Corrupting Dr. Nice

by John Kessel

  "Don't mention it."

  Gen closed the apartment door, examined the card that came with the flowers. A tiny image of Owen spoke to her. "Emma. One rose for every sleepless hour I'll have thinking of you."

  Gen closed the card. "I'm going to do this, August. I'm going to give the Vannice clan a thrashing they'll never forget."

  August sighed. "I expect the audience for that will be huge. It just proves what they say: give the public what they want to see and they'll come out for it."

  NINE: WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

  Ever since he had heard Owen describe to Emma Zume his planned testimony, Bill had been advising Owen against it. =This is exactly the kind of situation your parents bought me for. You'll put yourself in the way of public ridicule, if not legal hazard, for no good reason.=

  "Showing Emma what I stand for isn't a good reason?"

  =Trust God, not shopping; dreaming men, funny women.=

  The physical courtroom, crammed into the Stamford Vannicom studios, was not large. At the front stood LEX's polished mahogany bench. Before the bench was the performance space, with its matte black floor and the dramatic stage lighting. Next came the tables of the defense and the plaintiff, and behind a rail, an arc of a dozen seats for witnesses and those spectators who were physically present. But the courtroom was wired for VR, and countless subscribers jacking in would be there watching.

  Not only would they watch, but each participant's sensorium was backwired to the court. Their instantaneous judgments about the case were crunched by a computer. Home viewers could pull down a monitor that would display at any moment the state of public opinion: on the defendant's guilt or innocence, LEX's rulings, the lawyers' arguments, the lawyers' clothes, the lawyers' cosmetic surgery, whether it would be fun to sleep with the defendant, did the defendant look like a person who preferred cats or dogs, and how, if the defendant should be found guilty of a capital offense, the execution should be carried out. The same feedback was also wired into LEX's judgment program. A modern arbitration like Simon's trial became a struggle, not just to convince LEX, but to affect that invisible audience. Everything leading up to the trial was designed to prepare that audience to be sympathetic to one or the other side.

  In the courtroom, the only indicator of that feedback was the large display on the front of LEX's bench. Not visible to the witnesses testifying, a simple needle ran along a graduated scale from the green of "Acquit" to the red of "Convict." The lawyers judged from this how the minute-by-minute PR surge was running. A good advocate was a person who could wing it, adjusting his strategy from moment to moment in keeping with the VR jury's reaction, without losing track of the framework of law within which LEX would rule.

  At the Saltimbanque table were Jerry Canady heading the plaintiff's team, his two regular assistants, Hiroko Sato and Wanda Skolnik (who had already become a notorious figure on the worldwide net because of her demure seriousness and great legs). Plus a dark man Owen did not recognize. "Who is that?" he whispered.

  =Delbert Lamont,= Bill said. =PR. He's monitoring responses and advising Canady on his closing argument. When you cross them he's going to have Canady use you for wallpaper.=

  In comparison to the crowded prosecution table, at the defense table sat Simon and Diane Ontiveros. Simon wore a woolen tunic and a leather belt, a headband, sandals. "The embattled little guy ," Owen muttered.

  =The lone fanatic. The guaranteed loser, no matter what you do.=

  "Hear ye, hear ye, the court of the honorable LEX is now in session. All rise."

  The in-court spectators rose, and Owen got up with them.

  The door behind the bench opened and LEX entered. Today he had chosen to be a huge black raven with a hooked yellow beak and beady eyes. A sharp crest of midnight feathers shot up from his narrow head. He wore striped trousers, a waistcoat, a stand up collar with jet cravat, black cutaway, and brilliant white gloves. Only the fact that Owen knew it was an illusion kept him from thinking the creature was really there.

  LEX settled down behind the desk. "Be seated," it said in a skirling voice that stood the hairs on the back of Owen's neck. "In our last episode, the defense challenged the authenticity of the Herod's Palace security pix. Mr. Canady, are you prepared to respond?"

