"He wasn't a man!" Ann cried scornfully. Her glance flickered across at Jacques. "There are no more men." Ponderously, like a slow moving river that would not be diverted from its course, the Chief Justice returned to the facts of the case: "Ye speak in riddles, Lady Ann! The evidence makes it full clear that the victim was a man...." "Evidence!" Ann gestured toward the breathless stands. "There is your evidence! Ask those women what they are doing here! Ask them what their great, great grandmothers were doing at the ancient wrestling matches!! Ask them if they have ever known a real man--or ask your own wives!" The Chief Justice's impassiveness was shattered. His cheeks puffed out indignantly. A strange, tense silence gripped the women in the stands; the men drew back their padded shoulders, and shouted in reproof: "Shame! For shame, Lady Ann!" "Why don't you ask them?" Ann persisted. 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. At a curt nod from the Chief Justice, the Bailiff, still trembling, began to poll the Court. The first two judges angrily raised their hands to signify that they were voting to uphold the death sentence of the lower court. The third judge hesitated, then held out both hands, palms down. This brought an outburst of applause from the stands. The first palms-down vote always evoked such a demonstration, for a one-sided execution was a comparatively dull affair.