The Years of the City

by Frederik Pohl

  “Oh, did you see me?” asked Gwenanda, gratified by her brush with fame. She preened herself as the other justices congratulated her, then got serious. “I have to talk to you about something, C.J.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he beamed.

  “I’m thinking about a deal. Suppose I take the C.J. job next year. Does that mean I can pick the place where the court sits?”

  “Getting too hot for you in New York, sweets?” he twinkled, and then saw she was in earnest. “Well, it’s not up to me, of course, but that’s usually the C.J.’s privilege. Assuming you get elected C.J., that is.”

  “You’ve got my vote,” said Pak behind her, “although I do hope you don’t want to move to Houston—I spent thirty-one years there already, and that’s enough.”

  And the Digital Colleague chimed in: “I will gladly vote for you, Gwenanda. I don’t think the junior members would object…only, will I have to wear this damn throw-rug when you’re C.J.?”

  Caught between the D.C. and Samelweiss, Gwenanda said only, “We’ll have to see about that later.” But with the eye away from Samelweiss she tipped the Digital Colleague a broad wink.

  “So there’s no problem,” said Samelweiss, his tone a little dejected as he contemplated a future in which someone other than himself would inherit the mantle of John Marshall and Charles Evans Hughes. “Where do you want to move to?”

  “Why,” said Gwenanda, “Seattle, of course! Where else?”

  Half a million people in the city had felt the chilly breath of death on their necks, but the morning’s chief defendants had not been touched. Of course not, thought Gwenanda as she glowered down at the two of them, sober and hostile in the midst of the celebrating mob in the spectator seats. Those two were probably so full of old germs they were like city rats, too scummy mean to be damaged by trap, bug or poison! They had chosen to sit together, an oasis of ice in the warm courtroom. Even their lawyers, flanking them on either side, were leaning away from them as they chattered with their neighbors, or called greetings to the justices. “How’s it going, D.C.?” cried Wally Amaretto, lawyer for the two-billion-dollar loony, Horatio Margov. “Say, did you know Tim Kapetzki here is this other prunt’s lawyer?”

  “Yes,” said the Digital Colleague. “It’s in the record. How are you, Tim?” Since the Digital Colleague was playing remote chess with one of the pages, out in the robing room, and at the same time calculating race-horse form on the afternoon’s card for the Chief Justice, his circuits were taxed. His voice had only a narrow band of frequencies, and so it sounded as though he were talking through a tin cup and string.

  “Fine, thank you,” said Kapetzki, ignoring the gasps and glares from the two clients. “How’s the game going, D.C.?”

  “Mate in twenty-two,” piped the Digital Colleague.

  “Damn good, D.C. Listen, can we get these cases heard so we can get out of here?”

  “Now, now,” said the Chief Justice benevolently, “you have to wait your turn, because we have a really full calendar today what with the UTM and all. Let’s get on with it, all right?” he said, sweeping his eyes over the ranks of his colleagues. “Court’s in session!”

  Wait their turn they did, though not with good grace. As the cases raced through the Court machine Margov and Jocelyn Feigerman watched with hostility, and contempt, and finally pure shock. There were plenty of cases. There was a reckless hang-gliding, and an ingenious credit-embezzling, and three or four other minor misdemeanants who hadn’t been willing to accept the rough justice of the nearest E.S. patroller. There were no fewer than twenty-eight separate challenges already filed against various parts of the weekend’s UTM decision on the NARRO project. There was a murder, and a child-molester, and a particularly nasty case of a loo-job assignments clerk who had been caught taking bribes to credit people with work they hadn’t done. Gwenanda reluctantly disqualified herself in the case of the child-molester, for she could not help seeing Maris, scared, hurting and uncomprehending, as one of his victims. (But she was delighted when the other eight justices were unanimous to freeze the prunt, and used the free time to look up apartment listings in Seattle.) The clerks and pages had already run all the NARRO challenges through the computer, and the Tin Twins reported there was no merit in any of them, just last-gasp attempts by die-hards of one kind or another. Five minutes was plenty for the C.J. to gavel them all out of existence. Even so, the Court was more than two hours getting through the minor attractions of the day and Gwenanda, gazing absent-mindedly at the moving adages—

  “All that is needed to remedy the evils of our time is to do justice and give freedom.”—Henry George.