  "Yes, LEX. We call Dr. Owen Vannice to the stand."

  Owen moved to the witness stand. The lights were bright enough that he could not see past the lawyer's tables: there might have been an army of watchers. He looked over at Simon. If Ontiveros had told him of Owen's plan, he showed no signs of either hope or resignation.

  "Dr. Vannice," Canady began, "thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be here. Thanks to the pix in question we've all witnessed your heroic action in the resolution of the Jerusalem hostage crisis, for which we must commend you."

  "Thank you."

  "In regard to those pix, in your view, are they an accurate representation of what occurred in the Herod's Palace Hotel?"

  "As far as it goes, yes."

  "I want you to identify for us the man who threatened to kill you at the end of that confrontation."

  "Objection, LEX," Ontiveros said. "We don't know the defendant's intentions."

  "Sustained. Try again, Jerry."

  Canady was undeterred. "Is the man who pointed his weapon at you here in this courtroom?"

  "Yes he is. But--"

  "Would you point him out for us?"

  Owen pointed to Simon. "There he is. But I want to make clear that he didn't shoot, although--"

  Canady looked vexed. "He was standing there, with an rifle."

  "Yes"

  "And he pointed it at you."

  "Yes, that's so. But--"

  "So the tranquilizing gas kept him from firing."

  "Objection, your honor. Leading."

  "Sustained," said LEX.

  Canady's eyes flicked over the feedback indicator. "Let me rephrase that, Dr. Vannice. You were there. As the pix seem to show, were you passing out from the tranquilizing gas?"

  "Yes."

  "Were the other hostages likewise affected?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it likely that anyone not wearing a gas mask would be equally affected by the gas?"

  "I suppose so. But--"

  "That's all, your honor."

  Owen looked at Simon, who was watching the indicator on the front of LEX's desk. He doubted anything he'd said so far had done much to nudge it toward "acquit."

  =Nice job, Boss. Now let it go.=

  Dianne Ontiveros got up for the cross examination. "Dr. Vannice, when you were injured during the assault, did the defendant do anything to hurt you?

  "No. In fact, he prevented the guard from hurting me further."

  "You yourself have experience with time travel to distant moment universes."

  "Yes, I do."

  "You might even be said to be an expert on the effects of time travel. As a scientist, Dr. Vannice, would you give us your opinion of the effects of time travel on the present and past? What has the result been since the first cat was sent back to the 2022 moment universe by Patel in 2035?"

  "Objection, your honor!" Canady said. "Immaterial."

  "I'm going to allow it," LEX chirped. "Ratings could use a boost."

  It was the opening Owen had hoped for. Bill whispered, =I don't suppose at this point you want to listen to reason.=

  "Time travel's had many deleterious effects," Owen said.

  =I didn't think so. I'm outa here, boss.=

  "In your opinion, what have these effects been?" Ontiveros asked.

  Now he would show Emma who he really was. "We're all aware of them. For instance, you go back into a two-second old moment universe and you can pull an essential duplicate of a real person into our world. These historical duplicates have been used for fraud."

  "Isn't that illegal?"

  "It hasn't stopped people from doing it. But that's the least of time travel's deleterious effects. Look at the effect on the economy! How
many plastic farms have gone out of business since we've started pumping petrochemicals out of the past? Plus, the psychic costs have been immeasurable! We're living by the past so much we've closed off our own future. Try to become a writer or entertainer or athlete on your own today, when you have to compete with the best of all history."

  =You're in free fall, now.=

  Owen ignored Bill. He was enjoying this, and Bill's attempts to derail him only made it more sweet. He was acting on principle, in defiance of what his parents wanted. He felt himself growing eloquent. "What about the destruction of past peoples? The antibiotic-resistant microbes of the 21st century have wreaked havoc in earlier eras. Influenza killed millions in the fourteenth century alone, exceeding deaths caused by the Black Plague. How do we know the retrovirus explosion in the late twentieth wasn't a result of contamination by time travelers?"

