The Snake Oil Wars

by Parke Godwin

  That was another problem for another day. Speed’s concentration focused on the six jurors impaneled in pretrial proceedings. Even with the most altruistic motives, no one came unbiased to the issue of religious belief. From a pool of prospective jurors, Speed had warred with Helm for a balance of attitude. Helm tried for as many hardshell Fundamentalists as possible and all the women he would wangle, knowing them susceptible to Candor’s bunting-wrapped personality. He used his peremptory challenges to eliminate, as far as possible, any upperclass or Catholic choices. Speed let himself be guided by Darrow’s famous essay on Christian juries. Having the safety valve of confession and absolution, Catholics tended to be more compassionate. Episcopalians could be counted on to be conservative; being deeply invested in the status quo, they would resist all that threatened a comfortable sense of order. Lutherans and the less rabid Methodists were generally solid citizens who wouldn’t be hypnotized by charisma but needed to be shown. With Baptists the ground beneath a lawyer’s feet grew treacherous, and with Pentacostals he navigated amid quicksand, liable to sink with any step.

  Helm got two women, both Baptists, and the flinty foreman, Matthew Wycherley. More accurately he allowed Master Wycherley for the exclusion of a Polish Catholic. Speed managed one Unitarian stockbroker from Connecticut, a Lutheran Swede from Minnesota and a Catholic from upstate New York, an Italian stonemason who looked as if he’d enjoyed his life and hadn’t desisted for a little thing like death.

  The foreman Wycherley was the only juror not of American birth or the twentieth century, still dressed in the rusty black of his time and place, seventeenth-century Yorkshire. My own ancestors began not two days’ ride from there, Speed recalled. Wycherley and the two women had the kind of faces Speed had seen and intimately known in river settlements from Cairo to New Orleans. He knew the beliefs burned into them to produce that set. God and life were hard, neither gave quarter to the weak. You were lucky to have a doctor or a preacher within ten miles; more likely you died of the fever or the burst appendix before either could reach you. Someone who loved you washed your remains, dressed you in Sunday best and laid you in a pine-slab coffin. Someone read over you, someone else cut the brief parenthesis of your life, beloved of, born – died, on a raw pine board still oozing sap and smelling of turpentine.

  And yet we were optimists with hopes big as the land. Hope was all we had. Despair was death.

  The three faces he studied had that same gnarled look. Wycherley came by it naturally, but the women were modem, from a time of television and computers when their well-dressed preachers told them God wanted them to be rich and happy but couldn’t quite cheer that flint from their eyes. Hickory people who carved their God from the same fire-hardened wood.

  “Hickory gods...”

  “What?” Coyul looked up.

  “Nothing, Just ruminating on juries.”

  A blast of heraldic trumpets, Coyul thought at first they signaled the entrance of Marcus Aurelius, but the brass went on and on in a flourish Caligula would have thought excessive, followed by a surge and rumble as thousands rose all over the gigantic arena and a brushfire of furious motion ignited around one entry way.

  LANCE! LANCE! LANCE!

  Without a break the brass swung into “My Country,’Tis of Thee” for augmented marching band. A squad of busty cheerleaders in sweaters a size too small and emblazoned with LANCE IS ROMANCE, whooped, semaphored, did splits and cartwheels while a leggy majorette twirled and juggled three flashing batons.

  WE LOVE LANCE! WE LOVE LANCE!

  “— SUH-WELT LAN DUV LI-BURTEE —”

  Speed shaded his eyes, disgust silent but classic.

  “So much for the majesty of the law,” Coyul noted.

  “Enter Lance,” Speed drawled with a tinge of vitriol. “We are plowing a rocky furrow, Coyul.”

  Watching the scene on TV, Purji thought – yes, she did see someone in the spectator row closest to Helm raise his arm in a subtle but discernible signal. On cue, so swiftly that cameras had to pan in a blur, a blue-blazered choir of fifty young men and women broke into an up-tempo spiritual.

  Yes, Jesus loves me,

  Yes, Jesus loves me...

