J. Walter Keyes sat eating his dinner at a small table in the room they had provided for him. It was comfortable, this room in which they kept him all day, even though it was windowless and, obviously soundproof, as silent as a tomb. The room had a good bed in which to sleep, and a nicely upholstered armchair in which to sit and read; and they provided him with ample reading material: books, magazines, newspapers which he devoured daily for some indication that he was being searched for, but which indication, to his utter amazement and great frustration, he had not found. There was even a portable television set in the room, that he used to relentlessly watch the news broadcasts, secretly expecting at any moment to have one of them interrupted with a special bulletin announcing that he was missing, and warning his abductors that a massive search was being launched to locate him. But, of course, no such urgent report was forthcoming, and as each newscast concluded, Keyes sat staring at the set in mute wonder, marveling that he had been missing for nearly a week and nobody seemed to care.
He ate his dinner with little relish, although the food, he had to admit to himself, was excellent; but he could not, in the evenings, find much appetite with the thought gnawing at him that in another hour that goddamned Jap or whatever he was, yellow, slant-eyed bastard anyway, would be coming for him; coming with that rolling chair to strap him into it as if he were some kind of madman, and then—
He shut off the thought, trying to force himself to concentrate on his meal, knowing that if he allowed his mind to go any farther that he would only become tense and angry again and then his food would not settle—
But he found, as usual, that once the thought began there was no getting away from it. He had to proceed, to go through in his mind in preview the ordeal that an hour later he would have to endure in fact.
The Oriental, dressed in his neat, tailored chauffeur’s uniform, would wheel him out the door of his room into a small foyer where the girl—the one he had seen and whose trim body he had admired that first night—where she would be sitting at a desk which was usually bare save for a telephone, and beside which was a chair where, he assumed, his Jap keeper would wait while the trial was in session. One section of a flight of stairs came down just opposite the desk, and it was down these, probably, that his seven tormentors nightly made their way. The stairs, along with the absence of any windows, made Keyes suspect that he was being held in a basement or cellar of some kind; but aside from that speculation he had not the vaguest notion where he was.
From the small foyer, he would be wheeled to the left through a large double doorway into the Blue Room. The men of the Eden Movement would be waiting for him. They would already be in their places, all seven of them, smug and business-like, making their obvious little efforts to ignore him—when all along what they really wanted to do was stare at him some more, as they had done the first night and the second; stare at him and examine him, as if he were some kind of—of bug; something alien, curiosity provoking; something unusual, peculiar; something—odd!
Goddamn them anyway! he thought savagely, pushing the plate of food away from him. Goddamn them, with their calm self-rightousness, their unpenetratable aloofness, their ridiculous dedication to truth, utter truth, and only truth—goddamn them all!
And Abby, he added in silent fury; goddamn her too!
Abby, she was the one. It was all her fault. She had told them all those things, let them tape record everything she knew; she was the one who had turned on him, set these madmen on him; it was her fault that they had him, her fault that he was being kept locked up like an animal, strapped into that goddamn chair like a maniac, wheeled into that room where everything was blue; her fault that he was nightly subjected to their cold glances, their sudden, probing, unnerving stares, their icy solemness as they listened to all the rotten things she said about him—
Her fault, yes, her fault, Abby’s fault.
He shook his head slowly, almost incredulously.
Abby’s fault. And after all he’d done for her, too—
Behind him, he heard the door being unlocked. He turned to see the uniformed Oriental entering the room, pushing the blue leather chair before him on its shiny ball casters. He was a fairly young man, this Jap or whatever he was; at least, he seemed to be young; Keyes found it difficult to tell with Orientals. But he was sure that the man was no more than, say, twenty-nine or thirty. And he was small, no taller than Keyes himself, and much slighter of build—
I wonder, Keyes thought suddenly, if I could handle him? Handle him physically. He was younger, the Jap, but Keyes was heavier and would have the element of surprise on his side. A quick, damaging attack; then make a run for it to those stairs out there—no one to stop him, the others would all be in the Blue Room waiting, only the girl in the foyer—
“It is time, Mr. Keyes,” the Oriental said tonelessly, standing beside the chair, waiting to strap Keyes into it.
Keyes turned around on the armless chair and shifted his body forward slightly, tensing his legs to spring. One hand, still on the table next to his plate, jerked nervously.
“Mr. Keyes,” the Oriental said quietly, “I urge you not to attempt anything physical. For your information, I happen to be an expert at karate. I can temporarily paralyze, permanently cripple, or kill you, with a single blow. It will be much less trouble for both of us if you simply get into the chair as usual.”
Keyes relaxed, sighing heavily with disgust. He moved into the chair and sat silently fuming while the Oriental strapped first his wrists, then his ankles.
