Yes, it was time. Cecil was whispering to her. Watching Edith still, ready with a smile if Edith would only look her way, Callista lost his words and had to ask him to repeat. "I'm putting you on now. Feeling all right, Cal? Steady?"
"I'm fine, Bud. Steady. Let 'em all come." It occurred to her that she really did feel in excellent condition. This was the end of the long affliction of waiting, mute listening, anticipation: now at least she could attempt to do something. Cecil rose and moved away; he was up there near the witness stand, calling her name, smiling a little—Himself, not like my father. It is time. First to Mr.-Delehanty-which-is-the-Clerk.
At close range Mr. Delehanty's eyes appeared curiously vacant. She found a moment's fantastic pleasure in proposing to herself that the poor guy might actually have died long ago, leaving a fruity voice, a magnificent suit of clothes, and some structure (partly plastic?) designed to hold the two together world without end. The arm mechanism must be especially clever, to carry on that Bible routine. She held her hands at her sides, and before the melodious rumble (a concealed recording?) could start, she spoke quickly as she had rehearsed herself last night while Matron Kowalski was playing the usual games with that light bulb in the corridor: "I affirm that I will tell the truth, the whole truth so far as I know it, and nothing but the truth."
At the corner of her eye she glimpsed Cecil's stricken look, and thought: Oh yes yes, I should have warned him. Her thought continued with an irritation which love somehow magnified instead of diminishing: What's the matter anyhow? Must we be so timid? They're not going to condemn me for such a thing as that. Are they?
Mr. Delehanty made an indeterminate fogbound noise.
Judge Mann said evenly: "The oath is binding in that form—should there be a question in anyone's mind. The witness is exercising a constitutional privilege which ought to be familiar to everyone." She felt he would have liked to speak to her directly, humanly. Instead he turned to the still faintly resonating Delehanty and remarked in a casual undertone too low for the jury's hearing but not for hers: "You might be interested to know, Mr. Delehanty, that I chose to affirm when I took the oath as a justice." You were not actually speaking to that-which-is-the-Clerk—I heard and I'm grateful. "You may take the stand now, Miss Blake."
They were trying to help her. Cecil, Edith, now Judge Mann who, as Cecil said, had tried all along to give her every break—tried too much for his own good, maybe, and hers too. She understood that he not only desired to help her: he saw her.
Her mind grew dizzy, shifted, retreated, sought to steady itself, reason and unreason quarreling within. Were they, the three of them, treating her as they might treat a difficult child? She fought down the illogical resentment, despising it, conquering it—almost. She was seated, the ungainly witness chair still warm from Edith's body. How different the courtroom looked from up here! A whole new orientation. Just look, for instance, at that big slob in the back row smuggling a candy bar up to the pink slot in his shiny face. Had that operation been going on since Monday morning? Look, Daddy! Is he s'posed to eat in here, Daddy, is he s'posed to, huh, Daddy?
The jury too. (Where's Jimmy?) The jury was closer, much closer. She could smell them. One of the females gave off a powerful tuberose reek, variable as drafts in the large room stirred it about. (Where's Jimmy, if it matters?) Callista decided the smell was generated by the Lagovski, probably in heat. Any minute now—well, Emerson Lake was the biggest, but pretty old; maybe one of the more vigorous younger males—
"Callista—" Please stand near me always!—"you're a resident of Winchester, aren't you?"