He Shot First Read online

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  The little cell block turned out to have an alarm.

  Bwaarp-bwaarp-bwaarp...bwaarp-bwaarp-bwaarp... Dan opened his eyes. He didn't smell smoke, so he assumed the alarm probably wasn't a fire alarm, but instead was meant to wake him up. He inspected the ceiling, squinted at the half-dozen square panels that lit the room. He couldn't see where the ugly dying-frog noise was coming from.

  He sat up, pushing the blanket aside. “I'm awake,” he said. The sound stopped. He got out of the cot, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He wished for coffee but all he got was a little paper-sealed plastic cup sitting on the tiny sink. At least it was a clean cup. He unwrapped it, filled it with lukewarm water from the tap, drank, replaced it. The paper wrapper he balled up tightly and, seeing no trash basket, set on the sink next to the cup. He wondered if they fed prisoners here, he'd had nothing to eat the night before and there was no breakfast in sight. His stomach let out a long, wailing gurgle at the thought.

  The other cot was empty. His cellmate was missing. Removed in the middle of the night? He hoped... um, what's-his-name... was okay.

  The room's door opened and three hawzai entered, two in hats and mantles and one not. Dan leapt the short distance to the chicken wire and jammed his fingers through it, gripping.

  “Did you bring food?” he asked. The trio stopped a couple of meters short of the cell.

  “At the courthouse, Dan,” the unmantled one said. “It didn't occur to us that humans were semi-continuous feeders until late last night, and by then it was too late to order from any of the places near the spaceport that cater to your species.”

  Dan hesitated, looking closely at the one who had spoken. “You look familiar,” he said.

  All three trilled.

  “I was with you in your cell, Dan,” the unmantled one said. “Kwazit, remember? I suppose we all look alike to you.” More trilling. Dan ground his teeth together behind his smiling lips.

  “This whole situation is disorienting,” he said, trying to save face. “If you're a cop, what were you doing in my cell?”

  “I'm a lawyer, Dan. Your lawyer. As such, I had the option to spend the evening in your cell familiarizing myself with you.”

  “And you didn't tell me?”

  “It worked out fine, I got a sense of you as a being, Dan. I've seen worse. Much worse, in fact,” Kwazit said.

  Something popped into Dan's mind from last night's conversation. “The cell is on camera, right? A client consulting with a lawyer is recorded by the police?”

  “It's all in the FAQ. Under the 'legal' heading,” the smaller officer said, waggling his head tentacle-antennae.

  Dan sighed and stepped back from the chicken wire.

  “Fine. Just take me to the food before my stomach eats itself.”

  They opened the cell's chicken wire door and Dan stepped out. He hesitated for a moment, waiting to be chained or handcuffed, but instead Kwazit took the lead, waving Dan after him with a flip of a tentacle. The two officers followed behind. They had no weapons in hand, and Dan couldn't positively swear any of the gadgets on the officers' belts were weapons. It doesn't matter, Dan decided. They have those stingers. He hadn't been planning a grand escape, but the combination of stingers and uncertainty made it easy to follow along peacefully. They led him through a minor maze of office corridors, a different way than the straightforward path from the front door to the cells Dan had been led through on the way in. Kwazit opened an unmarked door into the sunlight.

  The crowd noise hit Dan like a shockwave. The walkway from the jail building to the courthouse was a good forty meters long, with a curved rain shield three meters overhead. The sides were open, and at least a thousand ululating hawzai lined it.

  Some of the tentacles were waving short black truncheons overhead. A large number of them gripped obvious sidearms, several aimed at the open door.

  “Gah!” Dan blurted, and he backpedaled furiously. “They! Gun! Guns!” The larger officer slapped him across the back of the head with a meaty tentacle and he fell to his knees, then threw himself backwards onto his butt and tried to push himself away from the door with wild thrusts of his feet. The big cop blocked the way with his legs and stared down disdainfully. Kwazit turned around.

  “You need to come along,” he said. “Resistance will only harm your case.” Dan stopped thrashing. At least Kwazit's body blocked the line of fire through the door a bit.