The girl was standing next to her desk when Keyes was wheeled into the foyer. She was an attractive girl, in her mid-twenties, with an obviously good body under the tailored skirt and paisley blouse she wore. She looked freshly scrubbed and clean; her face was rosy, smooth, young. If instead of being darkhaired she had been a blonde, she would have reminded him a great deal of—
Abby! Goddamn her, it was her fault he was here—
Through the double doors he was pushed, across the thick blue carpet, up to a point facing the oddly bluish-hued table behind which sat the one they called the Examiner.
After his chair stopped, he felt the Oriental’s hands move away from the back, and a second later heard the double doors being closed behind him. A brief moment of silence followed—and then it began.
“Mr. Keyes, you have heard all the statements made against you which pertain to the charge of Undermining Civilization—”
It was, Keyes saw, the elderly man at the end of the panel table who was speaking. The one they called the Moderator. Stupid, senile old fool, Keyes thought, noticing that, as usual, the old man wore a dying carnation in his lapel.
“—and now is the proper time for you to speak in your own defense, if you care to. Have you anything to say?”
Keyes swallowed and smiled his very best ingratiating smile.
“Ah, yes—yes, I do have—”
“Very well,” the Moderator consented. “You will direct all your remarks to the Examiner. And please be advised that any statement you make is subject to rebuttal comment by the Examiner. You may proceed.”
“Well,” Keyes said, trying to look solemn and sincere, “I would like to point out that what you heard on that tape insofar as my own attitude and feelings regarding the situation between Hal—Mr. O’Brien—and Miss Atkins were concerned, was strictly the personal interpretation of Abby—Abigail Daniels. It was quite obvious to me from the things she said that she is harboring some sort of ill will toward me, though for what reason I can’t imagine, after all I did for that girl—”
“We will grant,” said the Examiner, “that even though under hypnosis or subconscious—releasing drugs, Miss Daniels might render her version of your part in the affair with a certain amount of animosity; however, that does not alter the nature of the actual facts revealed, Mr. Keyes.”
“No, of course not,” Keyes quickly agreed, “but I did want to point out that I may have acted with considerably more compassion and understanding toward Miss Atkins—”
“We will further grant,” the Examiner said patiently, “that it is possible that you are capable of a more humane conduct than was described. May I ask if you intend to discuss the factual evidence on the tape?”
“Certainly, of course,” Keyes replied, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. He was not accustomed to being hurried along in this manner; he liked to take his own good time, set a stage for himself, create a wise, all-knowing image, cast a spell—and then make his point. But the Examiner was having none of this; he was, to Keyes’ way of thinking, far too quick in granting the minor considerations with which Keyes had hoped to impress the panel. And in his quickness, he was depriving Keyes of the one weapon he still had left: his sincere-sounding, impressive, and convincing manner of talking.
“As long as you are so concerned with facts,” Keyes nearly blurted now, “there is one very important one which you seem to have overlooked completely: in my position as personal business manager for Mr. O’Brien, I am responsible for him; I am obligated to see to his best interests at all times—”
“Mr. Keyes,” the Examiner intoned, “a hired murderer might likewise be ethically obligated to the best interests of his employer; but that in no way will excuse him if he does in fact commit murder. Surely you must recognize the shallowness of what you are saying.”
“No, I don’t,” Keyes argued, piqued by the classification of shallowness being applied to his statement. Nothing he ever said could possibly be considered shallow. “I don’t think it’s shallow at all. I think it is essential for you to take into consideration that I was not acting in my own interests in this situation, that I was seeking to protect the welfare of one of my clients—”
“But your own interests were being served, were they not, Mr. Keyes?”
“Oh, indirectly I suppose they were—”
“Do you recall a statement Miss Daniels made on the tape to the effect that you had been very pleased with yourself at being able to strike such a favorable financial bargain with Miss Atkins? I believe that you considered it something of an accomplishment that you had prevented Miss Atkins from securing a claim on Mr. O’Brien’s future income. Income, I might point out, of which you, as his business manager, receive a percentage.”
“I remember that, yes, but I’m afraid that Abby—Miss Daniels—took what I said entirely out of context—”
“You deny then that you were acting primarily in your own financial interests when you negotiated the agreement with Miss Atkins to protect Mr. O’Brien against future parental responsibilities with regard to the then unborn child?”
“Yes, I do,” said Keyes. His face fell into a hurt expression. “I was merely acting as a—a go-between; I was simply trying to find a sensible solution to a very unfortunate situation. I was concerned with what was best for both parties, and for the child too; after all, I have a daughter of my own, you know—”
“Yes, we know, Mr. Keyes,” the Examiner advised him, glancing rather pointedly at the six men occupying the panel table. “You would have us believe, then, that throughout the entire arrangements being made between Miss Atkins and Mr. O’Brien, that your role was solely that of an impartial arbiter; a neutral, so to speak, who was there to see that a settlement was reached which would be fair to both parties?”
