Gibbon's Decline and Fall (42 page)

The ignorance wasn't total. Certain groups seemed to know something! Bag ladies knew something! The armies of marching men knew something! What they knew and what they intended were obscure, however, and seemed to bear little relationship to day-to-day life. It was almost as though those two groups were moved by something outside the everyday world, by some alien or spiritual force that was playing
checkers across the earth, immune to the malaise felt by the rest of mankind.

The rest of mankind, for whom the machinery of life ground on. Consumers went on consuming, though the pattern of their consumption was changing. Even without the depredations of the bag ladies, extreme fashions were not moving. Uncomfortable apparel or shoes were not selling. Auto showrooms suffered from a glut of expensive cars. More books were being read as many TV shows lost their audiences, particularly the trashy talk shows, the sexy soaps and sitcoms, and the late-night porns. The 900-number sex-talk lines were as dead as the spotted owl, the sea turtle, the elephant, the rhino, the gorilla …

Individual sports equipment was in big demand; team competitive sports were sagging. The baseball season was in full swing, but stadiums were uncrowded and TV coverage went largely unwatched. Advertising was in chaos. Barbie and G.I. Joe had suffered a fatal decline; teddy bears, building blocks, roller blades, and bicycles went on as ever.

Simon's boss, after a behind-closed-doors conference with Simon, sent him on an around-the-world jaunt to investigate how far the plague had spread: from where, starting when. Nothing could be printed yet, but much could be learned that would be printed later.

Simon's nose led him almost immediately to one symptom of change: the divorce rate had skyrocketed. Couples were splitting by the hundreds of thousands. They were dispassionately, casually, going their separate ways without rancor. Men who had beaten their wives regularly, constantly, who had threatened them with death if they tried to escape, now yawned as they watched them go. In India arranged marriages had simply ceased, as had the burning of brides. In the Sudan parents were not having their daughters' external genitalia cut off, as had been the tradition for centuries.

Among some religious groups all these changes, those that were known and those that were suspected, were cause for grave concern. For millennia religious power and prestige had been built on a foundation of sexual proscription. Now the sudden absence of sex came like the surgeon's knife, abbreviating both doctrine and doctrinaire. What were sin fighters to do without the favorite sin? Without traditional lusts, what good were traditional values? There were secret meetings, covert assemblies, men working deep into the night as they
sought to confound whatever devil had been so presumptuous as to purify humanity without first asking permission from its moral advisers.

In India a Hindu prophet claimed that in the future all men would be reborn as something other than humans because men had been too destructive of other life and now must learn to respect other forms by living in other shapes. Since all humans were to be reincarnated in other forms, human babies were no longer needed. The Hindu prophet was assaulted by a Muslim prophet, who claimed that the Hindus had caused whatever was going on. The Muslim prophet was counterattacked by a Buddhist, and everyone retired bloody from the field of battle with injuries more symbolic than fatal. Accounts of this brouhaha were heavily censored before publication.

June moved toward its end. The Vatican, with much pious misdirection, canceled planned visits of His Holiness to various parts of the world and announced instead a conference of all bishops for early autumn, the first in many years. The cardinals, still conservative but now neuter to a man, were at a loss. Everywhere the Church was preoccupied, even in Louisiana, where the archbishop was too busy worrying about survival to think about the oyster farms. The question of support for the Church's secret project was not renewed.

The date for the trial of Lolly Ashaler was only days away. According to the quickie phone-in TV polls, long a staple of the twitchy titillations that had taken the place of the evening news, the vast majority of persons felt Lolly Ashaler should be found guilty and executed. Carolyn, hearing this nonsense, wondered whether people had been paid to call in anti-Lolly responses or whether the station had been paid to announce a totally false result. According to the media, feeling was running high against Lolly, but Carolyn hadn't noticed any such run of opinion. The rumored hostility and anger was only reported, not apparent.

