by James Morrow
“Why?”
“I was trying to spot my new patient.”
“Did you?”
“No. I became fascinated by the town itself. I realized that it was about to disappear, and I wanted to see how everyone was spending his time. The people’s faces were tight and grim. They went about their Saturday morning duties—getting their mail, buying their doughnuts—and I could find no joy. This was seven days before Christmas. But then a little girl and her mother came out of a store. The mother carried a bag of groceries. The child had a small plastic snowman in her hands. She was bubbling about it. Her lips said, ‘You’re going to live on our Christmas tree!’ I began feeling much better…and much worse.
“The warhead was groundburst, and the mother became trapped under a brick wall. Everything was dark. I had to use the infrared. ‘I’m thirsty,’ the woman said. The initial radiation, of course. So the little girl ran into the burning store and came back holding a carton of orange juice. It was hard to tear open. She said—children’s lips are easy to read, they put so much into talking—she said, ‘Look, Mommy, I opened it! Will this make you better, Mommy?’ She nursed her mother with orange juice. ‘Everything will be all right, Mommy,’ the little girl said. The mother closed her eyes—stopped breathing. Then a man who knew the child came along. I think he worked at the bank. He seemed to be sleepwalking. ‘Is my mommy dead?’ the girl asked. ‘Is my mommy in heaven now?’ she wanted to know. The man fell down. The little girl began to cry. ‘I want my daddy,’ she said. A few seconds later, another warhead arrived.
“And then, the following month, while I was treating the defendant, he showed me his daughter’s nursery school photograph, and I realized who had given the dying woman the orange juice. The point I wish to make, your Honors, is that George Paxton is much more a victim of this war than a perpetrator. His wife and daughter were innocent civilian casualties, and he would have been one too if the prosecution hadn’t pulled his name out of a hat, entrapped him, and brought him to this ridiculous trial. Do you want revenge? Convict him. Justice? Let him go…I shall not answer any further questions, nor shall I submit to cross-examination.”
George’s sobs were slow and regular, like tympani notes at a funeral. Somebody—Brat? Wengernook?—gave his knee a firm, sympathetic squeeze.
“Mr. Aquinas, are you satisfied not to interview this witness?” Justice Jefferson wanted to know.
“I would like to ask her one question,” said the chief prosecutor.
“All right,” said Morning. “One.”
Aquinas stomped on a WHEN? balloon and approached the stand. “As I understand your testimony, Dr. Valcourt, you were on the City of New York during the whole of its seven-week passage from the United States to Antarctica. I also understand that, during this time, you engaged George Paxton in an intimate series of psychoanalytic sessions. Assuming that you do not wish to deny these facts, then my question is this—to what extent are you romantically involved with the defendant?”
The unpregnant expectant mother frowned gently and straightened up. “I am not now,” she said, “nor have I ever been, romantically involved with the defendant.”
CHAPTER 16
In Which the Essential Question Is Answered and Something Very Much Like Justice Is Served
“The tribunal will hear the closing argument of the prosecution,” said Shawna Queen Jefferson.
Aquinas rose, approached the bench, and stood silently before the judges.
“Fifteen billion years ago,” he began at last, “the cosmos came into being. Nobody, even the best of our unadmitted scientists and clerics, quite knows how, or why.” Looping his arms together behind his back, he paced around the pile of frozen missiles. “Later, some three and a half billion years ago, another miracle occurred. On one particular planet, Earth, organic molecules formed. We do not know whether the same miracle happened elsewhere. The opportunities were overwhelmingly for it, the odds overwhelmingly against it.”
“At this rate he won’t get around to us for a week,” said Wengernook.
“Shut up,” said Overwhite.
“The organisms evolved,” said Aquinas. “Great apes appeared. Some of these apes were carnivorous, perhaps even cannibalistic. It is probable that the human species branched off from bipedal, small-brained, weapon-wielding primates who were stunningly proficient at murder.”
George noticed that Reverend Sparrow appeared to be suffering from apoplexy.
