Alethea went on, with wonderful aplomb considering that no one seemed interested, about horses and riding. Her father listened abstractedly, his manicured fingers patting the tangles of his fantastic beard.
Alethea fell silent.
No one took the initiative.
“Mr. Whiting,” said Daniel, “was it you I spoke to earlier, when I was at the gatehouse?”
“I’m sorry to have to say it was. Candidly, Daniel, I hoped I might just wriggle out of that one. Did you recognize my voice? Everyone does, it seems.”
“I only meant to apologize.”
“Apologize? Nonsense! I was in the wrong, and you called me down for it quite properly. Indeed, it was then, hanging up the phone and blushing for my sins, that I decided I must have you come to tea. Wasn’t it, Alethea? She was with me, you see, when the alarm went off.”
“The alarms go off a dozen times a day,” Boa said. “And they’re always false alarms. Father says it’s the price we have to pay.”
“Does it seem an excess of caution?” Grandison Whiting asked rhetorically. “No doubt it is. But it’s probably best to err on that side, don’t you think? In future when you visit you must let us know in advance, so that we may shut off the scanner, or whatever they call it. And I sincerely hope you will return, if only for Bobo’s sake. I’m afraid she’s been feeling rather… cut-off?… since she came back from the greater world beyond Iowa.” He raised his hand, as though to forestall Boa’s protests. “I know it’s not for me to say that. But one of the few advantages of being a parent is that one may take liberties with one’s children.”
“Or so he claims,” said Boa. “But in fact he takes all the liberties he can, with whoever allows it.”
“It’s nice of you to say so, Bobo, since that gives me leave to ask Daniel — you will allow me to call you Daniel, won’t you? And you must call me Grandison.”
Serjeant snickered.
Grandison Whiting nodded toward his son, by way of acknowledgement, and continued: “To ask you, Daniel (as I know I have no right to), Why have you never had that terrible apparatus removed from your stomach? You’re quite entitled to, aren’t you? As I understand it — and I’ve had to give the matter some consideration, since officially I’m on the governing board of the state prison system — only convicts who are paroled, or who’ve committed much more… heinous crimes than yours—”
“Which isn’t,” Boa hastened to remind her father, “any crime at all, since the court’s decision.”
“Thank you, dear — that’s exactly my point. Why, Daniel, having been wholly exonerated, do you submit to the inconvenience and, I daresay, the embarrassment of the sort of thing that happened today?”
“Oh, you learn where the alarms are. And you don’t go back.”
“Pardon me, um, Daniel,” said Serjeant, with vague good will, “but I’m not quite following. How is it that you go about setting off alarms?”
“When I was in prison,” Daniel explained, “I had a P-W lozenge embedded in my stomach. The lozenge is gone, so there’s no chance of my blowing us all up accidentally, but the housing for it is still there, and that, or the traces of metal in it, is what sets off alarms.”
“But why is it still there?”
“I could have it taken out if I wanted, but I’m squeamish about surgery. If they could get it out as easily as they got it in, I’d have no objections.”
“Is it a big operation?” Alethea asked, wrinkling her nose in pretty revulsion.
“Not according to the doctors. But—” He lifted his shoulders: “One man’s meat…”
Alethea laughed.
He was feeling more and more sure of himself, even cocky. This was a routine he’d often gone through, and it always made him feel like Joan of Arc or Galileo, a modern martyr of the Inquisition. He also felt something of a hypocrite, since the reason he’d kept the P-W housing in his stomach (as anyone who thought about it would have known) was that as long as he was still wired for prison he couldn’t be drafted into the National Guard. Not that he minded being or feeling hypocritical. Hadn’t he read, in Reverend Van Dyke’s book, that we’re all hypocrites and liars in the eyes of God? To deny that was only to be self-deluded besides.
However, some molecular switch inside must have responded to this tremor of guilt, for much to his own surprise Daniel started to tell Grandison Whiting of the corruption and abuses he’d witnessed at Spirit Lake. This, on the grounds that Whiting, being on the governing board of the state’s prisons, might be able to do something. He developed quite a head of steam about the system of food vouchers you had to buy just to keep alive, but even at the height of it he could see he was making a tactical error. Grandison Whiting listened to the exposé with a glistening attentiveness behind which Daniel could sense not indignation but the meshing of various cogs and gears of a logical rebuttal. Clearly, Whiting had known already of the evils Daniel was denouncing.
Boa, at the close of Daniel’s tale, expressed a hearty sense of the wrong being done, which would have been more gratifying if he hadn’t seen her through so many other tirades in the Iceberg’s classroom. More surprising was Serjeant’s response. Though it amounted to no more than his saying that it didn’t seem fair, he must have known that he would be flying in the face of his father’s as-yet-unexpressed opinion.
After a long and dour look at his son, Grandison Whiting brightened to a formal smile, and said, quietly: “Justice isn’t always fair.”
“You must excuse me,” said Alethea, putting aside her cup and rising, “but I see that Father means to have a serious discussion, and that is a pastime, like bridge, that I’ve never learned how to enjoy.”
“As you please, my dear,” said her father. “And indeed, if the rest of you would prefer… ?”
“Nonsense,” said Boa. “We’re just beginning to enjoy ourselves.” She took hold of Daniel’s hand and squeezed. “Aren’t we?”
Daniel went, “Mm.”
Serjeant took another pastry from the plate, his fourth.
“Let us say, for the sake of argument,” said Boa pouring tea, and then cream, into Daniel’s cup, “that justice is always fair.”
Grandison Whiting folded his hands across his waistcoat, just above his watchchain. “Justice is always just, certainly. But fairness is to justice as common sense is to logic. That is to say, justice may (and often does) transcend fairness. Fairness usually boils down to a simple, heartfelt conviction that the world should be ordered with one’s own convenience in mind. Fairness is a child’s view of justice. Or a bum’s.”
“Oh, Father, don’t go off on bums.” She turned to Daniel. “I don’t know how many times we’ve had the same argument. Always about bums. It’s Father’s hobbyhorse.”
“Bums,” he went on imperturbably, “as opposed to beggars. Men who have chosen abjection as a way of life, without the extenuating circumstances of blindness, amputation, or imbecility.”
“Men,” Boa contradicted, “who simply can’t take responsibility for themselves. Men who are helpless before a world that is, after all, a pretty rough place.”
“Helpless? So they would have us believe. But all men are responsible for themselves, by definition. All adults, that is. Bums, however, insist on remaining children, in a state of absolute dependency. Think of the most incorrigible such wretch you’ve seen, and imagine him at the age of five instead of five-and-fifty. What change might you observe? There he is, smaller no doubt, but in moral terms the same spoiled child, whining over his miseries, wheedling to have his way, with no plans except for the next immediate gratification, which he will either bully us into giving him or, failing that, will attempt to seduce from us by the grandeur and mystery of his abasement.”