Perhaps she felt my stare, for she looked around and unsmilingly examined me, as I might a chimpanzee in a cage. I guess the attraction wasn’t mutual.
There was every gradation from pseudo-wormface to the iridescent girl—not only the range between, but also way out in left field; some had their own private aquaria.
I could not tell how the invective affected them. The girl creature was taking it quietly, but what can you say about a walrus thing with octopus arms? If he twitches, is he angry? Or laughing? Or itches where the twitch is?
The Yankee-voiced spokesman let the wormface rave on.
Peewee was holding my hand. Now she grabbed my ear, tilted her face and whispered, “He talks nasty.” She sounded awed.
The wormface ended with a blast of hate that must have overtaxed the translator for instead of English we heard a wordless scream.
The Yankee voice said flatly, “But do you have anything to say in your defense?”
The scream was repeated, then the wormface became coherent. “I have made my defense—that no defense is necessary.”
The emotionless voice went on, to the Mother Thing. “Do you speak for them?”
She answered reluctantly, “My lord peers… I am forced to say…that I found them to be quite naughty.” She sounded grieved.
“You find against them?”
“I do.”
“Then you may not be heard. Such is the Law.”
“‘Three Galaxies, One Law.’ I may not speak.”
The flat voice went on, “Will any witness speak favorably?”
There was silence.
That was my chance to be noble. We humans were their victims; we were in a position to speak up, point out that from their standpoint they hadn’t done anything wrong, and ask mercy—if they would promise to behave in the future.
Well, I didn’t. I’ve heard all the usual Sweetness and Light that kids get pushed at them—how they should always forgive, how there’s some good in the worst of us, etc. But when I see a black widow, I step on it; I don’t plead with it to be a good little spider and please stop poisoning people. A black widow spider can’t help it—but that’s the point.
The voice said to the wormfaces: “Is there any race anywhere which might speak for you? If so, it will be summoned.”
The spokesman wormface spat at the idea. That another race might be character witnesses for them disgusted him.
“So be it,” answered the Yankee voice. “Are the facts sufficient to permit a decision?”
Almost immediately the voice answered itself: “Yes.”
“What is the decision?”
Again it answered itself: “Their planet shall be rotated.”
It didn’t sound like much—shucks, all planets rotate—and the flat voice held no expression. But the verdict scared me. The whole room seemed to shudder.
The Mother Thing turned and came toward us. It was a long way but she reached us quickly. Peewee flung herself on her; the solid air that penned us solidified still more until we three were in a private room, a silvery hemisphere.
Peewee was trembling and gasping and the Mother Thing comforted her. When Peewee had control of herself, I said nervously, “Mother Thing? What did he mean? ‘Their planet shall be rotated.’”
She looked at me without letting go of Peewee and her great soft eyes were sternly sad. (“It means that their planet is tilted ninety degrees out of the space-time of your senses and mine.”)
Her voice sounded like a funeral dirge played softly on a flute. Yet the verdict did not seem tragic to me. I knew what she meant; her meaning was even clearer in Vegan than in English. If you rotate a plane figure about an axis in its plane—it disappears. It is no longer in a plane and Mr. A. Square of Flatland is permanently out of touch with it.
But it doesn’t cease to exist; it just is no longer where it was. It struck me that the wormfaces were getting off easy. I had halfway expected their planet to be blown up (and I didn’t doubt that Three Galaxies could do so), or something equally drastic. As it was, the wormfaces were to be run out of town and would never find their way back—there are so many, many dimensions—but they wouldn’t be hurt; they were just being placed in Coventry.
But the Mother Thing sounded as if she had taken unwilling part in a hanging. So I asked her.
(“You do not understand, dear gentle Kip—they do not take their star with them.”)
“Oh—” was all I could say. Peewee turned white.
Stars are the source of life—planets are merely life’s containers. Chop off the star…and the planet gets colder…and colder…and colder—then still colder.
How long until the very air freezes? How many hours or days to absolute zero? I shivered and got goose pimples. Worse than Pluto—
“Mother Thing? How long before they do this?” I had a queasy misgiving that I should have spoken, that even wormfaces did not deserve this. Blow them up, shoot them down—but don’t freeze them.
(“It is done,”) she sang in that same dirgelike way.
“What?”
(“The agent charged with executing the decision waits for the word…the message goes out the instant we hear it. They were rotated out of our world even before I turned to join you. It is better so.”)
I gulped and heard an echo in my mind: “—’twere well it were done quickly.”
But the Mother Thing was saying rapidly, (“Think no more on’t, for now you must be brave!”)
“Huh? What, Mother Thing? What happens now?”
(“You’ll be summoned any moment—for your own trial.”)
I simply stared, I could not speak—I had thought it was all over. Peewee looked still thinner and whiter but did not cry. She wet her lips and said quietly, “You’ll come with us, Mother Thing?”
(“Oh, my children! I cannot. You must face this alone.”)
I found my voice. “But what are we being tried for? We haven’t hurt anybody. We haven’t done a thing.”