One aspect of the coverage, however, Carolyn found deeply disturbing. According to some editorial pages and some talk shows, Lolly had killed not just a baby but “the future of mankind.” The Santa Fe paper editorialized that “the current desperation of humanity” had been Lolly's fault, she had committed “the final sin,” had added “the spiritual last straw” to the sin burden of mankind. While “the current desperation” was undefined, Sodom and Gomorrah were mentioned in
passing, along with the Flood. Carolyn saw a coordinated effort in all this, no doubt on Jagger's behalf. Seemingly, even if the world died tomorrow, Jagger intended to stand with one foot atop the corpse declaring himself victorious.

“The world situation was the girl's fault?” asked Ophy when Carolyn called her—on the bedroom phone—to discuss testimony and strategy. “Where do they get that idea?”

“The morning paper printed it, but I imagine Jagger or one of his minions came up with the idea: Lolly has so offended God by killing her child that God is punishing the entire human race by withholding babies. This time it won't be by flood, or by fire. It'll just be extinction. Which, if you're an environmentalist, must seem like divine retribution. Maybe the Gaia hypothesis has some truth to it.”

Carolyn rubbed at her forehead, staring at the papers on her desk, which would be exhibit something or other in the upcoming trial. She was so tired she couldn't think.

“I suppose the guilt can be wiped away by blood sacrifice,” Ophy growled.

“That may be the reasoning behind Jagger's going for murder one with the possibility of the death penalty. He wants to prove she intended all along to kill the baby. She's to be the scapegoat: If we spill the blood of this bad, bad woman, God will relent.”

“You sound weary, Carolyn.”

“Lately I feel that I'm living in a badly written, badly directed foreign movie that's running on late-night TV in black-and-white with lots of static and inadequate subtitles. It's extremely difficult to follow, just like this trial.”

“What is he pushing it for?”

“I don't know. Before this libido plague came up, I thought I knew what Jagger was up to: pure ambition. Now I can't figure the guy. If he knows what's going on—and even with the news blackout he
has
to know what's going on!—why does he want public office? I can't imagine any sane person wanting public office right now. Being in charge of anything would be hell.”

Ophy laughed. “Didn't we read something in college about preferring to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven? And then, too, I keep thinking about Sophy's story where Elder Sister was supposed to be weaving a new medicine bag.…”

Silence at the other end.

“Carolyn?”

“I'm here. If one weren't modern and scientific and skeptical, one could certainly believe somebody was fixing us.”

The following morning Carolyn was finally overrun by the media. The TV stations couldn't get their trucks past the new electric gate, but they came trudging down the driveway, nonetheless, cameras and recorders at the ready. The assault turned into a rout when Hector, Fancy, and Fandango came boiling out of the house in full cry, to be joined by Leonegro. The resultant reportorial scatter bore some resemblance, Carolyn thought, to a flock of startled leghorn hens, taking off in all directions.

“Down at the road, they ask for somebody. What I say?” asked Carlos when he arrived for work.

Carolyn had spent several sleepless nights thinking her way through this question. “Say Ms. Crespin will send a statement to the gate in a few minutes.”

“Ms. Crespin?”

“My lawyer name, Carlos. Here on the farm I'm Mrs. or Ms. Shepherd, but when I'm a lawyer, I'm Ms. Crespin.”

“You don't have to say anything, you know,” Hal commented.

“I know. But if I don't at least make a statement, I'll come across as hiding something. Better get it over with.”

She went into the office and took a few moments to write out a statement: Lolly Ashaler felt she would be more comfortable with a female attorney; the American system presumes innocence until proof of guilt; Ms. Crespin presumed her client was, indeed, innocent. She ran a dozen copies of it and sent Carlos to distribute them to the newsmen.

The statement, reduced to a fifteen-second bite, was on the evening news, followed by an oleaginous Jagger, who said it was rumored that some feminist organization had hired Ms. Crespin to defend the baby killer. Everyone knew that's what feminists were interested in. Ms. Crespin, so he said, was from a big eastern liberal Catholic family, but it was rumored she'd repudiated the faith in which she'd been reared. She'd belonged to a reportedly subversive group, too, he'd been told. Of course, that's when she was younger, and it might not mean anything.