  The song was taken up by thousands, booming through the Megachurch and over the airways of Topside and Below Stairs. The shot cut from the choir to the star of the stampede, Lance Candor, surrounded by six bodyguards. On his arm, Mrs. Candor ogled the cameras like dessert.

  Closeup on Lance: Purji could see the sheer gratification in that face. No dissemblance; he didn’t perform or play on these people as Helm might. Lance was of them and needed them, basked and believed in the outpouring of their love. A screaming teenaged girl with wild eyes, blocked by a bodyguard, strained to touch even the garment of her god.

  And cut to —

  The choir leader as the spiritual ended, a clean-cut fortyish man whose Ivy League suit clashed with the smarmy manner of a local TV salesman hawking doubtful used cars. “Isn’t it time you came home to Jesus?” he implored the cameras and a million hearts. “After all, that’s where you started.”

  Purji sighed and looked away from the screen. Now and then her eyes suggested not so much vast age as a profound awareness of time and the grain from its ponderous mill. Yet something in her was young enough to protest.

  This is dark fantasy. This isn’t real. These people are already mastering space, thousands of years beyond the Keljians, but they haven’t learned a thing.

  The shot cut back to Lance as he strode to the defense table and shook hands vigorously with Peter Helm. As if he’d already won, Purji thought.

  What are we doing here, Coyul?

  What of all they’d seen in their eons, or that they knew more of the universe now than these people would ever intuit or discovery They were atypical of their own kind – easy, lazing out their ages with laughter as leavening to the pain of awareness. The graceful loving for the sake of love itself, the frivolous bitchery that found pain and passion alike weary givens, the wit that daubed a graffiti mustache of light on the shadowed visage of eternity – what of it? A pretty, pathetic illusion.

  These creatures are reality, and in any form, we would be their demons.

  There, that was depressing. Purji willed the scotch to hand, a stiff drink in a tall glass. She wondered if George Kaufman was watching. Talk about bad revivals...

  “All rise.”

  The crowd rose in perfunctory courtesy when Marcus Aurelius entered. No cheers or applause greeted him. Aurelius wore the late-second-century costume he saw no reason to abandon in post life, a plain undyed linen tunic under a toga of the same natural shade with a single purple stripe to indicate his rank. A spare, modest man, a philosopher king who reigned in a time when a more practical man might have done better, Aurelius was remembered more for his writings than his rule.

  “Marcus Aurelius,” the clerk droned. “Former emperor of Rome, presiding. This court is now in session.”

  From the dais raised high above the rest of the court, the magistrate addressed the jury in a voice serene as his bearing. “This is a civil case. You half dozen have a wider latitude than in the mere determination of guilt or innocence. You need only a majority to find for either side or for any degree of damages due the Plaintiff. Herein lies your office not a jot further. Whatever else has been cried abroad in this case, whatever consequences arise from your decision must not concern you here. You will hear testimony and render judgment on that basis alone. Scribe will now read the plaint and specifications.”

  The court clerk appeared in closeup on dozens of monitors throughout the arena:

  That on the day of his assumption of authority over Topside, Coyul was libeled by the Defendant, Lance Candor, falsely accused of being that entity known as Lucifer or the Devil and by implication inimical to the good of Mankind and Topside.

  “He is!” Lance shot to his feet amid a flurry of cheers. He pointed at Coyul with a denunciatory gesture worthy of Hawthorne. “Ask him the better know
n name for Below Stairs, that’s all.” Aurelius rapped for order, but Lance would not be checked. “And you, Judge? You’re not even a Christian I challenge you for bias.”

  “Indeed?” Aurelius regarded him with equanimity. “When I lived, sir, the followers of your faith were a minor cult who could not even agree on the cardinal points of their own belief or whom they most detested, so-called pagans or each other. If you challenge for bias, I must reprove for barbarism. Sit down, Mr. Candor.”

  “That’s a stupid play,” Coyul muttered to Speed. “I’m surprised Helm didn’t put a cork in him.”

  “I’d say he rehearsed it.” Speed shot an acerbic glance at Peter Helm. “Don’t be surprised at anything you see.”

