The colonists waited as the men from the ship taped a metal plate behind each person’s right ear. Even the servants in their prison and the men from the ship were fitted with them, and then the trial began, each person testifying directly from his memory into the minds of every other person.

  The court first heard the testimony of the men from the ship. The people closed their eyes and saw men in a huge starship, pushing buttons and speaking rapidly into computers. Finally expressions of relief, and four men entering a skyship to go down.

  The people saw that it was not their world, for here there were no survivors. Instead there was just a castle, just a king and queen, and when they were dead, just fallow fields and the ruins of a village abandoned many years before.

  They saw the same scene again and again. Only Abbey Colony had any human beings left alive.

  Then they watched as bodies of kings and queens on other worlds were cut open. A chamber within the queen split wide, and there in a writhing mass of life lived a thousand tiny fetuses, many-armed and bleeding in the cold air outside the womb. Thirty years of gestation, and then two by two they would have continued to conquer and rape other worlds in an unstoppable epidemic across the galaxy.

  But in the womb, it was stopped, and the fetuses were sprayed with a chemical and soon they lay still and dried into shriveled balls of gray skin.

  The testimony of the men from the ship ended, and the court probed the memories of the colonists:

  A screaming from the sky, and a blast of light, and then the king and queen descending without machinery. But the devices follow quickly, and the people are beaten by invisible whips and forced into a pen that they watched grow from nothing into a dark, tiny room that they barely fit into, standing.

  Heavy air, impossible to breathe. A woman fainting, then a man, and the screams and cries deafening. Sweat until bodies are dry, heat until bodies are cold, and then a trembling through the room.

  A door, and then the king, huger than any had thought, his many arms revolting. Vomit on your back from the man behind, then your own vomit, and your bladder empties in fear. The arms reach, and screams are all around, screams in all throats, screams until all voices are silenced. Then one man plucked writhing from the crowd, the door closed again, darkness back, and the stench and heat and terror greater than before.

  Silence. And in the distance a drawn-out cry of agony.

  Silence. Hours. And then the open door again, the king again, the scream again.

  The third time the king is in the door and out of the crowd walks one who is not screaming, whose shirt is caked with stale vomit but who is not vomiting, whose eyes are calm and whose lips are at peace and whose eyes shine. The Shepherd, though known then by another name.

  He walks to the king and reaches out his hand, and he is not seized. He is led, and he walks out, and the door closes.

  Silence. Hours. And still no scream.

  And then the pen is gone, into the nothing it seemed to come from, and the air is clear and the sun is shining and the grass is green. There is only one change: the castle, rising high and delicately and madly in an upward tumble of spires and domes. A moat of acid around it. A slender bridge.

  And then back to the village, all of them. The houses are intact, and it is almost possible to forget.

  Until the Shepherd walks through the village streets. He is still called by the old name—what was the name? And the people speak to him, ask him, what is in the castle, what do the king and queen want, why were we imprisoned, why are we free.

  But the Shepherd only points to a baker. The man steps out, the Shepherd touches him on the temple with his crook, and the man smiles and walks toward the castle.

  Four strong men likewise sent on their way, and a boy, and another man, and then the people begin to murmur and shrink back from the Shepherd. His face is still beautiful, but they remember the scream they heard in the pen. They do not want to go to the castle. They do not trust the empty smiles of those who go.

  And then the Shepherd comes again, and again, and limbs are lost from living men and women. There are plans. There are attacks. But always the Shepherd’s crook or the Shepherd’s unseen whip stops them. Always they return crippled to their houses. And they wait. And they hate.

  And there are many who wish they had died in the first terrified moments of the attack. But never once does the Shepherd kill.

  The testimony of the people ended, and the court let them pause before the trial went on. They needed time to dry their eyes of the tears their memories shed. They needed time to clear their throats of the thickness of silent cries.

  And then they closed their eyes again and watched the testimony of the Shepherd. This time there were not many different views; they all watched through one pair of eyes:

  The pen again, crowds huddled in terror. The door opens, as before. Only this time all of them walk toward the king in the door, and all of them hold out a hand, and all of them feel a cold tentacle wrap around and lead them from the pen.

  The castle grows closer, and they feel the fear of it. But also there is a quietness, a peace that is pressed down on the terror, a peace that holds the face calm and the heart to its normal beat.

  The castle. A narrow bridge, and acid in a moat. A gate opens. The bridge is crossed with a moment of vertigo when the king seems about to push, about to throw his prey into the moat.

  And then the vast dining hall, and the queen at the console, shaping the world according to the pattern that will bring her children to life.

  You stand alone at the head of the table, and the king and queen sit on high stools and watch you. You look at the table and see enough to realize why the others screamed. You feel a scream rise in your throat, knowing that you, and then all the others, will be torn like that, will be half-devoured, will be left in a pile of gristle and bone until all are gone.

  And then you press down the fear, and you watch.

  The king and queen raise and lower their arms, undulating them in syncopated patterns. They seem to be conversing. Is there meaning in the movements?

  You will find out. You also extend an arm, and try to imitate the patterns that you see.

  They stop moving and watch you.

