The Long War

‘You know, Maggie, sometimes there are no words . . . If I were to say that it could have been worse, you need to understand that even so I would like to spend some time alone in a room with the gentleman concerned and a baseball bat, knowing with surgical precision the right spots to hit—’

It was at times like this that Maggie was glad she’d stuck to her career, never married, never had kids of her own, left the glorious burden of caring for children to her siblings, cousins, friends; she was happy to be an aunt, honorary or otherwise. ‘It’s OK, Mac.’

‘Well, no, it isn’t OK, not for that little girl, and may never be again. I’d prefer her to be sent to a Datum hospital for a full examination. At the least I want to take her up on to the ship for observation for a while.’

Maggie nodded. ‘Let’s go meet the leaders of this joint.’

They met in the mayor’s office. At Maggie’s side were Mac and Nathan Boss. Maggie had invited Robinson herself, and a few chosen citizens from the town meeting whom the mayor reckoned to be well-balanced and sensible, at least by the standards of this community, to consider the verdict.

As they sat down, everybody looked to the Captain – looked to her as a saviour, she realized. Maggie cleared her throat. Time to step up to the plate, she thought.

‘For the record – and we are being recorded – this session is nothing more than a panel of inquiry. Judicial processes can follow as necessary. I have no policing role here. But I have taken it upon myself, at the request of the mayor of the town, to ascertain fairly all the facts of the matter.

‘I’ll summarize what I’ve been told; the facts are apparently not being denied. A week ago Roderick Bacon plied with drugs Angela Hartmann, a girl of nine years old, the daughter of Raymond Hartmann and Daphne Hartmann. Hearing the girl cry out, her father, Ray Hartmann, rushed to her room and saw Bacon with her. The girl was vomiting, fitting. Hartmann pulled the man away, handed the girl to her mother, and then beat Bacon, dragged him out of the house, and set about him again, causing, after a minute or two, his death. The neighbours, alerted by the screams, told us that Bacon was pleading for his life, saying that “a lurid angel” made him do it, made him want to give this “pure child” the gift of his own “inner light” . . . You get the picture.

‘In the absence of a lawyer I’ve had my XO, Commander Nathan Boss, take a personal statement from Hartmann about the events of that night, and also a statement by Bacon’s wife. And according to the wife, before the crime Bacon had been out processing a harvest of the apparently psychoactive flowers endemic in the woods hereabouts. He ran a side business, of dubious legality, selling the stuff in stepwise worlds . . .’

Maggie stopped there. She wished she’d had better training for something like this. She looked around at the others in the room. ‘For the record the child will be cared for overnight on the Benjamin Franklin

, under the care of Dr. Mackenzie. I’ll invite the girl’s mother to spend the night with her daughter; I’ll send a crewman down to escort her up to the ship. Meanwhile – well, Bacon is dead, and Ray Hartmann is in custody.

‘I think I understand the feelings of all involved in this. I’m no lawyer, I’m no judge, but I can give you my personal assessment. I have to say that Bacon was guilty, in any reasonable sense of the word. He knowingly exposed himself to narcotics, these flowers from the woods; my view is he’s responsible for his behaviour thereafter. As for Hartmann, murder is murder. Yet I find myself loath to condemn the actions of an overwrought husband and father.

‘So, what next? We’ll file a report, and in the end the Datum cops will come out here, go through this fully, refer it to the judicial system – but that could take years; the Aegis is a big place, and tough to police. In the meantime you have Ray Hartmann stuck in that ice house. What to do with him? Well, frankly, you – all of you – must be judge and jury, prosecution and defence. We can leave you advice on due process. But it’s up to you to run your own affairs, and I urge you to work out how to deal with this yourselves, within US law as best you understand it.’ She eyed them one by one. ‘This kind of autonomy was, after all, presumably what you wanted when you came out here.

‘In the longer term, get together with your stepwise neighbours. I’m sure that together you could support the equivalent of a county court. I’m told that’s becoming common in the colony worlds. Hire a lawyer or two – even a visiting circuit judge.’ She ran out of steam. She stood up. ‘That’s all from me. The rest is up to you as a community. But for God’s sake – Nathan, make sure the science boys take samples first, and make sure they do this when the wind isn’t blowing into the town – burn those flowers. That’s all, people, at least for today. I’ll have the minutes of this session ready for all of you tomorrow.’