The Shift Key by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page B

through her papers in search of today’s court schedule when memory came to her aid.
    Of course! How could she not know Basil Goodsir? Wasn’t he the person Vic Draycock kept accusing of planning to break up the library at Weyharrow Court?
    The magistrates were conferring with the clerk of the court, as was usual when they needed to know the extent of their legal powers. Why, though, should they do so for such a trivial case? A teenage boy was arraigned before them, charged with stealing a sheep from his father. The latter was estranged from his mother and now lived with another woman on the farm where the boy had been raised. The father’s evidence had been riddled with vindictiveness andcontradictions, while the son’s defence had been – just a second … Jenny shuffled her notes, for she had taken down the last lot more or less subconsciously.
    Yes! It sprang back from lines of neat shorthand. His defence was that the sheep he was alleged to have stolen was one he had been given, a stray lamb he himself had tended and even named, that knew him and came when called. On any other day but Thursday the
Chronicle
might well have found space for it as a human-interest item …
    Turning, she caught the eye of a police constable who had earlier given evidence. They shrugged and smiled at one another, both at a loss to know why the magistrates were making heavy weather of a case that ought not to have been brought at all.
    And then, quite unexpectedly, Basil Goodsir exploded.
    Leaping to his feet, he roared, ‘He stole a sheep! That violates the sacred laws of property! I say he must be hanged, right now, in public!’
    His co-magistrates, and the clerk, strove in vain to quiet him.
    ‘I won’t be silent!’ he raved on. ‘Where in God’s name is the executioner?
Take this wicked fellow out and hang him by the neck until he’s dead!
Then let his body rot upon the gallows! To steal from your own son – I mean your father – is the most heinous crime conceivable! It’s worse than murder, worse than blasphemy!’
    An awed silence had by now pervaded the court, apart from certain officials who were conferring softly by the door through which the accused were brought in. By degrees even their voices hushed, and all eyes turned on Basil.
    Who gradually seemed to realize what he’d said.
    ‘But stealing sheep …’ he forced out under that massed accusing gaze. ‘I mean: it is a crime that calls for hanging, isn’t it? I mean: I know it is!’
    Dead pause.
    ‘Well, it always used to be …’
    ‘Adjourn!’ shouted the senior magistrate. ‘Adjourn! Get this court cleared!’
    Jenny did not obey the order, but sat white-faced with pencil poised above the next sheet of her notebook, convinced that what she had just heard was as chimerical as her memory of Hal Awnham’s speech last night.
    Coming up, the usher – who had grown friendly with her since she joined the
Chronicle
– said chaffingly, ‘Pity that’s too late to make the paper this week, isn’t it? I mean, what a story for you! “Local JP goes off his rocker in public! Demands death penalty for stealing sheep!”’
    ‘Even though you heard him say it,’ Jenny whispered, ‘even though everybody else did, too, I wouldn’t stand a prayer of making my editor believe it. Not after what I almost did to him this morning …’
    Jumping up, she went to drown her sorrows in a pint of lunch.
    But when she came back to the office, Ian Tenterwell met her with a brow like thunder.
    ‘Were you in court when Mr Goodsir lost his marbles?’
    ‘Of course!’ – raising one hand as to defend herself.
    ‘And you didn’t phone me right away?’
    ‘I thought you wouldn’t believe me!’ Jenny cried.
    ‘Christ!’ He seemed not to have heard. ‘We had a reporter on the spot and still we had to get the news from someone who phoned it in on spec! Christ, there would have been time to make the front page over! With so many witnesses …!’
    Drawing a deep breath,