[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October and December 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The pythons had entered into Mankind. No man
knew at what moment he might be Possessed!
Because of the crowd they held Chandler's trial in the all-purpose room
of the high school. It smelled of leather and stale sweat. He walked up
the three steps to the stage, with the bailiff's hand on his elbow, and
took his place at the defendant's table.
Chandler's lawyer looked at him without emotion. He was appointed by
the court. He was willing to do his job, but his job didn't require him
to like his client. All he said was, "Stand up. The judge is coming in."
Chandler got to his feet and leaned on the table while the bailiff
chanted his call and the chaplain read some verses from John. He did
not listen. The Bible verse came too late to help him, and besides he
ached.
When the police arrested him they had not been gentle. There were four
of them. They were from the plant's own security force and carried
no guns. They didn't need any; Chandler had put up no resistance
after the first few moments--that is, he stopped as soon as he could
stop--but the police hadn't stopped. He remembered that very clearly.
He remembered the nightstick across the side of his head that left his
ear squashed and puffy, he remembered the kick in the gut that still
made walking painful. He even remembered the series of blows about the
skull that had knocked him out.
The bruises along his rib cage and left arm, though, he did not
remember getting. Obviously the police had been mad enough to keep
right on subduing him after he was already unconscious.
Chandler did not blame them--exactly. He supposed he would have done
the same thing.
The judge was having a long mumble with the court stenographer
apparently about something which had happened in the Union House the
night before. Chandler knew Judge Ellithorp slightly. He did not
expect to get a fair trial. The previous December the judge himself,
while possessed, had smashed the transmitter of the town's radio
station, which he owned, and set fire to the building it occupied. His
son-in-law had been killed in the fire.
Laughing, the judge waved the reporter back to his seat and glanced
around the courtroom. His gaze touched Chandler lightly, like the
flick of the hanging strands of cord that precede a railroad tunnel.
The touch carried the same warning. What lay ahead for Chandler was
destruction.
"Read the charge," ordered Judge Ellithorp. He spoke very loudly.
There were more than six hundred persons in the auditorium; the judge
didn't want any of them to miss a word.
The bailiff ordered Chandler to stand and informed him that he was
accused of having, on the seventeenth day of June last, committed on
the person of Margaret Flershem, a minor, an act of rape--"Louder!"
ordered the judge testily.
"Yes, Your Honor," said the bailiff, and inflated his chest. "An Act
of Rape under Threat of Bodily Violence," he cried; "and Did Further
Commit on the Person of Said Margaret Flershem an Act of Aggravated
Assault--"
Chandler rubbed his aching side, looking at the ceiling. He remembered
the look in Peggy Flershem's eyes as he forced himself on her. She was
only sixteen years old, and at that time he hadn't even known her name.
The bailiff boomed on: "--and Did Further Commit on that Same
Seventeenth Day of June Last on the Person of Ingovar Porter an Act of
Assault with Intent to Rape, the Foregoing Being a True Bill Handed
Down by the Grand Jury of Sepulpas County in Extraordinary Session
Assembled, the Eighteenth Day of June Last."
Judge Ellithorp looked satisfied as the bailiff sat down, quite winded.
While the judge hunted through the papers on his desk the crowd in the
auditorium stirred and murmured.
A child began to cry.
* * * * *
The judge stood up and pounded his gavel. "What is it? What's the
matter with him? You, Dundon!" The court attendant the judge was
looking at hurried over and spoke to the child's mother, then reported
to the judge.
"I dunno, Your Honor. All he says is something scared him."
The judge was enraged. "Well, that's just fine! Now we have to take up
the time of all these good people, probably for no reason, and hold up
the business of this court, just because of a child. Bailiff! I want
you to clear this courtroom of all children under--" he hesitated,
calculating voting blocks in his head--"all children under the age
of six. Dr. Palmer, are you there? Well, you better go ahead with
the--prayer." The judge could not make himself say "the exorcism."
"I'm sorry, madam," he added to the mother of the crying two-year-old.
"If you have someone to leave the child with, I'll instruct the
attendants to save your place for you." She was also a voter.
Dr. Palmer rose, very grave, as he was embarrassed. He glared around
the all-purpose room, defying anyone to smile, as he chanted: "Domina
Pythonis, I command you, leave! Leave, Hel! Leave, Heloym! Leave,
Sother and Thetragrammaton, leave, all unclean ones! I command you!
In the name of God, in all of His manifestations!" He sat down again,
still very grave. He knew that he did not make nearly as fine a showing
as Father Lon, with his resonant _in nomina Jesu Christi et Sancti
Ubaldi_ and his censer, but the post of exorcist was filled in strict
rotation, one month to a denomination, ever since the troubles started.
