Boudreau leaped from his cubicle and beat his fists against the rail.

  “What—?”

  He flung his tank at the lectern and shoved his foot through the railings to kick at it, screaming, “Thordh, you filthy bastard! Where are you?”

  “Be still, man! Bailiff!” The bailiff aimed her lightning-rod at Boudreau. Skerow said sharply, “Don’t be violent with him! Just return him to the holding area.”

  “You sonofabitch, he swore you’d let me off easy!” Boudreau howled. “I’ll die before I get out of those hell-pits!

  The bailiff summoned two guards to remove him, and the courtroom began to stir like dry leaves before a storm. A burly Tignit with swarming tentacles sniggered through his vocoder, “Give him five more years for bribing the judge!” Attending court was one of the few legal pleasures of Starry Nova.

  An elderly Solthree woman in a mineworker’s uniform said in a quiet but penetrating voice, “Give him death. His drugs killed my son.”

  “Quiet!” Skerow’s small hoarse voice was passing its limit, and the bailiff tapped the railing with her rod: a spark jumped from it, hissing.

  “Get that prisoner some more oxygen before he suffocates.” She slammed her heavy tail on the floor. “Court is adjourned! This is the last session of Galactic Federation Assizes in the city of Starry Nova until next quarter.” Tony was looking at her slantwise, but said nothing. The audience gathered itself up and away, grumbling; there were plenty of local courtroom scenes to be enjoyed, but no more exciting interworld ones for another quarter-year.

  Skerow turned now to Sama, who was lingering to get her files together. Her voice had been reduced to a hiss and a squeak; she went down the ramp to the floor below the cubicle so that her head would be level with Sama’s. “You wanted to tell me,” she whispered.

  Sama pulled her lips tight and shook her head.

  “I will not bring down more trouble on your client’s brow,” Skerow said. “Five years of prison in Starry Nova is a very heavy sentence. Thordh is a different matter.”

  Sama looked at her and shrugged, then muttered, “Boudreau said Thordh would let him off with a short sentence, that he’d done it before. Twice.” After a moment she added, “I knew that would have to come out some time, but I had an obligation to him, and he might have been boasting. Of course I haven’t checked on what he said.”

  “Quite right. But Thordh said this to him directly? Boudreau could not have been allowed to see him in person.”

  “I think there was an intermediary, someone who actually spoke to Thordh.”

  “Yes.” He said I’d get off . . . “Whatever it is, there’s nothing to be done about it this moment,” except, of course, that I must speak to Thordh, “officially. Good night.”

  In the empty courtroom she and Tony looked at each other. “I had the impression that you thought I would let that go by. Did you really believe I would be so derelict, Tony?”

  “Not at all. It might be easier on you if I spoke to him. That’s all I was thinking.”

  “I must speak to him first. He cannot be let off easier than Boudreau.” Tony kept on looking at her. “But I cannot go on sleeping in the same room with the man while this lies so cold between us.”

  Tony snickered faintly. “I never knew you slept with him, sweetheart.”

  “Not in the same basin,” she hissed.

  “Tsk.” Tony whisked himself away.

  She found herself suddenly very hungry and thirsty. In the lavatory she moistened her gill-stoppers and dropped a pellet of Khagodi sea salt into her water bowl; she was just flicking her tongue at the water when the reaction hit her. Thordh. Fussy, careful Thordh. She felt slightly nauseated but drank anyway.

  . . . Some notes you do not have . . .

  A very sober sides, that Thordh of yours.

  But this was foolish. At the least premature: an enraged felon, an attorney resentful of Khagodi authority . . .

  Yet . . . with the cage off her head, and her mind free-ranging, she recalled the wisps of thought, the suspicions, the remarks aside that she had just barely caught when she and Thordh were preparing this case, the efforts she had made not to know or hear. Half-consciously to hide her dislike of the man she had known and often worked with for twenty-five years.

  Khagodi: a name made by the Ancestral Saints from compounding words: Double heart, single mind. Or expanding them from a chance-found name, perhaps: her people carried these words everywhere throughout the Galaxy. She felt her two hearts beating their heavy uncoordinated rhythms.