  “They're waiting for me with guns. This isn't a trial, you're taking me to a lynching,” he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice with mixed success. “I'm not resisting. I'm trying to not get killed. Can't you drive me over in an armored car or something?” Kwazit stared at him, tentacle-antennae waggling furiously, chaotically.

  “To go forty meters? No. And nobody's going to kill you. Even if they did, it's all recorded and the killer would stand trial.” He reached a tentacle down to Dan. “Now stand up and come along before these two officers decide to put you in restraints and carry you. As a legal professional I can assure you that entering the courtroom like that will practically guarantee a conviction.”

  “This is ridiculous. Barbaric. You're going to expose me to vigilante killers? And what does how I enter the courthouse matter to what I'm guilty or innocent of?”

  “Vigilante killing, Dan? Really, that's what you're worried about? Isn't that what you did in the bar? And you were found to have been justified in that. Someone who shoots you on the way to the courthouse will hardly be able to claim self-defense. They'd certainly be convicted of a crime, probably premeditated murder. That's a shunning and disarming offense.”

  “That's not much comfort to a dead man,” Dan said. He took the tentacle reluctantly, allowed Kwazit to help him to his feet.

  “No, I suppose not. But it's the comfort available to you now so I suggest you take it with grace. Now walk with me,” Kwazit said, words abrupt and clipped, then turned and walked out onto the walkway. Dan forced himself to follow. The yells and trills rose in volume, battering him with waves of anger. He felt like his legs were a mile below him, shuddering along like clumsy roboticized sticks, knees shaking. He flinched as the gun barrels waved along his path; some of the holders pointed the weapons directly at him and shook them threateningly. Finally they reached the opposite side, and then they were inside again and the crowd noise was cut off by the heavy door.

  “God! How is that legal,” Dan said, back to the door, panting.

  “No hawzai can be denied the right to be armed, any time, any place, unless convicted of the commission of an unjustified killing, maiming, or similarly grave crime,” the smaller officer said with an air of recitation.

  “Do you want me to find you some fresh pants?” Kwazit asked him, voice gentle.

  Dan looked down at the dark urine stains still migrating down his legs, and felt a blush flood his cheeks.

  “Yeah,” he whispered, and followed Kwazit, docile as a kitten.

  The two police followed Kwazit and Dan to a small private room with its own bathroom. There was a plate of ham sandwiches on a small table near the door, Dan snatched one as he passed and had it half eaten by the time he entered the bathroom door across the room. Apparently, hawzit didn't shower but there was a small square box to stand in that flooded with steam, sort of a miniature sauna. It contained a round basin with an orange spongelike blob that he hoped was for body cleaning, because that's how he used it. Once he was sufficiently scrubbed, Dan stuck his head out of the opening.

  “Kwazit, did you find those clean pants?”

  Kwazit looked up from his seat, where he was reading something on a flexible tablet.

  “On the desk,” he said, and went back to his reading. Dan hesitated, then shrugged. He might not be an expert on hawzit, or any other nonhuman species, but he had been around enough to realize that body modesty wasn't universal. Even in some species that had it for themselves, it didn't extend to other species. He walked out and dressed.

  “Underwear would ha
ve been nice,” he said.

  “I had to stay with you since the trial is immanent,” Kwazit said, “so I had to send someone. He didn't realize that most humans like to wear clothes under their clothes. Sorry.”

  Dan slid his fingers around the inside of the waistband of the pants and was relieved to find a smartcloth thumb toggle. Smartclothes were common but not universal, especially in places like spaceport shops on alien worlds. Dan rested his thumb on the toggle pad until the pants began to adjust themselves. The hem let itself down and the waistband tightened until he had a comfortable fit.

  “So, now what happens, Kwazit?” Dan asked, sitting down in the other available chair in the room. The smaller of the two police reclined on a folding cot across the room from them, the larger one wasn't in sight. Dan assumed that one was outside the door. He'd rather have talked to Kwazit in private, but it didn't seem like privacy was a big deal here.

  “We wait until we're called. It shouldn't be long.”

  “Okay, but what happens? Can you tell me what I'm charged with yet?”

