MacRoscope (31 page)

He was going too far, bringing in irrelevancies, but could not seem to stop. His resentments were coming out, and she personified them. He was angry at her because he loved her.

“But one thing kept her there, despite her obvious unsuitability for the position. She met an attractive young American scientist only slightly more intelligent than she who was willing to fraternize. She — became infatuated with him.” Translation: Ivo was angry because Afra loved Brad…

A crease appeared in Afra’s brow and her color heightened, but she did not move or speak.

“But it turned out, after a brief but intimate liaison, that this American had deceived her. He was far more able intellectually than she, having falsified his status in that respect. He had far, more education, and regarded what she had taken to be a commitment for marriage as no more than a temporary entertainment. Further, he proposed to reassign her favors to an acquaintance. She thus found herself reduced to the lowest status imaginable to her: so-called white slavery.”

Beatryx gestured in distress. “Ivo, that’s horrible. You have no right to accuse her of—”

He felt cold now, no longer angry. “Of
de facto
prostitution? I was not doing so. I was making the point that Bradley Carpenter treated her as a diversion. His real purpose—”

“You’re overdoing it,” Groton cautioned him. “Brad isn’t on trial.”

Ivo was glad to let that aspect drop. Brad had, after all, been his friend. He had known for twenty years what Brad was like: a polite, cautious, dull Schön. If Brad used people ruthlessly, what would Schön do?

“It subsequently turned out that her supposed fiancé was himself of mixed blood: by her definition, a mulatto or worse. And he had been raised in a free-love colony where morality in the conventional sense was unknown. Thus she learned that she had not been the first to share intimacies with him; rather, she was the last in a very long line, and followed after girls — and boys — of all the races of the world.”

Some condemnation! Ivo himself was as conservative as Afra, and as biased, despite what he knew of his origin. Yet he had shared much of the life of the project until its breakup. When, thereafter, he had encountered individual girls from it, he had indulged in the usual amenities. Outsiders would have considered this to be flagrant promiscuity. Yet the project bond was special; its members shared a heritage, and there were no reservations between them. What was more natural than a sharing of intellect and experience, in this way recapturing a fragment of that larger camaraderie?

Ivo had been shocked by Afra’s nudity and actions at the time of the handling — but that was because she was a nonproject girl. Had he been properly objective, he would have had no problem. She had been true to her viewpoint, then and in her relation to Brad, while he was a thorough hypocrite.
He
should be on trial, not she…

Time to wrap it up, before he got carried away again. He gestured at Afra. “It is not for us, as it was not for her, to judge the morality of Bradley Carpenter. He is dead by this woman’s hand. It is for us to determine whether the defendant had motivation for murder — and surely, by her bigoted definitions, she had. Her act must be interpreted in this light. There can be no verdict but guilty.”

He had spoken well, but he felt tight and sick. This trial had shown him unwelcome things in himself.

Beatryx, assigned counsel for the defense, took the floor. She was gaunt now, and troubled, but her voice was strong. “Harold, this is all wrong. Ivo has put things all out of proportion. There’s hardly anybody who couldn’t be condemned by that sort of reasoning. Afra was trying to bring back the man she loved, and she tried very hard, but it didn’t work. Nobody else did anything. The rest of us would have let him fade away, there in his tank. If she had known what would happen, she never would have—”

“No,” Afra said. “I couldn’t stand to have him remain as jelly, or as an idiot. Better to have him dead, than that.”

Ivo froze. Beatryx was making a good case — and Afra had just undermined it.

“That isn’t true!” Beatryx told her. “You just think because he died, you have to take the blame. But he did it himself — he watched the destroyer on purpose.”

Afra stared straight ahead. Beatryx was right. Afra hadn’t tried to kill Brad. She had taken a wild gamble in an effort to bring him back — from the dead, in effect. Her failure did not imply malice.

“Do you have any statement to make on your own behalf?” Groton asked Afra after a moment.

There was no response.

“In that case, having heard the presentation and being already familiar with the background of this case, it behooves me to render an impartial decision.”

Groton was going through with it, but it seemed to Ivo that this “trial” was in a shambles. Afra had not fought back properly, and so had not been officially vindicated. They had accomplished nothing.

