Gordon Dickson - Wolfling

“My apologies,” he said, looking up to Jim. “All right. You tell me what I can do.”

“Well,” said Jim, “for one thing, you can go to that Committee meeting with me tomorrow as my counsel. For another thing, you can answer a few questions. First—why should the Committee and the government and people in general be so eager to find me guilty of treason when all I’ve done is come back safe, with a valuable spaceship and a couple of people from the Throne World? I don’t see how either of those things could suggest that I had treason in my heart when I was on the Throne World. Of course, there’s Max Holland wanting to nail me. But if it was just him, it doesn’t seem to me that I’d have too much to worry about.”

“Why, don’t you understand?” Wylcoxin frowned up at him. “All this talk of treason—all this is because they’re afraid that you did things on the Throne World that will make the Empire want to take it out on Earth, in payment or revenge.”

“Why?” asked Jim.

“Why…” Wylcoxin did not quite sputter, but he came close to it. “Maybe it’s because of you that an uncle and a cousin of the Emperor are dead. Isn’t it possible that this Emperor would want to make somebody pay for those deaths?”

Jim chuckled. Wylcoxin’s eyebrows rose in astonishment and bafflement.

“You think that’s funny?” the other man demanded.

“No,” said Jim. “It’s just that I suddenly see where it all came from, this fear that has me threatened with a charge of treason. Treason carries the death penalty, doesn’t it?”

“Sometimes…” said Wylcoxin, grudgingly. “But what’re you talking about?”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t explain it to you,” said Jim. “Tell me, can you go and see Ro aboard the spaceship?”

Wylcoxin shook his head.

“I tried that earlier,” he said. “The authorities wouldn’t let me go out to the ship.”

“Can you send her a message?” asked Jim.

“I think I can do that.” Wylcoxin frowned. “I don’t know if I can get an answer for you, though.”

“An answer won’t be necessary,” said Jim. “Ro gave me up to Earth’s doctors without any protest. So she must be trusting them, where I’m concerned. That leads me to believe that she doesn’t know what this Committee is aiming at with me tomorrow. Could you get word to her of what they’re after, and what their attitude toward me is likely to be?”

“I think so,” said Wylcoxin. More energetically he added, “Yes, I know I can! If nothing else, I can get word to her when she comes in tomorrow morning. They’ll be calling her to repeat her story to the Committee. She’ll be there tomorrow too, undoubtedly.”

“If you can get word to her this evening on the ship, I’d appreciate that more,” said Jim.

“I should be able to.” Wylcoxin looked at him oddly. “But what do you expect from her? She can’t very well change her story from what it was earlier.”

“I don’t expect her to,” said Jim.

“But you said no one from Earth could help you. That leaves only Ro and that other passenger you brought back from the Throne World,” said Wylcoxin. “Let me warn you that these are almost in the position of being prosecution star witnesses. In short, you don’t have anyone to testify for you.”

“I might have.” Jim smiled slightly. “There’s the Governor of Alpha Centauri III.”

“Him!” Wylcoxin’s eyes lit up. “I’d never thought of him! That’s right—he did put in a good word for your Ro when she wanted to stay aboard the spaceship. Maybe he would speak up in your defense tomorrow… Want me to get in touch with him?”

Jim shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Leave that to me.”

Wylcoxin shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said helplessly. “I just don’t know. But I guess I’m along for the ride. Anything else?”

He looked up at Jim.

“No,” said Jim. “Just get that message to Ro if you can.”

“All right.” Wylcoxin got to his feet. “I’ll be around about half an hour before it’s time for you to be taken into Government Center, and I’ll ride in with you.”

He went over to the door, rattled the doorknob, and pounded on the door panel.

“It’s Wylcoxin!” he shouted through the door. “Let me out!”

After a second the door opened gingerly. Wylcoxin looked over at Jim.

“Well, good night,” he said. “And good luck.”

“Thank you,” said Jim.

Wylcoxin went out, and the door was shut and locked behind him.

Jim lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. For a moment the rush of thoughts that came immediately upon him threatened to overwhelm him. But he stemmed and silenced them with a grim self-control. After a little while, like a soldier in the field and under arms, he slept.

Daniel Wylcoxin came for him at eight-fifteen the following morning and rode along as Jim was transferred by closed car to the Committee room in one of the government buildings at Government Center. The Inquiry, Wylcoxin told him, was to start at nine.

Jim asked the other man only whether he had been able to get in touch with Ro. Wylcoxin nodded.

“They wouldn’t let me out to the ship to see her,” Wylcoxin said, “but I was able to talk into the ship from the guard line outside it, on a field phone they’ve rigged in order to keep in touch with her and that other fellow aboard. I asked her a lot of general questions, ostensibly for answers I needed in acting as your counsel, and slipped the information you wanted given her in between the lines, so to speak.”

“Good,” said Jim.

However, after that, and during the half-hour ride into Government Center in the closed car, Jim withdrew into himself and ignored the questions Wylcoxin put him, to the point where the other man finally got exasperated and forced himself on Jim’s attention by joggling Jim’s elbow.

“Look. Give me some answers, will you?” demanded Wylcoxin. “In half an hour I’m going to have to be up there, theoretically aiding and representing you as your counsel. You owe me some answers! Don’t forget, I got through to Ro for you, and that wasn’t easy. There was absolutely no line of communication open to her except that field telephone from the spaceport outside into your ship.”

Jim looked at him.

“Government Center is less than ten miles from Government Center spaceport,” he said, “isn’t that right?”

“Why… yes,” said Wylcoxin, wondering.

“If I’d been in a building in Government Center, I wouldn’t have needed you to get in touch with Ro,” said Jim. “At that distance, I could’ve talked directly to the ship myself.”

Wylcoxin looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and puzzlement.

“I’m only pointing out,” said Jim quietly, “that there’s no point in my wasting valuable thinking time giving you answers you’re not going to be able to understand, even if you could believe them. As far as the Committee members, Max Holland, and the other witnesses are concerned—it doesn’t matter what they say, or what they ask me. All I’m asking from you, now that you’ve got word to Ro, is to sit by my side and do whatever seems necessary as things come up.”

Jim went back to his thoughts. This time Wylcoxin left him alone with them.

They reached Government Center and the building where the Inquiry was to take place. Jim was kept in a small side room until just before the Committee members were due to appear. Then he and Wylcoxin were taken to their seats in an already filled Committee room.

Jim and Wylcoxin were installed at one of the several tables directly in front of the raised platform with its long table at which the six Committee members would sit. As he came in, he saw, seated separately in the crowd a few rows back from the front row tables, Max Holland and Styrk Jacobsen—the executive heads of the program that had trained him to go to the Throne World—and Ro, as well as a handful of other, minor figures out of his past from the time when he had been selected to be trained and sent.