Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [46]
But if they intend to force some kind of confession out of him, Damon thought, everyone will know that it’s worthless. Take away a man’s ability to control pain and he can be made to say anything at all. What kind of “absolute proof” is that?
The image abruptly shifted to display a crude cartoon of a virtual courtroom. The accused man who stood in a wooden dock topped with spikes like spearheads was a caricature, but Damon had no difficulty in recognizing him as Silas Arnett. The twelve jurors who were positioned to his left were mere sketches, and the person whose position was directly opposite the camera’s—presumably the prosecutor—had features no better defined than theirs. The black-robed judge who faced Arnett was drawn in greater detail, although his profile was subtly exaggerated.
“Please state your name for the record,” said the judge. His voice was deep and obviously synthetic.
“I’ll do no such thing,” said the figure in the dock. Damon recognized Silas Arnett’s voice, but in the circumstances he couldn’t be sure that the words hadn’t been synthesized by a program that had analyzed recordings and isolated the differentiating features of the original.
“Let the name Silas Arnett be entered in the record,” said the judge. “I am obliged to point out, Dr. Arnett, that there really is a record. Every moment of this trial will be preserved for posterity. Any and all of your testimony may be broadcast, so you should conduct yourself as though the whole world were watching. Given the nature of the charges which will be brought against you, that may well be the case.”
“I didn’t think you people bothered with interrogations and trials,” Arnett said. It seemed to Damon that Silas—or the software speaking in his stead—was injecting as much contempt into his voice as he could. “I thought you operated strictly on a sentence first, verdict afterwards basis.”
“It sometimes happens,” said the judge, “that we are certain of one man’s guilt, but do not know the extent to which his collaborators and accomplices were involved in his crime. In such cases we are obliged to undertake further inquiries.”
“Like the witch-hunters of old,” said Arnett grimly. “I suppose it would make it easier to select future victims if the people you select out for murder were forced to denounce others before they die. Any testimony you get by such means is worse than worthless; this is a farce, and you know it.”
“We know the truth,” said the judge flatly. “Your role is merely to confirm what we know.”
“Fuck you,” Arnett said with apparent feeling. The obsolete expletive sounded curiously old-fashioned.
“The charges laid against you are these,” the judge recited portentously. “First, that between 2095 and 2120 you conspired with Eveline Hywood, Karol Kachellek, Mary Hallam, and others, under the supervision of Conrad Helier, to cause actual bodily harm to some seven billion individuals, that actual bodily harm consisting of the irreversible disabling of their reproductive organs. Second, that you collaborated with Eveline Hywood, Karol Kachellek, Mary Hallam, and others, under the supervision of Conrad Helier, in the design, manufacture, and distribution of the agents of that actual bodily harm, namely the various virus species collectively known as meiotic disrupters or chiasmalytic transformers. You are now formally invited to make a statement in response to these charges.”
Damon was astonished by his own reaction, which was more extreme than he could have anticipated. He was seized by an actual physical shock which jolted him and left him trembling. He turned to look at Karol Kachellek, but the blond man wouldn’t meet his eye. Karol seemed remarkably unperturbed, considering that he had just been accused of manufacturing and spreading the great plague of sterility whose dire effects he and his collaborators had so magnificently subverted.
“Karol . . .?”
Karol cut Damon off with a swift gesture. “Listen!” he hissed “If you had any real evidence,” the cartoon Arnett said, while the face of his simulacrum took on