“Let me be very clear here, ladies, gentlemen, and you hostile scientists in the back,” Judge Rufus Porrel looked down over the top edge of his glasses, “despite the setting and my presence here – this is not a trial!”
There was a murmur of “we knew that from the assembled crowd”, but I could hear one of the sci-jockeys in the back mutter under his breath “you damned well bet it is”, and I knew that whatever came out here would either have a profound effect on how we did things or would make my friend a laughingstock and peg him as a nutcase for the rest of his life.
Looking at him sitting next to me, hands folded in his lap and eye closed, I'm irrationally angry I decided to take his “case”. The least he could do is look like he gave a damn.
“Vin,” I say, poking him hard, “you should think about waking up, buddy. This thing is going to get underway. Try to at least pretend you're interested.”
Opening his eyes, Vin smiled but didn't bother to tip his chair forward; with broad shoulders and chiseled good looks, NASA's favorite son could get away with just about anything he wanted – or least, that used to be the case.
“Bring it down a notch, Robbie – you were like this when we were kids, too – always so serious. This ain't a trial, my friend, and I've got nothing to be worried about.” Thing was, he really did sound unconcerned; this wasn't the talk of a guilty defendant trying to reassure himself or dupe his lawyer, these were the words of a man who truly believed.
Who might just be nuts.
“You remember that time by the old swimmin' hole, Robbie? When you snuck that kiss from Sarah Vekker? You talked her into it, somehow, talked your way right up to that sweet thing and into your arms. You were never the best looking kid on the block,” Vin smiled; that had always been him, “but you were the smartest by a long shot. Long as you're here, I'll be fine.”
I fought to push down a surge of confidence and self-pity at his words – that had been one of the highlights of my young life, but I'd let my own pride take Sarah from me within a year. Vin's voice had that effect on people though, the ability to inspire emotion even when people knew better.
“Order!” Judge Porrel barked. “Council, approach!”
It was just me today – the eggheads weren't bothering with an attorney since they said they had nothing to defend. Like the judge said, this wasn’t supposed to be a trial, but dollars to donuts they were going to can Vin and find him a nice padded cell to live in if he didn't stop with all this “fourth dimension” nonsense.
He was a special projects man, Vinny was, and one of the best. He talked about me being smart but he had his share of brains and coupled with those looks, well, the first committee to get a look at him, to really sit down and talked to him realized he could be the face they were looking for, the voice the failing agency needed.
They suited him up, shipped him out, and brought him back a dozen times, each one garnering more popularity for space travel and funding from the government, enough so that they could send him somewhere no one had ever been – I still didn't know where – but he'd come back like this. Weird.
He wasn't violent or infected by some alien organism, so far as they could tell, but he blathered on about some fourth dimension, something I'd heard of but really didn't put much stock in, and something the eggheads in the back seemed to take great offense to.
“Any witnesses, Council?” Porrel looked down from his bench. It wasn't a trial in that it had no legal force, but the man in charge wasn't about to sway from procedure one tiny bit.
“Just the one, your Honor, and I'm not sure what help he's going to be for his own case.”
Porrel almost smiled and then looked back at his docket. “He's the only one on their list as well – let's get him up here.”
A matter of minutes later and up he went, affirmation taken and large frame resting easily in the wooden witness box. I went first, and we walked through the steps of his mission and his return to earth. Nothing special, and I let them take it from there.
“Mr. Tarranto,” the appointed techie inquisitor asked, “just what is this fourth dimension you keep referring to?” They didn't beat around the bush – if this had been a real trial, they wouldn't stand a chance.
“Time.” Vin's voice was quiet, but sure. I groaned. He was supposed to be vague, obtuse – but not Vin.
“Time!” The techie's tone was incredulous. “It's been posited, certainly, but we're just supposed to take your word for it?”
“No.” Vin said just as softly as before, and pulled out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. Unfolded, I saw that it had a large square drawn in black on its face. “I'll show you.”
He pointed to the square. “For our purposes, the square is two dimensional, agreed?” The NASA man nodded. “Great. Now, if I draw a line like so,” he brought out a market and made a quick mark, “and one like this,” another, “and one more,” a final slash, “we have a cube.”
NASA nodded. “Yes, but so what?”
“So what?” Vin smiled. “If we were in the second dimension, you'd have just had your mind blown. They'd have no way to conceptualize what I'd done here, no way to make it fit their world view. That's the problem with the fourth dimension.”
“So your argument is that you can't show us because we wouldn't understand, Mr. Tarranto? That hardly seems iron-clad.” The NANA man's voice was patronizing.
“Hell no, chief.” Vin's hand went back to the paper and he did – something. I couldn't quite follow it with my eyes, couldn't quite catch what he'd done buy suddenly there were a hell of a lot more squares than there were supposed to be, all zipping around Vin and the paper he was holding up.
What's more, there were multiple Vins as well – one in the chair beside me, one on his way to the stand and one leaving the courtroom, all with the same gentle smile on their faces.
“And...blown,” they said in unison, as the courtroom erupted. Oddly, Sarah Vekker came to mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment