They all agreed to that instantly, but with a questioning note in their voices.
“Well, then, I trust you all realize that we cannot, under any circumstances, allow those three brothers to be convicted in this court,” I added.
There was a moment of startled silence, while Hoddy and Stonehenge and Parros and Thrombley were understanding what they had just heard. Then Stonehenge cleared his throat and said:
“Mr. Ambassador! I’m sure that you have some excellent reasons for that remarkable statement, but I must say—”
“It was a really colossal error on somebody’s part,” I said, “that this case was allowed to get into the Court of Political Justice. It never should have. And if we take a part in the prosecution, or allow those men to be convicted, we will establish a precedent to support the principle that a foreign Ambassador is, on this planet, defined as a practicing local politician.
“I will invite you to digest that for a moment.”
A moment was all they needed. Thrombley was horrified and dithered incoherently. Stonehenge frowned and fidgeted with some papers in front of him. I could see several thoughts gathering behind his eyes, including, I was sure, a new view of his instructions from Klüng.
Even Hoddy got at least part of it. “Why, that means that anybody can bump off any diplomat he doesn’t like. …” he began.
“That is only part of it, Mr. Ringo,” Thrombley told him. “It also means that a diplomat, instead of being regarded as the representative of his own government, becomes, in effect, a functionary of the government of New Texas. Why, all sorts of complications could arise. …”
“It certainly would impair, shall we say, the principle of extraterritoriality of Embassies,” Stonehenge picked it up. “And it would practically destroy the principle of diplomatic immunity.”
“Migawd!” Hoddy looked around nervously, as though he could already hear an army of New Texas Rangers, each with a warrant for Hoddy Ringo, battering at the gates.
“We’ll have to do something!” Gomez, the Secretary of the Embassy, said.
“I don’t know what,” Stonehenge said. “The obvious solution would be, of course, to bring charges against those Bonney Boys on simple first-degree murder, which would be tried in an ordinary criminal court. But it’s too late for that now. We wouldn’t have time to prevent their being arraigned in this Political Justice court, and once a defendant is brought into court, on this planet, he cannot be brought into court again for the same act. Not the same crime, the same act.”
I had been thinking about this and I was ready. “Look, we must bring those Bonney brothers to trial. It’s the only effective way of demonstrating to the public the simple fact that Ambassador Cumshaw was murdered at the instigation of the z’Srauff. We dare not allow them to be convicted in the Court of Political Justice, for the reasons already stated. And to maintain the prestige of the Solar League, we dare not allow them to go unpunished.”
“We can have it one way,” Parros said, “and maybe we can have it two ways. But I’m damned if I can see how we can have it all three ways.”
I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t see it; he hadn’t had the same urgency goading him which had forced me to find the answer. It wasn’t an answer that I liked, but I was in the position where I had no choice.
“Well, here’s what we have to do, gentlemen,” I began, and from the respectful way they regarded me, from the attention they were giving my words, I got a sudden thrill of pride. For the first time since my scrambled arrival, I was really Ambassador Stephen Silk.
VIII
A couple of New Texas Ranger tanks met the Embassy car four blocks from the Statehouse and convoyed us into the central plaza, where the barbecue had been held on the Friday afternoon that I had arrived on New Texas. There was almost as dense a crowd as the last time I had seen the place; but they were quieter, to the extent that there were no bands, and no shooting, no cowbells or whistles. The barbecue pits were going again, however, and hawkers were pushing or propelling their little wagons about, vending sandwiches. I saw a half a dozen big twenty-foot teleview screens, apparently wired from the courtroom.
As soon as the Embassy car and its escorting tanks reached the plaza, an ovation broke out. I was cheered, with the high-pitched yipeee! of New Texans and adjured and implored not to let them so-and-sos get away with it.
There was a veritable army of Rangers on guard at the doors of the courtroom. The only spectators being admitted to the courtroom seemed to be prominent citizens with enough pull to secure passes.
Inside, some of the spectators’ benches had been removed to clear the front of the room. In the cleared space, there was one bulky shape under a cloth cover that seemed to be the aircar and another cloth-covered shape that looked like a fifty-mm dual-purpose gun. Smaller exhibits, including a twenty-mm auto-rifle, were piled on the friends-of-the-court table. The prosecution table was already occupied—Colonel Hickock, who waved a greeting to me, three or four men who looked like well-to-do ranchers, and a delegation of lawyers.
“Samuel Goodham,” Parros, beside me, whispered, indicating a big, heavyset man with white hair, dressed in a dark suit of the cut that had been fashionable on Terra seventy-five years ago. “Best criminal lawyer on the planet. Hickock must have hired him.”
There was quite a swarm at the center table, too. Some of them were ranchers, a couple in aggressively shabby workclothes, and there were several members of the Diplomatic Corps. I shook hands with them and gathered that they, like myself, were worried about the precedent that might be established by this trial. While I was introducing Hoddy Ringo
