Pohl, Frederik - Plague of Pythons

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"HEY, CHANDLER," said Lan-y Grantz, the jailer, "I can get
fifty to one for a conviction. What d'you think?"
"Go to hell," said Chandler.
"Come on. Let me in on it. You got any surprises for
the judge?"
Chandler didn't answer. He didn't even look at the
jailer. A man who was on his way to hell didn't have to
worry about what people thought of him.
"Now, look," said the jailer, "you could maybe use a
friend or two before long. What do you say? Listen, I can
get five for one if you're going to plead guilty. Are you?"
"Why should I? I'm innocent."
"Oh, yeah, all right, but if you plead guilty and throw
yourself on the mercy of the court No? The hell with
you, then."
The jailer stood in the doorway, picking his nose and
looking at Chandler with dislike. That was all right.
Chandler was getting used to it.
It was hard to believe that this was the late 20th
century. . . the third decade of the Atomic Age, the era of
spaceffight. Of course, there hadn't been much of that
lately. Chandler wondered what the Mars expedition must
be thinking these days, waiting for the relief-and-rotation
ship that must be a year or two overdue by now. Assum-
ing they were still alive, of course. . . .
"You're gonna go in there in a minute. Chandler," said
Grantz, "and then it's too late. Why don't you be a sport
and let me know what's up?"
Chandler said, "I've got nothing to tell you. I'm inno-
cent."
"You gonna plead that way?" pressed the jailer.
7
"I'm going to plead that way."
"Ah, cripes, they'll shoot you sure."
Chandler shook his head. Meaning: that's not up to me.
Grantz stared at him irresolutely.
Chandler changed position gently, since he still hurt
pretty badly. He wished he had a watch, although there
was no particular reason for him to worry about the time
any more.
Five years before, back in the old days before the
demons came, when he was helping design telemetry
equipment for the Ganymede probe. Chandler would not
have believed his life would be at stake in a witchcraft
trial. Not even that. He wasn't accused of being involved
in witchcraft. He was about to go on trial for his life for
the far more serious crime of not being involved in witch-
craft.
It was hard to believe-but believe it or not, it was
happening. It was happening to him.
It was happening right now.
Grantz cocked an ear to a voice from outside the door,
nodded, ground out his cigarette under a heel and said,
"All right, fink. Just remember when they're pulling the
trigger on you, you could have had a friend on the
firing squad." And he opened the door and marched
Chandler out.
Because of the crowd that was attracted by the sensa-
tional nature of the charges against him, they held Chan-
dler's trial in the all-purpose room of the high school. It
smelled of leather and stale sweat.
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There was a mob. There must have been three or four
hundred people present. They all looked at him exactly as
the jailer had.
Chandler walked up the three steps to the stage, with
the jailer's hand on his elbow, and took his place at the
defendant's table. His lawyer was there already.
The lawyer, who had been appointed by the court over
his vigorous protests, looked at him without emotion. He
was willing to do his job, but his job didn't require him to
like his client. All he said was, "Stand up. The judge is
coming in."
Chandler got to his feet and leaned on the table while
the bailiff chanted his call and the chaplain read some
verses from John. He did not listen. The Bible verses came
too late to help him, and besides he ached.
When the police arrested him they had not been gentle.
There were four of them. They were from the plant's own
security force and carried no guns. They didn't need any;
Chandler had put up no resistance after the first few
momentsfliat is, he stopped fighting as soon as he could
stopbut the police hadn't stopped. He remembered that
very clearly. He remembered the nightstick across the side
of his head that left his ear squashed and puffy, he
remembered the kick in the gut that still made walking
painful. He even remembered the pounding on his skull
that had knocked him out.
The bruises along his rib cage and left arm, though, he
did not remember getting. Obviously the police had been
mad enough to keep right on subduing him after he was
already unconscious.
Chandler did not blame themexactly. He supposed he
would have done the same thing.