(“Not you personally. Your race is on trial. Through you.”)
Peewee turned away from her and looked at me—and I felt a thrill of tragic pride that in our moment of extremity she had turned, not to the Mother Thing, but to me, another human being.
I knew that she was thinking of the same thing I was: a ship, a ship hanging close to Earth, only an instant away and yet perhaps uncounted trillion miles in some pocket of folded space, where no DEW line gives warning, where no radar can reach.
The Earth, green and gold and lovely, turning lazily in the warm light of the Sun—
A flat voice—No more Sun.
No stars.
The orphaned Moon would bobble once, then continue around the Sun, a gravestone to the hopes of men. The few at Lunar Base and Luna City and Tombaugh Station would last weeks or even months, the only human beings left alive. Then they would go—if not of suffocation, then of grief and loneliness.
Peewee said shrilly, “Kip, she’s not serious! Tell me she’s not!”
I said hoarsely, “Mother Thing—are the executioners already waiting?”
She did not answer. She said to Peewee, (“It is very serious, my daughter. But do not be afraid. I exacted a promise before I surrendered you. If things go against your race, you two will return with me and be suffered to live out your little lives in my home. So stand up and tell the truth…and do not be afraid.”)
The flat voice entered the closed space: “The human beings are summoned.”
Chapter 11
We walked out onto that vast floor. The farther we went the more I felt like a fly on a plate. Having Peewee with me was a help; nevertheless it was that nightmare where you find yourself not decently dressed in a public place. Peewee clutched my hand and held Madame Pompadour pressed tightly to her. I wished that I had suited-up in Oscar—I wouldn’t have felt quite so under a microscope with Oscar around me.
Just before we left, the Mother Thing placed her hand against my forehead and started to hold me with her eyes. I pu
shed her hand aside and looked away. “No,” I told her. “No treatments! I’m not going to—oh, I know you mean well but I won’t take an anesthetic. Thanks.”
She did not insist; she simply turned to Peewee. Peewee looked uncertain, then shook her head. “We’re ready,” she piped.
The farther out we got on that great bare floor the more I regretted that I had not let the Mother Thing do whatever it was that kept one from worrying. At least I should have insisted that Peewee take it.
Coming at us from the other walls were two other flies; as they got closer I recognized them: the Neanderthal and the Legionary. The cave man was being dragged invisibly; the Roman covered ground in a long, slow, easy lope. We all arrived at the center at the same time and were stopped about twenty feet apart, Peewee and I at one point of a triangle, the Roman and the cave man each at another.
I called out, “Hail, Iunio!”
“Silence, barbarian.” He looked around him, his eyes estimating the crowd at the walls.
He was no longer in casual dress. The untidy leggings were gone; strapped to his right shin was armor. Over the tunic he wore full cuirass and his head was brave with plumed helmet. All metal was burnished, all leather was clean.
He had approached with his shield on his back, route-march style. But even as we were stopped he unslung it and raised it on his left arm. He did not draw his sword as his right hand held his javelin at the ready—carried easily while his wary eyes assessed the foe.
To his left the cave man hunkered himself small, as an animal crouches who has no place to hide.
“Iunio!” I called out. “Listen!” The sight of those two had me still more worried. The cave man I could not talk to but perhaps I could reason with the Roman. “Do you know why we are here?”
“I know,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Today the Gods try us in their arena. This is work for a soldier and a Roman citizen. You’re no help so keep out. No—watch behind me and shout. Caesar will reward you.”
I started to try to talk sense but was cut off by a giant voice from everywhere:
YOU ARE NOW BEING JUDGED!
Peewee shivered and got closer. I twisted my left hand out of her clutch, substituted my right, and put my left arm around her shoulders. “Head up, partner,” I said softly. “Don’t let them scare you.”
“I’m not scared,” she whispered as she trembled. “Kip? You do the talking.”
“Is that the way you want it?”
“Yes. You don’t get mad as fast as I do—and if I lost my temper…well, that’d be awful.”
“Okay.”
We were interrupted by that flat, nasal twang. As before, it seemed close by. “This case derives from the one preceding it. The three temporal samples are from a small Lanador-type planet around a star in an out-center part of the Third Galaxy. It is a very primitive area having no civilized races. This race, as you see from the samples, is barbaric. It has been examined twice before and would not yet be up for routine examination had not new facts about it come out in the case which preceded it.”
The voice asked itself: “When was the last examination made?”
It answered itself: “Approximately one half-death of Thorium-230 ago.” It added, apparently to us only: “About eighty thousand of your years.”
Iunio jerked his head and looked around, as if trying to locate the voice. I concluded that he had heard the same figure in his corrupt Latin. Well, I was startled too—but I was numb to that sort of shock.
“Is it necessary again so soon?”
“It is. There has been a discontinuity. They are developing with unexpected speed.” The flat voice went on, speaking to us: “I am your judge. Many of the civilized beings you see around you are part of me. Others are spectators, some are students, and a few are here because they hope to catch me in a mistake.” The voice added, “This they have not managed to do in more than a million of your years.”
