Ling enjoyed those mornings and nights when the wind rose off the sea
and roared outside
the huts, and shook the woman's hut and howled. The wind scared the
woman. Ling loved
hearing the woman make whimpering noises behind her closed door and
shut window.
Sometimes he ran outside her hut and screamed himself hoarse, trying
to sound as loud as
the wind's howl. He shouted his thanks to the wind for the noise. And
on those nights that
he got up and went roaring in sync with the wind, and on those mornings
when he ran outside
and welcomed the wind like a brother, he felt like a man. The wind
was free. It could leave
the island. It could traveled around the planet, and possibly some
of it could escape on the
space ships that embarked for far away ports.
Ling and the woman, too, were inmates of one of the millions of Droid-made
"Black Irish"
rocks scattered throughout the South Pacific. These island-rocks were
sunny and warm, and
isolated and lonely places where the feared Gorm, the Blue AnDroids,
the steel enforcers
of the iron law, sent the worst of the lot of state prisoners. It was
quite unusual for a man of
Ling's modest criminality to be sent to an "Irish rock". He probably
would have been quartered
in one of the bleak, sterile, Scott-boxes, the correctional facilities
built on platforms in the North
Atlantic, where he would have been locked in a cage twenty four hours
a day, if when he was
arrested for urinating in a public place a banned book of folklores,
containing the wild tales of
how the common folk over came the Blue Droids of the Third Millennium,
was not found in his
possession.
The anDroids didn't believe him when he said he had stolen the book
from a flat in the flats
block on Newt Street in the central district of the Capitol Dome City.
The central district was
the sort of place where madmen, radicals, rebels lived, who held illegal
rallies in little groups
and who in their speeches and literature called for "humankind to rise
and to drive out the
anDroid-devils." The Droid-cops checked the address Ling claimed he
burglarized and found
an empty flat.
During the interrogation, the Droid captain hauled Ling into a cold
room and made him strip
down to his underwear. The Droid stood Ling up straight and snarled
into his face.
"Tell us some lies. If you do not acquit yourself well against the charges,
you can bend over,
put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye."
Ling told the Droid again that the book was not his. "Besides it is
in a language I can't
read, English!" Ling pled to be let go.
"Is this a contest, liar?" the Droid captain spoke softly, menacingly soft.
"I don't know what you want to hear, " Ling trembled. He was cold and he was afraid.
It was well known on Terra that the Blue Droids wanted to hear from
the accused one
thing, a confession. Ling's face turned blue, the color of a drowning
man.
"What do I know about books anyway," Ling body shook more.
The Droid said, "During the first great rebellion, a thousand years
ago, radicals called
themselves Celts. They painted their faces blue. Why are you turning
blue? Are you a blue
man?"
"No, you anDroids are the Blue Men!"
"True, some of us are. Any way, your ancient book calls for you, blue-faced
wicked radicals,
to cause an uprising against the public order."
"No, not me! I'm not blue-face. I am cold!"
Ling shook his legs, arms, shuffled on his feet, then did a jitterbug to try to stay warm. "
The indigenous people support our heroic struggle to defeat, contain,
control, you, monsters
of chaos, " the Droid captain said.
"Sir, I am not a radical. I applaud the diligence of you Blue Men."
What ever Ling said, and how ever he said it, he could not convince
the Droid policeman
that we was not guilty of a political crime. For one thing, none of
the explanation he made
squared with the fact that every time he spoke his face turned bluer.
He had even less luck
with the prosecutor, who was an expressionless Droid, who kept making
references to the
blackness in Ling's face, and to Ling's dark eyes, like dark eyes and
black hair, etc, were
presumed to be features prominent among the radicals.
Ling had no luck with the judge. Humans sat on all the trial benches.
They were there as a
formality. The real trials took place in the police offices, with only
the police and the
prosecutors present, who were all Droids. These law-Droids sifted through
the evidence.
