The Long Result (16 page)

I stared down at her lovely tousled hair for a long while, thinking that I ought to know more about her than I did. I knew she was an orphan; I knew she didn’t like talking about the loss of her parents, so I’d never questioned her closely. Some time I should – some time …

I drowsed off.

During the night I had a fearful dream. I imagined that Patricia was leaning over me as I lay on my back, kissing me hungrily, and that her face became soft, and spread, and oozed all over mine like the Sag parasite, blocking my nostrils with a horrid slick jelly until I suffocated.

It was so terrible that I came awake moaning, and half-aroused her. She threw her arm over me and murmured my name, and I went gratefully back to darkness.

Afternoon sunlight reached yellow fingers through the windows of the courtroom, touching the polished brass pans of the symbolic scales on the judge’s desk and lying in bright pools at the feet of the assembled witnesses. There were only four of us: Micky, who was unconcernedly reading a file of social assay documents, the steward of the express, the police sergeant whose lie-detector squad had met us at the port on landing, and myself.

I wasn’t looking forward to the next hour or so. I’d never been to a sanity trial before – though of course like everyone else I’d been taught about modern judicial procedure in school – and I certainly had never thought this was how I’d attend my first one.

The public gallery was half empty. That surprised me at first, in view of the sensational nature of the charge; then I reflected that maybe nowadays we’d become civilized enough to resist the morbid temptation to come and gloat over a man’s destruction. Psyching wasn’t cruel, but it was far from kind, and in this case it was the only possible verdict.

I noted a palely pretty woman in the front row of the public seats, whose hands never stopped twisting a handkerchief back and forth. I wondered if she was the wife, or sister, or girl friend of the accused man.

His name had proved to be Hugues Castle, and his job, so I was informed, was that of full-time organizer and publicist for the Cambridge chapter of the League. That was another new development – a year ago, funds wouldn’t have stretched to anything but volunteer labour.

He had just been brought in, and now sat facing the judge’s table with his advocate on one side and a policeman
on the other. Meantime, the clerk of the court and government inspector were checking the operation of the lie-detector at the side of the witness chair. Finally the inspector thumb-printed the seal of approval to show the machine was working in accordance with legal requirements, and there was a moment of tense expectancy.

During it, I realized with some shame that like most people I didn’t have the faintest idea how lie-detectors worked – I took them as much for granted as cars or phones. I was about to lean towards Micky, when the door of the judge’s chambers slid back and we had to rise.

The judge was a woman of late middle-age – about seventy-five – in the university gown of a doctor of criminal sociology. She took her place, nodded for us to resume our seats and picked up a written questionnaire which summarized the direction of the whole trial.

‘This is the case of the Human Race versus one Hugues Castle,’ she said briskly. ‘Is the accused present?’

A shiver ran down my back. That was a terrifying notion – the Human Race against one man!

The clerk stood up. ‘He is present,’ he agreed.

‘Read the charge.’

‘The charge is,’ the clerk said, turning to face Castle, ‘that you, Hugues Castle, being at the time a passenger aboard trans-Atlantic express rocket liner serial number 191905, did at or about one hour fifteen minutes on the fourth day of March this year place an organism from the third planet of Sigma Sagittarii, namely a mutated pseuda moeboid Dockeri, over the mouth and nose of one Roald Savage Vincent, an employee of the Bureau of Cultural Relations, well knowing that such action could result in death.’

There followed playbacks of the evidence which I, Micky and the steward had recorded on arriving at the rocketport; each of us in turn was called before the lie-detector
to certify that this was a true recording. The police sergeant confirmed having taken these depositions, then went on to describe how he had screened the passengers of the express and discovered that Castle was the culprit. He spoke in a clear, rather monotonous voice, and throughout the needle of the lie-detector never wavered past the line dividing truth from falsehood.

That established the deed as a fact. There remained the question of whether the accused had consciously intended murder. As the clerk led Castle to the witness chair, the judge interrupted for the first time.

‘Donald!’

‘Yes, Mrs Gladshaw?’ the clerk said, turning.

