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The next morning they hold a trial.
They sit around the dining table - or the MaddAddamites and the God's Gardeners sit. The Pigoons sprawl on the grass and pebbles; the Crakers graze nearby, chewing their eternal mouthfuls of leaf, taking it all in.
The prisoners themselves are not present. They don't need to be there: what they've done isn't in question. The trial is about the verdict only.
"So, we're here to decide their fates," says Zeb. "Worse luck we didn't blow them away in the heat of the proceedings, but since we didn't, we have to make some decisions in cold blood. Vote now, or is there any discussion?"
Toby says, "Are they common prisoners? Or prisoners of war? Because it's different, no?" She feels impelled to advocate for them in some way, but why? Is it simply because they don't have a lawyer?
"How about soul-dead neurotrash?" says Rebecca.
"Fellow human beings," says White Sedge. "Though I realize that this in itself is not a defence."
"They killed our brother," says Shackleton.
"Scumsucking fuckbuckets," says Crozier.
"Rapists and murderers," says Amanda.
"They shot Jimmy," says Ren, starting to cry. Amanda puts an arm around her, gives her a hug. She herself is not crying: she looks flinty-eyed, like a wood carving of herself. She'd make a good executioner, thinks Toby.
"Who cares what we call them," says Rhino. "So long as it's not people."
Hard to choose a label, thinks Toby: three sessions in the once notorious Painball Arena have scraped all modifying labels away from them, bleached them of language. Triple Painball survivors have long been known to be not quite human.
"I vote for all of the above," says Zeb. "Now let's get on with it."
White Sedge enters a halfhearted clemency plea. "We shouldn't judge," she says. "Surely their viciousness is a result of what was done to them earlier in their lives, by others. And considering the plasticity of the brain and how their behaviour was shaped by harsh experience, how are we to know that they had any control over what they did?"
"Are you fucking serious?" says Shackleton. "They ate my little brother's fucking kidneys! They butchered him like a Mo'Hair! I want to rip out all their teeth! Through their assholes," he adds, perhaps unnecessarily.
"Let's not get too fired up," says Zeb. "Hold the outrage. We all have cause. Though some more than others." He looks older, thinks Toby. Older and grimmer. Finding Adam and then losing him again has dragged him down. We're all in mourning: even the Pigoons. Their tails are drooping, their ears are limp; they nuzzle one another in a consoling way.
"We shouldn't fight over what should be a purely philosophical and practical decision," says Ivory Bill. "The question is, do we have the facilities for correctional guardianship, or, on the other hand, the theoretical justification for ..."
"It's not a time for hair-splitting," says Zeb.
"Taking life under any circumstances is reprehensible," says White Sedge. "We shouldn't let our own moral standards slip, just because --"
"Just because most of the human race has been wiped out and the surviving remnant can hardly get enough solar going to run a light bulb?" says Shackleton. "So you want to let these two cesspools bash your brains out?"
"I don't know why you're being so hostile," says White Sedge. "Adam One would have advocated clemency."
"Maybe he'd have been wrong," says Amanda. "You weren't there, you don't know what they did to us. Me and Ren. You don't know what they're like."
"Though, with so few true humans left," says Ivory Bill, "perhaps we shouldn't waste any increasingly rare human DNA. Even if the individuals in question must be eliminated, possibly their ... their generative fluids should be, as it were, siphoned off, to provide genetic variety. An ingrown gene pool must be avoided."
"Avoid it yourself," says Swift Fox. "Personally, the mere idea of having sex with those two festering bedsores just to capture their rancid DNA makes me nauseous."
"You wouldn't need to have sex with them, as such," says Ivory Bill. "We could use a turkey baster."
"Use it on your own self," says Swift Fox rudely. "Men are always telling women what to do with their uteruses. Excuse me, their uteri."
"I'd rather slit my wrists than let any of their fucking generative fluids near me ever again," says Amanda. "It's bad enough as it is. How do I know my own kid won't be one of theirs?"
"Anyway, a child with such warped genes would be a monster," says Ren. "The mother couldn't love it. Oh, sorry," she says to Amanda.
"It's okay," says Amanda. "If it's theirs, I'll hand it over to White Sedge and she can love it. Or the Pigoons can eat the thing; they'd appreciate it."
