Authors: John Brunner
There were TV lights in the courtroom. They would be transmitting the case live, all over the country. The precedent had been set years ago in Denver, but the Watkins case was recorded and edited for broadcasting. This was being covered like the Army-McCarthy hearings, only more so. It was going to have a colossal audience despite its daytime slot. It didn't seem right for the networks to be putting on old movies and repeats of comedy shows when the nation was on a war footing. (One said carefully: "war footing." Because there was no enemy yet to throw the big bombs at.)
Moreover, the networks were glad of the chance to economize.
Some of the wealthiest sponsors had had to withdraw support. Who was buying cars at the moment? Who was selling insurance?
The country, so to speak, was idling. Industries were closed down all over, either through sabotage or because they were intrinsically non-productive, like advertising. Men, if fit, had been drafted. But millions upon millions of women were at home, not out shopping or visiting friends, because of rationing and the economy drive. There was gasoline only on a permit. There was a policeman or National Guardsman on the corner with a gun, ready to check the permit. There was TV, though, and "in the national interest" the major networks were today going to pool their facilities.
So the number of viewers would be fantastic.
Great, Roland Bamberley thought as he steered his son in the wake of the armed guards clearing a way through the pressmen before the courthouse. Well, pillory the bastard the way he deserves. Even the president, we know, will be watching.
He sneezed and apologized to Hector, hoping his mask had trapped the germs.
Great, Peg thought, taking her place among the reporters, rubbing her arm where she had received an obligatory injection. Against the new flu, the medic on the door had said, but not to put too much faith in it because it had been rushed into production.
She'd managed to see Austin. Just for a few minutes. And she wasn't worried any more about him being crazy.
She wasn't sure even yet what bombshell he had up his sleeve. She was convinced, though, that his purpose in refusing to cooperate, to apply for bail, to engage a lawyer, must be a valid one. He had dropped one clue; when she told him what she'd just learned about Decimus's fate, he gave a faint smile and commented that at least in jail he wasn't exposed to that kind of risk. And that was that. But it was enough.
It hadn't occurred to her before, but it had now crossed her mind that maybe things were going the way he wanted, the right way. And that being so he was safer in prison than out.
She'd know soon, anyhow, and so would the world. If only Zena could be here! And Felice! But Felice was too sick and Zena was in jail. Widow of a famous Trainite.
That would be put right when they tore down the jails.
The judge took his place, trying not to scowl at the TV lights because he knew he was the star of the show. He looked out over the court: prosecuting attorney (nod), lawyer appointed by the state to defend Train who hated his client anyway and had learned to detest him even more owing to his obstinate non-cooperation, press, TV
commentator murmuring into his mike, prospective jurors…
"Is everything in order?" he asked the clerk. "Then let the prisoner be brought in."
Meekly into the box, amid a rustle and buzz as people half rose to stare at him.
"Who's that?" Hector Bamberley asked his father.
"What do you mean, 'who's that?""
The prosecuting attorney twisted in his seat. "What did Hector say?
I didn't quite catch it."
The judge, poised to launch the proceedings, noticed the conversation and frowned his disapproval. TV cameras were closing on Hector and his father, while another remained fixed on Austin. The judge coughed to attract attention back to him, which was foolish; it was a good thirty seconds before he was in a state to talk clearly again, and by then Austin had said in a clear voice, well carried by the microphones, "Your honor, if that's Hector Bamberley over there, perhaps you'd ask if he's ever seen me before. My name, of course, is Austin Train."
Someone booed from the back of the court. Gasping, the judge said, "Be quiet! I must make one thing clear from the very outset-I will not tolerate any disturbances during this trial!"
"But that's not Austin Train!" Hector shouted. He looked as though he was about to cry. "I never saw him in my life!"
There was a moment of astonished silence. Then Peg, deliberately, gave a giggle. A nice loud one. It was echoed.
"Quiet!" the judge snapped. She received glares from all sides and one of the armed ushers moved menacingly toward her. She subsided.
