Chapter Eight
i
The Truthsayers Guild had added rugs to the deck plates and tapestries to the walls, replacing sections of the armored hull with reinforced windows and stained glass mosaics—but they had done little to modify the brig.
Troy Boren sat in one of the dim detention cells, fingers threaded through his hair, staring down at his knees. The lower decks of the SkySword’s belly lay buried in the dust, blocking all daylight from the smothered viewports.
At least his trial would come within three days, they said. It wasn’t soon enough for him, but the Guild was required to send out notice of the public Truthsaying. Despite his protestations, they seemed convinced of his guilt—and why shouldn’t they be? Eli Strone had also claimed to be innocent.
Troy had been caught kneeling over a dead body in the middle of the night. Cren had verified that computer manifests from the last elevator shipment had been altered. Records proved that Troy had used his pass card to enter the inventory warehouse long after normal operating hours. Tests showed that the murdered man had recently taken Veritas—illegal Veritas—and two more of the capsules were found on his person.
Troy had tried to explain why he had really gone out late at night. He had done something wrong, to be sure—but certainly not murder. Troy laced his fingers together and swallowed. His throat was very dry, but the sol-pols had given him only warm, alkaline-tasting water.
Though a brown-sashed representative from the Truthsayers Guild had come to make certain that Troy did indeed want to be tried in front of the gathered crowd, it was obvious the worker didn’t believe him, thinking that Troy was wasting everyone’s time.
But it didn’t matter what the non-telepathic administrator thought. Troy was entitled to have his name cleared, and only the Truthsayer’s actual verdict counted.
The Atlas system of justice was based on incontrovertible truth, thoughts of guilt or innocence taken directly from the mind of the accused rather than relying on such circumstantial evidence as had piled up against Troy. He felt relieved that a Truthsayer would find out the real story, no matter how unlikely it seemed. Just wait, he thought. Just wait, and everyone will see.
ii
During the following day, another member of the Truthsayers Guild came, strongly advising Troy to confess and save the Truthsayer the trouble, save himself the public humiliation. The administrator assured him his sentence would be lighter if he admitted his own sins rather than forcing the telepath to tear them out and expose them in public.
Troy continued to shake his head and insist that he wanted the clear Truthsayer verdict. He wanted to be pronounced innocent so that everyone could see.
Finally, toward evening that day—though deep underground in the cell, Troy had no idea what the actual time might be—he received a visit he had dreaded, one he had hoped he wouldn’t have to face until after the Truthsayer pronounced him clean.
He heard footsteps, the rustle of stiff uniforms, the clicking weapons of the heavily armored elite guard marching in an oddly echoing lockstep as they escorted several people. Troy hoped it wasn’t more Guild representatives come to dissuade him again—instead he saw the swarthy face of his father with his mother and two sisters in tow.
“You didn’t have to come,” Troy blurted, unable to think of anything else in the moment of his shock.
His older sister Leisa smiled wryly. “Good to see you, too, Troy.”
“I mean,” Troy said, “I’ll be cleared in a couple of days.”
“We all had to come,” sour-faced little Rissbeth said. “Do you know how much a mag-lev ticket for the whole family cost?”
“Your father got a bonus yesterday,” Dama said. “He found a rich molybdenum deposit on his shift, and we had to come and show you our support. You depend on us, don’t you?”
Rambra scowled, avoiding the transparent security field by a wide margin. “If you did this thing, Troy,” he said, “I can’t describe how disgusted I’ll be with you.” Troy saw, though, a secret glint of confused pride behind his father’s eyes. He wondered if Rambra might not be at least partially pleased that his weakling son was capable of fighting a man.
Troy flushed, feeling guilty at what he had put them through, but then annoyance at his little sister rose up. “I didn’t ask you to be here,” he said.
His mother rolled her eyes. “We’ve got so much invested in you, Troy—and now look at what’s happened. How could you do this to us? And after only three weeks! You should have been so careful, on your best behavior.”
Troy’s stomach churned. “How can you even think I’m guilty?” he said.
“No matter how this turns out,” his mother said, “they’ll look down on you forever. I understand you’ve confessed to manipulating the records in the computers. What were you thinking? Now you’ll never get a promotion. You’ll never earn any extra credits. It’s all for nothing.”
Rissbeth made a sound as if she had swallowed a live squirming worm. “Yeah, thanks a lot, Troy.”
Leisa shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re capable of murder, Troy. Or that you would be mixed up in a drug-smuggling ring. In fact, when I think about it I have to laugh.”
Troy forced a smile, warmed by the comforting tone of his sister’s words. “At least somebody believes I’ve been falsely accused.”
“Falsely accused!” Leisa pantomimed a wail. “A gross flaw in the system. This could lead to the shake-up of our very society.”
“To the unraveling of society’s moral fiber,” Troy picked up the thread. “It could lead to chaos, civil war, and universal Armageddon!”
Dama’s alarm escalated with the interchange, as if she had finally realized the magnitude of her son’s circumstances. “Oh, you two!” she said stoically. “Stop being so pessimistic. It’s not over yet. We’ll see this thing through.”
Troy slumped onto his bunk, still looking at them through the security field. “Don’t worry, Mother. It’ll all be over in a couple of days. I didn’t do this. Trust me.”
“We’ll be there watching you when you face the Truthsayer,” Leisa said. “Promise.”
Troy swallowed the lump in his throat. “I’ll try to find you in the crowd but … my mind will probably be occupied with other things.”
“It better be,” Rambra said.
“Afterward,” Troy said confidently, “we can all go out and celebrate.”
With a clatter of thick red boots on the deck plates, the sol-pol elite guards returned to his holding cell. “Time,” one guard said, gesturing with his weapon for the visitors to leave.
As his family filed out, Troy found that he was more shaken now than he had been before their visit.