That established the deed as a fact. There remained the question of whether the accused had consciously intended murder. As the clerk led Castle to the witness chair, the judge interrupted for the first time.
‘Donald!’
‘Yes, Mrs Gladshaw?’ the clerk said, turning.
‘Give this to the defence advocate, will you?’ She held out a folded document. ‘The police have asked me to put some additional questions not covered in the preliminary hearings – I believe they’re in order, but I’d like the advocate’s assent.’
A buzz of surprise went around the court. Glancing towards the public seats again, I saw the pale woman was now using her handkerchief to weep into. Definitely a relation or lover of Castle’s – at a pinch, she might even be his mother, for weeping made her look much older.
The advocate rose and gave back the document. His was a thankless task in such a case, I imagined; all he could do was advance mitigating circumstances.
‘Defence agrees that these questions are in order!’
‘Thank you. Now, Mr Castle…’
With unfailing politeness the judge posed the damning questions; Castle answered in a thin strained voice. Yes, it was reasonable to expect that the parasite would block the nostrils and mouth; yes, a man who couldn’t breathe would die; yes, he’d been aware of all this at the time in question.
I couldn’t hate him for what he’d done. He was more an object of pity, to my mind. Anyone whose mental horizons were so shrunken and deformed as his must be a miserable half-person.
And suddenly the judge asked, ‘Did you mean to kill Roald Vincent?’
The audience assumed an affirmative. Instead, Castle uttered a resigned, ‘No!’
The lie-detector stayed on the ‘true ‘ side. There was a murmur of bewilderment.
‘Did you in fact plan to make Miguel Torres the victim? You can see the man I mean in the witnesses’ row, next to the police sergeant.’
Castle didn’t look round. He merely muttered, ‘Yes …’
The defence advocate rose. ‘I’d respectfully remind the court that at this point the questions overlap with a public inquiry material germane to which is sub judice,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ the judge murmured. ‘I have no intention of pursuing this line further.’
I noticed that Micky was paying full attention for the first time. The reason was obvious; he didn’t want the Star-homers to get wind of our discovery that they were connected with the League until he felt the moment was ripe. But what had been said seemed to satisfy him, and he went back to his reading.
The defence advocate rose now and did his best; he painted a grim picture of an unhappy childhood and persecution by an unkind society. It was scarcely convincing, but it had to be taken into account by the court before sentence was passed.
The judge listened intently to every word. The public didn’t, and I could guess what was distracting them. Not once in the whole proceedings had the question come up of why Castle wanted to commit this murder.
I hoped no inspired guesswork would reveal the truth.
Finally the judge addressed Castle with the same politeness as throughout the afternoon.
‘Mr Castle, we hereby find that you did the act of which you are accused. We also find that you knew the probable consequences, and you likewise knew that doing something to bring about a man’s death is a crime known as murder, the penalties for which are public knowledge. In accordance with modern criminal codes, a person who does what you have done is regarded as insane, and for the safeguarding of society a course of action is prescribed from which I am not empowered to depart.
‘At any time in the next fifteen days you may appeal against the conduct of this trial; you may submit all or any part of the evidence to computer scrutiny and try to show that the cause of justice has not been properly served. Failing that, this court decrees that you shall be submitted to a form of psychotherapy that shall in the opinion of a qualified orthopsychic practitioner render you incapable of again committing a crime.’
She pushed back her chair.
‘The court is closed. Good afternoon to you all.’
And the pale woman in the front row of the public seats slid to the floor in a dead faint.
‘Your Inspector Klabund is a very subtle man,’ Micky said as we left the courthouse.
‘And the defence advocate must have been pretty ready to co-operate,’ I said.
‘Yes. I was wondering how they’d keep the League out of the evidence. But then of course I realized that it would follow automatically – they were only putting one man on trial, not an organization or a creed. A modern trial is really marvellously simple, isn’t it?’
