The Heaven Makers (15 page)

“Mr. Thurlow! My questions are aimed at whether defendant’s accusations are reasonable in the light of all the evidence. I agree they cannot be proved or disproved with the principal dead, but are the accusations reasonable?”

Thurlow swallowed, then: “Was it reasonable to kill, sir?”

Paret’s face darkened. His voice came out low, deadly: “It’s time we quit playing with words, Mr. Thurlow. Will you tell the court, please, if you have any other relationship with the defendant’s family than that of… psychologist?”

Thurlow’s knuckles went white as he gripped the chair arm. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Were you not at one time engaged to defendant’s daughter?”

Thurlow nodded mutely.

“Speak up,” Paret said. “Were you?”

“Yes.”

At the defense table, Bondelli stood up, glared at Paret, looked up at the judge. “Your honor, I object. This line of questioning is not relevant.”

Slowly, Paret swiveled. He leaned heavily on his cane, said: “Your honor, the jury has the right to know all the factors which have guided this expert witness in arriving at his opinion.”

“What is your intention?” Judge Grimm asked. He looked over Paret’s head at the jury.

“Defendant’s daughter is not available for testimony, your honor. She is missing under mysterious circumstances attendant upon the death of her husband. This expert witness was in the immediate vicinity when the husband…”

“Your honor, I object!” Bondelli pounded a fist on the table.

Judge Grimm pursed his lips. He glanced down at Thurlow’s profile, then at Paret. “What I say now I do not say as approval or as disapproval of Dr. Thurlow’s present testimony. But I will state by way of accepting his qualifications that he is psychologist for this court. As such, he may present opinions in disagreement with the opinions of other qualified witnesses. This is the privilege of expert testimony. It is up to the jury to decide which experts it will accept as being the most reliable. The jury may arrive at such decision strictly on the expert qualifications of the witnesses. Objection sustained.”

Paret shrugged. He limped a step closer to Thurlow, appeared about to speak, hesitated, then: “Very well. No more questions.”

“Witness may stand down,” the judge said.

As the scene began to fade under Ruth’s manipulation of the pantovive, Kelexel focused on Joe Murphey. The defendant was smiling, a sly, secretive smile.

Kelexel nodded, matched that smile. Nothing was entirely lost when even the victims could share amusement at their predicament.

Ruth turned, saw the smile on Kelexel’s face. In her flat, controlled voice, she said: “God damn you for every second of your goddamn’ eternity.”

Kelexel blinked.

“You’re as crazy as my father,” she said. “Andy’s describing you when he talks about my father.” She whirled back to the pantovive. “See yourself!”

Kelexel took a deep, shivering breath. The pantovive screeched as Ruth twisted its controls and rapped keys.

He wanted to jerk her away from the machine, fearful of what she might show him. See myself? he wondered. It was a terrifying thought. A Chem did not see himself in the pantovive!

The bubble of light on the image stage became Bondelli’s law office, the big desk, glass-fronted bookcases shielding the mud-red backs of law books with their gold lettering. Bondelli sat behind the desk, a pencil in his right hand. He pushed the pencil point down through his fingers, repeated the action with the eraser against the desk. The eraser left little rubber smudges on the polished surface.

Thurlow sat across from him behind a scattering of papers. He clutched his heavy glasses like a lecturer’s pointer in his left hand, waving them as he spoke.

“The delusional system is like a mask,” Thurlow said. Vertical cords smoothed and reappeared in his neck as he gestured. “Behind that mask, Murphey wants to be found sane even though he knows that this condemns him to death.”

“It’s not logical,” Bondelli muttered.

“And if it isn’t logical it’s the most difficult thing there is to prove,” Thurlow said. “This is hard to put into words that can be understood by people who haven’t had long familiarity with such things. But if Murphey’s delusional system were shattered, if we penetrated it, broke it down, this could be compared to what it would be like for an ordinary person to awaken one morning and find his bed different from the one he thought he went to sleep in, the room different, a different woman saying, ‘I’m your wife!’, unfamiliar youngsters claiming him as father. He’d be overwhelmed, his whole concept of his life destroyed.”

“Total unreality,” Bondelli whispered.

“Reality from the standpoint of an objective observer isn’t important here,” Thurlow said. “As long as Murphey maintains the delusional system he saves himself from the psychological equivalent of annihilation. That, of course, is the fear of death.”

“Fear of death?” Bondelli appeared puzzled. “But that’s what faces him if…”

“There’re two kinds of death here. Murphey has far less fear for real death in the gas chamber than he has for the kind of death he’d experience in the collapse of his delusional world.”

“But can’t he see the difference?”

“No.”

“That’s crazy!”

