The 13th juror

One night they watched a column of flame lift a silver speck into the sky. And one night, much later, they heard a voice call into space, saying, "Come back, John Hastings, come back.

"Our inspection has shown serious deviations in your emotiograph. You will turn your rocket and rechart for Earth, John Hastings. For trial, John Hastings."

And they came to the trial. Out of the ripe, wet hills, down from the blistering dome over the city, up through the shafts of the gritty Substructure. They came and stood in lines, wiping the August sweat from their eyes, littering the levels with orange peels as they ate. Women, with babies strapped to their shoulders, and suppers left unradiated on the cooker. Men, with lead-shielded faces, and tools laid aside in the middle of a movement. But they came, and stood and jostled one another, milling and gossiping:

"Gonna be some trial!"

"... might even resort to electrocution...."

"Naw, that's dark time methods."

"Oh yeah?"

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah....

But they felt good, the people, for it wasn't their trial. The words could come easy and undammed, for it was John Hastings who was on trial. They could look at him all they wanted to, and talk.

And then, suddenly, they could look at me too. Because I was called as the thirteenth juror on the John Hastings trial.

I walked into it after a night that held no sleep. And looked at it. The yawning amphitheatre where humanity poured. And saw it. The thirteen chairs raised high in the center. And heard it. The crowd's susurrus gentling under insistent reminders from a bodiless Questioner.

I glanced at the faces in the other twelve boxes, recognizing some of them. Angus Vortler, the psychosurgeon. William Bax, head of Intergalactic, a bleak, wintery man who doodled constantly. Dollar signs, probably. Fred Kitson, of the horny palms, chief mechanic on the Darkness. All men who, because they had once reached out and touched hands with John Hastings, were now called to judge him. Several of them nodded to me as I took my place.

Wait.

They brought him in. I remembered the first time I had ever seen him, in the classroom. Eager and tall ... tall and eager. Lord, what changed him? Something had taken the straightness from his shoulders, the sureness from his stride. There were furrows on his face where the tears had already been.

He stood silently in the box where they had put him. A box just big enough for his bulky body, and maybe a little of the misery he carried with him.

A voice spoke.

"This, John Hastings, is your trial. You stand before this Court of Truth-Probity, accused of registering the emotion of hate. A hatred so violent, that had we permitted you to carry out your anticipated actions, it would have resulted in the murder of one Mary Hastings, your wife. Do you understand the charge?"

"I do." He didn't know what to do with his hands.

"How do you plead?"

"I plead not guilty."

"On what ground?" asked the voice.

The defendant raised his head. "On the ground that I had good and sufficient reason to justify my emotion."

"The reactographs on your wife, Mary Hastings, have been thoroughly examined, and it has been determined that she performed no act which in any way deviated from the norm. Had any disturbances taken place within Mary Hastings during the week of last March ninth to sixteenth, it would have shown up plainly in a flux on the charts. Your contention is impossible."

The man in the box bit his lip. "Nevertheless, I contend it. My wife gave me sufficient reason. She--she was unfaithful to me."

Only silence for a full minute.

"It is impossible."

"_But_ true!" Hastings shouted.

The multitude leaned forward, a misted inquiry rustling its skirts.

"Very well," the voice almost sighed. "Will you submit, Captain Hastings, to the use of the concentric screen? We wish to know more of the circumstances surrounding several pertinent dates."

His face was the color of picked bones. "Yes, I will submit."

Two men advanced carrying a mesh complexity between them. Placing it over the defendant's head they allowed it to fall to his shoulders.

"Are you ready, John Hastings?"

"Yes." It seemed he was already gone from the place.