“I’d say no. Do not let me live. I don’t fit. I can’t spiek and hier. Nobody knows what my children would be like, but the odds are against them. Except for one thing…”
“And what, Child and Citizen, is that?” asked the Lord Redlady, while Beasley and Taggart watched as though they were staring at the last five meters of a horse race.
“Look at me carefully, Citizens and Members of the Board,” said Rod, finding that in this milieu it was easy to fall into a ceremonious way of talking. “Look at me carefully and do not consider my own happiness, because you are not allowed, by law, to judge that anyhow. Look at my talent — the way I can hier, the big thunderstorm way I can spiek.” Rod gathered his mind for a final gamble and as his lips got through talking, he spat his whole mind at them:
anger-anger, rage-red
blood-red,
fire-fury,
noise, stench, glare, roughness, sourness and hate hate hate,
all the anxiety of a bitter day.
crutts, whelps, pups!
It all poured out at once. The Lord Redlady turned pale and compressed his lips, Old Taggart put his hands over his face, Beasley looked bewildered and nauseated. Beasley then started to belch as calm descended on the room.
In a slightly shaky voice, the Lord Redlady asked,
“And what was that supposed to show, Child and Citizen?”
“In grown-up form, sir, could it be a useful weapon?”
The Lord Redlady looked at the other two. They talked with the tiny expressions on their faces; if they were spieking, Rod could not read it. This last effort had cost him all telepathic input.
“Let’s go on,” said Taggart.
“Are you ready?” said the Lord Redlady to Rod.
“Yes sir,” said Rod.
“I continue,” said the Lord Redlady. “If you understand your own case as we see it, we shall proceed to make a decision and, upon making the decision, to kill you immediately or to set you free no less immediately. Should the latter prove the case, we shall also present you with a small but precious gift, so as to reward you for the courtesy which you will have shown this board, for without courtesy there could be no proper hearing, without the hearing no appropriate decision, and without an appropriate decision there could be neither justice nor safety in the years to come. Do you understand? Do you agree?”
“I suppose so,” said Rod.
“Do you really understand? Do you really agree? It is your life which we are talking about,” said the Lord Redlady.
“I understand and I agree,” said Rod.
“Cover us,” said the Lord Redlady.
Rod started to ask how when he understood that the command was not directed at him in the least.
The snake-man had come to life and was breathing heavily. He spoke in clear old words, with an odd dropping cadence in each syllable:
“High, my lord, or utter maximum?”
For answer, the Lord Redlady pointed his right arm straight up with the index finger straight at the ceiling. The snake-man hissed and gathered his emotions for an attack. Rod felt his skin go goose-pimply all over, then he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, finally he felt nothing but an unbearable alertness. If these were the thoughts which the snake-man was sending out of the trailer van, no passerby could possibly eavesdrop on the decision. The startling pressure of raw menace would take care of that instead.
The three members of the board held hands and seemed to be asleep.
The Lord Redlady opened his eyes and shook his head, almost imperceptibly, at the snake-soldier.
The feeling of snake-threat went off. The soldier returned to his immobile position, eyes forward. The members of the board slumped over their table. They did not seem to be able or ready to speak. They looked out of breath. At last Taggart dragged himself to his feet, gasping his message to Rod,
“There’s the door, boy. Go. You’re a citizen. Free.”
Rod started to thank him but the old man held up his right hand:
“Don’t thank me. Duty. But remember — not one word, ever. Not one word, ever, about this hearing. Go along.”
Rod plunged for the door, lurched through, and was in his own yard. Free.
For a moment he stood in the yard, stunned.
The dear grey sky of Old North Australia rolled low overhead; this was no longer the eerie light of Old Earth, where the heavens were supposed to shine perpetually blue. He sneezed as the dry air caught the tissue of his nostrils. He felt his clothing chill as the moisture evaporated out of it; he did not think whether it was the wetness of the trailer van or his own sweat which had made his shirt so wet. There were a lot of people there, and a lot of light. And the smell of roses was as far away as another life might be.
Lavinia stood near him, weeping.
He started to turn to her, when a collective gasp from the crowd caused him to turn around.
The snake-man had come out of the van. (It was just an old theater van, he realized at last, the kind which he himself had entered a hundred times.) His earth uniform looked like the acme of wealth and decadence among the dusty coveralls of the men and the poplin dresses of the women. His green complexion looked bright among the tanned faces of the Norstrilians. He saluted Rod.
Rod did not return the salute. He just stared.
Perhaps they had changed their minds and had sent the giggle of death after him.
The soldier held out his hand. There was a wallet of what seemed to be leather, finely chased, of off-world manufacture.
Rod stammered, “It’s not mine.”
“It — is — not — yours,” said the snake man, “but — it — is — the — things — gift — which — the — people — promised — you — inside. — Take — it — because — I — am — too — dry — out — here.”
Rod took it and stuffed it in his pocket. What did a present matter when they had given him life, eyes, daylight, the wind itself?
The snake-soldier watched with flickering eyes. He made no comment, but he saluted and went stiffly back to the van. At the door he turned and looked over the crowd as though he were appraising the easiest way to kill them all. He said nothing, threatened nothing. He opened the door and put himself into the van. There was no sign of who the human inhabitants of the van might be. There must be, thought Rod, some way of getting them in and out of the Garden of Death very secretly and very quietly, because he had lived around the neighborhood a long time and had never had the faintest idea that his own neighbors might sit on a board.
The people were funny. They stood quietly in the yard, waiting for him to make the first move.
He turned stiffly and looked around more deliberately.
Why, it was his neighbors and kinfolk, all of them — McBans, MacArthurs, Passarellis, Schmidts, even the Sanders!
He lifted his hand in greeting to all of them.
Pandemonium broke loose.
They rushed toward him. The women kissed him, the men patted him on the back and shook his hand, the little children began a piping little song about the Station of Doom. He had become the center of a mob which led him to his own kitchen.
Many of the people had begun to cry.
He wondered why. Almost immediately, he understood—
They liked him.
For unfathomable people reasons, mixed-up non-logical human reasons they had wished him well. Even the auntie who had predicted a coffin for him was sniveling without shame, using a corner of her apron to wipe her eyes and nose.
He had gotten tired of people, being a freak himself, but in this moment of trial their goodness, though capricious, flowed over him like a great wave. He let them sit him down in his own kitchen. Among the babble, the weeps, the laughter, the hearty and falsely cheerful relief, he heard a single fugue being repeated again and again: they liked him. He had come back from death: he was their Rod McBan.