Gordon Dickson - Wolfling

Wylcoxin broke off to look curiously at Jim.

“I understand the High-born run the Empire?” he wound up.

“They do,” said Jim flatly. “What am I doing here?”

“This lady, this High-born—”

“Her name is Ro,” interrupted Jim grimly.

“Ro, then,” said Wylcoxin, “met the first government people to come aboard your spaceship after it landed. There was quite a well-known group, I understand, because the Alpha Centauri Governor, who’s visiting Government Center here, recognized the ship as being one belonging to these High-born. Anyway, Ro let them aboard and told them quite a story, including how you got wounded fighting some kind of duel with a Prince of the Empire. She said you were a lot better, but she didn’t object when the government offered to take you to one of our own hospitals for care. Evidently they convinced her that whatever she could do, the kind of medicine you were used to might do you more good in the long run.”

“Yes,” murmured Jim. “She’s not the suspicious kind.”

“Evidently,” said Wylcoxin. “At any rate, she let them take you. And here you are. And the Committee’s scheduled to start its Inquiry as soon as you’re well enough to appear before it. I understand the doctor’s already certified you in that respect, so the proceedings will probably start tomorrow morning.”

“What are they inquiring about?” asked Jim.

“Well…” Wylcoxin leaned forward in his chair. “That’s the point. As I say, the Inquiry has no relation to any court procedure. Theoretically it’s called simply to supply the government with information, so that it will know how to act about you, your friends, and your ship. Actually, and I imagine you expected something like this, it’s merely a get-together to determine if there’s any reason why they shouldn’t set the wheels in motion to bring you to trial for treason.”

The final words of Wylcoxin’s sentence fell softly on the still air of the hospital room. Jim looked at him for a second.

“You said I ‘expected’ it?” Jim echoed quietly. “What makes you think I expected something like this when I got back here?”

“Why”—Wylcoxin paused and shot him a keen glance—“Maxwell Holland came back after you left Alpha Centauri III for the Throne World with those other High-born, and evidently he reported you as saying then that you meant to pay no attention to your orders, but to raise any kind of hell you felt like raising at the Imperial Court. Certainly Holland is going to testify to that effect tomorrow before the Committee. Didn’t you say what he says you said?”

“No,” said Jim. “I said I’d have to follow my own judgment from there on.”

“That might sound like the same thing to the Committee,” said Wylcoxin.

“It sounds,” said Jim, “like this Committee has already made up its mind to consider me guilty of—what was it—treason?”

“I’d say they have,” said Wylcoxin. “But then, I’m automatically on your side of it. And your side of it doesn’t look too good from where I sit. You were carefully selected to be the man sent in to the Throne World, and trained at a great deal of trouble and expense, so that you could go among these High-born and observe them. Then you were to report back to Earth with your observations, so government could make up its mind whether we were really a lost bit of this Empire, and bound to consider ourselves a part of it, or whether there was a chance we’d evolved on Earth here entirely separately—and really were a different race entirely from the so-called human beings of the Empire. Right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Jim.

“Good, so far,” said Wylcoxin. “But now, according to this Ro, instead of merely observing, you started out by getting into a fight with one of the High-born and knifing him aboard the ship going to the Throne World, then followed that up by joining some military bodyguard belonging to the Emperor when you got there, winding it all up by involving yourself in some kind of intrigue in which the Emperor’s uncle and cousin were killed, as well as several bodyguards. Is that right?”

“It covers the physical facts of what happened,” said Jim evenly, “but it distorts them, and the situations that gave rise to them, completely out of recognition.”

“You’re saying that this girl Ro is a liar?” Wylcoxin demanded.

“I’m saying that she didn’t tell it that way,” said Jim. “Tell me, did you get the story direct from her, or secondhand from somebody else who heard it from her?”

Wylcoxin sank thoughtfully back in his chair and rubbed his chin.

“I got it secondhand,” he admitted. “But if the man who reported what she said to me can make it sound the way I made it sound just now to you, then that’s the way government witnesses will be making it sound to the Committee tomorrow morning.”

“It sounds more than ever like a hanging Committee,” said Jim.

“Maybe…” Wylcoxin rubbed his chin thoughtfully again. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and began to walk up and down the room.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, stopping in front of Jim. “I wasn’t too happy about being assigned as your counsel. Maybe I’d been brainwashed a little myself.”

He checked himself.

“I don’t say that because so far you’ve said anything to make me alter my own feelings about you and the situation,” he said hastily. “I say that simply because you’ve opened my eyes to the fact that there might—I say might— be a certain amount of prejudice on the other side.”

He sat down again in his chair before Jim.

“Well,” he said, “let’s hear your side of it. What happened from the time you left Alpha Centauri III until you landed back here?”

“I got myself taken to the Throne World,” said Jim, looking straight at the other man, “to find out, as you say, whether the Empire was populated by humans we were related to, or whether we were a separate stock from them entirely. Everything else happened after that as necessity dictated.”

Wylcoxin sat for several seconds after Jim had stopped talking, almost as if he expected Jim to continue.

“Is that all you’ve got to say?” he demanded then.

“That’s all for now,” said Jim. “I’ll tell a more complete story to that Committee tomorrow if they care to listen.”

“You’re deliberately not telling me anything you know that might help you, then,” said Wylcoxin. “Don’t you understand, I can’t be of any use to you unless you’re as open with me as you possibly can be?”

“I understand it,” said Jim. “Quite frankly, I don’t trust you. I trust your goodwill and honesty toward me, but I don’t trust your capability to understand what I tell you, any more than I’d trust the capability of anyone else who hadn’t been to the Throne World himself.”

“Why, man,” said Wylcoxin, “that takes in everyone on Earth!”

“That’s right,” said Jim. “I don’t think anyone from Earth could help me much. Not if Max Holland, as you say, is there to testify against me, and the Committee seems determined to find grounds for bringing me to trial for treason.”

“Then I can’t be any good to you!”

Wylcoxin jumped to his feet out of the chair and headed toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” said Jim. “Perhaps you can’t help me by defending me, any more than any other Earth-born human can. But you can help me in other ways.”

“How?” Wylcoxin turned almost belligerently, with one hand on the doorknob.

“To start off with,” said Jim quietly, “by considering me innocent until I’m proven guilty.”

Wylcoxin stood for a second with his hand on the doorknob; then his hand dropped free. He came slowly back and sat down in the chair once more.