  Why should I feel betrayed? This one was no Saint and I never liked him. I think I am suffering from deflated vanity. Obviously my judgment of others is not as good as I thought it was.

  “Oh Judge Skerow!” Before she had shut the door behind her in the corridor there was a journalist, a thin dark Solthree with a microphone, plucking at her robe. “Where is Thordh, Judge? Where?”

  Skerow stared down at the insolent face beneath the broad-brimmed rain hat. She could tell that beneath it he was wearing a commercial shield to hide his journalistic secrets. “He is indisposed,” she said, and flicked away the restraining hand with one pearled claw.

  Kobai

  She called off the limousine and walked the streets in the dirty rain. There was still a smear of dull light toward the west, but the eastern sky roared with takeoffs and landings, and their muffled thunders rolled across the city from beyond its limits. No stars to be seen. Twenty-five years of riding circuit with Thordh and others had brought her here four or five times, and each time renewed her fascination with the thick and lurid sky, the shimmering pavements, the coldlight displays advertising shoddy and expensive gewgaws. In no other city that she knew did hunched figures slink in and out of crumbling archways in such a sinister way, in no other streets could she expect to be confronted out of the darkness with such huge bubble windows that blazed with light to offer satisfaction of the darkest urges in a half-score of species.

  Khagodi who live among northern hills and dry plains are usually of a smaller, tighter build than those of the south, and can walk halfway gracefully; the others have a heavy wagging gait that is tiring even to watch. In spite of this advantage in size, the shocking trial had wearied Skerow, enough to make her look for a short cut, though the residence was not far away. She searched for a street where she could go slower and out of the rain, which she liked well enough when it was clean. Now it was coming up over the soles of her sandal-boots, and the chill dampness was getting to her the way it bothered Thordh. She paused in a dimly lit stone passageway leading to an open square. It seemed clear except for the odd drifting flock of bockers and footpads, and the one nuzzer who slithered up to her, whining, “Mama, you want a pogue?”

  She spat in his face while she swept her tail to knock down the huggard creeping up on her from behind. Then she moved forward quickly into the light of the stone square.

  —and I’ll kill you for this!

  The thoughtvoice came from nowhere, sharp as a steel dart, and she stood still for a moment among the flashing, bloody-colored lights; the passersby stared, and their thoughts eddied around her.

  :Who is that? Who!: No answer: the cry had come from emptiness, as if it had been waiting at the gate of her thought for a stimulus. She turned about, still searching, and behind her left shoulder found the kind of display she had been thinking about, the kind that made Starry Nova so interesting. She stood s
taring.

  A huge bubble of light—no, an illuminated water tank formed the advertisement and window of one shop. She was dimly aware that the line of symbols on its base spelled the name of a chain of brothels famous in a hundred cities on three worlds.

  There were two creatures in the tank. One lay on a bed of fake jewels: it nearly covered them, so pearly pale, all tentacles and violet-rimmed mouths: Skerow did not want to know if it was sentient.

  The other was . . . a Solthree woman. No matter that it—that she—was hairless, with dark red skin and a blade-shaped tail that propelled her in angry circles, that her forehead and chin receded steeply from the firm mouth, and her huge eyes had sealed transparent lids. Those eyes were empty of thought only because she was sleeping, and twitched with angry dreams that made her open her mouth and clench her teeth. She was a human Solthree woman, not merely sentient but intelligent—powerfully built, with square hands and spatulate fingers, a navel in her belly, and milk glands. Breasts. The sight of them with their stub nipples, of her, exposed and perhaps used, in this window, gave Skerow a powerful pang of vulnerability. Was she the source of that furious threat?

  The woman’s head rose, her eyes came alive and sharp.

  :You out-there do-nothing!: Furious enough, but not the voice that wanted to kill. :Scaly lady-woman, you tell Lord Big One Upthere, that Nohl, when I catch a good hold of him there is not much left that the dung-fish chew on, you tell him Kobai say so!: Her dark red palms and knees pressed flat against the glastex, she pushed her bright red mouth and tongue against it in a threat-face. :You tell him!:

  For the first time in her life, Skerow had absolutely no idea what to do.

