Plague of Pythons
By Frederik Pohl.
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I
Because of the crowd they held Chandler’s trial in the all-purpose room of the high school. It smelled of leather and stale sweat. He walked up the three steps to the stage, with the bailiff’s hand on his elbow, and took his place at the defendant’s table.
Chandler’s lawyer looked at him without emotion. He was appointed by the court. He was willing to do his job, but his job didn’t require him to like his client. All he said was, “Stand up. The judge is coming in.”
Chandler got to his feet and leaned on the table while the bailiff chanted his call and the chaplain read some verses from John. He did not listen. The Bible verse came too late to help him, and besides he ached.
When the police arrested him they had not been gentle. There were four of them. They were from the plant’s own security force and carried no guns. They didn’t need any; Chandler had put up no resistance after the first few moments—that is, he stopped as soon as he could stop—but the police hadn’t stopped. He remembered that very clearly. He remembered the nightstick across the side of his head that left his ear squashed and puffy, he remembered the kick in the gut that still made walking painful. He even remembered the series of blows about the skull that had knocked him out.
The bruises along his rib cage and left arm, though, he did not remember getting. Obviously the police had been mad enough to keep right on subduing him after he was already unconscious.
Chandler did not blame them—exactly. He supposed he would have done the same thing.
The judge was having a long mumble with the court stenographer apparently about something which had happened in the Union House the night before. Chandler knew Judge Ellithorp slightly. He did not expect to get a fair trial. The previous December the judge himself, while possessed, had smashed the transmitter of the town’s radio station, which he owned, and set fire to the building it occupied. His son-in-law had been killed in the fire.
Laughing, the judge waved the reporter back to his seat and glanced around the courtroom. His gaze touched Chandler lightly, like the flick of the hanging strands of cord that precede a railroad tunnel. The touch carried the same warning. What lay ahead for Chandler was destruction.
“Read the charge,” ordered Judge Ellithorp. He spoke very loudly. There were more than six hundred persons in the auditorium; the judge didn’t want any of them to miss a word.
The bailiff ordered Chandler to stand and informed him that he was accused of having, on the seventeenth day of June last, committed on the person of Margaret Flershem, a minor, an act of rape—“Louder!” ordered the judge testily.
“Yes, Your Honor,” said the bailiff, and inflated his chest. “An Act of Rape under Threat of Bodily Violence,” he cried; “and Did Further Commit on the Person of Said Margaret Flershem an Act of Aggravated Assault—”
Chandler rubbed his aching side, looking at the ceiling. He remembered the look in Peggy Flershem’s eyes as he forced himself on her. She was only sixteen years old, and at that time he hadn’t even known her name.
The bailiff boomed on: “—and Did Further Commit on that Same Seventeenth Day of June Last on the Person of Ingovar Porter an Act of Assault with Intent to Rape, the Foregoing Being a True Bill Handed Down by the Grand Jury of Sepulpas County in Extraordinary Session Assembled, the Eighteenth Day of June Last.”
Judge Ellithorp looked satisfied as the bailiff sat down, quite winded. While the judge hunted through the papers on his desk the crowd in the auditorium stirred and murmured.
A child began to cry.
The judge stood up and pounded his gavel. “What is it? What’s the matter with him? You, Dundon!” The court attendant the judge was looking at hurried over and spoke to the child’s mother, then reported to the judge.
“I dunno, Your Honor. All he says is something scared him.”
The judge was enraged. “Well, that’s just fine! Now we have to take up the time of all these good people, probably for no reason, and hold up the business of this court, just because of a child. Bailiff! I want you to clear this courtroom of all children under—” he hesitated, calculating voting blocks in his head—“all children under the age of six. Dr. Palmer, are you there?
