Sacrifice of Fools Read Free Page A

deal with each other: the body shape, the build, the bulges, the breasts or the balls, and they’re not there. Is it male, female, man, woman? We look at another one, maybe there’ll be some difference, then we can tell. It’s important. We have to get these things before we know how to deal with them. They look exactly the same.
    Jesus, this is weird. Do they have men and women? How do they tell?
    They see with more than eyes, that’s how.
    The client stands up to greet Andy Gillespie. It’s dressed in a men’s business suit, way too short in the legs and sleeves, worn over a high-neck green body; a Long Tall Sally label sticks up at the back of the neck. Gillespie takes a long, deep sniff. A female. He shrugs his eyebrows. The client returns the gesture, a flicker of the thin line of dark fur on either side of the central strip. Gillespie offers a hand, palm up. The client bends down and licks it.
    The whole room has gone quiet.
    She offers Gillespie her hand. He touches the tip of his tongue to the soft centre of her palm. The Outsider tastes of herbs, honey, vagina, rust, hay, incense and pot. Her unique chemical identity. Her name, in perfume.
    Aileen McKimmis’s eyes are wide behind her too-big glasses.
    I bet you smiled, Gillespie thinks, like they taught you in client relations. Put the client at her ease. Except you did the exact opposite. Bared teeth are a threat. You smile to these people by blinking slowly. Like this.
    — I’m Andy Gillespie, he says in Narha. The Welcome Centre sent me. —
    — I was expecting a Harridi, the client says. Her voice is a low contralto, her accent unplaceable; strange yet familiar. The aliens in the movies never have accents, except the ones with boomy Big Brother voices. Echoey. Jehovah speaks. This Outsider talks like music.
    — Like I was saying to —
    — I heard what you said to my advocate.
    — I’m here in the capacity of an expert witness. Advocate McKimmis has explained to you that we’re here… Gillespie breaks off. — Could we continue this in English? Narha doesn’t have the words for the legal processes. Your law is too different.
    ‘Certainly, Mr Gillespie.’
    ‘I know that by your law you did nothing wrong, but this is a very serious charge and the prosecution — that’s the lawyer who represents the state whose laws you’ve broken — will try to have you sent to prison until the full trial because they think you might attempt to leave the country.’
    ‘Why should I do that? Do you people not respect your own law?’
    ‘In a word, no.’
    The Outsider screws up her nose: incomprehension.
    ‘I would have preferred one of our own knight-advocates, a genro,’ she says.
    ‘Our courts don’t recognize them. You’ve got me, you’ve got Mizz McKimmis; we’ll keep you out of jail.’
    You do not want to be there. I’ve seen what it’s like for your people. And I don’t ever want to see what happened there happen again. You won’t go to jail, none of you will go to jail, while I have strength in me.
    The door to court one opens.
    ‘Case twelve,’ calls a short usher in a black gown. ‘Case twelve.’
    Aileen McKimmis stands up, tucks her briefcase under her arm and dusts cigarette ash off her skirt.
    ‘Show time.’
    She leaves another butt-end impact crater behind her in the waiting room floor.
    Above the magistrates’ bench the shiny new harp and cross shoulder in on the chipped lion and unicorn, like a scam merchant with a deal to offer. There’s a new name for the prosecution. It’s not the Crown versus any more. It’s the Joint Justices. Gillespie can’t believe that the name made it all the way to statute without anyone getting the joke. Double the civil servants, half the irony.
    Defence and Joint Justices confer. Back on their home bench, the prosecution consults palmtops. The defendant comes up into the dock. The court goes very quiet. All rise. The magistrates are in. All persons having business, all that. Then again, in