A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [139]
The child was crying again. The mother stirred restlessly.
“Officers, this girl and baby aren’t well. I’ll accept the process, but please let us drive on hack to the abbey now. Then I’ll come back alone.”
The officer looked at the girl again. “Ma’am?”
She stared toward the camp and looked up at the statue towering over the entrance. “I’m getting out here,” she told them tonelessly.
“You’ll be better off, ma’am,” said the officer, eying the red tickets again.
“No!” Dom Zerchi caught her arm. “Child, I forbid you-”
The officer’s hand shot out to seize the priest’s wrist.
“Let go!” he snapped, then softly: “Ma’am, are you his ward or something?”
“No.”
“Where do you get off forbidding the lady to get out?” the officer demanded. “We’re just a little impatient with you, mister, and it had better be-”
Zerchi ignored him and spoke rapidly to the girl. She shook her head.
“The baby, then. Let me take the baby back to the sisters. I insist-”
“Ma’am, is that your child?” the officer asked. The girl was already out of the car, but Zerchi was holding the child.
The girl nodded. “She’s mine.”
“Has he been holding you prisoner or something?”
“No.”
“What do you want to do, ma’am?”
She paused.
“Get back in the car,” Dom Zerchi told her.
“You cut that tone of voice, mister!” the officer barked.
“Lady, what about the kid?”
“We’re both getting out here,” she said.
Zerchi slammed the door and tried to start the car, but the officer’s hand flashed in through the window, hit the CANCEL button, and removed the key.
“Attempted kidnapping?” one officer grunted to the other.
“Maybe,” said the other, and opened the door. “Now let go of the woman’s baby!”
“To let it be murdered here?” the abbot asked. “You’ll have to use force.”
“Go around to the other side of the car, Fal.”
“No!”
“Now, just a little baton under the armpit. That’s it, pull! All right, lady-there’s your kid. No, I guess you can’t, not with those crutches Cors? Where’s Cors? Hey, Doc!”
Abbot Zerchi caught a glimpse of a familiar face coining through the crowd.
“Lift the kid out while we hold this nut, will you?”
Doctor and priest exchanged a silent glance, and then the baby was lifted from the car. The officers released the abbot’s wrists. One of them turned and found himself hemmed in by novices with upraised signs. He interpreted the signs as potential weapons, and his hand dropped to his gun.
“Back up!” he snapped.
Bewildered, the novices moved back.
“Get out.”
The abbot climbed out of the car. He found himself facing the chubby court official. The latter tapped him on the arm with a folded paper. “You have just been served with a restraining order, which I am required by the court to read and explain to you. Here is your copy. The officers are witnesses that you have been confronted with it, so you cannot resist service-”
“Oh, give it here.”
“That’s the right attitude. Now you are directed by the court as follows: ‘Whereas the plaintiff alleges that a great public nuisance has been-’ “
“Throw the signs in the ash barrel over there,” Zerchi instructed his novices, “unless somebody objects. Then climb in the car and wait.” He paid no attention to the reading of the order, but approached the officers while the process server trailed behind, reading in monotonous staccato. “Am I under arrest?”
“We’re thinking about it.”
“‘-and to appear before this court on the aforesaid date to show cause why an injunction-’“
“Any particular charge?”
“We could make four or five charges stick, if you want it that way.”
Cors came back through the gate. The woman and her child had been escorted into the camp area. The doctor’s expression was grave, if not guilty.
“Listen, Father,” he said, “I know how you feel about all this, but-”
Abbot Zerchi’s fist shot out at the doctor’s face in a straight right jab. It caught Cors off balance, and he sat down hard in the driveway. He looked bewildered. He snuffled a