Welcome to the Greenhouse (18 page)

Why me?
she asked the Universe At Large.

Nobody answered, not even Self.

Her next stop was the galley, where she could look at her witnesses through the service window without being spied upon herself. The three of them were seated in the Mess, at the captain’s table. All three were stuffing their faces, surrounded by ration pack wrappers and soup bowls.

“Been eating their heads off,” the cook told her. “Them kids’ll finish a pack and get up and go run laps around the boiler deck. They’re trying to make room for more, I guess. ‘Specially when they found out they was gettin’ dessert.”

Taiesha nodded. “How long do you think it’s been since any of them got to eat their fill?”

“No tellin’, honey. I reckon that boy been hungry his whole life. The little one ain’t quite so fixated on it, but she sure ain’t picky! And Momma’s already got three or four picnics’ worth tucked into her underwear.”

Taiesha could see a certain lumpiness in regions that ought to have curved a bit more, but some of that was the sheer lack of meat on her bones. The woman looked to be in her late twenties—a skinny brownette with long tapering fingers and ragged nails. She might have been pretty once, when she was still a kid. Now, mostly, she looked worn out.

Small wonder. The boy seemed to be in perpetual motion. Keeping up with him would wipe out a Marine. And the girl… Oh my God.

The little girl had Kayla’s snub nose. She turned her head toward the window, presenting a backlit profile, and just at that moment, the woman reached out and tapped the tip of that upturned nose. The move transferred a dollop of cream from the pie she’d been eating.

“Tia Trina!” the child protested. She promptly went cross-eyed, trying to look at her new decoration. Then she tried to lick it off, only her tongue wouldn’t reach. The two of them burst into giggles, and Taiesha’s heart did a belly flop as she remembered the barbecue, that final Fourth of July before her own daughter was killed.

Something crashed to the floor—a stack of pie tins. She’d knocked them off as she staggered back.

“Hey! You all right, honey?” Large warm floury hands took hold of her. They held her up when Taiesha’s legs didn’t want to. She clung to the counter and closed her eyes and turned away, from the view and the memory.

“Here,” said another deeper voice, and she felt herself pressed into a chair. At the sound of that second voice, though, her eyes flew wide open again, and she found that while two of the helping hands were the cook’s, the other two were MacClure’s. Where in hell had
he
come from?

She pulled free of both sets, and growled out a low, “No, don’t!”

To the Scotsman, she said, “You get the fuck away from me.”

To her relief, and without a word, he did. But the trio pigging out in the Mess must have heard all the noise, and been spooked by it. When she looked back through the service window, all three were gone. There was nothing left but wrappers and crumbs, and damn few of those.

Taiesha sighed. She hauled herself upright again. “It’s… I’m okay,” she told the cook when the latter moved in again, ready to grab her. “It’s just the heat.” And since the kitchen was indeed overly warm, that gave her a semi-graceful exit.

She made it by way of the Mess, where she pulled on gloves and carefully gathered up lunch’s remains. There just might be a little bit more she could do for these people.

Moreland’s hearing took all of ten minutes. The bailiffs allowed thirty townsmen aboard, but also insisted on disarming everyone. Taiesha had Jerome make sure at least five were refugees, too. Some townies weren’t happy about that, but justice, as Jerome loudly informed them all, either applied to everyone or nobody. That, plus the big guns the bailiffs all carried around on their belts, served as a convincing argument and the protest subsided, at least until the judge ordered remand for the mayor.

What do they expect on a charge like this?
Taiesha wondered. There weren’t any bail bondsmen left, for God’s sake, not around here.

Then, after her client was hauled back to lock-up, the judge’s clerk called out the traditional Oyez announcement, and they proceeded directly to trial for the two surviving pirates. She was saved from having to mount the witness stand herself by MacClure’s testimony about what took place on the boiler deck that morning when they were boarded, but realized now why she’d won that round so easily. The “man” she’d kicked and cold-cocked was nowhere near full grown. He was a teenager, half starved to death, and so striped with scars as well as tattoos, there was hardly a square inch of him unmarked by one or the other. Fifteen, sixteen, maybe? Scared, for sure.

