Overruled

by Hank Davis

  “Of course not, sir. I merely wish to demonstrate some basic scientific principles. Once again, I wish to stress the importance of keeping this between these four walls.” He paused solemnly and everyone looked duly impressed.

  “Mr. Ferguson,” he began, “is proposing to tap one of the fundamental forces of nature. It is a force on which every living thing depends—a force, gentlemen, which keeps you alive, even though you may never have heard of it.”

  He moved over to the table and took up his position beside the flasks and bottles.

  “Have you ever stopped to consider,” he said, “how the sap manages to reach the highest leaf of a tall tree? It takes a lot of force to pump water a hundred—sometimes over three hundred—feet from the ground. Where does that force come from? I’ll show you, with this practical example.

  “Here I have a strong container, divided into two parts by a porous membrane. On one side of the membrane is pure water—on the other, a concentrated solution of sugar and other chemicals which I do not propose to specify. Under these conditions, a pressure is set up, known as osmotic pressure. The pure water tries to pass through the membrane, as if to dilute the solution on the other side. I’ve now sealed the container, and you’ll notice the pressure gauge here on the right—see how the pointer’s going up. That’s osmotic pressure for you. This same force acts through the cell walls in our bodies, causing fluid movement. It drives the sap up the trunk of trees, from the roots to the topmost branches. It’s a universal force, and a powerful one. To Mr. Ferguson must go the credit of first attempting to harness it.”

  Harry paused impressively and looked round the court.

  “Mr. Ferguson,” he said, “was attempting to develop the Osmotic Bomb.”

  It took some time for this to sink in. Then Major Fotheringham leaned forward and said in a hushed voice: “Are we to presume that he had succeeded in manufacturing this bomb, and that it exploded in his workshop?”

  “Precisely, your Honor. It is a pleasure—an unusual pleasure, I might say—to present a case to so perspicacious a court. Mr. Ferguson had succeeded, and he was preparing to report his method to us when, owing to an unfortunate oversight, a safety device attached to the bomb failed to operate. The results, you all know. I think you will need no further evidence of the power of this weapon—and you will realize its importance when I point out that the solutions it contains are all extremely common chemicals.”

  Major Fotheringham, looking a little puzzled, turned to the prosecution lawyer. “Mr. Whiting,” he said, “have you any questions to ask the witness?”

  “I certainly have, your Honor. I’ve never heard such a ridiculous—”

  “You will please confine yourself to questions of fact.”

  “Very good, your Honor. May I ask the witness how he accounts for the large quantity of alcohol vapor immediately after the explosion?”

  “I rather doubt if the inspector’s nose was capable of accurate quantitative analysis. But admittedly there was some alcohol vapor released. The solution used in the bomb contained about 25 percent. By employing dilute alcohol, the mobility of the inorganic ions is restricted and the osmotic pressure raised—a desirable effect, of course.”

  That should hold them for a while, thought Harry.

  He was right. It was a good couple of minutes before the second question. Then the prosecution’s spokesman waved one of the pieces of copper tubing in the air.

  “What function did these carry out?” he said, in as nasty a tone of voice as he could manage. Harry affected not to notice the sneer.

  “Manometer tubing for the pressure gauges,” he replied promptly.

  The Bench, it was clear, was already far out of its depth. This was just where Harry wanted it to be. But the prosecution still had one card up its sleeve. There was a furtive whispering between the excise men and his legal eagle. Harry looked nervously at Uncle Homer, who shrugged his shoulders with a “Don’t ask me!” gesture.

  “I have some additional evidence I wish to present to the Court,” said the Customs lawyer briskly, as a bulky brown paper parcel was hoisted on to the table.

  “Is this in order, your Honor?” protested Harry. “All evidence against my—ah—colleague should already have been presented.”

  “I withdraw my statement,” the lawyer interjected swiftly. “Let us say that this is not evidence for this case, but material for later proceedings.” He paused ominously to let that sink in. “Nevertheless, if Mr. Ferguson can give a satisfactory answer to our questions now, this whole business can be cleared up right away.”