The judge was having a long mumble with the court
stenographer, apparently about something which had hap-
pened in the Union House the night before. Chandler
knew Judge Ellithorp slightly. He did not expect to get a
fair trial. The previous December the judge himself,
while possessed, had smashed the transmitter of the
town's radio station, which he owned, and set fire to
the building it occupied. His son-in-law had been killed in
the fire.
Since the judge had had his own taste of hell, he would
not be kind to Chandler.
Laughing, the judge waved the reporter back to his seat
and glanced around the courtroom. His gaze touched
Chandler lightly, like the flick of the hanging strands of
cord that precede a railroad tunnel. The touch carried the
same warning. What lay ahead for Chandler was destruc-
tion.
"Read the charge," ordered Judge Ellithorp. He spoke
very loudly. There were more than six hundred persons in
the auditorium; the judge didn't want any of them to miss
a word.
The bailiff ordered Chandler to stand and informed
him that he was accused of having, on the seventeenth
day of June last, committed on the person of Margaret
Flershem, a minor, an act of rape"Louder!" ordered
the judge testily.
"Yes, Your Honor," said the bailiff, and inflated his
chest. "An Act of Rape under Threat of Bodily Violence,"
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he cried; "and Did Further Commit on the Person of Said
Margaret Flershem an Act of Aggravated Assault"
Chandler rubbed his aching side, looking at the ceiling.
He remembered the look in Peggy Flershem's eyes as he
forced himself on her. She was only sixteen years old, and
at that time he hadn't even known her last name.
The bailiff boomed on: "and Did Further Commit
on that Same Seventeenth Day of June Last on the Person
of Ingovar Porter an Act of Assault with Intent to Rape,
the Foregoing Being a True Bill Handed Down by the
Grand Jury of Marecel County in Extraordinary Session
Assembled, the Eighteenth Day of June Last."
Judge Ellithorp looked satisfied as the bailiff sat down,
quite winded. While the judge hunted through the papers
on his desk the crowd in the auditorium stirred and
murmured.
A child began to cry.
The judge stood up and pounded his gavel. "What is it?
What's the matter with him? You, Dundon!" The court
attendant the judge was looking at hurried over and spoke
to the child's mother, then reported to the judge.
"I dunno. Your Honor. All he says is something scared
him."
The judge was enraged. "Well, that's just fine! Now we
have to take up the time of all these good people, proba-
bly for no reason, and hold up the business of this court,
just because of a child. Bailiff! I want you to clear this
courtroom of all children under" he hesitated, calculat-
ing voting blocks in his head"all children under the age
of six. Dr. Palmer, are you there? Well, you better go
ahead with theprayer." The judge could not make him-
self say "the exorcism."
"I'm sorry, madam," he added to the mother of the
crying two-year-old. "If you have someone to leave the
child with, I'll instruct the attendants to save your place
for you." She was also a voter.
Dr. Palmer rose, very grave, as he was embarrassed. He
glared around the all-purpose room, defying anyone to
smile, as he chanted: "Domina Pythonis, I command you,
leave! Leave, Hel! Leave, Heloym! Leave, Sother and
Thetragrammaton, leave, all unclean ones! I command
you! In the name of God, in all of His manifestations!"
He sat down again, still very grave. He knew that he did
not make nearly as fine a showing as Father Lon, with his
resonant in nomina lesu Christi et Sancti Ubaldi and his
censer, but the post of exorcist was filled in strict rotation,
one month to a denomination, ever since the troubles
started. Dr. Palmer was a Unitarian. Exorcisms had not
been in the curriculum at the seminary and he had been
forced to invent his own.
Chandler's lawyer tapped him on the shoulder. "Last
chance to change your mind," he said.
"No. I'm not guilty, and that's the way I want to
plead."
The lawyer shrugged and stood up, waiting for the
judge to notice him.
