by Patty Jansen
Veyada and Mereeni were already waiting in the hall, as usual in heated argument about some legal thing. It struck me that Mereeni argued in an atypical manner for Coldi people: she used her hands a lot. Her face was also unusually expressive. When Veyada said something, he remained more subdued, but he watched her with an intensive expression. I remembered what Thayu had said about the two of them yesterday, and with all the will in the world, I didn’t see it.
Then the Pengali turned up.
Ynggi pushed one of the hotel’s luggage trolleys with the barrel and pipes of the irrka drum on top.
What was this?
“Today, we tell our story,” Abri said.
She seemed content, and I wondered what had happened to the requirement to bring the fish. I hoped she finally understood that it wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t hold much hope. I glanced at the fishpond, and could just see two goldfish in the corner.
Why did I get a feeling I didn’t want to know what sort of animal they were bringing today?
Ynggi followed me, wheeling the trolley with the drum; and Abri and Kita came in after him, followed by Jemiro.
The van waited outside the hotel’s entrance. The driver helped us open the door and manoeuvre the drum and the pipes inside. It fitted—just. We were lucky that police weren’t checking on silly things like seatbelts.
The streets were quiet, but we passed several groups of police, some in riot gear, mulling around in strategic places. Some of those police waved at the driver.
I glanced at Veyada. He was looking at something on his reader.
“Anything happening?” I asked him in a low voice when we got out of the van in the underground entrance.
“There is a lot of interest in the court case.”
To his other side, Mereeni said, “There is interest from parties that normally wouldn’t have interest.” Every time I heard her speak her accent startled me. Hedron Coldi was as different as one could possibly go within the same language.
Veyada nodded.
There was a message in their words. It was not good, I didn’t think. But they couldn’t tell me what or who they thought was watching. Spies from the cartel. Tamerians possibly. Others maybe, I didn’t know. People in orbit, even?
That was a disturbing thought.
None of us were armed. I’d gladly taken off my gun last night. Weapons were not allowed in the court building and everyone entering the courtroom was subjected to a body search.
If Thayu were here, she would still find a way to conceal a weapon, but when Veyada said he wasn’t armed, he wasn’t armed. And it felt disturbing and naked. I hated guns, but I found their presence on the belts and arm brackets of my team comforting.
Because there were fewer of us than yesterday, we all fitted in the lift, including the trolley with the parts of the drum. Idda was wriggling under Kita’s jacket. I would have expected her to be fast asleep for hours.
Lenka Trnkova waited in the ground floor hall. She looked a lot more formal today, in a blouse with the buttons done up to under her chin.
She said, “Dr Cross is waiting for you.”
Through the glass wall at the front of the foyer, I could see that the crowd had swelled. All the empty space between the tents was filled up with people.
The Africans were there again, playing their drums. I recognised the distinctive boom-toc-toc-boom-toc-boom-toc-toc-boom-toc rhythm of informal betanka. The Pengali had taught them this yesterday?
People cheered when they saw us.
A couple of guards stood near the door, and a few others were setting up a security checking station with a scanning machine for bags.
There was also a guard with a dog.
It turned around and sniffed the air when we came in.
Ynggi stiffened next to me. “Why is the animal inside?”
“It’s a dog. It smells what people carry in their pockets.”
“People can smell it just as well.”
“They can’t.” Then a thought. “Can you smell if someone is armed?”
“Of course we can. We can smell everything.”
“Everything?”
“I can smell that you had fish for breakfast and also that you had sex last night.”
Really, could he smell that?
“It has a distinctive smell.”
Veyada’s back was shaking with his laughter. Mereeni rolled her eyes.
We went into the small meeting room where we had also met yesterday. Dr Cross came in while we were finding seats. He sat down and looked around. “No seagulls today?”
What sort of remark was that? Had he no concept that other people might have different customs?
He again went through his questions. He explained that he would ask questions and then the lawyer representing Robert Davidson would ask questions.
“Is he actually going to be in court today?”
“He will be.”
I guessed this was the reason for the heightened security.
“Yesterday, we didn’t get an definitive answer on our request for the Pengali to put their statement in music. This is a traditional custom. All their hearings of justice are set to music.”
His face remained blank. I guessed he had deliberately avoided speaking about it yesterday in the hope that we would forget and it would fall between the cracks.
He said stiffly, “The case is not about their claims.”
“No, but Dr Martens agreed that they could be heard anyway. I have that agreement in writing. And the Pengali put their official claims in music.”
He nodded, stiffly. “I’ll have to ask.”
He rose and left the room. He didn’t come back for quite some time.
We waited and waited.
Even Veyada and Mereeni ran out of legal arguments and sat glaring at each other.
Jemiro sat stiff as a rod, pretending he wasn’t there. I didn’t want to discuss anything in his presence.
The Pengali kept looking at the door. Idda was asleep inside her mother’s jacket, but her tail kept wriggling as if she were about to wake up.