  It was obvious that the last thing the speaker expected—or hoped for—was such a satisfactory explanation. He unwrapped the brown paper, and there were three bottles of a famous brand of whiskey.

  “Uh-huh,” said Uncle Homer, “I was wondering—”

  “Mr. Ferguson,” said the Chairman of the Bench. “There is no need for you to make any statement unless you wish.”

  Harry Purvis shot Major Fotheringham a grateful glance. He guessed what had happened. The prosecution had, when prowling through the ruins of Uncle’s laboratory, acquired some bottles of his home-brew. Their action was probably illegal, since they would not have had a search-warrant—hence the reluctance in producing the evidence. The case had seemed sufficiently clear-cut without it. It certainly appeared pretty clear-cut now…

  “These bottles,” said the representative of the Crown, “do not contain the brand advertised on the label. They have obviously been used as convenient receptacles for the defendant’s—shall we say—chemical solutions.” He gave Harry Purvis an unsympathetic glance. “We have had these solutions analyzed, with most interesting results. Apart from an abnormally high alcohol concentration, the contents of these bottles are virtually indistinguishable from—”

  He never had time to finish his unsolicited and certainly unwanted testimonial to Uncle Homer’s skill. For at that moment, Harry Purvis became aware of an ominous whistling sound. At first he thought it was a falling bomb—but that seemed unlikely, as there had been no air raid warning. Then he realized that the whistling came from close at hand; from the courtroom table, in fact…

  “Take cover!” he yelled.

  The Court went into recess with a speed never matched in the annals of British law. The three justices disappeared behind the dais; those in the body of the room burrowed into the floor or sheltered under desks. For a protracted, anguished moment nothing happened, and Harry wondered if he had given a false alarm. Then there was a dull, peculiarly muffled explosion, a great tinkling of glass—and a smell like a blitzed brewery.

  Slowly, the Court emerged from shelter. The Osmotic Bomb had proved its power. More important still, it had destroyed the evidence for the prosecution.

  The Bench was none too happy about dismissing the case; it felt, with good reason, that its dignity had been assailed. Moreover, each one of the justices would have to do some fast talking when he got home: the mist of alcohol had penetrated everything.

  Though the Clerk of the Court rushed round opening windows (none of which, oddly enough, had been broken) the fumes seemed reluctant to disperse. Harry Purvis, as he removed pieces of bottle-glass from his hair, wondered if there would be some intoxicated pupils in class tomorrow.

  Major Fotheringham, however, was undoubtedly a real sport, and as they filed out of the devastated courtroom, Harry heard him say to his Uncle: “Look here, Ferguson—it’ll be ages before we can get those Molotov Cocktails we’ve been promised by the War Office. What about making some of these bombs of yours for the Home Guard? If they don’t knock out a tank, at least they’ll make the crew drunk and incapable.”

  “I’ll certainly think about it, Major,” replied Uncle Homer, who still seemed a little dazed by the turn of events. He recovered somewhat as they drove back to the Vicarage along the narrow, winding lanes with their high walls of unmortared stone.

  “I hope, Uncle,” remarked Harry, when they had reached a relatively str
aight stretch and it seemed safe to talk to the driver, “that you don’t intend to rebuild that still. They’ll be watching you like hawks and you won’t get away with it again.”

  “Very well,” said Uncle, a little sulkily. “Confound these brakes! I had them fixed only just before the War!”

  “Hey!” cried Harry, “Watch out!”

  It was too late. They had come to a cross-roads at which a brand-new HALT sign had been erected. Uncle braked hard, but for a moment nothing happened. Then the wheels on the left seized up, while those on the right continued gaily spinning. The car did a hairpin bend, luckily without turning over, and ended in the ditch pointing in the direction from which it had come.

  Harry looked reproachfully at his Uncle. He was about to frame a suitable reprimand when a motor-cycle came out of the side-turning and drew up to them. It was not going to be their lucky day, after all.

