Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [42]
Picard’s face reddened with rage. “Don’t you have trials here? Aren’t people told the nature of the charges against them? Don’t they have a right to defend themselves?”
The CS men pulled him again.
“Get off of me,” he growled.
“Let him stay a moment,” said Crichton. He still looked at the papers on his desk. Sweat trickled down the scars on his mask-like face.
Finally Crichton looked up partway, at the level of Picard’s chest. Picard had the impression Crichton was hiding something, which eye contact might make him betray.
If I provoke him, thought Picard, perhaps I can make him reveal something, or entrap him. If fiction is a capital crime here, then Crichton can’t actually lie to me.
Crichton began to speak. The words emerged from his mouth like hard, dry pellets.
“We deal only in facts here,” he said. “Irrefutable facts. For what, then, do we need trials, lawyers, or judges? A person either committed a crime or they did not. There are no ambiguities for argument. All crimes are clearly documented on this planet; that is what Cephalic Security is for. If you were to commit a crime right now, as you can see,” he said, pointing in an arc at all the lenses and antennae, “your crime would be a matter of record. In fact, your crimes were a matter of record as soon as our one-eyes first intercepted your brain waves, on your ship. This sentencing is merely a completion of the file.”
“Then sentence me,” said Picard, “and let my crewmembers and my ship go. I’m the captain, I’m responsible for their actions. They were just following my orders. You have no cause to prosecute them.”
“You are all guilty of high crimes,” said Crichton. “It’s a matter of record.”
“And exactly what are these high crimes?”
“You already know.”
“Maybe I just want you to look at me and say it. The crime of having an imagination and using it? The crime of speculating, of creating, of thinking at all, is that it?”
“We manage to think quite a bit. Enough to get along without the help of anyone from Earth, which was in a pretty sorry state when my ancestors left.”
“What you do is not thinking any more than the pronouncements of a mynah bird. And I’ll tell you something else, Crichton. Earth is in fine shape, and we got there by doing exactly the opposite of all this. Crichton! Aren’t you going to look me in the eye just once?”
Picard advanced a step. The CS men grabbed him roughly. One of them raised his hand to strike.
“No,” said Crichton. “Don’t harm his body.”
As if unable to resist some inner temptation, Crichton lifted his eyes to meet Picard’s.
It was just a quick glance, and then he returned his attention to his paperwork. He immediately went pale, and then grabbed his head with both hands, pressing as if to keep it from exploding. Through clenched teeth he groaned, “Get him out of here.”
As the CS roughly shoved Picard out of the office, he heard someone from inside say, “Call the medical staff!”
“No!” he heard Crichton reply. “I’m going to see my own doctor.”
Picard was taken under heavy guard back to the little white cell. On the way he tried to make sense out of his interview with Crichton—but couldn’t. He didn’t believe all persons who used their imaginations on this planet could be executed without trial. Eventually there would be too few people to keep the machines running. Eventually there would be no people at all.
By the time he was locked back in his room, he thought he might have hit upon the answer. It wasn’t simple capital punishment, it was worse.
Riker awoke in a small white room. He had a devastating headache. Gradually the memory of the fight at the ore factory came back to him. He figured that the radiation gun Ferris shot him with was responsible for the pain. It was so bad he couldn’t move a muscle.
He lay for a long time, watching news reports on the video screen. He was in one of them; it was a piece on his capture at the ore factory. And