  “No, we'll have to wait for the panel to tell us that. I can guess,” Kwazit said.

  “Great, then guess.”

  “Possibly the bar's owner has made a complaint for his lost business following the incident. If that happens, I'll almost certainly be able to argue it down to a token percentage of his claim. More likely a question has been raised as to your fitness to be armed. After all, you're not a citizen or even a hawzai.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “You don't have a right to know, though anyone making a complaint can choose to reveal themselves in court if they wish to testify. It lends a little weight to an accusation to do that, so maybe you'll find out. More important than the identity of the being bringing the complaint is how you respond to it. You'll need to show that you have some sort of social consciousness, that you're aware of your responsibilities as a sentient being and a guest in our society, and that you're aware of the gravity of your actions. Which is why it was so important that you come here under your own power and without giving the police cause to restrain you beyond keeping you in a cell overnight,” Kwazit said.

  “I don't have a right to know who's accusing me? That's insane. Anyone could make any complaint about anyone. Sabotage anyone's life,” Dan said, alarmed. What if they just didn't like humans around here? The crowd outside certainly hadn't liked him. He could be accused of a hundred different crimes by now.

  “If the complaint is unfounded and a panel finds it maliciously made, bringing it can be judged a crime. Depending on how the accused is affected by the accusation, it can be as grave a crime as murder. So, no. Fabricated accusations are rare because of the risk associated with them. The accuser is as much on trial as the accused.”

  “Well... I guess complaining about it isn't going to be much help right now. So what can I do?” Dan looked down at his hands, fidgeting, picking at his cuticles with his fingernails.

  “That's clear thinking,” Kwazit said, “and you'd be well advised to keep it that way. I suggest you meditate. Cultivate some calm. You can't afford to panic in front of a judicial panel the way you panicked in front of that crowd. Demonstrating control of yourself will help you more than any coaching I could possibly give you.”

  “You should have warned me about the crowd,” Dan said.

  “Would you have come to the door under your own power, if I had told you there was a screaming armed mob waiting for you? We'd have had to carry you over in manacles for sure.”

  “Well... maybe,” Dan said. “Where did you learn so much about humans?” he asked.

  “Nibu War College,” Kwazit said. Dan stopped fidgeting with his fingers and looked up.

  “What?”

  “I was a mercenary with a xenopsychological background and a well-regarded thesis on human psychology. The pay was good. I was a consultant on raid planning.”

  “Raid planning?” Dan asked. “Like Titan?”

  “Titan and several others,” Kwazit said, casually.

  “Son of a bitch!” Dan said, jumping to his feet. The reclining police officer swung his feet off his cot and put a hand on one of the pouches on his belt. Kwazit met Dan's eyes and held his gaze.

  “I was a mercenary, and I was a consultant, not a warrior. I never went into battle, or into the field at all. I stayed on Nibu and consulted on strategy as a xenopsychologist. Could you still hold me responsible? Yes, of course. I wasn't the only one who made recommendations based on the human response to mass casualties, but I was an influential voice. I told them it was a risky choice, that it would lead to an extreme response, whether that response was surrender or attack. And I was right. It led to the relativistic cluster bombing. They gambled and lost, based in part on my advice. So, Dan, here's the question: do you want another lawyer?”

  “No,” Dan said, sitting back down and looking at his feet.

  “Want to kill me, Dan?”

  Dan looked up sharply.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Kwazit said.

  “Damn.” Dan sighed heavily, letting his breath out slow. “It's done, Kwazit. It's all done. I don't like what I just heard. I don't like it one bit. But what does that have to do with what we're doing today? We're here now, the dead are in the past, and as far as I can tell you're helping me. You know the ropes here and I don't. And if I had to guess, I'd guess you're smarter than I am. So no, I don't want to see you dead. And yes, I do want you to be my lawyer.”

  Kwazit stuck a tentacle out, the end crimped into a fair approximation of an open hand.

  “Shake on it?”

  Dan took Kwazit's tentacle. It was cool and dry, and Kwazit faked a human handshake well, with a firm grip.

  “Let's go get you acquitted,” Kwazit said. This time, Dan followed him with confidence.

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