"Now, young man," the judge said in an avuncular tone, "I realize this trial is a great strain for you after all you've been through, but I assure you your chance to speak-"
"I
won't
shut up!" Not to the judge; to his father who was trying to keep him in his seat. Forcing himself to his feet, he went on, "Sir, that isn't in the least like the man who locked me up. That one was fatter, with lots of hair, brown teeth, no glasses, always dirty-"
"But you said you were kidnapped by Austin Train!" his father roared.
"That's not him!" Hector cried.
It looked as though the judge might be going to faint; a camera zoomed in on him as he briefly shut his eyes. Recovering, to the accompaniment of a hubbub of comment in the court as well as the coughs and snuffles which were so continual now in any public place it would have seemed uncanny for them to stop, he said, "Am I to understand that this boy has never been confronted with the accused?"
A hasty consultation. Then: "Your honor, a recess please!"
"Denied!" the judge said without hesitation. "This is the most extraordinary, I may say the most ridiculous case of confusion I have ever encountered in nearly twenty years. I'm waiting for an answer to my question!"
Everyone looked toward the Bamberleys. Eventually Roland rose, very stiffly, like an old man.
"Well, your honor, in view of the strain on my son-and he's barely recovered even now from all the disgusting diseases he was given…"
"I see," the judge said. "
I
see. Who is responsible for this incredible piece of incompetence?"
"Well, your honor," the prosecuting attorney said, looking dazed as though the sky had just fallen on him, "he did positively identify pictures of Train-"
"I said yes to make you stop badgering me!" Hector flared. "You were worse than the people who kidnapped me, the way you kept on and on!"
By this time the court was in uproar; the boy's voice could scarcely be heard. Peg was jigging up and down in her seat with sheer delight.
Oh, shame to have suspected Austin of being crazy! They built the pillory and here they're in it themselves!
"Order!" the judge shouted, rapping with his gavel, and the noise died away little by little. Obviously everyone present wanted some sort of explanation as much as he did.
"Now!" he continued when he had the chance. "Am I to understand that you, Hector, identified this man from photographs?"
"Oh, they kept on showing me photographs all right," was the sullen answer. "They said he could have been wearing a wig, couldn't he?
They said he worked as a garbage-man-wouldn't that make him dirty?
So in the end I said, yes, yes, yes, just to make them leave me alone!"
He sat down suddenly and buried his face in his hands. At his side his father stood, frozen and pale as a marble statue.
"Your honor!" Austin said suddenly. The judge turned as though so bewildered he would accept help from any quarter.
"What is it?"
Peg clenched her fists because if she didn't keep control she feared she might scream like a teenager at a Body English concert. There had been a-a ring to those last two words. Something of the timbre which had been in his voice when he converted Petronella Page. Was he going to get a chance now to speak to all the millions watching?
"Your honor, I gather you'd welcome an explanation of the way this laughable situation has arisen."
"I do indeed want an explanation!" the judge rasped. "And certainly it ought to come from you! You've sat in jail with your mouth shut when a single word could have saved us this-this farce!" And he added, "But be brief!"
"I'll try, your honor. Briefly, then, it's because even though my prosecutors knew there are some two hundred people who've adopted my name, they were so eager to crucify me they ignored the fact and so stupid they didn't bother to show me to Hector."
"Train!" The judge was on the verge of explosion. "Silence! This is a court of law, not a forum for your treasonable mouthings!"
"I have kept quiet in face of even a prejudgment by the president!"
Austin barked. "I'll leave it to the American public to decide what justice I'd have received from a judge who accuses me of treason-which I'm not on trial for!"
"Made it!" Peg whooped, discovering to her surprise that she was out of her seat and waving despite the orders of an armed man to sit down. She obeyed, contentedly enough. Now he was over the watershed; if they cut him off at this point, literally millions and millions of people would be demanding why, and prepared to do something about it.
And the judge knew it. His face had gone paper-white, and his mouth was working as though he was about to throw up. Suddenly, without warning, he left his chair and stormed out of the court. There was commotion in his wake.
