“So much for Simmons’s plan,” Caird said. “But what’s it going to do about the ASF? That’s something the public isn’t going to let loose without a hell of a struggle.”
“The government has admitted that it was in error about that. The ASF has been found to be what you claimed it was. Therefore, ASF will be given to any citizen who wants it. You can bet your life that no one is going to refuse it. A lot of citizens resent not having it when they were younger, and they blame the immers for keeping ASF to themselves. I understand—the prosecuting attorney told me this—that you’ve lost a lot of sympathy from the public because you were part of the elitist conspiracy to keep it from the public.”
“There was a good reason for that,” Caird said.
“Try justifying it to those who feel cheated. You can include me among them. My life span is going to be lengthened, but it’d have been lengthened much more if I’d had ASF when I was twenty-one.”
“Feeling that way, maybe you shouldn’t be my lawyer.”
“I’m a professional,” Bearss said. “Anyway, you won’t be charged with concealing ASF and keeping it from use for the public good. So, I’m not involved with that particular element of this case. It’s the public that’ll be condemning you for that, not the government.”
“Then the revolution is a lost cause?”
Bearss smiled as if he took pleasure in answering. “No, it’s not. You started something that may have lost momentum in certain respects. But the people are still aroused. You see, the Council has also admitted that the world population is, in fact, as you claimed, only two billion, not ten billion. The head of the Bureau of Population Data and some of his higher officials have been charged with conspiracy to deceive the government and the people with false data.”
“For God’s sake!” Caird said. “Things have been happening fast!”
“Much faster than they should given the normal slowness of events,” Bearss said. He smiled wickedly. “Obviously, it’s…”
“A setup!” Caird said.
Bearss looked a trifle annoyed at having been interrupted.
“What can I do? If I accuse the government of this, I’ll be put on trial while I’m theoretically trying the government. I won’t be able to prove a thing, and I’ll end up as a rehab.”
Bearss shrugged. “I’m a cynic. All lawyers are cynics. It wasn’t the practice of law that made me a cynic. I was born one. Only cynics go into law.”
After a short silence, Caird said, “Snick was framed by the government—or maybe by Ananda alone—to keep her mouth shut and cover up fraud by the government. That won’t be brought up during her trial, of course.”
“If she insists on telling about it despite the court’s orders not to, she’ll be taken back to her cell.”
“But the public will be viewing the entire trial procedures. They’ll hear her initial objections.”
“Not more than a few words. The sound will be turned off, and the public won’t hear more than the beginning of her protests. That’s legal, since the court will deem her statements irrelevant. She’ll be taken away and kept in her room until she agrees to stick to only what the court says is relevant. If she refuses, the trial will go on without her. She’ll still have the right to watch the trial on TV, but she won’t be able to testify.”
“The others? Simmons? The Cloyds?”
“The same. Charged with conspiracy to subvert the government and illegal flight from Los Angeles to Zurich. The filming of the chaining of the conspirators to Sin Tzu’s monument, by the way, has been displayed worldwide. The government has freely permitted it. It’s smart. It knew that the public was going to see it illegally, and it wanted to avoid accusations of free speech-and-viewing suppression.”
Caird shook his head in wonder. “The murder charges against us have been dropped?”
“The government doesn’t need them to convict you. It’s also afraid that it might not be able to prevent testimony which would reveal that it itself isn’t innocent. Murder is the most serious charge on the books, and it might be difficult to insist on irrelevancy in this matter.”
“Do you advise that I plead guilty immediately?”
25
“Well,” Bearss said slowly. “Your case is unique and unusually difficult. Difficult for the government, that is. Your ability to resist TM is well-known. It’s claimed that you can lie when under it even though you’re unconscious.”
“True,” Caird said.
“The court knows this has been established, but you’ll have to be TMed again to establish that you have not lost that ability. I’ll insist, as is our right, that the test be witnessed by myself and several others, scientists whom I know, or rather believe, to be objective. The test will be filmed, of course. That puts the government in a quandary. To prove you’re lying, it’ll have to ask you certain questions about certain items. These have to be events which the government knows did exist. For example, you did attack the power centers. You’ll admit this. There’s no sense in your lying about them.
“You’ll also be asked if certain things happened which did not happen. You’ll deny that these did happen.
“You won’t be questioned about anything which happened in your previous personae. The repetition of the TM test will establish that you do not remember these. Or, at least, very little of them and nothing legally significant.
“It won’t question you about any period of your life except that starting with your escape from the Manhattan institution. That period of time after you had created the persona you thought of as Duncan.”
Bearss pulled the chair closer. His nose was only a few inches from Caird’s. His smile looked like the half-moon.
“Heretofore, the report on the TM interrogation has always been the basis of conviction. If the TM showed that the prisoner was innocent, the court automatically decreed the innocence and release of the prisoner. If the TM showed that the prisoner was guilty, the opposite was decreed.
