The Butt

7

Feeling conspicuous in his sky-blue tailored suit, with its short-sleeved jacket and short pants, Tom arrived at the court at what he hoped was an early hour. It was only 7 a.m., yet Vance’s office workers were already hurrying through the rain-soaked streets.

The Central Criminal Court stood on Dundas Boulevard. It was an ugly lump of a building five storeys high. The concrete façade was textured so as to resemble the intricate pattern of logs seen in a Gandaro longhouse. Slitted windows like the embrasures of a medieval castle laid waste to the architect’s pathetic delusion: this was an Anglo building, at once threatening and ridiculous — a dictator wearing a party hat.

An escutcheon was fixed over the chunky pediment. It was an enlarged version of the badges on the cops’ shiny caps. With mouth and beak, an auraca and a moa held aloft the Crown of the Republic against a field of southern stars. Beneath hooves and claws undulated a stylized strip of parchment, upon which was inscribed the motto of the Criminal Justice Department: ABYSSUS ABYSSUM IN VOCAT.

Like a gawky schoolgirl, Tom bent to pull up the white knee-socks that completed his outfit; socks that he had hand-washed in the kitchenette sink at his miserable apartment. A slow hand clap of thunder rolled in across Vance Bay.

Straightening up, Tom saw that, far from being early, he was barely on time; for ranged in a semicircle sixteen metres from the main entrance were a number of suited men smoking with studious concentration. At the middle of this arc was Jethro Swai-Phillips, and, despite the engwegge cheroot stuck in his full lips, the lawyer looked dapper in his dress kit.

Was it coincidence or had Prentice — who stood puffing alongside, basking in the lawyer’s reflected elegance — been primed? For Swai-Phillips’s suit was cut from the same cloth as his own. On the lawyer the dark pinstripe was magisterial: brilliant white cuffs were turned over the short sleeves of the jacket and fastened with oval gold cuff links. Swai-Phillips’s knee-socks were held up with gold-tasselled garters, while from his broad shoulders hung a short pleated gown, decorated with purple and pink ribbons. On top of his Afro perched an antiquated horsehair wig — yet even this only confirmed the dignity of his bearing.

He was accompanied by an Anglo with a jolly Celtic face; bat ears, gap teeth, freckled cheeks. The man had a drinker’s red nose. Tom assumed this must be Mulgrene, the attaché, and wondered where Adams, his own government’s representative, was hiding himself.

As Tom approached, he realized that Swai-Phillips’s trademark shades were gone, and the glaucoma had miraculously vanished from his right eye. In its place there was a glazed copy of an eye: the white too white, the pupil too black, the brown iris fixed and unwavering. Seeing Tom’s consternation, the lawyer snapped, ‘It’s a contact lens, Brodzinski, no need to be afraid.’ And Prentice snickered.

‘You’re mighty cool,’ Swai-Phillips continued. ‘The lists will be posted any minute now, and we’ll find out who’s up first.’

He turned to the man smoking beside him in the line, and Tom recognized the clerk he’d met at the Metro-Center. ‘Have you got the depositions, Abdul?’ Swai-Phillips barked, and the clerk displayed a leather valise bulging with scrolls that were tied up with the same kind of ribbons that dangled from his boss’s gown.

‘OK.’ Swai-Phillips drew Tom and Prentice into a huddle. ‘That fellow over there’ — he used the nub of his cheroot as a pointer — ‘is the DA, Tancroppollopp.’

The man was enormous — six and a half feet of taut solidity. Adams had said the DA had Tugganarong blood — Tom suspected him of being the Ur-Tugganarong, the Ancestor, who had propelled his outrigger from the Feltham Islands, using only his own paddle-sized hands. In one of these the DA held the smoking digit of a cigarette, cupped on the inside, as a skulking schoolboy would. The contrast between this homely gesture and the giant’s sinewy forearms would have been comical, were it not for the belligerent expression on his copper face, and the two aggressive tattoos that spiralled down from his shaven scalp to loop his shark’s fin ears.

