Tina pointed to Barney. “That one.”
“Oh, hell!” Judith whispered.
“Quite,” Clayton concurred.
The Rebel walked up to Barney and stopped a foot from him. Barney looked shaken, his color similar to old whipped cream. The filming lights had been on, and no one had noticed when a camera operator began rolling, recording the event.
“I’m Sergeant Roisseau,” the Rebel informed the reporter. “It would behoove you, in the future, to keep off- color remarks to yourself. You have been warned; this is a one-mistake state, and you’ve made yours.”
“I… ah… was only making a little joke,” Barney said. “I meant nothing by it.” The blood rushed to his face, betraying the truth.
“Your face says you’re a liar,” Roisseau said calmly.
“And you’re armed!” Barney said, blinking. He was indignant; the crowd he ran with did not behave in this manner over a little joke. No matter how poor the taste.
Roisseau smiled and unbuckled his web belt, laying the pistol on the desk. “Now, fish or cut bait,” he challenged him.
That really shook Barney. All the bets were down and the pot right. He shook his head. “No… I won’t fight you.”
“Not only do you have a greasy mouth,” Roisseau said, “but you’re a coward to boot.”
Barney’s eyes narrowed, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.
“All right,” Roisseau said. “Then when you apologize to the young lady, we’ll forget it.”
“I’ll be damned!” Barney said, looking around him for help. None came forward.
“Probably,” Roisseau said. “But that is not the immediate issue.” He looked at Tina and winked, humor in his dark eyes. “So, newsman, if you’re too timid to fight me, perhaps you’d rather fight the young lady?”
“The kid?” Barney questioned, then laughed aloud. “What is this, some kind of joke?”
Judith walked to Barney’s side. She remembered the bus driver’s words and sensed there was very little humor involved in any of this, and if there was, the joke was going to be on Barney. And it wasn’t going to be funny. “Barney, ease off. Apologize to her. You were out of line.”
“No. I was only making a joke.”
“Nobody laughed,” she reminded him, and backed away, thinking: are the people in this state humorless? Or have they just returned to values my generation tossed aside?
“No way.” Barney shook his head. “You people are nuts!”
The camera rolled, silently recording.
Roisseau smiled, then looked at Tina. “Miss Raines, the… gentleman is all yours. No killing blows, girl. Just teach him a hard lesson in manners.”
Tina put her left hand on the top of the desk and, in one fluid motion, as graceful as a cat, vaulted the desk to land lightly on her tennis shoe-clad feet.
She stood quietly in front of the man who outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She offered up a slight bow. Had Barney any knowledge of the martial arts, he would have fainted, thus saving himself some bruises.
Tina held her hands in front of her, palms facing Barney, then drew the left one back to her side, balling the fist. Her right foot was extended, unlike a boxer’s stance. Her right hand open, palm out, knife edge to Barney. Her eyes were strangely empty of expression. Barney could not know she was psyching herself.
Barney did notice the light ridge of calluses that ran from the tips of her fingers to her wrist, and another light row of calluses on the edge of her hand, from the tip of her little finger down to the wrist. He backed away, instinctively.
Almost with the speed of a striking snake, Tina kicked high with her foot, catching Barney on the side of the face. He slammed backward against a wall, then recoiled forward, stunned at the suddenness of it all. With no change in her expression, Tina slashed out with the knife edge of her hand and slammed a blow just above his kidney, then slapped him on the face a stinging pop. Barney dropped to his knees, his back hurting, his face aching, blood dripping from a corner of his mouth. He rose slowly to his feet, his face a vicious mask of hate and rage and frustration and disbelief.
“You bitch!” he snarled. “You rotten little cunt.”
Roisseau laughed. “Now, you are in trouble, hotshot.”
Barney shuffled forward, in a boxer’s stance, his chin tucked into his shoulder. He swung a wide looping fist at Tina. She smiled at his clumsiness and turned slightly, catching his right wrist. Using the forward motion of his swing against him, and her hips for leverage, she tossed the man over her side and bounced him off a wall. Quickly reaching down, her hands open, on either side of his head, Tina brought them in sharply, hard, slamming the open palms over his ears at precisely the same moment. Barney screamed in pain and rolled in agony on the floor, a small dribble of blood oozing from one damaged ear.
Tina smoothed her hair. She was not even breathing hard. She looked at Master Sergeant Roisseau. “Did I do all right, Sergeant?”
The reporters then noticed the flap of Roisseau’s holster, lying on the desk, open, the butt of the .45 exposed. And all were glad no one had tried to interfere.
Then, from the floor of the reception center, came the battle cry of urbane, modern, twentieth-century man. Unable to cope with a situation, either mentally or physically, or because of laws that have been deballing the species for years, man bellows the words:
The room suddenly rocked with laughter. News commentators, reporters, camera-people and sound-people; people who, for years, had recorded the best and worst of humankind, all howled at the words from their colleague.
Roisseau spoke to the girl still behind the desk. “Judy, get on the horn and call the medics and tell them we have a hotshot with a pulled fuse.” He faced the crowd of newspeople.
“You’re all due at a press conference in two hours. Meanwhile, I’d suggest you all help yourselves to coffee and doughnuts and soft drinks and study the pamphlets we have for you.” He glanced at Barney, sitting on the floor, moaning and holding his head in his hands. “As for you, I’d forget about suing anyone. Our form of government discourages lawsuits. You’d lose anyway.”
“I’ll take this to the Supreme Court!” Barney yelled.
“Fine. Governor Raines is someday going to appoint one for us. Next twenty or thirty years. We don’t recognize yours.”
“Well, who is the final authority on Tri-states law?” a woman asked.
Roisseau smiled. “Just about anyone in the area… over the age of ten. As you study the simplicity of our judicial system, you’ll see what I mean. We don’t use any Latin base or legal double-talk. It’s all in very plain English. If you’re asking who would make the final decision on an issue—if it ever got that far—Governor Raines and half a dozen people whose names were pulled out of a hat.”
“Well, that’s the damnedest form of law I ever heard of in my life!” Larry Spain said.
“I’m sure that’s true,” Roisseau said. “But what is important is that it works for us.” He walked back into his office, closing the door.
Moments later, the medics came in and looked at Barney. They said he had a split lip, several bruises, a slightly damaged eardrum—nothing serious—and a severely deflated ego. They sat him in a chair, told him to check into any clinic if he began experiencing dizzy spells, patted him on the head, told him to watch his mouth, and left, chuckling.
“Very simple society we have here,” a reporter observed. “Live and let live, all the while respecting the rights of others who do the same. Very basic.”
“And very unconstitutional,” another remarked.
“I wonder,” Judith mused aloud. “I just wonder if it is.”
“Oh, come now, Judith,” Clayton said, shaking his head. “The entire debate is superfluous. There is no government of Tri-states. It doesn’t exist. The government of the United States doesn’t recognize it. It just doesn’t
