‘Sex, of course,’ said Feneloni, with a laugh. ‘Look no further. It’s sex. Why are your sympathies with the murderer, not his victim?’
Guenz responded, eyes twinkling. ‘I fear, Jarvis, that sympathy with Peters’s victim can do the victim little good.’
‘Okay then, try to discover what motives Peters had, other than sexual jealousy. Then we hang him. Both phases of the operation to be done in public.’
Tom said that could not be permitted, else all would be implicated in a second death. Peters must submit to a private course of mentatropy.
Then, said Jarvis, legislation had to be drawn up. Were they to deal with crimes of passion as a special subject, subject to special measures?
Interruptions from the floor continued for many minutes. ‘We want no deaths here!’ Choihosla shouted.
Someone claimed that freedom could not be legislated for. He was answered by another voice that said that they were not free, were indeed isolated far from their home ground, but had founded a contented society; fulfilment need not depend on freedom at all.
At this, there was uproar. A woman claimed that their ‘happy society’ was breaking up. It had been at its best one of de Tocqueville’s ‘voluntary associations’, viable only while everyone subscribed.
But like de Tocqueville’s, another voice replied, it depended on hierarchy. Perhaps all this time, they’d been living under the wrong hierarchy. Laughter followed this remark, and the temperature cooled.
So soon after the disgrace of Dayo, no one in the court dared suggest there was a racial element in Alysha’s murder. Perhaps there wasn’t, although such suspicions circulated on the Ambient. But who could prove a negative? Better to sweep the whole notion under the carpet.
Bill Abramson rose to suggest that they had paid too much attention to building a good society and not enough to lobbying Earth to rescue them and restore them to their own planet. What if the subterranean fossil water gave out? It was to their credit that a sort of mediating structure had been established, permitting them to live orderly lives; but perhaps they forgot on what an uncompromising basis that order was built. For himself, with a family at home in Israel, he prayed every night that Earth would send ships.
‘Pray there’ll be no more murders,’ called a voice from the rear.
Paula and I had been listening in silence to all this. She now rose, and brought the debate back to the subject, saying in a quiet voice, ‘You lay no blame on me, the cause of the men’s quarrel. But I also must share the guilt. I liked to have the men vying for me with each other. It satisfied my egotism – and other senses as well. I’m greedy for life, as Peters is and Alysha was. But frankly I’d rather be hanged than have some fool shrink prying into my past life. My past is my property as much as my breath.’
Tom asked if Paula was trying to alienate the forum’s sympathy. ‘You might think differently about hanging if you were actually on trial for such a hideous crime. A course of mentatropy must be Peters’s sentence. It can but have a better effect on him than a hanging…’
A vote was taken on what Peters’s punishment should be. The audience was four to one against his execution.
Jarvis Feneloni bowed to Tom, who declared the court adjourned. Jarvis’s manner throughout had been courteous. But I caught a look of hatred as he made his salutation to Tom. He had ambitions for himself as well as for justice, and did not like to be bested in argument.
As usual, the debate was filmed. No one gave a thought to how it would be received on Earth.