None of this sat noticeably well with Brother Michael. His face was trying to register so many different disapprovals simultaneously it seemed frozen in a disbelieving blank. He was trying to shout, too, but he couldn’t make up his mind what to shout first, and nothing came out but a vaguely well-bred gurgle.
I could understand a lot of what Mike must be feeling. After all, we really weren’t in anything like fighting trim just then. A pair of moderately irritated nuns could’ve wiped us out one-handed. To test this thesis, I projected a pair of moderately irritated nuns, but they just sniffed disdainfully, rattled their beads, and strode off into the woods. Nevertheless, we were pretty grossly ignoring our mission, and something certainly ought to be done. I hoped Mike could figure out something to do.
But he didn’t have to. Three vulgarly well-armed military robots clanked out of the thicket, Sativa fell to the sand with a tentative squeal and an alarmingly tactile thump, and all our manic fun and games evaporated.
Well, nearly all. My mighty Wanamaker organ didn’t seem to want to go. The robots ground to a halt and made it overwhelmingly clear that they were waiting for me to get rid of my overdone playtoy before they’d state their transcendentally important business. This was terribly embarrassing.
I unimagined my music box in painstaking detail and nothing worth mentioning happened. The robots, chugging softly, continued to wait. Mike’s face found a single expression it could maintain, but not one I enjoyed. The rest of the gang stared at me as though the whole thing were all my fault.
I carefully wished the organ off to the deepest pit of hell, where it might even do some good. It tootled derisively and stayed put.
“All right, you guys,” I sneered. “Who’s the wise guy put a hex on me?”
Nobody giggled, not even the robots. Most of my erstwhile friends gave me the kind of smile you’re supposed to use only when visiting elderly relatives in mental wards. Michael’s left nostril twitched in Morse.
“Aw come on!” I was running out of temper. The last time that’d happened to me, I gave the Old Empire State Building such a punishing kick I had to walk on crutches for a week. Recalling that mistake, I gave the musical monster — that forty-nine-ton albatross — an experimental tap with my right boot.
PoP! like the emperor of soap suds. It was gone. Someone was unkind enough to cheer.
“Now are you satisfied?” I asked the air a few yards to the left of the lead robot. They all three hopped to pots-and-pans attention, and the one in front threw me a bell-like salute so crisp it would have turned a West Point kay-det mauve.
“T-X two-three beta, sir. Are you Galactic Grand High Marshal Anderson?”
I floated him a return for his salute, said, “At ease, things,” and allowed as how I might well be the institution he was seeking. I almost remembered having vaguely considered conjuring up some such gadgets to keep the lobsters occupied a few hours back, but I couldn’t even pretend to remember having done it; and besides, any hallucination of mine would’ve known I’m just too modest to put up with such inflated titles.
Still, “What can I do for you, gadget?” I asked kindly, not wanting to hurt the poor thing’s ferric feelings.
“Begging to report, sir. Armored details Toggle-Xylophone and Marshmallow-Buggywhip” (I could hear the military Michael gagging somewhere to my left, but I ignored him. Why should I use someone else’s secondhand phonetic alphabet?) “engaged units of the enemy at 2100 hours, killing three aliens and capturing nine, plus one humanoid associated with the enemy, sustaining only superficial damage and no casualties, sir.”
He shot off another of those tool-and-die salutes, which I alertly fielded and returned. “Well done, device,” I said, “well done,” in a warm and well-oiled tone calculated to win me the instant love of my troops. “Please bring in the prisoners.”
After another volley of precisely machined salutes, the three gleaming golems snapped about face and returned to the woods.
“Chester?” Michael, fatally wounded, implored.
“I don’t know any more about it than you do,” I assured him. “Maybe less.”
“I certainly hope so,” just short of a sob.
One thing was relatively sure: either those machines were programmed by some unidentified subversive overpoweringly disrespectful of our hallowed military traditions, or I programmed them myself and was in desperate need of psychiatric care. Imagine, as didn’t I dare, the anguish those boiler-plate parodies were inflicting on poor Michael. I felt a sinking certainty he’d never forgive me for this.
Our gang — impressed, overawed, or otherwise incapable of free expression — shuffled feet, beat twitchy rhythms on thighs, uttered fractional whispers, and displayed other symptoms of uncomprehending restlessness. An exaggerated red, white, and bluely chauvinistic butterfly glided by within a half inch of my nose.
“Cool it,” I suggested. “I think we’ve got it licked now.” I was careful not to define my terms.
Then the mechanical marines returned — a good two dozen of them — riding herd on nine psychotically depressed blue lobsters and one ambiguously frantic Laszlo Scott. The cockles of my heart — whatever they might be — warmed to an instant ruby glow at the sight. (But where in hell did two whole dozen robots come from?)
“Hiya, Lasz!” bleated Gary the compulsive Frog. Laszlo didn’t respond.
The metallic militia lined the wilted prisoners up before me, took a uniform giant step back, discharged a barrage of salutes clearly audible halfway to Fort Mudge, then aimed a complete assortment of semiportable artillery at the prisoners and stood as still as robots standing still.
And there I was, staring at the first honest-to-God real enemies I’d ever honest-to-God really defeated — and I discovered that I didn’t know what to do with them. Nothing in my previous experience had prepared me for this situation.
“Okay,” I asked the world at large, “now what am I supposed to do?”
“Why,” somebody started, “don’t you just…” and faded out. Right. Nobody said anything for a while.
Then, “I suppose there ought to be a trial,” I supposed “That’s what they did last time. Nuremberg. It seems to be traditional.”
The courtroom was dark, but the darkness illuminated it. The lobsters were standing on separate round raised platforms in bulletproof glass cylinders. Laszlo was similarly housed, but at some distance from the others.
The ceiling, dark and glowing, rose powerfully to meet the wall some forty-five feet above the judge’s bench, from which point a flag — a glowing spiral nebula against a field of light-absorbent black in depth — hung down almost to the floor.
The judge’s bench was a plain white table with an inset display screen, and a white straight-back chair.
The judge wore vibrant gray robes that perfectly concealed the shape of his body, and he was some three feet taller than you’d expect a man to be; but his face was acceptably human — longer than ours and narrower, more angular, considerably wise, hairless, and bright yellow: not Homo sap., but human all the way.
I didn’t know who was responsible for it, but I surely did admire that set.
“Pay heed to the court,” a deep and sourceless voice admonished.
“An unaffiliated group of native Terrans now bring cause against one non-Terran, Ktch, and against his coracialists and their superiors, if any, for the crimes of felonious trespass, inciting to warfare, intent to practice genocide, and conspiracy to enslave. Cause is also brought against one Terran, Laszlo Scott, for voluntary participation in crimes against his species, for conspiracy to enslave, and for racial treason,” the judge read solemnly from his display screen. “Are you people ready? Come on, now. Let’s not take all day.”