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BOOK FOUR
"MORITURI TE SALUTAMUS"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
T
he scholars of Newton wore a perpetual puzzled expression that an agro-
world student once compared to a cow who had just had an inseminator's
burly fist jammed up its behind. As the Tribunal neared its opening, Sten saw
the puzzled look jump to open, smiling surprise. Kilgour said it was as if the
fist had been replaced by the real thing.
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Never in its dusty, academic history had the thousands of professors who
toiled on the university world been paid so much attention.
When word was purposefully leaked of the events about to unfold, livie crews
from all over the Empire raced to Newton to beat the expected privy-council
crackdown. Newton's administration was nearly buried by requests for
permission to attend, not just from news teams, but from political experts,
legal scholars, historians, and the merely curious.
Sten, Alex, and Mahoney scrambled like mad beings to set up a security
system to sift through the millions of requests. The task was especially
difficult, because the whole idea was to give maximum exposure to the
Tribunal's proceedings. They managed to get it all in hand plus hundreds of
other details before the public opening.
Meanwhile, Dean Blythe, his faculty, and the millions of students who
attended the many colleges that made up the university system, were besieged
for interviews. No dull fact, boring reaction, or drab bit of color was too lowly
for the news-hungry media. For a short time every resident of Newton was a
livie star.
The information hunger was particularly intense, because although Sr. Ecu
had revealed the general purposes of the Tribunal sitting in judgment of the
privy council he had kept the nature of the charges secret to all but the
judges. Everyone believed the bill of indictment involved the AM2. In other
words, conspiracy to defraud. Sr. Ecu could only imagine the surprise when
the real charges were announced: Conspiracy to murder.
Sr. Ecu had chosen Newton because of its long history and reputation for
impartiality. He had expected, however, tremendous difficulty in getting
Dean Blythe to agree to host the Tribunal. Instead, once the security
precautions had been detailed, the agreement was quickly reached. It helped
that Dean Blythe had been an Imperial general before he had taken up the life
of a scholastic. More importantly, one of the first places the privy council had
chosen for its budget cuts was Newton. Those cuts had been followed by a
host of others as the Imperials trimmed and trimmed to keep the economic
ship afloat.
A hefty donation of the AM2 Sten had stolen smoothed the rest of the way.
A huge auditorium was quickly prepared. A long court bench was installed on
the stage for the members of the Tribunal. The backstage area was converted
into offices for the legal support group. Outside and inside, potential security
danger areas were plugged. Teams of guards were assigned to the livie-crew
techs responsible for installing communication lines.
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Meanwhile the Bhor fighting ships spread out around the Jura System and its
capital world of Newton, or began patrolling areas believed most likely for
attack routes.
In the midst of all that, the members of the Tribunal and their retinue
arrived. Sten and Alex personally greeted each being and assigned the
bodyguards who would shadow them from that moment on.
Sr. Ecu had chosen three beings to sit as judges over the privy council. Despite
the great danger involved, he had no shortage of volunteer candidates. The
depression triggered by the privy council's actions had become so deep that
many systems feared for their own survival far more than they did Imperial
reprisal.
The three systems he eventually drew from were among the most respected in
the Empire as were the beings who would form the Tribunal.
The first to arrive was Warin, from the great agricultural worlds of Ryania.
He was a big, ponderous thinking being whose heavily bone-plated skull hid a
three-brain mental system capable of sifting through mountains of conflicting
information. Warin was slow and to the point, but he always arrived with
plenty of thinking ammunition. He was also completely open-minded as far as
the crimes alleged against the privy council.
The second was Rivas, from the distant frontier territory of Jono. Rivas was a
slender, quick-witted human, noted for his ability to find middle ground
where little existed an important, much honored skill in the wilds of Jono,
where there sometimes seemed more opposing viewpoints than people. He
had warned Sr. Ecu that, although he despised the current actions of the privy
council, he did not necessarily believe that they were all acting out of selfish
motives. His opinion of Kyes, for example, was quite good. His previous
dealings with the being had all gone well and had shown Kyes to be
honorable.
The final member was perhaps the most respected. Her name was Apus, and
she was the Queen Mother of Fernomia. She was very old and cared not a bit
that her title carried no royal authority. Her many daughters and
granddaughters oversaw the billions of females and few million males who
made up the populations of the Fernomia Cluster. Despite her age, her health
was excellent, her six spindly legs sturdy, and her mandibles as fluid and
flexible as when she had been young. She confessed to Sr. Ecu that she
despised the members of the privy council especially the Kraa twins, who
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