23

 

Slowly Pauli Yeager and Rafe Adams left the medcenter dome, their arms around Thorn Halgerd. Though he towered over the woman, he leaned heavily on her as well as Adams. As he passed Neave, he averted his face. The others also refused to meet Neave's eyes. The tall, dark-haired woman whom Neave had noted before hovered protectively close to him, while Lohr and Ayelet fanned out sideways in what Neave recognized as a flanking maneuver to protect their friends.

"I had to see her,” Thorn said. “You know I had to come back."

"I know,” said Rafe. “Just like we had to turn ourselves in."

"Construct!” came von Bulow's voice. “That's right, you!” The blond man turned toward her—that obedience was a reflex! Neave thought—and drew himself to attention.

"You don't have to!” Pauli hissed. “It's not a matter of orders and born-humans anymore, Thorn. You're ours! You broke that conditioning."

"Did I?” Halgerd's eyes seemed to go blank. One hand clasped and unclasped as if trying to hold himself back from the pull of orders he had been conditioned to obey.

"Yes, you did. Remember? And besides, you can't obey those Orders. You know what they'd mean for you. And Alicia made me promise to keep you safe."

But von Bulow was advancing on the newcomer, who took one step back, then recollected himself and tried to make a stand. He was taller than she and, as Neave knew from Yeager's report, far stronger and faster; but he seemed to cower before her.

"The law,” Elisabeth von Bulow stated, “requires that people of one state party shall render all possible assistance to the astronauts of other state parties, then return them safely and promptly..."

Pauli edged out from under Thorn's arm and stalked over to stand before the Abendsterner. “...to the state of registry of their space vehicle. I know the old precedents from Earth too. I've had ten years to study them. That treaty also states that we should have been notified of phenomena discovered in outer space which could constitute a danger to the life or health of astronauts. You see how well it was enforced."

"The Republic has a legal right to the return of...

"Thorn Halgerd—"

"Halgerd AA-prime—” Pauli and Thorn spoke simultaneously.

"The Republic,” Pauli mimicked coldly, one eye on Neave to see how far she could go, “unless we are all being deceived, no longer exists. However, the planet Freki has a right to the return of one of its citizens. Should Freki request it, and the citizen consent.” She darted a quick glance at Thorn, his cue if he was able to take it.

"He's not a citizen!” snapped von Bulow.

"I note,” Pauli observed, her voice low, sly even, “that even you call him ‘he.’”

"No,” agreed Thorn Halgerd. “I wasn't a citizen. I was what you called me. A construct. Forced to obey orders, even if they meant my death ... or my brothers'. Damn you all, you made a thing of me and of my brothers! And then your people sent us out to kill men who might have been us. Who were us, cloned from the same genefather. I can't forget them either, the men they were, for we were men, even deprived of a normal life by the tanks and your damned conditioning. Ever since these people took me in, it's been worse. Now I can't forgive you for killing the men my brothers should have been with my friends to help them. All that promise, and you killed them. At least I had a chance to hear Aesc before he died.

"If you return me to the Republic, they'll probably terminate and dissect me. Not ‘kill.’ You kill humans, not property. Things like me.” He turned to Pauli, who clasped his arm with both hands, then to Neave.

"Commissioner, these people shared their humanity with me. As long as I'm alive, I'm not leaving them. I claim asylum."

Neave turned his head in time to catch Pauli Yeager's imperceptible nod.

"What about his crimes against humanity?” asked the Abendsterner.

"For slagging my homeworld?” Lohr cried. “He didn't know what he was doing. Your people did. Besides, what's that to you? You gave the orders. You wanted that done. And when it was done, when he did it, you threw him away. For thanks, you would have killed him. Well, we caught him, and we're going to keep him."

Pauli walked forward. “The poor commissioner,” she laughed sharply, ironically, and held out a hand to Neave. “He's been looking for technicalities since he landed here, and we've been too stubborn to give him any. Relax, Commissioner. Just this once, here's a technicality for you. Thorn doesn't need asylum; he's got citizenship. Thorn Halgerd's the son of an Alliance national.” She raised her chin at von Bulow, mischief gleaming in her eyes. “The late Dr. Alicia Pryor adopted him legally. I've had it on file for years. Lohr's right. You threw him away, and we took him in. You have no claim on him now."