Chandler, for the first time, allowed himself to meet the
eyes of the crowd. ~
He studied the jury first. He knew some of them
casuallyit was not a big enough town to command a
jury of total strangers for any defendant, and Chandler
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had lived there most of his life. He recognized Pop Mathe-
son, old and very stiff, who ran the railroad station cigar
stand. Two of the other men were familiar as faces passed
in the street. The forewoman, though, was a stranger. Sb
sat there very composed and frownmg, and all he knew
about her was that she wore funny hats. Yesterday's had
been red roses when she was selected from the panel;
today's was, of all things, a stuffed bird.
He did not think that any of them was possessed. He
was not so sure of the audience.
He saw girls he had dated in high school, long before
he met Margot; men he worked with at the plant. They all
glanced at him, but he was not sure who was looking out
through some of those familiar eyes. The visitors reliably
watched all large gatherings, at least momentarily; it would
be surprising if none of them were here.
"All right, how do you plead?" said Judge Ellithorp at
last.
Chandler's lawyer straightened up. "Not guilty, Your
Honor, by reason of temporary pandemic insanity."
The judge looked pleased. The crowd murmured, but
they were pleased too. They had him dead to rights and it
would have been a disappointment if Chandler had plead-
ed guilty. They wanted to see one of the vilest criminals in
contemporary human society caught, exposed, convicted
and punished; they did not want to miss a step of the
process. Already in the playground behind the school three
deputies from the sheriff's office were loading their rifles,
while the school janitor chalked lines around the handball
court to mark where the crowd witnessing the execution
would be permitted to stand.
All this, as Chandler very reasonably told himself, was
quite insane. There were satellites in orbit in the skies
overhead! Every home in the town owned a television set,
although to be sure they now did nothing but serve as
receptacles for the holding of seashells and flowers . . . and
hopes for a better world. This was the 20th century!
But they gave every sign of being about to kill him as
dead as though it were the seventeenth. The prosecution
made its case very quickly. Mrs. Porter testified that she
worked at McKelvey Bros., the antibiotics plant, where the
defendant also worked. Yes, that was him. She had been
attracted by the noise from the culture room lastlet's
see"Was it the seventeenth day of June last?" prompt-
ed the prosecutor, and Chandler's attorney instinctively
gathered his muscles to rise, hesitated, glanced at his client
and shrugged. That was right, it was the seventeenth.
Incautiously she went right into the room. She should have
known better, she admitted. She should have called the
plant police right away, but, well, they hadn't had any
trouble at the plant, you know, andwell, she didn't. She
was a stupid woman, for all that she was rather good-
looking, and insatiably curious. She had seen Peggy Fler-
shem on the floor. "She was all blood. And her clothes
wereAnd she was, I mean herher body was" With
relentless tact the prosecutor allowed her to stammer out
her observation that the girl had clearly been raped. And
she had seen Chandler laughing and breaking up the
place, throwing racks of cultures through the windows,
upsetting trays. Of course she had crossed herself and tried
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a quick exorcism but there was no visible effect; then
Chandler had leaped at her. "He was hateful! He was just
foul!" But as he began to attack her the plant police came,
drawn by her screams.
Chandler's attorney did not question.
Peggy Flershem's deposition was introduced without ob-
jection from the defense. But she had little to say anyway,
having been dazed at first and unconscious later. The plant
police testified to having arrested Chandler; a doctor de-
scribed in chaste medical words the derangements Chan-
dler had worked on Peggy Flershem's virgin anatomy.
There was no question from Chandler's lawyerand, for
that matter, nothing to question. Chandler did not hope to
pretend that he had not ravished and nearly killed one girl,
then done his best to repeat the process on another. Sitting
there as the doctor testified, Chandler was able to tally
every break and bruise against the memory of what his
own body had done. He had been a .spectator then, too,
as remote from the event as he was now; but that was
why they had him on trial. That was what they did not
believe.
At twelve-thirty the prosecution rested its case. Judge
Ellithorp looking very pleased. He recessed the court for
one hour for lunch, and Larry Grant~tookk Chandler back
to the detention cell in the basement of the school.