  She knows me! No . . . she knows Khagodi, Nohl is a Khagodi name. Worse. She is from Khagodis! A captive . . .

  The wild and foolish thought came: rescue! She calmed herself: the young woman, really a girl, seemed healthy, unmarked, maintained in the kind of water she needed. Even treated like a possession she was being cared for in a legal establishment, and any fuss Skerow might make would harm her. :Kobai, I understand. I will help you. Tell me—:

  She felt other eyes on her. The madam, a blue-skinned Varvani woman, was standing in the doorway: she balanced her elephantine legs on gold clogs, and the enormous bosom above her chain-mail skirt was tattooed with red kissystars. The bouncer, a Solthree weightlifter, appeared behind her. She said in a deep plush voice, “Don’t block the window, dear heart. You want a sample, come on in.”

  :You tell that Nohl!:

  Skerow bared forty-six teeth at the woman, and snuffed air through her nostrils, but she very much wanted to avoid bringing further attention to herself and the captive woman. The Varvani knew nothing: she had only accepted delivery of a sullen package. Skerow told Kobai, :I don’t know him. But I will find him.:

  And without waiting for answers hurried away into the darkness.

  Thordh

  Because Fthel V is part of the Twelveworlds system, the Administrative Headquarters of Galactic Federation, and run by GalFed, its Outworld Residences are older and shabbier than those of worlds in other systems. They are built and furnished in Early Civil Service, and maintained threadbare and grimy. But this policy does not apply to the more exotic outworlders who need special mixtures of water or atmosphere, and particularly to Khagodi, whose basins and mud-tubs need constant sealing and renewing, as well as new floors to bear their weight: Skerow’s quarters in what was called The Luxury Suite were no more than half a century old.

  When she came round the corner to the entrance she was astonished to find the walkway full of street people, looking up at a window; it was her own, bright with much more light than her room’s dim lamps could give. Her first thought was that either the basin had broken, or the mudtub had fallen through the floor, and perhaps Thordh had been hurt. She dipped lightly into the minds of the people around her, but they knew nothing, and when they saw her, scattered.

  Just inside the gate a Solthree woman in a uniform was waiting for her: local police. Behind the helmet visor her eyes told of something more serious than a broken tank, or a sunken tub. “You are Madame Skerow?”

  “Yes. Where is my colleague? Judge Thordh?”

  “Come.”

  The bright light came from floods on stands. The basin was whole: Thordh was floating in it. Red ribbons of blood swirled round him; it had come from his eyes; squirting was typical of many Khagodi from his part of the world, along with high blood pressure. As he turned in the water the light refracted from his scales, pink, green, metallic blue and sudden red. A bubble had caught in his gill where his breathing siphon had retracted until only its stub was visible; his hands were open, as if he were beseeching.

  There were five people waiting for her, two Khagodi, two Solthrees, and a Lyhhrt in a workshell.

  “What happened? Is he dead?”

  “Yes,” said one of the Solthrees. “I’m Lieutenant Strang and this is Sergeant Ramaswamy. You know Commissioner Erha, and here,” indicating the Lyhhrt, “is Medical Examiner Um.” This was not the M.E.’s name. Lyhhrt were difficult to introduce because they did not have names. Strang offered a recording microphone. “Can you identify this person?”

  “Yes. He’s my colleague, Judge Thordh, of Khagodis. Did he die of a stroke?”

  “We’re not sure how. Or when.” He added grudgingly, “Someone called in without leaving a name.”

  One of the Khagodi, an iridescent young woman, said, “The unknown person also called Lawyer Anthony Labonta, and he sent me when he could not reach you.” Her name was Hathe, and she was a friend of Tony’s who worked in the Public Defender’s Office and lived in the complex.

