“Two, a man’s chair and a woman’s chair.”
“Thank you.” She turned around to face a different part of the crowd. “Given what I’ve been told of your people’s beliefs and habits, I find it extremely odd that P’tar’houn-Hoc had two chairs in such an intimate and private part of his home.”
K’anal’orb spoke up. “Odd, definitely, but not unexpected. P’tar’houn-Hoc was a notorious pervert.”
“But why a woman’s chair? There were no women in his Food Society. Why would he keep a smaller chair in that room unless he had a regular need of it?”
She turned again, this time to stare at the widow. “You, madam, discovered the body. That means you knew the passcode.”
Et’fhan spoke for the first time, very quietly and hesitantly. “It was part of my house. I was responsible for cleaning it.”
“I think you entered that room often to do far more than clean it.”
“You are impugning the virtue of an honorable woman,” K’anal’orb protested.
Rabinowitz continued on. “I believe you dined in that room, madam. I believe you dined there regularly in the company of your husband.”
Et’fhan seemed frozen, unable to speak. Rabinowitz pressed her momentary advantage. “I think you actually enjoyed it. I think you share your husband’s perverse eating habits. You ate there with him because it gave you pleasure.”
“No, no, he forced me. He made me eat with him in that room. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. I was his wife, I had to do what he told me. It sickened me. I hated it, I hated him!”
“You hated him because he made you perform horrible, disgusting acts.”
“Yes!”
“You hated him because he enjoyed degrading you in sick and perverted ways.”
“Yes!”
“You hated him so much that eventually you couldn’t stand it any longer, so you grabbed the knife and plunged it into his chest to make him stop degrading you, defiling you.”
“No, that’s not why!” Et’fhan screamed. She dropped to the ground, her body trembling in what Rabinowitz assumed were sobs. “That’s not why.”
The courtroom was deathly quiet. No one moved or spoke; all attention was focused on the prostrate form of the sobbing woman. After a minute or so she looked up again, regaining some of her composure. “If… if it were just me, I could have coped. I know what my duty was to my husband and I would have done it, shameful as it might be. But our son… he told me he was going to start bringing our son in there, to teach him those disgusting ways. Our son is so good, so innocent. I couldn’t…” Her voice broke.
“You couldn’t let your son be corrupted that way,” Rabinowitz said in a much gentler voice.
“No,” Et’fhan said, barely audible.
To his credit, F’tim was the first one to cross the room and comfort the woman he’d inherited as his responsibility.
Dinh was sulking in the cab they had to take back to the rent-a-bod agency, since the police were no longer escorting them. Rabinowitz could stand the cold treatment only so long, then said, “All right, Bian, out with it. What’s your problem?”
“You had no right to do that,” Dinh said curtly.
“Do what? I proved you were innocent, just like you asked me to.”
“You let them off the hook.”
“Them?”
“The forces of repression. We had a full confession. We could have pointed to them and shown how evil they are. Then you have to throw it out and prove the wife did it. What good does that serve? Do you really think she’ll be punished?”
“Not after K’anal’orb finishes making her a hero.”
“Exactly. We could have used that confession to tear down the villains. Instead, they’ll come out of this even stronger.”
“But it just happened to be the truth.”
“The truth?” Dinh laughed bitterly. “The truth is that P’tar’houn-Hoc would be alive today if their society wasn’t so repressed. After this case, it’ll be harder than ever to change that.”
Rabinowitz could hold her temper no longer. “Your problem, Bian, is you’ve got your priorities ass-backward. Your buddy P’tar’houn-Hoc was not just a pervert, he was a spouse abuser—and his wife killed him to stop him from abusing a child as well. If you want to fight for an underdog, fight for the women of K’tolu’tan who have no rights, who have to suffer whatever abuse their men dole out and get passed from hand to hand like spare change.”
“Debs, I—” Dinh started to say something, stopped, and was silent for a moment. “I just can’t talk to you any more,” she said at last.
The rest of the ride passed in silence. They turned in their rented bodies and switched off their teepers, returning each of them to their individual rooms.
Rabinowitz sat for a long time, breathing slowly and deeply and staring unseeing at the far wall. Finally she gave a deep sigh and clapped her hands together. “When shall we two meet again? When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won. Well, Bian, so much for hurly-burly, so much for winning and losing battles.”
She stood up and stretched, luxuriating in the feel of her own arms and legs again. She’d been in worse bodies, but not many and not for a very long time. “Phone: messages.”
Fran’s face filled the screen. “Hi. Kwame and Ricardo decided to practice their swordplay in some virtual gym without telling anyone, and Ricardo tried a Douglas Fairbanks over the banister edge and strained a tendon. 1 didn’t think you’d want a limping Duncan, so I found a software interface that translates the limp into a normal walk, sort of. I think it looks passable, but you’re the director so you’ll have to take a look. Oh, and Kwame’s depressed because he thinks he caused the injury, and he won’t listen to me so you’ll have to talk him out of it. Maybe the Scottish play wasn’t such a sly idea, after all.” Beep.
Editor’s Note: This story is a sequel to “The Height of Intrigue,” in our November 1994 issue.