Desolation Road

25

Justice Dunne was in poor humour for a sentencing. The local water had given him diarrhoea, which, coupled with his haemorrhoids, had felt like shitting sheets of flame. His breakfast had been cold and inadequate, he had learned from his radio that his racehorse had fallen and broken its neck in the Morongai Flats Ten Thousand Metres, and now two of his jurors were missing. He had his usher, that ragged scamp Rajandra Das, search the town for them, and when that proved to be in vain he ruled that the trial could proceed with a jury of eight. He made a mental note to add a charge of fifty golden dollars to the town’s already substantial bill for this additional ruling. And now the defense counsel, a ludicrous semi-educated bumpkin with an overinflated opinion of his legal prowess, was seriously proposing that a key witness be admitted at this late stage in the proceedings.

“What is the name of this key witness?” Louie Gallacelli cleared his throat.

“The ghost of Gaston Tenebrae.”

Messrs. Prye, Peake and Meddyl were on their feet instantly. Genevieve Tenebrae fainted and was carried out. Justice Dunne sighed. His anus was beginning to itch again. The counsels argued. The accused ate a breakfast of fried bread and coffee. After an hour, jury, spectators and witnesses went to tend their fields. Arguments clashed and parried. Justice Dunne fought an insistent urge to insert a forefinger into his backside and scratch the frustration until it bled. Two hours passed. Seeing no end to the wrangling unless he intervened, justice Dunne banged his gavel and declared, “The ghost may testify.”

Rajandra Das skipped around the fields and houses of Desolation Road rounding up jurors, witnesses and spectators. There was still no sign of the two missing jurors: Mikal Margolis and Marya Quinsana.

“Call the ghost of Gaston Tenebrae.”

The ghost-catchers exchanged clenched-fist signs of triumph. Ed Galla celli wheeled in the Mark Two time winder and checked the transducers he had fixed around the edge of the bubble.

“Can you hear me?” squeaked the ghost. Newly revived, Genevieve Tenebrae promptly fainted again. The phantom’s voice came scratchy but audible through Ed Gallacelli’s radio amplifier.

“Now, Mr. Tenebrae, or rather, Late Mr. Tenebrae, did this man, the accused, murder you on the night of thirty-first Julaugust, at approximately twenty minutes of nothing?”

The ghost somersaulted gleefully in its blue crystal ball.

“Joey and I have had our differences in the past, I’d be the first to admit it, but now that I’ve passed into the nearer presence of the Panarch, all that’s forgiven and forgotten. No. It wasn’t him that killed me. He didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?”

Genevieve Tenebrae regained consciousness to hear her husband name his murderer.

“It was Mikal Margolis. He did it.”

In the ensuing uproar Genevieve Tenebrae fainted for the third time and the Babooshka crowed triumphantly, “I told you so, he was no good, that son of mine,” and justice Dunne banged his gavel so hard the head came off.

“If there is any more of this behaviour, I’ll have you all fined for contempt,” he thundered.

Order restored, the ghost of Gaston Tenebrae unravelled its sordid testimony of adultery, glowing passion, violent death, and illicit tripartite relationships between Gaston Tenebrae, Mikal Margolis and Marya Quinsana.

“I suppose I should never have done it,” the phantom squeaked, “but I still thought of myself as an attractive man: I wanted to know I had not lost my touch with the ladies, so I flirted with Marya Quinsana because she’s a fine, fine woman.”

“Gaston!” shrieked his widow, up from her third faint, ready for her fourth. “How could you do this to me!”

“Order,” said justice Dunne.

“What about the baby, eh, darling?” said the ghost. “Since I passed into the world beyond I’ve learned a lot of interesting things. Like where little Arnie came from.”

Genevieve Tenebrae burst into tears and was led from the courtroom by Eva Mandella. The ghost resumed its tale of clandestine trysts and whispered intimacies beneath silk sheets to the utter amazement of the citizens of Desolation Road. Amazement, and admiration that an illicit adulterous relationship of such intensity (and with such a publicly promiscuous figure as Marya Quinsana) could have been so successfully concealed among a population of only twenty-two people.

“She led me along good. But now I know better.” Since metempsy-chosing to the Heavenly Exalted Plane, Gaston Tenebrae had learned of Marya Quinsana’s simultaneous relationship with Mikal Margolis. “She was playing us off, one against the other; me, Mikal and her brother Morton; playing us off just for the fun of it. She enjoyed manipulating people. Mikal Margolis, well, he was always a headstrong boy and never really made it in love: having me to contend with was too much for him.” Suspicious, Mikal Margolis had followed Marya Quinsana and Gaston Tenebrae and spied upon their lovemaking. It was then that the trembling started. In the surgery he would shudder with repressed rage and drop instruments and spill things. The tension built until he could feel the blood seething around his bones like the ocean breaking upon rocks until something old and foul like a black ulcer burst inside him. He found Gaston Tenebrae walking home from a tryst along the side of the railroad line.

