Minerva the Liar, page 27
Gasps could be heard throughout the courtroom. Bad Touch frowned. Of course they would be surprised. They regarded him as little more than an automaton, a tool. To them, his experiencing uncertainty would be like a robot having a midlife crisis.
Gentille nodded at him. She considered asking another question but could see in his body language that the homunculus was just on the verge of saying more, so she waited for him to continue.
“I am happy to have employment. That’s not it at all. But I have my doubts about Reality Injuries as a theory.”
“Really?” Gentille prompted.
Bad Touch nodded. “It just doesn’t make any sense. Reality always repairs itself. It always finds a way to offset what was done to it. Yes, you can end up on a different strain of reality than you were originally on. Yes, worlds and people can collide who were never meant to occupy the same space. That’s all true. But the laws of the universe hold fast. There is no destroying them. There is no injuring them. I only measure movement – or displacement, if you will. I do not measure injury. And to call it injury all of these years has been a great disservice to science.”
“So you’re saying that my client didn’t actually hurt anything when she moved reality? When she bent it?”
Bad Touch nodded. “No, she didn’t injure anything. She simply moved a few things around.”
Murmurs spread throughout the crowd. Cloche banged her gavel on her desk. “Quiet,” she admonished, “or I’m not only closing the doors but kicking you all out.”
That did the trick. The room hushed.
Minerva noted that the magistrate was quite pale. She’d been relatively unflappable for the entire proceedings. The judge had sat poised and unmoved and had also notably tolerated quite a bit of ambient noise during the trial from those who watched. But the words of the homunculus had clearly perturbed her deeply and tested her patience.
“Really?” Gentille asked. “And in your opinion, would it be possible to move it back?”
Bad Touch considered this. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It’s never been done.”
“But we don’t know for sure, do we?”
“I suppose not,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Touch,” Gentille concluded. “No further questions.”
Minerva Takes the Stand
“The prosecution would like to call its final witness,” Punit said.
“Proceed,” the judge said.
“Ms. Cantor,” Punit said.
As Minerva rose and walked to the witness stand, she felt more at ease than she had for several days. Bad Touch’s testimony had been the first real coup they’d had in her defense.
Minerva had thought it peculiar when she’d first found out that the prosecution wanted to call her as their witness, but Gentille told her that it was a game that Punit often played with defendants, a tactic she used to psyche them out. “It’s to make you feel that your case is so hopeless that your testimony will build theirs up. That sort of thing,” she explained.
Normally, defendants declined. They either testified in the defense portion or not at all.
But Minerva had opted to accept Punit’s invitation. “I want to let her know we’re not afraid,” she had said to Gentille.
“You know,” her lawyer had said, “I think this is the first legal decision you’ve made that I’ve really respected.”
“I’m not making a huge mistake, am I?” Minerva had asked.
“I think it’s the one thing you’re doing right,” Gentille had said. She pointed out that they weren’t calling any other witnesses for the defense, that Minerva would have been the only one to testify on her behalf as it was, so it was the same order of witnesses anyway.
“Just this is the power move version,” Minerva had observed, and Gentille had agreed.
It was a great time for a power move. As Minerva was sworn in, she felt as though she were rallying off Bad Touch’s strong testimony during Gentille’s cross-examination.
“Please state your name for the record.”
Minerva said her name. She’d heard it said that people universally love the sound of their own name more than just about anything else. You could see it on brain scans, research studies said. Parts of the brain would light up to demonstrate this.
If she thought really hard, she could just barely remember a time when that was true, when she loved the sound of her own name. It had to have been when she was a little girl. Somewhere along the way, however, it had stopped feeling good to hear her own name. Perhaps her name had been associated with too many stressful experiences. Too much shame, too much disappointment.
She’d had a friend who was fond of responding, “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” It was a joke, but as Minerva sat there on the witness stand waiting for the questioning to begin, she wondered if there weren’t some truth to it. Could other people wear out your name? Could they make hearing your own name an anxiety-provoking experience instead of an enjoyable one?
She certainly thought so. She noted as she said her name for the record that she had reached the point where it made her wince when even she said it.
She had expected a barrage of questions from Punit. An onslaught.
But the prosecutor was standing there studying her, not saying anything.
“Your question, prosecutor,” Judge Cloche prompted.
Punit nodded slowly, as though Cloche had said something profound.
“Are you sorry?” Punit asked.
“Sorry?”
“Are you sorry for what you did?”
“I… I’m innocent,” Minerva said. She shot a glance to Gentille hoping that she would object but noted the defense lawyer was filing her nails.
“Are you saying that the other witnesses are liars?”
Objection, badgering the witness, Minerva’s brain screamed. This would never happen on Law & Order.
