56 - I deserve to live

Sha: Fourth Chevenga, you have heard everything I have presented, all the evidence against you. You’ve heard it cited from the writings and the speeches of so many, all right-minded and observant. You know the evidence of your flaws—the madness, the foreign corruption, the aggressiveness, the uncontrollable rage, the power-lust, the disdain and deadly hatred for your own people, the callous disregard of all that is sacred in Yeola-e, the delusions of grandeur to the degree of divinity, the tendency to treason, the nihilism—and you know them in yourself. My question is, in the light of the truth of all this, how is it that you do not resign from the semanakraseyesin as in conscience you should?

4Che: Your question has a faulty premise. I dispute the truth of every supposed flaw of mine you list. The question at hand is not whether or why I don’t resign, but whether you would be justified in killing me, and as you’ve cited the words of many people in support of this argument, I would contend that there is not a person among them who wouldn’t disavow and deplore your aim, and be appalled that their words are being used to make such an argument, just as Linasika, who you’ve probably quoted more than anyone else, did so clearly and strongly right here. I challenge you to name even one you think would agree you would be justified.

Sha: It’s not for me to be challenged but to question—

4Che: You can’t, not one.

Sha: I request of the Presiding Judge that the witness be forbidden from interrupting me.

PJ: The rules of the court forbid interruptions.

Sha: Thank you, Presiding Judge. Let us look first at the matter of your actions precipitating the Arkan War; what do you have to say for yourself in regard to that?

4Che: The responsibility for the war lies with the person who had the power to launch it: Kurkas Aan.

Sha: But the citations I read were speaking of you.

4Che: I’ll say it more plainly: I didn’t precipitate the war. Kurkas did.

Sha: On retrospect do you think of the action of undertaking a state visit to an empire known to be contemplating war against us, and so effectively putting yourself into the hands of an enemy, as wise?

4Che: I could say no, but all manner of decisions seem unwise once we have learned what we did not know at the time they were made; at the time, this one seemed the wisest course to me. But what does this have to do with your case, that I deserve death? Even if I erred, as far as I know there is no clause in the treason or murder laws allowing an exemption if the victim erred.

Akana: I wonder the same, Presiding Judge.

Sha: I am leading to it. You recall that it was cited in the Pages of Arko that Kurkas based his decision to invade in part on your absence?

4Che: Yes, but I don’t trust him to have been honest in that quote, as it might have been to cause me pain, as he had something of an obsession with causing me pain. Besides, even if this were true, it does not make the war my fault, and insofar as empire-seeking kings consider my absence an opportunity, my permanent absence by your hand would provide them a permanent opportunity.

Sha: I raise then the issue of your penchant for killing your own, for killing Yeolis—

4Che: I categorically deny any such penchant and note again the premise of your question is faulty.

Sha: Eight in the blood-sport theatre of Arko—

4Che: I was tried and acquitted for that, because I was compelled, everyone knows this.

Sha: I request of the Presiding Judge that the witness be chastised and required to adhere to the rule of the court forbidding interruption.

PJ: I remind the witness of that specific rule.

Sha: Thank you, Presiding Judge. During the war you executed a Yeoli for the crime of stealing two pieces of firewood as well; do these things combined not prove a penchant, and is it not an abuse of your power as chakrachaseye as well?

4Che: No and no. I did not do it because I wanted to; I did not want to. I did it because it was necessary. He had relinquished his will as a warrior and so was living under military discipline. I had given a very clear standing order to the entire army, more than once to make sure every person knew, that there was to be no stealing property on conquered land, on pain of death. He knew exactly what he was risking.

Sha: But for two sticks, as he himself said?

4Che: In war, military law is law, just as peacetime law is law. I had executed two Lakans previously for exactly the same thing, and if I failed to enforce the law equally with all nationalities, the alliance would have been weakened and perhaps rendered incapable of victory. I’m not sure how you are making your case here, when it’s known that such discipline helped bring us victory, which is generally considered to my credit, not my discredit.

Sha: If you will, then, by victory you mean conquering the Arkan empire—since that execution happened in Arkan territory—do you deny that Yeola-e has been done harm by becoming a conquering nation?

4Che: I am not certain, because it has certainly been done harm by being a virtually-conquered nation, and it’s hard to separate out what harm might have been caused by one from what by the other, but I note for the court that it’s in part due to concern that we might be so harmed that I attempted by every means I could think of, legal and not so legal, to refuse to answer the question of whether it was my preference to invade, and currently am in the midst of ending our occupation.

Sha: But you did want to invade, you argued for it eloquently, and it’s that that brought us to this miserable pass we are at now!