“Are we innately aggressive?” asked Aquinas. “Was the nuclear predicament symptomatic of a more profound depravity? Nobody knows. But if this is so—and I suspect that it is—then the responsibility for what we are pleased to call our inhumanity still rests squarely in our blood-soaked hands. The killer-ape hypothesis does not specify a fate—it lays out an agenda. Beware, the fable warns. Caution. Trouble ahead. Genocidal weapons in the hands of creatures who are bored by peace.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” said Brat.
“But the fable went unheeded. And the weapons, unchecked. And then, one cold Christmas season, death came to an admirable species—a species that wrote symphonies and sired Leonardo da Vinci and would have gone to the stars. It did not have to be this way. Three virtues only were needed—creative diplomacy, technical ingenuity, and moral outrage. But the greatest of these is moral outrage.”
“Self-righteous slop, you needed that too,” said Brat.
“You needed a trough of it,” said Wengernook.
“Shut up,” said Overwhite.
“For the past twenty days the walls of this sacred palace have enclosed a curious world,” said Aquinas. “A world where peril is called security, destruction is called strategy, offense is called defense, enlightened self-interest is called appeasement, and machines of chaos and ecological horror are called weapons.”
“And kangaroo courts are called tribunals,” said Brat.
“It is the world of Major General Roger Tarmac, the MARCH Hare, who believed that his Holy Triad meant salvation for America. In the name of the Bombers, and of the Subs, and of the Land-Based Missiles—Amen! It is the world of Brian Overwhite, the weapons industry’s favorite arms controller, who never in his entire career denied the Pentagon a system it really wanted. It is the world of William Randstable, the doomsday doctor, whose smart warhead was just one more bullet in the revolver with which humanity played, you should forgive the expression, Russian roulette. It is the world of Peter Sparrow, the Ezekiel of the airwaves, who wanted America to demonstrate her moral superiority over her adversary by becoming just like her adversary, adopting the economy and mentality of a garrison state. It is the world of Robert Wengernook, the auditor of acceptable losses, who forgot that a species as inquisitive as Homo sapiens cannot draw up plans for a war, even a war of extinction, without eventually needing to find out how well they work. And it is the world of George Paxton, citizen, perhaps the most guilty of all. Every night, this man went to bed knowing that the human race was pointing nuclear weapons at itself. Every morning, he woke up knowing that the weapons were still there. And yet he never took a single step to relieve the threat.”
Has Bonenfant’s team found that vulture expert? asked George’s spermatids. I don’t know, he told them.
“Learned justices, you are about to write a verdict in the case. Your opinion will be the final chapter in human history. It will matter. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to speculate that, beyond our solar system, another intelligent species monitors this trial, seeking to learn what nuclear weapons are good for. And so I urge you to fill your pens with your black blood and tell these celestial eavesdroppers that the harvest of nuclear weapons is threefold—spiritual degeneration, self-delusion, and death. Perhaps we should bury your verdict in a capsule beneath the Antarctic ice, so that one day, a year or ten years or a century from now, some wayfarer in the Milky Way might find it and know that, for all our love of violence, at the final moment we were able to say no to fusion bombs and yes to life.”
&nb
sp; “Does he make up this crap himself?” said Brat.
“All the greeting card writers are dead,” said Wengernook.
“Shut up,” said George.
“While we cannot know for certain to whom your verdict will speak,” said Aquinas, “we do know for whom it will speak. It will speak for the thousands who sit in this courtroom and for the multitudes who wait on the glacier. It will speak for history—for those who struggled to make this planet a repository of art and learning, and whose achievements have now been laid waste. And it will speak for a population who, in our self-pity as unadmitteds, we sometimes forget. I refer to the five billion men, women, and children who were blasted and burned alive, irradiated and crushed, suffocated and starved and sickened unto death in the recent holocaust.
“Their blood cries to heaven, but their voice cannot be heard.
“Give them a voice, your Honors. Give them a voice.”
AQUINAS DELIVERS ELEGY FOR HUMAN RACE, said Mount Christ-church that afternoon.
