Bill 3 - on the Planet of Bottled Brains (15 page)

“That's a tough break,” Bill said feigning sympathy.

The Kookie blinked angry little red eyes and he caught the fake sympathy in Bill's voice. “Human skin is waterproof, too,” he snarled.

“Well, yes, I suppose so,” Bill said.

“Make heap good bathroom rug.”

Just then there was the sound of a key in the lock and the door of their cell swung open.

Four guards entered. They were extremely tall and thin, with long heads shaped like kidney beans and bodies which looked in the last degree of emaciation. They had to stoop almost double to get inside the cell door. Once inside they still couldn't straighten up. Four of them in the room, in addition to Bill and the Kookie, crowded the small cell to bursting point. This was the first time that Bill had ever seen a Swingli* in the flesh, although he had come across their pictures in the Alien Enemy Identification Book, which all human military personnel had to study so as to know the contours of their many and varied enemies.

There seemed to be a Swingli* officer in charge of the guards. He was half a head taller than the others, and as Bill later learned, a member of the officer class which prided itself upon its superior height. He wore a black bearskin cape, and Chewgumma cringed when he saw it and emitted a dolorous cry.

The guards moved them out of the cell and down the corridor, hurrying them along with the small human prods they carried for moments like this. It was a long corridor, made of rough-hewn rocks, and roofed over with palm fronds. After thirty yards or so, the corridor split into two branches. Here the guards divided, one contingent taking the Kookie down the right-hand path, and the other taking Bill down the left-hand side. The bearskinned officer accompanied Bill's group, and Bill didn't know if that was good news or bad. The Swinglis* hadn't said a word so far, although Bill had tried to question them, first in Shmendrik, main trading language of the Swingli* people, then in Unrevised Esperanto, and finally in Chinga Franca, the widely-used language of the Chinger lizard people, which had only recently been discovered in a translator machine from a wrecked Chinger ship. His built-in translator was able to handle all of these languages without difficulty, but the Swinglis* didn't even acknowledge that sounds were being made, much less that they were comprehensible sounds. After a while Bill shut up and began to take notice of his surroundings.

They went down a flight of stairs, then another. Torches flamed in embrasures, and there were antique glow-lights here and there, just enough to change the atmosphere from positively stygian to absolutely gloomy. There were cells along the way, and from them Bill heard funny screechy sounds, like bats feasting on something that didn't like it. But he couldn't tell what it really was, and subsequent research has revealed that it was a sound machine implanted by the Swinglis* and set to give forth unnerving noises. It was not for nothing that the Swinglis* were known as one of the more subtle of the galactic races. Their long stature helped, of course. Creatures who look as funny as Swinglis* do, with their orange fright-wig hair and their huge stooped shoulders and their air of frenetic absentmindedness, are apt to develop a sense of humor, whose invariable concomitant is the intelligence to avoid being laughed at. Once this is well set, other forms of intelligence follow. The Swinglis* hadn't had much time yet, counted in aeons, to go beyond the early stage of developing ways of avoiding being laughed at.

They even felt humiliated because they were not listed in Morrison's Standard Dictionary of Alien Races, not even in the addendum under Alien Races (Tall). Several documentaries have been made on them recently, most notably Sloan Buster's searing Thin, which shows the Swinglis* in an altogether too favorable light. Swingli* traders have occasionally appeared in Earth-dominated space, but they tend to avoid it since humans always laugh at them. On their own planet, however, they were able to arrange things more to their own needs. Their boast was, “You won't laugh at us on Swingli*.”

Due to their need to be taken seriously, the Swinglis* go to great expense to maintain an impressive pomp and circumstance. Thus, when Bill was ushered into the big room, he first noticed the high desk, cantilevered out over the floor so that three black-gowned Swingli* judges, with powdered perukes set precisely in place, could peer down at him through their granny glasses.

The Swinglis* had researched their justice system most carefully. Every race has its own inborn directive, the secret rules, written on the genes, expatiated upon in the spiraling DNA, which tell them what they are and what they should strive for. Not only that, but also implanted in the fundamental genetic equipment is the knowledge of what is funny and what is not, and a driving need to look good at all times and under all circumstances. Due to this racial imperative, the Swinglis*, when they first encountered alien civilizations, took pains to discover a form of justice that really suited them. Before encountering civilization, they had had no justice or legal system worthy of the word. When a Swingli* grew annoyed at another Swingli*, he bashed him over the head with the short lead-packed wooden clubs which were aptly named, in Swingli*, UuQ-Olen, or friendship-stoppers. If anyone didn't like this, he bashed the perpetrator over the head, and thus might in turn be bashed over the head himself. Friendship-stopping was the only form of death on the planet at this time, because a provident nature, always experimenting, had given the Swinglis* immortality except when they were smacked on the head with a wooden club packed with lead.