‘It’d be a hell of a sight simpler,’ I countered sourly, ‘if human beings weren’t so complicated.’
He chuckled. ‘We’ve wanted absolute justice for about ten thousand years. Short of mind-reading, nothing will make the law much faster or more accurate than it is today. I can’t think of any way to improve it.’
If you can’t, I won’t bother to try. Speaking of mind-reading though, I realized while we were in there that I haven’t the slightest idea how a lie-detector works. I have this foggy notion, left over from when I was a kid, that it’s some sort of mechanical telepathy. And since we’ve been basing our legal system on it for about a century now, I think I ought to straighten myself out.’
‘Telepathy it certainly doesn’t use! Let me see – there was a girl I knew at Cambridge, reading criminal sociology, and she told me about lie-detectors … Oh yes. They measure the degree of congruence between the recollection and the utterance. It takes a certain additional effort to tell a lie. Of course they aren’t foolproof – one may be honestly mistaken, or under a post-hypnotic command. But modern psychology can decide whether a witness actually knows what he’s talking about before he’s called into court.’
He cocked his head. ‘Better than it was in the old days, Roald! There was a time when just about every statute on the books had another to contradict it, in some other country or even in the same country. Read up on it some time and you’ll see how lucky we are. Going back to the Bureau?’
I checked my watch. ‘Yes, I guess so – I can fit in a little work before quitting time.’
20
On reaching my office, however, I didn’t tackle my work at once. Instead, I called the Ark to inquire after the Tau Cetians. I couldn’t locate bin Ishmael, but I did speak to Gobind, the lab chief. Despite the black rings under his eyes testifying to the pressure under which he was still working, he sounded happy.
‘All but one of the five are back on their feet now. Dr bin Ishmael thinks we’ve sold them on the story of an accident due to negligence, and Shvast hasn’t said anything to indicate they think we’re deceiving them. Matter of fact, we intend to stage a little drama for them this evening – this atmosphere engineer who’s due for posting away will be “fired” under circumstances of maximum humiliation. Vroazh wanted to punish him rather barbarically, but Shvast argued that this might lower their degree of civilization in our eyes, and won him around to accepting our proposals. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble with them.’
‘Fine!’ I exclaimed in relief, and would have rung off but that he gestured for me to wait a moment.
‘Look, is there any way we can have the police taken off our backs?’
‘I don’t quite understand,’ I said.
‘Place is crawling with them. Something to do with this hybrid three-legged inquiry Klabund is running. They’re interviewing everyone who knew the Tau Cetians were housed in G Block, and the time they’re using up is appalling! Couldn’t I get someone at the Bureau to drop some heavy hints? Who should I ask?’
‘It’ll have to be Tinescu,’ I said. ‘Or you could try Indowegiatuk, I guess.’
‘She’s on the side of the police. Cantankerous old baggage … Well, thanks anyway. Maybe I will try Tinescu.’
His image faded. I reached for a wait
ing file. But I couldn’t concentrate on it. Once again something was irking the back of my mind – not the same thing which Klabund’s question had set skipping about my skull like a flea yesterday, but something else perhaps even more important.
Determined this time to get to the bottom of it, I shut my eyes and leaned back, marshalling a whole bunch of factors. Starhomer technical superiority … Martin van’t Hoff … the Algenib… the Tau Cetians… Kay…
No, that was taking it too far. I backtracked.
And suddenly I had it.
I sat bolt upright on my chair, my eyes wide open but taking in nothing. It was fantastic, but my rudimentary technical knowledge didn’t allow me to say it was impossible. Maybe it was better so – someone with proper technical training might have dismissed it out of hand.
I reached to the phone. ‘Get me Inspector Klabund!’ I exclaimed. ‘Priority!’
Fortunately he was in his office. Unfortunately he didn’t want to be interrupted: the screen reddened as the secretary-to-record circuit was overridden by my priority demand.
He scowled at me from the screen. ‘What is it, Mr Vincent? I’m up to my eyes at the moment!’
