CHACK CHACK CHACK

Time to get up, lazybones!
—Rrmph.
It's quarter-to-ten! If you don't hurry, you'll miss breakfast!

CHACK CHACK

Axel, your friends are waiting!
—Grrwmph!
You can't sleep forever!
—Mrrnrrmph!
C'mon now, I'm asking nicelyyyyy…

CHACK CHACK CHACK CHACK CHACK

—Hrrmph!
Axel, you know the rules!

CHACK CHACK CHACK

—Hrmphrrrrrrmph!
Alright, mister, I'm coming in! Don't say I didn't warn you!

The doorhandle starts jiggling. Ms. Lindsey, she's got the keys to every room in the orphanage, but that won't help her with the chain lock.

Won't help her at all with the chain lock.

The door jerks open, then catches, and with a loud thump stops abruptly. She tries a couple more times, but it won't budge.

Axel, how'd you—?

Her fingers curl around the edge of the door, barely an inch of space to peek through. Happy eyes squint angrily into the room. Then they open up wide. Scary wide.

Oh my gosh…
—Mrrwmphgrrmph!
Axel, we'll get you out of there, hon! Don't worry!

Fingers disappear.

I'll be right back with Mr. B!
—Grrmrrph!

Her voice already receding down the hallway…

Don't worry, Axel, I'll be right back!

"Don't worry, Axel," Cherrycoke says, "I'll be right back."

As if for reassurance, he touches my right wrist, which is cuffed to my left wrist, then he gets up and, sidestepping the lieutenant's huge knees, slips briskly out of the traincar.

Outside it's all countryside, the hills an ugly boogery green dotted with pores of dead gray dirt, but still better than what they were. Even a year ago, better than what they were.

The train bumps along. I stare at my feet, which are also cuffed, trying not to make eye contact with the bulky, sweaty, red-faced cop, whose badge reads Wensleydale, sitting diagonally across from me.

He's a pig, both literally and because of the badge—a walking fucking pun.

"Ever been to the arboretum?" he oinks. Ever bin to the ar-ber-ree-tee-um?

I shake my head. He's going to make me look at him. Going to try, at least.

"Ain't like afore. They'n fixed it up 'bout six month ago. Me'n Roxy anna kids went seen it last Sa'urday. Bought three big jugga maple serrup. D'joo know maple serrup come from trees?"

Nodding this time.

"They was this girl showed us. Stucker finger inna treetrunk like—" his index finger upturned, wiggling back and forth, "—y'know, like fingerin a pussy?"

Like fingering a pussy.

"Then she go like—" offering me his finger, "—like she want me to lick it."

Did you lick it? That's the prompt he's waiting for. Waiting, his fat finger outstretched, trembling, and I can almost smell the syrup.

But I'm not asking. I'd rather slit my fucking wrists.

"Sorry, fellas," Cherrycoke staggering back into the car. "Too much coffee, too much coffee," retaking his seat, fidgeting with his briefcase. "Where was I?"

"Something about a slam dunk?"

"Right," thumbs up, "the judge." He quits fidgeting and slots his briefcase between his legs. "I've got ins with her. She and I, we go way back. Used to date my buddy Bill Furniss during the war. Long story short, I've been workin her. Ever since the verdict, I've been workin her, and if you watch your mouth today, if you follow protocol, I think she'll go easy on ya."

"Which means?"

His eyes dart sideways, mustache twitching. "Thirty years, hard labor."

Even the cop starts laughing.

Nineteen… plus thirty… "Slam dunk, huh?"

Cherrycoke looks offended. "Hey, count your blessings, bucko. I've read the new charter. Read it cover to cover. Ten thousand pages."

"I know, I know," he's told me ten thousand times, "the penalty for treason is—"

"Death," he snaps, "by firing squad. Live TV, instant replay. Sound like a party?"

Sounds quick.

Sounds better than what they did to Gedol.

What'd they do to Gedol? Castrated him, tortured his kids in front of him, shot him in the street, pissed on him in the street, cremated him in the street…

But that was a coup. That was the end of the war. My execution, they'd probably want it to look a little more civilized. Y'know, because of society, or whatever. Already gave me a trial. Wonder if they'd let me comb my hair, wear makeup. Wonder if they'd dress me up for the cameras.