  =Without a net.=

  "By entering the past we are creating whole new universes! Whole other earths, other human races, which we create and abandon. We steal their significant historical figures and leave them to struggle on, and never even know how or whether they cope."

  =Wake me when you hit.=

  "Then there are the theoretical questions. What about bleed-over? You can't go on burning adjacent moment universes without eventually having an effect on the fabric of time itself. You create a focused mass of altered time streams and you're going to affect our own. A black hole of warped history, sucking us down into it."

  =That noise you hear is the sound of fingernails scraping the bottom of the barrel.=

  Ontiveros asked, "What about those who say that there have been no measurable effects?"

  "How would we know?" Once the past has been changed, the present goes along and we are none the wiser."

  "Supposing all this to be true, Dr. Vannice, does it in any way justify Simon's actions?" Ontiveros asked.

  "I'm not saying that. All I'm saying is that some much larger crimes have to be ignored before we presume to judge those men who took over the basement of Herod's Palace."

  "Thank you, Dr. Vannice, for your frank and honest appraisal." Ontiveros swept her arm outward in a magnanimous gesture as she spun to face the gallery. "I'm sure it must have been difficult for you to speak the truth when your interests lie so strongly on the other side."

  She returned to the defense table. Owen started to rise.

  Jerry Canady held up his hand. "Just a minute, Dr. Vannice."

  The prosecution lawyers conferred, grim faced. Delbert Lamont's head was an inch from Canady's, whispering in his ear while Canady stared impassively at Owen. The witness stand felt suddenly uncomfortable.

  "Your honor, we'd like the opportunity to re-direct," Canady said.

  "Go ahead."

  =Nice knowing you, Owen.=

  Canady stood and came forward, a tight smile on his face. Owen tried not to feel nervous. "Dr. Vannice, are you an expert on time travel case law?"

  "I'm not."

  "So you didn't know that it's illegal to take doubles of living citizens, or the recently deceased, from Moment Universes?"

  "It may be illegal, but people still do it."

  "Are you an expert on the economics of time travel?"

  "Not exactly. But I've done a lot--"

  "In fact, it costs a lot of money to go back two seconds. So much so that the number of documented cases of illegal doubles being taken is--twelve. Should we close down a multi-billion dollar industry, one that employs hundreds of thousands of people and has beneficial effects throughout our economy, for the twelve times people have used this technology against the law?"

  "Those crimes are just the tip of the iceberg."

  "I didn't know you were an expert in icebergs, either. Now, you talked about 'bleed-over.' Tell us, Dr. Vannice, is your doctorate in temporal physics?"

  "Uh--no."

  "You are a paleontologist, is that correct?"

  "Yes."

  "At present, are you affiliated with any accredited college or university?"

  "No. I was at MIT, but--"

  "So, in fact, you don't have any scientific basis for lecturing us about the concept of bleed-over, do you?"

  Owen tried to keep calm. "Well, okay. It's generally felt that those moment universes are completely separate from our own past."

  "Thank you. You used the term 'fabric of time.' Is there any scientific evidence that time is a fabric?"

  "Uh--not exactly."

  "Do you know where that term comes from?"

  "It's in common use."

  "'Fabric of time' is a metaphor that was popular in the science fiction of the twentieth century. In fact, according to contemporary physics, time is a quantum gas. Do you know what a quantum gas is?"

  "Not precisely."

  "Not precisely." Canady turned to the invisible audience. "We're talking about reality, not metaphysical concepts like 'bleed-over' or archaic fantasies like the 'fabric of time.'"

  "Some reputable scientists speculate--"

  "Isn't it true that we have visited moment universes adjacent to ours to the next second," Canady said, "and that when we do so we find no perceptible difference until we begin to make an effect on it ourselves? That according to every study ever undertaken, our present, the True Moment, has not been affected in any way by changes made to past moment universes?"

