Plague of Pythons

I

Because of the crowd they held Chandler’s trial in the all-purpose room of the high school. It smelled of leather and stale sweat. He walked up the three steps to the stage, with the bailiff’s hand on his elbow, and took his place at the defendant’s table.

Chandler’s lawyer looked at him without emotion. He was appointed by the court. He was willing to do his job, but his job didn’t require him to like his client. All he said was, “Stand up. The judge is coming in.”

Chandler got to his feet and leaned on the table while the bailiff chanted his call and the chaplain read some verses from John. He did not listen. The Bible verse came too late to help him, and besides he ached.

When the police arrested him they had not been gentle. There were four of them. They were from the plant’s own security force and carried no guns. They didn’t need any; Chandler had put up no resistance after the first few moments—that is, he stopped as soon as he could stop—but the police hadn’t stopped. He remembered that very clearly. He remembered the nightstick across the side of his head that left his ear squashed and puffy, he remembered the kick in the gut that still made walking painful. He even remembered the series of blows about the skull that had knocked him out.

The bruises along his rib cage and left arm, though, he did not remember getting. Obviously the police had been mad enough to keep right on subduing him after he was already unconscious.

Chandler did not blame them—exactly. He supposed he would have done the same thing.

The judge was having a long mumble with the court stenographer apparently about something which had happened in the Union House the night before. Chandler knew Judge Ellithorp slightly. He did not expect to get a fair trial. The previous December the judge himself, while possessed, had smashed the transmitter of the town’s radio station, which he owned, and set fire to the building it occupied. His son-in-law had been killed in the fire.

Laughing, the judge waved the reporter back to his seat and glanced around the courtroom. His gaze touched Chandler lightly, like the flick of the hanging strands of cord that precede a railroad tunnel. The touch carried the same warning. What lay ahead for Chandler was destruction.

“Read the charge,” ordered Judge Ellithorp. He spoke very loudly. There were more than six hundred persons in the auditorium; the judge didn’t want any of them to miss a word.

The bailiff ordered Chandler to stand and informed him that he was accused of having, on the seventeenth day of June last, committed on the person of Margaret Flershem, a minor, an act of rape—“Louder!” ordered the judge testily.

“Yes, Your Honor,” said the bailiff, and inflated his chest. “An Act of Rape under Threat of Bodily Violence,” he cried; “and Did Further Commit on the Person of Said Margaret Flershem an Act of Aggravated Assault—”

Chandler rubbed his aching side, looking at the ceiling. He remembered the look in Peggy Flershem’s eyes as he forced himself on her. She was only sixteen years old, and at that time he hadn’t even known her name.

The bailiff boomed on: “—and Did Further Commit on that Same Seventeenth Day of June Last on the Person of Ingovar Porter an Act of Assault with Intent to Rape, the Foregoing Being a True Bill Handed Down by the Grand Jury of Sepulpas County in Extraordinary Session Assembled, the Eighteenth Day of June Last.”

Judge Ellithorp looked satisfied as the bailiff sat down, quite winded. While the judge hunted through the papers on his desk the crowd in the auditorium stirred and murmured.

A child began to cry.

The judge stood up and pounded his gavel. “What is it? What’s the matter with him? You, Dundon!” The court attendant the judge was looking at hurried over and spoke to the child’s mother, then reported to the judge.

“I dunno, Your Honor. All he says is something scared him.”

The judge was enraged. “Well, that’s just fine! Now we have to take up the time of all these good people, probably for no reason, and hold up the business of this court, just because of a child. Bailiff! I want you to clear this courtroom of all children under—” he hesitated, calculating voting blocks in his head—“all children under the age of six. Dr. Palmer, are you there? Well, you better go ahead with the—prayer.” The judge could not make himself say “the exorcism.”

“I’m sorry, madam,” he added to the mother of the crying two-year-old. “If you have someone to leave the child with, I’ll instruct the attendants to save your place for you.” She was also a voter.

Dr. Palmer rose, very grave, as he was embarrassed. He glared around the all-purpose room, defying anyone to smile, as he chanted: “Domina Pythonis, I command you, leave! Leave, Hel! Leave, Heloym! Leave, Sother and Thetragrammaton, leave, all unclean ones! I command you! In the name of God, in all of His manifestations!” He sat down again, still very grave. He knew that he did not make nearly as fine a showing as Father Lon, with his resonant in nomina Jesu Christi et Sancti Ubaldi and his censer, but the post of exorcist was filled in strict rotation, one month to a denomination, ever since the troubles started. Dr. Palmer was a Unitarian. Exorcisms had not been in the curriculum at the seminary and he had been forced to invent his own.

Chandler’s lawyer tapped him on the shoulder. “Last chance to change your mind,” he said.

“No. I’m not guilty, and that’s the way I want to plead.”

The lawyer shrugged and stood up, waiting for the judge to notice him.

Chandler, for the first time, allowed himself to meet the eyes of the crowd.

He studied the jury first. He knew some of them casually—it was not a big enough town to command a jury of total strangers for any defendant, and Chandler had lived there most of his life. He recognized Pop Matheson, old and very stiff, who ran the railroad station cigar stand. Two of the other men were familiar as faces passed in the street. The forewoman, though, was a stranger. She sat there very composed and frowning, and all he knew about her was that she wore funny hats. Yesterday’s had been red roses when she was selected from the panel; today’s was, of all things, a stuffed bird.

He did not think that any of them were possessed. He was not so sure of the audience.

He saw girls he had dated in high school, long before he met Margot; men he worked with at the plant. They all glanced at him, but he was not sure who was looking out through some of those familiar eyes. The visitors reliably watched all large gatherings, at least momentarily; it would be surprising if none of them were here.

“All right, how do you plead,” said Judge Ellithorp at last.

Chandler’s lawyer straightened up. “Not guilty, Your Honor, by reason of temporary pandemic insanity.”

The judge looked pleased. The crowd murmured, but they were pleased too. They had him dead to rights and it would have been a disappointment if Chandler had pleaded guilty. They wanted to see one of the vilest criminals in contemporary human society caught, exposed, convicted and punished; they did not want to miss a step of the process. Already in the playground behind the school three deputies from the sheriff’s office were loading their rifles, while the school janitor chalked lines around the handball court to mark where the crowd witnessing the execution would be permitted to stand.

The prosecution made its case very quickly. Mrs. Porter testified that she worked at McKelvey Bros., the antibiotics plant, where the defendant also worked. Yes, that was him. She had been attracted by the noise from the culture room last—let’s see—“Was it the seventeenth day of June last?” prompted the prosecutor, and Chandler’s attorney instinctively gathered his muscles to rise, hesitated, glanced at his client and shrugged. That was right, it was the seventeenth. Incautiously she went right into the room. She should have known better, she admitted. She should have called the plant police right away, but, well, they hadn’t had any trouble at the plant, you know, and—well, she didn’t. She was a stupid woman, for all that she was rather good-looking, and insatiably curious. She had seen Peggy Flershem on the floor. “She was all blood. And her clothes were—And she was, I mean her—her body was—” With relentless tact the prosecutor allowed her to stammer out her observation that the girl had clearly been raped. And she had seen Chandler laughing and breaking up the place, throwing racks of cultures through the windows, upsetting trays. Of course she had crossed herself and tried a quick exorcism but there was no visible effect; then Chandler had leaped at her. “He was hateful! He was just foul!” But as he began to attack her the plant police came, drawn by her screams.

Chandler’s attorney did not question.