Thurlow appeared surprised. “Isn’t that what we’ve been saying?”

Bondelli dropped the pencil onto the desk with a sharp click. “And what happens if he’s judged sane?”

“He’d be convinced he controlled this one last piece of his misfortune. To him, insanity means loss of control. It means he’s not the all great, all powerful person in control of his own destiny. If he controls even his own death, this is grandeur—a delusion of grandeur.”

“This isn’t something you can prove in a court of law,” Bondelli said.

“Especially not in this community and not right now,” Thurlow said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you from the beginning. You know Vauntman, my neighbor to the south? My walnut tree had a limb overhanging his yard. I’ve always let him have the nuts off it. We made a joke about it. Last night he sawed that limb off and threw it in my yard-because I’m testifying for Murphey’s defense.”

“That’s insane!”

“Right now insanity is the norm,” Thurlow said. He shook his head. “Vauntman’s perfectly normal under most circumstances. But this Murphey thing’s a sex crime and it’s stirred up a rat’s nest of unconscious content—guilt, fear, shame—that people aren’t equipped to handle. Vauntman’s just one isolated symptom. The whole community’s undergoing a kind of psychotic break.”

Thurlow put on his dark glasses, turned, stared directly out of the pantovive.

“The whole community,” he whispered.

Ruth reached out like a blind person, shut off the pantovive. As the stage darkened, Thurlow still stared out at her, Goodbye, Andy, she thought. Dear Andy. Destroyed Andy. I’ll never see you again.

Abruptly, Kelexel whirled away, strode across the room. He turned there, stared at Ruth’s back, cursing the day he’d first seen her. In the name of Silence! he thought. Why did I succumb to her?

Thurlow’s words still rang in his ears—Grandeur! Delusion! Death!

What was it about these natives that locked on the mind and senses, refusing to let go? A rage such as he’d never before experienced flooded through Kelexel then.

How dare she say I am like her father?

How dare she harbor one thought for her puny native lover when she has me?

An odd rasping sound was coming from Ruth. Her shoulders trembled and shook. Kelexel realized she was sobbing despite the manipulator’s suppression. The realization fed his rage.

Slowly, she turned in the pantovive’s chair, stared at him. Strange lines of grief wavered across her face. “Live forever!” she hissed. “And every day you live, I hope your crime gnaws at you!” The hate was stark in her eyes.

A sense of dismay shook Kelexel. How can she know of my crime? he asked himself.

But rage was there to support him.

She was contaminated by that immune! he thought. Let her see what a Chem can do to her lover, then!

With a vicious movement, Kelexel twisted the manipulator’s controls beneath his tunic. The pressure, building up abruptly, jerked Ruth backward into her chair, stiffened her body then relaxed it. She slumped into unconsciousness.

Chapter 17

Fraffin swept onto the landing platform with long, angry strides, his cloak whipping about his bowed legs. The sea shone like dark green crystals beyond the spider lines of the enclosing field. A file of ten flitters stood ready along the gray ramp, prepared to debark on his orders, checking the status of their “lovely little war.” Perhaps it could still be saved. There was a biting smell of damp ozone in the air. It made the guardian layers of Fraffin’s skin crawl in a protective reflex.

He could sense the planet flowering for him up there, spewing forth story after story in such a profusion as it had never done before. But if the report on Kelexel were true… It couldn’t be true. Logic said it couldn’t be true.

Fraffin slowed his stride as he approached traffic control, the yellow bubble eye with Lutt, his Master-of-Craft, personally in charge. The squat, solid body of the crewman imparted a feeling of reassurance to Fraffin. Lutt’s square face was bent over the yellow eye.

There was a crafty look to Lutt, though, and Fraffin suddenly remembered Cato saying: “Fear kings whose slaves are crafty.” Ah, there’d been a native to admire—Cato. And Fraffin recalled Cato’s Carthaginian enemies, the two kings looking down from Citadel-Byrsa onto the inner harbor of Corthon. “Proper sacrifice, right thinking, the best gods—those bring victory.” Cato had said that, too.

But Cato was dead, his life whirled up in the crazy time-blur that was a Chem’s memory. He was dead and the two kings were dead.

Surely the report on Kelexel is wrong, Fraffin thought.

A waiting flitter crewman signaled Lutt. The Master-of-Craft straightened, turned to face Fraffin. An alert air of caution in the man destroyed all illusion of reassurance.

He looks a little like Cato, Fraffin thought as he stopped three paces from Lutt. The same sort of bone structure in the face. Ah, we’ve bred much of ourselves into this place. Fraffin pulled his cloak around him, aware of a sudden chill in the air.

“Honored director,” Lutt said. How warily he spoke!