  The village police-sergeant had been lurking in ambush, waiting to catch motorists at the new sign. He parked his machine by the roadside and leaned in through the window of the Austin.

  “You all right, Mr. Ferguson?” he said. Then his nose wrinkled up, and he looked like Jove about to deliver a thunderbolt. “This won’t do,” he said. “I’ll have to put you on a charge. Driving under the influence is a very serious business.”

  “But I’ve not touched a drop all day!” protested Uncle, waving an alcohol-sodden sleeve under the sergeant’s twitching nose.

  “Do you expect me to believe that?” snorted the irate policeman, pulling out his notebook. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come to the station with me. Is your friend sober enough to drive?”

  Harry Purvis didn’t answer for a moment. He was too busy beating his head against the dash-board.

  “Well,” we asked Harry. “What did they do to your Uncle?”

  “Oh, he got fined five pounds and had his license endorsed for drunken driving. Major Fotheringham wasn’t in the Chair, unfortunately, when the case came up, but the other two justices were still on the Bench. I guess they felt that even if he was innocent this time, there was a limit to everything.”

  “And did you ever get any of his money?”

  “No fear! He was very grateful, of course, and he’s told me that I’m mentioned in his will. But when I saw him last, what do you think he was doing? He was searching for the Elixir of Life.”

  Harry sighed at the overwhelming injustice of things. “Sometimes,” he said gloomily, “I’m afraid he’s found it. The doctors say he’s the healthiest seventy-year-old they’ve ever seen. So all I got out of the whole affair was some interesting memories and a hangover.”

  “A hangover?” asked Charlie Willis.

  “Yes,” replied Harry, a faraway look in his eye. “You see, the excise men hadn’t seized all the evidence. We had to—ah—destroy the rest. It took us the best part of a week. We invented all sorts of things during that time—but we never discovered what they were.”

  •

  Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) surely needs no introduction, but I’ll give one anyway. Known for being one of the “Big Three” writers of modern science fiction (along with Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov). He was co-scripter of and technical advisor for the now-classic movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the author of many best-selling novels, as well as a commentator on CBS’s coverage of the Apollo missions, and winner of numerous awards, His readers knew him for writing both the hardest of hard science fiction stories and also for visionary far-future stories showing the influence of Olaf Stapledon. But his collection of humorous tall tales, Tales from the White Hart, demonstrates his talent for humor, as in “Moving Spirit,” included in this book. On a more serious note, in a technical paper in 1945, he was first to describe how geosynchronous satellites could relay broadcasts from the ground around the world, bringing a new era in global communications and television. His novels are too numerous to list here (but I’ll plug three of my favorites: The City and the Stars, Childhood’s End, and Earthlight), let alone his many short stories. He was equally adept at non-fiction, notably in his The Exploration of Space (a Book of the Month Club selection) in the early 1950s, his frequently reprinted Profiles of the Future, and another bunch of books also too numerous to mention. So, instead of not mentioning them further, I’ll just say, go thou and read.

  VICTIM OF CHANGES

  Christopher Ruocchio

  What’s a world where man and machine are forbidden from mixing supposed to do with cyborgs? Especially cyborgs too dangerous to be left alive? Well, when you can’t get justice, you have to settle for the law—even when the law is terrible. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a little mercy—and a little humanity—even for things that aren’t really human anymore.

  •

  The creature the cathars brought before the praetor had been human once. The mighty chains that bound it hand and foot rattled against their moorings as the guards drew them tight, forcing the metal beast to kneel. Its hunched shoulders were twice as broad as any man’s, but the face—bloodless and pale as stars—was that of a woman. Seated in the praetor’s throne, Sarana stirred as the creature turned milky eyes towards her. Sarana had sentenced a dozen such creatures to death before for the great sin of profanation, but they had all been men. Why should it bother her so much more that this creature was a woman? Or had been one? She wasn’t sure, and that was the worst part. Sarana was an inquisitor of Mother Earth’s own Holy Chantry, a praetor, no less. A praetor must be certain. Perhaps it was only that the face shrouded in all that ceramic and steel looked just that much more like her own.

