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39: My Trial
The Council was an ancient custom dating back before recorded history. Judges from twenty cities and domes gathered in a place chosen by me and the Holy Mother, Gina-Paulina Benedictina XXIV. The royal throne was vacant, but that didn't matter because there was no official recognition of royalty in the Creation myths. The Council was a throwback (I now know) to the earliest settler days, when Mars was rough and tumble.
Of all the legal formulas, we had chosen Trial by Demonstration, an arcane method involving proof of some point by demonstrating it Q.E.D.
President of the Court was a red-faced, white-haired, tough little man named Rimthet Sims in a black suit from one of the smaller domes. He was a true conservative, with that inbred domer streak of suspicion about city claptrap. Deeply religious, he honored in his opening speech the late King and the Holy Mother who was also present in town, though not at the trial as such.
Since this was an ecclesiastical trial, with the world's full, rapt attention, it wasn't the circus Balesso had dreamed of. Actually, he and Voreill appeared to have figured out that this was one better, since it was clearly not orchestrated by them and therefore looked all the more legitimate. They'd have to tread more carefully, but they felt the weight of evidence and history, and the momentum of their own evil plotting, was in their favor. Nevertheless Duke Balesso appeared with a gaggle of canon lawyers who were in his circle of schemers. They sat in a small section of sloping bleachers on one side. On the other side sat some of the best canon lawyers provided by Her Holiness, since she had everything riding on my success, and if I failed, we would go down together. Worse yet, Mars and all its citizens would become the personal chattels of the tyrant Balesso. I also understood that if history went this way, Voreill would murder Balesso in turn, and make himself the most hated tyrant in Mars history.
The court was held in the Holy Mother's traveling court and portable temple, exactly as it was every year on the circuit, and as it had been at the Late Holy Mother's murder. The difference was that I had, by right, requested my trial to be at night, and under an open sky. In the crowd seats, some 500 carefully screened common citizens were allowed to watch in silence. They would add their recommendation as a collective jury vote—a technicality, unless the Council were deadlocked.
So it was that I stood in the docket across the court floor, facing the President, who sat in the middle of the Council bleachers. Behind me were the bleak night time hills of Mars with their few distant Dome lights and a sky rich with stars above. To my left were my accusers, the Balesso faction. To my right were the defenders, the Upholder faction, and among them my grandfather the Abbot.
The proceedings began with prayers and ceremonies at the main altar nearby. There was no music, however, in this solemn atmosphere, since heresy and other serious crimes were at issue. The sixty torches were set up, and lights in oxygen-assist glass globes flickered under the stars.
A young assistant priest and canon lawyer read the charges to the President and the Council. From murder to heresy, they made me sound like the worst criminal in human history. Looking at the dour faces on the Council, including Sims', I knew they were taking all this very seriously. Under the law, there was no crime until it was proven one had been committed, and therefore I was innocent until proof of crime and then proof of my guilt.
The Balesso faction added a statement to the charges, essentially a speech with political and religious undertones that clearly implied if the Late Holy Mother had been murdered by an Eastgarden associated (they alleged) with the Upholder faction, then the present Holy Mother must step down to prevent giving the appearance of complicity or worse. They didn't say the next step, but it was pretty obvious they would replace her with a tool of Balesso, and then find a way for Gina-Paulina Benedictina XXIV to have an unfortunate fatal accident.
I had the right to make an opening statement in my defense at any time, but deferred for the moment to my lawyers. The Upholder faction felt that, if they had more time, they might be able to put together a trail of witnesses and pin the murder on Balesso and Voreill. They couldn't quite say that in court, but they made a less definite speech about the political nature of the trial, the perilous times since the King had been murdered by a mob and the throne stood empty.
I then stepped forth to lay the groundwork for my own case. As if by miraculous design, a large meteor crossed the sky as I raised my hands to speak. The crowd ducked down in a huddle. Some clutched their foreheads and gaped while pointing. The asterism crossed from west to east with a bright flaming head and a long smoky trail that would have been audible in a richer atmosphere. I looked up and wondered if I was getting help from some agency—perhaps Mars the Divine, or the Temporale forces that wouldn't want Balesso and Voreill to rule, or just coincidence? "I have this to say. I am innocent of all these trumped up charges. My cousin, Timony Eastgarden, lost his life bringing me a warning about the coming assassination. I tried to warn the Holy Mother, but couldn't reach her in time. I was arrested and immediately released by two priestesses, who would attest to my innocence if they were here and alive. There will be time to speak about the dreadful plotting of Duke Balesso and Counselor Voreill. For the moment, I wish to state that I ask Mars the Divine, Chief God of Our Home, whom I have faithfully served all my life, to send a sign of my innocence. I ask for a powerful sign that will speak as testimony for the goodness of my cause, and the morally bankrupt and hollow bleating of these fraudulent moralists who only lust for power. Thank you. For now, I rest."