Austin waited, his hands on the bar of the box. At length he murmured to the microphone nearest him, "I think most people would like to hear what I have to say, even if the judge is afraid to."
"Oh, I love you! I love you!" Peg whispered. She felt tears coursing down her cheeks. It was the most spectacular theatrical gesture she had ever seen: Petronella Page's treatment of the studio audience amplified to the tenth power. She tried to shout, "Yes, go on!" But her voice was lost somewhere in the depths of her throat It didn't matter. There were fifty other shouts to compensate.
"Thank you, my sick friends," Austin said as the cameras closed on him. "Poisoned, diseased, and now about to be starved as well…No, I'm not joking; I wish I were. And above all, I wasn't joking when I spoke of the people who have put me on trial as being stupid.
"That is the worst thing they have done to you: damaged your intelligence. And it's small consolation that now they are doing it to themselves.
"Those charges that the intelligence of people in this country is being undermined by pollution are all true-if they weren't, do you think I'd be here, the wrong man, the man who didn't kidnap Hector Bamberley?
Who could have been so
silly
?"
There was laughter. Nervous, drive-away-the-ghosts laughter.
"And because of that"-he drew himself up straight-"at all costs, to me, to anyone,
at all costs
if the human race is to survive, the forcible exportation of the way of life invented by these stupid men must…be…
stopped
."
His voice suddenly rose to a roar.
"The planet Earth can't afford it!"
He's got them, Peg thought. I never believed he'd do it. But he's got them. Christ, that cameraman: he's shaking, shaking from head to foot!
In a moment he's going to weep like Petronella did!
"Our way of life," Austin said, resuming a conversational tone.
"Yes…You're aware that we're under martial law? It's been claimed that we're at war, that at Denver we suffered a sneak chemical attack.
As a matter of fact, the stuff that caused the Denver Madness is a military psychotomimetic based on the ergot that infects rye, known by the US Army code 'BW', manufactured on an experimental basis at Fort Detrick, Maryland, from 1959 to 1963, stored at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal until the latter year, and then disposed of in steel drums in an abandoned silver mine. Are you interested in hearing what happened to it?"
He grinned suddenly; it made his newly bald head resemble the skull of one of the Trainite symbols they had-for a very short time-marketed for people to hang on their gates, three-dimensional in sterile plastic.
"Well, shortly before Christmas last year, one of the now frequent earthquakes in that area ruptured the first of the drums. Its contents leaked into the water-table serving the wells at the Bamberley Hydroponics Plant. As far as I've been able to discover, only one American citizen died from that contamination, my late friend Decimus Jones. Hearing he was about to make a trip to California, an acquaintance of his made him a present of some Nutripon filched from the factory. Part of the same batch that went to Noshri and San Pablo!
He went insane, and he died.
"You now know who started the war in Honduras, by the way."
Quite distinctly, Peg heard several people say, "So that's what happened!"
"Later there was another earthquake. It must have broken open not one but scores of the drums containing BW. So now you know about Denver and the Madness, too. You know why you're eating scant rations, why you're forbidden to travel freely, why you're at risk of being stopped and searched by any soldier who dislikes your face. The other thing you should know concerns the
jigras.
They weren't made deliberately resistant for use as a weapon against us! They simply learned the technique of biological adaptation. Any of you had trouble lately with fleas? Lice? Roaches? Mosquitoes?"
Roland Bamberley was sitting silent, Peg realized suddenly, when he should by rights have been on his feet screaming. Why? She glanced at him, and saw that his face was perfectly rigid, his eyes were shut, and he was clutching his right arm.
But no one was making any move to help him, though he was obviously in such pain he had almost fainted. What could be wrong?
And then she forgot about that. Austin was talking again.
"I could have said most of this months ago, all in fact except the story of Decimus Jones. Indeed, I was going to. On the Page show, as you'll recall. But then, when I realized what was going to happen to me, I decided I was better advised to wait. One more thing remained to be done.