The Trial of Tompa Lee

  5 The Bastard Child

  Tompa stared at a picture that throbbed in the fake window half hidden behind white curtains. The throbbing kept time with the pulsing in her temples. How could a picture know exactly when her heart would beat?

  “How’s your head, Tompa?” a deep voice asked from the other end of the couch.

  Oh, God. She’d forgotten the head roach, Roussel. How could she forget something as horrible as that?

  She was saved from answering when the woman with black hair cleared her throat. Ambassador Schneider, that was her name. Tompa cringed. Never in her life had she been near two such powerful gordos.

  “An ancient writer,” Schneider intoned from behind a desk that seemed too large for the room, “once said that law is the bastard child of justice.”

  Bastard?

  Tompa blinked as the picture behind Schneider flashed to another scene. Whenever she was noticed by gordos, even ones who weren’t as powerful as these two, bad things happened, so sitting here was nerve-wracking enough without insults about her ancestry. Insults shouldn’t bother her, of course—but her body ached as though she were ninety, her head throbbed and roared like a roach siren, and her mind spun out of control every few seconds. She simply couldn’t take this woman’s snide insults.

  “Bastard?” she said aloud.

  “Humans,” Schneider said more loudly, bulldozing her way past the interruption, “sometimes give mere lip service to the idea of justice, being more concerned with the letter of the law than the intent, and so . . .”

  The woman went on and on, speaking but not seeming to say anything no matter how hard Tompa listened. The words ricocheted around her mind until there was total chaos of this word, that word, another word, all flying in different directions without any sense of connection, sound-shrapnel tearing apart her befuddled brain. Tompa’s head sank to her knees. She covered her ears.

  The ambassador stopped talking.

  “Are you all right, Tompa?” Roussel’s voice was deep and didn’t hurt so much. He spoke quietly, too, which soothed the chaos in her skull. Slowly, she lifted her head. To her relief, it didn’t fall to the floor and break.

  “Yes, sir.” Always say ‘yes, sir’ to a gordo, whether policeman or AVP of a Navy cruiser. You might not do yes, but you had to say yes. Not ‘si,’ not ‘doo.’ ‘Yes,’ all polite and proper.

  You must speak like the best people. Sister Lakeisha had lectured Tompa in front of the small group of orphaned and abandoned girls after she heard Tompa say ‘chacha some blinks’ instead of ‘talk to you soon.’ Don’t y’all go cha like no-timy street amigas, Sister had said in an exaggerated accent. Roaches’ll spy ya for one’ll slipper throws soon as chacha, or flick la pez-pez outa eecount some sheet-brayin’ gordo. Understand me, girl?

  Roussel was staring at her intently, the way Sister had stared. There was no contempt in his eyes, only compassion, and his rugged face seemed friendly. Maybe . . . She ran a hand over her forehead where it was tender. Where her hair should have been, a patch of stubble prickled her fingers. There’d been a grenade. An explosion. A severed hand shooting toward her. Maybe he wanted to ask her what she knew. Maybe she wasn’t in trouble. Unsure of herself, Tompa smiled hesitantly.

  “As I was saying,” Ambassador Schneider said.

  Roussel held up a hand, halting her. “I’m not sure Ship’s Ward Lee caught everything. What was the last thing you heard?”

  Was he talking to her? “Uh, well . . . something about me being a bastard.”

  “What!”

  Schneider’s exclamation lanced through Tompa’s skull. She cringed. A moan escaped her clenched lips.

  “My dear,” Schneider said in a softer voice, “I never said any such thing.”

  Roussel started laughing, and the sound was as deep and quiet as his voice. “I think she’s referring to your quote about law being the bastard child of justice.”

  “That was just a saying, my dear.” Schneider didn’t meet Tompa’s gaze. “I used it to emphasize a point—that the Shon-Wod-Zee don’t settle for mere law. One of their most cherished cultural icons is the unstinting hero striving for absolute justice.”

