The Long War

neighbourhood?’
    She shook her head.
    Maggie sat in silence, letting the moment extend. ‘Very well. Here’s what you’re going to do. First of all, you are going to get your act together and make it clear to the Datum government that you are here. We’ll help you with that, and such details as ratifying property claims. Then you have a man in custody without trial, or any due process, and we need to sort that out. Look, to repeat: I’m not here with any mandate to police you. But we can help. And before all that, you’re going to let my ship’s doctor have a good look at the girl.’
    A few hours later Joe Mackenzie came out of the Hartmann house. Mac was in his fifties, grizzled, beaten up by a long career in emergency and battlefield medicine. He was old for a field posting, in fact; Maggie had helped him bend the regulations to have him at her side on this mission. This bright afternoon, the doctor’s expression was as dark as twilight.
    ‘You know, Maggie, sometimes there are no words . . . If I were to say that it could have been worse, you need to understand that even so I would like to spend some time alone in a room with the gentleman concerned and a baseball bat, knowing with surgical precision the right spots to hit—’
    It was at times like this that Maggie was glad she’d stuck to her career, never married, never had kids of her own, left the glorious burden of caring for children to her siblings, cousins, friends; she was happy to be an aunt, honorary or otherwise. ‘It’s OK, Mac.’
    ‘Well, no, it isn’t OK, not for that little girl, and may never be again. I’d prefer her to be sent to a Datum hospital for a full examination. At the least I want to take her up on to the ship for observation for a while.’
    Maggie nodded. ‘Let’s go meet the leaders of this joint.’
    They met in the mayor’s office. At Maggie’s side were Mac and Nathan Boss. Maggie had invited Robinson herself, and a few chosen citizens from the town meeting whom the mayor reckoned to be well-balanced and sensible, at least by the standards of this community, to consider the verdict.
    As they sat down, everybody looked to the Captain – looked to her as a saviour, she realized. Maggie cleared her throat. Time to step up to the plate, she thought.
    ‘For the record – and we are being recorded – this session is nothing more than a panel of inquiry. Judicial processes can follow as necessary. I have no policing role here. But I have taken it upon myself, at the request of the mayor of the town, to ascertain fairly all the facts of the matter.
    ‘I’ll summarize what I’ve been told; the facts are apparently not being denied. A week ago Roderick Bacon plied with drugs Angela Hartmann, a girl of nine years old, the daughter of Raymond Hartmann and Daphne Hartmann. Hearing the girl cry out, her father, Ray Hartmann, rushed to her room and saw Bacon with her. The girl was vomiting, fitting. Hartmann pulled the man away, handed the girl to her mother, and then beat Bacon, dragged him out of the house, and set about him again, causing, after a minute or two, his death. The neighbours, alerted by the screams, told us that Bacon was pleading for his life, saying that “a lurid angel” made him do it, made him want to give this “pure child” the gift of his own “inner light” . . . You get the picture.
    ‘In the absence of a lawyer I’ve had my XO, Commander Nathan Boss, take a personal statement from Hartmann about the events of that night, and also a statement by Bacon’s wife. And according to the wife, before the crime Bacon had been out processing a harvest of the apparently psychoactive flowers endemic in the woods hereabouts. He ran a side business, of dubious legality, selling the stuff in stepwise worlds . . .’
    Maggie stopped there. She wished she’d had better training for something like this. She looked around at the others in the room. ‘For the record the child will be cared for overnight on the Benjamin Franklin , under the care of Dr. Mackenzie. I’ll invite the girl’s mother to spend the night with her daughter; I’ll send a crewman down to escort her up to the ship. Meanwhile – well, Bacon is dead, and Ray Hartmann is in custody.
    ‘I think I understand the feelings of all involved in this. I’m no lawyer, I’m no judge, but I can give you my personal assessment. I have to say that Bacon was guilty, in any reasonable sense of the word. He knowingly exposed