Two Swiss cheese sandwiches and a wax paper carton
of chocolate milk were on the desk. They were Chandler's
lunch. As they had been standing, the sandwiches were
crusty and the milk luke-warm. He ate them anyway. He
knew what the judge looked pleased about. At one-thirty
Chandler's lawyer would put him on the stand, and no
one would pay very much attention to what he had to say,
and the juiy would be out at most twenty minutes, and
the verdict would be guilty. The judge was pleased because
he would be able to pronounce sentence no later than four
o'clock, no matter what.
They had formed the habit of holding the executions at
sundown. As, at that time of year, sundown was after
seven, it would all go very wellfor everyone but Chan-
dler.
LASRY GRANTZ looked m, eating a wedge of pie from the
diner across the street. "You want anything else?" he
demanded.
"Coffee."
"Ah, you won't have time to drink it." Grantz licked his
fingers. "Of course, if you wasn't such a bastard about
tipping me off" He waited a moment and, when Chan-
dler did not reply, closed the door.
Chandler looked out the window. It was a nice day.
Far outside, above and away, a thin pale line of cloud
stretched itself across the horizon. Contrail. Chandler
watched it, listening, and caught the distant thundering
mumble of a transsonic jet.
He wondered what sort of hand was at its controls.
Where they came from no one knew, where they were
going no one could tell. None had ever landed in this little
part of the world in a long time. Not even at the Air
Force base. Not anywhere, in the years since that day of
disaster when the old world came to an end. Every once in
a while one rasped across the sky, on what errands Chan-
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dler could not guess.
In any event he had more pressing problems.
The odd thing about his dilemma was not merely that
he was innocentin a way, that isbut that many who
were guilty (in a way; as guilty as he himself, at any rate)
were free and honored citizens. Chandler himself was a
widower because his own wife had been murdered. He had
seen the murderer leaving the scene of the crime, and the
man he had seen was in the courtroom today, watching
Chandler's own trial. Of the six hundred or so in the
court, at least fifty were known to have taken part in one
or more provable acts of murder, rape, arson, theft, sod-
omy, vandalism, assault and battery or a dozen other
offenses indictable under the laws of the state.
Of course, that could be said of almost any community
in the world in those years; Chandler's was not unique.
What had put Chandler in the dock was not what his
body had been seen to do, but the place in which it had
been seen to do it.
For everybody knew that medicine and agriculture were
never molested by the demons.
Chandler's own lawyer had pointed that out to him the
day before the trial. "If it was anywhere but at the Mc-
Kelvey plant, all right, but there's never been any trouble
there. You know that. The trouble with you laymen is you
think of lawyers in terms of Perry Mason, right? Rabbit
out of the hat stuff. Well, I can't do that. I can only
present your case, whatever it is, the best way possible.
And the best thing I can do for your case right now is tell
you you haven't got one." At that time the lawyer was still
trying to be fair. He was even casting around for some
thought he could use to convince himself that his client
was innocent, though he had frankly admitted as soon as
he introduced himself that he didn't have much hope
there.
Chandler protested that he didn't have to commit rape.
He'd been a widower for a year, but
"Wait a minute," said the lawyer. "Listen. You can't
make an ordinary claim of possession stick, but what
about good old-fashioned insanity?" Chandler looked puz-
zled, so the lawyer explained. Wasn't it possible that
Chandler wasconsciously, subconsciously, unconscious-
ly, call it what you willtrying to get revenge for what
had happened to his own wife?
"No," said Chandler, "certainly not!" But then he had
to stop and think. After all, he had never been possessed
before; in fact, he had always retained a certain skepti-
cism about "possession"it seemed like such a conven-
ient way for anyone to do any illicit thing he choseuntil
the moment when he looked up to see Peggy Flershem
walking into the culture room with a tray of agar disks,
and was astonished to find himself striking her with the
wrench in his hand and ripping at her absurdly floral-
printed slacks. Maybe his case was different. Maybe it
wasn't the sort of possession that struck at random; maybe
he was just off his rocker.