Dr. Palmer was a Unitarian. Exorcisms had not been in the curriculum at
the seminary and he had been forced to invent his own.
Chandler's lawyer tapped him on the shoulder. "Last chance to change
your mind," he said.
"No. I'm not guilty, and that's the way I want to plead."
The lawyer shrugged and stood up, waiting for the judge to notice him.
Chandler, for the first time, allowed himself to meet the eyes of the
crowd.
He studied the jury first. He knew some of them casually--it was not a
big enough town to command a jury of total strangers for any defendant,
and Chandler had lived there most of his life. He recognized Pop
Matheson, old and very stiff, who ran the railroad station cigar stand.
Two of the other men were familiar as faces passed in the street. The
forewoman, though, was a stranger. She sat there very composed and
frowning, and all he knew about her was that she wore funny hats.
Yesterday's had been red roses when she was selected from the panel;
today's was, of all things, a stuffed bird.
He did not think that any of them were possessed. He was not so sure of
the audience.
He saw girls he had dated in high school, long before he met Margot;
men he worked with at the plant. They all glanced at him, but he was
not sure who was looking out through some of those familiar eyes. The
visitors reliably watched all large gatherings, at least momentarily;
it would be surprising if none of them were here.
"All right, how do you plead," said Judge Ellithorp at last.
Chandler's lawyer straightened up. "Not guilty, Your Honor, by reason
of temporary pandemic insanity."
The judge looked pleased. The crowd murmured, but they were
pleased too. They had him dead to rights and it would have been a
disappointment if Chandler had pleaded guilty. They wanted to see
one of the vilest criminals in contemporary human society caught,
exposed, convicted and punished; they did not want to miss a step of
the process. Already in the playground behind the school three deputies
from the sheriff's office were loading their rifles, while the school
janitor chalked lines around the handball court to mark where the crowd
witnessing the execution would be permitted to stand.
* * * * *
The prosecution made its case very quickly. Mrs. Porter testified
that she worked at McKelvey Bros., the antibiotics plant, where the
defendant also worked. Yes, that was him. She had been attracted by the
noise from the culture room last--let's see--"Was it the seventeenth
day of June last?" prompted the prosecutor, and Chandler's attorney
instinctively gathered his muscles to rise, hesitated, glanced at
his client and shrugged. That was right, it was the seventeenth.
Incautiously she went right into the room. She should have known
better, she admitted. She should have called the plant police right
away, but, well, they hadn't had any trouble at the plant, you
know, and--well, she didn't. She was a stupid woman, for all that
she was rather good-looking, and insatiably curious. She had seen
Peggy Flershem on the floor. "She was all _blood_. And her clothes
were--And she was, I mean her--her body was--" With relentless tact the
prosecutor allowed her to stammer out her observation that the girl had
clearly been raped. And she had seen Chandler laughing and breaking up
the place, throwing racks of cultures through the windows, upsetting
trays. Of course she had crossed herself and tried a quick exorcism but
there was no visible effect; then Chandler had leaped at her. "He was
_hateful_! He was just _foul_!" But as he began to attack her the plant
police came, drawn by her screams.
Chandler's attorney did not question.
Peggy Flershem's deposition was introduced without objection from the
defense. But she had little to say anyway, having been dazed at first
and unconscious later. The plant police testified to having arrested
Chandler; a doctor described in chaste medical words the derangements
Chandler had worked on Peggy Flershem's virgin anatomy. There was no
question from Chandler's lawyer--and, for that matter, nothing to
question. Chandler did not hope to pretend that he had not ravished and
nearly killed one girl, then done his best to repeat the process on
another. Sitting there as the doctor testified, Chandler was able to
tally every break and bruise against the memory of what his own body
had done. He had been a spectator then, too, as remote from the event
as he was now; but that was why they had him on trial. That was what
they did not believe.
At twelve-thirty the prosecution rested its case, Judge Ellithorp
looking very pleased. He recessed the court for one hour for lunch, and
the guards took Chandler back to the detention cell in the basement of
the school.
Two Swiss cheese sandwiches and a wax-paper carton of chocolate
milk were on the desk. They were Chandler's lunch. As they had been
standing, the sandwiches were crusty and the milk lukewarm. He ate them
anyway. He knew what the judge looked pleased about. At one-thirty
Chandler's lawyer would put him on the stand, and no one would pay
very much attention to what he had to say, and the jury would be out
at most twenty minutes, and the verdict would be guilty. The judge was
pleased because he would be able to pronounce sentence no later than
four o'clock, no matter what. They had formed the habit of holding the
executions at sundown. As, at that time of year, sundown was after
seven, it would all go very well--for everyone but Chandler. For
Chandler it would be the end.