"Citizenship can be revoked,” von Bulow insisted. “There are precedents: people accused of war crimes can be stripped of citizenship, extradited..."

"You tell me of the war-crimes trials?” Pauli Yeager asked, her voice breathless, hard. “Me? In the name of God, do you think that a day's gone by when I don't think of them?"

Or identify with judge and criminal both, Neave thought. Not a woman easy to like, this Yeager, with her damnable guilt that spared neither herself nor anyone around her; but von Bulow was no charming specimen either.

Neave withdrew his attention from the fray to the way that the light generated by the repellors edging the fields shimmered in a violet haze above the river. It reminded him of night mists on the farm his family had owned. He had loved it, had visited it every year until the spring it. was sold to pay for his education. Since then, his only home had been Earth itself: no one place, unless it was any place where the truth, the sanctity of facts, counted more than people's whims or prejudices.

By that standard, I could call Cynthia home, he thought, and shuddered.

I'm not well educated, Yeager had said of herself. Yet she had neatly stymied Becker, von Bulow, and Neave himself since the moment that they had set foot on this world. He wished he had never seen it.

Shadows wandered and merged in the moons’ light, and he heard voices ... “don't trust..."

"You never do."

"Shut up!” A woman's voice hissed, and Neave strained to pick up the whispers that followed. A breeze stirred the ground scrub, flapped in the sag of the huge tent nearby, and he felt like cursing it.

"Do you think he'll hear? Do you think he'd care if we got them away? You saw. He wants a way out."

"I say we get them away, Pauli and Rafe. Thorn too."

"Do you think he'll go?"

"We'll make him!"

"Lohr, you're crazy. Thorn's stronger than any of us; we can't make him do anything."

"Then I'll talk him into it. What about Dave, Ari?"

"They've got some medtech watching him all the time. Can't get him away, and frankly, I wouldn't want to try."

"Don't cry, Ayelet. At least this Neave's saved Dad for us."

"Commissioner.” Yeager had walked over to him and laid a hand on his arm. “My husband and I will return to our quarters now. I have one request."

With difficulty, he drew himself back from the plot whispered in the shadows. “Name it, Captain."

"You'll have enough officers, I think, from the combined services of Earth, Alliance, and Secess’ ... I mean, the Republic ... to convene a general court-martial. May I ask, please, that you do not name Elisabeth von Bulow to the board? In light of what has just happened, I do not think she could render a fair judgment."

Von Bulow sputtered, and Neave allowed himself a thin smile at her discomfiture. “A point well taken. Captain Yeager, you have my word."

She inclined her head with an odd formality, as if his word alone would guarantee her what she sought. A woman of formidable honor herself, thought Neave.

I do not want to have to try these people. I do not want to condemn them.

What choice do I have?

Much later that night, Neave was still ignoring his messager and the barrage of files and personal requests that no doubt awaited on board ship. Instead, he wandered about the colony, slipping from the misty circles of light into shadow, from clusters of domes out toward the open fields.

"Commissioner?” called one of the omnipresent “littlests,” now adults ready to start families of their own. “Don't go beyond the repellors. There might be stobor. One will give you a nasty shock, and if you stumble into a bunch of them, it could kill you."

This planet could kill, Neave thought. Had killed. When his own exploration teams returned, he would know the full extent of its powers and potentialities: the mountain barriers and storms that had prevented the colonists from moving out of the Cynthian natives’ path; the land, possible crops and resources—the report that Becker's Project Seedcorn should have had, but did not.

He wanted to leave it. That desire was an ache in his gut: to leave Cynthia and its stubborn, naive moralists; to return to the libraries of an Earth that hoped that this time, it could declare itself dedicated to peace, and be right, for a change. He wanted to talk—God, did he want to say a few things—to the people who had saddled him with this assignment and confront them with the irony he now perceived. He had protested his lack of qualifications for the job, but now—who is qualified to conduct a genocide trial? he asked himself.

