Foundation - Isaac Asimov [87]
The scene ended, with the officers frozen at the horror of the situation, while Twer clamped shaking hands over his ears, and Mallow calmly put his gun away.
The lights were on again; the empty space in the center of the floor was no longer even apparently full. Mallow, the real Mallow of the present, took up the burden of his narration:
“The incident, you see, is exactly as the prosecution has presented it—on the surface. I’ll explain that shortly. Jaim Twer’s emotions through the whole business show clearly a priestly education, by the way.
“It was on that same day that I pointed out certain incongruities in the episode to Twer. I asked him where the missionary came from in the midst of the near-desolate tract we occupied at the time. I asked further where the gigantic mob had come from with the nearest sizable town a hundred miles away. The prosecution has paid no attention to such problems.
“Or to other points; for instance, the curious point of Jord Parma’s blatant conspicuousness. A missionary on Korell, risking his life in defiance of both Korellian and Foundation law, parades about in a very new and very distinctive priestly costume. There’s something wrong there. At the time, I suggested that the missionary was an unwitting accomplice of the Commdor, who was using him in an attempt to force us into an act of wildly illegal aggression, to justify, in law, his subsequent destruction of our ship and of us.
“The prosecution has anticipated this justification of my actions. They have expected me to explain that the safety of my ship, my crew, my mission itself were at stake and could not be sacrificed for one man, when that man would, in any case, have been destroyed, with us or without us. They reply by muttering about the Foundation’s ‘honor’ and the necessity of upholding our ‘dignity’ in order to maintain our ascendancy.
“For some strange reason, however, the prosecution has neglected Jord Parma himself,—as an individual. They brought out no details concerning him; neither his birthplace, nor his education, nor any detail of previous history. The explanation of this will also explain the incongruities I have pointed out in the Visual Record you have just seen. The two are connected.
“The prosecution has advanced no details concerning Jord Parma because it cannot. That scene you saw by Visual Record seemed phony because Jord Parma was phony. There never was a Jord Parma. This whole trial is the biggest farce ever cooked up over an issue that never existed.”
Once more he had to wait for the babble to die down. He said, slowly:
“I’m going to show you the enlargement of a single still from the Visual Record. It will speak for itself. Lights again, Jael.”
The chamber dimmed, and the empty air filled again with frozen figures in ghostly, waxen illusion. The officers of the Far Star struck their stiff, impossible attitudes. A gun pointed from Mallow’s rigid hand. At his left, the Revered Jord Parma, caught in mid-shriek, stretched his claws upward, while the falling sleeves hung halfway.
And from the missionary’s hand there was that little gleam that in the previous showing had flashed and gone. It was a permanent glow now.
“Keep your eye on that light on his hand,” called Mallow from the shadows. “Enlarge that scene, Jael!”
The tableau bloated—quickly. Outer portions fell away as the missionary drew towards the center and became a giant. Then there was only a hand and an arm, and then only a hand, which filled everything and remained there in immense, hazy tautness.
The light had become a set of fuzzy, glowing letters: K S P.
“That,” Mallow’s voice boomed out, “is a sample of tattooing, gentlemen. Under ordinary light it is invisible, but under ultraviolet light—with which I flooded the room in taking this Visual Record—it stands out in high relief. I’ll