Cat and Company (23 page)

And these were original circumstances.

Brant looked at the assembled reeves and mayors, who were watching him with open interest. Nichol, though, was standing with his arms crossed and his head down. He had bowed out of the proceedings, at least mentally.

Very well, then
. Brant took a deep breath. “We have all heard every point about this matter. It is now up to you to decide Farago’s fate. We do not need to decide if she is guilty or not, as she admits to the crime. Instead, we need to decide what punishment she should receive.”

The people in the circle around Farago muttered and shifted on their feet.

“What are you doing?” Lilly whispered.

He shook his head, just enough for her to see.

She pressed her lips together and spoke no more. The tiny furrow was sitting between her brows, though.

“I will take suggestions,” Brant said loudly. “One suggestion at a time. If you like the suggestion, you can raise your hand in support.”

The woman who had spoken of execution was the first on her feet. “A life for a life,” she declared. “It’s fitting.”

Brant nodded. “Who agrees?” he asked.

Surprisingly, there were a dozen or more hands raised. That was all.

The woman scowled and sat down.

The red-haired man stood. “A public whipping, while we all watch.”

There was a lot of whispering. Brant ignored it. “Who agrees with this suggestion?” he asked.

Far more hands were raised, but still not a majority.

Several more people got to their feet and Brant pointed to them in turn and let everyone vote on their suggestions, which ranged from slavery to hard labor, to incarceration and included even more forms of physical punishment, some of them highly creative. None of the suggestions got a show of hands that said that the idea resonated with everyone.

Brant waved everyone back down as he thought hard. “I have a suggestion of my own.”

Silence. He didn’t need to look to know that everyone was watching him, now. He had their complete attention.

“Let’s ask Farago what she thinks is a fitting punishment.”

The reaction was loud and thick with disapproval. Brant held up his hand. “Wait!” he cried.

It proved how involved everyone had become in the process that he got silence almost immediately.

“This is a measure of Farago herself. If she really does regret her actions, then the punishment she suggests will be a fitting one that satisfies everyone. If she is as unrepentant as she appears, then the punishment she suggests will be ludicrous. You will know that she is not sincere in her intention to live among you as a viable adult, and suitable arrangements can be made for her, including shipping her off to a place where she will be unable to harm other people.”

Lilly gasped softly, beside him. He didn’t dare look at her.

“Who agrees we ask Farago herself?” he demanded.

Nearly every hand shot up into the air.

He took a deep breath, letting his heart settle just a bit, then turned to face Farago. “Well? What do you consider a suitable punishment to be?”

The silence was total, as everyone watched her.

Farago’s defiant stance shifted. She dropped her gaze to the ground. Then for the first time she lifted her chin and looked Brant in the eye. “I will serve whatever function the city demands of me, until my child is born, for no money and no return.” She hesitated. “I honestly regret the loss of Sarkozi’s life. I will do what I can to make amends.”

There was a ripple, almost a sigh, that washed over the square.

Brant’s heart was beating even harder. This was the crux of it. This was the moment where the weight of public opinion would turn one way or the other. He turned to look out upon the square, spinning on his heels to take in everyone. “Who here agrees that this is a fitting punishment? Farago has offered to provide her services in whatever way we see fit, with no hope of gain, for the next six months at least. Does this sit well with you?”

Silence. No hands.

Then one was raised. It was the red-haired man. Then another hand. Then more. And more. Brant turned in a tight circle, watching the hands rise…until, finally, more hands were held up than not.

He nodded. “Very well. The majority of you have agreed that Farago will serve Charlton in a way that is fitting. I declare that she will provide her labor to the regeneration clinics in the city, working in the mortuary section among the newly dead and the permanently dead. In that way she might also come to understand in full what her actions have cost Sarkozi. At the end of her service, we will vote once more on whether she has redeemed herself and earned a permanent place among the residents of Charlton, or if she should be given transport to some other location.”

There was no hesitation this time. Applause thundered across the square, along with cheering and whistling and a deep thrumming that Brant realized was the stamping of feet and hands on the floor.

He glanced at Lilly. She was smiling as she looked around the square and when her gaze settled on him, her smile grew warmer and softer.

He drew in a breath that was unsteady. He’d pulled it off.

* * * * *

Lilly barely waited until they were in the bedroom section of their room, with the door shut, before she started to peel off his clothes. Her lips and hands were everywhere, knowing and experienced. His pleasure leapt.

“I don’t know why that worked, but it did,” she murmured against his flesh. “It was brilliant, Fareed.”

He was having trouble thinking clearly. “Voting on suggestions means everyone will be satisfied with the punishment, or satisfied that everyone else believes the punishment is fitting. It removes all the bitterness.” He gasped as her hands explored and caught her head in his hand. “Were you happy with the outcome?” he asked curiously.

“Thrilled,” she said. “Can’t you tell?”

“I mean, if you were only thinking about yourself and your life in Charlton, would that have made you happy, too?”

Her expression sobered. “Completely,” she said. “It was almost flawless. I’m so proud of you.”

His heart shifted. “Don’t be. I went against every Ammonite principal and practice I’ve been trained to believe was right.”

She sat up, her face troubled. “I never lived on an Ammonite-controlled world. I never even visited one.”

“Justice was swift and one hundred percent systemized,” he said. “There was an index of crimes and the punishment to match it. Nothing about the crime or the criminal was taken into account. It was believed that unwavering application of the laws would suppress the breaking of those laws.”

“You believed that?” she whispered.

Brant sighed. “I left, remember? I threw it all aside. Including my body.” He picked up her hand. “I thought I had made those choices for you, Lilly, but today I learned that I did it for more reasons than that.”

“You’ve given up on Glave?” she asked.

