On the cart was a metal cage.
In the cage was a gigantic vulture.
‘The first day of the war found me on a vulture hunt,’ Bonenfant explained, ‘chasing this creature from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts. I captured it not far from George Paxton’s hometown and then made my rendezvous with the City of New York.’
Aquinas boiled over like neglected oatmeal on a hot stove. ‘Your Honors, this is a courtroom, not a zoo! Whatever relevance Mr Bonenfant’s fat bird may have – and I see none – its arrival comes much too late to be considered admissible.’
‘I beg the court’s indulgence,’ said Bonenfant, gently lifting the solitary document from the defense table and handing it to Dennie. ‘Two days ago my chief assistant began an arduous trek up the glacier. She was searching for someone. This morning she found him. Your Honors, the defense is pleased to offer the deposition of one Dr Laslo Prendergorst – resident of Ice Limbo 905, unadmitted ornithologist, hypothetical Nobel laureate, and Antarctica’s most illustrious vulture expert.’
‘We didn’t have time to copy it,’ said Dennie, placing the document before Justice Jefferson.
‘Dr Prendergorst has examined the specimen in question,’ said Bonenfant, ‘and he has confirmed our suspicions. During the late Pleistocene era, a swift-flying, migratory species of vulture inhabited North America – the Teratornis, one form of which, Argentavis magnificens, was the largest bird ever to have lived. Twentieth-century scientists assumed that all the teratorns, including the gargantuan Argentavis magnificens, were extinct. The scientists were wrong. A small breeding population of Argentavis survived. In his deposition Dr Prendergorst draws an analogy with a fish called the coelacanth, believed to have vanished during the Cretaceous period. In 1938 a live coelacanth was found off the southern coast of Africa. Rumors of its extinction had been greatly exaggerated.’
Justice Wojciechowski smiled. The teratorn chewed the cage bars with its steam-shovel beak, shook them with its chipped and twisted claws.
When Bonenfant snapped his fingers, Parkman pulled some papers from the chief counsel’s briefcase and delivered them to the judges.
‘Your Honors, we are now offering a fresh copy of the prosecution’s own Document 318, a NORAD computer printout indicating the sizes, velocities, radar signatures, and trajectories of the objects that triggered this war. Were these objects heading across Canada on a line with Washington? Yes. Were they shaped like Soviet Spitball cruise missiles? Yes.
‘But’ – Bonenfant paused, weaving his hand through the air as if it were in flight – ‘were they Soviet Spitball cruise missiles?
‘No! They were a flock of admittedly hideous but completely unarmed vultures pursuing their annual one-day migration from Newfoundland to the Yucatan Peninsula. If you doubt my claim, turn to the last page. You will see one of the satellite photographs taken to corroborate the NORAD sighting. This is not a cruise missile, your Honors. You can even see the bloodstains on its beak.’
Aquinas leaped up. ‘Your Honors, how much longer must we endure this ludicrous presentation?’
Justice Jefferson seesawed her glasses on the bridge of her nose, looked at Document 318, and said, ‘Your findings are most unusual, Mr Bonenfant, and the court considers them admissible, but what is the point?’
‘Just this. Armed deterrence did not fail. The war happened through a freak of nature. If the teratorns had taken a slightly different flight path on that particular Saturday morning, they would have eluded the NORAD early warning systems, as they had done so many times in the past, and the nuclear balance would have remained intact. My clients planned no crimes against peace, nor did they carry them out. Armed deterrence worked, your Honors. It worked.’
‘It worked,’ said Brat.
‘It worked,’ said Wengernook.
‘It worked,’ said Overwhite.
‘It worked,’ said Randstable.
‘Amen,’ said Reverend Sparrow.
‘And that is all I have to say,’ Bonenfant concluded.
Justice Jefferson cast a thoughtful glance toward the foulsmelling bird – a glance into which George read vast volumes of wisdom and compassion – and announced that the court would withdraw to write its verdict.
And so the ice continent became a kind of physician’s office, humanity’s final remnant fidgeting in the anteroom, waiting to learn whether its collective case was terminal.
In George’s brain vicious and sadistic memory cells played his testimony over and over, torturing the guilt areas with snatches from speeches he might have made. Should I have spoken of Justine – of how she instinctively knew the suits were no good? Said more about Holly? Mentioned the Giant Ride horse, the Big Dipper, or the Mary Merlin doll back home in the closet? Certainly I could have put more stress on my co-defendants’ positive points…
He paced his cell, wearing a groove in the ice.
Why doesn’t your future wife come to visit you? his spermatids asked.
If word got back to the judges, he explained, they’d know she cared about me.
Of course, said the spermatids. Yes. Naturally. Why doesn’t she come anyway?
I don’t know, he confessed.
On the witness stand, she said she didn’t love you.
That was just to help our case.
JUSTICES STILL DELIBERATING, the slopes of Mount Christchurch declared to the assembled legions.
‘This game is seven-card stud,’ said Overwhite.
‘They’re probably hung up on Paxton’s testimony,’ said Brat. ‘All that talk about bad ideas – it must have thrown them.’
‘For a loop,’ said Wengernook.
‘I told the truth,’ said George.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Overwhite. He squeezed George’s hand. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that stuff about your kid.’
‘It’s all right,’ said George. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he added.
‘War always has its human side,’ said Brat.
‘Do you suppose Jefferson and company were favorably impressed by that vulture?’ asked Overwhite.
‘Definitely,’ said Wengernook.
‘An excellent move by Bonenfant,’ said Randstable. ‘Very pretty.’
‘It proves that you don’t get into a war by being too strong,’ said Brat.
‘Ace bets,’ said Randstable.
‘One egg,’ said Wengernook.
‘Two,’ said Overwhite.
‘We should be glad,’ said Brat. ‘It’s a good sign when a jury is out for a long time.’
‘That’s just in the movies,’ said Wengernook.
‘There is no jury,’ said Overwhite.
‘There are no movies,’ said George.
‘Raise,’ said Brat.
JUSTICES TO ANNOUNCE VERDICT TODAY, said Mount Christ-church.
The final week of school, the final day of a summer by the sea, the final hour of a long train trip – George could recall all of these experiences. In each case the space in question had changed, abandoning him even as he attempted to abandon it. For nearly a month the Ice Palace of Justice had been his home, but now it was regaining the aloofness and unfamiliarity it had worn on the first day.
The judges entered slowly, their black robes soaking up the oily gloom, each wearing a face that could have bluffed its way through a thousand losing poker hands. Shawna Queen Jefferson, who carried a ream of paper and a biography of Abraham Lincoln in her arms, was mumbling to herself. Theresa Gioberti seemed worried, Jan Wojciechowski bemused, Kamo Yoshinobu sad.
They sat down.