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Half-dreams flickered in and out of his consciousness, becoming presently a particularly soothing full-dream of Joy Marcoe and himself rolling backward on her bed. Her robe fell open to the smooth softness of aroused flesh and Keel felt the unmistakable stirrings of his body—the body in the chair and the body in the dream. He knew it was a dream of the memory of their first exploratory sharing. His hand slipped beneath her robe and pulled the softness of her against him, stroking her back. That had been the moment when he discovered the secret of Joy’s bulky clothes, the clothes that could not hide an occasional firm trim line of hips or thighs, the small strong arms. Joy cradled a third breast under her left armpit. In the dream of the memory, she giggled nervously as his wandering hand found the tiny nipple hardening between his fingers.
Mr. Justice.
It was Joy’s voice, but it was wrong.
That was not what she said.
“Mr. Justice.”
A hand shook his left arm. He felt the chair and the prosthetics, a pain where his neck joined the massive head.
“Ward, it’s wake-up. The Committee meets in fifteen minutes.” He blinked awake. Joy stood over him, smiling, her hand still on his arm.
“Nodded off,” he said. He yawned behind his hand. “I was dreaming about you.”
A distinctive flush darkened her cheeks. “Something nice, I hope.”
He smiled. “How could a dream with you in it be anything but nice?”
The blush deepened and her gray eyes glittered.
“Flattery will get you anything, Mr. Justice.” She patted his arm. “After Committee, you have a call to Kareen Ale. Her office said she would arrive here at thirteen-thirty. I told them you have a full appointment sheet through …”
“I’ll see her,” he said. He stood and steadied himself on the edge of his desk console. The boo always made him a little groggy at first recovery. Imagine the medics giving him their death sentence and then telling him to knock off the boo! Avoid extremes, avoid anxiety.
“Kareen Ale takes advantage of her position to presume on your good nature and waste your time,” Joy said.
Keel didn’t like the way Joy exaggerated the Merman ambassador’s name: “ah-lay.” True, it was a difficult name to carry through the cocktail parties of the diplomatic corps, but the woman had Keel’s complete respect on the debating floor.
He was suddenly aware that Joy was leaving. “Joy!” he called. “Allow me to cook for you in quarters tonight.”
Her back straightened in the doorway and when she turned to face him she smiled. “I’d like that very much. What time?”
“Nineteen hundred?”
She nodded once, firmly, and left. It was just the economy of movement and grace that endeared her to him. She was less than half his age, but she carried a wisdom about her that age ignored. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d taken a full-time lover.
Twelve years? No, thirteen.
Joy made the wait that much more right in his mind. Her body was supple and completely hairless—something that excited him in ways he’d thought he’d forgotten.
He sighed, and tried to get his mind set for the coming meeting with the Committee.
Old farts, he thought. One corner of his mouth twisted up in spite of himself. But they’re pretty interesting old farts.
The five Committee members were among the most powerful people on Vashon. Only one person rivaled Keel, with his position as Chief Justice—Simone Rocksack, the Chaplain/Psychiatrist, who commanded great popular support and provided a check on the power of the Committee. Simone could move things by inference and innuendo; Keel could order them done and they were done.
Keel realized, with some curiosity, that as well as he knew the Committee members, he always had trouble remembering their faces. Well … faces were not all that important. It was what lay behind the face that mattered. He touched a finger to his nose, to his distended forehead, and as though it were a magic gesture his hand called up a clear image of those other faces, those four old justices.
There was Alon, the youngest of them at sixty-seven. Alon Matts, Vashon’s leading bioengineer for nearly thirty years.
Theodore Carp was the cynic of the group and, so Keel thought, aptly named. Others referred to Carp as “Fish Man,” a product of both his appearance and his bearing. Carp looked fishlike. A sickly-pale, nearly translucent skin covered the long narrow face and blunt-fingered hands. The cuffs of his robe came nearly to the tips of his fingers and his hands appeared quite finlike at first glance. His lips were full and wide, and they never smiled. He had never been considered seriously for Chief Justice.
Not a political enough animal, Keel thought. No matter how bad things get, you’ve got to smile sometime. He shook his head and chuckled to himself. Maybe that should be one of the Committee’s criteria for passing questionable subjects—the ability to smile, to laugh …
“Ward,” a voice called, “I swear you’ll daydream your life away.”
He turned and saw the other two justices walking the hallway behind him. Had he passed them in the hatchway and not noticed? Possibly.
“Carolyn,” he said, and nodded, “and Gwynn. Yes, with luck I’ll daydream my life away. Are you refreshed after this morning’s session?”
Carolyn Bluelove turned her eyeless face up to his and sighed. “A difficult morning,” she said. “Clear-cut, of course, but difficult …”
“I don’t see why you go through a hearing, Ward,” Gwynn Erdsteppe said. “You just make yourself uncomfortable, it makes us all uncomfortable. We shouldn’t have to whip ourselves over something like that. Can’t we channel the drama outside the chambers?”
“
They have their right to be heard, and the right to hear something as irreversible as our decision from those who make it,” he said. “Otherwise, what might we become? The power over life and death is an awesome one, and it should have all the checks against it that we can muster. That’s one decision that should never be easy.”
“So what are we?” Gwynn persisted.
“Gods,” Carolyn snapped. She put her hand on Keel’s arm and said, “Walk these two dottering old gods to chambers, will you, Mr. Justice?”
“Delighted,” he said. They scuff-scuffed down the hallway, their bare feet hardly more than sighs on the soft deck.
Ahead of them, a team of slurry workers painted nutrient on the walls. This team used broad brushes and laid on vivid strokes of deep blue, yellow and
green. In a week all the color would be absorbed and the walls returned to their hungry, gray-brown hue.
Gwynn positioned herself behind Keel and Carolyn. Her lumbering pace hurried them on. Keel was distracted from Carolyn’s small talk by the constant lurch of Gwynn’s hulk behind them.
“Do either of my fellow justices know why we’re meeting just now?” he asked. “It must be something disturbing because Joy didn’t reveal it when she told me about the appointment.”
“That Merman this morning, he’s appealed to the Chaplain/Psychiatrist,” Gwynn snorted. “Why won’t they leave it be?”
“Curious,” Carolyn said.
It struck Keel as very curious. He had sat the bench for a full five years before a case had been appealed to the Chaplain/Psychiatrist. But this year …
“The C/P’s just a figurehead,” Gwynn said. “Why do they waste their time and ours on—”
“And hers,” Carolyn interrupted. “It’s a lot of work, being the emissary to the gods.”
Keel shuffled quietly between them while they reopened the ages-old debate. He tuned it out, as he’d learned to do years ago. People filled his life too much to leave any time for gods. Especially now—this day when the life burning inside him had become doubly precious.
Eight cases appealed by the C/P in this season alone, he thought. And all eight involved Mermen.
