“Hello again, Karen,” Nicole said quietly, stopping directly in front of the jurors. They were sitting in two rows of three seats each. “How are John and Marie? They must be teenagers by now.”
Mrs. Stolz squirmed in her seat. “They’re fine, Nicole,” she replied very softly.
Nicole smiled. “And do you still make those wonderful cinnamon rolls every Sunday morning?”
The crack of the gavel resounded through the courtroom. “Mrs. Wakefield,” Judge Nakamura said, “this is
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hardly the time for small talk. Your closing statement is limited to five minutes and the clock has already started.”
Nicole ignored the judge. She leaned across the barrier between her and the jury, her eyes focusing on a magnificent necklace around Karen Stolz’s neck. “The jewels are beautiful,” she said in a whisper. “But they would have paid much, much more.”
Again the gavel cracked. Two guards quickly approached Nicole, but she had already backed away from Mrs. Stolz. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Nicole said, “all this week you have listened as the prosecution has repeatedly insisted that I have incited resistance to the legitimate government of New Eden. For my putative actions I have been charged with sedition. You must now decide, on the basis of the evidence presented at this trial, if I am guilty. Please remember as you deliberate that sedition is a capital offense—a guilty verdict carries with it a mandatory death penalty.
“In my closing statement, I would like to examine carefully the structure of the prosecution’s case. The testimony on the first day, all of which was totally irrelevant to the charges against me and, 1 believe, was permitted by Judge Nakamura in clear violation of the colony codicils .covering testimony in capital offense trials—”
“Mrs. Wakefield,” Judge Nakamura angrily interrupted, “as I have told you before this week, I cannot tolerate such disrespectful comments in my courtroom. One more similar remark and I will not only cite you for contempt, I will also terminate your closing statement altogether.”
“That entire day, the prosecution attempted to show,that my sexual morality was questionable, and that therefore I was somehow a likely candidate to engage in political conspiracy,” Nicole continued, without so much as glancing at the judge. “Ladies and gentlemen, I would be happy to discuss privately with you the unusual circumstances associated with the conception of each of my six children. However, my sex life—past, present, or even future—has no bearing whatsoever on this trial. Except for its possible value as entertainment, that first day of testimony was absolutely meaningless.”
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There were a few titters in the packed gallery, but the guards quickly quieted the crowd. “The prosecution’s next set of witnesses,” Nicole continued, “spent many hours implicating my husband for seditious activities. I freely admit that I am married to Richard Wakefield. But his guilt—or lack of it, for that matter—is not of any importance at this trial either. Only evidence that purports to show me guilty of sedition is germane to your verdict here.
“The prosecution has suggested that my seditious acts originated with my involvement in the video that eventually resulted in the establishment of this colony. I acknowledge that I did help prepare the video that was transmitted from Rama to the Earth, but I categorically deny that I either conspired from the beginning with the aliens or in any way schemed with the extraterrestrials who built this spaceship against my fellow humans.
“I participated in the making of that video, as I indicated yesterday when I allowed the prosecutor to cross-examine me, because I felt I had no choice. My family and I were at the mercy of an intelligence and power far beyond anything any of us had ever imagined. There was a significant concern that failure to accede to their request for help with the video would have resulted in reprisals against us.”
Nicole returned to the defense table briefly and drank some water. She then turned around to face the jury again. “That leaves only two possible sources for any real evidence to convict me of sedition—my daughter Katie’s testimony and that strange audio recording, a disjointed collection of comments that I made to other members of my family after I was imprisoned, that you heard yesterday morning.
“You are all well aware how easily recordings like that can be twisted and manipulated. The two, key audio technicians both admitted yesterday on the witness stand that they had listened to hundreds of hours of conversation between my children and me before coming up with that thirty minutes of ‘damaging evidence,’ no more than eighteen seconds of which were taken from any single conversation. To say that my comments on that recording were presented out of context would be an understatement.
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“With respect to the testimony of my daughter Katie Wakefield, I can only say, with great sorrow, that she lied repeatedly in her original remarks. I have not ever had any knowledge of my husband Richard’s supposedly illegal activities and I have certainly never supported him in them.
“You recall that under cross-examination by me, Katie became confused about the facts and ultimately repudiated her earlier testimony before collapsing on the witness stand. The judge has advised you that my daughter has recently been in fragile mental health, and that you should ignore the comments she made under emotional duress during my questioning. I beseech you to remember every word that Katie said, not only when the prosecutor was asking her questions, but also during the time that I was trying to obtain the specific dates and places for the seditious actions that she had ascribed to me.”
Nicole approached the jurors one final time, carefully making eye contact with each of them. “Ultimately, you must judge where the truth lies in this case. I face you now with a heavy heart, disbelieving even as I stand here the events that have led to my being accused of these serious crimes. I have served both the colony and the human species well. I am not guilty of any of the charges against me. Whatever power or intelligence exists in this amazing universe will recognize that fact, regardless of the outcome of this trial.”
The outside light was fading quickly. A contemplative Nicole leaned against the wall in her cell, wondering if this would be the last night of her life. She shuddered involuntarily. Since the verdict had been announced, Nicole had gone to sleep each night expecting to die the next day.
The Garcia brought her dinner soon after it was dark. The food had been much better the last few days. As she slowly ate her grilled fish Nicole reflected on the five years since she and her family had met that first scouting party from the Pinta. What went wrong here? Nicole asked herself. What were our fundamental mistakes?
She could hear Richard’s voice in her head. Always cynical and distrustful of human behavior, he had sug-
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gested at the end of the first year that New Eden was too good for humanity. “We’ll eventually ruin it as we have the Earth,” he had said. “Our genetic baggage—the whole bit, you know, territoriality and aggression and reptilian behavior—is too strong for education and enlightenment to overcome. Look at O’Toole’s heroes, both of them, Jesus and that young Italian, St. Michael of Siena. They were destroyed because they suggested that humans should try to be more than clever chimpanzees.”
But here, in New Eden, Nicole thought, there was so much opportunity for a better world. The basics of life were provided. We were surrounded by unambiguous evidence that there was intelligence in the universe far beyond ours. That should have produced an environment in which . . .
She finished her fish and pulled the small chocolate pudding over in front of her. Nicole smiled to herself, remembering how much Richard had loved chocolate. / have missed him very much, she thought. Especially his conversation and his insight.
Nicole was startled to hear footsteps coming toward her cell. A deep chill of fear coursed through her body. Her visitors were two young men, each of them carrying lanterns. They were wearing the uniforms of Nakamura’s special police.
The men came into the celi in a very businesslike manner. They did not introduce themselves. The older one, probably in his mid-thirties, quickly pulled out a document and began to read. ‘.’Nicole des Jardins Wakefield,” he said, “you have been convicted of the crime of sedition and will be executed at 0800 tomorrow morning. Your breakfast will be served at 0630, ten minutes after first light, and we will come to take you to the execution chamber at 0730. You will be strapped into the electric chair at 0758 and current will be applied exactly two minutes later. … Do you have any questions?”
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