I blurted out, “You are more than a million years old?” I did not add that I didn’t believe it.
The voice answered, “I am older than that, but no part of me is that old. I am partly machine, which part can be repaired, replaced, recopied; I am partly alive, these parts die and are replaced. My living parts are more than a dozen dozens of dozens of civilized beings from throughout Three Galaxies, any dozen dozens of which may join with my non-living part to act. Today I am two hundred and nine qualified beings, who have at their instant disposal all knowledge accumulated in my nonliving part and all its ability to analyze and integrate.”
I said sharply, “Are your decisions made unanimously?” I thought I saw a loophole—I never had much luck mixing up Dad and Mother but there had been times as a kid when I had managed to confuse issues by getting one to answer one way and the other to answer another.
The voice added evenly, “Decisions are always unanimous. It may help you to think of me as one person.” It addressed everyone: “Standard sampling has been followed. The contemporary sample is the double one; the intermediate sample for curve check is the clothed single sample and was taken by standard random at a spacing of approximately one half-death of Radium-226—” The voice supplemented: “—call it sixteen hundred of your years. The remote curve-check sample, by standard procedure, was taken at two dozen times that distance.”
The voice asked itself: “Why is curve-check spacing so short? Why not at least a dozen times that?”
“Because this organism’s generations are very short. It mutates rapidly.”
The explanation appeared to satisfy for it went on, “The youngest sample will witness first.”
I thought he meant Peewee and so did she; she cringed. But the voice barked and the cave man jerked. He did not answer; he simply crouched more deeply into himself.
The voice barked again.
It then said to itself, “I observe something.”
“Speak.”
“This creature is not ancestor to those others.”
The voice of the machine almost seemed to betray emotion, as if my dour grocer had found salt in his sugar bin. “The sample was properly taken.”
“Nevertheless,” it answered, “it is not a correct sample. You must review all pertinent data.”
For a long five seconds was silence. Then the voice spoke: “This poor creature is not ancestor to these others; he is cousin only. He has no future of his own. Let him be returned at once to the space-time whence he came.”
The Neanderthal was dragged rapidly away. I watched him out of sight with a feeling of loss. I had been afraid of him at first. Then I had despised him and was ashamed of him. He was a coward, he was filthy, he stank. A dog was more civilized. But in the past five minutes I had decided that I had better love him, see his good points—for, unsavory as he was, he was human. Maybe he wasn’t my remote grandfather, but I was in no mood to disown even my sorriest relation.
The voice argued with itself, deciding whether the trial could proceed. Finally it stated: “Examination will continue. If enough facts are not developed, another remote sample of correct lineage will be summoned. Iunio.”
The Roman raised his javelin higher. “Who calls Iunio?”
“Stand forth and bear witness.”
Just as I feared, Iunio told the voice where to go and what to do. There was no protecting Peewee from his language; it echoed back in English—not that it mattered now whether Peewee was protected from “unladylike” influences.
The flat voice went on imperturbably: “Is this your voice? Is this your witnessing?” Immediately another voice started up which I recognized as that of the Roman, answering questions, giving accounts of battle, speaking of treatment of prisoners. This we got only in English but the translation held the arrogant timbre of Iunio’s voice.
Iunio shouted “Witchcraft!” and made horns at them.
The recording cut off. “The voice matches,” the machine said dryly. “The recording will be integrated.”
But it continued to peck at Iunio, asking him
details about who he was, why he was in Britain, what he had done there, and why it was necessary to serve Caesar. Iunio gave short answers, then blew his top and gave none. He let out a rebel yell that bounced around that mammoth room, drew back and let fly his javelin.
It fell short. But I think he broke the Olympic record.
I found myself cheering.
Iunio drew his sword while the javelin was still rising. He flung it up in a gladiatorial challenge, shouting, “Hail, Caesar!” and dropped into guard.
He reviled them. He told them what he thought of vermin who were not citizens, not even barbarians!
I said to myself, “Oh, oh! There goes the game. Human race, you’ve had it.”
Iunio went on and on, calling on his gods to help him, each way worse than the last, threatening them with Caesar’s vengeance in gruesome detail. I hoped that, even though it was translated, Peewee would not understand much of it. But she probably did; she understood entirely too much.
I began to grow proud of him. That wormface, in diatribe, was evil; Iunio was not. Under bad grammar, worse language, and rough manner, that tough old sergeant had courage, human dignity, and a basic gallantry. He might be an old scoundrel—but he was my kind of scoundrel.
He finished by demanding that they come at him, one at a time—or let them form a turtle and he would take them all on at once. “I’ll make a funeral pyre of you! I’ll temper my blade in your guts! I, who am about to die, will show you a Roman’s grave—piled high with Caesar’s enemies!”
He had to catch his breath. I cheered again and Peewee joined in. He looked over his shoulder and grinned. “Slit their throats as I bring them down, boy! There’s work to do!”
The cold voice said: “Let him now be returned to the space-time whence he came.”
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