  The balding little clerk went on with the specifications of the charge:

  That on said date and through the aforesaid libelous confusion of identities, the Defendant conceived of an explosive device, entered without permission on the private space of the Plaintiff and detonated said device, causing grievous distress to the Plaintiff and two innocent parties.

  “Counsels will please approach the bench.”

  Speed and Helm placed themselves before the bench, rangy wolfhound and lean whippet. “Counsels will remember the emotion surrounding this case and take no undue advantage of these mechanical eyes that enlarge you to the plebes.”

  “The Elect of God, my lord,” Helm prompted softly.

  “My definition was considered. Rome, Heaven or Hell, they are a mob capable of being swayed.”

  “Sir,” Helm acknowledged. “How may we address the bench?”

  “This being an American trial by American rules of jurisprudence, Your Honor will suffice.”

  “And less Chautaugua,” Speed suggested to his opponent. “That jackass colt of yours pops out of his stall again, I’ll move for contempt myself.”

  Helm stiffened. “For that matter, one could question your own spiritual leanings.”

  “Enough,” Aurelius overrode them brusquely. “I will now hear opening statements. Mr. Speed?”

  “Ready, Your Honor.” Speed clumped back to his table, studied a shed of notes and then, over his spectacles, his client. “Worried?

  “Concerned.”

  “Don’t you fret. I’ve had other jobs but I was real good at this,” He removed the spectacles, folding them into an inside pocket.

  “Josh, who are you? Just between us?”

  “Your lawyer. Best you can get this side of Clarence.”

  “Thanks a lot, I’ve got a job to do that I can’t even begin until I prove my right to do it. I’d rest easier knowing where I’m trusting my future.”

  “Sure. See that little bastard over there?” Speed Picked his eyes to Helm. “I’m his opposite.” He moved away toward the jury and stood, rocking back and forth on huge feet, hands clasped behind him, and Coyul had seen that stance and heard the voice before, but damn it, where?

  Speed began in an easy, conversational tone. “My opening remarks will direct your attention to the libel charge and its stain of defamation rather than the violence it generated. Our case then centers on the why of this action. Mr. Candor publicly called my client a demon. The Devil in fact, with all the attendant meaning. We will show that Coyul is not and could not be this alleged entity; that he is in fact, as he publicly stated, an alien being from a different galaxy, charged by his superiors to oversee our maturation as a species. We will demonstrate through this that Candor’s libel and his violent act retard this actual and wholly benevolent purpose.”

  Speed paused; his bony shoulders twitched as if reacting to an itch between the shoulder blades. He pulled at one earlobe in reflection. “I won’t gloss over the larger considerations of this case; neither will I try to cloud your judgment with grandstanding rhetoric.” He jerked a thumb at the defense table. “You’ll get enough of that as you go along. Thank you.”

  Speed ambled back to his place, awkwardly bumping against the table corner. Helm rose but remained in place.

  “May it please the court, my remarks to the jury are brief and clear enough that I will address them from here. Defense will show that the Plaintiff is indeed that entity identified by my client, by whatever name, that allegation was in fact truth and therefore the Devil was neither libeled nor defamed, nor in any way distressed by the words or acts of Mr. Candor. As for the larger consequences of this trial, no orthodox mind can accept any other conclusion.”

  Searching that sensitive face, Coyul for an instant thought he caught a glimpse of something behind the careful mask. Something like a matrix, perfectly built and ordered but flawed by an inconsistency. And he can’t stand it.

  “Further only that you are Christians rendering a verdict on a Christian and a hero who by his actions testified to those very beliefs you hold yourselves. That is all.”

  When Aurelius addressed counsels, one might have noted an ironic tinge to his words. “I compliment both counsels on their brevity and clarity of intent. And their scrupulous avoidance of emotional considerations while keeping them very clearly in sight. Witnesses are instructed that although there is no applicable oath to be administered, perjury is liable to expulsion from Topside. Counsel for Plaintiff may proceed.”