It ran in his family, they had told him. By now, very little else did: land, artwork, and other property having long ago been sold to help Earth weather the blockade and educate the last Neave with suitable rigor. Independently Yeager's awkward research had unearthed the very trials at which one of his ancestors served. Neave remembered that one. Like himself, he had been legally, trained; unlike himself, he was a military man (though, in his case a direct commission had taken care of that problem).

What was it his ancestor had written? “I felt I had come to speak for the dead. The tribunal itself would be the voice of the civilized world."

Had his ancestor been, like Neave himself, reluctant to act, even more reluctant to judge? He didn't think so. It had been a time for soldiers with strong loyalties to regions and factions, none of which Neave himself possessed. What would such a man have done if the criminals in that case had insisted on their “rights” to arrest, trial, and execution? Who were “the dead” that he must speak for? The native Cynthians? The settlement's first commander, dead because of sloppy information? The refugees and children in the settlement's too-large cemetery? And what was “the civilized world"? The people who had made and now demanded to unmake Thorn Halgerd, or Becker with his plots and excuses? What about himself? “Looking for a technicality,” Yeager had described him. He would have thanked every god in any pantheon he'd studied for the opportunity to play Pilate: wash his hands of this world's seismic moral quandaries, and flee. What about the children for whom the settlers had killed? They were plotting now to help their leaders break their arrest: a crime, by all laws, and yet love drove them to it too.

Perhaps they were the ones who were civilized.

His boots crunched in the ground scrub, and he stumbled over something, swore, then saw what he'd tripped over. “Forgive me,” he muttered to the grave marker that had almost brought him down. Ramon Aquino, it read; and someone had etched an ankh into the stone with a blaster. He traced the circled cross's outline and noted the date—the outbreak of ergotism that had turned the settlement into a colony of maniacs. Neave turned and walked back the way he came. Wandering in graveyards: God knows, the next thing he'd be writing poetry, and he was a philosopher, a governor, not a poet.

Abruptly he strode toward the dome where the colony's leaders had confined themselves.

"Lohr's been unnaturally well behaved for the past weeks, I'd say, wouldn't you, Pauli?” Rafe told Neave.

She nodded. “I should have expected some sort of outbreak from him by now. I suppose this sudden burst of chivalry, I suppose you would call it, is reasonable. Do you want us to stop it, Commissioner?"

Rafe laughed. “I think that the commissioner would be just as well pleased if we agreed to it, love. He has a classic case of ambivalence. What about it, sir? We let Lohr and his friends spirit us away, maybe to the caves or to the base Thorn established with those new gliders of his; and the case falls apart. David ben Yehuda's too sick to stand trial; Thorn's claimed asylum—and Commissioner Neave is off the hook."

Neave forced a chuckle, wondering which was harder to take: Yeager's nerves or her husband's urbanity? Ambivalent was barely the half of it.

Pauli looked at Neave, then picked up a book he remembered. “I told you I wasn't particularly well educated, Commissioner. But I've managed to puzzle out this much.” She handed Dr. Pryor's copy of Plato to him, and the “Crito” was clearly marked:

Moreover, you might have in the course of the trial, if you had liked, have fixed the penalty at banishment; the state which refuses to let you go now would have let you go then. But you pretended that you preferred death to exile, and that you were not unwilling to die. And now you have forgotten those fine sentiments, and pay no respect to us the laws, of whom you are the destroyer; and are doing what only a miserable slave would do, running away and turning your back upon the compacts and agreements which you made as a citizen."

"Tell me, Commissioner, what happened to the man who said that?"

Neave coughed. “He died in prison. By his own hand. But he was innocent."

"Still, innocent as he was, he was sentenced and he died. How much more should we..."

His judicious, rational calm finally punctured, Neave erupted from his battered chair.

"Damn you, woman, how can I try you? You're human, and you killed aliens and call it genocide."

"Which it is.” Yeager's voice was inexorable.

"Say that it is, then. You know what you did. I know what you did. Do you think, though, that you're going to get a fair trial? Do you think that anyone can judge you?"

Again, Adams laughed hollowly. “Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone?"

"Man, can't you talk sense into your wife?"

Rafe's eyebrows rose, and he snorted.

