‘But there is just one thing I want to ask you before I go-Why do you bother to live anyhow? I would think that anyone of you would welcome an end to your silly, futile lives just from sheer boredom. That’s all.’ He turned back to the bailiff. ‘Come on, you.’
‘One moment, David MacKinnon.’ The Senior Judge held up a restraining hand. ‘We have listened to you. Although custom does not compel it, I am minded to answer some of your statements. Will you listen?’
Unwilling, but less willing to appear loutish in the face of a request so obviously reasonable, the younger man consented.
The judge commenced to speak in gentle, scholarly words appropriate to a lecture room. ‘David MacKinnon, you have spoken in a fashion that doubtless seems wise to you. Nevertheless, your words were wild, and spoken in haste. I am moved to correct your obvious misstatements of fact. The Covenant is not a superstition, but a simple temporal contract entered into by those same revolutionists for pragmatic reasons. They wished to insure the maximum possible liberty for every person.
‘You yourself have enjoyed that liberty. No possible act, nor mode of conduct, was forbidden to you, as long as your action did not damage another. Even an act specifically prohibited by law could not be held against you, unless the state was able to prove that your particular act damaged, or caused evident danger of damage, to a particular individual.
‘Even if one should willfully and knowingly damage another-as you have done-the state does not attempt to sit in moral judgment, nor to punish. We have not the wisdom to do that, and the chain of injustices that have always followed such moralistic coercion endanger the liberty of all. Instead, the convicted is given the choice of submitting to psychological readjustment to correct his tendency to wish to damage others, or of having the state withdraw itself from him-of sending him to Coventry.
‘You complain that our way of living is dull and unromantic, and imply that we have deprived you of excitement to which you feel entitled. You are free to hold and express your esthetic opinion of our way of living, but you must not expect us to live to suit your tastes. You are free to seek danger and adventure if you wish-there is danger still in experimental laboratories; there is hardship in the mountains of the Moon, and death in the jungles of Venus-but you are not free to expose us to the violence of your nature.’
‘Why make so much of it?’ MacKinnon protested contemptuously. ‘You talk as if I had committed a murder-I simply punched a man in the nose for offending me outrageously!’
‘I agree with your esthetic judgment of that individual,’ the judge continued calmly, ‘and am personally rather gratified that you took a punch at him-but your psychometrical tests show that you believe yourself capable of judging morally your fellow citizens and feel justified in personally correcting and punishing their lapses. You are a dangerous individual, David MacKinnon, a danger to all of us, for we can not predict whet damage you may do next. From a social standpoint, your delusion makes you as mad as the March Hare.
‘You refuse treatment-therefore we withdraw our society from you, we cast you out, we divorce you. To Coventry with you.’ He turned to the bailiff. ‘Take him away.’
MacKinnon peered out of a forward port of the big transport helicopter with repressed excitement in his heart. There! That must be it-that black band in the distance. The helicopter drew closer, and he became certain that he was seeing the Barrier-the mysterious, impenetrable wall that divided the United States from the reservation known as Coventry.
His guard looked up from the magazine he was reading and followed his gaze. ‘Nearly there, I see,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Well, it won’t be long now.’
‘It can’t be any too soon for me!’
The guard looked at him quizzically, but with tolerance. ‘Pretty anxious to get on with it, eh?’
MacKinnon held his head high. ‘You’ve never brought a man to the Gateway who was more anxious to pass through!’
‘Mmm-maybe. They all say that, you know. Nobody goes through the Gate against his own will.’