  The woman seemed to be waiting for a reaction, so Tompa said, “Oh.”

  “In fact, one of the most beloved incarnations of their version of god is Bez-Tattin, the bringer of justice . . .”

  Justice? There was no such thing.

  Schneider waved a hand toward the window, which now showed a throbbing, sword-wielding statue that was too tall and slender to be a real Shon. “. . . Bez-Tattin as he appears in the Temple of Justice . . .”

  Tompa tried to concentrate, but her head wasn’t working right. It wandered back to a show she’d seen ages ago, about illegitimacy. Around the turn of the millennium, just decades before the aliens first landed, illegitimacy had become acceptable. But the pendulum had swung back, with a vengeance. Even on the streets, having marriage certificates in the family tree was a surefire way to separate losers from born losers. And Tompa was a bastard.

  “. . . whole islands devoted to Bez-Tattin and the pursuit of justice . . .”

  Pursuit, pursuit, round and round. Dizzying.

  When Tompa was twelve, she’d picked money from the pockets of a passed-out drunk who’d come to the streets in pursuit of a hooker. It happened around the beginning of the ‘temporary’ evacuation of contributing citizens from Manhattan. When the gordo ventured into their alley to pee, she turned her back on him as street etiquette demanded and bent over to continue picking through a reeking garbage pile for scraps of bread and limp lettuce. She had a good-sized pile in her hand; her mouth was watering.

  Then he grabbed her from behind. At first she was more concerned about dropping the precious food than his pawing hands, until he yanked her hair viciously and tore at the last nice blouse remaining from her mission days. He clawed her ribs and chest, leaving a scar that remained even now. She managed one shriek before he wrapped a soft hand over her mouth and nostrils. He smelled nice. That was the first time she noticed how good gordos smelled.

  At the end of the alley, Gramps tottered out of his cardboard lean-to. He wasn’t her real grandfather, just a crazy old black guy who’d looked after her since Sister Lakeisha left the decrepit storefront mission for groceries one day during the Fourth Wall Street Riots and didn’t return. Tompa had never seen his runny eyes so focused, so determined, so angry.

  “Leave my little girl alone!”

  The drunk ignored him, mashing his boozy lips against hers.

  “I said leave her alone, you bastard!”

  The gordo shoved Tompa to the ground and took a wild swing at Gramps. Instead of breaking Gramps’ jaw and like as not killing him, the gordo’s tripped over Tompa’s legs and pitched headfirst into a mound of picked-over garbage. He lay there, unmoving. Flies swarmed over his soft, pink neck.

  When she ran to Gramps’ arms, he tried to pull away. “No need,” he said in his usual, semi-comprehensible mutter. “No need . . .”

  Sobbing, she hugged him close regardless. She’d seen the look in his eyes as he hobbled down the alley. For the first time, she realized he loved her like a real grandfather—and her tears held even more joy in being loved than they did pain or fear. Gordos thought street meat were animals incapable of noble emotions, but they didn’t know shit.

  When Tompa stopped trembling, she looked at the gordo. “Is he . . . dead?” That would be disastrous. A dead street meat wouldn’t matter, but a gordo? The roaches would crucify them.

  Then the guy started snoring, face down in the garbage. She and Gramps rummaged through the man’s pockets, finding paper money but no wallet. He’d been smart enough to leave his cards at home.

  “. . . Bez-Tattin,” said Ambassador Schneider, “who is seen as half Shon and half divine . . .”

  Half divine. Like Gramps.

  He wouldn’t accept his half of the money. None of Sister Lakeisha’s other girls had found someone like Gramps to cushio
n their fall from the mission, and all seven of them had disappeared or were dead within months. Tompa felt she had to do something for him.

  With the gordo’s money, she bought Gramps some music paper. Before his mind disintegrated, he’d either been or wanted to be a musician—she wasn’t sure which—and he still liked to scrawl crazy tunes. He’d taught her to sight-read music, and she would sing his wordless melodies over and over as he clapped his hands and grinned.

