Variable Star (23 page)

Richie couldn’t believe his luck. “That’s
it
?”

She cleared her throat meaningfully, and his grin vanished. “I would be considerably harsher,” she assured him. “But the
Sheffield
’s Senior Healer, Dr. Lewis, has advised me that she considers moderate recreational use of happy hour acceptable on this voyage, and the Captain concurs. Neither of you knew that when you approached Mr. Johnston—but it was a fact all the same. You have narrowly escaped serious sanctions. Consider yourselves lucky that camera’s microphone did not malfunction.”

“We do. Thank you, Your Honor,” Jules said at once. “Let’s go, Rich.”

They both got up and left the frame, and a few seconds later, the door I was facing dilated, and they both came out together, accompanied by Lahey, their potbellied Advocate. They were striving hugely, and without much success, to suppress grins big enough to frighten a hired killer or even a real estate agent. When they saw me, their grins did not falter, just became more wolflike somehow. “Hey, Farmer Brown,” Richie called. “Knock knock.”

I was so confused and demoralized I played along. “Who’s there?”

“A fucked-in-the-head dipshit with manure on his shoes who goes around punching people ‘cause he doesn’t know his ass from his elmo,” he said triumphantly.

I opened my mouth…but if there is a comeback to that remark, I still don’t know what it is.

“Good luck in there, arsehole,” Jules said, and took a sip of his ever-present drink. I hadn’t noticed it on the monitor, but he had it now. “Come on, Rich, let’s go.” They both walked boldly through us, making us step out of their way, and left through the door behind us.

“You have your lines?” Solomon asked again.

I started, and patted my breast pocket. “Damn. I should have studied them—”

“Too late now,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I
soon
found myself in a surprisingly comfortable chair, facing The Three Bears.

To the left sat Coordinator Grossman. She wasn’t
that
big, physically. But she was a little bigger than the human average in all dimensions—and more important she was one of those larger-than-life people who can dominate any room she cares to. Right now she was just observing, but she was doing even that with gusto, with appreciation, hoping I would prove entertaining.

Directly ahead of me was Middle Size Bear, Magistrate Will, average height and mass. On the monitor outside her eyes had seemed skeptical. Now they were more…
knowing
. Mothers always know what you’re thinking, I’ve been told. Until you reach a certain age, anyway. Apparently I hadn’t reached it. I was glad there was a third bear because it gave me a reason to pull my eyes away from hers—

—and then was sorry I had. Littlest Bear, Lieutenant Bruce, was really more of a bantam rooster. Most small men learn to deal with it, but if they get picked on enough, early enough, sometimes they never do get over it. He was permanently pissed off at everyone. And me he was
allowed
to be pissed at. I tried not to look, and failed, and sure enough, his feet did not quite reach the floor, even with the lifts he was wearing. And he caught me looking.

“Good afternoon, Joel,” Dr. Will said.

I turned back to her and opened my mouth, and only then realized that every molecule of moisture in my oral tract had gone someplace else. I made a faint croaking sound. Solomon said, “Good afternoon, Doctor,” and gestured to someone outside my peripheral vision,

“You speak for Citizen Johnston, Dr. Short?” Lieutenant Bruce asked, surprised.

“Yes, Third Officer.”

A bottle of water was put before me. Once again, I was glad—but only momentarily. The instant the first sip touched my lips, I suddenly knew exactly where all that missing moisture had gone to, where all the moisture in my body had gone to.

Use of his honorific had pleased Lieutenant Bruce. “Do you mind if I ask why, Dr. Short?”

“He plays the saxophone, sir.”

This response clearly baffled Bruce. He wanted to find it contemptible—but even he couldn’t be contemptuous of a Relativist.

Dr. Will cut in, and
again
it was one of those glad-but-only-for-a-second deals, because with her first words, I realized she was speaking in courtroom tones. “Joel, we’re here to adjudicate the events that occurred in your quarters earlier this afternoon. First we will establish what facts we can. You will have an opportunity to explain, interpret, argue, or rebut, afterward, but please reserve your comments if any until we’ve finished examining the record. The
Sheffield
’s AI began saving this recording when one of you spoke one of its trigger phrases, ‘gray market.’ Under the terms of the Covenant, the recording was brought to official human attention only upon the observed commission of a breach of harmony which occurs several seconds in—”

Oh, shit, here we go, I thought. Okay, okay: when it gets to the crucial point in the playback, they’ll all hear how
close
it sounded like “poppy flowers.” They’ll see how it was an honest mistake.

