Overruled

by Hank Davis

  Waldo was having none of that. “I’ll give it to her. You wait here.”

  He tapped on the cloth flap of the tent, waited about five milliseconds, and disappeared inside. I heard an exclamation, a giggle, and some whispering. About a minute later Waldo emerged.

  “She says she’ll have a drop now, and share any that’s left with us after the jousting. She asked us to go now and make sure her horse is saddled and ready.”

  I couldn’t tell if a horse saddle was put on backwards or perhaps even upside down, while Waldo makes me appear as an equestrian expert. But apparently Helga’s word was law. We headed off together toward the stables.

  “She asked who gave you the whiskey,” Waldo said when we were halfway there. “But I couldn’t tell her.”

  “I should have gone into the tent. I could have told her who it came from.”

  “Well, you never told me.”

  “You never asked.”

  “You still could have mentioned it.”

  “I didn’t see any reason to.” Rather than bickering indefinitely, I added, “The whiskey came from a woman called Flora.”

  “Never heard of her.” Waldo was sulking.

  “She doesn’t use that name as a competitor. She fights as the Iron Maiden.”

  Waldo stopped in midstep. “Are you sure it came from the Iron Maiden?”

  “Positive. She handed the flask to me herself.”

  “But the Iron Maiden is in second place to Helga. Didn’t you see the scoreboard? They’re very close, and that means they’ll meet as opponents in the jousting.”

  We stared at each other for a fraction of a second, then set off for Helga’s tent at a run.

  I arrived four steps ahead of Waldo, barged in without asking, and was relieved to see the giant figure of Helga sitting over by the far wall. She leaned against a tent pole, and her armor was spread on the floor in front of her.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Waldo as he rushed in. “She’s—”

  Her eyes were closed. She had not moved.

  Waldo howled. “She’s dead!”

  “No.” I could see she was breathing. “She’s drugged.” I picked up the flask and shook it. Half empty. “Come on, we have to wake her up.”

  Waldo had subsided to the floor in his relief. “No need for that. She can sleep it off.”

  Sometimes I wonder which universe Waldo lives in. I glanced at my watch. “In half an hour, Helga has to take part in the jousting. We have all our money on her to win.”

  “What about the sword fight winnings?”

  “Article Twelve: Should a competitor fail to appear at the allocated time, blah-blah-blah—unless Helga fights the Iron Maiden, we lose a fortune.”

  “She can’t fight. Look at her.”

  Helga was snoring peacefully, her mouth open to reveal pearly and perfect teeth.

  “She has to,” I said grimly. “Come on.”

  For the next five minutes we tried shouting, pinching, pouring cold water on her head, burning cloth under her nose. Not a twitch. After we tried and failed to lift her to her feet, so that we could walk her up and down the tent, I realized that Waldo was right. Helga couldn’t fight.

  We were doomed.

  I paced up and down the tent myself. We had twenty minutes. Helga had to fight.

  But Helga didn’t have to win. All she had to do was appear. If she fought and lost, we would still have twenty percent of our winnings, the amount they refused to let us roll over into the next bet.

  I turned to Waldo. “Come on. We have to do this quickly.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get you into Helga’s armor. You have to fight in her place.”

  “What?!”

  “You heard.” I handed him the helmet. “You don’t have to fight well. It’s enough just to show up.”

  “I can’t pretend I’m Helga. I look nothing like her. For heaven’s sake, Henry, I have a mustache.”

  “You’ll be inside her suit of armor, with a visor covering your face. There won’t be an inch of you showing.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?”

  “I’m not half her size. I’d rattle around inside her armor like a pea in a can. For you, though, it won’t be a bad fit.”

  “Henry, you’ve gone mad. I can’t do it.” He folded his arms. “I won’t do it.”

  Twenty minutes. Fortunes have been made in twenty minutes, empires lost, cities destroyed, whole nations doomed or saved.

  I sat down opposite Waldo. After five years in law school and four times that as a practicing attorney, it was time to see how much I had learned of the gentle arts of persuasion.

  I began, “Think how grateful Helga will be…”

  * * *

  He didn’t look bad, not bad at all.

  Admittedly—I squinted into the sun—Waldo was close to two hundred meters away at the other end of the straightway, so that the finer details of the way he sat on the horse were probably lost to me. I hoped he had paid attention to my last cautionary words. “Don’t say a word to anyone, no matter who they are. After the jousting is done, ride this way. I’ll take care of the horse, you go back inside the tent and take off the armor. If anyone comes in after that, you tell them Helga needed to sleep after a hard day.”

  It might work. It could work. Waldo just had to ride the length of the field without falling off, then he would be back at the exhibit area where he had started. The competitors’ tents were close by, and Helga’s was near the front. He could ride the horse right up to it.

  I hoped that he could see. Helga’s armor had been made for her, half a head taller. Stretching up as high as he could, Waldo had been able to get one of his eyes level with a nose hole. He had complained about that quite a bit. On the other hand, what did he need to see? The horses had been trained well, and I knew from watching previous contestants that a straight path was the easiest one for the animal.