‘Who the hell is he talking to?’ Tom blurted out.

‘Pipe down!’ Swai-Phillips snapped — and Prentice giggled, because the man in conversation with Tancroppollopp was smoking a pipe: a long curved one with a ceramic bowl.

Perhaps the man had chosen this pipe because it conformed to his morphology; for he too was long and curved. An Anglo, almost as tall as the DA but stick-thin like a desert tribesman. The pants of the Anglo’s dress kit were cut high, exposing a great length of scrawny thigh. It should have made him look ridiculous — but didn’t, for he had the taut watchfulness of a raptor. The pipe-smoker’s face was also avian: a sharp beak of veined nose, close-set yellowy eyes and hollow cheeks. He sported a gold pince-nez and a gown the same as Swai-Phillips’s — although his ribbons were red and white.

‘That’s Von Sasser,’ Tom’s lawyer explained. ‘He’s the Chief Prosecutor — must be acting as Counsel for the Eastern Province. I’d hoped he’d be down south, yeah. He normally only handles the most serious cases. I’m not in the habit of showing any damn weakness.’ Swai-Phillips drew deep on his cheroot, then spoke through a personal thunderhead: ‘But he’s a formidible bloody antagonist.’

‘Von Sasser?’ Tom queried. ‘I thought he was an anthropologist?’

‘The brother,’ Swai-Phillips replied. ‘This is Hippolyte — the other one’s Erich. You’d never catch him up here in Vance, too much civilization for the man to bear, yeah. .’

It seemed as if the lawyer was going to add to this, but suddenly — as if responding to an ultrasonic whistle audible only to smokers — the men formed a line at the steel dolmen of an ashtray, and one after another shed their butts. Von Sasser carefully knocked out his pipe before replacing it in a leather case. Then they all filed up the steps and into the Central Criminal Court.

The lobby was stygian, even after the sepia gloom of the monsoonal outdoors. There was a tremendous scurrying as clerks, police, court officials and lawyers scuttled over to consult the long lists pinned up on bulletin boards, then hurried back to consult with their clients. Abdul dove into this free-for-all, and, emerging a few minutes later, he went across and whispered to Swai-Phillips.

The lawyer rounded on his clients. ‘Good news!’ he boomed. ‘You’re up this morning, Prentice, and you, Brodzinski, will be dealt with first thing this afternoon.

‘You.’ He yanked Prentice by his tie. ‘Come with me. And you’ — he pressed Tom down by his shoulder on to a bench — ‘stay here.’

Tom gazed at Prentice being led away like a mangy sheep to the slaughter. He expected some anxiety to show on the abuser’s ovine features, yet Prentice appeared altogether unconcerned.

Once the morning sessions had begun, the bustle died away. A few hill people remained in the darkest recess of the lobby, huddling together and chanting their ‘bahn-bahn-bahn-boosh’ so mutedly that Tom couldn’t be certain that it was them and not his own agitated blood pulsing in his ears.

At the main reception desk a cop checked his armaments over in thorough yet listless fashion, removing every bullet from its clip, polishing them with his handkerchief, slotting them back in.

From time to time a lawyer or a court official exited from one of the high double doors ranged across the back of the lobby and scurried outside. There they paced along the sixteen-metre line, snatching smoke from their mouths and yakking on their cellphones, before scurrying back inside.

Tom sat and looked down at the white billow of his thighs. He wondered where Adams had gotten to — and Atalaya Intwennyfortee for that matter. He was missing the Honorary Consul and the plaintiff acutely: as if he were still a smoker and they a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Once or twice Tom caught himself patting the pockets of his suit jacket, as if in expectation of feeling small bodies tucked inside them: Adams with his seersucker smile, Atalaya with her matt-black skin.

There came more slow hand claps of thunder; then, at last, like a strained-for ejaculation, the hiss of the rains. Tom felt islanded in the lobby, listening to the ‘bahn-bahn-bahn-boosh’ of the natives, the scrape of a faulty aircon’ unit and the measured slap of a large digital clock.