In the real courtroom before her, no one objected. Her defense attorney barely paid any attention to the proceedings. The judge was listening attentively, as she had been the entire trial, but no emotion showed on her face.
Minerva bit her lower lip. “I’m not saying they’re liars. That’s their truth.”
“And your truth?”
“It’s different,” Minerva said.
“There’s a special word for someone who insists on having their own truth, regardless of whether that lines up with other people’s truth or with reality,” Punit said. “You’re a liar.”
“Prosecutor, that’s not a question,” Minerva replied.
Yet the court was unmoved. No one was coming to her rescue. She found herself wishing she could reshape reality again. That she could just cross her fingers behind her back and make it so this entire ordeal had never happened.
She wouldn’t have to be back in the big house with dozens of boyfriends. She would be happy with a smaller life, settling down with one or two of them. She was okay with reality picking companions for her, so long as it didn’t pick Chad. The one thing she’d learned from the past few months was that life with Chad wasn’t as good as she’d been trying to believe it was.
If only she could do it one more time, cross her fingers and bend the truth – undo this mess.
Minerva felt the crowd stir. Of course. The telepaths knew what she was thinking. Like always. They’d been listening to her private ruminations all trial, after all.
It was ironic, she thought, as she sat there feeling the intensity of so many eyes on her, watching her, listening to both her public testimony and what should be private thoughts. She was on trial for bending the truth, and now the truth was her only option.
There was nowhere to hide. To lie before such an assembly would be like trying to claim you were wearing a fur coat when those you stood before could clearly see you were naked. It had only worked for the emperor in the fairy tale because he’d had leverage. Power.
And even then, a small child had managed to break through those defenses and point out the obvious.
The power to lie was gone; all that was left to her was the truth.
She hoped it would be enough.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said, and even as she heard herself speak the words aloud, she knew that a legal expert would scream at her to shut up, that she was incriminating herself, ruining her chances at any sort of reasonable defense, even on appeal.
“I didn’t know I was a truthshaper,” she continued. “I didn’t know truthshapers existed, that someone could even do that.”
“You never suspected something was off? How could you not notice the energy flowing through your body or the ways that things would just change?” Punit pressed her.
“I didn’t at first,” Minerva said. “At first, it was easy to dismiss. I thought I was imagining things. My memory has never been all that good. I just assumed I had gotten things wrong. That I was remembering things wrong.”
“But surely it reached a point where you noticed,” Punit said.
Minerva shrugged. “Well, sorta.”
“Sorta?”
“I knew something weird was going on, but I didn’t know exactly what. And I wasn’t sure that it was coming from me,” Minerva said, but she felt doubt as she said this.
The crowd’s energy rippled as telepaths noted the stray doubt passing through.
Minerva sighed, knowing she’d have to address it. “Again,” she said. “Not at first.”
“But you did figure it out eventually?” Punit pressed.
Minerva nodded. “But I didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“Why not?”
“Because then I’d have to do something about it. And I had no idea where to even start.”
“Couldn’t you have asked for help?” Punit asked.
“Who would I ask?”
Punit clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “Very good, Ms. Cantor. The ignorance defense. You say you lacked resources and knowledge. That you had no awareness of your condition. You think that makes you innocent and that the court should take pity on you.”
“That’s pretty much it, yes.”
“You’re so close, Ms. Cantor. But ‘so close’ doesn’t cut it in a court of law,” Punit said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You were warned. Change Patterson came to see you specifically for that reason. And you ignored him. Rosie Drake, same story. She even told you what you were… and what did you do? You pursued her and her lover sexually, tried to subdue them against their will, by chasing them into dreams where their defenses were lower. And even that wasn’t good enough. You had to go and change the course of history.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Minerva said.
“Why did you do it anyway?” Punit asked.
“Do what?”
“Why did you form the Psychic State?” Punit said.
“It was an accident. A complete accident. I made some throwaway comment about politics, and my fingers acted on their own.”
Punit gave her an incredulous look. “Your fingers acted on their own?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Minerva said. “But it was starting to happen involuntarily. My body would lie before my brain even knew what was going on.”
“So you’re saying you lost control?” Punit said.
Minerva nodded. “I think my body became addicted to lying,” she admitted. “It might sound weird, but I’ve almost been having… withdrawals.” She bowed her head. “It’s been strange being held here, not able to shape the truth anymore. It’s like part of me was amputated.”
“It’s still there,” Punit said. “Just deadened. Constrained. Dormant.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“So,” Punit said, “your defense is that you didn’t know what you were doing at first, and by the time you did, you had completely lost control?”
“Yes,” Minerva said. “That’s the truth.”
“The truth about the lies?” Punit asked.
It was a cheap shot, intended to wound. This would never happen on Law & Order, Minerva thought again. But she didn’t fight it. “Yes, the truth about the lies. I know it’s not much of a defense, but the court should find me not guilty.”