Margot, his wife, had been cut up cruelly. He had seen
his friend, Jack Souther, leaving his home hurriedly as
he approached; and although he had thought that the stains
on his clothes looked queerly like blood, nothing in that
prepared him for what he found in the rumpus room. It
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had taken him some time to identify the spread-out dis-
section on the ffoor with his wife Margot . . .
"No," he told his lawyer, "I was shaken up, of course.
The worst time was the next night, when there was a knock
on the door and I opened it and it was Jack. He'd come
to apologize. Iwell, I got over it. I tell you I was pos-
sessed, that's all."
"And I tell you that defense will put you right in front
of a firing squad," said his lawyer. "And thafs all."
Five or six others had been executed for hoaxing;
Chandler was familiar with the ritual. He even understood
it, in a way. The world had gone to pot in the previous two
years. The real enemy was out of reach; when any citizen
might run wild and, when caught, relapse into his own
self, terrified and sick, there was a need to strike back.
But the enemy was invisible. The hoaxers were only whip-
ping boysbut they were the only targets vengeance had.
The real enemy had struck the entire world in a single
night. One day the people of the world went about their
business in the gloomy knowledge that they were likely to
make mistakes but with, at least, the comfort that the mis-
takes would be their own. The next day had not such com-
fort. The next day anyone, anywhere, was likely to find
himself seized, possessed, working evil or whimsy without
ever having formed the intention to do so . . . and helpless-
ly. Demons? Martians? No one knew whether the invad-
ers of the soul were from another world or from some
djinn's bottle. All they knew was that they were helpless
against them.
Chandler stood up, kicked the balled-up wax paper from
his sandwiches across the floor and swore violently.
He was beginning to wake from the shock that had
gripped him. "Damn fool," he said to himself. He had no
particular reason. Like the world, he needed a whipping
boy too, if only himself. "Damn fool, you know they're
going to shoot you!"
He stretched and twisted his body violently, alone in the
middle of the room, in silence. He had to wake up. He
had to start thinking. In a quarter of an hour or less the
court would reconvene, and from then it was only a
steady, quick slide 'to the grave.
It was better to do anything than to do nothing. He
examined the windows of his improvised cell. They were
above his head and barred; standing on the table, he could
see feet walking outside, in the paved playyard of the
school. He discarded the thought of escaping that way;
there was no one to smuggle him a file, and there was no
time. He studied the door to the hall. It was not impossible
that when the guard opened it he could jump him, knock
him out, run . . . run where? The room had been a storage
place for athletic equipment at the end of a hall; the hall
led only to the stairs and the stairs emerged into the
courtroom. It was quite likely, he thought, that the hall
had another flight of stairs somewhere farther along, or
through another room. What had he spent his taxes on
these years, if not for schools designed with more than one
exit in case of fire? But as he had not thought to mark an
escape route when he was brought in, it did him no good.
The guard, however, had a gun. Chandler lifted up an
edge of the table and tried to shake one of the legs. They
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did not shake; that part of his taxes had been well enough
spent, he thought wryly. The chair? Could he smash the
chair to get a club, which would give him a weapon to get
the guard's gun?...
Before he reached the chair the door opened and his
lawyer came in.
"Sorry I'm late," he said briskly. "Well. As your attor-
ney I have to tell you they've presented a damaging case.
As I see it"
"What case?" Chandler demanded. "I never denied the
acts. What else did they prove?"
"Oh, God!" said his lawyer, not quite loudly enough to
be insulting. "Do we have to go over that again? Your
claim of possession would make a defense if it had hap-
pened anywhere else. We know that these cases exist, but
we also know that they follow a pattern. Some areas seem
to be immunemedical establishments, pharmaceutical
plants among them. So they proved that all this happened
in a pharmaceutical plant. I advise you to plead guilty."
Chandler sat down on the edge of the table, controlling
himself very well, he thought. He only asked: "Would that
do me any good at all?"