There was also an interview with Emmet Swinter, who said he knew for a fact that Ms. Crespin had been picketed by
the Army of God for her unholy secular-humanist views. Which explained the reason for that.

“Wow,” Stace commented when Carolyn phoned her. “Now you're a backsliding Catholic, a feminist, a liberal,
and
a subversive who's been picketed by the righteous.”

“It's no more than I expected,” Carolyn replied dully. It was no more than she'd expected, but it still hurt, in the way a sudden blow hurts, as much from surprise as from trauma. “Actually, the tone is somewhat milder than I feared. Someone must have told Jagger to tone it down. By the way, the office phone is bugged, so when you need me, call me on the one in my bedroom.”

“Bugged? When? Had you talked to Ophy and Jessamine before you knew?”

“Yes.”

“So now Jagger could know what you plan for the case!”

“I never discussed the case on the bugged phone.”

“But if Jagger knows who's going to be testifying …”

“He'd know anyhow. Jagger is entitled to my list of witnesses just as I'm entitled to his.”

“This is a mess. I'm sorry I ever asked you.”

“Actually, Stace, I'm not thrilled about it, either. Jagger scares the hell out of me.”

“Of course he scares you. He gets people killed!”

“Well, I'm not about to kill myself or let someone sneak in and do it to me. I've even felt, during my more optimistic moments, that if we could have been assigned to some other judge than Rombauer, we would have had a chance of winning the case.”

“But not with him.”

“No. Not very likely. We can appeal, however, and that's what I'm counting on.”

She hung up the bedroom phone, then went purposefully into Hal's study, where she made herself comfortable before making a prearranged call to Ophy on the bugged phone. They chatted briefly and inconsequentially about the upcoming meeting.

When this had gone on long enough, Carolyn took a deep breath, enunciated very clearly, and said, “I'm fairly sure Lolly's mother was an alcoholic even when she was carrying Lolly.”

“You're thinking of fetal alcohol syndrome,” said Ophy, also speaking very clearly.

“It's a possibility.”

“Oh, it's a very good possibility. FAS victims are very much like Lolly. One of the characteristics of the disease is that victims are unable to see the consequences of their actions. They don't reason from cause to effect.”

“Is that scientifically established?”

“Very much so. The disease has been known for about fifteen years. It's not dissimilar to fetal crack addiction. Certain centers in the brain are destroyed.”

“But if she'd had some other environment—”

“It wouldn't have mattered. FAS victims raised in fine, supportive environments do very little better than others. They simply don't understand cause and effect.”

“Hell, Ophy, rats understand cause and effect!”

“Rats have to, in order to survive. What I'm saying is, FAS victims don't, and they can't survive unless someone takes care of them. They don't know if they go out without clothing, they'll freeze. They don't know if they don't eat, they'll die. They don't understand that if they set fire to the house, they can burn up. They can be trained to do some things, just as you'd train a dog—or a rat—to do them, but they are not human persons. Not by our definition, Carolyn.”

“Well, you don't convict nonhumans of murder.”

“Not since the Middle Ages,” said Ophy. “I think it's an excellent defense.”

Carolyn thanked her and hung up, then sat smiling grimly at the bugged phone. There, Jagger. Chew on that.

Jake Jagger had a late, quiet meeting with Martin, his chief snoop, driver, pilot, and occasional assassin. Jagger's office windows looked down on a street almost bare of traffic, a few late diners strolling back to their hotels past closed shops.

“I need to ask,” the snoop said a little stiffly. “You not satisfied with the way I been doin' the work?”

Jake's head came up. “Why would you ask that?”

“There was this kid arrested out there. I already had the bug on her phone line. I told you—”

“I did not send anyone,” Jake snarled. “If someone else went out there, they did it on their own.”

“Well, I'm just saying I don't need backup. I tell you I did something, I did it.” The snoop simmered briefly, then referred to his notes. “The bug I put outside on the phone line's working okay. This doctor from New York told this scientist
from Utah that there's some kind of a beedolus something. The woman in Utah called your subject and told her about it.”