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The column moved forward and I stared in wonder at the acres and acres of maus from Kvasir. Under normal circumstances my skin is dark enough to keep me from getting hired first or from getting a good table at the local bistro. Right in the middle of all that melanin, however, I felt pale. The news of our arrival spread and we were soon met by an even paler face: the ex-priest, Fodder.
The man's eyes were still haunted, and the two-week old beard of white made him look like a derelict. "What're you doing here, Fodder? I thought you were with Nkuma and the welcome wagon."
He moistened his lips and looked away as he answered. "When we passed through here last night there was a problem. Nkuma left me to straighten it out." His voice was weary. He looked up and stared me in the eyes. "I'm an RC."
There was a round of chuckles from the sharks who'd done time in the Crotch. I tried to ignore it, but Show Biz turned on her vidcam. I faced the ex-priest. "Is the problem straightened out?" I asked.
His shoulders gave a tiny shrug as he looked down at the sand. "I guess. No." He cut himself off and looked up at me. "There's a family named Nhandi."
"I know them," said the President. "Bhadri Nhandi and his wife Pura. They have a young daughter named Lauris. On Kvasir Bhadri was one of our most important political leaders. What is the problem? Are they all right?"
Fodder responded to none of Paxati's questions. Instead he kept looking at me. "There's a Kvasiri RC that Nkuma appointed soon after he found them. Her name is Fanta Cerita. The Nhandi girl, Lauris, came to her to get out of her family. The way she put it was that she wanted to divorce her parents."
"Impossible," declared the President. "The child must be overwrought." He looked at me and held out his hands. "Bhadri and Pura Nhandi are two of my oldest and closest friends."
"Shut up. Okay, Pres?" I nodded at Fodder. "Go on."
"The child asked to get out from under her parents' control and have the same rights as anyone else in the Razai."
"How old's the girl?"
"Eleven." Fodder was silent for a long time.
"And?" I prompted.
The ex-priest held out his hands. "Fanta Cerita took a bribe to decide in favor of the father." He shook his head and stared at the sand. "All that we've fought and died for. And to get a pack of tobacco cigarettes." He looked up at me and said, "I don't know what to do." He pulled some papers from beneath his sheet. "The law doesn't cover a crooked cop."
His hand came down slowly. I studied him and I was sure that he had only told me the easy part. There was always a complication and Fodder didn't want to talk about it.
"What you've told me so far, Fodder, the law covers." I dismounted and slogged through the sand until I was standing in front of him. "Spill it, you old fart. What's the rest?"
Fodder looked at me and his washed out blue eyes seemed to haze over as he barely whispered, "Incest. Nhandi has been raping his daughter. That's why she wants out."
I looked at him. In his heart he was a criminal, not an instrument of Razai justice. Who was he to point the finger at a child rapist, even one who raped his own daughter? For hadn't Fodder been the father to all the young boys and girls, and hadn't he taken one of them and raped her? Who was he to point a finger? Still, with the self-imposed whippings Fodder had been giving himself for years, how could he stand by and do nothing while Bhadri Nhandi abused his daughter?
He could hardly draw an even breath. I placed my hand on his shoulder and said in a low voice, "What went before the landing is done past, Fodder. It can't be changed any more than I can change the murder I did back on Earth. And you know I've given the max for murder."
"How do you feel about it?"
"Feel about it? How do you think I feel about it? I have a herd of ghosts riding my back every second. But I can't waste time listening to them. We have too much work to do now to spend all of our time in the past."
"What I did, in God's eyes—"
"Pack it, Fodder. That you take up with that party at the appropriate time." I removed my hand from his shoulder as I remembered something someone had said at a CSA meeting. "Fodder, if that god of yours can't come up with some forgiveness for you, fire the judgmental son of a bitch and get yourself one who can!"
I turned my back and rubbed my eyes. It seemed like ten times a day I was faced with things I couldn't even imagine taking on before the landing. Just for openers there was Bando Nicos handing out spiritual advice to an ex-priest. But there were more serious problems than that.