"The lawyer reflected, gazing at the ceiling. ". . . No."
Chandler nodded. "So what else shall we talk about?
Want to compare notes about where you were and I was
the night the President went possessed?"
The lawyer was irritated. He kept his mouth shut for a
moment until he thought he could keep from showing it.
Outside a vendor was hawking amulets: "St. Ann beads!
Witch knots! Fresh garlic, local grown, best in town!" The
lawyer shook his head.
"All right," he said, "it's your life. We'll do it your way.
Anyway, time's up; Sergeant Grantz will be banging On
the door any minute."
He zipped up his briefcase. Chandler did not move.
'They don't give us much time anyway," the lawyer add-
ed, angry at Chandler and at hoaxers in general but not
willing to say so. "Grantz is a stickler for promptness."
Chandler found a crumb of cheese by his hand and
absently ate it. The lawyer watched him and glanced at his
watch. "Oh, hell," he said, picked up his briefcase and
kicked the base of the door. "Grantz! What's the matter
with you? You asleep out there?"
Chandler was sworn, gave his name, admitted the truth
of everything the previous witnesses had said. The faces
were still aimed at him, every one. He could not read them
at all any more, could not tell if they were friendly or
hating, there were too many and they all had eyes. The
jurors sat on their funeral-parlor chairs like cadavers, em-
balmed and propped, the dead witnessing a wake for the
living. Only the forewoman in the funny hat showed signs
of life, looking alertly at Chandler, at the judge, at the
man next to her, around the auditorium. Maybe it was a
good sign. At least she did not have the frozen-in-concrete,
guilty-as-hell look of the others.
His attorney asked him the question he had been wait-
ing for: "Tell us, in your own words, what happened."
Chandler opened his mouth, and paused. Curiously, he
had forgotten what he wanted to say. He had rehearsed
this moment again and again; but all that came out was:
"I didn't do it. I mean, I did the acts, but I was
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possessed. That's all. Others have done worse, under the
same circumstances, and been let off. Just as Fisher was
acquitted for murdering the Leamards, as Draper got off
after what he did to the Cline boy. As Jack Souther over
there was let off after he murdered my own wife. They
should be. They couldn't help themselves. Whatever this
thing is that takes control, I know it can't be fought. My
God, you can't even try to fight it!"
He was not getting through. The faces had not changed.
The forewoman of the jury was now searching systemati-
cally through her pocketbook, taking each item out and
examining it, putting it back and taking out another. But
between times she looked at him and at least her expres-
sion wasn't hostile. He said, addressing her:
"That's all there is to it. It wasn't me running my body.
It was someone else. I swear it before all of you, and
before God."
"The prosecutor did not bother to question him.
Chandler went back to his seat and sat down and
watched the next twenty minutes go by in the wink of an
eye, rapid, rapid; they were in a hurry to shoot him. He
could hardly believe that Judge Ellithorp could speak so
fast; the jurymen rose and filed out at a gallop, zip, whisk,
and they were back again. Too fast! he cried silently, time
had gone into high gear; but he knew that it was only his
imagination. The twenty minutes had been a full twelve
hundred seconds. And then time, as if to make amends,
came to a stop, abrupt, brakes on. The judge asked the
jury for their verdict and it was an eternity before the
forewoman arose.
She was beginning to look rather disheveled. Beaming at
Chandlersurety the woman was rather odd, it couldn't
be just his imaginationshe fumbled in her pocketbook
for the slip of paper with the verdict. But she wore an
expression of suppressed laughter.
"I knew I had it," she cried triumphantly and waved the
slip above her head. "Now, let's see." She held it before
her eyes and squinted. "Oh, yes. Judge, we the jury, and
so forth and so on"
She paused to wink at Judge Ellithorp. An uncertain
worried murmur welled up in the auditorium. "All that
junk, Judge," she explained, "anyway, we unanimously
but unanimously, love!find this son of a bitch innocent.
