James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

‘I didn’t hear you say how many times you could go through the door marked DETERRENCE,’ George replied. His tone was more acid than he intended, but it sounded right. ‘The crowd drowned you out.’

‘Defending a country is a damn sight harder than sticking a few words on a tombstone,’ said Wengernook between locked teeth. A WHEN? balloon bounced off the booth door. ‘You’re going to testify tomorrow, aren’t you? Just remember, we’re with you one hundred percent.’

George’s spermatids trembled as his advocate left the defense table and walked through the mid-morning darkness. It won’t be that bad, he told them. I merely have to explain that I was not involved with smart warheads, damage limitation, any of it.

Bonenfant said, ‘The defense calls George—’

‘No!’ a familiar voice piped up from the back of the courtroom. ‘The defense calls me !’

Theophilus Carter ambled forward stomping on WHEN? balloons and carrying a steaming cup of tea. His scopas suit was diamond-patterned like a harlequin’s tights, and its utility belt sagged with daggers and pistols from the costume racks of the Mad Tea Party. ‘I don’t normally arm myself so heavily,’ he explained, sipping tea, ‘but I understand there are war criminals present. Say, shouldn’t somebody ask me to remove my hat?’ He darted a blobby finger toward Justice Jefferson. ‘Aren’t you in charge of that?’

‘I don’t care what you do with your hat, sir,’ she replied, ‘Can anyone tell me who this is?’

‘Dr Theophilus Carter, unadmitted tailor and inventor,’ said Aquinas, rising. ‘We hired him to deliver Document 919 to the defendant Paxton.’

‘Why did you retain the services of such an unbalanced person?’ Justice Jefferson demanded.

‘Oh, I’m highly balanced,’ asserted the MAD Hatter. He set the teacup in the brim of his hat and did a pirouette. ‘It’s the strategic forces that are unbalanced.’

‘We were unaware of his condition at the time,’ Aquinas explained.

‘You don’t really want this man testifying, do you, Mr Bonenfant?’ asked Justice Jefferson.

‘But I have evidence to give,’ said the Hatter. ‘I can prove that George is innocent.’

Bonenfant uncurled his index finger, aimed it at the client in question, wiggled it. George left the glass booth and joined his advocate in a niche jammed with documents relating to STABLE II.

‘Any reason not to hear what this fellow has to say?’ whispered Bonenfant.

‘He’s a madman,’ said George. ‘Can you put a madman on the stand?’

Swearing in Theophilus Carter was the greatest challenge of the court usher’s career. After fifteen minutes of semantic circumlocution, the job was done.

‘Are you acquainted with the defendant Paxton?’ Bonenfant asked.

‘George and I go back a long way,’ the Hatter replied. ‘I knew him before his secondary spermatocytes were failing to become spermatids. May I give my testimony now?’

‘That’s what you’re doing.’

‘This whole thing would go a lot quicker if I told you what to say. Ask me, “When did you first meet the defendant?”’

Bonenfant’s upper teeth entered into violent contact with his lower ones. ‘Er – when did you first meet—’

‘When he came in to get his free scopas suit. Ask me how much the prosecution paid me to make it.’

‘How much did the prosecution pay you—’

‘Objection!’ The Hatter shot up as if attached to a delivery system. ‘Leading the witness! The prosecution did not pay me to make the suit. But they did bribe me with a wonderful flying shop.’ He flopped back into the stand. ‘Ask me what happened after I told George he had to sign a sales contract implicating himself in the arms race.’

‘The tribunal will please note that my client was entrapped by the prosecution. Now, Mr Carter, what happened after you told George he had to sign a sales—’

‘He signed it, took the suit, and left.’

‘What happened next?’

‘I became curious. Would anyone have behaved as George did – accepting a free suit even after being told that this technology undermined deterrence? So I filled my hat with unsigned contracts and flew off in my shop. I figured that if fifty people refused to sign, then George was an unusually negligent person, and I was obliged to surrender his confession to the prosecution.’

‘Did you find fifty such people?’

After removing the teacup from the brim, Theophilus flipped his hat over and reached inside. His hand emerged with a stack of scopas suit sales contracts. ‘These are the first two hundred I gave out. Every one is signed. All right, I said to myself. I’ll settle for forty-five refusals. No luck. Thirty? Impossible, Ten? Nope. Time was running out. The warheads had started landing. One! If one person is less negligent than George Paxton, I’ll hand over the evidence of his guilt.’

‘And did you find such a person?’

‘Ask me if I found such a person.’

‘I just did.’

‘You did? What a coincidence – I found one too! Ask me whether this person was a man or a woman.’

‘Was this person a man or—’

‘That’s irrelevant! What’s relevant is that only one person on earth was willing to worry about the impact of scopas suits on deterrence.’

‘Your Honor, I object,’ said Aquinas. ‘Dr Carter did not approach every person on earth.’

As Justice Jefferson instructed the stenographers to delete the witness’s last remark, Theophilus unhooked a pineapple-type fragmentation grenade from his belt and began biting the cast iron case.

‘Ask me why I’m insane,’ he said.

‘Why are you insane?’ the advocate responded.

Theophilus pulled the pin from the grenade – nothing happened – and used it to stir his tea. If admitted, he explained, he would have been part of the abolition regime. His job would have been to sit in a rubber room in the Pentagon all day, thinking about strategic doctrine. It was assumed that people who took this job would go crazy. They were the heroes of the twenty-first century. Their madness was their gift to the human species; because of the Hatter and his fellow martyrs, humanity would never forget how close it had come to suicide.

‘Ask me what job I have now,’ said Theophilus.

‘What job—’

‘History rehabilitation. Long hours, low pay, bad smells. ‘Again he reached into his hat, this time coming up with a stack of computer software disks. ‘Now this program here,’ he said, ‘this is Marcus Aurelius. And this one will go into Mahatma Gandhi’s brain. At one time, all of history heartily approved of what this tribunal is trying to do. But then, after George saved my life—’

‘Saved your life?’ said Bonenfant, pouncing on the testimonial. ‘How did he come to save your life?’

‘I’m asking the questions around here! Ask me how George came to save my life.’

‘How did George—’

‘Somebody was going to shoot me. Ask me who.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t ask! It would not help Tarmac’s case one bit.’

‘I wasn’t really going to shoot him,’ Brat explained to his codefendants. ‘I just wanted to scare him into giving me his shop.’

‘It flies – is that what he said?’ asked Randstable.

‘Twenty-first century know-how,’ said Brat.

‘Love to see the schematics,’ said Randstable.

Theophilus took more software from his hat. ‘After George saved my life, I realized that the framers of the McMurdo Sound Agreement had been overstepping their authority. He’s a fine fellow, old George is. You should see the witnesses I’ve got lined up.’ The Hatter waved a disk around. ‘Look! Socrates will testify in his defense! And Saint Francis of Assisi! Joan of Arc! Jesus Christ Himself is prepared to take the stand on George’s behalf… Yes, the same Jesus Christ who said, “But whosoever shall nuke thy capital city, turn to him thy best seaport also.”’