He turned to me as calmly as my own servant. His neat denim jacket, now
standard fatigue uniform for Soths, was unfastened. His muscular chest
was bare.
"They were tormenting me with that." He pointed to a small electric
generator from which ran thin cables ending in sharp test prods. "I told
Professor Kahnovsky it was not allowed, but he stated I was his
property. The three boys tried to hold me with those straps while the
professor touched me with the prods.
"My conditioning forbade me from harming them, but there was a clear
violation of the terms of the covenant. I was in the proscribed
condition of immobility when the generator was started. When the pain
grew unbearable, the prime command of my conditioning was invoked. I
must survive. I threw them all out the window."
The Soth went with us peacefully enough, and submitted to the lockup
without demur. For a few days, before the state thought up a suitable
indictment, the papers held a stunned silence. Virtually every editor
and publisher had a Soth in his own home.
Then the D.A., who also owned a Soth, decided to drop the potentially
sensational first degree murder charges that might be indicated, and
came out instead with a second degree indictment.
* * * * *
That cracked it. The press split down the middle on whether the charge
should be changed to third degree murder or thrown out of court entirely
as justifiable homicide by a non-responsible creature.
This was all very sympathetic to the Soth's cause, but it had a fatal
effect. In bringing out the details of the crime, it stirred a certain
lower element of our society to add fear and hate to a simmering envy of
the wealthier Soth-owners.
Mobs formed in the streets, marching and demonstrating. The phony rape
story was given full credence, and soon they were amplifying it to a
lurid and rabble-rousing saga of bestiality.
Soth households kept their prized servants safely inside. But on the
afternoon of the case's dismissal, when the freed Soth started down the
courthouse steps, someone caved his head in with a brick.
Ollie Johnson and I were on either side of him, and his purple blood
splashed all over my light topcoat. When the mob saw it, they closed in
on us screaming for more.
An officer helped us drag the stricken Soth back into the courthouse,
and while the riot squad disbursed the mob, we slipped him out the back
way in an ambulance, which returned him to the Willow Run plant for
repairs.
It hit the evening newscasts and editions:
ACQUITTED SOTH
MURDERED
ON COURTHOUSE STEPS!
* * * * *
I was halfway home when the airwaves started buzzing. The mobs were
going wild. Further developments were described as Jack and I landed on
the wind-blown lake. The State Guard was protecting the Ollies' Willow
Run Plant against a large mob that was trying to storm it, and
reinforcements had been asked by the state police.
Vicki met me on the pier. Her face was white and terribly troubled. I
guess mine was, too, because she burst into tears in my arms. "The poor
Soth," she sobbed. "Now what will they do?"
"God knows," I said. I told Jack to tie up the boat and stay
overnight--I feared I might be called back any minute. He mumbled
something about overtime, but I think his main concern was in staying so
near to a Soth during the trouble that was brewing.
We went up to the house, leaving him to bed himself down in the
temporary quarters in the boathouse that the union required I maintain
for him.
Soth was standing motionless before the video, staring at a streaky
picture of the riot scene at Willow Run. His face was inscrutable as
usual, but I thought I sensed a tension. His black serving-jacket was
wrinkled at the shoulders as he flexed the muscles of his powerful arms.
Yet when Vicki asked for some martinis, he mixed and served them without
comment. We drank and then ate dinner in silence. We were both reluctant
to discuss this thing in front of Soth.
We were still eating when an aircab thundered overhead. A minute later,
I watched it land a tiny passenger at our pier and tie up to wait for
him.
It was Ollie Johnson, stumbling hatless up the flagstone path.