The playback began on the monitor before me, with a peripheral echo over on Prosecutor Dooley’s table.

And of course they’ll agree that if somebody
had been
trying to peddle poppy products in a small society like this one, they should have been spaced. Anybody might take a poke at guys like that, before getting control of their emotions.

Reluctantly I admitted to myself that onscreen, they did not look particularly like villains. They looked like idiots—somehow still optimistic enough to think they might put one over on The Man despite a consistent record of failure. Worse, they were clearly harmless idiots, not nearly as menacing as I remembered them.

Richie said his High Japonics line again, and Sol brayed with laughter, even though he’d heard it already, outside in the anteroom.

Then the recording reached the point at which I’d heard “poppy flower,” and what Jules said onscreen now sounded nothing at all like “poppy flower,” it was clearly and unambiguously “Happy Hour,” and nothing else.

And then
nothing
that followed was as I remembered it. I watched in growing dismay at what resembled nothing so much as a performance by an ancient comedy team called The Three Stooges.

I did not land a single punch. Nobody did. I was the only one who even tried very hard.

The me-onscreen cussed Richie and Jules out, and told them to get out of his room or he’d call a proctor. Richie jumped up indignantly, shouting, “Hey, fuck that, I’m on probation, okay!” He put a hand on my shoulder—to turn me around to face him, so he could argue more effectively; it was quite clear he wasn’t attempting a sucker punch. And I tried to spin on my heel and punch his face in. And tripped over my own feet and missed by a kilometer and fell heavily into him, staggering him a little. And behind me, Jules tried to step forward and pull me back by the collar, except the place he planned to put his foot turned out to be full of my tangled ankles, so he tripped and fell into
me
. That tipped Richie the rest of the way over backward, and we all crashed onto Pat’s bunk together, tearing it right out of the wall and dropping us to the deck. Richie and I both got the breath knocked completely out of us, but Jules was able to rise far enough to reach a musclebound arm up and grab hold of my bunk, which promptly also tore out of the wall and whacked him hard enough on the head to knock him cold. It drove his head forward and down, so it slid off the
front
of his head, and landed edge-on on the middle of Richie’s contorted face, smoothing it out completely, at just about the same instant that Jules’s kneecaps impacted both of my kidneys. Then it fell over onto the back of
my
head, and Jules’s face landed on it. And then we all were very quiet and still…

“Do you wish to see the recording again, Joel?” Dr. Will asked.

My mouth had once again become dry as a balance sheet. I shook my head no, reached for my water, and allowed myself the tiniest possible sip.

“Is there anything you wish to say on behalf of the colony, Prosecutor Dooley?”

“No, Doctor. I believe what we’ve seen twice now speaks for itself.”

“It certainly does,” Bruce muttered sotto voce.

“Joel, if there is anything you would like to say, now is the time.”

Oh. Oh. I was ready for this one. Thank you, Pat! I fumbled at my pocket, took out my lines, tried to unfold the paper under the table unobtrusively, so it wouldn’t be totally obvious I was using a crib sheet.

And when I had it open, the damned thing was blank.

I looked at Sol. Sol looked back at me. I looked down at that piece of paper. Then I looked back up at the judge and shook my head no.

She merely nodded, but her mouth changed slightly in a way that gave me the impression my response pleased her for some reason. “Anything to add, Advocate Short?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Sol said. He tapped a few keys on the table’s terminal. “You will all find my representation before you. It speaks to certain facts and circumstances which I hope you will agree are mitigational in this matter.”

As all three looked down at their screens and began to read, I looked at ours, but it was blank. I looked at Sol. Sol looked back at me. I faced forward and waited.

“I see,” Magistrate Will said after a few moments. “Thank you, Advocate.”

