by Larry Niven
"Tony, this is silly-"
"The hell it is! Pres, do you think you're the only one with nightmares? You did the right thing. You did the only thing. It's not your fault you didn't have any choices. You should never have been in that situation. But what could I do?
"It looks like a computer problem," Tony Rand brooded. "They knew too much about MILLIE, and MILLIE may be too vulnerable anyway. Too many people with access. They have to have access. Okay, maybe I can't deal with that, but suppose there's something else? One more door, or another set of locks, or a trapdoor somewhere-"
"Tony, you're doing it again." Preston Sanders looked as if he were trying to reach through the glass. "You're putting people in boxes. They don't fit. You can't stop everyone. It's like trying not to offend anyone. Remember what TV was like in the seventies? Even your high-diving board doesn't work on everyone, does it? A clever, determined suicide brings wire cutters and goes through the fence."
"Yeah. I used to wonder if that was a murder. Why would a suicide go to that much trouble?" Tony brooded for a moment. "Skip it. Is there anything I can bring you?"
"Yeah. My roommate brings westerns and is eager to loan them to me. So pick me a good thick science fiction novel with lots of obscure technical terms."
It was perfectly clear to Tony that Pres had said that to cheer up Tony Rand. "That'll fix him," Tony said.
Rand left the jail with a feeling of relief, but he continued to brood. What could he have done differently? And what should he do now? There'd be a next time. He was sure of it. And next time, there would be real bombs.
X. JUDGMENT
Justice, I think, is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don't believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodations concretely.
-Learned Hand
Tony Rand fidgeted uncomfortably on the courtroom chair. From time to time he tried to catch Preston Sanders's eye, but Pres was sitting rigidly upright, his eyes fastened on the witness, and never looked back. He didn't look too bad, considering that he'd been jailed for nearly three weeks.
The courtroom looked like a TV set. It was the special courtroom, with a big Plexiglas panel between the spectators and the area where the action went on. Rand had been told that Judge Penny Norton's bench had armor plate built into it as well. Marshals searched everyone who entered the room. When they were satisfied, they let the judge and defendant in.
Judge Norton looked very stern in her black robes. It was a big case for her, the biggest she'd ever been involved in. In the strategy meetings back at Todos Santos, John Shapiro had described her as "up-and-coming," a judge who'd likely end up on the California Supreme Court once she had more experience; he'd known her in law school. He also thought she'd pay more attention to the political situation than to the law, but he had no way to challenge her. "And," he'd said, "at least she's smart enough to understand the arguments. I don't think we'd get a better one, and it would take a long time to try."
That had been the deciding factor for Art Bonner. He wanted the trial over and done with, as soon as possible. No delays. There'd been argument over that, with Shapiro protesting that he had to work in Sanders's best interest, not the corporation's, and the best thing for Sanders would be to delay. That was when Bonner had taken Shapiro into his office, and Tony didn't know what Art had said to the lawyer, but certainly the legal proceedings had been surprisingly swift after that.
Tony was no lawyer; actually, he disliked the breed. For Tony Rand the world was a relatively simple place, and there was no need for people whose profession was to get rich by making it complex. However, he had to admire John Shapiro, who had carefully and patiently built his case, not merely in common sense, but in the strange convolutions required by the law. He had wrung Tony Rand dry of information, and at the same time kept a lot of the Todos Santos security system secret. Now he was cross-examining Allan Thompson.
"Allan," Shapiro said, "you told the District Attorney that you carried no weapons, and nothing harmful."
"Yes, sir."
"What did you carry?"
"Well, some electronics gear."
"Anything else?" Shapiro's manner was entirely friendly, matter-of-fact; he seemed almost uninterested in the answers.
"Gas masks."
"Gee. That's a strange kind of thing to carry, isn't it? Why gas masks?"
"Objection." District Attorney Sid Blackman was a tall, thin man with black hair cut to a fashionable length, and good but not expensive clothes: which made him a liar in Tony Rand's opinion, because Blackman was one of the heirs to a department store fortune, although he tried to give the impression of a man of the people. "Your Honor, this witness was not present when the gas masks were worn."
"Let's phrase it differently," John Shapiro said. "Did James Planchet or Diana Lauder tell you why they brought gas masks to Todos Santos?"
"Yes, sir. They were worried about knockout gas. We'd heard that Todos Santos used gas to defend the tunnels."
"Lethal gas?"
"No, sir, we didn't know they used poison gas! We thought they just used something to knock people out."
"Hmm. I see." Shapiro's manner didn't change. "Who did you hear that from, Allan?"
"I don't know."
"But you had all kinds of information about Todos Santos security systems. You were able to open locked doors and defeat the alarm system, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"And surely you learned that from someone. We've heard Mr. Rand and Colonel Cross testify that such information is very carefully guarded. It wasn't published anywhere. Where did you learn how to gain entry to Todos Santos?"