  You pause for a moment, unsure. Then you undulate your arms again.

  They move in a flurry of arms and soft sounds. You also imitate the soft sounds.

  And then they come for you. You steel yourself, vow that you will not scream, knowing that you will not be able to stop yourself.

  A cold arm touches you and you grow faint. And then you are led from the room, away from the table, and it grows dark.

  They keep you for weeks. Amusement. You are kept alive to entertain them when they grow weary of their work. But as you imitate them you begin to learn, and they begin to teach you, and soon a sort of stammering language emerges, they speaking slowly with their loose arms and soft voices, you with only two arms trying to imitate, then initiate words. The strain of it is killing, but at last you tell them what you want to tell them, what you must tell them before they become bored and look at you again as meat.

  You teach them how to keep a herd.

  And so they make you a shepherd, with only one duty: to give them meat in a never-ending supply. You have told them you can feed them and never run out of manflesh, and they are intrigued.

  They go to their surgical supplies and give you a crook so there will be no pain or struggle, and an ax for the butchery and healing, and on a piece of decaying flesh they show you how to use them. In your hand they implant the key that commands every hinge in the village. And then you go into the colony and proceed to murder your fellowmen bit by bit in order to keep them all alive.

  You do not speak. You hide from their hatred in silence. You long for death, but it does not come, because it cannot come. If you died, the colony would die, and so to save their lives you continue a life not worth living.

  And then the castle falls and you are finished and you hide the ax and crook in a certain place in the earth and wait for them all to kill you.

  The trial ended.

  The people pulled the plates from behind their ears, and blinked unbelieving at the afternoon sunlight. They looked at the beautiful face of the Shepherd and their faces wore unreadable expressions.

  “The verdict of the court,” a man from the ship read as the others moved through the crowd collecting witness plates, “is that the man called Shepherd is guilty of gross atrocities. However, these atrocities were the sole means of keeping alive those very persons against whom the atrocities were perpetrated. Therefore, the man called Shepherd is cleared of all charges. He is not to be put to death, and instead shall be honored by the people of Abbey Colony at least once a year and helped to live as long as science and prudence can keep a man alive.”

  It was the verdict of the court, and despite their twenty-two years of isolation the people of Abbey Colony would never disobey Imperial law.

  Weeks later the work of the men from the ship was finished. They returned to the sky. The people governed themselves as they had before.

  Somewhere between stars three of the men in the ship gathered after supper. “A shepherd, of all things,” said one.

  “A bloody good one, though,” said another.

  The fourth man seemed to be asleep. He was not, however, and suddenly he sat up and cried out, “My God, what have we done!”

  Over the years Abbey Colony thrived, and a new generation grew up strong and uncrippled. They told their children’s children the story of their long enslavement, and freedom was treasured; freedom and strength and wholeness and life.

  And every year, as the court had commanded, they went to a certain house in the village carrying gifts of grain and milk and meat. They lined up outside the door, and one by one entered to do honor to the Shepherd.

  They walked by the table where he was propped so he could see them. Each came in and looked into the beautiful face with the gentle lips and the soft eyes. There were no large strong hands now, however. Only a head and a neck and a spine and ribs and a loose sac of flesh that pulsed with life. The people looked over his naked body and saw the scars. Here had been a leg and a hip, right? Yes, and here he had once had genitals, and here shoulders and arms.

  How does he live? asked the little ones, wondering.

  We keep him alive, the older ones answered. The verdict of the court, they said year after year. We’ll keep him as long as science and prudence can keep a man alive.

  Then they set down their gifts and left, and at the end of the day the Shepherd was moved back to his hammock, where year after year he looked out the window at the weathers of the sky. They would, perhaps, have cut out his tongue, but since he never spoke, they didn’t think of it. They would, perhaps, have cut out his eyes, but they wanted him to see them smile.

  Happy Head

  A man may smile and smile—and still be a villain!

  I got into Salt Lake City at 5:00 a.m., tired from a stiff ride on the airplane and only three hours of sleep anyway. Lieutenant Kimball of the SLCPD met me at the airport, and I managed to smile.

  He didn’t.

  “Juster Benson,” he said as soon as he was sure I was the right man, “to you people in the capital at Winnipeg this is probably just small time, but this is big around here, and we need an answer to give to the press. Fast.”

  I sighed silently. Murders were ugly enough without the problems involved when famous men died.

  Lieutenant Kimball kept filling me in on how important the case was—neglecting to tell me even so much as who had died—as we flew in a police skimmer to the city of Granger, second largest in the state of Utah, though no one can really tell where Salt Lake leaves off and Granger begins. Merrill Motors is the city’s chief industry, since they still lead the field in the manufacture of hydrogen motors and passenger skimmers, and I assumed that the murder was somehow connected with Merrill.

  Wrong. We passed right by the airlot where Merrill employees parked fourteen stories deep, and went on to a much smaller building. Happy Head, Incorporated.

  And suddenly I woke up. “Happy Head?” I asked, incredulous.

  Lieutenant Kimball nodded. “I told you it was important.”