‘Give this to the defence advocate, will you?’ She held out a folded document. ‘The police have asked me to put some additional questions not covered in the preliminary hearings – I believe they’re in order, but I’d like the advocate’s assent.’

A buzz of surprise went around the court. Glancing towards the public seats again, I saw the pale woman was now using her handkerchief to weep into. Definitely a relation or lover of Castle’s – at a pinch, she might even be his mother, for weeping made her look much older.

The advocate rose and gave back the document. His was a thankless task in such a case, I imagined; all he could do was advance mitigating circumstances.

‘Defence agrees that these questions are in order!’

‘Thank you. Now, Mr Castle…’

With unfailing politeness the judge posed the damning questions; Castle answered in a thin strained voice. Yes, it was reasonable to expect that the parasite would block the nostrils and mouth; yes, a man who couldn’t breathe would die; yes, he’d been aware of all this at the time in question.

I couldn’t hate him for what he’d done. He was more an object of pity, to my mind. Anyone whose mental horizons
were so shrunken and deformed as his must be a miserable half-person.

And suddenly the judge asked, ‘Did you mean to kill Roald Vincent?’

The audience assumed an affirmative. Instead, Castle uttered a resigned, ‘No!’

The lie-detector stayed on the ‘true ‘ side. There was a murmur of bewilderment.

‘Did you in fact plan to make Miguel Torres the victim? You can see the man I mean in the witnesses’ row, next to the police sergeant.’

Castle didn’t look round. He merely muttered, ‘Yes …’

The defence advocate rose. ‘I’d respectfully remind the court that at this point the questions overlap with a public inquiry material germane to which is
sub judice,’
he said.

‘Thank you,’ the judge murmured. ‘I have no intention of pursuing this line further.’

I noticed that Micky was paying full attention for the first time. The reason was obvious; he didn’t want the Star-homers to get wind of our discovery that they were connected with the League until he felt the moment was ripe. But what had been said seemed to satisfy him, and he went back to his reading.

The defence advocate rose now and did his best; he painted a grim picture of an unhappy childhood and persecution by an unkind society. It was scarcely convincing, but it had to be taken into account by the court before sentence was passed.

The judge listened intently to every word. The public didn’t, and I could guess what was distracting them. Not once in the whole proceedings had the question come up of
why
Castle wanted to commit this murder.

I hoped no inspired guesswork would reveal the truth.

Finally the judge addressed Castle with the same politeness as throughout the afternoon.

‘Mr Castle, we hereby find that you did the act of which you are accused. We also find that you knew the probable consequences, and you likewise knew that doing something to bring about a man’s death is a crime known as murder, the penalties for which are public knowledge. In accordance with modern criminal codes, a person who does what you have done is regarded as insane, and for the safeguarding of society a course of action is prescribed from which I am not empowered to depart.

‘At any time in the next fifteen days you may appeal against the conduct of this trial; you may submit all or any part of the evidence to computer scrutiny and try to show that the cause of justice has not been properly served. Failing that, this court decrees that you shall be submitted to a form of psychotherapy that shall in the opinion of a qualified orthopsychic practitioner render you incapable of again committing a crime.’

She pushed back her chair.

‘The court is closed. Good afternoon to you all.’

And the pale woman in the front row of the public seats slid to the floor in a dead faint.

‘Your Inspector Klabund is a very subtle man,’ Micky said as we left the courthouse.

‘And the defence advocate must have been pretty ready to co-operate,’ I said.

‘Yes. I was wondering how they’d keep the League out of the evidence. But then of course I realized that it would follow automatically – they were only putting one man on trial, not an organization or a creed. A modern trial is really marvellously simple, isn’t it?’

‘It’d be a hell of a sight simpler,’ I countered sourly, ‘if human beings weren’t so complicated.’

He chuckled. ‘We’ve wanted absolute justice for about ten thousand years. Short of mind-reading, nothing will
make the law much faster or more accurate than it is today. I can’t think of any way to improve it.’