"I guess somebody told Jimmy," Allan said. He squirmed uncomfortably in the witness chair. "But I don't know who."
"You're sure you don't know who told Jimmy Planchet."
"Yes, sir. I'm sure."
John Shapiro looked away from the sweating boy for a moment. Tony thought the lawyer was disappointed, but it wasn't easy to tell. Shapiro came back, his voice again friendly. "All right. Now, you were carrying other things, too, weren't you? What were they?"
"Some boxes of sand."
"Sand. Did those boxes of sand have anything painted on them?"
"Yes, sir-"
"What?"
'Well, uh-uh-"
Shapiro let him stammer. He waited expectantly, and finally Allan said, "They said dynamite."
"Dynamite. The word dynamite was painted on the boxes of sand. Is that correct?"
"On two of them. The other one said bomb," Allan said. There was a titter of laughter in the courtroom.
Judge Norton looked stern and lifted her gavel, but she didn't have to say anything.
"So. If you hadn't known those were boxes of sand, would you have thought they were dangerous explosives?"
"Yes-"
"Capable of setting fires?"
"Objection," Blackman said. "Calls for a conclusion from the witness."
"Did you want people to think those were dangerous explosives?"
"No, not really. We were going to leave them, and when the guards found them they'd know we could have left real explosives-"
"I see," Shapiro said. "And why did you choose Tunnel Nine?"
"Because that's where the hydrogen lines come in-"
"And what's special about hydrogen lines?" Shapiro seemed a little more eager, a little more interested than he'd been before.
"Well, they need it to run that anthill-"
"Anything else?"
"Well, gee, if it had caught on fire it would have been pretty spectacular," Thompson said.
District Attorney Blackman cursed under his breath. Tony Rand saw it, and wondered why.
"If it had caught fire. In other words, the managers at Todos Santos would have legitimate cause to worry about fires if there were an explosion in Tunnel 9?"
"Objection-"
"Excuse me," Shapiro said. "Allan, did you think the managers would have legitimate cause to worr
y about fires from an explosion in Tunnel 9?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did Jimmy or Diana?"
"Objection-"
"Did either of them tell you they thought the managers of Todos Santos would be worried about fires from an explosion in Tunnel 9?"
"Sure. Jimmy said they'd be scared shitless."
Shapiro smiled in triumph. "And of course you knew that Todos Santos is inhabited. That there were people living there when you entered that tunnel."
'Well sure-"
"Thank you." Shapiro turned away, looking satisfied.
Thomas Lunan thought it a rather strange bar. For one thing, the bartender was lonely. He never saw most of his customers: orders came up on a television screen, the drinks were mixed, and then put through a pass-through, and from there they went to various places in Todos Santos.
The bar itself was wood with a Formica top. There were barstools, and a television set, and a few tables; but almost no customers. Two Todos Santos men -- Lunan wasn't sure how he knew they were Saints, but he did -- sat on barstools drinking beer and talking about the unfairness of their wives. Otherwise the place was empty.
Lunan had taken a seat as near the customers as he could. He'd told Phil Lowry to meet him here, and he had to wait, although he'd have preferred a place with more people to watch. After a few moments he'd struck up a conversation with the bartender, which was how he knew the man was lonely.
He'd never met such a friendly bartender. Or one who knew so little about what was going on. It was typical of Todos Santos people, though; none of them cared much about what went on outside their fortress. Except for the Sanders hearings. They knew all about those.
The bartender's name was Mark Levoy, and he liked to talk. Lunan knew that as soon as he admired the Old Fashioned.
"Yeah," Levoy said. "My drinks, now they're popular. I get more business than the Blackbird, more than Dreamland. But it's all remote. Drinks are popular, but my place isn't. Don't know why."
"Too bad. You own this place, then?"
"Well, me and the Todos Santos bank."
"Ms. Churchward loaned you the money," Lunan guessed.
"Miss Churchward. Yeah. Thanks to her, I got my own business. But it sure gets lonesome in here. Don't like being alone. Didn't like it in my underground days-" Levoy paused, hesitantly.
"Underground?" Lunan prompted.
Levoy's smile was broad. "Yeah. I was in the Weather Underground. Way back when. Had to hide out from the law-"
The two Todos Santos customers picked up' their drinks and moved to a table. Levoy watched them with a frown. They didn't seem unfriendly. They just left.
"Regulars?" Lunan asked. He nodded toward the two.
"Yeah. How'd you know? Anyway, I didn't like being alone then either. After a while the statute of limitations ran out. But it started going sour a long time before that."
"How so?"