  Skerow turned to the other Khagodi, the Commissioner whose party she had attended years earlier; he and Skerow, along with Hathe, now made up the complete Khagodi population of the city. “Erha Twelfth,” she said, for he had Lineage, “can you tell me something about this?”

  Erha said awkwardly, “I don’t know that I can, Skerow. I was called in . . .” He turned away from the lamps and the sight of the body. “I knew this man for most of my life . . . must we stand here looking at him?”

  Without esping him, as she dared not for the sake of privacy, she knew:

  You were called in, Twelfth Generation Erha, Father of Many, because someone told you that Thordh, another Father of Many, was in all of that trouble.

  Boudreau: . . . he swore you’d let me off easy!

  Give him death. His drugs killed my son.

  All the images of the trial boiled in her mind, and the vision of the woman Kobai imprisoned in a bowl. She had deliberately left off the helmet to avoid an appearance of defensiveness, and now she wished she had worn it. She was shielding perhaps to an unusual degree: Sergeant Ramaswamy put aside the daybook into which he had been both dictating and tapping out notes. “When did you see him last, Madame?”

  “During adjournment before the last trial, end of noon-chime three. He asked me to replace him and gave me his notes.”

  “Do you have them here?”

  “Yes.” She opened her carryall and offered the spools and tablets. “For some you will need an esp-reader. I scanned through them but there was no new material in them.”

  “He left after he spoke to you, then?”

  “As far as I knew. I found the trial very disturbing, and decided to walk home. I never saw him again.”

  Strang said, “Did you know he was under investigation, Madame Skerow?”

  “No! It seems I am the only one who did not!” She glanced at the body. It was drifting in the darkening water, spirit long gone, discussed with as little concern as if it were a stone of the desert. “I only learned today that there was some kind of trouble. He told me nothing.” The water-refresher caught her eye. “Look!”

  “What?” The Lyhhrt, previously only a statue of some vaguely hominid and sexually neutral being, stepped forward. She pointed to the rim of the basin and the inset container that normally purified the water. A thre
ad of dark green stuff was seeping through its perforations. He said, “What is that?”

  “It is not water purifier.”

  The Lyhhrt scooped up some of the green-stained water into a specimen jar without touching his metal hands to it.

  “He might have poisoned himself,” Strang murmured.

  “Would he have done it so elegantly?” Ramaswamy asked. Strang gave him a look.

  The Lyhhrt was kneeling at the edge of the basin delicately turning the body with a flexible wand. “Was this a moody person, Madame?”

  “Self-contained and self-respecting,” said Skerow. Smug she did not say. That glossy stud from the Lesser Archipelagoes, Tony had called him. He would have poisoned himself most elegantly.

  “Yes,” Strang said. “We will probably call on you again, Judge Skerow. I know you intend to ship out, now that the session is over, but I hope you will be staying for a while.”

  “Ten days, until the Zarandu leaves orbit.”

  “Good. You may remove the body, Medical Examiner.”

  “The van is waiting.”

  She dared a flash of esp at them as they left. The room was not bugged. :What really happened, Hathe?:

  :What makes you ask?:

  :I have not esped you, but those persons are a little uneasy with you.:

  Hathe was embarrassed. :I hid one small thing. Come to my chamber, where I am sure there are no spies.:

  Hathe’s room had two basins, like Skerow’s, but it was not offered to important people: two Khagodi would have been cramped in it. :I never mentioned the tethumekh.:

  :So much excitement, I had forgotten him.: The tethumekh, Skerow’s pet, or more truly companion, was a small primate reptile: a rare and ancient miniature given to her by her brother. It was perched on a basin faucet, flicking dead scales from its shoulder with a tiny forked tongue. “Eskat!” she hissed, and it leaped to her shoulder so that its glittering tail curled beneath her jaw. :How did he come here, Hathe?:

  :I found him running in the corridor. Someone . . . : Some murderer . . .:left the door open . . . I know I should have told the police, but I was afraid they would take away your pitiful Eskat and torment him for evidence. I will tell this to them though, if you want it.: And aloud, “Would you like to spend the night here, and use the extra basin? I have enough water allowance, and plenty of food.”