More environmental symbolism: when Jonnie is being driven out of the Academy, there's a storm rolling in. Jonnie notices this ill omen and is in no mood for conversation, telling Lars to shut up when he starts to prattle on about Hitler some more.
Jonnie is brought before a robed Brown Limper "loom[ing] like a vulture about to attack a corpse" from his high seat. The green-eyed cripple recognizes Jonnie immediately but asks his name for the sake of the recorders, and to make things good and legal. Jonnie is a mouthy and bored prisoner, tells his judge that he knows quite well who he is, and isn't interested when his smart-assery adds "contempt of court" to the list of charges against him.
These charges are murdering the Super Chamco Bros., kidnapping those two coordinators in Africa, murder and assault against the Brigantes, and massacring "a convoy of peaceful commercial people going about their business and maliciously slaughtering them to the last man." There's also a bunch of lesser crimes like stealing remote controls and shooting down Terl, but Brown Limper's saving his master stroke for last.
He reveals the bill of sale in which Terl "sold" him the entirety of Earth, a deed which will become valid once Terl goes back to Psychlo with the money via the teleportation rig he's building. Brown Limper then places Jonnie under house arrest, concluding with a "Hey man!" to add a touch of piety and dumbness to the proceedings.
Jonnie uses his last request to ask to pick up his horses before going home, which our polite and reasonable villains agree to. And off Jonnie goes. Unescorted. Alone.
These villains suck.
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They...let him...go...by...himself.
ReplyDeleteWha - I - how -
That cancels out the stupidity of "'attacking' a corpse" that I was going to comment on, because I'm fairly certain that, even when I was *nine*, I never had a villain let the hero he'd just captured go off all by himself.