Cherrycoke shows his palms. "Good behavior, they might let you out in twenty."

Shadows sweep through the cabin, close cement walls suddenly whipping past the window. City limits.

"And when I say good behavior," eyeing me sternly, almost suspiciously, "I mean priestly good."

Three new cops greet us at the train station, and they all look exactly like the lieutenant, just different heights, different weights.

"Didn't know pieces of shit could walk," one of them snickers as I stumble, chains clinking, onto the platform.

Uncuff me, I want to say, and I'll fucking walk all over you, but Cherrycoke nudges me in the ribs before I can open my mouth.

"Priestly good," he whispers. "Priestly good."

Courthouse is still being rebuilt. They lead me in through the back, partly to avoid construction, partly to avoid the small but prickly crowd of Zephyrans assembled in the front lobby.

Last week they had picket signs. Big homemade ones written in permanent marker:

GUILTY
AS
CHARGED

SPARKSTER
KICKED YOUR ASS

STILL
NO JUSTICE
FOR THE
VICTIMS
OF GEDOL

TRAITOR
TO YOUR
RACE

AXEL GEAR is a
• CHARLATAN
• TRAITOR
• SELLOUT
• MURDERER
• TERRORIST
and he MUST BE CONVICTED!

Shit like that.

When they broadcast the verdict, you could hear them whooping and screaming and cheering down the hall. Cheering for me, I pretended.

Today it's mostly media and construction workers inside the courtroom, where on the left side several benches have been removed to make room for scaffolding. They're finally fixing that huge unceremonious hole in the ceiling, running thick knots of wire up through the rafters.

Zzzzzzzzzzt-zzzzzt
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt

Then they start drilling, sending tiny flecks of plaster floating down toward the benches, and they don't stop even when the judge walks in. Judge Tucker, former girlfriend, supposedly, to Bill Furniss. Looks like she's in her forties, kind of a flat face, a little gray, but pretty enough. An opossum like me, which you'd think, in any other situation, might mean something.

But not here.

On her way to the bench she motions for me and Cherrycoke and the spectators to sit down. Casual today. No prosecutor. No jury. Just us and her and the myriad TV cameras poking out from behind the bar.

Zzzzzt-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt

And the drill.

"'Scuse me! Sir?!"

Rrrrrrrrrrt
ZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzRGGRrrVrrrg

"Sir! Sir, could you please?!" banging her gavel. "We'd like to get started…"

But he won't stop. Not for her. Not that easily. And the bailiff's not fucking climbing up there…

"Just yell, Tuck!" Cherrycoke beams. "Just yell, we can hear ya!"

Tuck? Did he really just call her Tuck?

She narrows her eyes at him, melting the stupid grin off his face. So much for that slam dunk.

ZzzzzRgggggrr-zzzzzzzzzzt

Let's get this over with…

"Mr. Gear!" she barks over the noise. "Your counsel, perhaps unknowingly, spent the entire weekend violating court procedure in an attempt to reargue your case."

Under the table, Cherrycoke's right knee, the one closest to me, starts bouncing.

"Friday," lifting one finger, "he called my house. Saturday," two fingers, "he interrupted my luncheon with police commissioner Smithe. And Sunday," three long, unimpressed fingers, "he invited me to," air quotes, "throw a couple back with him at the bar on 54th Street."

Zzzt
Zzzzzt

"Mr. Cherrycoke contends that you are a victim of character assassination. He contends that beneath your vile exterior—" My vile exterior? "—beneath your smirking, muttering and eye-rolling—" and sleeping in court… "—that you are, in fact, a good boy with a good conscience, and that deep down—perhaps deep, deep down—you truly regret what you've done."

Sounds like something he'd say.