His compadre was older by a decade or so, but missing an eye and still more of his teeth. The second man wasn’t frightened at all. He was grinning at one of the local women and smacking his lips as he grabbed his crotch. One of the bailiffs cracked a baton across his elbow, hoping to improve his manners, but mostly it just made him noisier.

To her surprise, the Scot’s account of the morning’s encounter was both concise and accurate. Unemotional, too. His brevity let her concentrate on her clients’ defense, which mainly amounted to a plea for mercy on account of the younger buc’s age.

In the end, however, the judge’s ruling surprised no one. Rishwain made his closing argument, she made hers, and the clerk handed up a neat sheaf of the paperwork involved to His Honor. Judge Hebert nodded his thanks, and glanced at the forms, but what he saw there deepened the lines engraved in his long face. He turned toward the pirates again with a grave air better suited to funeral parlors.

“Michael Dysart, and James Alan Wilson,” he intoned. “You have both been found guilty of attempted piracy on a public waterway. The penalty for attempted piracy is the same as for actual piracy—it is not the policy of this state, after all, to reward you for failing.”

He paused, and got a nervous laugh from the townies. Was that intentional? Hebert had an improv actor’s sense of timing, Taiesha thought, but she hoped he wasn’t going to play up this crowd, not when one of their own was about to be tried here.

“In addition,” the judge announced, “the two of you were tested while in custody. Your, ah, bodily by-products, that is.” Again he paused, letting that one sink into a growing silence. Taiesha, who’d run the tests, knew where he was going with this, but the locals didn’t. “James Alan Wilson, you tested positive. Human myoglobin from muscle tissue was found in your feces. You, sir, are a cannibal.”

The courtroom erupted and the bailiffs were hard pressed to keep the townsmen away from the two defendants. A clamor arose and became a chant, and the chant was soon loud enough to be heard ashore, where still more voices joined in. Moments later, the whole town of Atwater seemed to saying the same thing: “Hang ‘em! Hang ‘em!”

It didn’t subside until Judge Hebert used all of the
Queen’s
many loudspeakers. Over and over again, His Honor shouted, “Order in the Court!” and banged his gavel with such a will that it sounded like gunshots. That was what finally shut them all up—the fear that it might be.

Hebert waited until everyone had sat down again, too, before he banged the gavel once more and announced his decision. “Michael Dysart and James Alan Wilson, you have both been convicted of a capital crime. In accordance with the laws of the sovereign State of California, I do hereby sentence the pair of you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead.”

Again, the crowd in the courtroom roared, and drowned out the rest of it. This time, though, Hebert let them go at it until they were tired of shouting. Then he told them, “Said sentence will be carried out immediately.”

That’s when Dysart, the younger one, shot to his feet and cried, “No fair!
He
ate the meat,
not me!
That bastard wouldn’t even give me a
taste!
Hang him, not me!”

Half an hour later, Taiesha found herself back on the Texas deck. Alongside Judge Hebert, she watched while the bailiffs erected the collapsible gallows behind the pilot house. “Why hang them today?” she asked the judge.

“Why not?” said Hebert.

“Well…”

“We’d have to feed them again, for one thing,” His Honor went on, not waiting for her reply. “And they’d both have to suffer through a long sleepless night, knowing there was no hope. I think that would be cruel.”

“But…”

“What?”

Taiesha shook her head. “I’m just wondering how long it’ll be before we can afford
not
to kill everyone we convict.”

The judge sighed as he turned to face her. “You know we don’t have the resources to keep anybody in prison. We don’t have the space, or the guards, or the money for that, much less the food.”

“But a kid that young…” Here she pointed at Dysart. “… if he ever had even half a chance…”

“He’s a cannibal.” Hebert put his hand on her forearm. “You heard him. The boy was mad at his compadre. Why? Because he
didn’t
get his fair share of their last victim. Besides, you know there must have been others.”

“I realize that,” she retorted. “It just doesn’t feel right, that’s all.”

“Tell me, then. Why are we here?” the judge asked her.

Taiesha shrugged.

“Why?”
he demanded.