At eleven, scattering raindrops from her plastic poncho, Gloria Swai-Phillips swept in. She scanned the lobby and, spotting Tom on his bench, came across and sat down beside him. Her approximation of Martha’s features was at once imperious and consoling: the wide mouth and long top lip writhed as she struggled out of her rainwear. Underneath she wore a cream linen two-piece with a pleated skirt. Tom fixated on the raw pores of her freshly shaven calves.

At first, Gloria said nothing, only leaned over and probed Tom’s own leg. Her fingers found the makkata’s wound.

‘Does it hurt, yeah?’ she asked.

‘Did you call last—’ Tom began, then checked himself. ‘Not much,’ he answered instead. ‘It’s like a war wound — aches when the rains are coming.’

Gloria laughed curtly and withdrew her hand. ‘I’m leaving this arvo’,’ she said. ‘Flying first to Amherst on the west coast, then heading along Route 2 with a convoy for the Tontine Townships. .’ She paused and looked at Tom. He looked back, wondering what any of this had to do with him. ‘Y’know,’ she continued, ‘the orphanages I run there, they’ve gotta be supplied, right?’

‘Sure,’ Tom said. ‘Of course — I understand.’

‘I–I. .’ She took up his hand in her own, turning it this way and that. Her fingernails were long, sickle-curved and steelily varnished. ‘I hope to see you there, yeah?’

Before Tom could think of a response, Gloria was struggling back into her poncho. Her heels clacked the stone floor to the main doors. She glanced back at him over her shoulder, then covered her blonde hank of hair with the pointy hood and swept out into the rain.

Tom had no time to analyse this visitation: the doors to Court No. 3 banged open, and Gloria’s cousin came striding out. In his train were Abdul, the clerk, and Mulgrene, the attaché. Then came Prentice, together with a huddle of court officials. Mulgrene was saying, very loudly, as if advertising for prospective Swai-Phillips clients: ‘That was inspiring, Jethro, absolutely bloody inspiring. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone tackle Von Sasser with quite such sheer brio before. You deserve a drink, man.’

The whole posse came across to where Tom was sitting and grouped themselves around him, ignoring him while recounting loudly the feats of advocacy they had just witnessed. Tom tried to catch Prentice’s eye, but it was fixed on Swai-Phillips with an expression of nauseating adoration.

Tancroppollopp and Von Sasser came past and straight out into the rain. A clerk came up to the defendants’ party and handed a scrap of paper to Mulgrene. The attaché scanned it with goggling eyes, his sad clown’s smile turned upside down.

‘Four gross of reusable teats, ditto of disposable nappies. Ribavirin — 400 doses in ampoules, amoxycillin, antiseptic wipes—’ He broke off and turned to Prentice. ‘Nothing here that we weren’t expecting. You have the credit available, yes?’

Prentice nodded.

‘Then you can load up tomorrow,’ Swai-Phillips barked. ‘Then get the fuck outta here!’

* * *

Lunch dragged on for hours. The party sat at Formica-topped tables ranged around a shrubbery that threatened them with its saw-toothed leaves. Swai-Phillips, taking a moment out from the continuous toasting of beer that was celebrating his signal victory, explained to Tom: ‘The court won’t sit again till at least three, right. They’ve gotta put up a rood screen so Atalaya and her manager can give evidence to the makkatas. Try not to be so uptight, Brodzinski; it’ll play out fine. Have a bloody beer and relax, yeah.’

Tom couldn’t. He stepped outside of the food court. Rain hammered down on the glass porch as he hit redial for the twentieth time that day: ‘This phone is temporarily unavailable, your call is being answered by AdVance messaging. .’

When the peep-prompt came, Tom decanted all his pent-up anxiety: ‘Jesus-H-Christ, Adams. Are you gonna hang me out to dry, or what?’

