Above His Station (25 page)

Most of them looked to be in remarkably high spirits and I presumed they were the ones that had eaten the tagliatelle, whilst there were two or three other members that looked a bit green around the gills (with the exception of one chap who really did have gills, so he was a bit of a wild card). Prime Ambassador Serpiente and his gang were the last ones to enter the court, and I was suddenly anxious – especially as my nominated legal representative was nowhere to be seen! What on earth (or should that be Puck) was the rat playing at? Court was already in session, and I was sure there was some sort of rule that said that if you weren’t in your appointed position by the time it resumed, you would be barred from the proceedings. I was horrified! There was no way that I could possibly do this on my own. It had been bad enough when I’d had someone with me. But then my spirits rose as I heard Bloch say:

‘Damn that Mrs Jenkins, where is she?’

I looked down at the old lady’s empty seat, praying that it might give me valuable time in which to locate the rat. But this prayer came back unanswered as I heard the smashing of the court’s doors as they burst open. Mrs Jenkins waddled into the courtroom, taking her seat as if the entire room wasn’t looking at her with daggers in their eyes.

‘More trouble with the waterworks, Mrs J?’ enquired Bloch.

‘Not this time, duck. Bit of a fracas in the corridor outside,’ replied Mrs Jenkins. ‘Right, so where were we?’ Her pinprick eyes scanned the roll of paper from her transcribing machine, reacquainting herself with the details of the case before the break for lunch.

‘Perhaps I can save you the trouble,’ said Arbitrator Bloch. ‘I believe we had just heard Prime Ambassador Serpiente read the transcript of a transmission sent through space by the crew of the
Viper Explorer 1
, before it was lost back in 2003, a tragedy that I am sure all of us are familiar with.’ The rumble around the courtroom gave me the impression that indeed they were. As for me, I was completely oblivious to it until the day before. That’ll teach me not to take more of an interest in the affairs of other planets in distant galaxies. ‘The transcript was taken from a copy of the Bible; the Earth’s most widely-subscribed book of religious scriptures, and it relayed the events within the Garden of Eden. The Prime Ambassador then continued that, as sanctioned by his god, mankind has been conditioned to mistreat snakes ever since.’ With the rat absent, the Arbitrator looked over in my direction. ‘Is there a problem with your Advocate?’

I’d only just opened my mouth to admit that I had absolutely no idea, when the rat came skipping down the stairs and hurriedly took its former position next to me.

‘Sorry, I’m late,’ it said, straightening out its suit. ‘There was something going on-’

‘Outside, yes, so Mrs Jenkins informs us,’ said Bloch. ‘Very well, seeing as it has only just gone 14:78hrs, let’s pick up where we left off, and then we’ll take a short recess whilst the jury commences their deliberations.’

There followed directly the numbing sensation of a vacuum.

The Prime Ambassador’s evidence before lunch had left us on the ropes so we had to come out fighting if we wanted to win this thing. The facts were very clear and the evidence was hard. The Asclepians had launched an unprovoked pre-emptive strike against the Earth’s human population purely because of what was written in a Bible they had intercepted by accident and taken as the word of God (okay, so it really
is
the word of God, but you get my meaning). They had read in
Genesis
that Adam and Eve had blamed the snake for making them eat the apple from the forbidden tree, and as a direct result of this, the Asclepians held mankind accountable for how badly the snake has been treated throughout history. But that made no sense whatsoever. This was the cause of all my troubles? This revelation was the reason why everyone had suffered? I had hoped that taking this case before a court would answer all the questions buzzing around my head, hearing things explained in a manner that I could understand. I had only got half of my wish granted. My questions were indeed answered, but I was a long way from understanding them.

And then it occurred to me. I had been so transfixed by the Prime Ambassador’s speech that I hadn’t been listening to the words themselves. They sounded so familiar that my mind had just glossed over them, but as I took advantage of the silence in the courtroom to consult my memory, I suddenly heard them more clearly and I was compelled to say:

‘That quote.’

‘What quote?’ asked the rat.

‘The one that the Prime Ambassador read out earlier,’ I said. ‘The one about Adam and Eve.’

‘What about it?’ asked the rat. ‘It’s from the Bible, right?’

‘Yes…only it’s not.’