Why," she 'giggled, "we think he ought to get a medal, you
know? I tell you what you do, love, you go right over and
give him a big wet kiss and say you're sorry." She stood
drunkenly swaying, laughing at the courtroom.
The murmuring became something more like a mass
scream.
"Stop her, stop her!" bawled the judge, dropping his
glasses. "Bailiff! Sergeant Grantz!"
"Oh, cool it," cried the woman in the floppy hat. "Hi,
there! That you, love?" A man in the front row leaped to
his feet and waved to her. The scream became a shout, a
single word: Possessed!
"I tell you what," shrieked the woman, "let's all sing.
Everybody! 'For he's a fairly good fellow, for he's a fairly
good fellow' Come on now, loves! All together, for His
Honor"
The bailiff, half a dozen policemen, the ludge himself
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Plague%20of%20Pythons.txt (9 of 95) [1/21/03 10:36:32 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Plague%20of%20Pythons.txt
were scrambling toward her, but they were fighting a tide
of terrified people, flowing away. Possessed she clearly was.
And she was not alone. The man in the front row sang
raucously along with her; then he flopped like a rag doll,
and someone behind him leaped to his feet and carried
along with the song without missing a beat, then another,
another. . . it was like some distant sorcerer at a selector
switch, turning first one on, then another. The noise was
bedlam. As the police closed in on her the woman blew
them kisses. They fell away, as from leprosy, then buried
themselves grimly back, like a lynch mob.
She was giggling as they fell on her.
From under their scrambling bodies her voice gasped,
"Oh, now, not so rough! Say! Got acigarette? I've been
wanting"
The voice choked and spluttered; and then it screamed.
It was a sound of pure hysteria. The police separated
themselves and helped her up, still screaming, eyes weep-
ing with terror. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh! I1 couldn't
stop!"
Chandler stood up and took one step toward the door.
So much confusion. Such utter disorganization. There was
a chance
He stopped and turned. They would catch him before
he got outside the door. He made a decision, caught his
lawyer by the arm, jerked at it until he got the man's
attention. All of a sudden he felt alive again. There was
hope! Tiny, insubstantial, but"
"Listen," he said rapidly. "You, damn it! Listen to me.
"The jury acquitted me, right?"
The lawyer was startled. "Don't be ridiculous. It's a
clear case of"
"Be a lawyer, man! You live on technicalities, don't
you? Make this one work for me!"
The attorney gave him a queer, thoughtful look, hesi-
tated, shrugged and got to his feet. He had to shout to be
heard. "Your Honor! I take it my client is free to go."
He made almost as much of a stir as the sobbing
woman, but he outshouted the storm. "The jury's verdict
is on record. Granted there was an apparent case of
possession. Nevertheless"
Judge EUithorp yelled back: "No nonsense, you! Listen
to me, young man"
The lawyer snapped, "Permission to approach the
bench."
"Granted."
Chandler sat unable to move, watching the brief, stormy
conference. It was painful to be coming back to life. It was
agony to hope. At least, he thought detachedly, his lawyer
was fighting for him; the prosecutor's face was a thunder-
cloud.
The lawyer came back, with the expression of a man
who has won a victory he did not expect, and did not
want. "Your last chance. Chandler. Change your plea to
guilty."
"But"
"Don't push your luck, boy! The judge has agreed to
accept a plea. They'll throw you out of town, of course.
But you'll be alive." Chandler hesitated. "Make up your
mind! The best I can do otherwise is a mistrial, and that
means you'll get convicted by another jury next week."
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Plague%20of%20Pythons.txt (10 of 95) [1/21/03 10:36:32 PM]
摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Plague%20of%20Pyth\ons.txt"HEY,CHANDLER,"saidLan-yGrantz,thejailer,"Icangetfiftytooneforaconviction.Whatd'youthink?""Gotohell,"saidChandler."Comeon.Letmeinonit.Yougotanysurprisesforthejudge?"Chandlerdidn'tanswer.Hedidn'tevenlookatthejailer.Amanwh...

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