  I almost laughed. “Important hell,” I said. “I hardly knew that Happy Head still existed. But they make prebrains, Lieutenant.”

  “I know that,” he said, annoyed to think I thought he needed to be told.

  “I know you know,” I answered. “But this can complicate hell out of the trial.”

  “Well, you’re the juster,” he said.

  Talk about pointing out the obvious—I know I’m a juster.

  “Who’s dead?” I asked.

  “Rodney Miner,” he answered. “President of Happy Head.”

  Silently I wished that I had been out of town when the call came through on the coder. But when they called, I was home, and a juster can’t let sleet nor snow nor gloom of night and all that. Justice must be done.

  But Happy Head, of all places. They invented the prebrain, and even though IBM, Xerox, and AT&T now dominated the market (did Happy Head even manufacture anymore?), Happy Head, Incorporated, still held all the patents. So Xerox’s $27,000 economy model prebrain with the photographic full-color recall feature and IBM’s DoubleMind Masterplex prebrain which sold for over $200,000 a whack and AT&T’s ThinkSpeak prebrain with the long-distance quick-speak feature which was sweeping the country at only $49,000 each—all of them paid tidy royalties to Happy Head.

  And Happy Head’s president was dead.

  I stroked the buttons on my magic hand all the way into the building. After all, it was Happy Head’s scientists who had developed the technique that kept me employed at a reasonable salary.

  And suddenly I realized that I had inadvertently switched my prebrain to total recall on Happy Head. No wonder thoughts about the company kept racing through my head! I switched over to an undercurrent memory of the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Barber’s third piano concerto, and immediately I calmed down. A juster has to remain calm, and music did it for me.

  “This way,” said a clerk, and so we went that way.

  And finally came to a very ordinary hundred-thousand-dollar office—just what you’d expect from a man who had become very rich without acquiring any taste along the way.

  “This is Mr. Miner’s office,” Lieutenant Kimball said. A youngish man, about two meters and thirty kilos (who can estimate how much skinny people weigh?) stood up behind a desk and said, “Are you the juster?”

  “Juster Benson,” I introduced myself, offering my left hand. My magic hand—and he punched the query pattern on my terminal buttons. I have a neurotic feeling that I can sense the transmissions from my magic hand to Winnipeg and the answer coming back. I can’t really, of course. But I still tingled.

  “Satisfied?” I asked.

  “Completely,” he answered. “I’m Sally Wand, Mr. Miner’s secretary and friend.”

  So Miner was gay. Oh well, I thought. Odd that during the government’s tremendous Repopulation Program homosexuality was still legal. None of my business, though.

  Sally Wand, dressed fit to kill in a tweed suit that came tight at his knees, led us into Miner’s office. Of course the body was still there—with a juster coming, no one had dared touch it.

  Miner, nearly bald and vain enough not to have done anything about it, was lying slumped over his desk. His right hand was lying on the button that apparently buzzed Sally in the outer office. A tremendous amount of blood had already dried on the floor, on the desk, and on Miner’s body. It had apparently all come from a dagger that still stuck through his throat. Whoever had stabbed him had not had to use much force—the blade was sharp. And the murderer had stood just behind and beside Miner—close. Miner must not have known what was coming, though he surely knew that the murderer was standing that close. Someone known and fairly trusted, then.

  It was easy to see where the dagger had come from. The walls were lined with a collection of primitive weapons—blunderbusses, sabers, M-1s, blowguns, and so forth. A hook at easy eye-level was empty. It undoubtedly had held the dagger.

  I continued to gaze around the room, and then closed my eyes and shifted to the recall mode. Justers are required to have an IQ of at least 150 without their prebrain. But we’re given some extras that even IBM’s DoubleMind can’t legally offer. Besides the hardware in my magic hand, I have an anomalizer judgment center that spots discrepancies and illogic. As I recalled the room in minute detail, the anomalizer hunted for anything that didn’t seem right. Nothing, at least nothing I was prepared to notice yet.

  There are a lot of misconceptions about justers, by the way, one of the silliest being the idea that our brains are completely replaced by microcomputers. That’s nonsense, of course—we use our own brains with a prebrain implant, just like everyone else. After all, the same facts that make prebrains desirable for laymen make them desirable for us: the human brain is still the most efficient memory storage unit around, and no computer has yet been developed that can duplicate human personality, common sense, emotion, and all that.

  All that a juster’s prebrain does is what everyone else’s prebrains do: it sorts out information as it comes in from the nervous system, and routes it into the brain’s memory storage system in an organized fashion, according to various categories inherent in the prebrain. Where the unaided brain “loses” memories in the labyrinth of RNA throughout the millions of brain cells, the prebrain organizes everything for total recall, and cross-indexes it by subject, person, chronology, and relative importance.

  A juster simply has some extra equipment. Like the anomalizer. And, of course, that most coveted of all devices, the sympathizer.

  Coveted, that is, by anyone who doesn’t have one. I, for one, am rather sick of tramping around inside other people’s memories, and if I didn’t believe that my work was important, I’d have given it up long ago. But as long as there are justers, I’ll be one, because I have the arrogant idea that I use the power more impartially and justly than a lot of other people would.