"That's right. Night after night, I've come back here. I've set up the
god-dammed thing--and I've scanned."
"This is incredible!"
"Three nights ago I found New York. Two nights ago, I co-ordinated
to the Hudson River. Last night I got as far as the third level.
Tonight--" his arms swept a circle--"East Lynne."
Vortler's hand smashed down. "It's got to stop! There's no reason for
this. I won't permit it."
"What can you do? It's my lightscope--my ship. My orders supersede
yours."
Vortler closed the space between them, his fists knobbed white. John
laughed. "Don't overdo it, Angus. I'm not worth it." The sound died to
a chuckle, "Besides, remember your emotiograph. Somebody will spank."
The doctor's hands opened slowly, a finger at a time.
"Tell me, Angus. Can you honestly blame me? I suspect my wife. I'm
trying to find out."
"But you're wrong!"
"It _could_ be. The thing is possible." He leaned toward the
psychosurgeon. "You think about it and tell me. It's _possible_?"
Vortler looked defeated.
"Yes."
"And that's that."
Angus started for the barway. "I don't know what started this thing
off, John. Perhaps if a man loves his wife a little too much, a thing
like this can happen. Maybe that's why they've watched our charts so
carefully."
Hastings was already talking to himself. "If I can just prove it one
way or the other. If I can just know she's--alone."
The white clad figure paused. "Think it over, John. Change your mind. I
don't like any part of it."
"Angus," John said softly. "I don't like it either. I don't want the
sight of Mary on that lens! To leave what print? A dream smashed? A
dishonor? Who knows?"
The doctor shook his head. "Look out the viewplate, John. What do you
see? Planet systems, galaxies, eons. What is one tiny less-than-a-mite
in all of that? What does it mean to you? The mind of the Almighty--or
a few cents worth of bone, and hair, and tissue? Ask yourself, John.
What do you see?"
He closed the barway behind him.
John followed and threw the pressure lock. Going to a sleek instrument,
his hands inquired softly along its lines. Cold as space. Sure. Doubt
proof. He swept the litter from his desk, and set the instrument in
its center. Levers spun, mirrors sent out chips of light, adjusters
adjusted.
Then, pausing, he moved to the viewplate and stood looking out a long
time. His hands mangled themselves constantly behind his back. A star
twinkled--one star in particular--as if through the prism of a cold
tear.
But he went back to the instrument, and bent to it slowly. And as he
gripped the desk, his knuckles erupted, pale as washed gravestones....
_And the graph lines shivered and glowed hot, and the hate came pouring
out of the shining needle between the stars, and somewhere a voice
called into space...._
* * * * *
"Come back, John Hastings, come back," the Questioner said. "You may
return to the present."
Throbbing, the screen died as a stirring exhalation came from the
crowd. Someone asked for more air. A baby cried, and was lulled to
sleep.
"We have seen the pictures, Captain Hastings, and we accept them. The
facts were presented as they happened. It is unfortunate that we can
show no evidence of what reached John Hastings' eye as he looked into
the electron-lightscope. Mechanical tabulations cannot be transmitted
to our screen, since its envisioning powers are limited to the sensory
memory patterns of the brain. We must therefore go to the defendant
himself for further evidence."
They had removed the heavy mesh, but the captain's head remained bowed.
"Do you swear, John Hastings, that by the power of the God whom we know
to be, and by the strength of your own mind, you will tell us what you
saw in that instrument?"
"I do so swear."
"You may proceed."
He drew himself together. "I found her at her mother's house. Even
though it's vacant now, she liked to go back there occasionally when I
was away."
The twelve other jurors were leaning forward in their boxes. I could
feel my body itching from the strain.
"You located her at her mother's house, at 4AH54 on the Third Level,
Eighty-first Sector, west of the Hudson?"
"I did."
"Continue."
"She was sitting on the lawn in front of the house, talking to a man.
His back was toward me."
"You could not see his face?"
"Not then."
"Go on."
"They talked for a while. Then he moved to her on the grass. She smiled
and they put their arms around one another. He kissed her."
"What happened then?"
"He lifted her to her feet, and I saw it was Charles Lathrop. They went
to the door, and she opened it." He found it hard to get the words past
his lips.
"Please proceed."
"When she got inside, she turned around and smiled. It looked as if
she was laughing at me. Then she reached out and touched his arm.
She--she--"
"Please speak louder. She what?"
