She shook her head. “And there’s also the injuries,” she added. “This was no maddened beating, sir. This was as deliberate as a spanking.”
“I thought as much,” Steve said. He hesitated, then asked the next question. “Have you spoken to the victims?”
“The wife is confused,” Jean said. “The daughter ... is torn.”
She shrugged. “Sir, when someone is married, when the relationship is still there, people are often torn between wanting the husband back and wanting to be rid of him,” she continued. “So far, despite the beating, Mrs Witherspoon hasn't reached the point where she just wants him out of her life. His daughter ... she wants her old father back, but she also wants to be rid of the drunken lunatic who’s taken his place.”
Steve gritted his teeth. One of his family’s friends had been in the National Guard, rather than the regular army. He'd been called up for service in Iraq, been wounded there and returned a broken man. Two years afterwards, following screaming fits and threats against his family’s life, he’d put a gun in his mouth and killed himself. His children had wondered, out loud, just what sort of devil had stolen their father’s body. The kind man they’d known had died in Iraq.
“I thought he would have been treated for alcoholism,” he said, sharply. “Did he evade the tests somehow?”
“No,” Rochester said. “But while we handled the physical need for alcohol, we didn't – we couldn’t – handle the mental addiction to drink. It's possible that even one sip of moonshine or rotgut tipped him back over the edge.”
“We will need to be more careful with our screening tests in future,” Steve said, darkly. “For the moment ...”
He turned back to Jean. “What would you advise we do with him?”
Jean met his eyes. “Right now, we have a legal code that is largely untested,” she said. “And we really need to make it clear that we are not engaging in arbitrary punishment, no matter how deserved. We can't use his fists any longer.”
Rochester clenched the fists in question. “This isn't one miner beating the shit out of another miner,” he said. “Nor is this a fight that broke out over gambling. This is this ... asshole deliberately beating his wife and daughter, without any cause I care to recognise. There is no bloody way this can be excused.”
He looked at Steve. “Give me five minutes alone with him, please.”
Steve was tempted. He was very tempted. Mariko would not have allowed him to lay a hand on her, not unless she wanted it. And his partner would be furious with him if he allowed the man to escape without punishment. A savage beating might teach him a lesson. But, at the same time, Jean was right. They needed to test their legal code.
“Select a jury,” he ordered, finally. There wouldn't be any lawyers; someone would have to speak with Witherspoon, then explain his rights under the legal code. “Make sure they’re people who don't know him personally, if possible. Let them be unbiased.”
“Show them the images and there won't be a single unbiased person in the colony,” Jean muttered. “The girls were quite badly battered, sir.”
“I know,” Steve said. “I know.”
In the end, he ended up explaining Witherspoon’s rights himself. The man seemed torn between repentance and a cold self-satisfaction that sent chills running down Steve’s spine, something that he was tempted to mention when the jury finally assembled. Pushing his feelings aside, he explained that Witherspoon could either admit to the charges or deny them and present a countervailing argument of his own. The jury would either accept his arguments or find him guilty. If the latter, they would also devise their own punishment.
“But I didn't mean to do it,” Witherspoon whined, when Steve had finished. “Really, I didn't mean to do it.”
“Then I suggest you tell that to the jury,” Steve said. “They’re the ones who will decide your fate.”
He had never been fond of lawyers – viewing them as a plague on mankind – but he was starting to realise they might serve a useful purpose. Someone would have to be appointed as the Public Defender, to advise suspects of their rights under the law and assist them in producing their defence. Someone else would have to sum up the case for the jury ... no, that someone might wind up leading the jury one way or the other. And there would have to be someone to present the case against the suspect.
The jury assembled in the largest available chamber in the colony, a room that had once served as a dining hall and then turned into a storeroom for supplies brought from Earth. A handful of colonists, including three lunar bloggers, took seats where they could see everything, then Witherspoon himself was brought into the court in handcuffs. Jean, who would be presenting the case for the prosecution, had pointed out that she really needed extra staff or a dedicated prosecutor. Steve had to admit she had a point, although it would raise problems of its own. What would happen when the prosecutor found winning more important than justice?
“The charges facing Daniel Witherspoon are serious,” Jean said. “The previous night, Witherspoon drank heavily, then went home to his chambers. There, he fought with his wife, which ended with him beating her quite heavily. When his daughter attempted to intervene, she was beaten too. Both women are currently in the medical bay.”
Witherspoon looked reluctant to speak when it was his turn. Indeed, he hadn't even attempted to suggest if he would be pleading innocent or guilty. Steve rolled his eyes, then waited, as patiently as he could, for the man to present his defence. He had hours, if necessary. There would be no attempt to cut his defence short.
“I was drunk,” he said, finally. “I did not mean to hurt either my wife or my daughter.”
