My pattern of living--call it my office routine--had been
re-established through the day. I hadn't had a chance to brood much
over the bombshell Coleman had tossed in my lap in the morning, but now
I could think.
Coleman entered wearing the same black tunic, the same superior
attitude. His black eyes fastened on me.
"Sit down, Councilman," I directed.
He deigned to comply.
I studied the files flashed before me. Several times before, Coleman
had been guilty of slight misuses of his authority: helping his
friends, harming his enemies. Not enough to make him be impeached
from the Committee. His job was so hypersensitive that if every
transgression earned dismissal, no one could hold the position more
than a day. Even with the best intentions, mistakes can be taken for
deliberate errors. Not to mention the converse. For his earlier errors,
Coleman had first received a suspended sentence, then two terminal
sentences to be fixed by the warden. My predecessors had given him
first a few weeks, then a few months of sleep in Dreamland.
* * * * *
Coleman's eyes didn't frighten me; I focused right on the pupils. "That
was a pretty foul trick, Councilman. Did you hope to somehow frighten
me out of executing this sentence by what you told me this morning?"
I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was
only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I
couldn't see.
"Warden Walker," Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, "I'm
shocked. _I_ am not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as
a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real
world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with
what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps
to establish your moral capabilities."
"I suppose," I said heavily, "that I could best establish my high moral
character by excusing you from this penal sentence?"
"Not at all," Councilman Coleman asserted. "According to the facts as
you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined."
I was stymied for an instant. I had expected him to say that I must
know that he was incapable of committing such an error and I must
pardon him despite the misguided rulings of the courts. Then I thought
of something else.
"You show symptoms of being a habitual criminal, Coleman. I think you
deserve _life_."
Coleman cocked his head thoughtfully, concerned. "That seems rather
extreme, Warden."
"You would suggest a shorter sentence?"
"If it were my place to choose, yes. A few years, perhaps. But
life--no, I think not."
I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.
I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman
in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a
Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and
Horbit did.
There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that
morning, nothing in it for him.