Abri said several times that she didn’t think they were being taken seriously. To be frank, I didn’t think they were being taken seriously.
I went to the door and opened it a fraction. A man in a suit stood outside.
“Sir?”
“We’d like to know what’s going on.” I could hear the hum of many voices. It seemed people had been let into the foyer, which meant that the hearing today was going ahead. “Dr Cross left an—”
“He’s here now.”
He was, too, striding along the corridor in quick steps.
“So,” he said when he entered the room, still breathing fast. “The judges object to unrelated material being brought into the hearing—”
“But—”
“—But they have agreed that the witness and her family can play in the tea room in the lunch break.”
What? Was he serious?
I was about to jump up and give him a piece of my mind, that this was not how the Pengali should be treated, but I realised that this would have much more impact if I saved it for when press cameras were watching. Bursts of anger were much more effective when they were uncommon.
I explained the situation to Abri to the best of my abilities in the most neutral tone I could manage.
Jemiro bumbled through the translation for the benefit of the official transcripts and Dr Cross, who did not understand any of our conversations. Jemiro seemed even more confused than he had been yesterday, or maybe I was just impatient because I was seething inside.
We could add nothing to this process they were interested in. The trial might drag out for weeks, months, years. Ultimately, we were nothing more than window dressing. This was not about us. I just wanted to get out of here.
Abri was not impressed and I couldn’t blame her. She bypassed Jemiro, and said to me, “We have to make our claims in front of hairy face. He needs to hear our story.”
; “I know, but it’s their process. They determine how we can appear.”
As I said this, I realised that the Pengali story would probably be of greater interest to the spectators than to the lawyers anyway.
Lawyers could not make any money from the Pengali, but the public loved a good underdog story. The public outside the building in the forecourt would love their story. Not only that, it would give Margarethe something she, and other Nations of Earth politicians, had never had before: an in-road into the Blue faction of the population. We knew pretty much how the Whites would vote. There were hundreds of studies. Margarethe had said that her number crunchers said there was a chance she could push the referendum through. The real difference was going to be to get as many Blues registered to vote, and win their sympathy. Because they were being ignored. Because the Pengali represented gamra and they had suffered at the hands of the Pretoria Cartel.
We had everything here for a formal betanka: the drum, Abri, someone who could translate Abri’s words into Isla so that the crowd of protesters could hear them. So that Dharma Yuwono could hear them, and he could keep in contact with Margarethe.
I said to Abri, “Let them have their way. I think we will be fine.”
I said to Dr Cross, “Abri doesn’t like it, but understands it’s your call. They will play at lunch time.”
He nodded stiffly and rose. “I’m glad they understand. Let’s go then. The first session starts at ten.”
“What do we do with the drum?”
“Leave it here. You can come back for it later.”
I relayed that to the Pengali. They were still not happy, but came with me anyway.
We left the room to a great buzz of voices. The hallway was relatively empty, but the foyer was full of people.
We could only see them in the distance, though, because Dr Cross led us in the other direction. I wondered who they were. Certainly, they would not let any of the protesters into the courthouse, or at least not the ones whose identities they knew from checking their presence every night. But what about other people affiliated with the protesters? They couldn’t possibly check the political bent of everyone they admitted onto the public gallery.
Dr Cross took us to yet another room, where chairs stood in rows. A couple of other people were there, none of whom I recognised. They gave us curious looks.
“Wait here,” he said. “You will be called.”
We sat and waited.
To my horror, Idda woke up and wanted to be let out of the jacket. She jumped from her mother’s lap and zoomed around the room, to the amusement of the strangers who also waited there. Well, the effect of the vodka hadn’t lasted very long. Kita made a few attempts to catch and calm her, but Idda had never been controlled that way at home, and she did not agree with it now.
“She has to be kept quiet,” I said to Abri, exasperated. “I’m pretty sure that the lawyers won’t allow children in the courtroom.”
“I don’t understand these people. They invite us, and then they don’t want to hear from us at all.”
“You’ll get your time to speak,” I said. “I will make sure.”
The door opened, and Lenka came in. She was in her stiff work clothes, her hair tied up in a very legal-looking bun. Her eyes met mine briefly. “Abri, come with me.”
Both Abri and Jemiro got up.
“What should we do?” I asked her.
“You can go to the public gallery.”
We left the room.
Even though we were a distance from the building’s forecourt, the sounds from the crowd outside were prominent. The drums were going, and people were clapping and chanting, still in time with the betanka rhythm.
A great deal of yelling broke out when the people in the hall spotted us going up the stairs to the public gallery.
A large group of varied, colourful people stood waiting there, and some waved at us. There would be a good number of supporters in the building, and even on the public gallery.
The guard at the top of the stairs wanted to see our passes before we were allowed into the courtroom.
The public gallery held at least two hundred people, and it was packed, so all those people outside would not be able to get a seat. They’d be impatient. Or they might watch the proceedings on screens.