"She took him inside and shut the door."
Heaped silence greeted the words. Men turned quietly and gazed at their
wives, their eyes asking a question for the bewildered, the undecided.
"John Hastings, we have checked thoroughly. Your wife did spend the
night of the fifteenth in the vacant house of which you speak. She
spent the night, however, alone. Her graphs show no disturbances, no
emotional exhilaration. You are perpetrating an untruth."
"I'm not. I saw it! I saw it as plainly as I can see the box in which I
am standing now."
"You could not have seen it."
"Before my God, I did! I saw every detail. The yellow pannier she wore.
The blue hydrangea bush on the lawn. That broken aneroid beside the
door. Every detail." His voice crescendoed.
"It is impossible."
* * * * *
He raised his fists in the air. "Say it's impossible if you like.
Repeat it a thousand times! But I saw her do it just the same!! I _saw_
it!"
Something inside me had pulled tight. Thoughts of the classroom flooded
into my mind. Long forgotten formulae, theories ... somewhere! The
voice droned on, charging the jurors:
"--having reviewed the evidence--"
I kept groping toward a page in a book. Somewhere there was a piece
that would fit in. "The majority ballot rules." It was going too fast
for me. They were calling for the vote.
"Juror Number One, please stand and tell the court; how do you find?"
With great deliberation, he turned his back on the defendant in the box.
"Juror Number One designates guilt. Juror Number Two, how do you find?"
Vortler was second. He stood and gazed at John Hastings for a long
moment. Then he raised his arms toward the defendant, palms upward.
"Juror Number Two designates innocence."
I went back to the classroom again and again. There was a thing waiting
there for me, but it had been so long ago.
The count was going fast....
"Juror Number Six, how do you find?" Bax. I knew his vote before he
cast it. He turned his back.
Where did it stand now? Four guilty, two innocent!
My heart began to pound. It felt as if I were standing on the edge of a
deep water. Where was it, that I groped after? I tried to shut myself
in and think.
The semi-circle was almost completed. The voice had reached the juror
on my left. Six men stood with their backs to John Hastings. Five stood
with their arms outstretched, "Juror Number Twelve, how do you find?"
I asked for help then. I asked the Lord to turn the pages. And I asked
Him to help Kitson too. Kitson raised his arms high. The score was even.
It waited until then to come. The piece ... the little piece, falling
on my brain from that half-forgotten book.
"Juror Number Thirteen, how do--?"
"Mr. Questioner," I cried. "I would like to interpose."
"It is incorrect procedure to interrupt the vote--"
"Yes, yes, I know." My voice shook. "But there is something I just
remembered. Something pertinent to what John Hastings saw."
"Can it prove anything further one way or the other?"
"I think so."
An unseen conference. "Very well. Dispensation granted. What is your
information?"
I took a deep breath. "John Hastings viewed his wife on Earth from one
of the planets of Alpha Centauri."
"That is correct."
My tongue was dry; my hands wet.
"Alpha Centauri is four years, four months distant, measuring in light
years. Therefore, in his travel, John Hastings lost three of those
months, but when he turned his instrument backward, he was looking at
light images which had started from the Earth long before he ever left
it. He was looking at--"
"_At ... what happened four years ago...._" John Hastings had finished
the sentence for me. He was looking at something as if it were the
first sunrise he had ever known.
Speculation brought the amphitheatre to its feet. For the only time
during the trial, the mob found its voice. Uncertainty, relief and
surprise mingled, ebbed and flowed.
The voice called for attention. "Quiet, please, quiet. The information
is correct," and the storm was over.
"Since the jury is thus far hung, we will leave the decision to the
last, thirteenth talisman. We would like your vote, Juror Thirteen. How
do you find?"
John looked at me. It was the first time since they had brought him in.
And I stretched my arms out toward him....
Who can say whether I was right or wrong? It is too delicate a thing to
come out all white or all black. But I think that in order for a man to
hate a woman so very much, it is also necessary for him to have loved
her very much, too.
And sometimes, I wake up, shaking, in the night. I am thinking of what
might have happened if I hadn't remembered that old discarded pannier,
or the way Mother transplanted the blue hydrangea bush before she died,
or how Dad swore when she made him throw that aneroid away. If I hadn't
remembered those things, I would never have seen the look on John's
face as he walked into my outstretched arms and said: "Is it time for
us to go home now, Mary? Is it?"