Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (53 page)

But I say it’s a noble thing, uniting rich and poor,

A population trillions-strong, from Jupiter to Venus:

There’s bound to be some friction in the bonds that link between us.

And though most folk would never think of acting contravenous

I grew up in a bubble forty-hundred metres wide

With every kind of flowering plant growing up the side;

I grew there as a farmer, with a farmer’s stubborn pride

And sprouted long-limbed, nimble-fingered, though my bones were weak

A lad who knew of garden-farming long ere I could speak;

And only sun was needful, and a wall that did not leak,

Our legless cows were special-bred to float and chew the herb

And days were spun from certainty that no doubt could disturb:

For
live
and
love
and
labour
—they are all the selfsame verb,

But then the Strangers came. They planned to steal our ice away;

They stayed to eat our fruit and cream, and drink our wine and whey,

Till, drunk, they jettisoned our cows ‘to join the milky way’

A little while they tired of self-indulgence and grew bored—

That cruel satiety of men who’ve fed, and drunk and whored

Whose only pleasure now is putting children to the sword—

They tapped man’s old delight in carnage, havoc in their eyes;

And filled the air with blood-drops like a parody of skies;

Inventive tortures, pain both sport and that sport’s prize;

And then they left, abruptly, just as rough as they’d arrived;

And from five thousand only hundreds had survived;

And of those few were none who were not burned, or knifed,

Some voted we should quit, and others said we should rebuild

And make some sacred compost-use of loved ones who’d been killed;

But only I insisted that The Law should be fulfilled—

They’d thieved or wrecked our sloops amongst their other many wrongs

And it was eighteen months before a trader chanced along;

Till then I helped the others—mended, sang the commune song,

I begged a ride to Haag; there I joined a freighter crew

And served six months, and found more work, and hauled, and packed, and flew;

Whatever any owner wanted doing I would do

I saved such credits as I could, although not over-paid,

And all the time I asked and listened to what others said,

And that way learned the best way to get legal charges laid

Then one day I was on the moon, my latest contract done.

I took a breath, and offered up a new prayer to the Sun,

And rode the capsule where the SysAdmin(Law) rails run,

They made me wait eleven days, and took a hefty fee,

And listened to my crime report most pro/confessionally

And then they gave a RACdroid-witnessed legal code to me

I told them that my world was far too poor to be insured—

And that my hope was Justice, not monetary reward,

That justice should be more than what the wealthy can afford,

They didn’t scoff, or laugh: they only—sadly—shook their heads.

‘We’re not such foes of idealism as some maintain,’ they said.

‘But law’s a practical matter, and all your friends are dead.’

I left there sombre; took the capsule back to Kepler Dome;

Sat and looked on star-blind darkness, thinking of my home.

Pondered getting drunk on wine, or—worse—pharmed-out on Som

I told myself: ‘they’re policing trillions with finite resource;

There must be a better algorithm than ‘remorse’

To provide the most efficient usage of their force

Now: those who’d hurt my world—well, I still had their DNA

(They’d left enough of it behind); a data dossier—

And I
could
have them brought to justice, if—
if
—I could pay.

Those men
were
wicked who had caused my people injury;

But they had also punished us! A black epiphany—

We had
deserved
our punishment—for crimes of poverty.

The truth that intermediates humanity is—war.

This is the righteous truth embedded in Ulanov Law:

That of all crimes the worst one is the crime of being poor
.

The Ulanovs have many ways to guard the System’s health;

And seventy percent of justice works its way by stealth.

The surest way to hurt your foes is:
take away their wealth
.

For ten years I worked harder than my rivals; saved as well;

I built myself a small but profitable trade cartel,

And those who crossed me came to my employ—or went to hell.

I gave the police financial help, and they were pleased to get it.

And none of them gainsaid my plan, when I had up and said it:

For Fairness comes from God, but Justice?— it depends on credits.

Some crave wealth to add more to the bulk of things they own;

And some to soak their bodies in indulgence to the bone;

But I craved me a future in which I brought Justice home,

If took me ten full years before I brought things to a head,

And of the Strangers all but eighty-odd were wiped or dead,

And half of them were wrecked by Som and drink and mad with dread,

But of the sound of mind, I captured each and every one;

I had them brought before me; told them each what they had done

(For most of them could not recall specifics in among

They wailed and begged me mercy, poured out water from the eye,

And prayed forgiveness, though they knew they all deserved to die.

I said they’d have as much of mercy, each, as they could buy,

I set the price: a million credits for each year that passed;

Instalment-paid, without remit, until they’d breathed their last;

And if they didn’t pay me, death would catch them lightbeam-fast.

They wept and called it hopeless—but they took the deal, of course.

They’d learned life’s sovereign lesson: do not fight superior force,

And I acquired a motivated, lucrative workforce;

The Ulanovs, in all their pomp, deigned to stoop down and praise:

I had found a way (they said) of helping villains change their ways,

And turned delinquents into types who worked hard all their days.

They’ve given me a Silver Star to pin upon my cloak,

And now I move at ease amongst the richest gentlefolk,

And these are truest of the many wisdom-words I spoke:

McAuley’s Hymn

Lord, I know the cosmos is but shadow thrown off by your light,

And I’ve learned the truth—man’s sphere is
interplanetary
flight.

Once there was a conflict in my heart, I do confess it so:

But to reach the stars is further than the Lord permits us go.

Coupler-snaps to spindle-poles and thrust: I see Your Hand, O God—

Yours the grace and wrath that drives the spinning antimatter-rod.

The Bible’s a complex machine, Lord—many million parts intact,

And Man can barely ken the myriad ways they mesh and interact.

Every verse and word is placed within the working of the whole,

To form a spiritual motor meant to launch and fire and guide the soul.

Accelerate escape velocity beyond the pull of sin,

And take us to the final coupling gate where God’s Love pulls us in!

And as an engineer can’t pick and choose components of his ship,

Maintain these few, but let those others rust or seize or slip,

Just so a soul can’t pick and choose amongst Bible commands,

He takes the whole book up, or lets the whole tumble from his hands.

**

I can’t get my sleep to-night; old bones and limbs are hard to settle;

So I’ll stand the watch up here—alone with God and spaceship metal.

My engines whirr: a hundred days of thrust and delta-v and strain

Interpenetrating space, around Thy Sun and home again.

It is too much—the driveshaft moans—and all the angeljets are loose;

Twenty billion miles of thrust has given them fair excuse.

The perfect dark of God outside: the black of blacks that baffles sight

The mystic void, infinity, the Ancient of all Days—at Night.

Here’s Ferguson relieving me. Three years gone by since his home pass:

His wife’s back there with both their kids; an outdome domicile on Mars.

He yearns towards his planetfall ... and who of us can blame the man?

It’s been a long and homesick time since his contracted time began.

There’s none on any world for me, no-one to fly to, fast or slow,

At least since Mia Chong went on to Thee, Lord, thirty years ago.

And since that time I’ve found Thy medium’s truly neither void nor ’cuum

But a flower of awe and grace, infinitude as a black bloom.

I recall Mkoko most, whose habitation now is space

And whose corpse, if found, could reignite the interstellar race.

God will not permit mankind to find him: and my work’s secure!