John Brunner - The Squares of the City

I leaned across to Angers, who was still sweating after his brush with Fats Brown, and whispered, “Clever, isn’t he?” I wasn’t looking forward with much enthusiasm to my own examination.

“Very,” said Angers, forcing a ghastly smile. “I don’t like to think what Tiempo will say about today’s proceedings.”

Ruiz now entered the box with an aggressive air and stood with both hands on the rail before him like a captain on the bridge of his ship, looking around the court. He showed every desire to talk, and talk Lucas let him—about health statistics, about the high incidence of disease, about the moral corruption among the slum-dwellers, about fears that people had expressed to him lest their children should associate in state schools with the children of the peasants, about the direct relation he had discovered between the growth of the slum and the typhoid fever rate in Vados…

The day’s time was almost up when Lucas finished his own questions, but long enough remained for Brown to start on his, and only a few words had been exchanged when it became clear that Ruiz had dug his heels in and was not going to yield an inch. Brown began to mop his forehead at intervals; Ruiz spoke more and more like an orator making a major speech.

In the public seats, Maria Posador and Felipe Mendoza grew tense and frequently exchanged glances; correspondingly, Lucas and Angers began to relax and every now and again to smile faintly. Angers leaned toward me and whispered, “He’s doing very well, isn’t he?”

I nodded.

“Very sound man,” Angers continued softly. “He’s the President’s personal physician. One of the best doctors in the country.”

“I don’t care about the situation in Puerto Joaquin!” Ruiz was exclaiming heatedly. “I’m only concerned with the situation in Ciudad de Vados, which is what this case is about! I’m saying that this slum represents a menace to mental and physical health, and the sooner something is done about it the better. It doesn’t really matter what, so long as it’s got rid of.”

“Have you finished your examination, Senor Brown?” the judge put in.

Fats shook his head.

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to continue it tomorrow. Court adjourned.”

I noticed that Brown’s forehead was deeply etched with lines of thought as he left the court with Sigueiras, hands clasped behind him, plodding alongside.

Angers had to join Lucas and Ruiz for a further discussion of the case; accordingly, I was leaving the building by myself when, near the exit, I passed Senora Posador and Felipe Mendoza talking together. I said a word of greeting and would have gone past, but Senora Posador called me back and introduced her companion—”our great writer of whom you have surely heard.”

I gave Mendoza a cold nod. “I read your attack on me in Tiempo ,”I said shortly.

Mendoza frowned. “Not on you, senor. On those who hired you, and on their motives.”

“You might have made that a lot clearer.”

“I think if you had been in possession of more of the underlying facts of the situation when you read my article, it would have been perfectly clear, Senor Hakluyt.”

“All right,” I said, a little wearily. “So I’m an ignorant outsider and the circumstances are highly involved. Go ahead and enlighten me. Tell me why this case is attracting such a lot of attention, for example.”

“Please, Senor Hakluyt!” said Maria Posador with a distressed look. “It is for us rather than you to be bitter about it.”

Mendoza regarded me with burning eyes. “You are an outsider, senor, let us not forget that. We fought hard to preserve in the city charter the birthright of those who belong here, against encroachment by outsiders. This land on which we are standing, senor—it is part of the country, not just of a city, and the country should come first. The foreign-born citizens care only—as I think you also do—for the city, but we—we feel for the earth itself, for the peasants who scratch it with ploughs, and their children who grow up in its villages. Now, regrettably, some of our own people seek to destroy the very liberties we struggled to preserve on their behalf.”

“Surely,” I said, “the foreign-born citizens have a stake here, too. They gave up their own lands voluntarily; they invested their efforts in Ciudad de Vados, and they don’t want to see their work wasted. Ruiz was stressing that when he insisted that this case now is concerned purely with the city—and after all, if it weren’t for the outsiders, the city wouldn’t be here.”

“Ruiz!” said Mendoza with violence, and twisted his mouth as though about to spit. “The hypocrite Ruiz! Listen, senor, and I will tell you what lies behind that smooth and aggressive face!”

“Felipe,” said Maria Posador in a warning tone. Mendoza brushed the word aside and thrust a forefinger through the air toward me.

“Think on this! Our President was married before. As a good Catholic—hah!—when his first wife became an encumbrance, he could not think of divorce. She fell ill. He had Dr. Ruiz to attend her. Within a week she was dead, and yet—-and yet—Vados has made Ruiz his director of health and hygiene.”

“I—you’re trying to tell me Ruiz killed her,” I said. “You should not speak recklessly, Felipe,” Senora Posador sighed, and I turned to her.

“You’re too right! I’ve read some of this guy’s articles in Tiempo which ought never to have seen print. You can’t go around tossing out accusations of bribery—or murder—with no evidence to support them.”

“There is evidence,” Senora Posador contradicted, and kept her violet eyes set on my face. “Enough evidence to ensure that if the regime falls, there will be a firing squad waiting to deal with the good doctor—if he does not flee first.”

“Well, what the hell has stopped you from using the evidence if it exists?”

“The fact,” she said coldly, “that he who would destroy Ruiz by using it will certainly destroy himself if Vados is still in power; he will then destroy Vados and perhaps the country. We are realists, Senor Hakluyt. What does it matter to us if one murderer goes free when to condemn him would be to tear Aguazul with civil war? There are men walking the streets here with worse crimes than murder to answer for. Come, Felipe—and hasta la vista, senor!”

She took Mendoza’s arm, and they walked toward the exit, leaving me with a peculiar taste of ashes in my mouth.

There was a saturnine policeman waiting for me when I returned to the hotel—a man called Carlos Guzman, who spoke good but heavily accented English and presented himself as a sergeant of detectives.

“It is about a threat that was made to you,” he said, and left his words hanging.

I said, “Go on.”

“Allegedly, by a certain Jose Dalban,” he said. And waited again.

I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said. “Why not say what you have to say and get it over with?”

He glanced around; we were in the lounge of the hotel. Not many people were present, and none of them were in earshot of a low-toned voice. He sighed. “Very well, senor. I would have thought you might prefer to discuss it in more private conditions—but as you wish. We are unable to make proceedings on your unsupported word.”

“Well, that’s no more than I expected,” I snapped.

He looked unhappy. “It is not that we doubt you, senor. But you must realize that Senor Dalban is respected and well-known—”

I decided to take a long shot on the strength of a hint Angers had dropped to me. “Especially respected by the police, hey? Respected so much that you turn a blind eye on his affairs.”