A proper justice system, for the Swingli*, had to look good. That was the prime consideration. The Swinglis* at this time were in desperate need for a new way of controlling friendship-stopping, since the population had been declining ever since the so-called Unpleasant Wars of the Nineties. They hit upon a combination of various modalities. From the English they took the high desks at which the judges sit, and the powdered perukes, and above all, the awesome dignity that pervaded British dispensations of justice as shown in the many Pinewood Studio pictures the Swingli* had unearthed in the ancient data banks, the only thing saved from that long-destroyed planet. No one could laugh at a three-man group of judges like that, they thought.

Bill couldn't control his giggle when he saw the three skinny judges with the granny glasses slipping down their scaly faces, with white perukes on their pointed heads, and a general air of testy dignity. The officer in the bearskin nudged him in the ribs with an incredibly sharp and pointed elbow and he sobered up at once.

The middle judge, in sepulchral tones, said, “Let the prisoner approach the bar of justice.”

Bill had intended to be dignified and contrite, but something about the crashingly solemn nature of the thing, as well as thirst, made him say, “You got any other kind of bar around here aside from a justice one? I sure could use a drink before going on with this.”

The judges looked at each other. The audience — there were close to three hundred Swinglis* in deck chairs watching the proceedings — looked at the judges. The guards looked at each other. Bill looked puzzled.

The middle judge remarked to the judge on his left. “Was that intelligible, what he said?”

“I might perhaps hazard,” the left judge said, “that the prisoner was essaying a witticism.”

“I could have told you that,” said the judge on the right.

“Do you mean,” the middle judge said, “that the prisoner was making a joke?”

“Impossible, yes, but it's true,” said the left judge.

“But what was the point of the joke?” asked the middle judge.

“It must have been subtle,” said the left judge, “because I didn't really get it. Word play on bar, I suppose. Bit of an odd way to begin, isn't it?”

“Yes, I should think so,” said the middle judge. He peered down at Bill. “Prisoner, did you in fact make a joke in our presence?”

“Well, yeah, I guess I did,” Bill said. “I didn't mean anything by it.” He started to giggle again.

“And what,” asked the middle judge, “is so funny?”

“Nothing, excuse me, I'm sorry,” said Bill.

The middle judge turned to the right judge. “Why would he burst into laughter like that?”

“I don't know,” said the right judge, “but I fear the worst. I suppose, if you thought it necessary, you could ask him.”

“Prisoner, why did you laugh?”

“The fact is,” Bill said, “I have a Chinger lodged in my left armpit and he's tickling me.”

“Did you hear that?” the left judge said to the right judge.

“Amazing, his effrontery.”

“He couldn't actually have a lizard secreted on his person, could he?”

“I doubt it. Earthians and Chingers are hereditary enemies.”

“I suppose,” said the bearskin-hatted guard, “we could search him and find out for sure.”

“No,” said the middle judge. “This is already bad enough. Frankly, I don't want to know.”

“Look,” Bill said, “I don't know why you've pulled me into court like this. I haven't done nothin'.”

“'Nothin',” the middle judge said. “What does that mean?”

The right judge, the one with the drooping right eyelid and the droll expression, said, “I believe it is 'nothing' with the terminal 'g' omitted.”

“But why would he do that?” the middle judge asked.

“It's probably some kind of a joke,” the right judge said.

“Ah! Another joke! It likes me not, the disposition of this felon at the bar.”

“He seems disposed to be humorous,” the left judge said.

“If so, it is a grievous fault,” the right judge said.

“And grievously shall he pay for it.” The three judges looked at each other and smiled the satisfied smiles of men who have essayed a small joke in a difficult situation.

“Now then, prisoner, you are accused of being a party to the landing of an unauthorized spaceship in the public festival grounds illegally and without a license, thus seriously disrupting the slug festival and causing the organizer of the festival, Zek Horsley, public embarrassment of a degree judged to be felonious. Prisoner, how do you plead?”

