The Commission's going to have to do something about that, Johnnie F. reflected as he watched. Willard had been duly tried and condemned for inciting to riot, inflaming public opinion, and a half dozen other charges. They were going to flog him, in public. Everything was ready. The bailiffs hauled him out of the cart, stripped him to the waist, folded him over the block of wood, and tied his wrists to the manacles that would hold him in place.
Johnnie F. left the platform. He walked into the center of the square, taking off his shirt as he went. He knelt next to Willard, on the side where the executioner was standing, and as close as he could put himself. He leaned forward, his arms across the block. There was no way that the executioner could flog Willard without hitting Johnnie F. at the same time.
The executioner looked at the VIP stand. The chief judge raised his hand; then brought it down. The executioner brought the knotted lash down. Again. Again. Until the spectators who had been standing around the square dragged him down to the ground. Along with the VIP stand.
"Why in hell did you do it?" Saunders Wendell asked.
"I went to six o'clock mass in the morning," Johnnie F. explained. "I mean, I've figured that if I was going to join this church, I was going to do it right. I'd actually go; take the kids; things like that. So I went to mass that day, before they were going to have the whipping. And it came to me, there in church. While I was looking at the big painting behind the altar."
"What came to you?"
"We're going about this wrong. Okay, we've all been brought up to think that the proper thing is that when the saved damsel thanks the hero, he blushes, scrapes the toe of his shoe in the dust, and says, `Oh, shucks, Ma'am, t'warn't nothin.' We were brought up on cowboy movies. Somewhere inside, we know it's the proper answer."
Johnnie F. shifted on the cot. He had a suspicion that even if his heart and mind had no regrets, his body was going to be registering protests about the events in Bamberg's market square for a long time to come. Not to mention those that Tania was sure to file, once she'd made sure that he was going to live.
"It was the picture. Everything in it was, well, flashy, you know. Showy. All the saints and the angels were really strutting their stuff. Doing miracles. Like the Old Testament prophets, calling down lightnings against the priests of Baal. No hiding your light under a bushel, for these guys. They're really into `show and tell.' And it's mostly the `show.' They've got to see it. Mumbling about it isn't going to work."
He looked around the room. "Hey. Where am I, anyway? And where's Willard? Is he okay?"
"It's Sunday morning. You're in the infirmary at a convent—the local branch nunnery, or maybe a chapter of the organization, if you can call it that, of the ladies that you adopted the kids from in Würzburg. The nuns patched you back together. And Willard. He's in the room next door. The ladies patched him and salved him and bandaged him just like they did you. That was all done before we got here. But we've still put a guard on his door, just in case."
"When did you two get here?"
"About an hour after your friends and admirers, whoever they are—and that's a little mysterious, right there, by the way—had tackled the local judiciary and pretty well swamped them. The city government seems to be having a revolution, from what we can tell. Unless it gets too bloody, we're staying out of it until things shake down. I've sent to Würzburg for some more soldiers, just in case, but the truth is we don't have enough N.U.S. soldiers to garrison a city. Not even one, if we were all together, and we're spread out over nearly twenty-five thousand square miles. We borrowed a company of Swedes who were just passing through."
Scott Blackwell laughed. "So they're standing out in the courtyard, whatever, of this convent, singing Swedish hymns. That's the racket you're hearing, if you noticed it. The nurse nun said that the music was maechtig schön. Who would have thought that people said `mighty purty' so long ago and far away? It was cute. I'll tell the story more than once. But running Franconia on sweetness and light, charm and persuasion, isn't going to cut it. What we really need is a regiment. Or two."
"What we need," said Johnnie F., "is a hero. A big heroic hero. Us ordinary guys are all well and good for most purposes, but if we're going to get away with this, if we're going to get away with everything that Mike Stearns is trying for these folks, that is. We need a hero. A huge, dramatic, bigger-than-life, grab the imagination, honest-to-God, hero! Ask Arnold Bellamy to tell Mike that, will ya? When he gets back home."