4Che: I don’t hear a question but I will answer the implied one: I will maintain to my dying breath, even though it won’t come as soon as you’d like, that it was improper for me to be compelled to reveal my preference. I did not argue for the invasion, as that would be improper also, but did what was proper and required: answered the questions that were asked of me, as anyone can see from the record. But I also remind you that a proper and legal vote was taken, and Yeolis, not I, voted their will and their conscience. We invaded not because I wished or chose to, but because semana did. I know you’ve argued this many times, but it was false every time. The fact is that if a majority of Yeolis had been against it, my favouring it would have been overruled and mattered nothing.

Sha: Do you deny that you appealed to the basest part of a people’s nature, its pain and fear and anger, in your persuasion?

4Che: I deny that I undertook any persuasion at all, for as is clear in the record I did not. This is all fact, Sharaina, and you can’t in a court of law fly in the face of it, and it’s all irrelevant to whether you would be justified in assassinating me anyway.

Sha: You admit that the conquest caused us harm as a people.

4Che: No, I don’t admit that, with certainty, because I think it was the invasion by Arko that did the great harm, that created the pain and fear and anger you speak of. I do think a people that engages in conquest is corrupted over the long run; but may I remind you that within a moon and a half I and Yeola-e will be relinquishing power in Arko to the Arkans, and returning to within our borders. And that this was my idea and my doing, in part with the intention of avoiding that corruption.

Sha: Yes, something you effectively imposed on the Assembly of Yeola-e.

4Che: No, it was a fair chalk vote; if they or enough of the people had disagreed with me they could have impeached me and sent Artira to be Imperator again. If we want to speak of impositions, the assassination of a semanakraseye is the ultimate political imposition.

Sha: Then I return to your time in the blood-ring of Arko, when you were willing to kill, in cold blood, eight Yeolis who were strangers to you, but then told the one who was a friend that you would not kill him, in full knowledge that by so doing you were making pointless the deaths of the eight, and forcing him to suicide?

4Che: And so I suppose if I’d killed him instead, Sharaina, you’d have thought, ‘Ah well, he killed his best friend, so I think he deserves to live after all and I shall not assassinate him’? (laughter) Honoured Presiding Judge, I beg permission to stand before the chair of witness instead of sitting in it, because I can’t bear to not be on my feet in the face of this questioning. And I beg forgiveness also if I should happen to faint from shock, from the sense that the world around me has gone entirely mad, when I—a semanakraseye in good standing who was voted for by a tripling majority of Yeolis in two impeachment votes, a chakrachaseye who is widely credited with leading us back from the brink of conquest, a Yeoli citizen—a human being—must argue that I am worthy of life in a Yeoli court of law, against a Yeoli who’d murder a Yeoli and openly admits it.

PJ: You may stand if you wish.

Sha: I would like to request of the Presiding Judge that he enforce the requirement that a witness speak only in answer to the questions asked.

PJ: I make note of the advocate and defendant’s request.

Sha: Chevenga, do you… do you deny Yeola-e has been irreversibly altered through what you have done in your life?

4Che: I think it’s been altered more by what Kurkas Aan did in his life; the most significant alteration I had a hand in was the transformation of occupied Yeoli territory into free.

Sha: But we are not the same; you know it; we are filled to the gills with foreign ideas, foreign methods, foreign corruption! We are ceasing to be Yeolis, ceasing to be athye, ceasing to be free of everything whose absence has defined us, and you are behind it more than any other Yeoli or any other thousand Yeolis.

4Che: I don’t hear a question here.

Sha: What do you have to say for yourself?

4Che: I’ve done nothing to justify your assassinating me. I shouldn’t have to stand here and answer point for point whether I was right or wrong in any decisions I have made, or how much responsibility I bore for which event or what change—I’ve done it too much already—because it’s all irrelevant; it’s absurd and insane and—up until now—inconceivable that anyone should have to defend his life in principle by arguing these things with his would-be murderer in a Yeoli court of law. It wouldn’t matter if I was the most idiotic semanakraseye in the history of Yeola-e; that wouldn’t justify assassinating me. There are lawful ways to remove idiotic semanakraseyel. Now you say the legal means were exhausted, which was because a majority of Yeolis voted in my favour; it doesn’t matter whether they were a nation of idiots when they so voted, that still wouldn’t justify assassinating me, because the law against murder still stands. It doesn’t matter whether the very law against murder is idiotic, that still would not justify assassinating me—it is still the law, and it’s the law by which we live, and under which you and I stand in this court.

Sha: You don’t frighten me!

4Che: What’s the question? Whether I ever intended to? No. Nonetheless, you fear me enough to plot to kill me.