“The tribunal will hear the closing argument of the defense,” said Justice Jefferson.
George noticed how barren Bonenfant’s table had become—Dennie gone, Parkman gone, all of the papers gone save one.
“Remember what he said on the boat,” muttered Brat. “He’s got a rabbit or two in the hat.”
“I’ll take two,” said Wengernook.
“A boy rabbit and a girl rabbit,” said Randstable.
“Honored justices,” Bonenfant began, “I submit that, beyond the ornate pieties of my learned opponent, the issue you must decide is simple. Did these six men aim to wage a war or to preserve a peace? Their aim, we have seen, was peace. Indeed, no firmer fact has emerged from this long inquest.
“Lest we forget, my clients did not ask to have thermonuclear weapons at their disposal. They did not want to inherit a world that knew these obscene devices. But inherit it they did, along with the threat to freedom posed by Russian Communism. I ask you, learned judges, would any of you have acted differently in their place?
“We all know that the peace was not preserved. During this hearing the mechanism of peace-preservation—the policy of deterrence through strategic balance—has been characterized as self-defeating. In his cross-examination of Robert Wengernook, the prosecutor even went so far as to suggest that my clients pursued deterrence so vigorously that they forced the Soviet Union into the suicidal action of striking first—and with second-strike weapons, no less.
“Now that is a most improbable scenario. Crazy. Fantastic. Weird…Indeed, it simply did not happen that way. I can prove as much.”
Gasps rushed through the courtroom like a thousand icy breezes. The Mount Christchurch reporters leaned over the balustrade of the press box.
“At this point in the hearing it would be most peculiar were I to put anyone else on the stand. And yet, your Honors, that is what I now propose to do. For there is a seventh defendant in this case—a defendant who should have stood trial in place of my clients.”
The gasps faded into the rumble of the question What? in fifty languages.
“Legal proceedings against animals have a long history. Plato’s The Laws includes the directive that ‘if a beast of burden shall kill anyone, the relatives of the deceased shall prosecute it for murder.’ The Book of Exodus tells us that ‘when an ox gores a man to death, the ox must be stoned.’ However, until today no one has indicted the animal that my assistants will now bring forward.”
A loud, high skreeee filled the courtroom—the shrill protestations of wheels turning on axles. Dennie and Parkman were pouring all of their youthful, unadmitted energy into pushing a large wooden cart toward the bench.
On the cart was a metal cage.
In the cage was a gigantic vulture.
“The first day of the war found me on a vulture hunt,” Bonenfant explained, “chasing this creature from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts. I captured it not far from George Paxton’s hometown and then made my rendezvous with the City of New York.”
Aquinas boiled over like neglected oatmeal on a hot stove. “Your Honors, this is a courtroom, not a zoo! Whatever relevance Mr. Bonenfant’s fat bird may have—and I see none—its arrival comes much too late to be considered admissible.”
“I beg the court’s indulgence,” said Bonenfant, gently lifting the solitary document from the defense table and handing it to Dennie. “Two days ago my chief assistant began an arduous trek up the glacier. She was searching for someone. This morning she found him. Your Honors, the defense is pleased to offer the deposition of one Dr. Laslo Prendergorst—resident of Ice Limbo 905, unadmitted ornithologist, hypothetical Nobel laureate, and Antarctica’s most illustrious vulture expert.”
“We didn’t have time to copy it,” said Dennie, placing the document before Justice Jefferson.
“Dr. Prendergorst has examined the specimen in question,” said Bonenfant, “and he has confirmed our suspicions. During the late Pleistocene era, a swift-flying, migratory species of vulture inhabited North America—the Teratornis, one form of which, Argentavis magnificens, was the largest bird ever to have lived. Twentieth-century scientists assumed that all the teratorns, including the gargantuan Argentavis magnificens, were extinct. The scientists were wrong. A small breeding population of Argentavis survived. In his deposition Dr. Prendergorst draws an analogy with a fish called the coelacanth, believed to have vanished during the Cretaceous period. In 1938 a live coelacanth was found off the southern coast of Africa. Rumors of its extinction had been greatly exaggerated.”
