Connie’s bar was open all the time now — Karen’s had closed, not just because she was dead but because no one else could make coffee like she did, and the wet black espresso grounds looked too much like what was leftover after the botch finished with a body — full of daytime lushes and shirkers, extra people who were too depressed by the new circumstances of their community to dance or stand on their heads in front of their class, but unwilling to leap back into the business of taking care of the sick. They were rare and distinctly unpopular. Among Jemma’s unfinished work in the Council was a resolution that would draft every last one of them into service again, but for now they were miserable and free, and this morning she was one of them, too.
“Hey, honey,” said Connie, as Jemma took a seat next to Dr. Chandra, the only other patron. “Shall I surprise you?” Jemma nodded, and Connie served her up a tall glass of alcohol-free Impeachment Punch, complete with a tall stick of fruit-kebab and a twirling umbrella. “Drink it all down,” she said. “It’s good luck.”
“Does that mean I’ve got your vote?”
“Honey,” Connie said, tossing her stringy hair over her shoulder and shaking her wattle in a way that Jemma knew she saved for very serious pronouncements. “You know I’ve got to hear the evidence. We all do. We’ve made our rules and now we have to lie in them.”
“You’ve got my vote,” said Dr. Chandra. “Not that it matters. Not that anything matters.”
“Darling,” said Connie. “Darling, don’t put yourself down. Of course it matters. Not very much, but it does. You just have to hang in there and try not to put yourself down to much, until you’re recovered. Then you’ll see. You’re going to stand so tall your head will scrape the skylights.”
“Whatever,” said Dr. Chandra. That was her line, the same one she spoke to all the sad souls she ministered to down here. The botch had put them in a slump like it put others into respiratory failure. They just had to be patient, and keep in their heart a willingness to let the sun shine in when it rose again, as it surely, surely would, Honey. To Jemma it was as viable and stupid as any other sort of pep talk, colder but just as effective, which was to say not at all, as the ones that Rob gave her.
“Thanks,” Jemma said to Dr. Chandra. “It does matter.” She looked at her watch: there were still five hours until her trial.
“Everyone’s going fucking crazy,” he said. “What they’re doing to you is crazy, and all the other shit is crazy, too. It’s the Program, back again to claim us all. Why would they let us out, just to start it all over again? What am I supposed to do now?”
“That’s botch-talk, Honey,” said Connie.
“Maybe,” he said. “It’s probably in my brain. Sometimes I think I can see it, when I close my eyes. It’s big and tall and hulking. It looks just like Tiller. It’s probably there… Do you see it?” He spun on his stool and grabbed Jemma’s hand. She did see it, not in his brain but tucked away in his abdominal organs, a seemingly impotent series of shadows.
“No,” she said.
“Lighten up, Botchcake,” said Connie.
“Lighten up,” she says. “Tell it to Dr. Tiller, coming for me with her red dripping claws.”
“They need everybody they can get,” Jemma said.
“Don’t give me that,” he said, tearing his hand away from her. “Any moron will do in a hopeless situation. Anybody can ask the angel for anti-arrhythmia potions. And I may be just another moron, but I’m not her moron, not yet. She can just fuck off.”
“Well,” Jemma said, taking another sip of her punch. She was about to whisper, A little fucking off might do her good, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Ishmael.
“Hello, handsome,” said Connie. Dr. Chandra blushed and looked into his drink.
Ishmael ignored them both. “We need to talk,” he said to Jemma.
70
Dr. Snood had launched his impeachment proceedings in the thirtieth week of the flood — it took another week to bring the matter to a trial presided over by Dr. Sundae. Jemma hadn’t even realized she could be impeached — the protocol was been hidden in a sub-sub-paragraph of the constitution, something she hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to, because it was boring and because she knew that the laws had been composed with the expectation of never needing them; nobody thought they’d still be floating around when her forty-month term expired. Offenses and conditions warranting impeachment included being caught in a lie, egregious public sexual misconduct, acting against the interests of the hospital in collusion with a foreign power (should one ever be encountered), verbal or physical abuse of a child, murder, insanity, and willful harm of a patient.
He argued a combination of the last three, saying — not unpleasantly, not angrily or self-righteously, and (he assured everybody) with an absolute absence of malice — that Jemma was suffering from bouts of insanity brought on by the immense and overwhelming power of her singular gift. His speech calling for a vote to entertain impeachment was full of praise for the good Jemma, the Jemma who harrowed the hospital, whom the popular will had wisely elevated to their highest office, the Jemma who had presided so capably over all their deliberations, who had helped execute the final transformation of their home from a hospital to a community. But he damned with great fervor the menacing, insane Jemma who became intermittently drunk with power and wrought destruction on the populace. Twice she had lost control and twice someone had died.
Jemma was compelled to be silent during Dr. Snood’s first speech, and all through the subsequent trial. She sat with her arms folded, still in her place in the middle of the Council table, like she was listening to a new plan for another addition to the lobby, trying not to shake her head, or show any emotion at all. They all watched the video of the musical again. The angel’s cameras had mysteriously failed, and so the only footage was shot from high on the seventh floor, and if anything from far away it looked even less like she was trying to help Dr. Sashay. Jemma looked at the screen with a blank face, but tried not to actually watch. She thought of other things: the botch and Rob and her baby and of Vivian, lying in bed on the ninth floor.
“Well, I saw the green fire,” said Dr. Chandra, a key witness because he was one of the few people seated in the front row who hadn’t fled when Jemma first descended, “and I heard that strange noise. The whistling, humming noise. It was kind of like what you hear when the television is on but the sound is turned off, only it was louder. Dr. Sashay was lying on the stage. I think she was still trying to sing, when Dr. Claflin knelt by her.”
“Near her, or on her?” asked Dr. Sundae.
“Oh, just near her, I’m sure. I heard Dr. Sashay go, oof! But I think it was just because she was hurting. Dr. Claflin put her hands on her hands, and the fire got brighter — it became a little hard to see through. It went on like that. I’m not sure how long. Dr. Sashay sort of floated up while she burned. When it stopped she fell to the ground and… broke.”
“Is that all?” asked Dr. Snood.
“Yes,” he said.
“You told us what you saw,” said Dr. Sundae. “But didn’t you hear anything else?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Dr. Pudding reported that he heard Dr. Sashay screaming in pain as Dr. Claflin touched her. Was that your perception?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Dr. Chandra, let me remind you…”
“She might have said something.”
“What did she say?”
“It was all very indistinct.”
“What did you think she said?”