"Your Honor," he finally said, "I challenge you on that. There is no provision…"
"But there is," said the judge. "Think of it and you'd realize that there had to be. There has to be provision against the sabotage of the plan to prolong human life. I can quote you…"
Frost shook his head. "No need to, although I've never heard of it. But even so, there has been no treason on my part. I've worked for that very plan; I've worked for Forever Center…"
"Under narco-questioning," said the judge, "you admitted to conniving with various publishers, using your position, for motives of your own, to prejudice the plan." "It's a lie!" yelled Frost. "That was not the way it was."
The ghostly head shook slowly, sadly.
"It must have been the way it was. You told of it yourself. You testified against yourself. You would not lie about yourself and to your discredit."
"A trial!" Frost said bitterly. "In the middle of the night. Struck down in the street and carried here. No arrest. No attorney. And, I would suppose, no chance to
appeal."
"You are right," said the judge. "There is no appeal. Under law, narco-trial results and judgments stand final. After all, it is the most equable approach to justice. It does away with all impediments to the course of justice." "Justice!"
"Mr. Frost," said the judge, "I have been patient with you. Because of your former position of trust and honor and your long record with Forever Center, I have given you more latitude in your remarks than conforms with the dignity of this court. I can assure you that the trial was conducted properly and by the only means that a trial for treason can be conducted under law, that you have been found guilty of the charge and that sentence has been passed. I now will read the sentence to you." A phantom hand reached into the darkness where a pocket was and, bringing out a pair of spectacles, placed them on the ghostly face. "The seemingly detached hand picked up a sheaf of papers and the papers rustled. "Daniel Frost," said the judge, reading from the paper, "you have been adjudged, after due legal process, guilty of the charge of treason against all humankind in that you attempted willingly and willfully to obstruct the administrative functions and processes aimed at the bringing of immortality not only to all presently living persons but to all the others who are dead, with their bodies held in preservation.
"It is the sentence of this court, in accordance with the penalty set out by the statutes, that you, Daniel Frost, shall be ostracized from the human race, that you shall be forbidden…"
"No!" yelled Frost. "No, you can't do that to me. I didn't…"
"Bailiff," roared the judge.
A hand reached out of the darkness and the fingers ground into Frost's shoulder.
"You shut up," said the bailiff, grinding his teeth, "and listen to His Honor."
"… that you shall be forbidden," the judge went on, "to have any intercourse, commerce, or communication, in any manner whatsoever, with any other member of the human race, and that any other member of the human race, under duly set forth penalties, shall be forbidden to have any intercourse, commerce, or communication with you. That you shall have stripped from you all personal possessions except, for the sake of decency, the very clothes you stand in, and that all other of your possessions shall be confiscated. Likewise you are stripped of all rights except the one final right of having your body preserved, in accordance with the law, and by the mercy of this court.
"And it is hereby directed that, in order all men may recognize your ostracism and so refrain from any contact with you, you be branded, by the means of a tattoo, upon your forehead and each cheek with an O outlined in red."
The judge kid down the paper and took off his glasses.
1 have one thing to add," he said. "As a matter of mercy, the tattooing already has been done, while you still were under drug. It is a rather painful process and it is not the purpose of this court to cause you unnecessary agony or greater humiliation than is unavoidable.
"And a warning. The court is aware that by various means these tattoo marks may be covered or disguised, or even removed. Do not, under any circumstance, be tempted to resort to such deception. The penalty for such an act is the cancellation of the one right you still have left, the preservation of your body."
He glared at Frost. "Sir," he asked, "do you understand?"
"Yes," Frost mumbled. "Yes, I understand,"
The judge reached for his gavel and banged it. The sound rang hollowly in the almost-empty room.
"This case is closed," he said. "Bailiff, escort him to the street and throw him—I mean, turn him loose."
18
In the night, the cross blew down again.
19
The faint lighting of the eastern sky served notice that dawn was near at hand.
Daniel Frost stood unsteadily in the street, still numb from the impact of what had happened in the courtroom, still held in the dying grip of drug, filled with a strange blend of desperation, of anger, fear, and pity for himself.
There was something very wrong about all of it, he knew—not only the fact that he could not have been convicted as they had said he'd been convicted, but wrong about the hour, a trial in the dead of night, and in the fact that there had been no other persons in the court but the judge and bailiff. If in fact they had been judge and bailiff.
A put-up job, he thought. The long arm of Marcus Appleton reaching out for him. And reaching out most desperately. There must, he told himself, be something in that paper that Appleton would go to any lengths to hide.
But he was in no position at the moment—if he ever were to be in position—to do anything about it. There was no one who would listen.to him. There was no one he would dare to talk with. There is no appeal, the ghostly face had said. And that was right; there was no way to appeal.
Ann Harrison, he thought.
Good Lord, there was Ann Harrison.
Had she been the trigger, her coming up to see him, that had brought this all about?
And had he said anything about her? Had he said she had the paper—if she really had the paper?
If he had been questioned under drug, he undoubtedly had implicated her. But it seemed impossible to believe that he had been so questioned, for if he had (and the court had really been a duly constituted court) he'd not have been convicted.
He stood shaky in the night just before the dawn and the questions and the doubts and the fumbling for an understanding went on roaring through his brain.
No longer a member of the human race.
No longer anything.
Just a blob of protoplasm tossed out in the street-naked of possessions and of hope.
With but one single right remaining—the human right to die.
And that, of course, was what Appleton had planned.
That was what he counted on—that with no other right, a man would exercise that one remaining right.
"I won't do it, Marcus," said Daniel Frost, talking to himself and to the night and to the world and to Marcus Appleton.
He turned from where he stood and went fumbling down the street, for he had to get away, before the light could come he must find a place to hide. To hide from the mockery and the anger and the callous cruelty that would greet him if he should happen to be seen. For now he was no longer of the world, but an enemy. Every hand would be raised against him and he'd have no protection beyond the protection of the dark and hidden place. He was, henceforth, his own protector, for there was no law nor right that he could claim.