“But, for the first time, a person has been accused of crimes who can deny his guilt even if he’s guilty. I’ll be presenting that to the court, and they know I will. They have to be working on that problem right now. I’ll insist that your case is unprecedented. Therefore, new precedents will have to be decided upon, and these will become law. Your case will be delayed until these are settled.”
“Will that do me any good in the long run?” Caird said. “Won’t they have to revert to the ancient system of trial by jury? Decide on the basis of evidence?”
“Yes, they will. But it won’t matter in the end. There’s no doubt that you did steal an organic airboat and destroyed the power centers. The court judges will try to make your admission of guilt while under TM to be sufficient. They’ll consider that admission to be enough to conduct the trial very quickly and under present law. But I’ll insist that you have the ability to lie when TMed. The fact that you admitted to the destruction will then have no bearing on your guilt or innocence. There must then be a trial even though everybody knows that you are guilty.”
Caird said, “I’m going to let you in on a secret if you’ll pass it on to the lawyers defending Snick and Simmons and the others.”
Bearss hummed, cocked his head, roiled his eyes, and grimaced. Then he said, “All right. I promise.”
“I’m not the only one who can lie under TM. My ability is natural. But Simmons, Snick, all those on trial—they’ve been injected with anti-TM.”
Bearss rose from the chair as if he had suddenly been made weightless. “What?!”
“All of us,” Caird said. “And that anti-TM is being distributed throughout the OMC and God knows how many other organizations.”
Bearss began pacing back and forth, his hand on his nose. “Blackstone preserve us!”
“Who?”
“Blackstone was an ancient English jurist. Never mind. My God! Do you realize the implications of this? Of course you do! You’ll all have to be tried according to the ancient rules of trial by jury, by
a panel of judges, anyway. And this anti-TM, it’s going to become public knowledge some day. The people are going to demand it, and they’ll get it lawfully or not. Think what that’s going to do to the judicial system!”
Though he had been startled by the news, he did not seem to be displeased. Caird understood his reaction. This development was going to make more work for the lawyers and a demand for more lawyers.
“You know,” Bearss said, his hands now rubbing each other, “you’ll be a martyr. But you can console yourself knowing that you have begot a revolution. Eventually, the New Era system will have to be abolished. The ASF is going to cause tremendous social, psychological, and population changes. The anti-TM is going to alter our legal and judicial setup considerably. I can foresee a lot of changes, but there’ll be many no one’ll be able to predict. Not even their godly computers.”
“It’s not a great consolation,” Caird said. “To know you’ve caused interesting times doesn’t salve the sorrow of knowing you won’t share in the excitement.”
“We must always try to make the best of it,” Bearss said. He sat down again. “Now. I think you should plead innocent. Make them work a little and put off the sentencing. Don’t you agree?”
“Innocent it is,” Caird said.
“Your mental stability, if you’ll pardon my using that term, will be entered for consideration by the court. It should moderate the severity of your sentence.”
“Nothing doing,” Caird said. “That’s a copout, a betrayal of all I’ve fought for. I forbid you to use that excuse.”
“Very well, though I believe that you’re throwing away your chances to get out lightly. In any event, you’ll be going to a rehab unit. The government’s reasoning is that, if you’re antisocial, you must be a psychopath, or, at least, highly neurotic. Since the government determines whether or not a psychicist’s recommendation that a patient be released as cured is to be honored…”
He raised his hands, palms up. “You might be in for a long, long time. You might even be judged incurable and, thus, will be gorgonized.”
“That may be. Do you know what really burns me? I voluntarily became an immer. But Snick, she was just doing her job, yet she got railroaded because of it. No one but a wimp would’ve accepted the injustice, and she’s anything but that. Of course she became an outlaw! Wouldn’t you?”
Bearss gingerly felt the bulbous end of his nose as if he had just discovered a strange growth.
“It’s possible that the bench, if it has a conscience, will consider that. But that depends on whether or not the judges know the circumstances of her illegal punishment. They probably haven’t been made privy to that data. And there’s no way it’s going to come out in court.”
“If I ever get free,” Caird said, “I’m going to make it my life’s work to make sure that, one way or another, everybody will learn the truth about her. She’ll be redeemed somehow or other!”
“You’re an ever-bubbling pisspot,” Bearss said. “But when you get into trouble again, hire me. I admire you, though I don’t necessarily condone everything you’ve done.”
He stopped walking. “We’re agreed on your plea?”
“You don’t have to ask again.”
“I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”
He spoke a codeword to the wall. A pictureless screen glowed into life.
“We’re through conferring,” he said. “You may TM my client now.”
“They’ll be here to start the questioning in a few seconds,” he said. “It’s just a formality to validate…”
“I know. I heard you the first time,” Caird said.
