Auntie was spieking to Lavinia without noisy words. “We’ll see this pretty boy in his coffin tonight.”
Lavinia thought right back, without apology. “No, we won’t.”
Rod sat impassive in his chair. The two women, their faces grave and silent, went on spieking the argument at each other with their minds.
“How would you know — you’re not very old?” spieked auntie.
“He has the oldest station in all of Old North Australia. He was one of the very oldest names. He is—” and even in spieking her thoughts cluttered up, like a stammer — “he is a very nice boy and he’s is going to be a wonderful man.”
“Mark my thought,” spieked the auntie again, “I’m telling you that we’ll see him in his coffin tonight and that by midnight he’ll be on his coffin-ride to the Long Way Out.”
Lavinia jumped to her feet. She almost knocked over the basin of water a second time. She moved her throat and mouth to speak words but she just croaked,
“Sorry, Rod. Sorry.”
Rod McBan, his face guarded, gave a pleasant, stupid little nod, as though he had no idea of what they had been spieking to each other.
She turned and ran, shout-spieking the loud thought at auntie, “Get somebody else to do his hands. You’re heartless, hopeless. Get somebody else to do your corpse washing for you. Not me. Not me.”
“What’s the matter with her?” said Rod to the auntie, just as though he did not know.
“She’s just difficult, that’s all. Just difficult. Nerves, I suppose,” she added in her croaking spoken words. She could not talk very well, since all her family and friends could spiek and hier with privacy and grace. “We were spieking with each other about what you would be doing tomorrow.”
“Where’s a priest, auntie?” said Rod.
“A what?”
“A priest, like the old poem has, in the rough rough days before our people found this planet and got our sheep settled down. Everybody knows it.
There’s more to it, but that’s the part I remember. Isn’t a priest a specialist in how to die? Do we have any around here?”
He watched her mind as she lied to him. As he had spoken, he had a perfectly clear picture of one of their more distant neighbors, a man named Tolliver, who had a very gentle manner; but her words were not about Tolliver at all.
“Some things are men’s business,” she said, cawing her words. “Anyhow, that song isn’t about Norstrilia at all. If s about Paradise VII and why we left it. I didn’t know you knew it.”
In her mind he read, “That boy knows too much.”
“Thanks, auntie,” said he meekly.
“Come along for the rinse,” said she. “We’re using an awful lot of real water on you today.”
He followed her and he felt more kindly toward her when he saw her think, Lavinia had the right feelings but she drew the wrong conclusion. He’s going to be dead tonight.
That was too much.
Rod hesitated for a moment, tempering the chords of his oddly attuned mind. Then he let out a tremendous howl of telepathic joy, just to bother the lot of them. It did. They all stopped still. Then they stared at him.
“In words the auntie said, “What was that?”
“What?” said he, innocently.
“That noise you spieked. It wasn’t meaning.”
“Just sort of a sneeze, I suppose. I didn’t know I did it.” Deep down inside himself he chuckled. He might be on his way to the Hoohoo House, but he would fritter their friskies for them while he went.
It was a dashed silly way to die, he thought all to himself.
And then a strange, crazy, happy idea came to him:
Perhaps they can’t kill me. Perhaps I have powers. Powers of my own. Well, we’ll soon enough find out.
THE TRIAL
Rod walked across the dusty lot, took three steps up the folding staircase which had been let down from the side of the big trailer van, knocked on the door once as he had been instructed to do, had a green light flash in his face, opened the door, and entered.
It was a garden.
The moist, sweet, scent-laden air was like a narcotic. There were bright green plants in profusion. The lights were clear but not bright; their ceiling gave the effect of a penetrating blue, blue sky. He looked around. It was a copy of Old Old Earth. The growths on the green plants were roses; he remembered pictures which his computer had showed him. The pictures had not gotten across the idea that they smelled nice at the same time that they looked nice. He wondered if they did that all the time, and then remembered the wet air: wet air always holds smells better than dry air does. At last, almost shyly, he looked up at the three judges.
With real startlement, he saw that one of them was not a Norstrilian at all, but the local Commissioner of the Instrumentality, the Lord Redlady — a thin man with a sharp, inquiring face. The other two were Old Taggart and John Beasley. He knew them, but not well.
“Welcome,” said the Lord Redlady, speaking in the funning singsong of a man from Manhome.
“Thank you,” said Rod.
“You are Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan the one hundred and fifty-first?” said Taggart, knowing perfectly well that Rod was that person.
Lord love a duck and lucky me! thought Rod, I’ve got my hiering, even in this place!
“Yes,” said the Lord Redlady.
There was silence.
The other two judges looked at the Manhome man; the stranger looked at Rod; Rod stared, and then began to feel sick at the bottom of his stomach.
For the first time in his life, he had met somebody who could penetrate his peculiar perceptual abilities.
At last he thought, “I understand.”
The Lord Redlady looked sharply and impatiently at him, as though waiting for a response to that single word “yes.”
Rod had already answered — telepathically.
At last Old Taggart broke the silence.
“Aren’t you going to talk? I asked you your name.”
The Lord Redlady held up his hand in a gesture for patience; it was not a gesture which Rod had ever seen before, but he understood it immediately.
He thought telepathically at Rod, “You are watching my thoughts.”
“Indeed I am,” thought Rod, back at him.
The Lord Redlady clapped a hand to his forehead. “You are hurting me. Did you think you said something?”
With his voice Rod said, “I told you that I was reading your mind.”
The Lord Redlady turned to the other two men and spieked to them: “Did either of you hier what he tried to spiek?”
“No.” “No.” They both thought back at him. “Just noise, loud noise.”
“He is a broadbander like myself. And I have been disgraced for it. You know that I am the only Lord of the Instrumentality who has been degraded from the status of Lord to that of Commissioner—”
“Yes,” they spieked.
“You know that they could not cure me of shouting, and suggested I die?”
“No,” they answered.
“You know that the Instrumentality thought I could not bother you here and sent me to your planet on this miserable job, just to get me out of the way?”
“Yes,” they answered.
“Then, what do you want to do about him? Don’t try to fool him. He knows all about this place already.” The Lord Redlady glanced quickly, sympathetically up at Rod, giving him a little phantom smile of encouragement. “Do you want to kill him? To exile him? To turn him loose?”