‘I’ve had an inspiration,’ I said. ‘You have the section of airpipe which was damaged in the attack on the Tau Cetians?’
‘Of course, it’s in our labs right now.’
‘I want you to go over the face of the pipe which was farthest from the wall. I think you’ll find another hole in it directly opposite the larger one.’
Klabund looked openly annoyed. ‘Mr Vincent, there isn’t such a hole! We’d have noticed it. I ordered it to be examined and it was examined – I’ve seen the report myself, and there’s only the one hole.’
‘Did they go over the pipe with a microscope?’
‘Looking for holes? Why in the world should they? A three-inch tear is big enough to do all the damage we have to account for!’
I shook my head. ‘Tell your forensic people to look again – this time, for a hole so small the naked eye doesn’t notice it.’
‘And if it’s there, what will it prove?’ Klabund snapped.
‘It will be the hole left by the projectile which tore open the pipe. A bullet, presumably.’
Klabund took a deep breath. ‘Mr Vincent, I don’t know how busy you are. Myself, I’m conducting an extensive and very complicated inquiry, and I have people screaming down my neck for quick results. Do you mind getting the hell off this phone?’
I hesitated, long enough to check on two facts in my mind’s eye: first, of course, whether I was confident of what I was saying. I decided I was.
Second, I ran through two little tables of rank-structure. Klabund’s went: inspector – superintendent – commissioner – Minister of Justice. Mine went: assistant – Chief of Bureau – Minister of Extra-Terrestrial Affairs. We were both government employees; I was one step nearer the top.
I said, ‘All right, do it your way. Inspector Klabund, I rank you. I order you to examine that pipe for such a hole as I have described.’
I’d never seen such a raw fury in a man’s face before. He broke the connexion with a gesture like a sword-thrust, and I immediately began to have second thoughts. It was too late to worry now, of course – the conversation would have been recorded, and if I proved to have pulled rank without good cause and wasted his valuable time, the least I could expect was a severe reprimand.
For the next fifteen minutes I was in an agony of suspense. I welcomed the buzz of the phone when it next came. Perhaps, I thought, Patricia was calling – she’d told me she was flying up to Alaska tonight to see her married sister, and she’d promised to say good-bye before leaving for the rocket-port.
But it wasn’t her. It was Klabund again, and so subdued I felt an enormous sinking weight of relief.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said without preamble. ‘I sent down to the lab, and they found the hole at once. It isn’t even microscopic – it’s about point zero five of an inch across. Some blockhead decided it wasn’t worth looking at closely because it was so small! Now they have examined it, though, it turns out to look exactly like a miniature bullet-hole. How in the galaxy did you know it had to be there?’
I conquered my jubilation and remembered to ask him to turn on his scrambler.
‘I don’t think they can be blamed, inspector,’ I said. ‘They were looking for something to make an exit hole three inches across, weren’t they? And since they’d ruled out explosives or atomics, they’d also ruled out a connexion with this tiny hole.’
‘But I thought you said this was made by the projectile! In that case, we’re going to have to bring atomics back into consideration—’
‘No, you won’t.’ I launched my own bombshell with some pride. ‘It was a bullet of condensed matter.’
‘Mr Vincent, I thought you were on the social assay side, not the technical side. I’ve heard of condensed matter as a theoretical possibility, but I didn’t know it had been made yet.’
‘Hear me out. You know it was a ship built at Starhome which brought the Tau Cetians here? Well, I’ve been told unofficially’ – a fine way of dressing-up Martin van’t Hoff’s guesswork, I glossed mentally – ‘that the design breakthrough which that ship represents implies a means of directly manipulating electron orbits.
‘If you can do that, you can presumably condense matter. Consult your ballistics section; I think they’ll agree that a shot whose inertia was so large compared to its size would permit tremendous accuracy over very long distances. My view is that it was designed to expand to its normal volume when it struck the outer wall of the pipe. Moreover, it was made of some volatile compound that dissipated in the escaping gas – perhaps a substance soluble in chlorine but not in ordinary air. This accounts for your detectives not finding it when they came on the scene.