  —was beginning to find hunger distracting her from her lovely, leisurely musings about the future in Seattle. Then she became aware that the loony with the two-billion-dollar suit was making a wasp of himself again: “Mr. Chief Justice! Sir! I do believe we were here long before many of these other good folks!”

  “Why, sure you were,” said Samelweiss amiably. “I’m glad to tell you that the two of you are next—as soon as we come back from lunch.”

  “Lunch!” rumbled the ex-corpsicle, as though the word referred to some depraved lunacy these future weirdos had invented.

  “Lunch,” ruled Samelweiss, and grinned. “And I’ve saved you two for dessert.”

  Samelweiss, Gwenanda decided, had something up his sleeve. He was really polite to Horatio Margov, smiled at him, urged him to take his time making his speech—“I mean, delivering your what’s it, statement,” he corrected himself—and all the while was smiling the secret smiles of a cat that’s been lapping up cream. Gwenanda, who had actually been lapping up cream, the heavenliest kiwi-fruit pie ever, with at least three centimeters of whipped cream on top of it to end one of the nicest lunches she’d ever had, was sated enough to be tolerant. Even amused, as all of the Court was obviously amused, though some of them tried to hide it. “I am, honorable justices,” the loony was declaiming, “formerly of your estate myself, as you know—” And went on like that, and Samelweiss never told him to get the hell on to the point.

  What a damn great lunch it had been! They’d gone to where Dorothy worked, bustling and partyish now, as the whole city was; the same people as before, Kriss and Maris with her, Dorothy waiting on them and sitting down for a minute now and then when she got a chance. But what a different feeling! Gwenanda wondered if she’d made a mistake inviting Dorothy to come to Seattle with them, maybe live with them and help take care of Maris until she got herself settled—dog, what if Kriss didn’t think she was too old for him? But that wouldn’t happen. She lifted her head and smiled at the two important people in her life, sitting way at the back of the auditorium under the bright red letters that were spelling out:

  “Justice is truth in action.”—Benjamin Disraeli.

  They smiled back, and it was all Gwenanda could do to keep from jumping down from the bench to hug them.

  Instead, she made herself pay attention to the loony. What the loony was doing was reciting great slabs of autobiography. Now, that was pe-culiar. Old C.J. didn’t let people do that on his time—if he did, he was off to the lavatories until it was over, but this time he was smiling and nodding through all the stuff. “—a person of some stature. I was a State Senator for eight years, then a member of the Governor’s cabinet. My name was mentioned as a candidate for Governor myself, as a matter of fact, but I chose what I believed, and still believe, the more honorable profession of judge. As a jurist, I had a certain reputation for being severe on serious and recidivist offenders—in fact, the press labeled me with the sobriquet ‘The Hanging Judge of Harlem.’” He twinkled at the nine justices. “After what was generally considered a distinguished career, I discovered that I was seriously ill and elected to have myself placed in cryonic suspension, since my doctor could not undertake to be responsible for treatment at that time.”

  “You came out pretty healthy,” commented the C.J.

  “Only after much therapy,”
said the Hanging Judge quickly. “And that is the essence of my case, Your Honor. Too much therapy! Serious and even life-threatening repetitious doses of vaccines and immunizing agents of all kinds, causing me great pain and loss of function. I am prepared,” he said, “to place in evidence certain records to establish—”

  “Oh,” said the C.J., interrupting, “we’ve already got them.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Margov, rattled.

  “We’ve got the records,” the C.J. explained. “Not ‘certain’ ones. All of them. You can shut up a while, because there’s some other stuff. Wally? Would you come up here and say out loud what you told me in the bar, while we were waiting for our lunch table?”

  Wally Amaretto stood up and approached the bench, licking his lips as he looked at his client. “E’s going to be pissed, C.J.,” he said gloomily.