"The law, however, requires that traitors to the state of New Zephyrus—"

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt

Suddenly Cherrycoke's knee quits bouncing, and suddenly I'm back to Gedol, back to picturing my own execution. Picturing smirking, muttering and eye-rolling while Lieutenant Wensleydale and the other pigs line up shoulder-to-shoulder. Picturing them CHACK CHACK shooting me in the chest and the forehead and maybe the crotch. Picturing the way my head might come apart and how, in super slow-mo instant replay, the whole state might get a glimpse of my brain, or at least parts of it, and how the image of my body collapsing in on itself, as if my entire skeleton had spontaneously jellified, might give a few of them nightmares, might quietly pluck at their heartstrings, poor boy, poor boy…

What's not to love? I mean, aside from the crotch thing…

"—which leaves us with a question," she's still talking, and she thinks I'm still listening. "What kind of nation are we? What kind of people are we? Is our judgment clear, or have we already begun," pause, for effect, "to repeat the mistakes of the past?"

Cherrycoke blinks an eye at me. A knowing eye. An "I told you so" eye.

"Please stand." Didn't we just sit down?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt-zzzzzrrr…

Drilling stops. Perfect timing.

"Neither I nor the state," she continues, "wants much to do with the execution of a nineteen-year-old war orphan and former knight…" A murmur combs through the pack of journalists crammed into the pews behind me. "For the growth and moral development of our new nation, it would be better, I think, to resist temptation than to give in to it."

Louder, angrier murmuring. This isn't what they want. This isn't what anyone wants.

"I hope, for his sake, that you pay your lawyer well, Mr. Gear." Heh, sure. "If it weren't for him, I might be signing your death warrant. Instead, I'm sentencing you to fifty years—" Fifty? "—at Montcalm Labor Camp—" Did she say fifty years? "—with an option for parole after forty." After forty?!

I glance over at Cherrycoke, who's sitting with his elbows on the table. He tilts his head to one side, turns out his palms and scrunches up his eyebrows: Don't ask me…

"Mr. Gear," smiling now, quite pleased with herself, "before we conclude, do you wish to make a statement?"

The room's gone silent. My head's gone silent. My tongue and my throat are dry. The fur on my chest and under my arms itches. My heart feels like it's being squeezed, each beat a thick, heavy, drumlike thump, Gedol's ugly, scaly, bony, long-nailed, jewelried fingers closing steadily around, closing steadily around…

"Mr. Gear?"

That's when I punch Cherrycoke in the face.

It isn't a clean punch, but it's enough to knock him out of his chair, enough to draw a little yelp from the judge.

"Slam dunk, huh?"

Before I can jump on him, the cops jump on me, pasting my cheek to the ground. All four of them, including the lieutenant. One twists my arm, one shoves a gun in my back and the other two pin my legs. I try to get up, but they just slam me back down, and my teeth click together as my chin hits the floor.

Wonder if that gun is safetied.

"Git 'im! Hold 'im! Git 'im!"

I arch my back, trying to bump it, trying to make it go off, hoping he just lets it go off, maybe a couple times.

"Fucking do it!" I spit into the floor. Frrrcking drrrvit! My tongue is bleeding. "Jssst frrrcking drrrvit!"

Photographers spilling over the bar. From the ground I can see their feet racing toward me, circling, tripping over lens caps and wires.

"Git 'im outta here! Git 'im outta here!"

The judge is splintering her gavel, bailiff trying to corral everyone, trying to shoo them all back to their seats.

Pinching an arm around my throat, the lieutenant peels me kicking and flailing off the ground.

"Git the door!"

I elbow him in the stomach.

"Git the, rmph, door!"

The emergency door, that's the one he's talking about. The big yellow and black one.

"Jes hold it! I got 'im!"

Somewhere between being dragged toward the door and heaved bodily out of it, I catch a glimpse, in blur, of the judge's horrified, deeply reddened, deeply frozen face.

Ms. Lindsey's face, that's what it reminds me of. Her mouth, her big round eyes. Always so disappointed.

Always so disappointed.

My head strikes pavement. The lieutenant, panting, seals the door behind us, then he draws his gun, climbs onto my chest and presses the barrel to my forehead. Like I'm supposed to be scared. Like I'm supposed to squirm and gulp and beg like some cartoon character.

But it's way too late for that.

D'joo know maple serrup come from trees?

He slides the gun under my chin, and between breaths I ask him: "You want me to lick it or something?"