“Huh?” Bill asked.

“Were you or were you not a party to the unauthorized landing of a spaceship on the festival grounds?”

“Now look,” Bill said, “we were shot down. I was a passenger on the ship. But we were shot down by Swinglis*. We had no choice where we landed.”

“I didn't ask you if you had any choice,” the middle judge said. “I asked if you did land on the aforesaid fair grounds.”

“Suppose I did,” Bill said. “I'm talking hypothetically now.”

“Duly noted,” said the middle judge, his left eye drooping characteristically.

“Well then, if I did land on the fair grounds, first of all I had nothing to do with it, second of all, nobody was hurt, so I plead let's forget it and I'll get back to my military people.”

“Nobody was hurt?” the middle judge said with a snort. “What about the slugs?”

“What slugs?”

“The slugs that had been assembled for the slug judging contest, that's what slugs.”

“Yeah, well what about them?”

“Your ship crushed the slug sectioner where the slugs were sleeping.”

“You mean we slushed the slug sectioner,” Bill said, breaking into uncontrollable laughter as a human is apt to do when he makes a bad joke in extremely uptight surroundings. “Anyhow, I'll pay for the damage. Or Duo will. How much will it cost to truck in another load of slugs?”

“He tries to make light of it,” the middle judge remarked to the left judge behind his hand.

“Yet there might be merit in what he says.”

“What of the embarrassment to Horsley?”

“And anyhow, are the slugs replaceable?”

“Not that lot, no.”

“Obviously not that lot. I mean another lot that would represent a fair and more than fair exchange?”

“Hard to say. You know as well as I do how hard it is to pick a truckload of really good-looking fat old slugs, especially now with the dry season coming on.”

“And there's still the insult to Horsley to be considered.”

“I would feel more sympathetic to Horsley's plight,” the right judge said, his eyelid having just stopped fluttering, “if he weren't the sort of bloke whom someone would have hit with a friendship-stopper long ago if this were the bad old days.”

“It's true,” the middle judge said. “Nothing sympathetic about Old Horsley. What do you say we let the prisoner off with a reprimand?”

“I suppose that would be all right,” the left judge said, “though it seems a bit of heavy punishment.”

“He made jokes,” the middle judge pointed out.

“So he did. Yes, let it be a reprimand?”

They turned to the other judge. “And how say you?”

“Eh?” the other judge said.

“We're voting for a reprimand.”

“Well jolly good,” the other judge said. “And let it be a severe one. Prisoner do you accept the judgment?”

“Sure I do,” Bill said, thinking that these were the nicest aliens he had met in a long time, and a whole lot more civilized and sophisticated in their justice system than many he could think of, including his own people.

“Very well,” the middle judge said. “Bailiff! Bring in the reprimand!”

Afterward, Bill couldn't believe how silly he had been to accept the reprimand like that without finding out exactly what it was. Alien races were alien and sneaky, that had been drilled into him by the military. Along with a lot of other things that he was trying to forget. They had long preached distrust of everyone who was not like them. Since there were few potbellied and prematurely bald races in the universe, this meant they distrusted everyone. The Swinglis* had an especially bad reputation. “Swindlers, that's what I call them,” Bill's old sergeant Assbreaker had told him at basic at Fort Ziggurat where Bill had been sent for a repeater course in case he had forgotten how to scream during bayonet drill. “I call them Swindlers and that's what they are. And I'll tell you something else, too. They can't take a joke.”

Bill had seen that for himself. But he hadn't expected the unexpected nature of the reprimand. When they wheeled out the white cart with the black velvet cloth on it, he had felt like laughing again. It was just like the Swinglis* to deliver a reprimand on black velvet. But his laughter died with a squawk as the bailiff, at a signal from the middle judge, carefully folded back the black velvet and revealed beneath it what looked at first like a tiny ornamental scarab. Then guards seized and held him as the bailiff held the glittering little thing close to his ear. This was no laughing matter. Bill tried to pull down the whole bunch of them, and came close to succeeding, since his short and muscular frame was able to play merry hell with the eccentrically tall and badly-proportioned Swinglis* — one more reason, by the way, why the Swinglis* always suspect people of laughing at them. But he couldn't take them all out. They held him as the bailiff extended the glittering scarab-like creature toward his ear.