  “Tell the truth and shame the devil, Wally,” said the C.J. sunnily. “Or, in this case, shame your client.”

  “Well…Well, what e said, when we were talking about uz case, was e said it cost um plenty to fugger up the records at the freezatorium.”

  Gasps and babble from the courtroom, while the Hanging Judge stuttered in rage. The C.J. looked pleased. “Now, you just keep shut up, Margov, while we straighten this out. Did e say why e’d do a thing like that?”

  “E said it was so they couldn’t find um in a hurry. I think e was in law trouble, then.”

  “Uh-huh. And tell me, Wally. Did you report this to anybody?”

  “Oh, sure. I told um.” He pointed to the Digital Colleague. “All the rest of you ran off to lunch, but e doesn’t eat, you know. So e was just sitting there playing thirty-board simultaneous chess the way e does. I told um, then I went out to catch a drink and I saw you there.”

  “I protest!” Margov yelled.

  “You shush. D.C., what about it?”

  “That’s right,” the Digital Colleague boomed. He was playing no chess now. “So I called the freezatorium and got them to search their records. It took a while—they’ve been busy the last couple of days!—but they found out Wally was right. This defendant fuggered the records.”

  “Now, that’s enough!” bellowed Margov, and needed no microphone to be heard. “I protest the unethical behavior of this attorney! I want him disbarred. And I object to the prejudicial statements of this justice, for I am not a defendant. I’m a plaintiff!”

  “No,” boomed the rich, full-attention tones of the Digital Colleague, “you used to be a plaintiff, but that suit’s going to be dismissed. The freezatorium records show that you caused your ID file to be concealed under the case history of one Chrétien Entier, and when they thawed you the records were still bollixed so you got all uz shots and e got none.”

  “Right,” said Samelweiss in happy indignation. “It was your own fault, Margov, case dismissed. Now we have to figure out what to do to you for this record-fuggering business.”

  “Objection!” cried Margov. “Exception! I intend to appeal this ruling!”

  Samelweiss stared at him in honest puzzlement. “Appeal to who? This is the Supreme Court, chotz.”

  “This rinky-dink crowd? Supreme?” sneered Margov.

  “We’re the supremest you’ve got, chotz,” the C.J. pointed out. “And you’re beginning to give me a pain! Some of you criminals are as bad as the lawyers, the way you act!”

  “I am simply insisting on my right to be heard by competent authority!”

  “You already were! Look, we don’t have all the time in the world, you know, we’ve got—what is it now, D.C.?”

  The Digital Colleague was flashing for attention. “I only wanted to suggest that we hear um out, C.J. This is a rather important case, after all.”

  Samelweiss shrugged, and the Hanging Judge looked both pleased and faintly worried, at the same time. “I appreciate the courtesy, Your Honor,” he said, addressing the Digital Colleague, “although if you are referring to this matter of the error in the records, I must say I am astonished to hear it called an ‘important case.’ Surely a fifty-dollar fine, or perhaps only a reprimand—At any rate,” he said, responding to Samelweiss’s glare, “I will take very little of the Court’s time. All I wish to say is that I am a stranger here. I am not familiar with your customs. In my day a court was headed by a judge. A judge who had legal training, who usually had many years of experience as a trial lawyer or a corporate attorney—some sort of practice that he was actually working at. Then I come up against you people! None of you are lawyers, really. You’re certainly not judges. You’re just average citizens—well, to be frank, some of you are not anywhere near what I would call ‘average.’ No offense to any of you. You’ve been picked for this job like, my God, I don’t know what, like being drafted or something. As I understand it, some for God’s sake computer—no offense, you two gentlemen—just picks your names out of the hat, and you’re the Supreme Court! My God! How can you be expected to know anything about the law?” He stood silent for a moment, scanning the nine justices. His strong, photogenic, politician’s face had softened into a less distinguished, but much more human, expression of worry. Gwenanda found herself almost feeling sorry for the chotz, until he spoke again. “I guess that’s all,” he said humbly. “I withdraw my suit. As to the other matter, I suppose I did wrong and I’m willing to pay my fine or whatever—although considering my record I should think a suspended sentence would be the maximum you would consider imposing.”