When she still didn’t answer, he moved closer and took hold of both shoulders, so that she had to look up at him. “We
are
the law,” Hebert reminded her. “This circuit court, these robes?” he said, waving a hand at his wind-fluttered expanse of black muslin. “This whole damn ridiculous floating courthouse?
This
is the heart of the law, and we must bring it back to life. Because if we don’t, there’s no hope for any of us.”

The urge to argue that point must have shown in her face.

“You know it’s true,” Hebert told her. “We made it through First Rise, but Second has damn near done in the entire world. How many people have died already, of flooding and droughts and famine and war? Of murder, disease, and cannibalism? Three billion? Four? Hell, we don’t even know. But we do know this. We’ve only got one more chance at it. We’ve
got
to get things back under control. Because if we don’t, then sure as hell, Third Rise is coming. If that happens, civilization is over with. Probably, so is what’s left of humanity.”

She knew he was right, knew it down in her bones, but that didn’t do much for the queasiness rumbling through her gut, or the aching pain in her lower back, where things had healed up, but would never be totally right again.

There was so damn much that wouldn’t, Taiesha reminded herself. Why
are
we here?

For Ramon Izquierdo. For my daughter, too, and Tremaine. And for that little girl with the snub nose, and for all the rest of them that are still breathing, so they’ll have a ghost of a chance.

She pulled in a deep breath. This time around, when she glanced at her clients, she saw them for what they were—bits of anomie, ready to murder again and again. The two pirates stood at the foot of the gallows, now nearly erect, but the bailiffs hadn’t covered their heads yet. Michael Dysart, the teenager, looked like he might be sick any minute. The other one, Wilson, grinned at Taiesha. Licking his lips, he said, “You look yummy.”

“Shut your mouth,” the judge instructed. “I’ll tell you when it’s your turn to talk.”

“You go to hell,” the pirate snarled back.

“Gag him,” Hebert ordered.

That took a couple of minutes and three of their burliest bailiffs, but that was because the condemned man kept trying to bite them. Then both buccaneers were dragged on up the thirteen steps and positioned on top of the trapdoor, with nooses around their scrawny necks. When the bailiffs had finished, the judge got up on the platform too. He took a theatrical tour of the gallows, circling both men. The teenager nearly fell over, just trying to keep him in sight, but the older man was much too busy caterwauling around the muzzle they’d strapped to his face. He nearly drowned out the rowdy crowd on the dock, where it looked like the whole damn town had turned out to watch the proceedings.

They hadn’t allowed any locals to stay aboard ship, not for this. Moreland and their three witnesses had been sequestered below decks, and everyone else had been herded ashore.

So far, none had admitted to knowing the two raiders. Still, they might either one have some unknown connection to Atwater’s residents. That’s why the
Queen’s
captain stood ready to cut the big riverboat loose from the landing. They could always continue the hangings offshore, once they’d gained a safe distance from anyone trying to interfere.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said the judge, using the
Queen’s
PA system. The sound of his voice boomed out, eliciting howls from dogs and small children, and still more excitement among the adults, who were treating the whole thing like some kind of holiday. Maybe it was. No one seemed to be working today.

“Your attention, please!” the judge went on. “These proceedings are serious business. I must ask for your forbearance while we complete the legal niceties.”

That got a laugh out of some of the onlookers. Townies, not sea rats. However, the general noise level did drop dramatically, if not the tension Taiesha felt.

Oh, God,
she thought, panic rising.
God, help me,
she pleaded. Her hands knotted up on their own as she fought for control, and her heart turned into a giant-size fist. It knocked at her ribs again and again while Hebert once more pronounced the death sentence for each man.

Sweet Jesus, why was he taking so long?

Next, Hebert solemnly asked each man if he wanted a priest or a preacher of some kind.

The kid merely shook his head.

Wilson, unmuzzled, proceeded to spit at the three nearest bailiffs. His Honor, however, stayed well out of range as he inquired of the boy, “Michael Dysart, do you have anything you’d like to say?”

The teenager squeaked out: “I never ate nobody!”

“You lyin’ sack o’ shit!” Wilson spat his way as well. And at that point, without waiting till both their heads were bagged, or giving Wilson his chance to speak, Judge Hebert nodded. Jerome hit the big black release lever. The trap door crashed downward. Both men dropped, and a loud double crack echoed over the water.