Shacklar managed to sublimate his feelings into a huge sigh, and leaned forward. "Be that as it may… Accused!"
"Uh, yes?" Rod looked up.
"Were you, or your wife, at the Sun-Greeting Place yesterday morning?"
Rod shook his head. "Never saw it till we went to look for evidence last night."
Hwun's head snapped around to stare at Rod, but Shacklar said, "And no one was slain last night." He turned to the panel of Wolman chiefs. "Would any of you happen to know where these two were first sighted?"
"In middle of Horse Plain," answered the Purple chief.
"On foot?" Corrigan asked.
"On foot," the chief confirmed.
"And that's a good ten kilometers from the Sun-Greeting Place. At what time did your warriors sight the accused, Chief?"
The chief shrugged. "Sun not up long."
"Soon after dawn," Corrigan translated. "Was the sun completely above the horizon?"
The chief nodded.
"How far above?"
The chief demonstrated with his hands. "Two fingers' width."
"Two fingers' width, at arm's length." Corrigan held his own fingers out, squinting at them. "Perhaps a half an hour after dawn." He dropped his hand, and was looking at Hwun. "I submit that it would have been rather difficult for the defendants to kill a man at the Sun-Greeting Place, and be in middle of the Horse Plain, ten kilometers away, half an hour later."
Hwun stared for a moment, then said, "Could have killed earlier."
"Indeed, they could have," Corrigan countered, "but did they? Have you the slightest shred of evidence that indicates they so much as met the deceased, let alone slew him?"
Hwun gave him a long, cold stare. Then, turning to his fellow Wolmen with frigid dignity, he drew himself up and stated, "Soldiers stalling." His forefinger jabbed out at Rod and Gwen again. "These two did murder! Plain for all to see!" He turned back to Shacklar. "And all can see soldiers not deal fairly with Wolmen! Oh, with goods, cash, pipe-weed, soldiers deal fair—but not life! Then, no soldier deal fairly!"
The other chiefs glared, then began to mutter to one another, darting hostile glances at Shacklar and the officers' panel. The officers stiffened, their faces turning to wood.
"Give!" Hwun thundered, holding out a hand, palm up. "Give these two to Wolmen! Give murderer of brother into our hands, to slay in justice here, now!"
"Justice! Why, you pious prig!" Chornoi was on her feet, raging. "You're not looking for justice; you're looking for a scapegoat! You know damn well that if you can't satisfy your fellow chiefs, they'll kick you out of office! And you can't satisfy them all, if it turns out it was a Wolman who murdered a Wolman! Because if it was, the murderer's tribe will defend him, and the victim's tribe will charge out for revenge! And that'll be the end of your nice little Confederation!"
"Not so!"
"Wolman law!"
"All tribes heed!" The chiefs were on their feet, shouting.
But Hwun drowned them all out. "Justice! Seek only justice!"
"Justice!" Chornoi sneered, pacing up to him. "How can a tyrant seek justice? Because that's what you really want to be, isn't it? King of all the Wolmen! Tyrant! Dictator! That's all you are—just a power-driven machine!"
Rod stiffened, feeling as though his spine had turned into a hot wire. Facts suddenly connected in his head, and sparked into fusion.
"Machine!" Chornoi spat.
Hwun's hand lashed out so fast it seemed to blur, cracking backhanded against Chornoi's jaw. She shot back, crashing into the colonists' bench.
Rod bellowed, rage erupting as he whirled toward Hwun, which brought him just far enough to the side so that the Chief Chief's fist hissed past his ear. An icicle stabbed Rod as he realized the blow would have killed him. He was fighting for his life!
The hell with fighting fair!
He came out of his crouch in a whirl, knee driving up into Hwun's groin. It struck—
With a hollow crack.
Rod howled as his knee burst into fire.
Everyone in the courtroom stood frozen, galvanized by the sound.
Hwun's hand reached for Rod's throat—but Rod's leg gave way, and crashed to the floor. Hwun's hand clawed through empty air. Fear sizzled through Rod, opening a channel for the scarlet wrath that boiled through him in a raging torrent. Rod focused it on his hand, shoving himself back up onto one knee, concentrating on the hand's edge, willing it into a sword, a battle-ax, slamming out in a chop so fast that no one noticed it had turned into the shiny gray of tungsten steel. It crashed up into Hwun's jaw. The Wolman shot into the air and crashed down to the floor, right in front of the Wolman bench.
Rod knelt, arm falling limp, panting, wild-eyed, amazed and terrified by his own action. I couldn't have hit him that hard!
Aye, thou couldst.
Rod looked up, and saw the steel of his hand reflected in his wife's eyes.
But Hwun was rolling to his feet…
… and a searing, ruby ray skewered his head.
For a frozen moment, Rod could see the line of light joining the Wolman chieftain to the blaster in the General's hand, seeming as much a part of him as his uniform.
Then the moment thawed, the beam of light winked out, and Hwun crashed to the ground.
The Wolmen stared, appalled.
Then they leaped to their feet, blasters whipping out from under their cloaks. "Blood!" They howled. "Justice!"
"Treachery!" "Kill!"
But Shacklar vaulted over his bench and landed beside Hwun's body. He yanked off the chief's loincloth. The other
Wolmen howled, outraged—but the howls died, and their eyes bulged as they stared, frozen. For a moment, the room was totally silent.
Then groans welled up from the Wolmen's chests, as they gazed in horror at the smooth curve of a groin without genitals.
Rod shoved himself over to Hwun, whipping out his dagger. He gripped the corpse's hair, and the blade sliced keenly around in a single stroke. Rod peeled back the skin. There was no blood, no fatty tissue—only the bland curve of a beige skull, with four hairline cracks forming a perfect rectangle.
The chiefs still stared, too stunned to move.
Rod jammed the tip of his dagger into one of the cracks and pried. The material resisted for a moment, then the rectangle popped open. Rod stared at a cluster of jewels, gleaming from the darkness inside.
"Molecular circuits, of course," Rod explained. "Each one of those 'jewels' was a computer big enough to run all the utilities for a small city."
He lifted his stein for a swallow, and Cholly asked, "How did you guess he was a robot?"
"Easy," Rod said, with a wry smile. "In fact, I can't understand why I didn't figure it out, for so long. I mean, a Wolman had been murdered, right? But no Wolman was missing. Which meant there was one extra Wolman." He spread his hands. "Couldn't be. And we'd met Hwun. He hadn't shown any emotion at all, except anger—but a very cold anger, if you follow me. That's how he was in everything—very cold, very factual. I suppose it was his lousy logic that sidetracked me."
"Yeah." Yorick scratched his head. "How could a computer 'brain' do such sloppy thinking, as to think you two were guilty just because you were outside the Wall that morning?"
"Especially when there were others out, too." Rod held up a forefinger. "Thaler—and we don't know how many traders."
"Right. So how come Hwun didn't see that suspecting you two, didn't make sense?"
Rod shrugged. "He could only think the way he'd been programmed—'garbage in, garbage out.' But it really should have hit me when Chornoi told us that he didn't show the slightest flicker of response to her flirting, even though every other Wolman she'd met liked flirting so much that it was her guarantee of safety. That really should have made Hwun stand out in my mind. And the real clincher is that he broke off conversation with her to run over to the stone step and greet the sun just before it rose."