  “About time,” Samelweiss grumbled—“Oh, what is it this time, D.C.?”

  “I’d like to respond to uz remarks, please,” said Ai-Max.

  “For what?”

  “As a courtesy!” boomed the Digital Colleague. “Also there are other matters. First, we are the Supreme Court, because we’re about the only court there is. The only one that’s needed, because there aren’t all that many laws any more, and most things get settled on the spot. Second, we do know the law, real well, or anyway the Court computers do, and the clerks are really good at letting us know whatever we need. Third, the reason we hear rinky-dink cases like yours is we don’t have much else to do—because of the fact that there aren’t that many laws now, and people usually try to get along by themselves. And fourth—” The D.C. paused, before going on: “Fourth, there’s some stuff we haven’t talked about yet. This Chrétien an, who didn’t get any shots at all, e was unfroze and released to population with all those dirty old organic bugs still in um. E was the stiff they found. The flu vector, C.J. E was the reason the whole city got sick, pretty nearly, with all that trouble and worry and cost, and considering all the other diseases e was carrying we were damn lucky it was just flu. So there’s more for Margov to worry about than the old records business, because e’s the one that put us through it all.”

  The whole courtroom was thunderstruck. There weren’t any gasps. There certainly weren’t any snickers. This was a whole new aspect to what had been a light farce. Around the room a new adage was circling—

  “The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it.”—John Marshall.

  —and Gwenanda wondered absently if the D.C. had ordered that one up for Margov’s benefit, but mostly, like everyone else in the room, she was almost in shock.

  The Chief Justice was the first one to act. His eyes were narrowed. His brows pulled themselves down toward the bridge of his nose. His lips pressed each other into thin lines. He slapped the cutoff for all lawyer and litigant circuits. For the justices’ ears only he snarled, “Now it’s not funny any more. Freezing’s too good for that prunt. What’ll we give um?”

  “Forfeiture of all uz property,” offered Ai-Max. “E’s from a property time, you know, so that’s what will mean the most to um.”

  “Twenty years’ draft service, with no lieu-of-taxes credits,” snapped Pak.

  “Exile um to Los Angeles,” Myra Haik proposed, and Angel hissed:

  “It’s not enough! Let’s stick um the whole shaft—give um all of them, and then when they’re all ser
ved we pop um back in the freezer!”

  Now, damn, thought Gwenanda, staring at the Tin Twin, that was kind of perplexing. Why would Angel get so upset? She ignored the buzzing of the justices, trying to figure it out—of course! Angel was the other one who’d been taken sick! Somehow or another, there was enough of the meat human being inside that tin can of prostheses and life-support systems to catch a disease, and so Angel had a very personal reason for wanting a way-up-high shaft job on the Hanging Judge.

  And yet, she thought disconsolately, it really wasn’t right to crucify the prunt. In spite of the fact that, personally speaking, remembering the terror of clutching her sick child, she really felt that they didn’t have a punishment bad enough for him. She stared loathingly at Margov who, far from repentant, was furiously berating his lawyer, pausing only to accept sympathy and share resentments with the other prunt, Jocelyn Feigerman. The whole courtroom was buzzing now. The word had got out, and the telly crews were there with their news cameras, and the print media, and the foreign correspondents, and the citizens’ interest observers. They were all going to be on the screens that night, thought Gwenanda, pausing to sneak a look at herself in the monitor and poke the dreadlocks into place…but it was still wrong. Wasn’t it? “Hey, C.J.,” she called, overriding the other justices. “How about if we cool off a little bit?”

  “Now, Gwenanda,” said Samelweiss, turning his good profile to the cameras, “why don’t we just finish this up and get um put away good?”

  But the Digital Colleague chimed in, “I urgently support Gwenanda on this, C.J. True, e’s a prunt. But we’re talking lynch mob now, not U.S. Supreme Court.”

  “So what we can do,” said Gwenanda quickly, “is hear my chotz’s case. It won’t take long, I think, ’cause e’s guilty as hell.”