The trial continued through the early hours of night. In the meantime, the Holy Mother and several of the most senior priestesses were playing out an unusual program of religious implications. Having signalled her intentions to the global media, she had the interest and attention of a vast majority of Mars citizens who were still unsure of the situation and could swing with either party. This had never been done before. Without reference to my trial, the Holy Mother simultaneously opened the annual ceremonies in all six centers. Normally she would pilgrimage to each location, one per year. She declared this week to be a special Holy Week in remembrance of the late king, and also a special journey of the soul to pray for the salvation of Mars. What only she and I knew was that the seventh location on the circuit, the place no pilgrimage had ever come, was at this minor Dome of my trial.
The arguments flew back and forth, and the Council looked darker and meaner by the hour. Despite silver-tongued rhetoric by the Upholder faction, the dreadful Voreill and his duke of dishonesty had laid their traps cleverly and popular instant-polls showed sixty percent swinging more and more in favor of convicting me and unseating the current Holy Mother. What partly caused this was the perception that her grand slam of ceremonies in a large, loose cluster on the planet's face was a transparent way to draw attention from herself and her possible complicity in the Late Holy Mother's murder.
After midnight, we were still arguing fine points, and I was beginning to sweat. I had a demonstration table set up in the middle of the court, and there I had two or three of the coins or plates on which the dots of the circuit were marked. We also had a lens set up, along with the sacred projection mechanism.
At one point, when it just had to be one, I requested an opportunity to perform special priestly rites in an effort to strongly call down a divine blessing upon myself. It was a warmup for the real thing, which I hoped to pull off or die trying, some time that night. I was ritually not permitted to call any sort of blessing down on the crowd, for fear it might be perceived by the Gods as blasphemy and result in a curse. Even while innocent, there was a presumption of noli stare in regard to the validity and licitness of my priestly ceremonial ministrations. I turned on the projector and put the coins one by one under the lens, so that a tall beam of light shot up into the sky. There was a faint projection of the map of Mars and the dots under some thin, low clouds, but that was the extent of the miracle.
Nothing happened, and the crowd including several Council members and the whole Balesso bench laughed. The Upholder faction sat dour as rocks and didn't blink an eye. We were hurting. We were in deep trouble. My grandfather Abbot looked more pained than I had ever seen, and my soul hurt for him. I felt worse for him than I did for myself. Leaving the ceremonial candles, books, cloths, and other paraphernalia on the table, I returned to my seat in the dock.
About an hour later, while a Balesso lawyer performed his antics on the court floor, pointing at me, making faces, invoking the Gods, I noticed a slight movement in the altar cloths I had left behind.
When the windbag had finished his speech, thinking himself very clever, he walked to the altar and pointed to it. "Perhaps the heretic Farr would care to come try more hocus-pocus for our amusement?" Loud laughter rolled through the entire area, with only the Upholder faction looked stunned and depressed as their world crumbled around them. All of them, whether clergy or civil, realized that if I lost on this field tonight, then so did they all. Balesso would not rest until he had every last Upholder, Eastgarden, or other potential rival hunted down and killed once he seized supreme power while declaring an emergency. It was all so clear what he had planned.
I rose to the occasion. "I will indeed offer more prayers to the Gods, as is my right."
The President rose. "You will all be respectful and silent, or I will clear this court. It is blasphemy to attack a man of the cloth, innocent as he still is under the law. If there are any more outbursts, I will declare a mistrial." He glared at Balesso's faction with blazing eyes, and I gathered he found them most distasteful. "That would not suit your agenda, would it?"
They stared back with expressions as numb and pale as the Upholders' were. Sims sat down.
I walked to the altar, thanking Sims mentally. I spread my arms, and again a comet flew by overhead. There was a mixture of gasps and cries of "Trickery!"
"Silence!" thundered Sims. "For the last time, order in this court!"
I almost smiled to myself, knowing fully well by now that Professor Taylor was somewhere in the Temporale, shooting artillery across the sky and offering me the gift I so desperately needed. The six-pointed medallions and coins had not worked. What had materialized under the cloths was the object that Tuttle and I had observed lying outside the Anomaly. It was a perfectly machined version of the coins, with seven rather than six locations indicated by dots.
While a number of Balesso followers chortled audibly, I slid the map plate under the projector. Again, a tall shaft of light rose into the sky. The map shone again under a fringe of moving clouds, and nothing happened.
There were snickers.
I was sweating so hard that my neck seemed to prickle like the surface of a buttered skillet.
The clouds rolled away, and the image vanished.
The Council members looked red and ready to explode as they waited with dark stares. It was obvious to me that these good, pious civic leaders suspected they were being taken in by a charlatan.
Then the light began to intensify. Was it the dawn that was just looming beyond the black hills and mountains of nighttime? The light in the shaft began to whirl slowly, like a barber pole, but in green and amber and garnet spirals that interwove each other.
So, after all this that I have told, I stand here before the Council of Inquisition, and my fate becomes clear to me even when it is not yet so in the eyes of Sims and the two factions.
"What is the oldest legend on Mars?" I ask loudly, looking at the sky. "It is the ancient Triber myth that once, long ago, water fell from the sky."
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