James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

Aquinas leaped up. ‘Your Honors, how much longer must we endure this ludicrous presentation?’

Justice Jefferson seesawed her glasses on the bridge of her nose, looked at Document 318, and said, ‘Your findings are most unusual, Mr Bonenfant, and the court considers them admissible, but what is the point ?’

‘Just this. Armed deterrence did not fail. The war happened through a freak of nature. If the teratorns had taken a slightly different flight path on that particular Saturday morning, they would have eluded the NORAD early warning systems, as they had done so many times in the past, and the nuclear balance would have remained intact. My clients planned no crimes against peace, nor did they carry them out. Armed deterrence worked, your Honors. It worked.’

‘It worked,’ said Brat.

‘It worked,’ said Wengernook.

‘It worked,’ said Overwhite.

‘It worked,’ said Randstable.

‘Amen,’ said Reverend Sparrow.

‘And that is all I have to say,’ Bonenfant concluded.

Justice Jefferson cast a thoughtful glance toward the foulsmelling bird – a glance into which George read vast volumes of wisdom and compassion – and announced that the court would withdraw to write its verdict.

And so the ice continent became a kind of physician’s office, humanity’s final remnant fidgeting in the anteroom, waiting to learn whether its collective case was terminal.

In George’s brain vicious and sadistic memory cells played his testimony over and over, torturing the guilt areas with snatches from speeches he might have made. Should I have spoken of Justine – of how she instinctively knew the suits were no good? Said more about Holly? Mentioned the Giant Ride horse, the Big Dipper, or the Mary Merlin doll back home in the closet? Certainly I could have put more stress on my co-defendants’ positive points…

He paced his cell, wearing a groove in the ice.

Why doesn’t your future wife come to visit you? his spermatids asked.

If word got back to the judges, he explained, they’d know she cared about me.

Of course, said the spermatids. Yes. Naturally. Why doesn’t she come anyway?

I don’t know, he confessed.

On the witness stand, she said she didn’t love you.

That was just to help our case.

JUSTICES STILL DELIBERATING, the slopes of Mount Christchurch declared to the assembled legions.

‘This game is seven-card stud,’ said Overwhite.

‘They’re probably hung up on Paxton’s testimony,’ said Brat. ‘All that talk about bad ideas – it must have thrown them.’

‘For a loop,’ said Wengernook.

‘I told the truth,’ said George.

‘Leave him alone,’ said Overwhite. He squeezed George’s hand. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that stuff about your kid.’

‘It’s all right,’ said George. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he added.

‘War always has its human side,’ said Brat.

‘Do you suppose Jefferson and company were favorably impressed by that vulture?’ asked Overwhite.

‘Definitely,’ said Wengernook.

‘An excellent move by Bonenfant,’ said Randstable. ‘Very pretty.’

‘It proves that you don’t get into a war by being too strong,’ said Brat.

‘Ace bets,’ said Randstable.

‘One egg,’ said Wengernook.

‘Two,’ said Overwhite.

‘We should be glad,’ said Brat. ‘It’s a good sign when a jury is out for a long time.’

‘That’s just in the movies,’ said Wengernook.

‘There is no jury,’ said Overwhite.

‘There are no movies,’ said George.

‘Raise,’ said Brat.

JUSTICES TO ANNOUNCE VERDICT TODAY, said Mount Christ-church.

The final week of school, the final day of a summer by the sea, the final hour of a long train trip – George could recall all of these experiences. In each case the space in question had changed, abandoning him even as he attempted to abandon it. For nearly a month the Ice Palace of Justice had been his home, but now it was regaining the aloofness and unfamiliarity it had worn on the first day.

The judges entered slowly, their black robes soaking up the oily gloom, each wearing a face that could have bluffed its way through a thousand losing poker hands. Shawna Queen Jefferson, who carried a ream of paper and a biography of Abraham Lincoln in her arms, was mumbling to herself. Theresa Gioberti seemed worried, Jan Wojciechowski bemused, Kamo Yoshinobu sad.

They sat down.

The cold, muffled stillness of a planetarium seeped through the palace. George scanned the gallery – the faces, the signs. Yes, there she was, between LET US IN and GIVE THEM A VOICE: Aubrey’s mother. His spermatids longed for the South Pole and the strength they knew they would find there.

At the defense table Bonenfant, Dennie, and Parkman held hands.

Justice Jefferson took her whalebone glasses from her scopas suit and put them on. She spread out the papers, selected one.

‘I shall begin by stating that, in the opinion of the tribunal, the doctrine of armed deterrence remains vigorous, credible, and intact.’

A vast and spontaneous ‘NO!’ thundered down from the gallery. The judge smashed her gavel into the bench, launching a spray of ice chips.

‘Even while undergoing certain disturbing variations during the last administration, the armed-deterrence doctrine continued to boast such resilience that it could be used to make as good a case for expanding America’s thermonuclear arsenal as for scaling it down.’

A smile jumped onto Dennie’s impossibly pretty face.

‘Hot damn!’ said Wengernook.

‘Guys, we brought it off,’ said Brat.

‘All they wanted was an explanation,’ said Overwhite.

‘We agree with Mr Bonenfant that armed deterrence might have lasted until the nuclear powers grew tired of maintaining their pointless stockpiles, subsequently scrapping them,’ said Shawna Queen Jefferson. ‘And we agree with the defendant Randstable that the warheads might also have disappeared through a kind of technological evolution.’

When the groans and catcalls finally subsided, the judge continued.

‘In his closing argument the chief counsel put a crucial question to us. What would we have done in his clients’ place? A fair question. A tormenting question…

‘Oddly enough, Mr Aquinas miscalculated when he introduced his scale-model weapons as evidence for the prosecution. For we learned that, whether carved from ice or from metal, such technology has a fearsome glamor. We found ourselves saying, “Yes, yes, give us these sensual missiles, these steel boats, these wondrous planes, these high-IQ warheads. Give us these things, and no one will ever dare to attack us.” So we too would have wanted that Triad, in all its completeness and power.’

Randstable and Wengernook exchanged thumbs-up signals. Transcending their differences over STABLE II, Overwhite and Sparrow embraced. Brat offered his bony right hand to George; the tomb inscriber shook it.

And then, after taking a drink of cocoa, Shawna Queen Jefferson removed her glasses and slammed them klack against the bench. ‘It is not we four judges who are on trial here, however,’ she said swiftly, tersely. ‘It is you six defendants,’ she added. ‘Thank God,’ sighed the president of the court.

She opened her Lincoln biography and, moistening her black thumb with a pink tongue, flipped back several pages. ‘In a message to Congress on December 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves…”’ She slammed the book shut. ‘Gentlemen in the dock, you know as well as I that the vast record assembled in this courtroom admits of but one interpretation. It is true that your crimes had the outward appearance of legality. It is true that you committed them under conditions that made it difficult for you to feel you were doing wrong. It is even true that you tried to limit their essentially illimitable implications.