If
you
can’t, I won’t bother to try. Speaking of mind-reading though, I realized while we were in there that I haven’t the slightest idea how a lie-detector works. I have this foggy notion, left over from when I was a kid, that it’s some sort of mechanical telepathy. And since we’ve been basing our legal system on it for about a century now, I think I ought to straighten myself out.’

‘Telepathy it certainly
doesn’t
use! Let me see – there was a girl I knew at Cambridge, reading criminal sociology, and she told me about lie-detectors … Oh yes. They measure the degree of congruence between the recollection and the utterance. It takes a certain additional effort to tell a lie. Of course they aren’t foolproof – one may be honestly mistaken, or under a post-hypnotic command. But modern psychology can decide whether a witness actually knows what he’s talking about before he’s called into court.’

He cocked his head. ‘Better than it was in the old days, Roald! There was a time when just about every statute on the books had another to contradict it, in some other country or even in the same country. Read up on it some time and you’ll see how lucky we are. Going back to the Bureau?’

I checked my watch. ‘Yes, I guess so – I can fit in a little work before quitting time.’

On reaching my office, however, I didn’t tackle my work at once. Instead, I called the Ark to inquire after the Tau Cetians. I couldn’t locate bin Ishmael, but I did speak to Gobind, the lab chief. Despite the black rings under his
eyes testifying to the pressure under which he was still working, he sounded happy.

‘All but one of the five are back on their feet now. Dr bin Ishmael thinks we’ve sold them on the story of an accident due to negligence, and Shvast hasn’t said anything to indicate they think we’re deceiving them. Matter of fact, we intend to stage a little drama for them this evening – this atmosphere engineer who’s due for posting away will be “fired” under circumstances of maximum humiliation. Vroazh wanted to punish him rather barbarically, but Shvast argued that this might lower their degree of civilization in our eyes, and won him around to accepting our proposals. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble with them.’

‘Fine!’ I exclaimed in relief, and would have rung off but that he gestured for me to wait a moment.

‘Look, is there any way we can have the police taken off our backs?’

‘I don’t quite understand,’ I said.

‘Place is crawling with them. Something to do with this hybrid three-legged inquiry Klabund is running. They’re interviewing everyone who knew the Tau Cetians were housed in G Block, and the time they’re using up is appalling! Couldn’t I get someone at the Bureau to drop some heavy hints? Who should I ask?’

‘It’ll have to be Tinescu,’ I said. ‘Or you could try Indowegiatuk, I guess.’

‘She’s on the side of the police. Cantankerous old baggage … Well, thanks anyway. Maybe I will try Tinescu.’

His image faded. I reached for a waiting file. But I couldn’t concentrate on it. Once again something was irking the back of my mind – not the same thing which Klabund’s question had set skipping about my skull like a flea yesterday, but something else perhaps even more important.

Determined this time to get to the bottom of it, I shut my
eyes and leaned back, marshalling a whole bunch of factors. Starhomer technical superiority … Martin van’t Hoff … the
Algenib
… the Tau Cetians… Kay…

No, that was taking it too far. I backtracked.

And suddenly I had it.

I sat bolt upright on my chair, my eyes wide open but taking in nothing. It was fantastic, but my rudimentary technical knowledge didn’t allow me to say it was impossible. Maybe it was better so – someone with proper technical training might have dismissed it out of hand.

I reached to the phone. ‘Get me Inspector Klabund!’ I exclaimed. ‘Priority!’

Fortunately he was in his office. Unfortunately he didn’t want to be interrupted: the screen reddened as the secretary-to-record circuit was overridden by my priority demand.

He scowled at me from the screen. ‘What is it, Mr Vincent? I’m up to my eyes at the moment!’

‘I’ve had an inspiration,’ I said. ‘You have the section of airpipe which was damaged in the attack on the Tau Cetians?’

‘Of course, it’s in our labs right now.’

‘I want you to go over the face of the pipe which was farthest from the wall. I think you’ll find another hole in it directly opposite the larger one.’

Klabund looked openly annoyed. ‘Mr Vincent, there isn’t such a hole! We’d have noticed it. I ordered it to be examined and it was examined – I’ve seen the report myself, and there’s only the one hole.’