“Then he picked up a short piece of rail, about half a metre long, that was lying beside the track and smashed me on the side of the neck with it. Severed my spine at once. Killed me instantly.”

The ghost concluded its evidence here and was wheeled away. Justice Dunne delivered his summing up and after begging them to please be objective about what they had seen and heard, gave leave for the jury to retire and consider its verdict. The jury retired to the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel, now reduced to seven jurors. Unseen by any, Morton Quinsana had slipped away during the final testimony.

At fourteen minutes of fourteen the jury returned.

“How do you find the accused, guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty,” said Rael Mandella.

“And that is the verdict of you all?”

“It is.”

The judge acquitted Mr. Stalin. There was cheering and clapping. Louie Gallacelli was carried shoulder-high from the Court of Piepowder and paraded all around the town so that every goat, chicken and llama might see what a fine lawyer Desolation Road had produced. Genevieve Tenebrae took her daughter and went to ask Ed Gallacelli for her husband’s ghost.

“The time-dependent set of persona engrams stored holographically in the local spatial-stress matrix?” said engineer Ed. “Sure.” Genevieve Tenebrae took the time winder and the tiny bubble containing her late husband home, put them on the shelf, and nagged the ghost for its unfaithfulness for twelve years.

Justice Dunne returned to his disrobing carriage and had his personal servant, an eight-year-old sloe-eyed Xanthian girl, apply soothing, lotion to his piles.

Mr. Stalin was joyously reunited with wife and blubbering adolescent son, whose nose had generated a stream of shining goo all through the trial. Celebrating with roast turkey and peapod wine that night, the Stalins’ buoyant mood was shattered when four armed men dressed in black and gold leather smashed the door in with rifle butts.

“Joseph Mencke Stalin?” the leader asked.

Wife and son pointed simultaneously to husband and father. The man who had spoken held out a piece of paper.

“This is your bill for services rendered by the Bethlehem Ares Corporation Legal Services Division, incorporating hire of courtroom, court charges, hire of court personnel for two days, wages for same, use of power and light, use of papers, file reference charges, prosecution fees, recorder’s fees, judge’s fees, comestibles, including sundries, including meals, pile ointment, and claret, justice’s servant’s fees, arrival and departure fees for the locomotive, insurance of same, hire of same, interrogation fees, acquittal fees, jury tax and replacement of one judicial gavel: total, 3548 New Dollars twenty-eight centavos.” The Stalins gaped like ducks in a thunderstorm.

“But I’ve paid. I’ve paid Louie Gallacelli his twenty-five dollars,” stammered Mr. Stalin.

“Normally all court fees are paid by the guilty party,” said the sergeantat-arms. “However, the guilty party having absconded, the charges, under sub-section 37, paragraph 16 of the Legal Charges Deferment Act (Regional and Sub-Contractee Courts) all pass to the defendant, as the legal next-toguilty party. However, the Company being generous to those of limited means, will accept payment in either cash or kind and will issue you, upon your request, with a court order for the restitution of payment from Mr. Mikal Margolis, the actual guilty party.”

“But we’ve no money,” pleaded Mrs. Stalin.

“Cash or kind,” said the sergeant-at-arms, already quartering the room with his bailiff’s eyes. His gaze rested on Johnny Stalin, a forkful of turkey frozen between plate and open mouth. “He’ll do.” The three armed sequestrators marched down into the dining room and lifted Johnny Stalin bodily from his chair, fork still in hand. The sergeant-at-arms scribbled something on his clipboard.

“Sign here and here,” he said to Mr. Stalin.

“Right. That…” he continued, ripping a pink form off at its perforations, “is one certificate for the indenture of your son against incurred court charges liable to the Court of Piepowder, for an indefinite amount of time no less than twenty years and no greater than sixty. And this"-he slapped a piece of blue paper into Mr. Stalin’s hand-"is your receipt.”

Shrieking and blubbering like a stuck pig, Johnny Stalin, aged 8%, was marched out of his house, up the alley and onto the train. With an earshattering roar of power the locomotive fired up its fusion engines and drew away from Desolation Road. The Court of Piepowder was never seen again.

Morton Quinsana returned to the empty office. He took all his dental tools, his dental books, his dental coats, his dental chair, and made a pile of them in the middle of the office and set fire to them. When it had died to ashes, he took a piece of hemp rope from a cupboard, made a strong noose, and hanged himself in the name of love from the roofbeam. His feet pendulumed through the pile of ashes and fused metal and drew little grey trails across the floor.