As if he'd deliberately telepathed the thought, the girl said suddenly: "Tony, is—is it true about the furious roses? I mean, if a man is found guilty, do they—?"
"The 'furious' roses, Mrs. Haley?" He smiled. "I see. You mean because they're so red. Yes, it's true. Ritual roses, we call them, but that's nothing. Nothing at all. A custom only. A symbol handed down. It means nothing."
"I know." The girl nodded again. "When we were children, we always called them the furious roses because they were a furious red. We always used to say that if an innocent man was executed, the furious red rose would right away turn white, Tony. To show they'd been wrong about him."
He shrugged. "Bedtime stories, Mrs. Haley."
"Not—not that it means anything to me, Tony. They'll find Johnny innocent, of course. All three machines. The final machines."
Innocent? Oh, sure.
"A man," said Tony with a vague motion of his hands. "What's the difference what man a woman has? In the morning there's always another—and another name. What's the difference?" He smiled a small toy smile with eyes half closed so the girl couldn't look too closely into them.
But it was all right, she hadn't heard. At least she wasn't balling those big eyes of hers at him. She was looking down into her folded hands.
He continued, "There's a war on, Mrs. Haley. It seems there's always a war on, somehow. And everybody—you, me, the guy down the street who skins ships for a living—we all have to remember that. And yet some of us don't. Some of us go off on a tangent and try to sell out our country and then there's hell to pay. And if we're found guilty, we get the execution. The Neg-Emote."
The girl's lips began to tremble. She looked up. "Does it hurt, Tony? I mean...."