Silence falls, and Boudreaux resumes. “What would you do, to protect your spouse? What would you do, to protect your only child from horror? Faced with a choice between harming someone you loved and someone you did not know at all, which would you mark out for suffering? When you consider the fate of Harald Buxton, ladies and gentlemen, ask yourselves these questions, and let your answers temper your verdict.

“In all four cases, ask yourselves whether we have not had enough of dying. Ask whether, in our present condition, with perhaps as much as seventy-five or eighty percent of our population dead or captive, we can afford to discard one more human life, even the life of a man who has committed abominable acts but who even so has not fallen so far as to murder. A life for a life, ladies and gentlemen, whether that life is taken or spared. Thank you.”

Only the rustle of papers breaks the silence as Boudreaux makes his way back to his seat. At the bench, Harcourt sifts through half a dozen sheets of printout and a pair of legal volumes marked with so many small post-its in so many colors that it looks like the business end of an old-fashioned feather duster. When he has found the passages he wants, he lays the books open before him. “Does the prosecution wish to offer rebuttal, Major Alderson?”

Alderson half rises in his chair. “No, Your Honor.”

“Very well. I will now charge the jury.” Harcourt pushes his glasses up onto the high bridge of his nose and begins to read from one of the heavy embossed volumes. As he details the legal definition of rape, assault, battery and the other lesser included charges, Kirsten allows her attention to wander. She had hated the ceremonial and bureaucratic aspects of her position as a Cabinet officer, the endless meetings, the wrangling, the trading off, the paper-pushing. Her role here is largely ceremonial, too, and she would by far rather be at home working on the android code. Or, better yet, sitting with Dakota before the fire, Asi sprawled at their feet.

But the atmosphere in this courtroom is free of both the cyicism and the zealotry to be found in government. The people who fill the spectators’ seats—the women brutalized by the four defendants; surviving residents of Rapid City, most of them women, too; the ranchers with faces and hands burned raw by the wind rolling unimpeded over the plains off the Arctic ice cap—sit in quiet solemnity, patient with the workings of justice. This community has begun to feel its way toward a framework of order. Perhaps other remnants, elsewhere, are even now faced with finding solutions to the same problem these face; perhaps their solutions are completely different. How would the Shiloh community handle a trial on a capital charge? And how, if she is successful in shutting down the droids, will she manage to draw together a collection of far-flung and disparate townships, villages, communes, no two with the same experiences since the world has changed?

She has never put it to herself in quite those terms before; has never dared. A lump of ice forms in her chest, its cold running down her veins, sheeting along her skin. How will I manage? Gods . . ..

With an almost palpable wrench, she forces her attention back to Harcourt’s charge to the jury. He has finished with the legal definitions and has gone on to outline the panel’s options.

” . . .is perhaps the heaviest part of the burden your fellow citizens have asked you to bear. If you find the defendants guilty, and I cannot impress upon you too clearly that you must make four separate decision, then you must turn your attention to setting the punishment. And here we encounter a difficulty.

“Before the uprising, your choices would have been to sentence a guilty party to death or to a substantial term in a federal prison, given that the federal conspiracy charges would take precedence over the state jail felony of rape. The option of a federal prison is no longer available, nor is either the Ellsworth brig nor the Rapid City jail sufficiently staffed to handle long-term inmates. Imprisonment is not a viable option.

“It is at this point, ladies and gentlemen, that you must, in essence, make the law rather than follow it. We are in the Fifth Circuit of South Dakota, but we are also in the lands traditionally inhabited by the Lakota, the Cheyenne and other indigenous Nations. Under their traditional law, a violent offender is exiled rather than executed so that continuing undesirable, indeed potentially tragic, consequences, and I urge you to approach it with caution. We are in uncharted territory here, and the precedents we set may well become the foundations of future law. Let us take up our responsibilities as the ancient Book of Common Prayer admonishes those about to enter into matrimony: soberly, advisedly and in the fear of God.

“The jury will now retire. Court is in recess until a verdict is reached.”

Kirsten rises to her feet, stretching, bracketed by Manny and Andrews. Wonderful. Siamese triplets. On their way out, she is not surprised to see Blind Harry, his guitar slung over his back, making his way toward the door, his white cane tapping out a path in front of him. She is pleased to see that his cotton shirt still has the creases from its package; he has made himself a comfortable place within the new economy as tale-teller and news-bearer. Whatever happens in the next few hours, he will have a song from it, and an audience.