  The Iron Maiden would start from close to where I stood. I wished I could see the expression on the face behind the visor. There had been no more of the “fine sweet prince” talk, and my bet was that she was scowling and wondering where her plan to nobble Helga had failed.

  The blue flag was slowly being raised. When it fluttered down, the two contestants would begin to ride toward each other, first at a canter and then at a full gallop.

  There was one other detail that I preferred not to think about. Each rider was armed with a lance about twenty-five feet long. Even after watching some of the other jousters, I didn’t know how the cumbersome thing was supposed to be supported. I finally lashed Waldo’s weapon to the saddle in one place and tucked the rounded haft between his arm and breastplate. The chance that he would hit anything with it was negligible, but at least the point could not drop too far and convert the event to the pole vault.

  The chance that the Iron Maiden would damage Waldo was another matter. I had downplayed the risk, telling him that no one in the jousting had been killed. I did not mention that there had been a couple of very violent dismounts. It would only send him off on another tirade of protest.

  The blue flag was starting down. That made little difference, because Waldo’s horse had decided to use its own best judgment on the matter and started to canter forward a few seconds earlier.

  I heard a loud curse from inside the helmet of the Iron Maiden. She dug her heels into her own horse and it whinnied and jerked forward.

  The crowd became silent, the only sound the thundering hooves. It did not take a connoisseur to detect a certain difference of styles between the two contestants. The Iron Maiden sat rock-steady on her horse and the tip of her lance moved as though it was fixed to a straight line parallel to the ground.

  By contrast, I could see occasional daylight between Waldo and his saddle. The end of his lance described random motion within a vertical circle twenty-five feet ahead of him. The radius of that circle increased as the horse moved from a canter to a full gallop.

  I had never before realized how
fast horses can run. The horses that I bet on seldom seem to manage more than an arthritic crawl toward the winning post. But Waldo and the Iron Maiden were approaching each other at an impossible speed.

  They were forty meters apart—twenty—a crash of metal—they were somehow past each other, and the spectators were screaming in horror. The tip of the Iron Maiden’s lance had struck Waldo squarely in the middle of his helmet, ripping it loose from the rest of his armor. As the helmet rolled away across the dirt, the headless knight galloped on.

  Rode toward me. Rode straight at me. As I threw myself out of the way, convinced that the decapitated rider was about to lance Helga as she lay sleeping inside her tent, the horse at the last moment veered off. The lance leading the way, horse and burden missed the competitors’ enclosure and plunged into the next one.

  I couldn’t see behind the awning separating the enclosures, but the noise that reached me was frightful.

  * * *

  It took a couple of weeks to arrange the hearing, long enough for Waldo to be out of the hospital. He claimed that he ought to come to court and present part of our arguments, but I dissuaded him on the grounds that his broken and wired jaw denied him his customary verbal clarity.

  The rest of his head was intact. Unable to maintain a high enough position in Helga’s suit when on horseback, he had slipped down to peer out through a slit in the neck piece. He had been untouched by the lance that removed the helmet, but the force of his final collision did considerable damage.

  I expected to be alone in the court, except for the judge and the team of seven attorneys representing Joustin’ Time. When I heard another group of people slip into the back as the proceedings began, I was too busy listening to the Joustin’ Time claims to take notice of new arrivals.

  Their list of purported offenses and damages was impressive. The lead attorney, Duncan Whiteside, a man of earnest demeanor and awkward body language, took four and a half hours to deliver it, but I could boil everything down to this:

  * Messrs. Burmeister and Carver had illegally taken part in a tournament organized by Joustin’ Time.

  * Messrs. Burmeister and Carver had by their actions forced cancellation of the jousting contest.

  * Messrs. Burmeister and Carver, by killing the tournament dragon, had forced the cancellation of the entire second half of the program.

  Both compensatory and punitive damages were sought.

  When Duncan Whiteside finally dribbled to a halt, Judge Solomon looked at me and said, “You may now respond to these charges.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. I will be brief.”

  I had seen the judge’s eyes rolling during the previous presentation. Hubert Solomon was a man of famously few words, and he admired the same trait in others. I figured I had five good minutes and I did not intend to go a second over.

  “Your Honor,” I said, “I would draw your attention to Exhibit Seven, the contract between Helga Svensen and Joustin’ Time Enterprises.”

  “I have it.”

  “Article Nineteen, paragraph four, clause five. Let me read it aloud, since the print is awfully small. ‘The terms and conditions of this contract will apply in toto to any designated representative of the contractor.’ Your honor, Burmeister and Carver are designated representatives of Helga Svensen. My colleague, Waldo Burmeister, represented Helga Svensen in the jousting tournament. I would simply make the comment that were an attorney not deemed to be a designated representative of a client, the entire legal profession would be irreparably damaged.”

  “Your point is noted. Continue.”