“I find the defendant guilty of conduct prejudicial to the well-being of the decedent, Bradley Carpenter. Motivation for overt, premeditated murder, however, has by no means been shown, and more than a single interpretation may be placed on the defendant’s physical actions. At worst, they were reckless. The actual instrument of demise appears to have been the phenomenon we term the destroyer, combined with an incompletely understood function of the melting cycle. Rehabilitation of the defendant therefore seems feasible.”

Brother! Would Afra swallow this?

“Are you saying it was an accident?” Beatryx asked. “But she still has to pay for it?”

“Just about,” Groton conceded. “Recklessness, though, has been well established in my judgment.”

“I suppose that’s all right, then.”

Ivo nodded acquiescence.

“I therefore sentence you, Afra Summerfield of Georgia, to exile from the equal society of man until such time as the neutralization of the said destroyer seems feasible, so that no other person need ever be similarly afflicted. This will be considered penance by corrective endeavor. Further: because to a considerable extent your personal pride was at fault, this sentence includes a period of confinement at onerous labor. You shall assume the gardening and cooking and laundry chores for the Triton encampment and shall not leave the garden-kitchen-laundry areas except to make beds and to perform such other menial tasks as may be required of you by the other members of this encampment. This labor shall terminate only upon the group’s departure from the present locale, at which time you shall be permitted to petition the group for readmittance to its society on a probationary basis.

“Until that point you shall not again be addressed by name, nor shall you address any member of the group by name.”

And Afra, amazingly, nodded. She
wanted
to be punished!

“This sentence,” Groton said after a pause, “is suspended, owing to—”

“No!” Afra said dully. “It’s a fair sentence.”

So Groton had intended only a token reprimand. Afra, anticipating this, had insisted that it be real. Her privilege, of course — but were they helping her to recover, or merely catering to her masochism?

“Girl,” Ivo snapped into the intercom.

After a few seconds Afra’s voice came back. “Sir?”

“Report to the drawing room for conference.”

She appeared duly, clad in a simple black skirt falling below the knees, with a long-sleeved blouse overset by a loose housecoat. A drab kerchief bound her hair, giving her something of the aspect of a nun.

She stood silently, waiting for him to speak.

“Sit down.”

“Sir?”

“Down. I have something to show you.”

She settled on the least comfortable perch available.

Ivo took his stance before the blackboard he had set up. “A conception of cosmology,” he said, assuming the manner of a lecturer. “The evidence available indicates that our universe is in a state of continual expansion. Calculations suggest that there is a finite limit to such expansion, governed by variables too complex to discuss at this time. For convenience we shall think of the present universe as that four-dimensional volume beyond which our three-dimensional physical space and matter cannot expand: the cosmic limitation. We shall further consider these four dimensions to be spatial in nature, though in fact the universe is a complex of
n
dimensions, few of which are spatial and many of which interact with spatial planes deviously. Do you understand?”

“Which other dimensions are you thinking of?”

“Time, mass, intensity, probability — any measurable or theoretically measurable quality.” She nodded, and he saw that he had her interest. There was nothing like a few weeks of household drudgery to make the stellar reaches more exciting. “Now assume that the 3-space cosmos we perceive can be represented by a derivative: a one-dimensional line.” He drew a line on the board. “If you prefer, you may think of this line as a cord or section of pipe, in itself embracing three dimensions, but finite and flexible.” He amplified his drawing:

“Quite clear,” she said. “A pipe of macroscopic diameter represented by a line.”

“Our fourth spatial dimension is now illustrated by a two-space figure: a circle.” He erased the pipe-section and drew a circle on the board. “Within this circle is our line. Let’s say it extends from point A to point B on the perimeter.” He set it up:

“The ends of the universe,” she agreed.

“Call this 3-space line within this 4-space circle the universe at, or soon after, its inception.”

“The fabled big bang.”

“Yes. Now in what manner would our fixed circle accommodate our variable line — if that line lengthened? Say the line AB expanded to a length of 2 AB?”

“It would have to wrinkle,” she said immediately.

“Precisely.” He erased his figure and drew another with a bending line:

“Now our universe has been expanding for some time,” he continued. “How would you represent a hundredfold extension?”

She stood up, came to the board, accepted the chalk from him, and drew a more involved figure in place of his last:

“Very good,” he said. “Now how about a thousandfold? A millionfold?”