‘And another thing. This ties in with what I told you before – that the Starhomers are connected with the League. As far as we know, only on Starhome would anyone have the ability to make such bullets.’
Klabund was looking almost happy now. ‘Mr Vincent, I’m eternally grateful to you. A special kind of gun sounds like something concrete to try and trace – much more solid than an influx of money or propaganda, which is what we’re hunting for right now. I – I’m sorry I lost my temper with you.’
‘And I’m sorry to have pulled rank on you,’ I countered.
‘Oh, I understand you’re feeling the strain, same as I am. I don’t imagine the attempt on your life helped any. By the way’ – he glanced at something off-screen, and gave a wry smile – ‘we’ve got the man who supplied Castle with the parasite.’
‘That was fast work. Who was it?’
‘One of the Fellows in the Cambridge Faculty of Medicine. Name of Aristide Scarlatti, an extra-terrestrial biochemist. As a matter of fact, when we picked him up he’d just initiated a new research project involving a friend of yours, who’s with me now. Which of course is why I didn’t want to be interrupted. Anovel!’
He swung the phone around, and there was the Regulan perched on a high broad stool, his back-bent legs hanging down the far side. He nodded a greeting to me, ripples running down his yellow mane.
‘A pity about Scarlatti – he’s a brilliant man. But dreadfully mixed up in his mind! He’s pathologically convinced that my virtual immunity to anything which endangers a human life implies an insult to his own species. I’m surprised his psychosis hadn’t been noticed before.’
The phone swung back to show Klabund, very worried. ‘I’m afraid that’s so. Scarlatti appeared to be doing his best to – uh – penetrate that immunity.’
‘You mean find a way of killing Anovel?’ My head spun; this was the stuff of which we in the Bureau made our nightmares.
‘Bluntly, yes. Luckily Anovel has been most understanding about the whole nasty affair.’
‘Tell him that his – uh – employer on the zoo ship is going to find him a bad bargain,’ I said in a tone of forced lightness. ?
??And ask if he’d care to come over to my apartment for the evening, if he’s free.’
Klabund relayed the message, turning the phone again.
‘I’d be delighted,’ Anovel said. ‘May I have the address?’
I gave it, suggested he come at twenty hours, and rang off with my hands shaking. Immediately I called Tinescu, meaning to break the awful news.
But he’d already heard it.
‘It’s a disgraceful thing to have happened,’ he agreed. ‘But it was at least a Regulan who was concerned, not some more vulnerable creature.’
‘A pretty slim consolation!’ I snapped. ‘What’s a League sympathizer doing in alien biology, anyway? Trying to put his race-prejudice on a scientific footing?’
‘Possibly.’ Tinescu gave a glance at the clock in his office, out of range of the camera. ‘Don’t let it bother you, Roald. I’ve discussed it with Indowegiatuk, and the verdict is that now the harm’s done we can only rely on Anovel’s tolerance.’
‘He seemed amused, rather than annoyed,’ I conceded. ‘But it’s hard to know what those beasts are thinking … Anyhow, I did the first thing that came into my head: invited him to my apartment for the evening.’
‘What’s become of this woman who’s been monopolizing your evenings, then?’ Tinescu grunted.
‘Huh? Oh, Patricia!’ I forced a laugh. ‘She’s off to see her sister in Alaska.’
‘I thought there must be some special reason for your being on your own. Well, do your best with Anovel, but I don’t expect much from your meeting.’
‘Nor do L’ I frowned. ‘You know, Regulans worry me. I get the impression that it’s we who ought to be travelling in their zoo ships.’
‘Agreed! With their fantastic adaptability they seem tailor-made for interstellar colonization. Well, I must be off – dinner with the Minister again tonight.’ He sighed lugubriously, and cut the connexion.