  “Burmeister and Carver, jointly and severally, had no part in the decision to cancel the jousting tournament. Therefore we cannot be regarded as responsible for such a decision.”

  “Noted. Continue.”

  “Now, as to the dragon—”

  “Objection!” Naturally, from Duncan Whiteside.

  Judge Solomon had an odd frown on his face as he stared at me. “Mr. Carver, this is a serious matter. I hope that you are not proposing to argue that Mr. Burmeister did not kill the dragon.”

  “Not at all. Your Honor, it is a central point of our argument that Mr. Burmeister’s lance undeniably killed the dragon. Now let me draw your attention to Article Seventeen of the contract. Again I quote: ‘Any bona fide representative of a participating team, such representative or representatives to be termed hereinafter collectively the contestant, may enter into single combat with the dragon. Should the contestant slay or otherwise defeat the dragon, the contestant will win the Grand Prize.’ Since Mr. Burmeister was a representative of Helga Svensen, and killed the dragon, the Grand Prize should be paid—”

  “Objection!” The lead attorney for Joustin’ Time was on his feet. “Your Honor, the dragon was asleep when Mr. Burmeister killed it.”

  “Mr. Whiteside, you must allow Mr. Carver to finish his sentences, otherwise—”

  “Your Honor, the dragon-slaying part of the tournament had not even begun.”

  “Mr. Whiteside, you must also allow me to finish my sentences.” Hubert Solomon was enjoying the tussle. Otherwise he would have bitten off Duncan Whiteside’s head. He nodded to me. “Mr. Carver, proceed.”

  “Thank you. Your Honor, I have little to add. Nothing in the contract mentions the time or circumstances in which the dragon must be slain in order for a contestant to win the Grand Prize. Mr. Burmeister slew the dragon, and therefore won the Grand Prize. The amount owed to us is given in Exhibit Two.”

  “Very good.” The judge abruptly stood up. “I now call a ten-minute recess.”

  He swept out. I knew where he was going—to private chambers for a good laugh.

  I felt an urge to do the same. I headed for the exit, carefully avoiding the dismayed eyes of the Joustin’ Time team. They were not complete fools. They knew they had ten minutes to agree among themselves on the terms of a mediated settlement.

  Near the door I came to the group of people who had arrived late. It offered the impression of a group, but actually it was just Helga Svensen and Flora McTavish.

  Together! Clad today in light, springtime armor, they sat side by side smiling at the world.

  “Mr. Carver.” Helga reached out and enveloped my hand in hers. “You were brilliant, totally brilliant.”

  “You were.” Flora beamed at me. “Helga told me you’d do it, but I didn’t see how. You’re a genius!”

  “Not really.” I coughed modestly. “It’s far from over, you know. And all I did was read the fine print.”

  “But how you read it!” Flora’s eyes were shining. “Would you be willing to read my fine print?”

  While I was pondering the possible implications of that question, Helga stood up. “I’m going to leave the two of you to talk. Is it too soon for me to go and see Waldo?”

  I thought of my partner, splinted and swathed from head to toe. In his present condition I didn’t think that even Waldo could get into too much trouble. “You can go and see him,” I said, “but you won’t see much of him.”

  “I’ll tell him things are going well.” She thundered out, shaking the floor with her girlish tread.

  I turned to Flora. “I don’t understand. She brought you here. She’s talking to you.”

  “Of course she is. Helga and I are best friends.”

  “But you drugged her and tried to kill her!”

  “Oh, nonsense. Drugged her a wee bit, aye, but that’s all in the game. I knew it wasn’t Helga, the minute I saw that lance wobbling about. I thought she was snoring in her tent, and somebody had tied a stuffed dummy up there on her horse.”

  Stuffed, perhaps, and far too frequently for someone on a perennial diet; but Waldo was no dummy.

  “There’s a big tournament coming up on Ceres,” Flora went on. “I’d like you to be there with me.”

  I could not talk any longer. A buzz of activity at the front of the room announced that Judge Solomon had entered and Duncan Whiteside was already stepping toward him, an anxious ex
pression on his face.

  I ran for the steps, calling over my shoulder, “Go there, and do what?”

  I think that Flora, behind me, said, “Read my fine print.” But it sounded an awful lot like, “Be my fine prince.”

  •

  Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) graduated from St. John’s College in Cambridge, England, and had notable careers as a scientist and a writer. In the former field, he served as Chief Scientist of the Earth Satellite Corporation, which processed remote sensing data collected by satellites, producing many technical papers and two popular nonfiction books, Earthwatch and Man on Earth. He was a consultant with NASA. His science fiction writing was equally impressive, as when his novelet, “Georgia on My Mind,” won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. His novel Brother to Dragons won the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1984 to 1986 and also served as president of the American Astronautical Society. Noted for his flair for humor (as in the story in this book), he was Toastmaster at the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention. He had brilliant careers in science and science fiction and his untimely death from a brain tumor in 2002 was a tragic loss for both fields.