Coordinator Grossman was next to finish reading; she sat back, turned her head five degrees to the right, and studied me, frowning slightly.

When Bruce spoke, there was something odd about his voice. “You appear to have been under a great deal of stress lately, Colonist.” It took me a moment to identify the subtle change in his tone. He was addressing me with respect. It confused me so much, the interval into which I could have inserted a response passed before I could think of one.

Dr. Will polled her companions by eye. There was some brief silent communication I didn’t get. “Very well,” she said then, and fixed me with an eagle’s remorseless gaze. “Citizen Joel Johnston, physical violence aboard this ship is intolerable. You have damaged fellow citizens and colony property without cause. Examination suggests that you may have done so because of situational emotional imbalance, and possibly perceptual error, rather than from an unhealthy belief that you are entitled to correct the moral lapses of your fellow citizens with assault. Therefore, this matter will be held in abeyance indefinitely. You will not be required to accept remedial neurochemistry at this time. You are released in your own recognizance, on the conditions that, first, you enter treatment immediately, and satisfy all requirements of your chosen Healer to the best of your ability, and second, you either make peace with Transportees Bent and Rafuse, or mutually file a standard hundred-meter restraining order. In addition you are fined their medical expenses, and the cost of materials for repairing the physical damage to your quarters.”

“Do you understand all that, Joel?” Grossman asked. Her voice was deep, raspy, kindly. “Settle the score, bury the hatchet, do as your Healer tells you, this all goes away and you get to keep on being who you are right now. Otherwise your brain chemistry gets readjusted until you’re fit to live with people. It’s our only choice, I’m afraid: we have no Coventry aboard.”

I stood there listening to the blood in my ears until Bruce said, “Is there anything you wish to say for the record, Citizen Johnston?”

I looked at Sol. Sol looked back at me. I looked down at my crib sheet, and it was still blank. I looked up at the panel, and found that there was enough moisture in my mouth to permit speech, and that decided me.

I said, “Thank you,” to Magistrate Will, and “Very much,” to Coordinator Grossman, and “All of you,” to Third Officer Bruce.

All three gave the same inclined nod of polite acknowledgment. All three stood up. So did Sol. So did Prosecutor Dooley. So, finally, did I.

“Hot jets, Citizen,” Dr. Will said formally.

“C-clear skies,” I responded automatically, but she had already spun on her heel and left, followed by her fellow panelists.

I turned to Sol, and found him beaming at me. “Some people are
really
hard to drag to a shrink,” he said. Then his expression changed slightly “Whoa, now. Okay. Let’s sit down and have a nice drink of water. That’s better. Now a nice deep breath. Hold it for a moment. That’s it. Let it out. Wait. Deep breath again. Hold. Release. Hold. You’ve got it. A little longer each time.” The breathing thing was very hard to do, but soon it did start to clear my head a little. My heart was pumping a klick a sec. I felt like I was on the Upper Farm Deck: the temperature seemed to have shot up five degrees. I was pouring with fresh sweat from head to toe.

“Idiot,” Sol said, shaking his head. “
Before
, you sweat.”

“I don’t know why I hadn’t figured it out for myself, but I hadn’t,” I said. “I’m usually
much
quicker on the uptake, but it never occurred to me I was in danger of being put on neuromeds until she said I wasn’t anymore. It’s kind of a phobia of mine, having my personality altered by someone else. You probably think Ganymedeans are backward primitives in that regard, but—”

“It is precisely because I share your unconventional horror that I chose to act as your Advocate.”

“Sol—”

“Don’t thank me until you hear my fee. I want a new composition. It has to be at least fifteen minutes long. It can have anything you want in it as long as there’s a lot of sax, baritone. Theme, style, tempo, key—all up to you. And it has to have my name in the title. You have until we reach our destination.”

I looked at his goofy kindly smile for a long moment. “Sold,” I said finally “Thank you, Solomon.”

“Don’t forget to thank Pat for writing your speech. You delivered it eloquently. I might almost say movingly.”

“I won’t. Which one of you put the other up to this?”

He was gone like the Cheshire Cat, leaving behind only a ghost of his dopey grin.

M
y Healer said, “Will you excuse me for just one moment, Joel?”