Aquinas began warming up for a gigantic smile. ‘Why do you suppose your co-defendants spent so much time and energy on these bad ideas?’
‘That’s hard to say.’
The prosecutor’s smile grew. ‘Can you guess?’
‘Well, I suppose that thinking about bad ideas is more interesting and exciting than… you know.’
‘Than what?’
‘You know.’
‘Abolishing the weapons?’
‘Yes,’ sighed George.
Aquinas’s smile reached full potential. ‘No further questions,’ he said, slapping the sales contract on the bench.
A new and particularly bitter layer of frost had infested the glass booth during George’s absence. ‘I found you very sympathetic,’ said Overwhite tonelessly as the tomb inscriber settled back down in the dock.
‘Sincerity city,’ said Randstable without passion.
‘I don’t think it was necessary to mention bad ideas,’ said Brat.
‘Yes, I had trouble with that part too,’ said Overwhite.
‘Abolition regimes are inherently unworkable,’ said Wengernook. ‘Seabird admitted as much.’
‘You don’t need to keep saying that,’ George snapped.
Justice Jefferson put on her whalebone glasses, briefly studied the sales contract, and asked, ‘Might I assume that the case for the defense is concluded?’
‘Our final witness will take the stand tomorrow,’ said Bonenfant.
When his advocate glowered at him, George’s bullet wound felt as if it were reopening.
Thrust into a frigid hell with nothing to sustain him but a glass painting of his unborn child, infused with the feeling that his performance on the stand had been a disaster, sick with the thought that he had betrayed his friends, George was nevertheless as happy as any human has ever been. For walking boldly through the courtroom, eyes dead ahead, was the future mother of Holly’s stepsister. His spermatids thrashed with desire. Morning smiled at him quickly, subtly; perhaps she hadn’t smiled at all. She changed the world. The palace brightened. Everyone in the gallery, even the old ones with their bleak eyes and crushed postures, had a beauty George had not noticed before.
‘Hey, look,’ said Wengernook. ‘It’s the periscope lady.’
‘Somebody that frigid should feel right at home around here,’ said Brat.
‘Why don’t you be quiet?’ hissed George.
After Morning had been sworn in, Bonenfant asked, ‘Are you a war refugee?’
She closed her eyes and said, in a voice George and his spermatids found overwhelmingly sensual, ‘I practiced psychotherapy in Chicago when it existed.’
‘Did you treat the six defendants for survivor’s guilt aboard the City of New York?’ Bonenfant asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you wish to testify?’
‘I know something that will help Paxton’s case.’
‘Something you learned while treating him?’
George grimaced internally. Nothing makes you as self-conscious, he realized – no magnitude of nakedness or public blunder – as the experience of observing others discuss you.
‘No, my testimony comes from before that time,’ said Morning. ‘Mr Bonenfant, members of the tribunal, let me take you back to the day of Paxton’s rescue. Our submarine lay in Boston Harbor, waiting for the abduction team to return. I trained one of the periscopes on the defendant’s hometown.’
‘Why?’
‘I was trying to spot my new patient.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. I became fascinated by the town itself. I realized that it was about to disappear, and I wanted to see how everyone was spending his time. The people’s faces were tight and grim. They went about their Saturday morning duties – getting their mail, buying their doughnuts – and I could find no joy. This was seven days before Christmas. But then a little girl and her mother came out of a store. The mother carried a bag of groceries. The child had a small plastic snowman in her hands. She was bubbling about it. Her lips said, “You’re going to live on our Christmas tree!” I began feeling much better… and much worse.
‘The warhead was groundburst, and the mother became trapped under a brick wall. Everything was dark. I had to use the infrared. “I’m thirsty,” the woman said. The initial radiation, of course. So the little girl ran into the burning store and came back holding a carton of orange juice. It was hard to tear open. She said – children’s lips are easy to read, they put so much into talking – she said, “Look, Mommy, I opened it! Will this make you better, Mommy?” She nursed her mother with orange juice. “Everything will be all right, Mommy,” the little girl said. The mother closed her eyes – stopped breathing. Then a man who knew the child came along. I think he worked at the bank. He seemed to be sleepwalking. “Is my mommy dead?” the girl asked. “Is my mommy in heaven now?” she wanted to know. The man fell down. The little girl began to cry. “I want my daddy,” she said. A few seconds later, another warhead arrived.
‘And then, the following month, while I was treating the defendant, he showed me his daughter’s nursery school photograph, and I realized who had given the dying woman the orange juice. The point I wish to make, your Honors, is that George Paxton is much more a victim of this war than a perpetrator. His wife and daughter were innocent civilian casualties, and he would have been one too if the prosecution hadn’t pulled his name out of a hat, entrapped him, and brought him to this ridiculous trial. Do you want revenge? Convict him. Justice? Let him go… I shall not answer any further questions, nor shall I submit to cross-examination.’
George’s sobs were slow and regular, like tympani notes at a funeral. Somebody – Brat? Wengernook? – gave his knee a firm, sympathetic squeeze.
‘Mr Aquinas, are you satisfied not to interview this witness?’ Justice Jefferson wanted to know.
‘I would like to ask her one question,’ said the chief prosecutor.
‘All right,’ said Morning. ‘One.’
Aquinas stomped on a WHEN? balloon and approached the stand. ‘As I understand your testimony, Dr Valcourt, you were on the City of New York during the whole of its seven-week passage from the United States to Antarctica. I also understand that, during this time, you engaged George Paxton in an intimate series of psychoanalytic sessions. Assuming that you do not wish to deny these facts, then my question is this – to what extent are you romantically involved with the defendant?’
The unpregnant expectant mother frowned gently and straightened up. ‘I am not now,’ she said, ‘nor have I ever been, romantically involved with the defendant.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘The tribunal will hear the closing argument of the prosecution,’ said Shawna Queen Jefferson.
Aquinas rose, approached the bench, and stood silently before the judges.
‘Fifteen billion years ago,’ he began at last, ‘the cosmos came into being. Nobody, even the best of our unadmitted scientists and clerics, quite knows how, or why.’ Looping his arms together behind his back, he paced around the pile of frozen missiles. ‘Later, some three and a half billion years ago, another miracle occurred. On one particular planet, Earth, organic molecules formed. We do not know whether the same miracle happened elsewhere. The opportunities were overwhelmingly for it, the odds overwhelmingly against it.’
‘At this rate he won’t get around to us for a week,’ said Wengernook.
‘Shut up,’ said Overwhite.
‘The organisms evolved,’ said Aquinas. ‘Great apes appeared. Some of these apes were carnivorous, perhaps even cannibalistic. It is probable that the human species branched off from bipedal, small-brained, weapon-wielding primates who were stunningly proficient at murder.’