  He was always cold, wearing a pair of threadbare, mismatched gloves, even in summer, so she also bought him a tiny heater, just before the last of the stores on Manhattan closed. You could stick its chimney through a tear in the wall and burn whatever was handy.

  Her debt to Gramps somewhat paid, Tompa splurged on a forged marriage certificate for her long-vanished mother. The forger had laughed when Tompa didn’t know how to spell the names she’d made up for her parents.

  To her disappointment, the certificate didn’t make people respect her. She stopped believing in miracles.

  That winter, when Gramps lay ill, she’d used the marriage certificate instead of his precious music paper to light a fire in the heater. He croaked out a protest, but he was too weak to pluck it from the fire. She watched it burn, glad that the evidence of her stupidity was gone. The next day, moaning that the devils in his head were breaking out with chisels and sledgehammers, Gramps died.

  “. . . And that’s quite wonderful, don’t you think?”

  Oh, maggots. The ambassador had been talking on and on, but Tompa hadn’t caught a word. What was the matter with her head? She sat straight, trying to appear as though she didn’t rent out her empty skull to cockroaches.

  “Do you understand, Ship’s Ward?”

  Ship’s Ward. Had she really stopped believing in miracles, or just transferred her stupidity to a foolish belief in the Space Navy? Too many books, Sister Lakeisha had said; Tompa Lee, you read too many old books. But books were miraculous excursions out of the squalor of everyday life, just like the Navy, and—

  “Ship’s Ward,” Roussel said gently.

  “Huh?” She shook her head, regretted it. “I . . . I’m sorry, sir. What did you say?”

  Roussel and Schneider exchanged glances. “Maybe this should wait a few days,” he said. “The doctors say she’ll make a full recovery, in time.”

  “The Klicks won’t let it,” Schneider answered. “You know that.”

  Klicks? Tompa lowered her gaze to her lap, where her hands, pasty like death after days of heal-sleep, were curled into claws. What did Klicks have to do with anything? What was going on? She had to concentrate.

  “My dear,” Schneider said, “remember that justice is incredibly important to the Shon-Wod-Zee.” She paused, cleared her throat. “So you see, you have nothing to worry about.”

  The diplomat abruptly stopped speaking, leaving that confusing statement hanging like an axe poised to chop off Tompa’s head. She waited. No explanation came. She raised her head, slowly and carefully.

  Roussel was staring at her. She lowered her head again.

  “Sir,” she said, “permission to ask a question?”

  “Ask anything you’d like,” Roussel said in a gentle voice. “But are you sure you feel well enough to talk now?”

  Tompa shrugged, then remembered whom she was talking to. “Yes, sir.” She took a deep breath, which somehow shoved the question right out of her quivering mind. What was the matter with her?

  They were looking at her. She had to say something. “Sir,” she whispered, “are the crewmen who were inside the pub all right?”

  “Were they your friends?”

  How could they be, after what they’d done?

  “If it makes you feel any better about what happened there in the pub,” Roussel said, “we’ve come to the conclusion that it was the wine speaking, not them.”

  How did he know what went on in the pub? Was he there?

  No, of course not. God, she couldn’t think straight. What was the original question? Something about the grenade? No . . .

  To her grim satisfaction, she was able to force her mind back along the thread of conversation to find the question. “I don’t have any friends.”

  “I’m sorry, Ship’s Ward,” he said. “The other sailors, along with ninety-seven Shon-Wod-Zee, were killed.”

  “And the populace down on the planet are absolutely furious,” Ambassador Schneider said. “There have been anti-human riots.”

  “Riots?” Had she missed something important again? “But . . .”

  “It was a human grenade,” Schneider said.

  Tompa stared straight ahead at the fake window, which now showed an alien spaceship landing on a barren hill. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry and salty, like powdered blood. “An A-140.”