Sha: Presiding Judge, please rule that he answer my questions only!

PJ: I think that the witness’s point that he should not have to answer questions that are irrelevant to the matter at hand is well-taken. I shall rule that he keep his answers narrowed to addressing your questions when you refrain from questions which do not speak to the issue of whether you would have been justified in assassinating him.

Sha: Chevenga, do you not admit that you intimidate people, and bend them to your will?

4Che: I have done that, but only when it was militarily necessary, either to frighten enemies or in commanding soldiers.

Sha: But you have that tendency, do you deny it?

4Che: Yes, in that I only did these things when I chose to.

Sha: But you’ve chosen to rather a lot, don’t you think? In Arko you hold absolute power—

4Che: No, I don’t; there is an Assembly now with which power is split, and has been since I instituted it, and, again, I will have absolutely no power there at all within a moon and a half.

Sha: But the sway you have over people, the way in which you are able to spellbind and rule… of course you will not admit it on the stand, I wonder what the procedure is for requesting that a witness be truth-drugged… I ask the Presiding Judge.

PJ: An advocate, or one acting as an advocate in her own right, may request this of the witness himself, and if he should decline, then the advocate may request of the court that he be compelled, and give grounds, and the court will rule whether the grounds are reasonable and sufficient, and if so, the witness is compelled.

Sha: I request that the witness submit himself to a dose of Arkan truth-drug, since it will be generally seen and known that he is attempting to conceal something if he refuses.

4Che: I refuse on the grounds that it is not necessary. You’ve called me up, Sharaina, to try to prove that I ought to be dead, and I’m sorry if I’m not going along with your plans, (laughter) but it is nothing more than an honest difference of opinion on my part, and truth-drug does not alter opinions.

Sha: I request that the witness be compelled on the grounds that he will not otherwise tell the truth.

PJ: Denied, as the witness has spoken of publicly-known events all through this questioning, and recognizably truthfully throughout.

Sha: Do you deny that even you yourself have doubted your own worthiness to live, as we have learned recently?

4Che: I don’t deny that, but I have never disagreed with the Yeoli laws against treason and murder.

Sha: Why have you doubted your own worthiness to live?

4Che: Certainly not for any of the reasons you offered for my unworthiness to live in your summary, nor that you’ve listed since. Look, Sharaina, if you thought notions in my own mind justified my death, so that I might have been persuaded myself, then you should have undertaken to persuade me. You should have come to me, offered me Bartelao’s hunting knife and asked me if I’d be so good as to thrust it into my own heart for your list of reasons (laughter), and I would have been compelled by the force of your logic to do so. Then you’d have broken no law.

Sha: Do you deny your own insanity?

4Che: To properly answer that, I’d have to ask you to define exactly what you mean by insanity, but I won’t bother, because it’s neither here nor there. If you argue I should die because I am insane, then you must also be arguing that every patient in the House of Integrity on Haiu Menshir, and all the patients of all the psyche-healers in Yeola-e and indeed the world, whether they be victims of torture or sufferers of some bitter loss or simply born mad, should all die too.

Sha: I argue no such thing!

4Che: Then you can’t argue that I should for that reason. This is the crux of it, Sharaina, and I keep having to return you to it: your defense is justification, that you were right in assassinating me, that if I were dead it would be the best thing for the world, or at least Yeola-e, and that therefore I don’t deserve to live. Since you are making the defense the onus is on you to prove that I don’t, and so if I see fallacies in the arguments by which you attempt to prove this, pardon me, but I will raise them.

Sha: You are just trying to save your own life!

4Che: Imagine! (laughter)

Sha: A condemned man will say anything to try to escape his fate.

4Che: Sharaina, are you on the Earthsphere with the rest of us? I’m not condemned by this court; I’m not even accused in this court. It’s you who are; do you even understand that?

Sha: You should be dead, you are a curse, it was a bitter day for Yeola-e the moment you were born!

4Che: I don’t hear a question, except the implied one of whether I agree or not. For the record, I do not.

Sha: You have no cursed right to disagree!

4Che: I don’t deserve to be assassinated. Sharaina, you’re just wrong.

Sha: Yes you do!

4Che: I deserve to live.

Sha: No you don’t! (dissent)

4Che: Yes I do! (laughter)

Sha: No you don’t! (dissent)

4Che: No no no no no! (spectator unrest)

PJ: Order. Order! Order, sib gentlefolk, please! I ask order and silence. As Presiding Judge I suspend this course of questioning on the grounds that it is doing nothing to further any understanding of the court in relation to the matter. I declare a break also.