  I could lie a little and go home, Coyul dreamed. The Rock wouldn’t be so bad if Purji were there. I wonder if I’m up to all this significance.

  Speed scraped back is chair. “I call the Plantiff Coyul to the stand.”

  10

  I Saw the universe once;

  it was closed...

  Speed had to wait until the boos and catcalls subsided before addressing his first question to the witness. “Your full name?”

  “Coyul”

  “Have you ever gone under any other name?”

  “Not among my own people. Just Coyul.”

  Speed nodded, He was standing close to the jury box in position to see his witness and evaluate jury reactions. “For the record, would you give us a brief description of your Origins and people?”

  “People might be inaccurate. Entities comes closer.”

  “I stand corrected. Precisely where do you come from?”

  “That’s rather involved. If I may, Your Honor?” Coyul asked and got permission for visual aid. The entire ceiling of the Megachurch became a vast electronic map of unfamiliar heavens. “Not as it looks now but when I left it.”

  An arrow pointed to an E-type galaxy within an irregular cluster. His original planet, Coyul explained, was more gaseous than solid. Sentient life forms tended to be more energy than matter, at least the successful ones. Evolution weeded out the losers but extended survivors’ ability to transmute themselves as needed. By the time the planet grew old and started to fall back into its sun, they had long since departed with little need for bodies or physical surroundings.

  “The universe was new then; quite new as universes go. We were one of the first of the higher life forms.”

  Being thus, they considered it a moral and scientific imperative to seed intelligent life by boosting basic potential under strict guidelines and supervision. Within the limits of given ability, life had a tendency to improve and adapt, finally to be aware of itself as in the case of humans.

  “So you are essentially a scientist?”

  “Not really,” Coyul qualified modestly. “Trained as one, but my chosen field is music. Now, Barion had great ambitions in science. That’s what started all the trouble. We were still in school...”

  An older class decided on a graduation party that got out of hand and wandered far oft the known universal routes. The party ended on Earth, where Coyul and Barion were stranded for a joke. The problem was that none of the jokers were all that keen at navigation. When they finally got home, no one could remember exactly where they’d left the brothers.

  “That was when?”

  “About five million years ago. Your Pliocene period.”

  “Objection.” Helm raised his hand. “Aside from being impossible to substantiate, none of this
testimony has any bearing on the case.”

  “Your Honor,” Speed retorted quickly, “the case itself arises out of the Defendant’s mistaken assumption as to Coyul’s identity. I’m seeking to establish that the Plaintiff is an alien life form and where he came from.”

  “This is not a tidy case at all,” Aurelius said. “If you start entering objections on every pretext, we will be ages getting through. Overruled. But counsel will keep his inquiry clearly relevant at all times.”

  “Coyul, I take it your present human form is an illusion.”

  Coyul preferred to call it a convention. “I could manage any likeness, but there’s the pull of habit.”

  “For the record, might the jury have a brief demonstration of your native form?”

  “Of course,” Coyul agreed pleasantly. “If the court has no objection. Don’t look directly at me; very hard on the eyes. Right then, here we go.”

  Even with eyes averted and then shut tight, every post-life human in the Megachurch found the brilliant light intolerable. Television viewers saw their screens become thousand-watt bulbs. They rubbed their eyes – then, through a world of bright dots, saw the inoffensive form of Coyul again. The Megachurch stirred with a vast reaction in which fear and hostility were major ingredients.

  “Sorry about that,” Coyul apologized.

  “You mentioned trouble,” Speed went on. “Would you enlarge on that?”

  Coyul obliged. He and Barion were young, Barion ambitious and himself rather arrogant. They experimented with the indigenous apes, augmenting their intelligence to Cultural Threshold far earlier than normal. When their own kind found them again, Barion was charged with illegal experimentation.

  “I was left here to clean up the mess. As long as it takes.”

  “Mess?” Helm bristled. “Objection! Are we to understand that human history, its majesty and massive endeavors were considered by his alleged kind to be a mistake?”

  “Oh no,” Coyul hastily backtracked. “Rather, as Tennyson might put it, a magnificent blunder. Perhaps I should clarify.”