Back inside, a wheeled icebox was being pushed from one man to the next. In turn they drew off glasses of beer, then made another toast, to ‘Justice!’, or ‘Rhetoric!’, or ‘Reason!’ Jackets had been slung over chair backs. Bare forearms lay among the curry-smeared pannikins, together with a dandruff of coconut flakes.

Swai-Phillips sat at the head of the table, his tie loosened, his globe of hair so beaded with sweat that it resembled a jewelled snood. Yet he was sober compared to Mulgrene and Prentice — both of whom were straightforwardly drunk.

At two thirty, Tom palmed one of the waiters forty bucks to go to the liquor store and get him a fifth of Seagram’s. When the man returned, Tom took two swift shots. The whisky slapped him lazily in the face, a knuckle of intoxication catching him beneath one eye. His head spinning, Tom looked up to see the rains smashing through the skylight. Swai-Phillips aimed his painted lens at his client. The lawyer’s strong jaw was bearded with bladder clams, his mouth a robotic speaker through which he crackled: ‘It’s gone two forty-five, Brodzinski. The court’ll sit in fifteen minutes; we don’t wanna be late, mate.’

Leaving Prentice, Mulgrene and the others, they splashed back through the afternoon downpour. Abdul draped a waxed coat over his boss’s broad shoulders. Beneath this, the lawyer’s suit and gown remained obstinately crisp; while Tom, who only had a folding umbrella for protection, discovered that his jacket was covered with damp splodges.

As they entered the lobby, they were met by the Honorary Consul, who, taking Tom by the arm, led him directly into the courtroom. Predictably, Adams was sporting a tan seersucker suit. Set beside the imposing figures in the court, he looked like an overgrown school boy, an impression enhanced only by the blue sash he wore, which Tom assumed must be the badge of his — mostly specious — office.

The bench was unoccupied, but Hippolyte von Sasser and Tancroppollopp, the DA, were at a table across the aisle from where the defence had seated themselves.

Leaning over, Adams hissed: ‘I’m sorry I was late, Brodzinski, but, as you must appreciate, I’m in a, ah, potentially invidious position, given that I’ve to consider the interests of the, ah, plaintiff as well. I had to go to the hospital early this morning; there have been some, ah, unfortunate developments regarding Mr Lincoln.’

Adams stopped, and Tom, unbridled by whisky, neighed: ‘What developments?’

Adams shushed him as the door behind the bench swung open, and a beadle led in the judges.

Staring at the bizarre trio that came in, Tom was flummoxed by how the courtroom had gulled him. On entering, it had seemed so ordinary as to be banal: the rows of plain tables, the railed-off public gallery, the stenographer and the clerks seated at a table below the bench. That the strip lighting seemed harsh and the carpet jaggedly patterned, he put down to the Seagram’s. This mental astigmatism perhaps also accounted for the way the escutcheon seemed to be leaning out from the wall above the bench at a precipitous angle.

However, as the native judge, his black body elaborately painted with white stripes, slipped behind the end of the thorny screen that bisected the chamber, Tom realized that he hadn’t even noticed this weird organic baffler.

Seeing Tom’s consternation, Adams whispered: ‘Karroo thorn: it’s freshly woven by Tayswengo in from the desert. As I explained, neither Mrs Lincoln nor any of her people may give evidence in open court.’

The beadle banged a gnarled staff on the floor and cried: ‘Rise!’

Tom stood and gawped at the two remaining judges: one Anglo, one Tugganarong. Their full-length robes were so bedecked with ribbons of various hues that they resembled raggedy dolls with human heads stuck on them.

There was an awkward pause while the beadle groped for a hidden switch. En masse, the court cleared its several throats. Then came a crackle of static, followed by a fanfare so faithlessly recorded that the trumpets sounded like kazoos. With one tuneless voice the entire company burst into song:

From shining sea to awesome desert,

From angry reef to bounteous mine,

This golden realm of unutterable promise,

It is thine, O Lord, it is thine. .