An RC with dirty fingers. It took everything I had ever heard at the CSA meetings to keep from exploding. There was a piece of me, an incredibly gullible, incredibly naive piece of me, that believed we would never have a dirty cop. Because of who we were, what we were, and where we were, such a thing could never happen. You can't ever imagine having a thousand snakes dropped in your lap, and then it happens. Wasting time saying, Hey, this can't be happening, makes no sense. The snakes are there. The only question left is, what do you do with them?
"Fodder—Man, what in the hell is your real name?"
Fodder had to pause and think for a moment. "Amos," he answered. "Amos George."
I looked back at him. "Amos, do you know about Compulsive Self-destructives Anonymous?"
"Yes. I've seen you at a couple of meetings. Don't you remember?"
There was a hazy memory or two from the meetings I had attended. He probably had been there but I had been too wrapped up in myself and in my own pain to notice.
I reached out and put my hand back on his shoulder. "I want you to stay close to me for the next couple of hours. There are some things that need to be done, and it would be real easy to do them from the center of a rage. If I pick that route, I'm afraid I'll never come back. You understand me?"
He nodded. Still holding onto his shoulder, I gave orders to Bongo to begin the training and more orders to Zarika Yute to take her two hundred rifles and post guard on the camp. When they had gone, only Fodder, Jak, the President, and Deadeye remained. "Let's go. We have some garbage to take out."
I looked at Fodder. "Show me Fanta Cerita."
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Lessons at the Rabbi's Kneecap
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Again I looked upon a familiar scene. There was Bando Nicos beneath the scorching rays of Alsvid, standing between a couple of dunes crowded with maybe two thousand angry faces, preparing to do something very unpopular. Before me stood a tall woman with purple-black skin and such a regal bearing that you just knew she came from a long line of queens. She was smoking a nail and her name was Fanta Cerita. Seated at the base of the dune to my right were Bhadri Nhandi and his wife, Pura. Bhadri was a handsome mau in his late thirties. His wife's face reminded me of my mother. They were both looking at the other dune where Lauris Nhandi sat stone faced staring at me with unblinking black eyes. The girl's parents appeared very hurt and very concerned for their daughter.
I had Fodder, the President, and Deadeye with me while Jak Edge and a few of Zarika's rifles wandered around in back of the crowd just in case somebody might want to start rocking. Only we were armed, so there was no need to go through the rifle stacking ritual and we could get right to the action. I nodded at Lauris Nhandi.
The girl stood and walked until she was between the two dunes. She moved as though she was an old lady. Her face showed no emotion at all. I recognized that face. It was the face put on by every child who lives in Hell and has absolutely no control over the monotony of horrors that are constantly inflicted upon her. Her face said, this I can control. I can't stop you, but I'd rather die than let you see my tears.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she said. Her voice sounded very small, very strained.
"You have a problem you want to bring to the RC?"
She nodded.
"Tell me what it is."
She glanced nervously at Fanta Cerita and back at me. "I was already told
I had to stay with my parents."
"There are a couple of problems with what happened before. We're going to iron them out right now. Tell me what your problem is like no one was ever told before."
She took a deep breath and balled her hands into two tiny fists. The kid had lots of guts. She had no reason at all to trust the RCs or the law, and there she was about to drop another tarantula into her old man's drawers. "I want to divorce my parents. I don't want them to control me or to tell me what to do anymore. Just like it says in the law. Rule Two." She turned her head slowly until she was looking square at her father. "I want to be free of them."
"Is that all of it?"
"That's all of it," she answered as she turned her face toward me. "I want to be free of them."
"You got it," I said.
The dunes erupted with mumblings, and the child's father jumped to his feet and shouted, "You can't do this! What kind of a hearing is this? She's my daughter! This has all been settled! You can't take her away from me!"