  The two gordos exchanged glances. Roussel asked, “How do you know that? My people said you didn’t remember anything.”

  She couldn’t answer right away, but to her surprise they waited. “I’m starting to remember. I shouted for him to duck—this old Shon geezer who was waving a sign in my face, I mean—but he didn’t understand.”

  “Did you see who threw the grenade?” Roussel asked.

  She didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to relive the smoke and blood and pain. The terror. But these were the most powerful gordos she’d ever faced. “No,” she whispered.

  “Do you know anything about who threw it?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anything at all that could help us—”

  “I told you, no!”

  He let out a long breath. “We can’t do this.”

  “Do what?” Tompa whispered.

  “We have to,” Schneider said. She turned toward Tompa. “A human grenade translates for the Shon-Wod-Zee into a human attack.” She shook her head, her expression bleak. “For the Kalikiniki, too. We have no choice, Ship’s Ward.”

  “Choice?”

  The sofa creaked as Roussel leaned toward her and put his hand on top of hers. “May I call you Tompa, Ship’s Ward?”

  Her blood turned to ice. Shit. Oh, shit.

  “Tompa,” Roussel said without waiting for a reply, “I’m sorry to have to inform you that you have been charged by Shon-Wod-Zee authorities with terrorism and mass murder.”

  “Shit!”

  The ambassador sat straighter in her chair, a haughty look of distaste on her wrinkled face.

  “In the last couple of days,” Roussel continued, “I’ve read every scrap of information we have about you, Ship’s Ward. Manager McShallin wrote complimentary reports about your hard work. He thought you had a fair chance of making full Navy.”

  Had, not has. No. Oh no.

  “However,” he continued, “tomorrow, when your head feels better, you will be transported planetside and handed over to the Shons. Ambassador Schneider has given me her personal word of honor that you will receive a fair trial and not become the scapegoat for the current situation.”

  Tompa stared brazenly at Roussel, who was staring at Schneider. Good cop, bad cop. He wasn’t on her side at all—and the good cop was the worst, because he was a hypocrite who teased you with hope and used compassion as a weapon. Tompa summoned her remaining strength to withstand the agony that spread from her heart—the agony of a stillborn dream, dying and rotting inside her. “The Navy doesn’t do that.” Her voice was a piteous whine that rasped along her throat like a blunt knife. “Sailors stick together. Always.”

  “Need I remind you,” the ambassador said, “that you are not regular navy, Ship’s Ward?”

  With tears threatening, Tompa rubbed at the corner of her eye. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t shown weakness. Her soul felt like screaming, but the sound would shatter her head, make her explode. Perhaps the explosion would send her severed, bloody hand hurtling into the bastard Roussel’s fake-sympathetic face. Now that would be justice.

  “My mission is in grave danger, Ship’s Ward.” The ambassador shifted uncomfortably behind
the fortress of her desk. “I still think I can pull out a trade agreement with the Shons, but they refuse to negotiate until your trial is over. The Kalikinikis have threatened to destroy the Vance unless we comply with Shon demands. An Inspector from the Trading Council will be arriving soon to threaten Consortium Earth with a leper’s quarantine. The future of mankind, along with my personal future, is at stake. I’m sorry.”

  Schneider did indeed appear sorry. So did Roussel. Their sorrow smelled like shit.

  Tompa shot to her feet, intending to catch them by surprise and run . . . somewhere. Didn’t matter where. Just run.

  But she managed only two steps before her legs gave way. Like the long-ago drunk who’d molested her in an alley, she pitched face-first to the floor. Roussel was on her immediately, trying to turn her over. “I hate you!” She clawed at him as well as she was able, but there was nothing but agony to fight with. “I hate you,” she whimpered.

  He pawed at her. Hope and strength abandoned her. She curled into a tight fetal ball and concentrated every scrap of her pride on not crying.