Tom had heard the anthem before — even parodied it for his kids. With its jaunty melody and studious doggerel, it had seemed to him the very essence of the gimcrack national character. Now he was taken aback by the conviction with which it was being belted out, and, when he looked to his right at Swai-Phillips, was amazed to see tears welling in his eyes. Tears that, as Tom watched, swelled and coursed down the lawyer’s cheeks.

The court groaned to a crescendo:

We give it to you, O Lord, our country,

We give. . it. . to. . you-ooo. .!

The tape hissed on for a bit, then cut out. ‘Sit!’ barked the beadle, and they all sat, except for the DA, who, without preamble, began reciting the charges against Tom. ‘That on the 26th of August this year, the defendant, Thomas Jefferson Brodzinski, at that time temporarily resident at the Mimosa Apartments on Dundas Boulevard, did wilfully, and with full cognizance of the likely effects of his malicious action, employ a projectile weapon with a toxic payload to assault Mr Reginald Lincoln the Third — hereinafter referred to as the victim — and that the victim, having been grievously injured, now appeals to this court — both through my own office and through his wife’s spiritual manager — for the three forms of justice provided for under the linked constitutional and Native Title provisions. To whit: punitive, retributive and corrective.

‘Before my esteemed colleague Mr Von Sasser presents the Eastern Provincial Government’s case against the defendant, I believe it would be in the court’s interest, your honours, for these jurisdictional complexities to be elucidated fully, lest confusion arise at a later stage in the proceedings.’

Belying his monumental and impassive features, the DA spoke with great vivacity. Clearly, he liked the booming of his own voice and was settling in for a protracted oration. Tom, stunned by hearing a flipped cigarette butt referred to as ‘a projectile weapon with a toxic payload’, had already lapsed into the confusion the DA foresaw.

Then he heard the Anglo judge, who said irritatedly: ‘Yes, yes, Mr Tancroppollopp, I think we’re all well enough aware of this. . this stuff. Let Von Sasser give us his opening remarks now.’

The judge was elderly and his demeanour mild — pale blue eyes peering over thick bifocals — yet he stopped the massive Tancroppollopp in his tracks. The DA sat down abruptly, and a ripple of amusement passed through the court. The loungers in the public gallery began chatting; the stenographer left off typing and took a swig of water from a plastic bottle.

Swai-Phillips whispered to Tom: ‘This is all fencing, Brodzinski. None of the DA’s case will be played out in a prelim’; the Intwennyfortee mob’s claim takes precedence. All the important action is behind the screen, right.’

The contrast between the sinuous organic curves of the screen and the scuffed wood panelling was total. At the front of the court, where the screen furled into a tube and kinked up to the bench, it was held in place by cables attached to hooks, which were screwed into the ceiling, the floor and even the bench itself.

Through chinks in the tightly woven, thorny sticks, Tom could see the makkata judge sitting cross-legged on his end of the bench, like a spider in a basketwork web. Elsewhere, behind the screen, dark shapes flitted, and there was constant guttural muttering. Tom tried to make out Atalaya Intwennyfortee’s lithe form among the others. He wondered, idly, why it was that he, who had been deemed astande, was none the less behaving as if he were inquivoo, altogether passive in the face of this monstrous inquisition.

Adams nudged him. ‘Brodzinski,’ he hissed. ‘What I meant to say before is that Mr Lincoln has—’ But once again he was precluded.

Von Sasser had risen; the public gallery fell silent; the stenographer raised her hands like a concert pianist.

‘Your honours, esteemed colleagues.’ He nodded to Tancroppollopp. ‘Citizens of Vance.’ He cast a prosecutorial eye at the defence table before continuing: ‘May I proceed by analogy?’

This blunt inquiry seized everyone’s attention. The Tugganarong judge, who had been absorbed in some scraps of paper he was rearranging on the bench in front of him, looked up at the Chief Prosecutor and said, ‘Why not?’

