“It does, Your Honor.”
“Then I'll declare this–”
“Your Honor!” cried Marty Laws. “The matter of possession of the plow.”
“All right, Mr. Laws,” said the judge. “Time for brief arguments.”
“It's absurd for the defendant to remain in possession of the property in question, that's all,” said Marty.
“Since the defendant himself is in the custody of the county jail,” said Verily Cooper, “and the plow is in his possession, then, like his clothing and his pen and ink and paper and everything else in his possession, the plow is obviously in the custody of the county jail as well. The state's motion is moot.”
“How do we know that the defendant even has the plow?” asked Marty Laws. “Nobody's seen it.”
“That's a point,” said the judge, looking at Verily.
“Because of special properties of the plow,” said Verily, “the defendant feels it unwise to let it out of his sight. Nevertheless, if the state wishes to designate three officers of the court to see it…”
“Let's keep it simple,” said the judge. “Mr. Laws, Mr. Cooper, and I will go see this plow today, as soon as we finish here.”
Verily noticed with pleasure that Daniel Webster flushed with anger as he realized he was not going to be treated as an equal and invited along. Webster tugged at Laws' coat and then whispered in his ear.
“Um, Your Honor,” said Laws.
“What message are you delivering for Mr. Webster?” asked the judge.
“We can't exactly call me, you, and Mr. Cooper as witnesses, us being, um, what we are,” said Laws.
“I thought the point of, this was to make sure the plow existed,” said the judge. “If you and me and Mr. Cooper see it, then I think we can fairly well assure everybody it exists.”
“But in the trial, we'll want people other than the defendant and Mr. Makepeace Smith to be able to testify about the plow.”
“Plenty of time for worrying about that later. I'm sure we can get a few witnesses to see it by then, too. How many do you want?”
Another whispered conference. “Eight will do fine,” said Laws.
“You and Mr. Cooper get together in the next while and decide which eight people you'll settle on as witnesses. In the meantime, the three of us will go visit Mr. Alvin Smith in prison and get an eyeful of this marvelous legendary mythical golden plow that has– how did you put it, Mr. Cooper?”
“Special properties,” said Verily.
“You Englishmen have such a fine way with words.”
Once again, Verily could sense some kind of nastiness directed toward him from the judge. As before, he had no idea what he had done to provoke it.
Still, the judge's inexplicable annoyance aside, things had gone rather well.
Unless, of course, the Millers had been all wrong and the Slave Finders could identify Arthur Stuart as the wanted runaway. Then there'd be problems. But… the nicest thing about this case was that if Verily performed quite badly, making it certain that Alvin would be hanged or Arthur Stuart returned to slavery, Alvin, being a Maker, could always just take the boy and go away; and not a soul could stop them if Alvin didn't want to be stopped, or find them if Alvin didn't want to be found.
Still, Verily had no intention of doing badly. He intended to win spectacularly. He intended to clear Alvin's name of all charges so the Maker would be free to teach him all that he wanted to know. And another, deeper motive, one which he did not try to hide from himself though he would never have admitted it to another: He wanted the Maker to respect him. He wanted Alvin Smith to look him in the eye and say, “Well done, friend.”
That would be good. Verily Cooper wanted that good thing.
Chapter 14 – Witnesses
All the time of waiting hadn't been so bad, really. Nothing was happening in the jail, but Alvin didn't mind being alone and doing nothing. It gave him thinking time. And thinking time was making time, he reckoned. Not like he used to do as a boy, making bug baskets out of pulled-up grass to keep the Unmaker back. But making things in his head. Trying to remember the Crystal City as he saw it in the waterspout with Tenskwa-Tawa. Trying to figure how such a place was made. Can't teach folks how to make it if I don't know what it is myself.
Outside the jail he knew that the Unmaker was moving in the world, tearing down a little here, knocking over a little there, setting a wedge in every tiny crack it found. And there were always people searching for the Unmaker, for some awful destructive power outside themselves. Poor fools, they always thought that Destruction was merely destruction, they were using it and when they were done with it, they'd set to building. But you don't build on a foundation of destruction. That's the dark secret of the Unmaker, Alvin thought. Once he sets you to tearing down, it's hard to get back to building, hard to get your own self back. The digger wears out the ground and the spade. And once you let yourself be a tool in the Unmaker's hand, he'll wear you out, he'll tear you down, he'll dull you and hole you and all the time you'll be thinking you're so sharp and fine and bright and whole, and you never know till he lets go of you, lets you drop and fall. What's that clatter? Why, that was me. That was me, sounding like a wore-out tool. What you leaving me for? I still got use left in me!
But you don't, not when the Unmaker's got you.
What Alvin figured out was that when you're Making, you don't use people like tools. You don't wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they're right. So instead of one ruler and a bunch of wore-out tools, you got a whole city of Makers, all of them free fellow-citizens, hard workers every one…
Except for one little problem. Alvin couldn't teach Making. Oh, he could get people to sort of set their minds right and their work would be enhanced a little. And a few people, like Measure, mostly, and his sister Eleanor, they learned a thing or two, they caught a glimmer. But most was in the dark.
And then there comes a one like this lawyer from England, this Verily Cooper, and he was just born knowing how to do in a second what Measure could only do after a whole day's struggle. Sealing a book shut like it was a single block of wood and cloth, and then opening it again with no harm to any of the pages and the letters still stuck on the surfaces. That was some Making.
What did he have to teach Verily? He was born knowing. And how could he hope to teach those as wasn't born knowing? And anyway how could he teach anything when he didn't know how to make the crystal out of which the city would be made?
You can't build a city of glass; it'll break, it can't hold weight. You can't build out of ice, either, because it ain't clear enough and what about summer? Diamonds, they're strong enough, but a city made of diamond, even if he could find or make so much of it– no way would they be allowed to use such rich stuff for building, there'd be folks to tear it down in no time, each one stealing a bit of wall to make hisself rich, and pretty soon the whole thing would be like a Swiss cheese, more hole than wall.
Oh, Alvin could spin himself through these thoughts and wonderings, through memories and words of books he read when Miss Larner– when Peggy– was teaching him. He could keep his mind occupied in solitude and not mind it a bit, though he also sure didn't mind when Arthur Stuart came to talk to him about goings on.
Today, though, things were happening. Verily Cooper would be fending off motions for this and that, and even if he was a good lawyer, he was from England and he didn't know the ways here, he could make mistakes, but there wasn't a blame thing Alvin could do about it even if he did. He just had to put his trust in other folks and Alvin hated that.
“Everyone hates it,” said a voice, a so-familiar voice, a dreamed-of, longed-for voice with which he had had many a debate in his memory, many a quarrel in his imagination; a voice that he dreamed of whispering gently to him in the night and in the morning.