She saw that I was not convinced, as she had never been able to convince me that the duties of an honorable Praetorian went beyond protecting the body of his Commander. She reverted to the female—as those bastards had trained her to do when she saw her words were failing. She tucked her legs up under her as though innocently showing me herself. A gesture that had always trapped me, and often turned our arguments into fornication.
This time her movement showed me not only herself, it showed me the butt of her gun hidden between the cushions of the couch. I watched her fingers stray toward it. “Gavin, I hear you’ve seen a video of the shooting. What did it show?”
“It showed the President hit and dropping.” So Humboldt had told her! Had he told Sline also? Had he told Gerald Futrell? How many and who were part of this treason?
“Did it show anything else?”
She knew what it showed. And she knew I was the only agent loyal to the dead President who had seen it. She was nerving herself to do what she thought she must do.
“Sherry,” I snapped. “Don’t! It’s suicide for a novice like you to go against a veteran.”
“Gavin, I don’t understand what you mean.” The tragedy was that she didn’t. She was even less aware than I had thought. It was my mistake. I had not stopped her soon enough. Her right hand was under the cushion.
“Sherry—”
She made her last and fatal error. She acted precipitously and she signaled her act. “Gavin, I hate to do this! But freedom’s more important than either of us. And that video—” She had her gun half out.
It was too late for both of us. I fired from the pocket and I hit her in the heart. Even as I sprang toward her I was thankful I had not smashed the beauty of her face. Even as I bent over her, realizing the enormity of it all, I was glad that her loveliness was marred only by the scarlet patch spreading out across her nightdress from between her breasts.
I had not realized the full enormity. I was still on my knees beside her when Brodnax burst in from the bedroom with Sline at his heels. There was an instant of recognition, of shock at finding her dead instead of me. Then Brodnax fired. I was lucky that he was in first for he was armed with a Jena dart-gun, probably planning to knock out Sherry while they removed my body. Sline had a 9mm magnum which would have flung me across her with my head blown off.
I took a dart in the chest and dropped unconscious.
I woke up in the Service holding cell, charged with first-degree murder. I found that when I joined the Service I had waived my right to an open trial if my offense involved national security. The medieval Bill of Attainder, abolished in England but allowed by the U.S. Constitution, had been revived by Futrell and attainder of the person was used against me. I was flooded with Paxin, the universal solvent of personal problems, and tried in camera. The evidence against me was damning; Sherry and I had been passionate lovers who had become bitter enemies. Paxined as I was, I could deny very little nor gather enough of my mind together to tell the Court the truth, even if my lawyer had put me on the stand and given me a Chance to tell it.
He chose to plead that mine had been a crime of passion. That might have helped had I been an ordinary citizen. The Judge rightly said that a trained killer who gave way to passion was too dangerous to be ever again released upon a defenseless public. He sentenced me to imprisonment in the Federal Penitentiary for the term of my natural life. He, and everybody else, assumed that I would choose character restructuring instead. Despite the Paxin my willpower was still strong enough to refuse that offer.
A sentence to life imprisonment was the legal equivalent to execution. For all practical purposes I was now dead. The only message I got from the Service was that both Sherry and I were being recorded as “killed in the line of duty,” thus preserving our good names and the Service’s honor. And, as the law directed, I was immediately handed over to officers of the Federal Penitentiary to be held incommunicado for ever.
Those officers were still untainted by the venality diffusing through the Federal Government and its Agencies. They let the Paxin leach out of me before they took me before the Board of Psychiatric Assessors, the experts who would decide whether I was sufficiently sane to make an informed decision. If the Assessors decided I was not they could order involuntary character restructuring. The whole operation went too smoothly for me to believe that I was the first obstacle to Futrell’s ambitions who had been disposed of by this route.
The Board were still an obstacle of a kind; most of its members were honest psychiatrists. I tried to tell them my true story but they refused to consider anything except my present mental state. The Court had decided on my guilt; the Board’s only task was to decide on my sanity. My past actions were not their concern. Psychiatry had outgrown its Freudian diapers. My mental status was judged by my current behavior and by a range of psychological, physiological, and neurochemical parameters. My insistence on dragging up the past might be regarded as showing present mental disorganization. When I saw one member of the Board taking rapid notes while I was disputing this point with the Chairman, I gave up. I had been examined by psychiatrists every six months for years; the Service had always been meticulous about ensuring its agents were sane. I let them run their tests, half-expecting that they would be faked and I would be sent to forced mind-wipe.
I was brought back before a Board that was obviously discomfited at having to admit that any killer was normal in terms of their measurements. The Chairman, a kind, intelligent, and sympathetic physician, did his best to persuade me to accept voluntary character restructuring, but when I still refused he had to certify that I was capable of deciding my own fate.
I was immediately shipped off to the Pen, and here I have been for the past three years. I cannot dispute the ultimate justice of my sentence, only that I have been condemned for the wrong reason. Mine was guiltless but punishable error. I should have stayed beside Grainer. I should have warned Sherry sooner.
I was not an admirer of my own character and would have gladly forgotten my old self. But I must not forget Futrell. Hatred is an emotion which Praetorians cannot afford; one of my few virtues had been my freedom from hatred until I met Futrell. I had hated him—I don’t know why—even before he debauched the Service, led Sherry into treason, and arranged the assassination of his President. Now my only ambition was to expose him as a traitor and kill him as a murderer.
I flung down the draft, disgusted with myself. I had set out to write an accurate and succinct account of President Grainer’s murder. I had lapsed into verbose, self-justifying sentimentality. Into an hypocrisy as bad as Sherry’s.
I had presented myself as a Praetorian outside politics. In my heart I had been Grainer’s devoted supporter ever since Western Moonbase. And Sherry had known it I had killed her before she could kill me. That was a memory I longed to lose, but not at the cost of forgetting to cry “Treason” against Grainer’s assassins. To expose them at least; to kill them at best. Those were the only goals I still had.
I settled down to compress onto one page all the evidence against Gerald Futrell. A single sheet that I might hope to slip to some outsider before I was recaptured or killed. When I was satisfied that it was as convincing as I could make it I hid it in the lining of my jumpsuit.
I took my original effusion to the garbage disposer and then hesitated, reluctant to pulp the only literary effort of my life. I looked around my cell, then eased the grill off the air-conditioning vent. I stuffed the bundle of papers up the shaft and round the first elbow where it was unlikely to be found in a cell inspection, even the kind of inspection this cell would get after I had gone.
Perhaps one day in the future, long after the Pen had ceased to be a prison and my words had lost their relevance, some worker cleaning out air shafts would read it, laugh, and toss it away.