Bang (26 page)

‘Oh poppet, so sorry, quite forgot. In one ear, out
the other. Yes, I did promise. And you importuned me, too, didn’t you. I
haven’t been importuned for a good long while, I can tell you that, and I was
so busy thinking exactly that that I quite misplaced the actual purpose of your
importuning. How funny.’ He laughed enthusiastically and offered Delilah a
bright look. ‘Soon as I get back to the office I’ll do it. Won’t be today, too
much on, I’m afraid, and I’ve got this blessed party tonight. I say, have you
just been to the Gentle Memorial Gardens, your feet are wet. Quite extraordinary,
aren’t they? Transporting. So tranquil, too. I’m quite beside myself after the
stroll I took. Ah, door’s opening. In we go.’ Poy Yack checked his Life for the
time, gave Delilah a strange look, and pushed through the crowd, elbowing
violently the pupils, who speedily apologised when he said he’d see them in
court if they didn’t get out of his way. In this crowd were one or two, what
Delilah took to be, pupils, who were apparently encouraging other, what Delilah
took to be, pupils to conspire in some sort of mischief. Upon seeing Delilah
they averted their eyes and hid charts or sometimes little books in their
pockets. Then they stood there whistling and looking at the ceiling. If Delilah
succeeded in engaging them they challenged her with a stare of ‘What of it?’

Odd, but it was time for school.

‘Let the pupils in first,’ Cagee instructed her. ‘You
are janitor and must get used to the fact that, no matter how much you abhor
it, they rank above you. They are your superiors. You’re worthless. And don’t
forget about that vomit behind the radiator. At least I hope it’s only vomit.’
Delilah waited.

Delilah entered the school at the back of the queue,
shaking her head.

17
– A S
chool?

She gazed around. Something wasn’t, she didn’t think,
quite right about this school. That’s strange. Hey? What the …?

And in the next instant, her hopes of exiting the
System took on a far bleaker aspect. A clock struck 12 noon and a bailiff
cried, ‘COURT IN SESSION.’ He straightened his stripy cap and sat down, but
sprang up quickly as if he’d sat on something sharp, which he hadn’t.

Out loud, and in the complete silence that had done
that thing silence sometimes did and descend, Delilah’s fear spoke simply and
clearly. It said, ‘Oh fuck.’

‘Language,’ screamed the Superintendent, from up high,
and rising, in what looked like a hydraulic rostrum. ‘Seize the defendant and
wash her mouth out.’ Two stripe-uniformed bailiffs approached Delilah. Their
stripes joined and ran in and out of each other’s sleeves when they stood
shoulder-to-shoulder, weirdly cojoining them, eliciting from an officer in the
audience a proud designer’s smile. When the bailiffs stepped apart, these
stripes stretched between them to form an elastic cradle in which they ensnared
Delilah and relocated her to the dock, pushing a toilet-type brush in and out
of her mouth as they did so, telling her they’d like to take her brain out and
rinse it too. The brushing opened the healed closure of her extracted tooth,
and her tongue started feeling around of its own accord, sucking pain out of
the hole.

‘Not a good start, defendant,’ said the
Superintendent. ‘Such language undermines society. What do you suppose would
happen were we all to go round indiscriminately uttering such obscenities? I do
not know exactly, but let me assure you on good authority, not
the
Authority, mind, that the results would be wholly detrimental. New swearwords
would need to invented, for a start, to replace the old ones diluted by
overuse, and what new words could possibly challenge words of such ancestry?
No, this just cannot be allowed to happen and in this courtroom it shall not.
We haven’t refurbished Remand 111 and turned it into a grand court simply for
you to come swaggering in and swear your head off dressed like some oiky manual
labour in his worn clobber with a gaping zipper and turn the world of
obscenities on its head. Besides, you knew your court date approached, there it
was on the horizon of your incarceration – what made you think it wouldn’t
arrive on your twentieth birthday? No, I cannot possibly see what you have to
swear about. So today has come, and, guess what, here it is. Say Hello. Best
get it over and done with, wouldn’t you say, and begin your sentence. Sooner it
gets started, sooner it’ll be over. Then you can get on with your life. Though
this may become irrelevant should you be released after your death. High
probability of that, given the charges. So let’s have another look and see what
you’re charged
with
.’ The Superintendent consulted information before
him. ‘Hum,’ he said, ‘that’s quite a list. If you’d come before me earlier,
we’d have nipped this in bud and you wouldn’t be here now. If you weren’t here
now, nor would I be. Do you think I want to be here? It’s your fault I’m here.
It’s your fault we’ve had to go to all this trouble and expense. It’s your
fault we must ultimately recoup costs from you. Even if you’re innocent. Which
I think you know full well you’re not. What do you have to say to that?’

