conspirators.”
Julian leafed through the warrants. “It’s good to see that my friends kept up their skills in calligraphy.”
“We took the liberty of paging through the archives of our predecessor, as well,” said the Godfather. He produced a set of older documents. “You will recognize the striking eloquence of these death sentences. You were in top form back then. These documents of state are so grandiloquent, so closely argued, and in such exquisite English. They killed certain members of my own family—but as legal court documents, they were second to none.”
Julian sighed. “I just couldn’t do that any longer.”
“You won’t have to do it,” the Godfather allowed. “You wrote such sustainable classics here that We won’t need any new death sentences. We can simply reuse your fine, sturdy documents, over and over.”
“It was my duty to write sentences,” said Julian. “Sentences are a necessity of statecraft. Let me formally express my remorse.”
“You express your remorse now,” remarked the Godfather. “At the time, you were taking great pride in your superb ability to compose a sentence.”
“I admit my misdeeds, sir. I am contrite.”
“More recently, you and your friends were plotting against Our election,” said the Godfather patiently. “As a further patent insult to Our dignity, you had yourself crowned as the ‘President of the United States.’ There are witnesses to that event.”
“That was a diversion,” said Julian. “That was part of a magic ceremony. To help me electrically reach the virtual image of the planet Venus.”
“Juli, have you become a heretic, or just a maniac? You should read the allegations in these confessions! They are fantastic. Your fellow conspirators say that you believe that men can still fly. That you conjured living phantoms in public. We don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“People talk,” said Julian. “In a cage, people will sing.”
“You dressed your slave as a golden goddess and you made people worship her.”
“That was her costume,” said Julian. “She enjoyed that. I think it was the only time I’ve ever seen her happy.”
“Juli, We are not your classmate any more. We have become your Godfather. It is unclear to Us what you thought you were gaining by this charade. In any case, that will go on no longer. Your cabal has been arrested. Your house, and all that eerie rubbish inside it, has been seized. In times this dark and troubled, We have no need for epicene displays. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now tell Us what We are supposed to do with you.”
“Let me go,” said Julian, sweating in the stony chill. “Release me, and I will sing your praises. Some day history will speak of you. You will want history to say something noble and decent about you.”
“That is a tempting offer,” mused the Godfather. “I would like history to say this of me: that I was an iron disciplinarian who scourged corruption, and struck his enemies with hammer blows. Can you arrange that?”
“I can teach rhetoric. Someone will say that for you, and they’ll need great skill.”
“I hate a subtle insult,” said the Godfather. “I can forgive an enemy soldier who flings a spear straight at me, but a thing like that is just vile.”
“I don’t want to die here in this stone cage!” screeched Julian. “I can write a much better groveling confession than these other wretches! A man of your insight knows that confessions are nothing but rhetoric! Of course they all chose to indict me! How could they not? They are men with families to consider, while I am foreign-born and I have no one! We’re all intelligent men! We all know that if someone must die, then I’m the best to die. I’m one against four! But surely you must know better!”
“Of course I know better,” said the Godfather. “You imagined that, as men of letters, you were free of the healthy atmosphere of general fear so fit for everyone else. That is not true. Men of letters have to obey Us, they have to serve Us loyally, and they have to know that their lives are forfeit. Just like everyone else.”
“ ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the hood,’ ” said Julian.
“You always had a fertile mind for an apposite quote. We are inclined to spare you.”
Light bloomed in the dampest corner of Julian’s mind. “Yes, of course, of course I should be spared! Why should I die? I never raised my hand against you. I never even raised my voice.”
“Like the others, you must write your full and complete confession. It will be read aloud to the assembled court. Then, a year in the field with the army will toughen you up. You’re much too timid to fight, but Our army needs its political observers. We need clearly written reports from the field. And the better my officers, the worse they seem to write!”
“Is there a war? Who has attacked us?”
“There is no war just as yet,” said the Godfather. “But of course they will attack Us, unless We prove to them that they dare not attack. So, we plan a small campaign to commence Our reign. One insolent village, leveled. You’ll be in no great danger.”
“I’m not a coward.”
“Yes, in fact, you are a coward, Julian. You happened to live in a time when you could play-act otherwise. Those decadent times have passed. You’re a coward, and you always were. So, make a clean breast of your many failings. We pledge that you too will be spared. You might as well write your own confessions, for your sins are many and you know them better than anyone.”
“Once I do that for you, you’ll spare my friends.”
“We will. We don’t say they will suck the blood of the taxpayer anymore, but yes, they will be spared.”
“You’ll spare my students.”
“Fine young men. They were led astray. Young men of good family are natural officer material.”
“You’ll give me back my house and my servant.”
“Oh, you won’t need any house, and as for your wicked witch … You should read the thunderation that rings around her little head! Your friends denounced you—but in their wisdom, they denounced her much, much more violently. They all tell Us that this lamentable situation is not your fault at all. They proclaim that she seduced you to it, that she turned your head. She drove you mad, she drugged you. She used all the wicked wiles of a foreign courtesan. She descended to female depths of evil that no mere man can plumb.”
Julian sat on his stony bench for a moment. Then he rose again and put his hands around the bars. “Permit me to beg for her life.”
“To spare her is not possible. We can’t publish these many eloquent confessions without having her drowned in the Cistern right away. It would be madness to let a malignant creature like that walk in daylight for even an hour.”
“She did nothing except what I trained her to do! She’s completely harmless and timid. She’s the meekest creature alive. You are sacrificing an innocent for political expediency. It’s a shame.”
“Should We spare this meek creature and execute you, and four friends? She was a lost whore, and the lowest of the low, as soon as her own soldiers failed to protect her from the world. You want to blame someone for the cold facts? Blame yourself, professor. Let this be a good lesson to you.”
“You are breaking a bird on an anvil here. That’s easy for you to do, but it’s a cruelty. You’ll be remembered for that. It will weigh on your conscience.”
“It will not,” said the Godfather. “Because We will kindly offer to spare the witch’s life. Then We will watch your friends in a yapping frenzy to have her killed. Your noble scholars will do everything they can to have her vilified, lynched, dumped into the Cistern, and forgotten forever. They will blame her lavishly in order to absolve themselves. Then, when you meet each other again, you men with a cause, you literati—that’s when the conscience will sting.”
“So,” said Julian, “it’s not enough that we’re fools, or that we’re cowards, or that we failed to defend ourselves. We also have to be evil.”
“You are evil. Truly, you are fraudulent and wicked men. We should wash you from the fabric of society in a cleansing bath of blood. But We won’t do that. Do you know why? Because We understand necessity. We are responsible. We know what the state requires. We think these things through.”
“You could still spare us. You could forgive us for the things we wrote and thought. You could be courageous and generous. That is within your great power.”