A young woman ushered us to a row of seats at the very front.
I ended up between Veyada, doing something on his reader, and Ynggi, who was fiddling with an earpiece and reader, checking if the recording facility worked as it should.
The court building was modern, and the courtroom was equally spacious and light-filled, with a wall-to-ceiling window on one side that looked out into a courtyard garden with a burbling fountain and more damned goldfish.
The long table where the judges would sit, with a couple of microphones, was still empty. A jug of water and a couple of glasses stood on the corner.
The floor area, a few steps down from the public gallery and separated from it by a glass barrier, contained a couple of rows of seats to the left, in front of the window, and to the right. There were desks, too, and two witness stands, both consisting of a single chair in a boxed-off area with waist-high walls. At the corners of the box, there were slots for posts where I presumed police could put up a cage for dangerous criminals—or ones needing protection from the other people in the room.
A door opened at the back. A line of people came in, most of them carrying devices. They sat down at the tables to the left. Then another group came in, surrounding a man in a bright yellow jumpsuit.
Robert Davidson had aged terribly since I had last seen him. He looked tidier, and had shaved his beard, but his hair had gone grey, his skin looked sallow and his arms were thin and ridden with sores. He didn’t look up when he was being led across the floor, wearing wrist braces and ankle braces.
The three guards with him pushed him down on the chair in one of the boxes, and attached a device to his braces. Probably something that would deliver an electric shock when he tried to get up. The guards shut the little door to the box, but remained on the outside. They wore Nations of Earth uniforms with an insignia I didn’t know, and were visibly armed.
Another group of people came in, which included Lenka Trnkova, Abri, Jemiro, and Dr Cross wearing a long, grey gown.
A murmur went up when people saw Abri. Cameras zoomed and I picked up a few remarks.
She’s really small, isn’t she?
She’s wearing clothes. They said she would be almost naked.
A lot of people had noticed us when we came in, but many more had entered the gallery after us and would not have noticed us in the front row.
A bell rang and everyone rose.
The three judges filed in, also in grey gowns, and found their places at the long table facing the audience. There were two men, and a woman who I guessed was the notorious Judge Hermans. Her hair was more grey than brown, and cut in a bob. She produced glasses and put them on her nose. “Please be seated.” Her voice was stern and prim.
After the rumble of everyone sitting down had faded, she explained the agenda for today, and gave the floor to Dr Cross. He introduced Abri and her tribe. Apparently the judges had previously seen images of the area where Robert had made his camps and where he stored the diamonds. I didn’t know there was more than one cave, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. Apparently the photos were Robert’s, and they were all slightly overexposed as photos taken in Barresh with Earth equipment tended to be. The light was different.
He showed images of Pengali kids on the beach. The light on the sand was bright and warm. The forest was so incredibly green, the water azure blue. It looked like a setting from a dream holiday destination.
Damn it, I wanted to go home.
According to Dr Cross, the Pengali lived peacefully—and they didn’t. Neither were they primitive, or, for that matter, innocent; and those were all words he used.
Ynggi was listening to this in Coldi through a translation device. Jemiro translated fo
r Abri, and she glared at us.
I knew I was asking a lot of her, and right now, she probably didn’t think much of me, because I hadn’t told her of my plans to let her speak.
Then he asked for the statement to be read. Abri did this, even if she didn’t read. She had memorised the whole thing. Jemiro translated to Isla. Faithfully, Ynggi said, still listening to his translation device.
Then Dr Cross went into the questions. Exactly what Abri had and hadn’t seen, where Robert had been, which tribespeople he had subverted. How she knew that he had killed Melissa’s trackers and about the significance of blue diamonds.
Dr Cross then asked Robert to confirm or deny her words. He confirmed everything, looking at his knees.
The whole thing was anti-climactic and scripted. Veyada was fiddling with his reader. Abri was getting annoyed with having to reply to a couple of variations of each question.
Eventually she burst out, “I said all these things before. Do you not believe me? When are you going to ask about Pengali? Do you need to wait until after we present you with the gift?”
I couldn’t understand her words, but this was how Jemiro translated them, in a halting way.
“Why do you not ask the other people with us for what they saw. I told you what I saw. I didn’t see that he killed Kasamo. He killed Pengali. We saw that. Why don’t you ask about that?”
Jemiro translated. Now his voice sounded positively dead and robotic. What was going on?
The sound of Abri’s voice brought Idda out of her mother’s jacket, where she had been wriggling around for a while. Now she came out and jumped—
From her mother’s lap to the banister in front of us. She wore nothing except her orange beanie. The giraffe patterns on her skin were accentuated under the room’s fluorescent light.
Kita lunged for her and missed, and then she ran past Ynggi who was concentrating on the trial and me. I tried to grab her tail, but she had worked out that I had a habit of doing this, so her tail flicked up and out of my hands. Then she ran in front of Veyada, who was listening and didn’t notice her until it was too late.
