Chapter 1.5

Freeman arrived back at the capitol later that evening. He had woke up about fifteen miles from the island, and let the craft drive him back to Diamond Head.

As before, he really didn’t want to see anyone at that moment, especially Paul, so he turned his craft around and headed up into the hills. On his way there, he stopped by his own home and picked up a very old bottle of Scotch Whiskey he had found at a dig several years before. He had kept it as a souvenir. He knew he shouldn’t have, but they had found several of them. The thing was now God knows how many years old. The old date on the bottle had no bearing to the system they now used. A year was still a year, and a day still a day, but the numbers of the years had changed. Was it still good? He didn’t know, but this night was his time to find out.

He stopped at an old lookout on what was still labeled the H1 highway. This was a park in the city, so it was dark here. He let his craft settle to the ground, and got out. He walked to the edge of the lookout and stared down at the city below. The lights were on, as it was about 9:30 at night. He looked up, as if he could see the station. That was a laugh. It was pretty much out of the galaxy now. He walked back to his craft and picked up the bottle. Taking it with him, he sat down on a rock that let him see the city and beyond.

He opened the bottle, and sniffed it. The smell was very strong. He held it up and looked through the liquid. It was an amber color, and the lights below all glowed golden through it.

“Willem, you bastard. I wish I hadn’t have had to authorize what happened to you, but you brought it on yourself. I don’t know how or when you went mad, but it was pretty damned obvious that you were.” He took a swig of the scotch and felt the alcohol rush through his body. If this was what Scotch Whiskey was supposed to taste like, he liked it a lot.

“No one should have to endure what you did. You should have told us what we needed to know, then you wouldn’t have suffered.” he knew that wasn’t true, but it made him feel less responsible to say it. The boy’s father would have made Willem suffer regardless what or when he gave them the information. What had happened to his son was inexcusable, and Freeman knew it. His brother’s perversions had condemned him to hell on Earth. It didn’t make it any easier to watch, though.

He was a quarter of the way through the bottle when he heard another craft settle onto the ground. He was rather insensate now, and didn’t look up, even when he heard someone walking up to him. He didn’t even turn when he heard Paul. “Hello, Fred.”

Freeman held the bottle out abruptly to Paul, his arm completely straight.

Paul took it and read the label. “God, Fred, where’d you get this?”

Freeman didn’t answer that question, but rather told Paul, “Take a drink before I take back the bottle.” His words seemed labored to get out.

Paul took a ginger sip, then a larger one. It was good. “You know your brother wasn’t your fault.” He handed back the bottle.

“So you keep saying.” He took another drink.

Paul sat down beside his friend. “I keep asking myself if we could have gotten that info differently. I keep finding the same answer. ‘No’.”

“I’ve never murdered anyone before,” Fred told him.

“You didn’t murder Willem.”

“Bullshit, I didn’t. I stood there and watched him tortured, and I did nothing. I’m just as guilty as that sick bastard who killed him.”

“You think he was sick? Look at what happened to his kid.” Paul reached out for the bottle. Fred handed it to him.

“And killing Willem that way was sane?” Fred’s voice was louder than he meant for it to be.

Before Paul answered he took a gulp of the amber fluid. He coughed, and when he spoke his voice was a harsh whisper. “How about the way Willem killed his son. Was that sane?”

“He didn’t kill the kid.”

“That’s bullshit. He killed the boy the moment those nanites were activated. We watched those tapes, both of us. That one time when they were made to see what happened to them was the last time that kid ever was in control of himself. You saw what Willem made him do. He was the number one concubine for Willem. He murdered the kid, plain and simple.”

Fred didn’t say anything for a long time, while Paul took another gulp and handed the bottle back. Fred made a point of looking at the level of the liquid. “I’m catching up,” Paul said by way of explanation.

Fred nodded, then said, “You’re right, you know. But I still feel responsible.”

“Let’s say, for a moment, that you are. Was there any other choice?”

Again Fred held his tongue, but rather, shook his head.