I fired my rifle in the air and the crowd hushed. After a moment of silence, I resumed. "As I told Lauris," I began, "there are a couple of problems with what happened before. If she leaves her parents, we won't be taking her away. She'll be walking under her own power and she'll choose her own direction." When I was certain the crowd had termed its hosties a shade, I slung my rifle. I felt a hand on my arm and I looked and saw the President standing there.
"What?"
"Bando Nicos," he pleaded, "is there not something you can do to stop this humiliation? Lauris Nhandi is a very difficult child, and she—"
I grabbed Lomon Paxati by the front of his desert sheet and hissed in his face, "Little children who're being fucked by their fathers tend to get a little difficult!"
His mouth fell open with utter shock. He pulled himself free of my grasp. "I don't believe it!"
"You don't have to. Neither does anyone else, because that isn't the issue. The issue is that she wants to be free of her parents. That's all she asked for."
I pulled out my copy of the law and talked to the protos. "The first law the Razai ever voted on was the no prisoners law. We don't take prisoners," I said to the Kvasiri, "we don't hold prisoners, and we don't allow others to take and hold prisoners."
"She isn't a prisoner," interrupted Bhadri Nhandi. "She's my daughter. She belongs to me."
I shook my head. "She don't belong to you, man. In the Razai nobody belongs to nobody. Nobody in the Razai is property." I held up my copy of the law. "Wasn't this read to you people when you joined the Razai?" I turned and shouted at the other dune full of faces. "Didn't somebody read this to you?"
There were some muttered assents followed by a shout from the left that was crammed with just about all of the prime Jesus-what-an-asshole-you-are sarcasm in the galaxy. "There is a difference between forced incarceration and being part of a family."
I looked and the mau was short, stocky, and had his big fat nose up in the air. Instinctively I wanted to stick my rifle in his mouth and blow his think goo all over the sand. He had to be a cockroach. It wasn't a debate, but the guy's expression teased me into a little of it. I jabbed the President with my elbow. "Who's that?"
"His name is Colis Vizelandi. He is a very distinguished attorney."
Maybe I was born with a special cockroach detecting antenna in my nose. I faced the money threads. "Aside from biology, man, what's the difference?"
"Purpose, for one. The purpose of keeping a prisoner is punishment, rehabilitation, or control. In a family the nature of the control over a child is benevolent—"
From behind my left shoulder erupted an almost maniacal laugh. I turned and it was Fodder. He was holding his rifle across his chest and on his face was the look of someone who was about to empty a machine gun into a crowd just for the sake of letting off a few decades of steam.
"Amos," I said quietly. "Amos?"
Fodder looked at me. The fingers wrapped around the handgrip of his weapon were dead white. In slow stages his mouth closed, his eyes seemed to focus, and his trembling eased. "According to the law," he said, "friends of the court may give testimony. I want to say something."
"It's already over, Fodder. She's free. It's the law. All we're doing now is farting through our hairpieces."
"Nevertheless. I have something to say." It took me a bit to decide, but in the end I figured it would be better to have him say it than shoot it. "Go ahead." I pointed at his weapon. "Sling your piece."
Fodder slung his rifle and walked until he was standing next to Lauris Nhandi. He reached out a hand to place it on her shoulder, but before he touched her his hand became a fist and he withdrew it. He turned to his right and faced the cockroach. "Compared to some families, prison is a treat. Next to some parents, torturers and slave masters are kind and gentle mentors." Fodder turned and looked around at the dunes. His voice became very strong. "A lot of you think you're better than us—better than the convict-exiles—because you've never been in the crowbars. When Nkuma picked you out of the sand, however, you didn't look any different than us, and you certainly didn't bleed any different. He met you maybe ten hours after you were dumped, and already you were divided up into gangs and were killing each other over food, water, and old scores. For the rest of you, I think the only difference between you and us is chance. We got caught; you didn't."