Von Sasser teased out two of the ribbons from his gown. He held these taut between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, while holding his long back erect.

‘I don’t need to tell anyone present — except, perhaps, for the defendant himself — the extent to which the introduction of alien elements has contaminated this once pure land.’

Even the native people behind the screen now ceased their muttering. Von Sasser twisted his beak into a smile, then resumed. ‘Whether those elements be people, their ways or even the species they bring with them, the results have been almost uniformly disastrous for both our indigenous people and their environment.

‘Now.’ Von Sasser turned fully to confront Tom, and bore down on him with his raptor’s stare. ‘Here we have a — a tourist — for want of any other appellation — who comes here in ignorance of both our civil and our customary laws. Who both indulges in a filthy alien habit, and who then employs the vile instruments of his addiction to assault — violently assault — an esteemed elder of our community.

‘Doubtless, he will soon call upon my colleague, Mr Swai-Phillips, to argue that his action was “an accident”; and, doubtless, the defendant would also argue — as have so many of his compatriots — that the Sangat clam is “an accident”, that the tontine is “an accident”, that the asbestosis of the Kellippi miners is “an accident”, that—’

‘Objection, your honours!’

Swai-Phillips was on his feet — Tom was hyperventilating. As calumny had been piled upon lie by the skeletal Chief Prosecutor, he had swooned with the injustice of it all: that this still-smoking Anglo had the hypocrisy to so accuse him.

‘You have the floor, counsellor,’ the Anglo judge whispered.

‘To compare my client to a single invasive element might provide my learned friend with the substance of an analogy. .’ Swai-Phillips paused, vainly patting his wig. Tom was impressed by the clarity of his diction — there was no beer, here. ‘But to arrogate to Mr Brodzinski all the ills of colonialism is, I venture to suggest, a false syllogism: all alien species are destructive. Mr Brodzinski is an alien species. QED. . But I’m sure I don’t need to explain the suppressed premise to minds as logical and finely tuned as those of your honours’.’

He abruptly sat down, clearly well pleased with himself.

The bench also appeared taken by Swai-Phillips’s reasoning. The Anglo judge turned to his Tugganarong colleague, and they entered into urgent sotto voce conversation. Chatter broke out in the rest of the court. Tom turned to Swai-Phillips and asked: ‘Exactly how long is this going to go on for?’

‘It’s in our interests’, the lawyer said, ‘to curtail it as soon as possible. But, all things being equal, I wouldn’t anticipate a conclusion of the prelims in under a week.’

‘A week!’ Tom gasped.

The $5,000 he had initially deposited with Swai-Phillips had been eaten up by the pre-trial meetings alone; two more had gone on the astande ceremony. Tom had arranged for a further $10,000 to be wired to the lawyer’s account, but Swai-Phillips had been blunt about the costs of his representation: ‘It’s a K a day, every day we’re in court. Just ’cause I’m a solicitor-advocate, it doesn’t mean I’m not the best, right.’

Seeing Tom’s distress, Adams took pity on him. ‘Jethro’s only fooling with you, Brodzinski. Remember, the Intwen-nyfortee mob’s retributive claim takes precedence. Immediate precedence — especially given that Mr Lincoln has lapsed into a coma.’

‘A coma?’

‘Yes, a coma, sometime during the night. You’ll see: this will cut things short on the prelim’ hearing. The Intwen-nyfortee mob will want to squeeze as much as possible out of you right away, in case—’

‘In case of what?’ Tom broke in.

Adams sighed wearily. ‘In case the old man dies. Because then the charge will change to murder, and their, ah, blood money’ — Adams’s nose wrinkled with the bad smell of this term — ‘will have to be recovered from the state’s presumptive bond — and that could take years.’

The Consul swivelled in his seat. ‘But, if I’m not mistaken, here comes the doctor from the hospital with the medical bulletin. This will shake things up — you’ll see.’