A stripy bailiff prodded Delilah and she opened her
mouth, but instead of saying what she’d intended to say – that she’d
committed no crime before entering the System, other than a minor traffic
violation, which was only because a crime had been committed against her, and
that everything was unfair, everything – she unintentionally blew a
caustic bubble of soap, then shut her mouth again when the Superintendent
smacked down his black gavel (made from her film
The Murderer
) and
glared his ugly eyes down at her. This looked like being another bad day.
Possibly the worst of her life. And she’d had a few of those recently.

He continued, while pulling at his eyebrows and
yanking out the longest hairs, which he measured with callipers, ‘I see the
prosecution is ready, as ever. May the prosecution be commended, especially
esteemed lawyer Lawyer Poy Yack, whom it is always a pleasure to set eyes on, a
man whose presence alone causes about my person a bristling sensation, which,
though I have spoken with experts about, goes largely unexplained. Good
afternoon, sir, I trust you are well?’

‘Very well and very rich, thank you, Superintendent.
Also, in the prime of my career.’

‘You certainly are. Not that the same can be said of
the defence team, whose section remains fully empty. Such complete vacancy
screams at me and says on the part of the defendant that she does not care.
What truly innocent defendant comes into the trial of their life undefended, I
ask you. Not you, Lawyer Poy Yack, you understand, I don’t ask you, you have
better things to do than respond to such rhetoric, but I ask the court in
general. No, the lack of a team, of even one sole representative, speaks loudly
indeed of the defendant’s guilt. “I do not need defending,” it says, “because I
am guilty of all charges laid before me.” Such a slovenly attitude makes me
wonder if I shouldn’t here and now cancel the whole show and skip to
sentencing. “Take me away and lock me in a cell, why don’t you. Send me down,
bang me up, I’ll do my clink.” But a trial has always been considered
entertainment. Even when the outcome is already decided the tension remains,
and I am sure that the defendant, like you the audience, whom I now address,
can feel it.’ The audience murmured, and clapped, and those who had brought
them opened their packed lunches. ‘It is not so much the outcome that intrigues
but the route there that compels us to follow proceedings. I, on behalf of the
Authority, extend my warmest welcome to all in the audience and trust that you
enjoy this afternoon, long billed as one of the year’s legal highlights. Quite
a turn out, I must say. I see over there the teacher with the penchant for
cabbages, I do hope you, too, madam, enjoy this matinee performance of your
troublesome ex-pupil. Everybody, welcome. The preliminaries are over. Evidence
is our next port of call.’

The audience clapped loudly. But too loudly, because
the Superintendent now put his hands over his ugly ears and said, ‘Bailiffs,
count the audience immediately.’

‘980,’ said one, a moment later.

‘1024,’ said another, a moment after that.

‘1064,’ said yet another, as more people filed in.

‘1100,’ said the next.

‘Bailiffs, reduce the number to 100. 100, I say. The
Center of Disinformation has provided strict attendance figures guidelines for
such events. A maximum number of one hundred is permitted or the information
released risks acquiring a dangerous accuracy a high-numbered audience’s
consensus of opinion might grant it. 1000 people, leave now. Get out. OUT.’

Obviously no one budged. Except Delilah, who pushed
herself up and made to leave. ‘Not you! Stay where you are. How can we have a
trial with no defendant? Are you stupid? Stupid enough, patently, to think you
can walk out of your own trial, therefore stupid enough to think you could get
away with murder. The two go hand in hand, getting caught for murder and
stupidity. As we shall prove. Or the prosecution will, anyway. I am impartial,
you understand. A-choo! When I speak of the outcome being preordained do not
take this to mean that I know what it is, not at all, just that it is already
decided. 1000 out. Come on, be off with you.’