“I’ll be here throughout the procedure to protect you against any hanky-panky. Two supposedly objective psychicists will also be present.”
“Remember your promise.”
The general, three officers, two psychicists, and the TM specialist entered. Duncan stretched out on the sofa as ordered. The specialist, a middle-aged woman, sprayed the mist in his face. He went down into the blackness with his answers prepared. Any questions they might ask which he had not reviewed in his mind would not matter. Somehow, his unconscious took over and replied as he would if he were awake.
This time, his mind was not as blank as if he had been stoned. He dreamed.
He knew that he was dreaming. He also knew that he was doing what he had not considered doing and did not want to do.
Something, some thing, was taking him over. He was helpless to stop it. He, who had always been in supreme control of himself, except for that one time in Manhattan, was governed by an entity or some rebellious part of himself.
Like it or not, and he certainly did not, he was shaping a new persona.
He struggled against the powerful strands that enfolded him as if he were a fly in a spider’s web.
The night within became edged with a pale violet light, though there were, in actuality, no edges. It was dawn without a sun unless it could be said that the sun was his brain. The light slowly spread outwards—at the same time, inwards—until the darkness was violet except for a ragged block as dark as basalt in the center which was no center. But the edges of the field became agitated. They were pulsations of a slightly more dark violet, and they flickered into cone shapes, square shapes, and sawtoothed shapes. They were, he knew dimly, his other personae trying to break through. This was when he was consciously trying to shape a new persona, his moment of greatest strength and also his weakest.
Faint voices came up from where there was no up. He recognized them despite their thinness. The original Caird, Tingle, Dunski, Repp, Ohm, Zurvan, and Isharashvili. Last to speak was Duncan. He could not hear what they were saying, but he understood their tones. They were full of rage and frustration and demands that they be allowed to live fully and to possess this body and mind. That was impossible. Only one could live in full ownership and control of this flesh-house born as Caird.
At that moment he thought, I have to kill them all.
The black thing in the center started to bleed color—violet—and to dwindle. It was melting away while the violet field around it became darker and the shapes on the edges swelled, and the voices became stronger. He strove to push back the menacing shapes. The only voice whose words he could make out was that of Duncan, and that was because he was still Duncan. Partly Duncan, anyway. This was the main battle. He became panicky. He realized that if he did not win this fight, he might lose forever. Somehow, those others knew that he was in a very precarious situation and was now very fragile and open.
He gritted his mental teeth. A voice unheard yet powerful rippled the violet field. The shapes on the edges, ever growing, were thrown back, compressed, as if a foot were stepping on them, were whirled around, and then were jammed below the rim of the vision that was not vision.
The voice was not that of God, certainly, but it was like the voice that roared down from Mount Sinai to the trembling Moses. It was one that would not brook nay-saying. It was—whoever he was going to become—speaking like a volcano in full eruption.
The edges were still flickering. The shapes were going away. Darkness was spreading from them, and the flickering was not from the violet but from the slowly oozing outwards—and inwards—of darkness. The black thing in the center was dripping away, a candle burning with spurts of nonlight.
He was losing the battle with himself.
A thought like a ghost floating down the corridor of an ancient castle, an invisible but felt presence, crossed the violet.
His time was short.
That did not mean what it would have meant if he had been in full contact with the exterior world. Time was a concept very difficult to understand here. Yet, it filtered through and brushed across him, the wings of a moth on the face of a sleeper. The touch and the soft residue of moth-powder left behind did not awaken him to the sense of time. It stirred in him the dream of a dream of a dream. The idea of time thrice removed from outer reality.
This had to be done. He did not want it don
e.
This was being done.
Being…
The image in the center, black as the heart of a stone but soft as putty, had quit waning. The flecks of blackness he now saw rotating across the violet—like motes in the eye—were cast back onto the block. A black fire burned through him. The shape—the persona—concealed in that edgeless monolith, was beginning to emerge.
A face crossed both the dark field and the faintly violet block. It was that face which had shot by him before. The child’s face. Himself as a very young boy.
It was gone, leaving behind only ripples. It was like a chronon in a cloud chamber except that the face, unlike the time-wave particle itself, could be seen directly.
Ignoring the slowly dying effects, a curtain shaken by a breeze but still flapping, the image of Baker No Wiley, formed from the mass. It would look just like him, like all of the others.
Baker No Wiley? He had never heard that name before.
He was swelling. He was a balloon figure spreading out to block off all the violet light. When he shoved that light out, no rags, no tags, no wisps left, he would be here.
And he, Caird, would be gone.
This was the most painful and hardest act. To give himself up.
Screaming silently, “No! No! No!”, he was wrenched and twisted and aflame with pain.
But he—all his personae—could endure hurt and loss, though the amount of tolerance differed. When he had made Duncan, he thought, he must have been thinking of just this necessity. Duncan had a will of vanadium, hard, hard, hard. Still…