Escorted by two armed police, Vishtar Loman approached the bench and passed the elderly Anglo judge an envelope. His Tugganarong colleague ignored the exchange; he’d produced a pocket knife from his raggedy-doll robes and was conspicuously cleaning his nails. Loman and the Anglo judge exchanged a few words, and the doctor was then dismissed. The Anglo judge relaxed back into his seat, a relieved expression on his mild features. General hubbub welled up in the court. The Anglo judge passed the envelope to his colleague, who opened and read it. He then shifted along the bench so he could speak through the thorny screen to the painted makkata. The makkata, in turn, relayed the information to a figure that writhed beside him, and who Tom thought must be Atalaya’s manager, the Entreati sorceress.

Then, a tremendous ululation went up from behind the screen and dark shapes threw themselves against it. The Anglo judge gestured to the beadle, who thumped his staff on the floor until order was restored.

‘This court is prorogued,’ the judge said. ‘Mr Tancrop-pollopp, Counsellors Von Sasser and Swai-Phillips, you will all assemble in my chambers in ten minutes. And Mr Swai-Phillips’ — Tom’s lawyer rose respectfully — ‘bring your client with you.’

Tom spent the break sitting, shaking, on the bench he had occupied all morning. Swai-Phillips went out to smoke — and Adams went with him.

The DA and the Chief Prosecutor came sweeping past. Then Von Sasser turned back and approached Tom. ‘Mr Brodzinski.’ He pecked down with his hawkish beak.

‘Y-yes?’

‘You will almost certainly be heading over there in the near future. If you chance to encounter my brother, Erich. .’ He paused.

‘Yes?’ Tom was perplexed. ‘What about him? I mean, is it likely? Isn’t “over there” a big place?’

‘That is correct.’ Von Sasser spoke with pernickety precision. ‘Never the less, my brother’s is a very expansive personality — he takes up a lot of the interior, he. .’ But then Von Sasser broke off, clearly feeling he had said too much, and, turning on his heel, stalked away, without any goodbye.

When Swai-Phillips came back, Tom told him about the encounter.

‘Those Von Sassers,’ the lawyer snorted. ‘They act like it’s their personal bloody fiefdom over there. Y’know, it’s been years now. .’ But then he too bit his tongue and, together with Adams, began ushering Tom down a corridor that led towards the back of the building.

‘I thought Von Sasser and the DA had to come to the judge’s chambers as well?’ Tom protested.

Swai-Phillips snorted again. ‘That? Oh, that was just for show, yeah.’

But whose? Tom thought, as Adams knocked on a nondescript door, and they were admitted by the beadle.

At once, Tom had a strong impression of cloying homeliness. There were lace doilies on occasional tables, muddy watercolours of the cloud forest on the panelled walls, while an electric jug chuckled and spat on a tray.

Then he saw the Intwennyfortee mob. They were sitting on drab easy-chairs around a coffee table slathered with magazines: Atalaya, the Entreati sorceress and two other women Tom recognized from the hospital. With them was the zebra-striped makkata judge. The kettle must have boiled once already, for the natives were all nursing steaming mugs, and, as he watched, the makkata leaned forward to pop two sweeteners in his. Atalaya was chomping on a chocolate-chip cookie.

‘Tea, Mr Brodzinski?’

Tom turned abruptly; hovering by his shoulder was a tiny old Anglo man wearing only paisley-patterned boxers and a string undershirt, through which snaggled a few limp chest hairs.

‘I–I’m sorry?’ he stuttered.

‘Tea,’ the old man reiterated. ‘Would you like some?’

It was only then that Tom noticed the judicial robe, with its hanks of multicoloured ribbons, hanging on a coat stand and realized that he was being addressed by the judge.

‘Um, yuh, sure, thanks, your honour,’ he floundered.

‘Brodzinski.’ Swai-Phillips gripped his upper arm. ‘This is Chief Justice Hogg.’

‘S — Sir.’ Tom half bowed to the old man, uncertain whether he should offer his hand. Justice Hogg seemed not in the least put out. He skipped away, and began shooting out remarks as he made tea for the new arrivals.