Usually, they had the defendant's confession. In political cases, they
decided on the
punishment. The judges read out the Droids' decisions. Ling went before
a dim looking judge
who had a dimmer memory. The man didn't remember to read out the whole
charge and
verdict against Ling. The lead prosecutor had to blurt out that Ling
was found guilty of
being an unrepentant radical, as well as a public pee-er. Everybody,
Droid and human, in
the courtroom looked at the judge with disdain.
One day after Ling spent an entire night, running on the beach, screaming
with the wind,
until his face turned blue, the woman, exiled on the same beach-rock
as him, shouting, asked
if he had any idea of what a spectacle he was making of himself. He
boyishly admitted he
did. She screamed at him. He laughed at her. She stared at him, told
him that he was strange.
"Because you are afraid of the wind, I'm strange?" He mocked her. She
turned away from
him, she looked as though she was in a daze, like she could not believe
the depth of his
cruelty, callowness, kookiness. She mumbled, "Compassion went out the
window a long time
ago."
"You admit it!" he shouted.
She stopped like she was hearing a warning bell. She looked like she
was a little further
more out of it, like the world had gone on without her.
"Do I know you?" she mumbled.
"You sentenced me to a year in the Scott-box!" Ling exclaimed.
The woman's jaw dropped. "Shit!" she gasped. "I thought I've seen you
before -- You
were brought before me." She cursed, walked in a circle, stared at
Ling and then screamed
a loud, wild wail, then she yelled and yelled and yelled.
* * *
"I what!"
"You want to kill me!" the blonde wig slipped off the woman's head as
she repeated, to
Ling's shock, her fear.
"Are you crazy!" Ling couldn't help yelling.
The woman glared for a second, then said in a calmer tone, "You can
not lie to me. I know
when people lie. "
"I'm not thinking about you!" Ling shouted. "You are crazier than a jelly bean."
"A ha! You are attempting to be nonchalant about it -- tried not to
let on that you
recognized me." The woman's voice rose.
"You, who in the Hell are you?"
"Listen, little, strange, nasty man, I was a judge."
"Like I said, who in the Hell were you?"
Five years ago Ling stood before the bench in the courtroom of the JUDGE,
the WIDOW.
The crazy woman on his beach was the judge, the WIDOW, on the bench.
Everybody
knew the widow's story. During a radical uprising, her husband fell
to a bomb that also
almost took the judge's life. The black robe and the white powder wig
that she wore were
more than symbols of office. The robe had an usually high collar that
hid the scars on her
neck. The wig covered her bald-head. She lost her hair during the bomb
attack. The fire
started by the explosion singed her hair and left burn marks on her
scalp. She worked and
lived with the hope of hauling the bomber's butt into her courtroom,
so she could read the
death sentence against him. Everybody knew that -- and everybody knew
that she was bias
in every case against the accused, --particularly in cases were the
Droid prosecutors took
no notice, in the petty crime cases that came before her court. Ling
knew he didn't have a
chance, the moment he saw that he was in her courtroom.
"Mr. Ling," she spoke down at the defendant. Her voice was nasal. The
sound came half from
her nose and half from the corner of her mouth, passed a sneer. "Six
months in the regional
correctional and rehabilitation center."
"Ma'am! Your worship!" Ling protested.
"Mr. Ling, be silent," she ordered him, her eyes were ice cold as a
snowball that Ling once
saw in a foreign magazine he retrieved from a trash bin outside an
alien tourist hotel.
"No, I won't," said Ling.
Well, he didn't think she would do any worse to him, but she did. But
first he had a word
with her. "Is there no justice?" he demanded. She was nearly speechless
for a minute, then
she reminded Ling where he was and who she was. "I told you to shut
your wicked mouth.
You have been found guilty by this court," she said. "You have been
found guilty of gross wickedness."
"Guilty? Me? Poor Ling? I am innocent!"
"Bailiff, seize this criminal."