"Me, get Pauli to change course? I haven't managed it once in fifteen years. You try it,” Rafe answered. “Look, Commissioner, I opened contact with the Cynthians. They were human, all right. Intelligent. Kind. They liked us; and we betrayed them. Convene your trial, Commissioner. Do it the best you can and the fastest you can. I'm bone tired. Alicia was the lucky one; she's out of it now. It will be good to rest."

It will be good to rest. Neave's eyes hadn't burned like that since he was a graduate student in the last frenzied days before his qualifying examinations held despite the war. He sighed, and pulled out the lustrous, blackish-green plaque that held the exploration preliminary report from one of the exploration teams. It glistened, luring him back to the fascinating topic of a fresh new planet—Earth was old and tired, drained from the blockade; the worlds of the Secess’ and Alliance, those not slagged or glowing, were in even worse shape. Once his crew conducted a proper survey, Cynthia could be opened up to immigrants who would have all the advantages of the settlers’ experience and full backing. Apparently the team had inspected Halgerd's designs for ultralight craft and begun to test them in storm conditions like they might find over the seas here.

Neave sighed. Once he knew who the construct's “father” had been, he would have been surprised if Halgerd's designs had not been brilliant. The test results tempted him with distraction. So what if it was an adventure? It was his responsibility, therefore his duty to study it. Rationalization lured, but he turned his attention away from the plaque and the way it caught and focused the light in his cabin, and resolutely chose another plaque.

The LEDs of his screen danced, wavered, and reformed. His back felt like someone had set fire to his spine as he reviewed the rules of evidence: writings, official writings, letters, reports—Gods. Then there were the rules relating to witnesses. An accused person who voluntarily testifies as a witness becomes subject to cross-examination upon the issues concerning which he has testified and upon the question of his credibility ... When the accused voluntarily testifies about an offense for which he is being tried, as when he voluntarily testifies in denial or explanation of such offense, he thereby, with respect to cross-examination of such offense, waives the privilege against self-incrimination, and any matter relevant to the issue of his guilt or innocence of such offense is properly the subject of cross-examination.

He had no doubts on that subject. Yeager and Adams had pleaded guilty. They would testify against themselves. The only problem would be “explanation of such offense.” He already knew that they did not consider any explanation relevant.

His door annunciator buzzed. “Yes?"

"David ben Yehuda, sir."

"Come in."

The door slid aside and ben Yehuda entered. The weeks since the Amherst II had touched down had stripped weight and vigor from the man. His hair was almost totally gray now, and he walked as if uncertain of each step, as if the ground might open and swallow him. He stood before Neave, clasping and unclasping his big, competent hands, and blinked when he was asked to sit down.

"I think I had better stand for this,” he said.

"As you wish.” Neave angled his screen away from the man and punched up his records. Depressed. Well, he knew that. Yeager had as much as ordered him to put her old friend on suicide watch. And, judging from the conversation Neave had overheard, his children concurred in that decision. He was a civilian. If Neave waived jurisdiction over him, he would have to be extradited for trial. As well shoot him here, and far kinder, thought Neave.

"I have a request to make,” ben Yehuda said.

Neave tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

"Try me with my friends. Please. I assisted the military governor to make and implement her decision. I've held a reserve commission; you could activate it and try me too."

"Will you sit down, man?” demanded Neave, his patience fraying. “I dislike being towered over. Now, sit down and explain to me this passion everyone on this benighted world seems to have for self-incrimination."

Ben Yehuda seated himself on the edge of the nearest chair. “I told you, I'm from Ararat. One generation removed from Earth. Does the commissioner know anything about Ararat?"

"The commissioner—dammit, man, you're not on trial yet, so speak like a normal person!—assumes that Ararat is a planet settled by members of one minority group. Since Mount Ararat was where, allegedly, the Ark touched down after the Flood—"

"That's right, sir. I'm Jewish. Not observant: never was. And when the courts on Ararat denied my wife and kids full citizenship, I left. I won't deny I was angry. But that's not an excuse. The thing is, as a citizen of Ararat, I should have died rather than conspire at ... at what I did. As I saw it, I had a choice to make: my kids’ lives as opposed to the lives of the Cynthians.