“But you say that you can’t control yourself. You say that your body lies before your brain catches up. Given this, aren’t you basically admitting to the court that given a chance, you’re going to reoffend?”
Minerva froze. She didn’t know what to say to that. “Surely there must be rehabilitation programs. Places where I could learn how to control this, where I could turn it into a strength rather than my weakness.”
“Rather than a threat to society,” Punit corrected her.
“Sure,” Minerva said.
“Your honor,” Gentille said, rising suddenly. “May I approach the bench?”
Cloche allowed this, and Minerva watched curiously as both lawyers clustered close to the judge.
“I’d like to request an audience in chambers,” Gentille said.
“On what grounds?” Punit challenged her.
“So that the proper steps towards a plea deal can be reached.”
A plea deal? The hair stood up on the back of Minerva’s neck.
“No plea deal,” she said to the attorneys and the judge, interrupting their impromptu benchside conference. “I’m innocent.”
“But what you were describing… entering into a rehabilitation program, learning how to control your powers, integrating into our society… all of that could happen, and quite easily, if you would just enter into a plea agreement and throw yourself on the mercy of the court,” Gentille said.
“But that would be lying,” Minerva said.
Punit raised an eyebrow. Minerva didn’t have to be a telepath to understand what was going on in the prosecutor’s mind. The liar was suddenly concerned about lying. Well, let her gawk.
“I’m not going to plead guilty when I’m innocent,” Minerva said.
Cloche sighed. “Counselor,” she said to Gentille, “your request is denied. It appears that your client is not amenable to this course of action at this time.”
Gentille’s eyes narrowed, and her jaw tensed. “Yes, your honor,” she said.
“No further questions,” Punit said, smiling broadly.
The floor was yielded to Gentille. She sat in her chair at the defense table with her arms folded across her chest. She didn’t even rise to speak.
“Your witness, Gentille,” Judge Cloche prompted her.
Gentille shook her head. “I’m done with her,” she pronounced.
Minerva’s stomach fell. She felt abandoned by her lawyer once again. Perhaps she’s just confident in our case, Minerva thought, trying to reassure herself, but she didn’t believe it at all. The days when she could convince herself of something that untrue were over.
There was very little new in Punit’s closing argument. It was shorter than Minerva expected it would be, perhaps 10 minutes. The prosecutor laid out the same series of events she’d detailed in the witness testimony, emphasizing the most damning facts: That Minerva had bent the truth repeatedly, in a multitude of ways, and continued to do so after being repeatedly warned.
“But I don’t have to tell you this,” she said, concluding the main narrative. “You’ve been here, you’ve listened. You know what she’s done. Even Minerva admits it. But what you don’t know, well, that’s even worse.”
The judge leaned forward with great interest at these words.
“Even as Minerva Cantor sat on the witness stand, telling you that she wanted to be rehabilitated, that she shouldn’t be held accountable for what she’d done because she couldn’t control herself, her inner thoughts told a different story.”
Minerva felt a pang of confusion. She’d stuck to the truth. What on Earth was Punit talking about?
“As she sat on that witness stand, she kept thinking to herself that she wished she could lie this entire trial away. That she could just get rid of any accountability or responsibility for what she’d done. The only thing stopping her was the fact that her powers don’t work here in the Coterie. If she could have bent the truth and freed herself, she would have done it several times.”
Minerva lowered her head. It was true. And awfully damning when spoken aloud instead of thought silently. The difference between an urge that was given into and one that was resisted was huge normally, but telepathic scrutiny had a way of shrinking the size of such a distinction down to a rounding error.
It was much easier to claim pure intentions than to actually have them. You wouldn’t know it listening to people defend themselves and their mistakes, but people rarely had purely good or purely bad intentions. Instead, most people had a mix of good and bad intentions in just about every situation.
Normally, if bad intentions made up a minority of the picture, they had a way of receding into the background and not mattering, unspoken, overshadowed by voiced good intentions and extenuating circumstances. But in a telepathic court, they stayed detectible, impossible to forget.
“The defense is asking the court to take a chance and have mercy on a defendant who won’t even admit that what she did was wrong. She wants the court to invest the time and resources to rehabilitate her but won’t admit to her guilt. Do you see a problem here? I do.”
Punit shook her head. “Ms. Cantor can’t have it both ways. If she can’t admit her guilt, then the only sensible thing left for the court to do is to convict her and punish her appropriately. Not rehabilitate her but punish her. Ms. Cantor has demonstrated that rehabilitation would be wasted on her. Effective rehabilitation takes humility, a willingness to admit you’re wrong. There is no rehabilitation without accountability. If Ms. Cantor can’t take accountability now, in a situation that is this dire and this stark, what hope would she have in an informal rehabilitation setting?”
