“No,” Carpenter said. The familiar air of moral confusion rising from Rhodes almost took his mind off his own troubles. “Not for the first time.”
The actual 442 hearing took place three days later, once more at the Port of Oakland’s Administration Shed Fourteen. The rain had not halted for a moment during those three days: a steady maddening downpour, a drumbeat of great filthy drops pelting the entire Bay Area in a demented reversal of the long-standing weather pattern. No one could say how much longer it would go on before the iron band of drought clamped once again over the West Coast. Meanwhile, though, highways were flooding, houses were tumbling down cliffs, whole hillsides were slashed by deep gullies, rivers of mud flowed in the streets.
When Carpenter presented himself for the hearing there were only two other human beings in the room: the hearing officer with the Irish name and the androidal-looking woman bailiff. Carpenter wondered where Tedesco, who was supposed to be representing him on behalf of Samurai Industries, was. Taking the day off because of the rain?
O’Brien, O’Reilly, O’Leary, gaveled the hearing into session. This time Carpenter took the trouble of noticing and remembering his name. O’Reilly, it was. O’Reilly.
“Objection,” Carpenter said immediately. “My counsel isn’t here.”
“Counsel? We don’t have counsel here.”
“Mr. Tedesco of Samurai. My representative. He was supposed to be present today.”
O’Reilly looked at the bailiff.
“Mr. Tedesco has filed a stipulation of posteriori,” she said.
“A what?” Carpenter asked.
“A request to be absent today and to receive a transcript of today’s proceedings at a later time. He will file appropriate responses if he deems it necessary to do so,” O’Reilly said.
“What? I’m on my own today?” Carpenter said.
Impassively the hearing officer said, “Let us proceed. We enter into evidence the following exhibits—”
“Hold it a second! I demand the right to a proper representative!”
O’Reilly gave Carpenter a long cool glance. “You have a proper representative, Captain Carpenter, and he will be given an opportunity to file an appropriate response in due course. I’d like no further outbursts, if you please. We enter into evidence the following exhibits—”
Leadenly Carpenter watched as Exhibit A appeared on a visor mounted at one end of the long tubular room. Exhibit A was the testimony of Maintenance/Operations Officer Rennett, describing her visit to the Calamari Maru in the company of Captain Carpenter. Crisply and efficiently Rennett outlined the conditions she had observed aboard the squid ship, the deposed and sedated officers, the statements of the mutinous Kovalcik. It all seemed accurate enough to Carpenter, and not in any way damaging to him. Then came Exhibit B, the statement of Navigator Hitchcock, telling how the movements of the hooked iceberg in the roughening sea had accidentally swamped the squid ship, and describing the way the three dinghies had come toward the Tonopah Maru seeking help, and how Captain Carpenter had ordered the crew of the Tonopah Maru to ignore the castaways and begin the return voyage to San Francisco. That part sounded pretty horrendous even to Carpenter; but he couldn’t say that Hitchcock had distorted anything, particularly. It was merely what had happened.
He assumed that the statements of Cassie and Nakata would now be played. And then, presumably, he would be given a chance to speak in his own defense—to explain the difficulty of the situation, the limited capacity of his ship and the inadequate supplies of provisions and Screen, and to show how in that instant of decision he had chosen to value the lives of his own crew over those of the strangers. Carpenter had already decided to declare that he felt contrite for having had to abandon the castaways, that he deeply regretted the necessity of it, that he hoped he would be forgiven for having made the choice he had and for having been too flustered afterward to file a proper report. Would Tedesco approve of his taking a repentant stance? Maybe not; maybe it was a weak legal position. Fuck Tedesco, though. Tedesco should have been here to advise him, and he wasn’t.
Carpenter allowed himself to feel a shred of confidence, even so. Rhodes’ words kept running through his mind.
—The Company will cover for you. Samurai isn’t going to want it to come out in public that one of its ships left a bunch of castaways to die—and so they’ll square the court in some way and get the charges dismissed, and shove the whole story out of sight, and transfer you back to the Weather Service, or something.
—They’re going to bury the whole event and make it seem as though nothing ever took place out there between your ship and that Kyocera one.
—I’m sure of it, Paul.
—I’m sure of it, Paul.
—I’m sure of it, Paul.
“Exhibit C,” O’Reilly announced. “The statement of Captain Kovalcik.”
What?
Yes, there she was on screen, stony-faced, icy-eyed, definitely Kovatak in the flesh. She hadn’t perished out there in her open boat after all. No, no, there she was, alive and staring grimly out of the visor, telling a terrible tale of survival at sea, of privation and torment, of eventual rescue by a patrol ship. Half of her people had died. All because the Samurai iceberg trawler’s captain had been unwilling to lift a finger to save them.
Even Carpenter had to admit it was a frightful indictment. Kovalcik said nothing about the mutiny she had led; she went completely around the fact that Calamari Maru had been swamped as a direct result of her own incompetent decision to remain in the vicinity of the huge captive iceberg; she utterly left out of the reckoning Carpenter’s own protests that his ship was incapable of taking on so big a load of passengers. She concentrated entirely on her request for succor and Carpenter’s heartless refusal to provide it. When Kovalcik had finished speaking her terrible image still glared out at him from the visor as though it had burned itself into the fabric of the visor.
“Captain Carpenter?” O’Reilly said.
So at last he was to have his day in court. He rose and spoke, running through the whole grimy tale one more time, the summons to Kovalcik’s ship, the signs of the mutiny, the sedated officers and the request to take them aboard, then the swamping of the other ship and the three dinghies bobbing in the sea. Listening to himself, Carpenter was struck by the hollowness of his own case. He should have taken them on board, he told himself, no matter what. Even if everyone starved on the way back to port. Even if they all ran out of Screen in a day and a half and burned right down through skin and flesh and muscle to the bone. Or else have called in for their rescue by others. But he pushed on through, limning the events, once more offering his self-justification, his arguments from efficiency and possibility, his statement of contrition and repentance for any errors committed.
Suddenly he was all out of words, standingjnute before the hearing officer and the bailiff.
There was a roaring silence. What was going to happen now? A verdict? A sentence?
O’Reilly banged the gavel. Then he turned away, as though to some other case that was before him on the desk.
“Am I supposed to wait?” Carpenter asked.
“The proceedings are adjourned,” the bailiff said. Picked up a sheaf of folders. Lost all interest in him, not that she had ever had much to begin with.