“Did Willem bring it on himself?”

Fred nodded.

“Here’s the clincher. Under the same circumstances, would you do it again?”

Freeman didn’t answer. He held up the bottle and took a Paul sized gulp, then handed it to his friend. Finally, he almost whispered, “Damned right, I would.”

It had been several years since Willem’s death, and Freeman had build a wall around himself that insulated him from what he had allowed. What Paul had said that night still haunted him. He would do it again, under the same circumstances. He had never considered himself capable of murder, but that’s what it had felt like. No matter what his brother did, Fred had murdered him in his own eyes.

Now, he was in a courtroom, playing judge to another murderer. He felt like such a hypocrite as he weighed the man’s actions.

The man had killed someone for monetary gain. He had robbed a liquor store. Untold millennia had gone by since the earliest of these establishments, and there were still people robbing them.

The alleged murderer had turned up the power on his stun gun, to lethal levels – basically he had made the power source give up all of it’s power in one burst – shot the proprietor, then put his card into the register, and reversed all funds onto his card.

It was stupid, because planetary security only had to look at what happened and where the funds went. There was very little doubt of the man’s guilt.

How did he end up judging this guy, Freeman wondered. “How did I get talked into this?”

The defendant’s counsel was summing up her client’s innocence. Well trying to. Basically, she was asking Freeman to be lenient to her client who was obviously guilty as hell.

She finished, and Freeman called a recess until the next morning. He didn’t even look back as he walked out of the courtroom.

Defense just stood there, mouth agape. What had just happened?

Freeman, for his part, went into his chambers and sat down. People in this position still wore the robes they had always done. He looked down at himself, then ripped the robe off and threw it against the wall. At the same time, Robson entered the room. He dodged the robe, then look at Fred with a surprised expression. “Care to explain?” he asked.

“Nope,” Freeman told him.

“Why?”

In answer, Freeman told him, “Get the hell out of here, Paul.”

“Not till you explain.”

Fred sat down behind his desk. “I am the president of this planet, Paul, and I’m telling you to get the f**k out of my office.”

Paul said nothing. He moved to right in front of one of the chairs, and very deliberately sat down.

For several minutes, they stared at each other, until Fred broke. “I’m an effing hypocrite, okay? Happy now?”

“This again? I thought you’d put that away.”

“Of course not. I let you think that.”

Paul was furious. He had had it. “How long are you going to mourn that son of a bitch?”

“I’m not mourning him. I’m mourning myself.”

“No, you're not. You’re feeling sorry for yourself because you think you’re the only person in the world who has had to convict a person because they did something absolutely despicable. Wake up call, Fred. Shit like that happens!”

Fred just stared.

“That guy out there in the courtroom. You know he’s guilty as sin, but you feel like you can’t judge him because you’re a murderer too. Right?”

Nod.

“I’ve told you before. You’re not a murderer. You were a judge then, and you’re a judge now. No, we didn’t have a trial for Willem. How could we? No one would have been able to sit on a jury. You know that. Anyway, we all knew what he’d done.

“So now you’re judging someone who has a jury, They’ll convict him, not you. You’ll declare the sentence. Will he be executed? No! We don’t do that. Instead, he’ll be put in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

“So what do you do? Say that a judge is a murderer? You can look at it as either being a military extraction of information, or a punishment for what he had done, but that’s all it was. Not murder.”

Paul stood up. “Until you realize that, you’re going to be hindered in your leadership.”

Paul left and shut the door, hard. Fred sat behind his desk for several minutes, then wrote something down on a tablet and left for the day.

The next morning, he entered the courtroom and asked the jury their findings. He hardly had to ask. The man was guilty.

For the first time in many years, Fred felt that his conscience was clear. Without a moment’s hesitation, he sentenced the man to the punishment Paul had said the night before.

Freeman had accepted that he was a judge to this murderer, and a judge to his brother. He didn’t like the job, but as the president, it was part of his job description. He was determined to change that, but until it was, he would do the job to the best of his ability.