We stepped up to the bench, all a little overawed.
“These bastards are as guilty as sin,” the judge said. “What’s it worth? Want ’em killed?”
Pause.
“No,” Mike said quietly. “That doesn’t fit, somehow.”
“Okay. Then how about expulsion and sanctions?”
I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it sounded right to me, and I said so.
“Right. Offender Ktch, give heed. You — by which are also meant and included your coracialists and superiors, if any — stand convicted of each charge. It is the order of this court that you shall withdraw from Terra and adjacent space no later than one local hour after the end of the present trial. You are further ordered to abstain henceforth from the practice of conquest and colonization, and to abandon all colonies no older than the oldest living member of your race, under pain of termination. If we catch you at this racket one more time, you’ve had it.
“Now what about the other one?”
This I’d made plans for. I’d been five years gathering recipes for Laszlo’s just deserts. I knew to the erg how to pay him back for all the Laszlo tricks he’d played. Elaborate visions of quaint retribution were a minor mainstay of my fantasy life. But now all these schemes felt inappropriate.
“How about sending him off with the others?” That had a certain humorous appeal.
“Quite poetic,” the judge smiled (sideways, by our reckoning). “All beings present and attending now bear witness,” he intoned. “Offender Laszlo Scott stands convicted of each charge, accusers urging clemency. Therefore this court declares and redefines said Laszlo Scott coracial in perpetuity to offender of the first cause, in full and equal membership and subject to the sanctions of this court. Wherefore the present cause is now closed and this body is dismissed.
“All right, you people, you have an hour. Start hopping.”
Which put us all on battle beach again. I’d’ve blamed the whole thing on the pill, except that the lobsters were scurrying and Laszlo was complaining, “Hey, man, Cool it! That ain’t fair! What’re you picking on Me for? I mean, what’d I Do, man? What’d I Do? Hey, baby, No!”
I hadn’t counted on that: Laszlo in voluble distress, myself in empathy. Very depressing. I felt sad and righteous, a brand-new combination for me. And I pitied Laszlo, which I also hadn’t counted on.
Not all of us experienced this hangup.
“Please don’t let ’em do it to me, baby. Man! I won’t never see real people anymore!”
“Don’t sweat it, Laszlo,” Kevin said. “You probably won’t even notice the difference.
The lobsters’ ship — a conventional saucer model with a highly polished mirror finish — was concealed in a dune just a few yards away from the beach. They had it cleared and ready to fly in under twenty minutes.
Laszlo was still in his glass cage, screaming, “I don’t wanna go away! Oh wow, man, I’m like scared, man. Somebody help me!” He was falling apart unprettily.
“Hey, baby,” Patrick comforted, “just think of all them groovy things you’re gonna see. Wow, and all those far-out planets and like that. Hey, man, what a gas!”
“No! No, don’ wanna! No!”
Ktch very shyly sought me out.
“I must apologize, Mister Spy,” he abased himself. “We misjudged you. I am sorry.”
Not sorry for trying to conquer us and all. Sorry he’d insulted us by underestimating us. This wasn’t a way I could ever think, but even so I had to give him credit: Ktch had class.
I forgave him everything he thought needed it, and we parted on technically friendly terms half an hour ahead of schedule.
“Please!” Laszlo shrieked prayers as the lobsters carried him to the ship. “Nonono I’m Sorry! No! Please! I’m Really sorry! I’ll be good, I promise! No! Don’t put me out in the dark! I won’t do it anymore! Don’t make me all alone! Please! I’ll be Good!” Then the ship’s lock closed and no one ever heard the voice of Laszlo Scott again.
I could feel the day at last begin to curve in toward a close. A day full of years. Mortal fear, mortal combat, victory, justice, and repentance: suddenly and all at once that day I had encountered concepts that I’d always thought were mythical, and they just weren’t what they’d been cracked up to be.
The ship rose above my nuclear lamps and out of sight. A few minutes later we all heard a pop like prepubescent thunder and I knew they were gone.
“Swell,” Mike privately rejoiced, then, louder, “Okay, everybody. Let’s pack it up and hit the road.”
Silently — the trial and its aftermath had put us in a collective thoughtful mood — we dismantled our imaginary artifacts and boarded the tripsmobile.
Mike had to get us home somehow without the benefit of my expert worrying. I fell asleep the minute I sat down.
28
AND THAT, we all naively thought, was that.
The world was saved to a fare-thee-well and only slightly battered. Laszlo and the lobster gang were gloriously out of it for real. The papers were hilarious with mad and earnest speculation on the curious corpses we’d abandoned in the reservoir. Sean’d bought me a bottle of spring water. And I had a practically inexhaustible supply of Reality Pills for Halloween, saturnalia, and bar mitzvahs.
There was, of course, a skinny outside chance that somebody might want Little Micky’s absence explained, but it wasn’t bloody likely. Micky’d been one of the hundreds of Villagers in vacuo: no family, no relations, no hometown, no background, no pad, no chick, no past, little present and let’s don’t have any morbid talk about the future. Out of the nothing, into the here and away — just one of the hundreds. It didn’t seem reasonable to expect Little Micky to have more kinfolk dead than he did alive; and, barring that acute unlikelihood, we didn’t have a problem to our names.
But all day Thursday afternoon I kept finding random little things I wanted right there underneath my hand, which wasn’t really consonant with my established way of life.
And the first tweet of the vidiphone brought me Andrew Blake saying, “Chester! God in heaven help me, it’s Happening again!” as openers for a half-hour lamentation on his new, improved, four-color Art Nouveau psychedelic Carnaby Street halo.
And Sandi phoned a little after that and did nothing but giggle uncontrollably for seven minutes.
And after that, when I was donning my gaudiest celebratory threads for work, I happened to look out my bedroom window and see in the courtyard below a perfectly lovely small quiescent steam calliope all garlanded with improbable blossoms.
And then Mike’s malty, dry, let’s-explore-the-obvious voice tiptoed into my room, saying, “Know what, Chester? I’ve been thinking,” and I braced myself.
“And what have you been thinking, O Michael?” I dreaded, entering the living room. Sean, looking rurally concerned, was already there.
“I’ve been thinking that we dropped a god-awful lot of those Reality Pills last night.” Michael was standing on his head, feet and buttocks braced against the west wall. He’d never done anything remotely like that before. My spirit or something trembled.
“Go on.”
“And an awful lot of Very Strange Things have been happening to everybody all day long. And somehow I’ve acquired this irrational conviction that we’re never ever coming down.”
He looked good, standing on his head. It became him, somehow. I piously wished that I didn’t believe him.
But Sean, that puppy, hollered, “GrOOvy!” and hallucinated an intense silver and scarlet butterfly with, printed across its wings in some invisible color our eyes could read like electricity, the magic words:
THE END
But it wasn’t, really.
Not at all.
Oh my, no!