Andrews says, “We’ve got some sandwiches in the truck. Anybody want to try to find a lemonade stand?”

*

Two hours and a tour of the market later, the sun casts long shadows along the open space in front of the Judicial Building. . The shade under the trees where Kirsten and her escort have taken possession of a bench begins to grow chill, and only a few stragglers remain on the streets. Of all the strange things she has encountered since setting out on her journey across the continent, this is among the strangest, that the night is no longer human territory. A small crowd, though, still lingers on the courthouse steps, waiting patiently, stubbornly, for the jury’s decision.

“Are they going to sequester them for the night?” Manny asks, glancing at his watch. “It’s past five, and we need to be starting back.”

Andrews shrugs. “Want me to ask?”

As he starts to make his way across the flagstones, the knot of people around the doors stirs, and one of the Bailiffs appears. Kirsten gets to her feet, followed by Manny. The Bailiff, spotting them, stops halfway down the stairs and beckons. “They’re in!”

*

Filing back into the courtroom, Kirsten feels the silence like a pressure on her skin. The audience has thinned, the seats now less than half filled, the murmur and shuffle as the judge enters and takes the bench now muted. Kirsten’s eyes, like the others’, track the twelve men and women as they file into the jury box. Their faces, set and still, give nothing away, not to the spectators, not to the defendants. Kazen stares at his hands, clasped on the legal pad before him. Petrovich and McCallum seem distracted, eyes flickering down the row of jurors, back again. Only Buxton seems entirely unaffected, lost somewhere in his own mind, indifferent to this moment as he has been to the trial from the beginning.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Harcourt asks, “have you reached a verdict?”

The foreman, a tall Cheyenne with grey braids, answers, “We have Your Honor.”

“If you will hand it to the Bailiff, please, Sir.”

The Bailiff receives the folded papers from him and carries it to the Judge. Harcourt unfolds and reads it in unbroken silence. Finally he says, “The defendants will rise.”

When they have done so, he says, reading from the documents in front of him, “Eric McCallum. On the first charge, of forcible rape, as defined by and pursuant to the criminal code of the State of South Dakota, the jury has determined the following verdict: guilty. On the second charge, of conspiracy, the jury has determined the following verdict: guilty. On the third charge, of murder as defined by the law of parties, the jury has determined the following verdict: guilty. In consideration of the gravity of your crimes, the jury has assessed against you the penalty of death.”

For Petrovich and Kazen, the findings are identical. As the verdicts are read, an MP moves to stand behind each man, handcuffs ready. The Judge continues, “Harald Buxton. On the first charge, of forcible rape, as defined by and pursuant to the criminal code of the State of South Dakota, the jury has determined the following verdict: guilty. On the second charge, of conspiracy, and on the third, of murder as per the law of parties, the jury has determined the following verdict: innocent. In consideration of the gravity of your offense, but in consideration also of the threats to your family employed to procure your co-operation, the jury has assessed against you the penalty of exile.”

Harcourt turns to the jury box again. “So say you one, so say you all?”

The foreman answers, “We do, Your Honor.”

Harcourt nods, turning back to the defendants. “Ordinarily,” he says, “your sentences would automatically be appealed. Unfortunately, there is no longer a superior court to hear your case. Also unfortunately, neither the civil nor the military authority has the means of maintaining you for an extended period. It is therefore the order of this Court that, at an hour and place to be determined, the sentences against you shall be carried out within two calendar days from the instant. May God have mercy on your souls.”

Kirsten, sitting almost directly behind him, sees the shudder that passes through Buxton’s gaunt body. With speed that seems impossible for a man honed down to bone, he pivots toward the military policeman behind him, feinting with his right hand toward the man’s face. In the fraction of a second it takes the officer to react, Buxton snatches the pistol from the holster at his right side. “No!” she cries, pushing up against the arms of her chair. And then she is sprawled face-down on the carpet, staring at the scuffed boots of the person behind her, while Manny’s bulk pins her to the floor and shields her from the shot that goes wild, shattering the glass shade of one of the ceiling lights. She hears a second shot, muffled; and a woman’s anguished scream, “Hal, no! Oh, God, no!”