“Yes,” Keyes said flatly, “that was my role, exactly.”
The Examiner sat back in his chair and folded his hands on the table before him. The soft blue light of the room laid a slightly tinted cast over his erectly held head, lessening the starkness of his white-slashed temples, evening the shadows of his finely chiseled face. His eyes, deep and almost harshly penetrating, fixed upon Keyes unmovingly.
“Mr. Keyes, prior to listening to the Investigator’s testimony, were you aware what kind of environment your client Mr. O’Brien’s illegitimate child was living in?”
“Why, no, of course not—”
“You knew the address where the boy and his mother were living, did you not?”
“Yes, I knew the address, naturally; the bank handling the trust fund kept me advised of that. But I didn’t know it was in a—a—”
“Slum is the word, Mr. Keyes. You didn’t know they were living in a slum? ”
“No.”
“Considering the deep sense of responsibility you felt, had you known of the boy’s circumstances, would you have tried to rectify the situation?”
“I certainly would have,” Keyes said firmly. “And when you gentlemen see fit to release me, that will be the first matter I will look into. As I said, I have a child of my own—”
“Tell me, Mr. Keyes,” the Examiner interrupted, “did your deep sense of responsibility ever prompt you to take steps to personally assure yourself that the boy was being properly cared for?”
“Uh, no—no, it didn’t,” he said hesitantly. Smiling rather sadly, he added, “I’ll have to admit that I was probably quite lax in that one respect. But I assumed, you understand, that as long as the money was being paid promptly—”
“Mr. Keyes, how much money does your client Hal O’Brien currently earn?”
“Why, I can’t divulge that,” Keyes said, somewhat taken back. “That is privileged information.”
The Examiner’s head snapped sideways. “Mr. Investigator, will you tell us, please?”
“Hal O’Brien,” the Investigator said, flipping open a file folder in front of him, “earned, from all sources, one and one-quarter million dollars last year.”
“One and one-quarter million dollars,” the Examiner said softly, returning his gaze to Keyes. “And out of that great sum of money, the amount paid to support Mr. O’Brien’s illegitimate son totaled exactly twenty-six hundred dollars.”
“But it’s not fair to look at it that way,” Keyes said, a slight whine rising in his voice. “Hal hasn’t always made that much, you know. Before his television series, he was a nothing, a nobody; he was just an extra, why he used to play Indian roles in Westerns, things like that. It was only after the series clicked that he made the real money—”
“Mr. Keyes,” the Examiner said, “the year after his son was born, Mr. O’Brien’s series had clicked, as you call it. Before the boy reached his first birthday, your client was earning half a million dollars per television season. The following year, when the boy was two, your client’s income had increased to twice that amount.” The Examiner’s fingers drummed impatiently on the tabletop. “Does it not impress you at all, Mr. Keyes, that while your client wears custom tailored suits of imported cloth, that his illegitimate son sometimes has newspaper put in his shoes to cover the holes in their soles? Does it not seem inequitable to you that while your client dines on the finest cuisine in the best restaurants from coast to coast, that his illegitimate son is often fed day-old bread and canned beans for supper? That while your Mr. O’Brien enjoys the adulation of his public, the poor child he sired must run in terror from other children in the slum neighborhood to which you, Mr. Keyes, condemmed him?”
“Yes, you did, Mr. Keyes!” the Examiner said sharply. “You threw that boy to the mercy of an unmerciful world before he was even born. You marked him a bastard when you helped take away his father. You burdened him with a demented mother when you coerced Anita Atkins into signing that statment that she had sexual intercourse with five other men and did not know by which one she was pregnant. You made the boy neurotic by putting him where he is today; and you will be responsible when he develops into a sociopath—or worse. And it is that very responsibility which makes you guilty of the criminal specification under consideration at this moment—the offense of undermining civilization.”
The Examiner leaned back in his chair, shoulders slumping noticeably, eyes and expression strained and troubled.
“You have done an admirable job, Mr. Keyes,” he said quietly, “of protecting both your client and your financial interests in this matter; but you have done so at great expense to yourself.”
“What—what do you mean?” Keyes said thickly.
“By doing what you have done to that totally innocent boy,” the Examiner explained, “you have ignored a very important obligation of life. The obligation to conduct yourself as a human being.”
The Examiner sighed a soft, almost undetectable sigh, and rose from his chair to move as if quite weary around the table and past Keyes. For the first time since the Truth Court began, he was the first, instead of the last, to leave the Blue Room.