‘Not what?’ asked the rat.

‘Not from the Bible,’ I said. ‘He got it wrong!’

‘Which bit?’

‘All of it!’ I spat. ‘He’s making out like the serpent was an innocent party…that Adam and Eve had some sort of
vendetta
against it…but that’s not how it was at all.’

‘Gramps, I can count the number of times that I’ve been inside a church on one paw. You’re going to have to throw me a bone here.’

‘I’ll try…although, I’m not exactly a regular churchgoer myself,’ I said, trying to peel back decades of memory. I’d spent my childhood going to Sunday School every week - until I found out that I had a choice in what I believed. We sat around on cushions listening to stories mostly, but I liked the smell of the place and it kept my parents happy so I didn’t complain. ‘The Bible does have the bit with the serpent, as well as Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden tree and all that stuff…but it’s the other way around. The serpent isn’t the victim. It
tricks
Eve into eating the apple! And God was only annoyed because he’d expressly forbidden it. It was a test, you see. And so that’s why he punishes the serpent, cursing it to crawl on its belly for the rest of its days.’

‘So how can we prove that?’ asked rat. ‘You don’t happen to have a copy of the Bible in that satchel of yours, do you?’

‘Only a MacLean and a Cussler,’ I responded, dolefully.

‘Okay, so the way I see it is like this,’ began the rat. ‘We’re in a pretty tight jam here, so either we need to call a witness who was in the Garden of Eden at the time and will serve as testament to the facts – which, as I’m sure you’re aware is completely impossible seeing as it’s all a load of old bollocks or-’

‘
Or?
’ I asked in anticipation.

‘Or we find the one that sent the transmission to Asclepia in the first place, so she can tell the jury that the Prime Ambassador’s version of events is wrong.’

‘You mean Astrid,’ I whispered. ‘But the Prime Ambassador’s not supposed to know she’s alive, remember?’

‘We don’t have time to worry about that now, Gramps,’ said the rat. ‘By the looks on the jury’s faces it’s pretty clear which way they’re going to go. Right now Astrid is our only hope.’

‘But…I gave her my word that no matter what happened, I would never reveal to her father that she’d been on Earth all this time and I can’t go back on it,’ I said, feeling something fall onto the back of my hand. After all that had happened, my first tear wasn’t for my species, my world, my children, or even for a spot of self pity…it was for a snake with Daddy issues.

‘She’ll understand,’ said the rat.

‘She won’t,’ I said, utterly convinced of that. ‘And I wouldn’t blame her either. You don’t know because you weren’t there last night, but she told me what a nasty piece of work her father is!’

‘Can you hear yourself? Dude, the whole of fucking mankind is on the ropes here, and you’re worried about breaking a fucking promise to a fucking
snake?
’

‘Astrid,’ I mumbled.

‘Yeah, I get it, okay? But this is-’

‘No,’ I said, jerking my head towards the doors to the courtroom. ‘
Astrid
.’

20

She hovered down the steps doing her whirly tail thing again. Her eyes were fixed upon her father, just as his eyes were fixed upon her. They had not seen each other’s faces for many a year and I could almost hear the cogs within their brains turning as they soaked up the sight, updating the mental image they had within their memories all this time. Yet it was not the look of a daughter elated to see her father that I saw, any more than it was the look of a father overjoyed to see that his daughter had not perished when her spaceship had veered dramatically off-course and crash-landed on Earth that I saw. From Astrid I saw hatred, whereas from her father I saw resentment, shock, anger. I saw all that, but what I didn’t see was any love between them. It was surely lost.

I had tried to put myself in the Prime Ambassador’s position when Astrid had told me about what he had done to sabotage her mission, and I thought that I would feel as he did. If I ever lost Claire (or even David if push came to shove) I would be devastated. If it were within my power I would go to the ends of the galaxy, tear right through it and into the next to find my child. Yet what had the Prime Ambassador done? Had he sat alone and wept, feeling the guilt eating him up from the inside? Or had he congratulated himself for getting his embarrassment of a daughter out of the picture so she wouldn’t make him look bad in the public eye? I knew that it had probably been the latter, and that made it easier to loathe him. But even with all of that spite bottling up inside me, whatever level of hatred I was capable of, it was nowhere near the level that Astrid was exhibiting, albeit silently for the time being.