Jean rose to her feet. “You inflicted no permanent harm,” she said. “That implies, very strongly, that you were in perfect control of yourself.”
She showed the jury images taken by the doctor. “As you can see, the bruises look very bad,” she continued. “But they would have faded, naturally, over the coming week if they hadn't been treated already. There would have been no permanent physical harm. But the scars you inflicted on their minds will never heal.”
Witherspoon offered no defence. Eventually, the jury withdrew to a secure room to debate Witherspoon’s fate. Steve watched them go, wondering if he was doing the right thing. A word from him could have condemned Witherspoon to death, or return to Earth, or a lifetime of hard labour. What if the jury took the view that no permanent harm wasn't as bad as something that did cause permanent harm? Or felt that they’d heard too much about mental harm from courtrooms down on Earth? It was so hard to prove that anyone had really suffered mental problems or depression from anything.
The jury returned, fifty minutes later.
“It is a principle of lunar law,” the foreperson said, “that a person is responsible for their own actions. If they should happen to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they are still responsible for themselves as they chose to enter a state of diminished rationality. As such, your attack on your wife and daughter was your responsibility.
“Furthermore, you have presented no excuse for your actions, no suggestion that they might somehow have been justified. Accordingly, we find you guilty of the charges brought against you.”
There was a long pause. “We debated sentencing for quite some time,” the foreperson continued. “Some of us felt you did not deserve to live, or that there was a strong possibility that you would reoffend. Others felt you simply did not deserve to live here. However, we have decided that you will spend four years at hard labour instead, assuming you wish to remain on the moon. If not, you may return to Earth.”
Steve wondered, absently, if Earth would take him. Witherspoon was an American citizen, technically, but the precise legal status of the lunar colonists was somewhat vague. It was arguable that they held joint citizenships, yet it was uncertain how it would all play out. As Kevin had said, it might be better if they all renounced their American citizenships. But Steve hadn't been able to bring himself to do that, not rea
lly. He still clung to the ideal of America in his heart.
Witherspoon, after being told that he had a day to decide, was marched out of the room and back to the cells. Steve sighed, then walked over to the bloggers, most of whom were just finishing their articles. As the first trial on the moon, it would set precedent for the future ... although Steve had no intention of allowing precedent to rule unchallenged. The jury would always have the final word on just what happened to suspects.
“Mr. Stuart,” Gunter Dawlish called. He'd moved to the moon, a decision that had boosted his popularity on Earth. “Do you have any comment on the case?”
“Justice has been served,” Steve said, after a moment’s thought. “The guilty man has been offered a choice between punishment or permanent exile from the moon.”
“Which is likely to be exile from his wife and daughter too,” Dawlish said. “Or will they be exiled too?”
“No,” Steve said. “They are not to blame for Witherspoon’s actions, so they will not be held to account for them. Should they wish to go with him, if he leaves, we will honour their request. If not, they will always have a place here.”
Another blogger stepped forward. “Don't you feel it was handled a little too fast?”
That, Steve had to admit, was an awkward question. “I think we had all the facts established,” he said. “If there had been a requirement for more investigations, we would have delayed the trial until they were carried out. If necessary, we would have used lie detectors to ensure that everyone involved was telling the truth.”
“But the prosecutor was also the policewoman,” another blogger asked. “Does that not create a conflict of interest?”
“She wasn't the one who passed sentence,” Steve said, with a shrug. The blogger had a point, but they didn't have a legal staff yet. One would be needed, sooner rather than later. The next trial might be far less open and shut. “And now, if you will excuse me ...”
He followed Rochester back to his office and sighed. “That could have gone better.”
“It went about as well as could be expected,” Rochester said. “Drink?”
Steve let him pour two cups of coffee, then took one gratefully. “Are there any other problems I ought to know about?”
“There’s one that may turn into a problem,” Rochester said, carefully. “You know we have a number of homosexual men on the moon?”
“I know,” Steve said. “So?”
“Two of them want to marry,” Rochester said. “Should we allow it?”
“What we want doesn't actually matter,” Steve said. “Let them call themselves husband and husband if they want. If they want to register a partnership, let them do that too. It’s not as if we give any incentives to married couples.”
Or disincentives, he thought, in the privacy of his own mind. One of the reasons he had never actually married Mariko was out of fear of what would happen if the marriage failed. Judges granted women all the rights in America these days, while leaving the man permanently tied to her. He'd known two retired Marines who had been unable to remarry or even have more children because their income was being garnished to keep the wife in house and home, while they could only see their children from time to time. He had just never felt like taking the risk.
He shook his head. “It doesn't cause any harm to the rest of us if they get married, does it?”