‘Excuse my informality. Bloody robes so uncomfortable — never got used to them, yeah. My colleague, Justice Antollopollollou, skedaddled. You appreciate — restitutional arrangements, interim stuff. . of no concern to him. Sugar? Milk? Lemon, perhaps?’

Throughout this the Intwennyfortee mob and the makkata judge stolidly chomped cookies. However, once the defence party were seated in their own easy-chairs, and Justice Hogg had perched on the corner of his large knee-hole desk, the makkata loosed off a volley of tooth clacks and palate clicks. Swai-Phillips returned fire, then the two went on, peppering each other with plosives.

Tom looked over at Atalaya. She sat like a teenager, with her legs over the arm of her chair, and smirked at her cookie. Tom took a sip of his tea. Sweet and milky, it dissolved the whisky crud in his anxious mouth.

Leaning forward to Tom, Justice Hogg explained: ‘This’ll go on for a while, right.’

‘What’re they talking about?’ Tom asked.

‘Well, I suppose your people would call it horse trading, but here such bargaining has a ritual function as well, right. They’re negotiating the terms of your restitutional payment to the Intwennyfortee mob.’

‘And my lawyer — he’s trying to get it, uh, reduced?’

‘Not exactly,’ Hogg smiled. ‘Since you’ve been deemed astande, it’s incumbent on you to offer more than they can rightly accept, yeah. You are the righter of wrongs. The makkata and Mrs Lincoln’s spiritual manager will gradually reduce their claims on you to a point at which they are acceptable.’

Acceptable to whom? Tom wanted to ask, but Swai-Phillips, breaking off the negotiations, turned to him, saying, ‘We’re nearly there, Brodzinski. I don’t know why, exactly, but the plaintiff is being most accommodating.’ Then he resumed yakking.

Tom couldn’t see that Atalaya was being anything much at all. While the other native women hung on to the rapid-fire exchanges, she went on munching, while staring distractedly through the sole window in the room, a tiny glass oblong hung with chintz curtains.

Some kind of conclusion was being reached, for, on a piece of copier paper he’d obtained from the judge, the makkata was laboriously inscribing a list with a felt-tip pen. When he’d finished, he held this up so that everyone present could read it:

TWO GOOD HUNTING RIFFLES

ONE COMPLEAT SET COKING POTS

$10,000.

‘That’s it?’ Tom queried. ‘What about medicines? Prentice has to get hold of medicines.’

‘Different, ah, strokes for different folks,’ Adams said fatuously. ‘The mob Prentice has to deal with are mostly in the Tontine Townships; yours are way over there.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Out beyond Eyre’s Pit in the Tayswengo tribal heartland. These are desert people, Brodzinski, these are the things they most need.’

The Intwennyfortee contingent were getting ready to leave. The makkata stood, stretched languorously and withdrew an engwegge quid from his breechclout. The Tayswengo women, and the frightening apparition that was her neutered spiritual manager, were clucking over the vacant Atalaya. Tom was torn: would it be acceptable for him to ask after the old man — or would he be breaking another taboo? The natives forestalled him by heaving Atalaya upright and quitting the room, without any farewells.

‘So,’ Tom asked Swai-Phillips, who was standing beside Justice Hogg while the latter pulled some short pants on over his boxers, ‘what happens now? Do I simply give them the money, the pots and the rifles, and that’s that?’

The big man laughed. ‘Ho-ho! Oh, no, Brodzinski, nothing here’s ever that simple. All restitution has to be made in person. You’ll have to rent a car and head out over there — you’ve gotta lot of driving to to do. There’s some good news, though.’

The lawyer and the judge exchanged knowing glances. Nettled, Tom snapped: ‘What’s that, then?’

‘Why,’ Swai-Phillips said, grinning, ‘Prentice has to head for the Tontines, so the two of you can share costs, and you’ll have a road buddy — at least for the first few thousand klicks.’