There was a rumble from the dunes, and before it became audible, I cautioned them about Rule 13. "Remember: a threat is a crime, and the thing you threaten is the punishment."
When it was again quiet, Fodder continued. "In the serenity of hearth and home," he began, "how many of you beat your wives, your husbands, your children? That's assault." He faced Bhadri Nhandi. "Under the cover of darkness, how many of you force your daughters and your sons—"
He closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. When he again opened his eyes, his head was back and he was looking up at the white hot sky. "Once upon a time there was a little boy whose mother was a judge. She was a black rag judge in a divorce court. Every day she would preside over hoards of parents and lawyers as they tortured little children. She would end her day by sentencing poor luckless little bastards to one parent or another. When her day was finished she would come home and make her little boy take off his clothes and climb into the bathtub. The boy was terribly shy and felt so embarrassed he thought he would die.
"His mother would remove all of her clothing, and then she would climb into the tub and wash him, concentrating on his genitals until his penis grew hard. Then she would slap it and accuse him of being a filthy little pervert. When the bath was finished, she would stand in the middle of the floor with her legs apart and make the little boy—"
For a moment I thought Fodder was either going to faint or kill somebody. When he calmed down, however, he continued with a trembling voice. "The little boy's father was a doctor. One time when the little boy didn't think he could stand anymore, he told his father what had been happening. The boy's father beat him. He beat him and accused him of being a dirty little pervert."
As Fodder talked I watched Lauris as she listened to him. Although she hadn't said a thing, by her reaction to Fodder's story, she had me convinced that her father had been on the bung with her.
She reached out and held Fodder's hand. He looked down into her eyes and continued in a quieter voice. "A year later, the boy was eleven, the father happened to walk in on one of these bathtub events. The mother was caught, and the little boy's heart soared with hope."
I saw the tears glistening in Fodder's eyes. When the words came out, they were choked and rough. "It turned him on! That's right! Seeing his eleven year old son eating out his wife turned him on. The three of us—the three of them slept together after that. After his mother would finish with him, his father would use him. They even called it love." He turned and faced the cockroach. "That was a family."
Bhadri Nhandi stood and walked until he was standing over his daughter, intimidating her with his height. To
Fodder he demanded, "Tell me if you are accusing me of something. If you are, I want to see your proof. Are you accusing me?"
"Right now," I interrupted, "there is no trial and no one has been accused of anything. The girl is free to go where she wants."
The cockroach came down from his dune. "Certainly there are families where there is abuse, but not all families are like the one described by our friend here."
Fodder nodded. "Not all families are like that. But freedom is never like that. In the Razai, wherever we are, whoever we are with, it is by choice." He held out his free hand and looked around at the crowd. "Every son and every daughter here will remain with their parents until they choose otherwise. That's the law."
Bhadri looked at me and held out his hands. "Can't we be reasonable about this?"
"Sure," I said. "Just as long as Lauris winds up where she wants to be. That's what we call reasonable in the Razai."
"This is absurd. She's too young to even know what she wants. How is she going to eat? How is she going to survive?"
"Those're good questions for any one of us right now. How are you going to eat? How are you going to survive? Nobody knows that right now."
"Are you saying that a four or five year old child who throws a tantrum and gets angry with its parents can end the relationship?"
"That's what I'm saying." The ghost of Tani Aduelo, slender and naked, danced before my eyes. "Bhadri Nhandi, we are the Razai. We—each of us individually—are responsible for our choices." I looked around at the dunes, picking out the youngest faces. "Each one of us is responsible for his or her own choices. If you eat up all of your rations at once, it's your choice, and it's no one's responsibility to feed you."
I looked down at Lauris. "If you bail out on your family, you're on your own. It's your choice, and your responsibility to take care of yourself." I looked at one of the punk faces in the crowd. "If you are only a child and you play a trick on someone who ends up dead because of it, you end up dead too. That you didn't really mean it doesn't count. The only thing that counts is that you took a life. It was your choice, and it is the law."
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