CHAPTER XIV
TOWARD A HIGHER AND MORE LASTING JUSTICE: Bitter, he is taken before the Temporal Court. Eight solemn old men in the special robes of their office sit above him and confer with one another by passing notes as Scop stands far below in the dock, looking down after that first swift glance at their faces. He cannot deal with them. He knows his failure. It is burnt within him. Later on he knows he will have to deal with the auditors but for the moment they have left him alone and he needs this isolation; quietly, bitterly, he reviews all the events in the long chain of his failure coming to the present time and his humiliation. “I wanted to change worlds,” he mutters but this does not give him satisfaction. “I wanted to make this all different, shift the way in which people regarded their lives,” but this as well does not matter. There is no efficacy in his voice, no power in his monologue, it is as if the very authority of self has drained from him at some point: maybe at the Games, maybe during one of the rapes, maybe even when little Abraham Zapruder confronted Scop and told him that he was wrong. Who is to say? It does not matter. You go into the machine, you do the best that you can and if at the end of it it has come to this . . . well then, at least one has made an effort. He made an effort to change. This does not comfort him either. In just a moment, Scop knows, he will disappear into this self-pity in which he is wallowing and never be heard of again, hear nothing himself. He does not want this. For one thing he has an enormous curiosity about the verdict. What will they say? What do they really think of him as measured through their judgement? He can hardly wait to find out.
The head of the temporals rises. He is not head by virtue of seniority but by election; nevertheless he sits at the extreme left being the junior member of the court and otherwise exposed to small indignities imposed by the hierarchical framework. Twenty-forty is full of little inconsistencies and mysteries like this; they do not concern Scop. They are not worthy of his rage. He always felt that his rage had to be saved for the higher, deeper, finer, more important things such as being on the Grassy Knoll. The head of the court clears his throat, shakes his head, allows his little fingers to play with papers on his desk. At length, in a mild, almost apologetic tone he pronounces Scop guilty. Scop is guilty of all counts of unauthorized realteration of circumstance. He is sentenced to obliteration to be conducted in due course.
Immediately Scop is on his feet. He is not really surprised by the verdict he finds; he must have anticipated it as this a long time ago. It could have been in no other way. “May I address the court,” he says. “I would like to make a statement.”
“You have tampered with the very fabric of our contemporaneity,” the head of the court says. His hands are little blotches against the paper, his voice a mild, reedy mumble against the sound of the huge generators which power the autonomous environment of the court. His eyes however are huge and round, it must be the compelling aspect of those eyes, beckoning and deep which made the other members feel that here indeed would be a proper chairman. “By attempting to juggle with the constants you have menaced the lives of everyman, woman and child of the planet, not only that but you have ransomed the unborn to your monstrous, megalomaniacal—” He trails off into vagueness, shaking his head, brings his palms together. “It is a terrible calamity,” he says and sits down.
“I would like to address the court,” Scop says. “I have some prepared remarks.”
“I am quite afraid,” the senior member, a huge old man at the center says, “that statements are not permitted at this time and in this fashion. You will have an opportunity later.”
“I want it now. Each of us, everyone of us are being held hostage not to the future but to a brutal mindless past, a past which if the truth itself but be known is the outcome of a criminal conspiracy—”
“No,” the senior member says, “no, I’m afraid that we cannot tolerate this at this time and you must be evicted.” Scop feels attendants, unseen, but enormous, seize his elbows. “Everything in its place,” the senior member points out, “and you will have ample opportunity to make your final statement after you are disposed of. After you are disposed of,” he says again and laughs although whether it is from his own humor or merely a random spasm Scop cannot tell. It probably does not matter. “You cannot change the past,” the senior member says. “You cannot change the past,” the others agree. Their unison is ragged but effective. Scop is speeded out.
His last thought as they take him to freeze him in stasis for a hundred thousand years while they decide what is to be done with him forever or leave that decision to future generations, his last thought is that although they are unreasonable they are not unkind. Perhaps that was what he should have understood from the beginning. They are not unkind. They may have wanted it to be this way but they too have had no choice. He is vaulted through doors. Wood collides with his features. He is taken to a different place. For a while there is immersion and sorrow but after a time there is the immersion only.