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| Tibbs' downfall | |
| By Snodlander | ||||||||||||||||||
| 30 April 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||
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The prisoner marched into the office, flanked by two MPs. He executed a sharp right turn at the officer's desk and threw a salute so rigid you could almost hear the 'twang' as his hand vibrated at his temple. "Corporal 12745632 Tibbs, Sah!" he shouted. Colonel Galbraith leant back, steepled his hands in front of him and regarded the prisoner in silence. It was a technique he had fostered to allow him to collect his thoughts, while piling pressure onto the prisoner. Not that it would work on Tibbs, veteran of far too many disciplinary charges. Tibbs should never be in uniform. That wasn't to say he shouldn't be in the army. Though Galbraith hated to admit it, men like Tibbs made the huge bureaucracy of today's armed forces work, by the simple expedience of bypassing it. If you needed a replacement track for a tank, or fresh strawberries out of season for the officers' mess, a nod and a favour to Tibbs and it would miraculously appear. No, the army needed men like Tibbs; it was just a shame he had to wear a uniform. His uniform was regulation and smart. The creases were ironed sharp enough to put a razor to shame; the brass glistened like gold in sunlight; the boots might have been patent leather for the shine that was on them. There was no detail about Tibbs' uniform that you could fault. But when it was draped onto Tibbs' small frame it took on an air that suggested it was spiritually slouching. It was immensely annoying, but there was nothing anyone could do, no suggestion you could make that would improve the overall look, other than taking the uniform and putting it on someone else. The uniform, in short, took on Tibbs' personality. Tibbs himself always appeared to be about to slouch. His natural environment was leaning against a bar, or a wall, or a tree. There was something not quite upright about Tibbs, even when standing perpendicular at attention, as now. Colonel Galbraith found his gaze wandering to Tibbs' right ear, in the expectation of seeing a half-smoked cigarette tucked behind it. Tibbs was just that sort of person: one of life's natural corporals. Galbraith shook his head sadly, in the manner of a head teacher who feels the school has been let down by a prefect. "What have you got to say for yourself, Tibbs?" "Sah! I am happy to forgo right to Court Martial in favour of your disciplinary prerogative, Sah!" recited Tibbs, staring fixedly at the wall. "What?" asked the colonel, incredulously. "Sah! I am happy to forgo right to Court ..." "Yes, yes, I heard what you said, Corporal. I just couldn't believe it. Do you seriously think that this can all be swept under the carpet?" "Nossir! But, begging your pardon, Sir, I have always found your judgement fair, Sir, and not at all sweeping under the carpet, sort of thing, Sir." "This isn't like the other times, Tibbs. This isn't a bit of petty theft." "Sir, not saying I stole anything nor nothing, but if Stores find themselves short of a few kitbags what happen to be a bit trendy with the girls in town, Sir, it weren't nothing to do with me, Sir, and if it was, Sir, well, it would be sort of petty, in the grand scheme of things, sort of thing, begging your pardon, Sir." Galbraith sorted out the twisted grammar in his head. "You think this is about stolen kitbags?" Tibbs licked his lips nervously, his eyes flicking to and fro for a moment as he scanned the wall above Galbraith's head for an answer. "Sir, if it was about the fight at the boozer a couple of weeks ago, I was merely ..." "For God's sake, man!" screamed the colonel, jumping up and slamming his hand down on the desk. "This isn't about some petty misdemeanour. This is about you starting World War Three!" "Ah!" said Tibbs, with the air of one who had been hoping his role in that offence had been somehow overlooked. "Well, begging your pardon, Sir, but I am still willing to forgo my right to Court Martial in favour of your judgement, Sir." "I am not about to judge you, Tibbs," said the colonel, his voice shaking with the effort of controlling his anger. "Not in a legal sense, that is, because, by God, if I had my way you'd have had a bullet in your brain long before now. History will judge you, God will judge you, the millions of people whose lives you have ruined will judge you, but your immediate concern should be the International War Crimes Tribunal that is even now baying for your blood. It is they that will judge you, Tibbs, not me." "In my defence, Sir, it wasn't a big war, as world wars go. Only two days." "I don't think nuclear holocausts are measured by how long they take, Tibbs, but by ..." Galbraith took a deep breath, then shouted, " the hundreds of millions of innocent souls you