Justice Wojciechowski smiled. The teratorn chewed the cage bars with its steam-shovel beak, shook them with its chipped and twisted claws.
When Bonenfant snapped his fingers, Parkman pulled some papers from the chief counsel’s briefcase and delivered them to the judges.
“Your Honors, we are now offering a fresh copy of the prosecution’s own Document 318, a NORAD computer printout indicating the sizes, velocities, radar signatures, and trajectories of the objects that triggered this war. Were these objects heading across Canada on a line with Washington? Yes. Were they shaped like Soviet Spitball cruise missiles? Yes.
“But”—Bonenfant paused, weaving his hand through the air as if it were in flight—“were they Soviet Spitball cruise missiles?
“No! They were a flock of admittedly hideous but completely unarmed vultures pursuing their annual one-day migration from Newfoundland to the Yucatan Peninsula. If you doubt my claim, turn to the last page. You will see one of the satellite photographs taken to corroborate the NORAD sighting. This is not a cruise missile, your Honors. You can even see the bloodstains on its beak.”
Aquinas leaped up. “Your Honors, how much longer must we endure this ludicrous presentation?”
Justice Jefferson seesawed her glasses on the bridge of her nose, looked at Document 318, and said, “Your findings are most unusual, Mr. Bonenfant, and the court considers them admissible, but what is the point?”
“Just this. Armed deterrence did not fail. The war happened through a freak of nature. If the teratorns had taken a slightly different flight path on that particular Saturday morning, they would have eluded the NORAD early warning systems, as they had done so many times in the past, and the nuclear balance would have remained intact. My clients planned no crimes against peace, nor did they carry them out. Armed deterrence worked, your Honors. It worked.”
“It worked,” said Brat.
“It worked,” said Wengernook.
“It worked,” said Overwhite.
“It worked,” said Randstable.
“Amen,” said Reverend Sparrow.
“And that is all I have to say,” Bonenfant concluded.
Justice Jefferson cast a thoughtful glance toward the foul-smelling bird—a glance into which George read vast volumes of wisdom and compassion—and announced that the court would withdraw to write its verdict.
And so the ice continent became a kind of physician’s office, humanity’s final remnant fidget
ing in the anteroom, waiting to learn whether its collective case was terminal.
In George’s brain vicious and sadistic memory cells played his testimony over and over, torturing the guilt areas with snatches from speeches he might have made. Should I have spoken of Justine—of how she instinctively knew the suits were no good? Said more about Holly? Mentioned the Giant Ride horse, the Big Dipper, or the Mary Merlin doll back home in the closet? Certainly I could have put more stress on my co-defendants’ positive points…
He paced his cell, wearing a groove in the ice.
Why doesn’t your future wife come to visit you? his spermatids asked.
If word got back to the judges, he explained, they’d know she cared about me.
Of course, said the spermatids. Yes. Naturally. Why doesn’t she come anyway?
I don’t know, he confessed.
On the witness stand, she said she didn’t love you.
That was just to help our case.
JUSTICES STILL DELIBERATING, the slopes of Mount Christchurch declared to the assembled legions.
“This game is seven-card stud,” said Overwhite.
“They’re probably hung up on Paxton’s testimony,” said Brat. “All that talk about bad ideas—it must have thrown them.”
“For a loop,” said Wengernook.
“I told the truth,” said George.
“Leave him alone,” said Overwhite. He squeezed George’s hand. “I’m sorry you had to hear that stuff about your kid.”
“It’s all right,” said George. “No, it isn’t,” he added.
“War always has its human side,” said Brat.
“Do you suppose Jefferson and company were favorably impressed by that vulture?” asked Overwhite.
“Definitely,” said Wengernook.
“An excellent move by Bonenfant,” said Randstable. “Very pretty.”
“It proves that you don’t get into a war by being too strong,” said Brat.
“Ace bets,” said Randstable.
“One egg,” said Wengernook.