  "As I said before, how would we know?"

  "How would you, at any rate. You mentioned those petrochemicals taken from the past. How many people have been able to afford artificial hearts because of those cheap petrochemicals?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "Those plastic farms were only started when we ran out of oil. Now that we have another source, we don't need them. As the son of wealth, and a cosseted academic, I guess we can't expect you to be familiar with the world of commerce, but that's the way the marketplace works. Yet you sit before us wearing a pair of mood boots made from oil piped from past versions of fields that were exhausted when you were a child."

  "Objection, LEX!" Ontiveros said. "Mr. Canady is making a speech, not examining the witness."

  LEX's crestfeathers waggled in excitement. "Sure. But it's a petty good speech. Go for it!"

  Owen tried to regain the initiative. "You're talking about science, or economics," he protested. "But the moral issue has not been settled."

  "Precisely. Settling it is one outcome we hope this trial will have." Canady moved away from the stand, toward the viewing audience. "We're not saying time use has had no effect. It's had an enormous effect: a positive one. Our lives have been immensely enriched by the things we've brought from the past. Our children go into the park and feed the passenger pigeons, and come home to play with Rin Tin Tin--the very same loyal, faithful, intelligent dog that made all those movies in the twentieth century."

  Canady pressed ahead. "If it's not beneath you, Dr. Vannice, you should go down to your local mall and walk into an art shop, where anyone of modest means can purchase an original of the Mona Lisa, Starry Night, or The Persistence of Memory."

  "But the effects on historicals--" Owen said.

  "For every historical who's been harmed by a disease brought from the future, we've saved ten using modern medical science. Why see those created moment universes as a debit when they could as easily be seen as a great unintended benefit of time visiting. Whole new universes exist. Whole new versions of history. Who's to say that the inhabitants of those alternative histories don't live better lives than they lived in our own history?"

  "Ask Simon about that," Owen said.

  Canady turned back to Owen, as if he'd forgotten him. "Dr. Vannice, I seem to recall that you are running an experiment on an apatosaurus."

  "That's true."

  "A creature that's been extinct for sixty-five million years. Are you telling us that you harmed the past by bringing that creature to the present? That you're harming the dinosaur by studying it? How can you, who altered history yourself by establishing your research station and bringin
g her here, take a position in opposition to time travel?"

  "I know things about that dinosaur that you can't possibly understand."

  "So you say. In the area of paleontology I'm prepared to listen. As a witness to the assault on the Jerusalem hotel you are no doubt reliable. But as an expert on the effects of time travel you are a paranoid who would impoverish our cultural and economic lives, for nothing."

  "Objection!" Dianne Ontiveros said.

  "I withdraw the question," Canady said. "That's all, your honor."

  =Splat.=

  "The witness is excused!" LEX crowed. "Used and abused!"

  Owen looked over at the defense table. Dianne Ontiveros was watching the viewer reaction indicator with a grim expression on her face. Simon sat as impassive as if nothing had happened. On the way out Owen glanced over his shoulder and saw the needle in the far red.

  Owen's boots felt like they were made of lead, and he did not need to look at them to know they were a humiliated purple. He left the courtroom as quickly as possible. On the steps in front of the studio, he was greeted by a host of reporters. Owen brushed them aside. But as he tried to move toward his waiting limousine, a woman in sixteenth century Japanese clothing threw herself at him. She tore apart the top of her kimono, exposing her breasts. "We're all animals!" she shouted. "We're all extinct!"

  Owen gave her his coat, then ducked into the limo. "Thanks for not killing her," Owen told Bill.

  =Hard work ends obsessive bed poetry laughter.=

  #

  Throughout Vannice's testimony Simon watched the indicator plunge steadily toward "convict." At the end Diane Ontiveros was scribbling furious notes on her thinkpad. "You have to let me make the closing statement," she whispered to Simon, "or this case is lost."