The bailiff, a huge Android, looking more like a mechanical beast than
like a Droid, and more
like a man than a machine, grabbed Ling by the neck. Ling, though trapped
in the bailiff's
grip, and hurting from the pressure the bailiff was applying to his
neck, was not cowed. He
yelled at the judge for justice like he didn't care.
"If I had stolen and sold the sheep, killed the sheep and eaten its
meat, or sheared it of its
wool, then I would be wicked, instead I am just a poor victim."
"One year..rr..rr," the judge stammered. She was so upset that she shook.
Now Ling stood on the beach with his hands on his hips and he laughed
at the ex-judge. When
he finished laughing at her, he grinned. "Your former worship, I am
wondering, who turned
you in?"
The former judge answered angrily," Because I am here does not mean
I am a criminal like
you!"
Ling laughed at her again. "Was it one of those dogs that got you?"
The judge decided that she wouldn't let Ling get to her again. She wasn't
going to say anything
to him again. She thought he was getting off on her disgrace and pain,
and she wasn't going to
play into his sick mind. Ling smiled at her.
"I read that the Droids have these crime dogs," he went on. "Some whacky
human scientist, if
you would believe that, published a theory that criminals give off
a special scent secreted by
the criminal hormones, glands or something. I don't know the details.
I am not a scientific
brain, " he paused.
The judge hadn't heard of these dogs. She tried not to show an interest
in what Ling was
saying. She looked away from him, had her back to him. She was curious
about the dogs.
She was trying to find a sane reason why she was on the prison island
with a common
criminal like Ling. She hoped he couldn't tell that she was listening
to him.
"The crime dogs are trained to go among the human population and to
sniff out criminal
behavior," Ling finally said.
"That is stupid," the judge said.
She couldn't help herself. She'd been listening so intensely and was
angry with herself for
giving anything this man said a second thought. "So stupid," she said,
repetitiously.
"I bet those dogs sniffed around you and smelled crime," Ling taunted the judge.
The judge became so nervous that she walked away. She went to her hut
and slammed
the door.
"Tell me about how you got here!" Ling yelled, taunting her more.
From inside the hut, the judge yelled curses.
Ling laughed.
The judge couldn't believe that she was responding to Ling, reacting
to him. She wanted
to know how could she! She remembered him in her courtroom. He was
a most nasty, filthy
man.
"Shut up, you," the bailiff growled. He smacked the back of Ling's neck.
Ling grimaced
at the slap's impact, his head hurt, but he would not keep still.
"You would have brought that mutton for your table! I know that you
corrupt officials don't
eat the food pellets!"
The judge was so annoyed by Ling's lack of respect for the court that she railed at him.
"You filthy man, you have been found guilty of kidnapping a farmer's
sheep and having
carnal knowledge of it. You were caught in flagrante delicto."
Ling kicked at the door of the judge's hut, with just enough force to make noise.
"You understand, you aren't a judge anymore?"
The judge opened the door. She looked at Ling, a concerned look was
on her face. Ling
thought she was too nervous not to face him.
"Good. I just want you to understand that I was innocent of the charges.
And I was bitter
about it at one time -- and I now just say it happened. I don't blame
you."
"You were guilty."
"Are you still nervous?"
"I guess I am, a little, maybe ..."
Ling smiled. "Don't be afraid."
He seemed to think a second, maybe about the evidence presented in the
judge's courtroom
against him, then he said: "Listen, I don't know who turned you in,
or why they turned
against you, all I know is you are here."
"You are guilty. I am not."
"I am not a liar, ma'am. I was a well-brought-up boy and had good parents.
I was also a
good boy at school, " Ling said.
"I do not think you had such a good background, nor such good parents," the judge replied.
"Okay. My father had a bad character. He treated his wife, my step-mother,
like a dog, and
she only on account of their children stayed with him over the years."
"Humph!" the woman, the ex-judge, grunted.
"Okay," Ling said and smiled. "My step-mother was a hard-working woman
and did what
she could. She was always out at work and could do little to control
her children."
