Coventry
Coventry
‘Have you anything to say before sentence is pronounced on you?’ The mild eyes of the Senior Judge studied the face of the accused. His question was answered by a sullen silence.
‘Very well-the jury has determined that you have violated a basic custom agreed to under the Covenant, and that through this act did damage another free citizen. It is the opinion of the jury and of the court that you did so knowingly, and aware of the probability of damage to a free citizen. Therefore, you are sentenced to choose between the Two Alternatives.’
A trained observer might have detected a trace of dismay breaking through the mask of indifference with which the young man had faced his trial. Dismay was unreasonable; in view of his offence, the sentence was inevitable-but reasonable men do not receive the sentence.
After waiting a decent interval, the judge turned to the bailiff. ‘Take him away.’
The prisoner stood up suddenly, knocking over his chair. He glared wildly around at the company assembled and burst into speech.
‘Hold on!’ he yelled. ‘I’ve got something to say first!’ In spite of his rough manner there was about him the noble dignity of a wild animal at bay. He stared at those around him, breathing heavily, as if they were dogs waiting to drag him down.
‘Well?’ he demanded, ‘Well? Do I get to talk, or don’t I? It ‘ud be the best joke of this whole comedy, if a condemned man couldn’t speak his mind at the last!’
‘You may speak,’ the Senior Judge told him, in the same unhurried tones with which he had pronounced sentence, ‘David MacKinnon, as long as you like, and in any manner that you like. There is no limit to that freedom, even for those who have broken the Covenant. Please speak into the recorder.’
MacKinnon glanced with distaste at the microphone near his face. The knowledge that any word he spoke would be recorded and analyzed inhibited him. ‘I don’t ask for records,’ he snapped.
‘But we must have them,’ the judge replied patiently, ‘in order that others may determine whether, or not, we have dealt with you fairly, and according to the Covenant. Oblige us, please.’
‘Oh-very well!’ He ungraciously conceded the requirement and directed his voice toward the instrument. ‘There’s no sense in me talking at all-but, just the same, I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen…You talk about your precious “Covenant” as if it were something holy. I don’t agree to it and I don’t accept it. You act as if it had been sent down from Heaven in a burst of light. My grandfathers fought in the Second Revolution-but they fought to abolish superstition…not to let sheep-minded fools set up new ones.
‘There were men in those days!’ He looked contemptuously around him. ‘What is there left today? Cautious, compromising “safe” weaklings with water in their veins. You’ve planned your whole world so carefully that you’ve planned the fun and zest right out of it. Nobody is ever hungry, nobody ever gets hurt. Your ships can’t crack up and your crops can’t fail. You even have the weather tamed so it rains politely after midnight. Why wait till midnight, I don’t know…you all go to bed at nine o’clock!
‘If one of you safe little people should have an unpleasant emotion-perish the thought! -You’d trot right over to the nearest psychodynamics clinic and get your soft little minds readjusted. Thank God I never succumbed to that dope habit. I’ll keep my own feelings, thanks, no matter how bad they taste.
‘You won’t even make love without consulting a psychotechnician-Is her mind as flat and insipid as mine? Is there any emotional instability in her family? It’s enough to make a man gag. As for fighting over a woman-if any one had the guts to do that, he’d find a proctor at his elbow in two minutes, looking for the most convenient place to paralyze him, and inquiring with sickening humility, “May I do you a service, sir?”
The bailiff edged closer to MacKinnon. He turned on him. ‘Stand back, you. I’m not through yet.’ He turned and added, ‘You’ve told me to choose between the Two Alternatives. Well, it’s no hard choice for me. Before I’d submit to treatment, before I’d enter one of your little, safe little, pleasant little reorientation homes and let my mind be pried into by a lot of soft-fingered doctors-before I did anything like that, I’d choose a nice, clean death. Oh, no-there is just one choice for me, not two. I take the choice of going to Coventry-and glad of it, too…I hope I never hear of the United States again!