killed, you idiot!" Tibbs squared his shoulders and found his spot on the wall at which to stare. "Fair enough, Sir. I knows you is a gentleman, Sir, and would have treated me fair, but if it's out of your hands, that's the way it is." Colonel Galbraith sat back down and rested his head in his hands. Eventually he gave a long sigh. "Get yourself a good legal team, Tibbs," he said, resignedly. "My God, you're going to need it." "That's alright, Sir, if it's all the same to you. I screwed up, if you pardon the expression, and I'll take the consequences. I'm prepared to make recompense." "Recompense?" "Yessir. I reckon I can pay eighteen pounds a week, Sir, out of my wages, if I'm busted back down to Private again. Which I guess I am, 'cos I don't see how you have a choice there, Sir," he added, magnanimously. Galbraith lifted his head and stared at the man, looking for a suggestion of a smile that would betray that he was joking, but there was no hint of guile on Corporal Tibbs' face. "You've ruined the economy of the five largest nations on this Earth, Tibbs. You think you can pay that off weekly?" "Only fair I make a contribution, Sir, seeing as how, if you look at it a certain way, some people might think I was somehow involved in it." "Somehow involved? Somehow? For crying out loud, man, you invoked a pre-emptive nuclear attack on China! Somehow involved? Which brings us to the reason your sorry arse has been hauled in front of me today. What the hell were you doing in the Strategic Defence control room in the first place?" "Must have got lost, Sir." "Got lost? And accidently circumvented three manned security posts and the most sophisticated electronic barrier in the western world?" "Yessir. Got lost, Sir. Won't happen again, Sir." Galbraith sighed, and tried to moderate his voice to something approaching a reasoning tone. "Look, Tibbs, I've already explained you're being tried by the tribunal, not me. You are so deep in so much shit that anything you say here is not going to make any difference at all. It's all off the record. All I want to know is, how did you do it? How did you get in there without being stopped?" "Got lost, Sir," he repeated, eyes fixed on the wall in front. Colonel Galbraith stared at Corporal Tibbs for long seconds, but it was obvious that Tibbs, barrack room lawyer, was not going to volunteer any more information. "Then tell me this. Why in God's name did you dismantle the safety systems that would have prevented this whole thing?" "Don't know nothing about no safety systems, Sir." "Oh, for chrisake, you were caught with the circuit boards in your hands." "Oh, those, Sir. I didn't know they were part of the safety systems, Sir." "So, what were you doing with them?" Tibbs cleared his throat. "I ... erm ... I thought they were PC motherboards, Sir, and they looked dusty to me, Sir, and I knows how you like a clean base, Sir, so I thought to myself, 'Tibbs,' I thought, 'you should go and clean those up,' I thought. But I didn't have no duster nor nothing, so I was just taking them back to my quarters to clean them properly, Sir, when the MPs arrested me, Sir." He made it sound as though arresting the perpetrator of a nuclear war was uncalled for, when they had more important things to investigate, such as the alleged disappearance of kitbags from the quartermaster's stores. "You dismantled three computer systems vital to the defence of this country, in order to steal some circuit boards?" Tibbs looked shocked. "No, sir. To dust them, Sir. I'd never nick nothing, Sir." And he looked innocent, in a way that only the truly guilty can look. "If you're lucky, Tibbs," said the colonel quietly. "If you are much luckier than anyone deserves, the kindest thing the tribunal will do is string you up from a lamppost. Get out. Get out of my sight." Tibbs snapped off another salute. "May I say it was an honour serving under you, Sir." "Out!" thundered the colonel. After Tibbs had left, and the colonel had stopped shaking with anger, he started to work through the mountain of papers bureaucracy insisted a commanding officer deal with, even in the aftermath of an accidental war. He thumbed a button on the intercom. "Jenson. Why do we still have two APCs out of commission?" "The mechanics are waiting for replacement tracks, Sir," came the disembodied voice of his adjutant. "The chit's been submitted, but HQ says there's a six-month delay, Sir. No way round it, I'm afraid." Despite himself, and against all reasonable logic, Colonel Galbraith started to hope that, somehow, Tibbs would talk himself out of this one and return. God only knew what they would be able to serve as dessert at the annual Regimental Dinner otherwise.
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. So if you are able to invoke that feeling in your readers, i am guessing you've done a fabulous job.
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