The judge is looking at the bailiff and the bailiff is pressing a button on the desk that sucks all the sound from the world. In an instant it becomes absolutely silent, a pure, deep silence like the courtroom is encased in glass, as if it is not sound but the very idea of sound that has disappeared. For a moment, wild Ms. Wells keeps talking, moving her mouth, moving her head in confused circles, but then she trails off, looks with bafflement around the impossibly silent room. After a minute of this, when her lips have stopped moving, the judge nods to the bailiff, who taps his desk once more and unmutes the courtroom, and the imposed silence is replaced by the subtler everyday quiet of a room full of people, watching the judge, watching the confused madwoman—who stands now with her hands flapping nervously at her side.
Judge Sampson keeps his eyes focused for a moment on the floor, a man briefly lost in important conversation with himself. And then he stands and returns slowly, solemnly, a one-man procession, to the bench.
“It is the verdict of this court that Ms. Wells has no connection to reality nor prospect of achieving one.”
Paige looks at me, startled, and then back at the judge. Poor thing. Young girl. She grabs my shoulder. Wanting me to—what—to leap to my feet? Object?
Judge Sampson looks at the bailiff, who makes a small gesture with both hands, palms up, like an elevator rising up a floor. Everybody stands. I take off my pinhole and press it to my chest. The judge keeps his eyes on Ms. Wells, who, of course, has no idea what’s going on. She is living in her own reality, and shelled within it, shelled and sheltered, flinging rocks over the top, a danger to us all, but not for long—not for long now.
“The presence of Ms. Wells within the Golden State is therefore deemed to be unsafe and unhealthful for its inhabitants.” The bailiff stands before the bench, a still pillar, hands behind his back. Paige’s grip tightens on my shoulder, as if it’s her on whom sentence is being passed. I feel her fingers through the thickness of my jacket. Trying to understand the judge’s words, though they are not hard to understand. Like a pledge or a curse, like “I do” or “I promise,” the words of a verdict are illocutionary: they do not have an intended effect, they are the intended effect.
The judge has changed reality. The madwoman was of our world and now she is gone from it.
“The remedy to the offense your presence represents is to be effected immediately.” And Judge Sampson brings down the gavel, three short chops, bap bap bap, and the bailiff steps forward to unshackle Ms. Wells from the ground.
15.
“Now wait a minute.” The judge looks me over, up and down, quizzical, curious, pleased. “I know you. We’ve met—yes? Tell me. Where have we met?”
“I don’t think so. My name is Laszlo Ratesic. I’m a Speculator, your honor.”
“Oh, you needn’t tell me that. That, I can see. And what a rare treat it is, to have one of you mysterious bats come to roost in my courtroom.” He offers Aysa a smile. “One or two. No, but”—the welcoming, slightly puzzled smile returns—“I know I know you, though.” He wags a finger at me. “Well, that’s all right. Let’s talk. It’ll come to me.”Judge Sampson settles back, fully at his ease. His chambers are as shabby as the courtroom, only darker, lined with thick carpeting and heavy curtains that cover the windows onto Grand Avenue, curtains so long the fabric pools along the floor. There are framed photographs, a tacky little Bear and Stars flag in a stand on the desk; there is a portable bar cart now docked snugly at the side of the desk, within the judge’s easy reach. The cart is not his only indulgence; there’s a small wall-mounted on the wall opposite the windows, and I wonder what sorts of themed streams Judge Sampson enjoys, after hours, when the last defendant has been dealt with.
There is something disorienting, something half anomalous, about a judge in chambers— especially a judge of the ANP. A man both small and large at once, still wearing his black robes but with his shirt collar unbuttoned beneath them and his tie loosened. An avatar of the State’s great power sitting with his ass half on and half off of his chintzy little desk, lifting his wry eyebrows, fetching a short glass from his bar cart and filling it with three ice cubes before popping the cork on a crystal decanter.
“Okay. So.” He enjoys a long sip of the drink and sets it down. “What can I do for you?”
I draw breath to speak and find that Ms. Paige, standing behind the chair where I’m sitting, has already begun.
“Why did you do it?”
The judge looks at her, eyebrows raised. “Why did I do what, exactly?”
“Send her away.”
Judge Sampson examines my partner with amusement. “You mean the poor woman in the courtroom? Just now? Today’s defendant?”
“Her name was Ms. Wells.”
“I know her name, young lady. I know all their names. I wonder what you think I am.”
I have craned all the way around, turned my large midsection as far as it will turn, trying to catch Ms. Paige’s eye and stop her from doing whatever it is she thinks she’s doing. What I told her was to wait, to watch and wait. That’s what I told her to do.
“I passed the sentence I did upon that particular defendant because it was what the facts required of me. Based on her history and current presentation, Ms. Wells showed no likelihood of reform. She would continue to commit daily, even hourly, assaults, on the Objectively So. She inhabits her own truth and is unable to step free from it. Such a person can not be allowed to continue inside the Golden State.”
“So you condemned her.”
“Her own mind condemned her. I only acknowledged that reality, on behalf of the State. If you think I enjoy making such decisions, you are incorrect.” But he smiles, and sips contentedly at his drink.
Paige is not satisfied. “You know what will happen to her out there.”
“No, young lady.” The judge sets the glass on the desk with a clink, a sharp and decisive sound like the gavel coming down. “I do not know. And you do not know. The fate of the exiled is unknown and unknowable, and any unconditional expression of that fate, any statement such as, for example, ‘You know what will happen to her out there,’ is by definition not true.”
We are in a moment now. Judge Sampson has just called Ms. Paige a liar, more or less, and he is not smiling any longer, and she for her part stands seething. What she wants to say is, Of course I know. Of course she knows what will happen to Ms. Wells, out there, over the wall, behind the curtain. But she can’t say it and she won’t say it and she wouldn’t and neither would I. She knows and we all know and it’s unknown and unknowable.
I raise one hand from my lap. This is supposed to be my show, after all.
“Hello. Excuse me. We’re going to move on.”
“Yeah,” says Aysa. “But—”
I look at her. “Ms. Paige,” I say. “We’re moving on. Okay?”
But Judge Sampson isn’t done. He tilts his head to one side, smiles with what looks like warmth.
“Have you,” he says to Ms. Paige, “perhaps lost someone to exile?”
“Yes,” she says, and he says “Ah,” and I recall her saying “Fuck my parents,” and the room fills with a brooding silence. I saw a lecture once, delivered by Our Acknowledged Expert on Geology and Geography, explaining how the Golden State, the whole thing, is built on movable plates, vast tracts that move, that push and scrape against other plates. The same is true inside Aysa Paige; the same is true inside me.