“I’ve just heard a disturbing report about the Investigator,” Fraffin said.

“The Investigator?”

“Kelexel, you oaf!”

Lutt’s tongue darted out and across his lips. He glanced left, right, returned his attention to Fraffin. “He… he said he had your permission to… he had the native female with him in a tagalong floater… she… what is wrong?”

Fraffin took a moment to compose himself. There was a slackdrum throbbing through every micro-instant that lay immersed in his being. This planet and its creatures! The erection/detumescence of each instant he’d shared with them lay on his awareness with scalding pressure. He felt like a bivalve at the tide-edge of the universe. History was collapsing within him and he could only remember the ages of his crime.

“The Investigator is gone then?” Fraffin asked, and he was proud of how calmly his voice emerged.

“Just a short trip,” Lutt whispered. “He said just a short trip.” Lutt nodded, a swift, jerking motion full of nervousness. “I… everyone said the Investigator’d been snared. He had the female with him. She was unconscious!” Lutt pounced on this revelation as though it were a most important discovery. “The native female was unconscious in the flitter!” A sly smile twitched Lutt’s mouth. “The better to control her, he said.”

Fraffin spoke through a dry mouth: “Did he say where?”

“Planetside,” Lutt hooked a thumb upward.

Fraffin’s eyes followed the motion, noting the warty skin, his mind filled with wonder that such a casual gesture could carry such a weight of terrifying possibilities.

“In the needleship?” Fraffin asked.

“He said he was more familiar with its controls,” Lutt said.

There was a veil of fear over Lutt’s eyes now. The Director’s bland voice and appearance couldn’t conceal the slashing purpose of these questions—and there’d already been one flash of anger.

“He assured me he had your approval,” Lutt rasped. “He said it was part of his training when he gets his own…” The glare in Fraffin’s eyes stopped him, then: “He said the female would enjoy it.”

“But she was unconscious,” Fraffin said.

Lutt’s head bobbed in affirmation.

Why was she unconscious? Fraffin wondered. Hope began to grow in him. What can he do? We own him! I was a fool to panic.

Beside Lutt, the eye of the traffic control selector shifted from yellow to red, blinked twice for override. The instrument emitted a harsh buzzing and projected Ynvic’s round face onto the air in front of them. The shipsurgeon’s features were drawn into a tight mask of worry. Her eyes stared fixedly at Fraffin.

“There you are!” she snapped. Her gaze darted to Lutt, to the platform background, returned to Fraffin. “Has he gone?”

“And taken the female with him,” Fraffin said.

“He’s not been rejuvenated!” Ynvic blurted.

It took a long minute for Fraffin to find his voice. “But all the others… he… you…” Again, he felt the distant slackdrum.

“Yes, all the others went immediately to the Rejuvenator,” Ynvic agreed. “So I assumed this one’d been handled by an assistant or that Kelexel had taken care of it himself. You do!” A rasp of feral anger touched her voice. “Who’d think otherwise? But there’s not a trace of him in Master Records. He’s not been rejuvenated!”

Fraffin swallowed in a dry throat. This was unthinkable! He felt himself go deathly still as though listening for the passage of suns and moons and planets his kind had all but forgotten. Not rejuvenated! The time… the time… His voice came out a husky whisper: “It’s been at least…”

“One of my assistants saw him with the female just a short while ago and alerted me,” Ynvic said. “Kelexel shows obvious signs of deterioration.”

Fraffin found it difficult to breathe. His chest ached. Not rejuvenated! If Kelexel destroyed all traces of the female… But he couldn’t! The storyship had a complete record of the liaison with the native. But if Kelexel destroyed her…

Lutt tugged at Fraffin’s coat.

In a rage, Fraffin whirled on him: “What do you want?”

Lutt ducked backward, peered up at Fraffin. “Honored director, the intercom…” Lutt touched the pickup instrument imbedded in the bone of his neck. “Kelexel’s needleship has been seen planetside.”

“Where?”

“In the home region of the female.”

“Do they still see him?”

Fraffin held his breath.

Lutt listened a moment, shook his head. “The ship was seen to pass without shields. One who saw it inquired about this breach of security. He no longer has the ship in view.”

Planetside! Fraffin thought.

“You will drop every other activity!” he rasped. “You will order out every pilot and vehicle. That ship must be found! It must be found!”

“But… what do we do when we find it?”

“The female,” Ynvic said.

Fraffin glanced at the disembodied face projected above the traffic control selector, returned his attention to Lutt. “Yes, the female. You’ll take her into custody and return her here. She’s our property. We’ll have an understanding with this Kelexel. No nonsense, you hear? Bring her to me.”

“If I can, honored director.”

“You had better find a way,” Fraffin said.