"So"—he held out his hands—"I made my decision and knew I'd pay for it all the rest of my life. But the others, Commissioner. There were plenty of people here who opposed the decision to poison the Cynthians. They shouldn't suf—"

The annunciator rang again, and both men jumped.

"Were you expecting anyone?” Neave asked ben Yehuda, more to see his face than anything else.

"My watchdog is outside. I wish you'd remove him. I'm not going to kill myself."

"Your son thinks otherwise..."

"My son's a protective idiot. Takes after his father."

Again the annunciator rang, louder this time, and repeated, a strident, insistent pattern of notes.

"Come in,” Neave said, on a sigh.

The woman who entered was thin, her black skin taut and unwrinkled about dark eyes that flashed with indignation. Her hair was silvered, and seemed to wreathe her face as much from the angry electricity that informed each of her movements as from natural curl.

"I thought you'd be here doing something stupid, Dave,” she greeted the engineer. “Beneatha Angelou, Life Sciences,” she introduced herself curtly to Neave, who had risen and begun a courteous speech about remembering her. Indeed, he wasn't likely to forget her last outbreak.

"What are you here to do?” ben Yehuda asked. They were old enemies, those two, Neave observed; good enemies, a relationship rich and mature with many years and conflicts.

Despite herself, Beneatha grinned. “Certainly not to turn myself in. You know I opposed a military government on Cynthia from the start, and I certainly opposed the annihilation of the Cynthians—"

"I remember, Beneatha. You asked me how I could personally consent to such a decision. It was a good question."

She nodded and made a “humph” of dissatisfaction. Then she looked for a chair, waved Neave off as he offered to place it for her, and turned it, to rest her arms and chin across its headrest.

"I need to tell you something,” she informed Neave.

Politely he steepled his fingers.

"Aside from the fact that I think that Dave here is being inflammatory, I want to state for the record that I'm damned if I'm going to turn myself in. Maybe I did wrong in not stopping these people; God knows, I argued myself blue in the face trying. But, Commissioner, what you've got to know is how hard they tried to keep the colony going. During the epidemic of ergot, I think we all would have died without them. Is there some way I can have that put into the record?"

Neave smiled at her. “I'll have one of my officers take your deposition,” he said. Suddenly he liked the caustic woman enormously. “Is that all you came to say?"

"Not quite all. Thorn wasn't at fault. And please,” her eyes suddenly filled with tears, “don't blame the kids, though some of them are blaming themselves right now. They were too young. We tried to protect them, give them some semblance of the normal life they never had. And we did just fine! Commissioner, you just look at our kids. We brought them up clean! It doesn't explain anything, or excuse anything, but if we were set down here as seedcorn, I think we did a pretty good job."

She rose as quickly as she had seated herself, and was halfway out the door before she turned.

"Thanks,” she said. “You've been handed a lousy situation. I think you'll do your best too."

The door slid closed behind her. Neave sank back into his chair and saw that ben Yehuda had steepled his fingers against his lips to hide a smile.

"Usually she's even more emphatic,” ben Yehuda said. He rose to leave too. “If you try me as a civilian, you'll have to extradite me, won't you?"

Neave lowered his eyes. “Not to Ararat, I promise you."

"That's all I ask. Thanks."

The door whispered open, then closed.

Damn. I like these people. How am I going to try them?

He flipped back to the manual on courts-martial. Subsection: general court-martial. Direct examination. Cross-examination. Redirect. Recross ... the labyrinth of precedent, tradition, and—he had to believe it—justice. The trial counsel had been making heavy weather of Captain Borodin's log, Yeager's continuations, the colony's records, and the “investigation” Yeager had prepared.

Heavy weather. How had Halgerd's ultralights withstood the ocean storms? Looking guiltily at the vacant walls in case they showed signs of reproaching him, Neave fed in the exploration team's report and scrolled rapidly to the end, his eyes flicking with the phenomenal speed of an experienced skim reader. He hissed under his breath. “Await subsequent reports” indeed! So much for distraction.

He could find no way around it. He would try the Cynthian leaders; and after he tried them, and convicted them—for so the evidence led—he would have to order them executed.