"You were a menace to the sheep of Pobi Providence," the judge said.
Ling laughed. "A menace? Me?" Ling giggled. "You are as crazy as you
were when you
were a judge." He stared at the judge who was holding her breath to
keep from blurting out
again her intense feelings of disgust for the man. Ling shook his head
and giggled some more.
* * *
The case against Mr. Ling was proven. Use of the expensive mind scanners,
(labeled by the
underground as mind scramblers), were not necessary in this case.
Mr. Ling stole -- borrowed according to him -- one of his neighbor's
sheep. The neighbor
traced the foot tracks left in his pasture to the woods where he found
Ling with the missing
sheep. The sheep was tied to a tree. The sheep was wearing a pink bonnet
and a girl's white
slip. Ling was in a state of undress, behind the sheep, singing a popular
off-world bar tune
and. Well, the farmer was furious. He'd expected to surprise a sheep
rustler, and certainly
did not expect to find Ling with the sheep doing what Ling was doing.
The farmer had a stun
gun that shot out highly charged bolts of static electricity. The farmer
used the gun to frightened
and to drive-off predators, like wild dogs and wolves. He used gun
sparingly as a good
shepherd would use a stick to shoo away bad animals. He zapped Ling
on the rump, hard,
once. He zapped Ling on the shoulders, twice. The first zap knocked
Ling off his feet and
brought him to his knees; the second zap, knocked the wind out him.
The farmer wasn't
trying to shoo Ling away. He was punishing poor Ling. There would have
been another zap
from the stun gun, but the farmer's screaming loudly at Ling, hollering
to high Heaven at him,
calling Ling a thief and a pervert, raised a great deal of noise, drew
the attention of two
Blue Droids on sky patrol. The Droids swooped down, ordered the farmer
to quit, landed
their air-car and jumped out. The farmer was overpowered. The Droids
pulled him off the
unconscious Ling and subdued him with their stun guns.
* * *
"Your worship, I am a poor man. I have no money," Ling said, his neck
and head held in the
arm grip of the bailiff, "You can't send me down for practicing safe
sex. Sheep are safer
than women and cheaper than the holograms. You don't get VMT from sheep,
or bankrupt
paying the corporations for their damn expensive holograms."
Several times the bailiff told Ling to be quiet. Ling wasn't about to
listen to him, though the
bailiff-Droid held Ling by the neck.
"Several times," said Ling, "I sleep with women, every time I get VMT.
I can't afford the
pay the public health schemes fees for the VMT medicines anymore."
"Shut this dirty man up and get him out of my court room!" The judge shouted.
The bailiff slugged Ling, knocked him out and took him out of the court room.
* * *
Ling went up to the ex-judge's face, insisting, "Animals were safer and cheaper."
The judge held her breath for a while.
"Listen," she finally spoke up again. "Did you think? Did you for a
second think of what it
was like for the sheep?"
"What?"
"What was it like to the innocent sheep?"
"Judge? You are still judging?"
"You ravished a defenseless sheep!"
"No."
"Yes you did!"
"Judge, you're kidding."
"You didn't consider anyone, not the sheep, not the farmer ..."
"Stop being silly. There were no complaints from the sheep. The farmer
was not harmed. I
would have returned the sheep."
"Sensibility was harmed!"
VMT! Greedy corporations! A man has a right to protect himself. You
would have thought
the government would have taken care of stuff like that by now. They
could beat VMT, but
then everybody would have some fun, too much fun, and the damn Puritans
who outlawed
bear fighting because people were having fun, the damn, and the damn
corporations keep
VMT to control us. We, people, aren't allowed .They, the government
and their Droids,
forced me to abandon women for sheep."
"You were a sheep ravisher!" the judge spat at him.
"You were the ravisher. You did it to humans! " Ling spat back. "And all I wanted was . . ."
Copyright 1998 Franchot Lewis, All Rights Reserved.