“Not the precepts, no. Human life is still holy. Only, the way we go about preserving and promoting human life…there are different ways of doing that. I just hadn’t seen how that could work until there in the square, with everyone watching me.”

“Including me,” Lilly breathed, her lips pressing against his once more.

Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187

It was a relief to be able to move out of witness mode. Yennifer hadn’t realized how much she liked human interactions. She also hadn’t realized how much she interacted, either. If someone had asked her for a gut instinct response, she would have said she did not talk a lot. Now she realized that was wrong.

It would be interesting one day to run a statistical analysis to determine just how much she used human communications instead of the far more efficient digital systems that defined a Varkan.

For today, though, she had a different issue to deal with. Nichol had withdrawn into himself. As they walked back to the rambling house in Celestial where they had lived for the last four years, he didn’t speak. Even when she tried to engage him with a direct question, he refused to respond.

It could simply be because there were so many people sitting and lying on the floors of the corridors and the village public areas, who could listen to every word they said as they passed. Yet Nichol had been talking freely on the way to the main square. Now, he was scowling, his brow jutting heavily over his narrowed eyes.

Yennifer always found him impossible to read when he was in these sorts of moods. She was generally very good at understanding human needs and desires. Watching Lilly and Brant and Connell and the others work among humans had taught her much more.

Even watching Nichol work his influence upon others had been educational.

Nichol himself was a difficult subject. She presumed it was because he was so naturally guarded—a fact that would shock anyone who knew him more than slightly. Nichol’s raising had been difficult and his early losses as a young adult had left their mark. He was a very private man in a very public role, which added stresses of their own.

What Brant had just done to him was unforgiveable. Except that… Yennifer pressed her lips together as they walked, trying to avoid formulating the disloyal thought, yet it was there, anyway.

Brant had done what he had, taking over that way, because Nichol had lost control of the crowd. Nichol had been taken by surprise by Farago’s claim of pregnancy and the upsetting of normal procedure. Someone had needed to act swiftly to keep the crowd from becoming unruly in reaction to the polarizing facts that had been spoken. Brant had only done what needed to be done.

Although she couldn’t help but admit, just to herself, that Brant had been clever and out of a situation that had started to look ugly, he had wrested back the good opinion of everyone assembled and had maintained peace.

She would never tell Nichol that. Especially not now.

He pushed on the tall gate that gave access to their little house and the AI opened it for him. He moved inside. Yennifer caught up with a quick stride or two and slid into the courtyard and looked around with pleasure.

It was the prettiest house in a lovely village, with its own private courtyard from where she could stand and study the stars overhead. The rooms of the house lined three sides of the courtyard. As weather was not an element in Celestial, the only protection they needed was from the scheduled rainfall that washed buildings and streets, watered the many plants growing in the village and helped keep the air in the dome clean and sweet.

She had cancelled rain for the foreseeable future. There were simply too many people sitting and lying in the public areas, bereft of shelter. It did make for a dusty courtyard, which Nichol had commented upon as they had left earlier in the afternoon.

Now he looked around the courtyard with an impatient sigh. “We can’t even enjoy evening rain while they’re out there!” He stomped up to the galley section and ordered a drink with heavy thrusts of his finger.

Yennifer no longer had any sort of appetite for food or drink. Perhaps Nichol did. Maybe that was adding to his temper. “Are you hungry?” she asked, coming up behind him. “Would you like me to arrange something for you? You can relax on the couch—”

“
Now
you want to help?” he snarled, spinning to face her.

She stepped back, confused. Fear blossomed as she realized that Nichol had found a way to blame her for this. She had thought that
this
time, she was blameless, but…

Yennifer swallowed. “Of course I want to help you!”

“You couldn’t have helped out there in the square when I really needed it?” He pulled the cold drink out of the dispenser. It was Sommera, the black spirit he preferred to drink when no one was looking. He tilted the glass, taking big gulps.

Her heart sank. At the same time, she felt a tiny spark of resistance. “I was in witness mode, Nichol. I can neither speak nor react. I couldn’t have helped you.”

He shoved the glass back under the dispenser and prodded the controls once more. “Why you?” he said. “Zoey or any AI could have done just as well. Even better than a Varkan. You had to volunteer, didn’t you?”

He pulled the second glass of Sommera out and drank just as deeply.

Every muscle in her body was tensing, trying to make her step back away from him but if she did that, if she cringed or tried to get away from him, it would only enrage him even more.

She held her ground. “I had to do it. Everyone had to see the city taking a neutral stance and be seen only observing the process. Zoey wouldn’t have had the same effect.”

“Effect? Like it made any difference at all. No one
saw
you. You’re a citymind.”

The derision in his voice made her flinch, shocked. For a long moment he stood drinking steadily and brooding while she cast about for something safe to say, when what she really wanted to do was shake him and demand to know if that was how he really felt about sentient computers.

“Everyone was watching Fareed Brant, anyway,” Nichol muttered and thrust the glass back for a third drink. “If you had stirred yourself and supported me, then everyone would have seen that the city was on
my
side.”

Yennifer ignored the illogic in his claim—that if no one had been watching her, a mere citymind, then her support of him would have been invisible, too. Instead, she tried the more neutral argument, the one that would better avoid inflaming his already igniting temper. “There are no sides in a hearing like that, Nichol. Or, there are thousands of ‘sides’, if you wish to look at it that way. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and their vote counts, just as yours did.”

“You made me look like a fool!” he raged, turning to confront her, the drink forgotten. His hair flopped over his eyes, giving him a wild look that matched the heat in his gaze as he glared at her. “You’re supposed to be
mine
and you couldn’t even move to my side when he took away my control!”

Her chest was hurting and she pushed the heel of her hand against it, trying to ease the ache. Her heart was working so hard that she could feel the throb of it in her fingers and in her head. Every nerve was leaping, as her instincts told her to run.