Still no one moved. ‘Ow,’ said the Superintendent and
extracted a troublesome eyebrow hair. ‘I was on a moving floor, once,’ he
began, in a tone that tipped-off that he now spoke by example, ‘up in the
Central Shopping Plaza, and the floor refused to move, too many people were
aboard it. An officer demanded that those nearest the edges alight. But, just
as now, no one moved. Obviously, had I spoken out, with my judicial clout, I
could have cleared the moving floor in no time, but I was interested in seeing
what transpired. It is not for me sufficient in these my retirement years to
observe behaviour in launderette customers alone – or in the odd special
court case, such as this one, for which I have come out of retirement and left
the laundrette in the trusty hands of the assistant superintendent. No, 45
minutes we were there, stuck on that floor.
45
. Until I nudged the
officer and advised that he start shooting. A scenario of direct equivalence to
that which greets us now. If the thousand people nearest the door do not start
leaving this instant I shall, one by one, find them in contempt of court and
have them up before the Whipping Boy for immediate punishment by
Voltaire
.’

‘THAT’S RIGHT,’ said the Whipping Boy in his deep new
bass voice, which startled the front row particularly, who still did not move,
though some had pushed their buttocks off their seats and now wobbled on their
hands in a state of limbo they could not reverse for fear of not only ignoring
the Superintendent’s order but actually flagrantly contravening it by sitting
back down.

‘Unholster your
Voltaire
,’ ordered the
Superintendent. The hundred furthest from the door, who considered themselves
safe, laughed and stamped their feet in a cattle-charge kind of way.

Still the nearer 1000 did not leave. Instead Delilah
read a lurid excitement on their faces. She quickly realised that the problem
here was that secretly, or maybe not even secretly, the 999 who were in fact
unlikely to be whipped wanted to see the one who was, who’d be made example of,
and were prepared, with such good odds, to risk themselves. There was no
denying it: a
Voltairing
represented required viewing.

‘Yes,’ the Superintendent enunciated clearly, ‘I
believe the defendant is quite correct, as she sits there in the dock,
wondering what will become of her. She has worked out exactly why you’re not
moving. The insatiable urge of voyeurism. The very reason that you have come
here, in the first place, to see what fate befalls her. Perhaps, on these
grounds, I can make an exception and allow 999 of the 1000 to stay.
Under
one condition
.’ He paused, as people habitually did when making such
pronouncements. ‘That the 999 choose a thousandth person to receive the
Voltaire
.
Quickly now, we must wrap this trial up in time for a party tonight to be
attended by the special waitress, at which I will be greatly enjoying myself.
This waitress cannot perform afternoon functions and never has been able to,
for she becomes a senior scientist and conducts experiments on prisoners by
rubbing eggshells on their teeth – it was she that invented the
Rolling
Rail
, an inspired device. Who is it? Who will be whipped? Choose now.’

They hummed and they mumbled.

Perhaps they’d all walk out, unable to sacrifice one
of their number, thought Delilah.

But agreement was quickly reached. ‘The gimp.’

‘The who?’ asked the Superintendent.

‘Him. The cripple.’

‘Where?’

‘Over there: V-Bones.’

The Superintendent demanded, ‘Who?’

‘Mr I-Haven’t-Got-Any-Hands!’

‘Cagee?’

‘Yes him,’ they all cried, gleefully excited, ‘Him.
Yes him. Whip Cagee!’

‘Yes, well he isn’t much use, is he,’ agreed the
Superintendent. ‘Without any hands. Would Officer JJ Jeffery sanction such
action?’

‘Oh indeed, it is long overdue. What is the point of
the man, I often ask myself. He has no hands, as you have said yourself. But
not only does he have no hands, he has no wrists, which is why his bones splay
in that grotesque manner when he tries swimming. His left foot, well the less
said about that the better, other than remarking that he brought it upon
himself. We can make amends for such a character, and in a forward society such
as ours we do, but no matter how correct we attempt to be, there is no getting
round the fact that a man of such little intelligence, such
unintelligibility – did you hear him lecture? – and such physical
impairment, can bring nothing to us, nothing but his weight upon our systems of
support. Harsh though this may sound, it remains the truth. I sanction the
action.’