I asked him what he had to say for himself.
‘You’re the talker.’
I stood looking at him, saying nothing, trying to master my anger.
Finally he burst out in a torrent of words, saying that he had intended no harm, but could not get a proper hearing for his view, which everyone shared, that everyone hated my guts, that he was only acting on behalf of all, who wished to get back to normal life on Earth and not waste their time on ‘this miserable stone’. All he wanted was a decent life again…
‘So is your idea of a decent life to capture and threaten an innocent woman – to threaten to rape her and tear off her leg? You’re a coward and a brute, Feneloni, no less a coward and a brute because you do this on Mars rather than Earth. Isn’t it to guard against your kind that we try to set up decent rules to live by under our difficult conditions?’
‘Look, we were only scaring the girl.’
‘And were you in control of the situation? Violence of any kind releases baser instincts. Right now I’d like to beat your brains out, but we’ve tried to set up laws against that kind of thing. What the hell are we going to do about you? A course of mentatropy?’
He hunched his shoulders and hung his head.
I waited. ‘Well?’
After a long silence, he said, ‘Not mentatropy… I’m not the brute you take me for. There’s plenty worse than me. I don’t have your powers of speech. That doesn’t mean I don’t suffer. Why should we be ruled over by those with better powers of speech?’
I had no wish to talk with him, but forced myself to answer.
‘In every society so far there have been top dogs and underdogs. The question is how we here can make the gulf between them as narrow and as flexible as possible. Would you rather be ruled by those who have – as you put it – “better powers of speech”, or those who have the greater brute strength?’
He stared at the ground. After a pause he said, in a low voice, ‘It’s a stupid question. All men are supposed to be equal, but if they aren’t heard then they aren’t equal.’
‘You were heard and dismissed. I could give you an example of a man with great powers of speech – the academic called John Homer Bateson, who is laughed off whenever he addresses the audience. We know that all men are not equal, although it befits a government of any kind to attempt to behave as if they were.’
‘But you’re trying to establish your little government here, instead of busting a bracket to get us back to Earth.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, man. What leverage have we with Earth in its present state? Nothing’s going to get us home until the repercussions of the EUPACUS disaster clear up. Meanwhile we must do our best to live like humans.’
The alternatives were clear enough to me. Not to Feneloni. He said that all our committees and forums were a waste of time.
‘I’m not entering into a debate with you, Feneloni. Not only am I determined to establish a fair society, but I expect the intellectual exercise involved to protect us from violence and unrest.
‘Any scum determined to promote violence and unrest must be isolated, as if they had an infectious disease.’
‘No such thing as justice,’ he muttered, and hung his head again.
I waited. I was curious about the way his mind worked; I knew there was good in him.
After a silence, he said, ‘It’s all right for you. Some of us have families back on Earth. Kids.’
I gave him no reply, only wishing I could claim as much.
Feneloni looked up angrily. ‘Why don’t you speak, since you’re so good at it?’
‘You cannot be allowed to attack a young woman and go unpunished. Tomorrow we will hold a court to decide what that punishment should be. Probably a course of mentatropy. You will be allowed to speak in your defence.’
Turning on my heel, I left him. Afterwards I wished I had said that to be eloquent was not necessarily a virtue; but it implied orderly thought and, perhaps more than that, wide experience and knowledge. But such, of course, was the reward of privilege, if only genetic privilege. My own troubled boyhood came back to me.