  Or perhaps it was that the abomination was not alone.

  Chained at its side—almost like a pet, to Sarana’s eye—was a child. A little girl, no more than three or four years standard, in a drab gray gown the sisters who tended the clients in the bastille had given her. The girl was not bound hand and foot, but clung to the behemoth’s thigh as any child might her mother’s skirts.

  Sarana’s mind balked at the comparison, and she swept her flinty gaze over the room.

  The court was by design an unforgiving place. Men and women did not come before a praetor of the Holy Inquisition for forgiveness. The old gods forgave, or so the magi said. Mother Earth did not. The chamber was fashioned all of gray stone, the throne and jurors’ bench brutal constructions of concrete without ornament or device, the lights harsh and colorless. The very shape of the chamber spoke of power, as did the black robe she wore, the black robe and the high, white crown and stole whose shape evoked the pharaohs and pontifexes of antiquity, symbols whose origins were lost in the minds of most of Earth’s children, but whose mute power remained stamped in the cellular memory of every human being in the galaxy.

  “State your names for the record,” Sarana said, steel in her voice to match the flint of her eye.

  The mighty beast twitched. It moved strangely, hobbled by more than the chains. Sarana knew her people had combed over its systems before admitting it into her presence and that of the thirteen who sat to advise her judgment. Whatever threat the once-human thing might have posed with its mighty arms and metal body was ended.

  “Leocadia,” the beast replied. Her voice—its voice—was decidedly human.

  Strange that such a monster could sound afraid. Sarana peered into the bloodless face. At twenty paces distant, the praetor thought she spied the shape of wires and hoses beneath the skin where the flesh flowed into plastic.

  “And the girl?”

  The child had not spoken. Had not looked out from where she hid in the shadow of the monster’s thigh.

  Leocadia spoke and tried to lower one massive hand to touch the child’s shoulder. “Tell her your name, sweetheart.”

  One blue eye—identical to the blue eyes of the once-human thing in the chains before her—peered up at Sarana. “Inas,” the girl said.

  Satisfied, Sarana gave the scribe an officious nod. These barbarians more often than not only had the one name. No house, no famil
y to speak of. The scribe bent to his task, mechanical keys clicking in the still air. Certain electronic devices were permitted under the Chantry’s Writ, but none was permitted within the court, particularly when so profane a creature as this Leocadia was present. The woman had perverted her Earth-given flesh, carved it away until she was a face and a spinal column and a bit of nerve wired into steel and rubber. Sarana had examined the scans. The barbarian’s heart was still there…her kidneys and liver. But the lungs were gone, replaced with a system that breathed for her, even and unceasing.

  “Do you know why you are here?” Sarana asked.

  “Because you think you own us!” the beast replied. “We are not your subjects!”

  Untroubled, Sarana pressed her fingertips against the broad arms of her seat. “All the Mother’s children are our charge. Though you spit on her and turn your back and sell your flesh to daimons.”

  The creature flinched, servos whining in its mighty limbs, rattling the heavy chains.

  “Do you know why you are here?” Sarana asked once more, fingers drumming against the arm of the judge’s throne.

  Silence.

  “You have been found guilty of Abomination under the Writ of Earth’s Holy Chantry. You have profaned your body with machines and consorted with daimons. For these crimes against your own humanity and for your sins in the eyes of the Earth, Our Mother, you will be put to death by fire.”

  “Crimes against my own humanity?” The giant strained against its bonds. “I am human, you cow!”

  The cathars pulled the chains tighter, massive winches tugging at the iron limbs until their mechanisms screamed in protest and the human face that once had been a woman named Leocadia grimaced in fury and frustration both.

  “The status of your humanity is not open to debate. It is gone,” Sarana said, surveying the bonds that kept her prisoner in place. They ought to hold, even against a hybrid twice the size of this. “This is merely a sentencing hearing.”