Yes, ask them, Jacques thought, with a sudden, overpowering anger of his own. Ask them! Maybe their answers would tell why he, too, of all men, should have failed so many of them.
"Hold thy insolent tongue, woman!" roared the Chief Justice. "There remains before this Court only one issue—Did ye or did ye not strike a man to his death in the full view of scores of gentilmen and gentilwoomen of Coberly?"
Ann shook her long hair in defiance.
"It wasn't a man I struck with that casing, and all the FBIT's heraldic mockery can't make him a man! I struck a bloodless slide-rule, a cold filing cabinet full of equations, a set of dull geometric patterns, an automaton that tried to treat a woman like a punched holrith card! He was no more a man than this...." She brought her elbow up so sharply that the paunchy Bailiff was toppled off balance and nearly fell. He looked frightened.
"Ye admit to the killing, then?" demanded the Chief Justice.
"I'm proud of it!"
"And ye claim no special circumstances?"
"How would you understand them?"
The crowd exploded into a frantic, unintelligible babble, and the Chief Justice slammed down his gavel. He turned to his fellow judges. Two were staring at the prisoner with an indignation that exceeded his own. The other two, both very old men, sat with heads bowed and hands fumbling with their robes.
Jacques felt his pulse leap with a hope that had seemed impossible. Could it be that after all...? Ann turned toward him, faltering for the first time, and they stared into each other's eyes.