As she glided slowly down the steps, I afforded myself a good look at her. She had scratches across her face! Along her body! She looked as if she’d been in some sort of fight. She suddenly dropped a few inches, as if it was taking all of her will to fly. The most telling of her actions came when instead of flying over to her father’s side, she did an abrupt flick of the air with her tongue and glided over to stand shoulder to shoulder with my nominated legal representative (even though neither of them had any shoulders to speak of, hopefully you understand the sentiment behind the action).

‘Professor Serpiente,’ said Arbitrator Bloch, ‘how nice of you to join us. Am I to take your place in this courtroom as confirmation that you align yourself with the Earth’s plea?’

Astrid lowered her head, as graceful as a swan. ‘Most ardently I align myself with Earth, for I have been stuck there for many years and have come to regard it as my surrogate home.’ And then she wrapped herself within her coils and looked directly at Arbitrator Bloch in a manner that suggested that she had something crucial to add to the proceedings. Wisely, he waved her to continue. ‘Members of the jury, Arbitrator Bloch, it has come to my attention that my father’s presence here extends far beyond the remit of this hearing.’

That’s right, I thought. It was odd that the Prime Ambassador had arrived on Puck days before we’d even lodged the official appeal. It was almost as if he had anticipated our actions. But how was that possible? We hadn’t even known that we could appeal ourselves, let alone who we were supposed to appeal to.

‘The floor’s all yours, Professor,’ urged Arbitrator Bloch, giving her a quick wink.

Astrid whipped her tail around and hovered several feet above the ground, positioning herself to look down upon her father. ‘Thank you, Arbitrator.’

‘
Assstrid?
’
 hissed the Prime Ambassador. ‘Daughter, I’m so happy that you’re-!’

She ignored him. ‘My father is not being entirely honest with you, with
any
of you,’ Astrid said, her voice ricocheting off the walls of the courtroom. ‘He wishes you to believe that he decided to come halfway across a dozen galaxies specifically for this tribunal, presumably because he feels so passionately about the awful turn of events, and possibly even a little bit guilty about the whole thing.’

‘Chief Arbitrator!’ snapped the Prime Ambassador. ‘My daughter is unwell. Look at her. I call for an adjournment until she has had sufficient time to acclimatise herself.’

‘I’m acclimatised just
fine
, Daddy,’ said Astrid. ‘No thanks to you!’

‘Astrid, my dear, I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean.’

‘The two pythons stood outside who tried to stop me from entering this court a few minutes ago? Does that ring any bells?’ Astrid turned back to Bloch. ‘Arbitrator, several days ago when you informed me that my father was already on Puck, I questioned the reason behind his actions. I have since discovered the reason why he came here, and it is not as he would have you believe.’

‘Arbitrator, I demand-!’

‘You are in no position to
demand
anything, Prime Ambassador,’ said Bloch, putting the snake back in its place.

The Prime Ambassador’s gang was getting rather fidgety. They were hissing and snapping back and forth like whips, whereas their boss was as cool as a cucumber. He was a politician, I had to remind myself. Even if he wasn’t a snake, he was used to speaking with a forked tongue.

‘Aren’t you going to step in?’ I urged the rat. ‘You are supposed to be my Advocate, remember?’

The rat folded its arms. ‘I think she’s doing well enough on her own, don’t you?’

‘So you’re not in the least bit worried about being upstaged by a snake then?’

‘Not when it’s as cool as this,’ said the rat. ‘They should do, like, refreshments and shit here, don’t you think?’

‘No, I absolutely do not,’ I said. ‘It would make a mockery of justice.’

‘Like that don’t happen every day,’ said the rat. ‘Shh! I think Astrid’s getting ready for a good bit.’

And my rodent companion was quite astute.

‘My father, the elected leader of Asclepia is lying to his followers, just as he is lying to all of you here in this room,’ Astrid continued as she flew even higher, her body as kinked as a shepherd’s crook. ‘The other night in my father’s suite I came across various receipts paid by the Asclepian government to an undisclosed party. I have since discovered the identity of this undisclosed party. I have evidence that my father paid the GGSO a considerable sum of money to keep a lid on their latest report.’