“Not really,” Rochester said. “Their teams will have to be resorted – I try to keep brothers apart, just to keep emotion out of the picture. But that isn't a problem now we have plenty of people on the surface teams.”
“Then let us not stand in their way,” Steve said. He couldn’t understand homosexuality, but he imagined they had the same problem with heterosexuals. Besides, everyone deserved a chance to seek happiness wherever they found it. “Any other problems?”
“The teachers want the kids to have more afterschool activities,” Rochester said. “They think the kids spend too long in VR worlds, so I'm planning to expand the sporting complex for them. But not all of the kids are interested in remaining in school. Some of the teenagers have even been caught roaming the upper levels.”
Steve sighed. “Give them another lecture,” he said.
“I have,” Rochester said. “I’ve even threatened to have the next teenager caught up there publically paddled. It doesn't seem to have done any good.”
“Of course not,” Steve agreed. “I was an idiot when I was a teenager too.”
He shrugged, expressively. “We’ll just have to keep playing with the problem,” he said. “And as we expand, the problem will solve itself.”
Rochester smiled. “And someone wants to set up a brothel,” he added. “She even has girls lined up and everything.”
“Best not to talk about it,” Steve said. “Mariko would kill me.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ying System
It was a curious fact - Cn!lss attributed it to the stubbornness of the average Hordesman – that stunners didn't have quite the same effect on them as they did on most other races. They were immobilised, sure, but they could still hear and feel what was going on around them, even though they were helpless. He could hear the Hordesmen chattering as they picked up their victims and carried them off, then picked up Cn!lss himself.
An odd sense of fatalism fell over him as he was carried away. Maybe he hadn't been captured – recaptured – by his own Horde, but he had no reason to expect anything other than an inglorious death. Hordesmen who were captured were expected to kill themselves – and Hordesmen who didn't kill themselves were generally killed anyway by their captors. No one would seriously believe a Hordesman to know anything worth sparing their lives.
He listened, carefully, as they were carried through the city. He knew better than to expect rescue; part of the reason he'd recommended Ying in the first place was because it was almost completely lawless. No one would object to the humans scanning the libraries for information, but no one would move to protect them too. They were captives now ... where were they going? And why had they been targeted?
Cn!lss found it hard to believe, as he heard the sound of a door opening ahead of them, that the Hordesmen had been watching for humans in particular. Had they been watching for the missing starships? But they weren’t a part of Cn!lss’s Horde ... he pushed the thought aside and waited, feeling a brief spurt of pain as he was dropped on a stone floor. Moments later, his entire body jerked as someone zapped him with an shocker. His eyes snapped open, revealing five armed Hordesmen and a single small blue alien.
There was a groan from beside him. Cn!lss turned to see the human – Kevin, he reminded himself – sitting upright, clutching his head. The small alien snapped his fingers and another alien appeared from the shadows, carrying a bottle of water. A servitor, Cn!lss realised, someone from yet another race that had no hope of standing on its own two feet. He would be a servant all his life, just as the Horde were nothing more than brutish mercenaries, slaves to the races that could and did build their own technology. Would the humans, too, end up like that?
“I believe we should talk,” the small blue alien said, addressing Kevin. “We may have made something of an error.”
***
Kevin had been concussed once before, during a mission in Afghanistan that had very nearly been the end of him. It wasn't an experience he’d enjoyed. Now, he had to fight hard to keep from throwing up as the tall green alien offered him water to drink. The alien was oddly cute, pretty much a green-skinned alien space babe. But the genitals, if they were genitals, were completely different from anything human. Staggering slightly, he managed to pull himself to his feet and stared at the smaller alien confronting him.
He couldn't help thinking of a mutated Smurf. The alien was short, barely taller than Yoda, with bright blue skin, no hair and eyes that were as dark as the inky blackness of space. He – Kevin assumed it was a he – wore a loincloth and nothing else, revealing a bare and utterly hairless blue chest. He couldn't help thin
king of the alien as a child, yet there was no doubt that he was the one in command. The Hordesmen clearly deferred to his authority.
The Horde are mercenaries, he thought. I'm looking at one of their masters.
“An error,” he repeated. Beside him, Romford was still stunned. “What sort of error?”
“It was our assumption that you were allies or slaves to the Varnar,” the alien said. “Their willingness to use your people as cannon fodder suggested the latter. We were therefore prepared to go to some distance to locate your homeworld and recover samples of your people for analysis. It simply did not occur to us to attempt to contact you openly.”
Kevin felt his eyes narrow. That showed an alarming awareness of events on Earth. Had the aliens hacked the starship database? Or was it simply a coincidence? Or a deduction?
“We maintained a watch for all traces of human life,” the alien continued. “When you arrived, you were noticed. The fact you had a Hordesman with you suggested that you took one or more of their ships.”
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