"Chicago, 1968, the Democratic National Convention. It's not smart to put shit in Baggies and throw it at armed men. It's not even smart to be standing next to that kind of yo-yo. And three of my buddies were trying to make a bomb to blow up the Statue of Liberty, and one day they blew themselves all over the basement walls."
Lunan considered responses, and chose, "Tough luck."
The bartender snorted. "Luck? My poker buddies would call that a run of bad playing! I'm sorry they got killed, of course. Not so sorry we didn't blow up the Lady. But you know what really got me out of the Movement? You'll never guess."
"I'm sure I can't," Lunan said. The two regulars glanced his way, then grinned at each other.
Levoy had to go mix more drinks. He made a shaker of martinis and put it onto the conveyor, then spent more time on a tall, complicated rum drink. He came back with another Old Fashioned for Lunan. "I wish that damned Canadian would go away," he said. "I've made enough Pimm's Cups to last me the rest of my life."
"Say, I've never tasted-"
Levoy rode him down. "You know, we used to tell each other about how stupid politicians are. You know, so dumb that they passed a law making pi equal to three, exactly?"
"I heard about that," Lunan said. "Pretty stupid all right-"
"Well, it didn't happen," Levoy said belligerently, and waited for Lunan to call him a liar. When Lunan didn't, he said, "I looked it up. I was going to use it in a pamphlet. Didn't happen. What did happen was that some joker in Indiana offered the royalties on his math text to the state of Indiana if they'd pass a law with a lot of complicated mathematical language in it. Turns out the law would have made pi equal to nine, but the-"
"Nine?"
"Nine. But the legislature didn't know that because they couldn't read it. So they referred it to the Committee on Swamps."
"Did you say Swamps?" Lunan was laughing.
"Swamps. Somebody must have been having fun. The Committee on Swamps recommended that they pass it, so they did. The other house figured out what was happening and sent it to the Committee on Temperance. It died there."
"And that's all?"
"That's all," Levoy said. He sniffed. "And here I'd believed all that, you know-"
"Well, hell, so did I! And it's a much better story the other way." The two regulars were grinning at him. Lunan surmised that the bartender had told this tale before. Often.
"Got a question," he said. "Maybe you know. Those pillars in the Mall downstairs. Three of them bring in money. Shops, restaurants, the gambling hall, day-care center, and so forth. But the waterfall-"
"Yeah. Someday Bonner'll sell that waterfall and it'll be something else. He's just never gotten an offer that had enough money in it and would be as pretty as the waterfall."
"That counts?"
"It counts for a lot. Shouldn't it? We could pile a lot more money-makers around the Yggdrasil pillar, but it'd look cluttered."
"Is that why you moved into Todos Santos?"
The bartender grinned. "It was eleven years ago, and coming up on April fifteenth. The word was out that nobody'd be making out their own taxes in Todos Santos. The taxes'd be part of our rent. It came to me that I didn't like being an accountant for the government on no pay."
"Nobody does," Lunan muttered. "That's a hell of a deal you people have."
"Sure," Levoy said. "But look at it this way. After the fire, there was this flicking great hole in Los Angeles. You could see it from orbit! And everybody wanted to forget it as fast as possible, only the city's finances were in horrible shape, and people needed housing-some of the same people who were shooting at the firemen, but how could you pick them out? Anyway, nobody could afford to fill that hole with buildings. It looked like they were going to have to put in temporary housing, you know, the kind that lasts longer than any skyscraper, instant slums." The bartender shrugged. "So, in exchange for leaving us alone, they got this place put up over that big scarred gap, and it's not like we don't pay a lot of taxes-"
"There's my assistant," Lunan said. "He'll want Teachers and soda. Nice to have met you." Thankfully Lunan took a table.
Lowry was a regular reporter, and he didn't much like being assigned to help Lunan get a big story. He wasn't much younger than Lunan, and he wanted off assignments, but so far he hadn't had any big breaks, and Lunan didn't think he ever would. Too much of a plodder.
"How'd the trial go?" Lunan asked.
"Dull. Only good part was when the Thompson kid told about the boxes of sand with dynamite and bomb painted on them. Kid's a liar, though."
"Liar? I've seen the boxes-"
"Not about that," Lowry said. He sipped his Scotch and soda. "Naw, earlier. He said he didn't know who'd given the dead kids the info about TS. Said it right in court, and he's lying."
"He does know?"
"Sure." Phil Lowry looked smug.
"This is straight?" Lunan had a feeling in the pit of his stomach. This could be it, the lever he needed to get some exclusives with the Todos Santos top brass.
"Absolutely."
"All right, I bite," Luna
n said. "How do you know?"
"I've got sources," Phil Lowry said. "As many and as good as you, you lucky bastard."
"Sure you do, Phil," Lunan said. Now how can I con him out of the information? I can't. He knows I'm interested. "Look, this place isn't your beat. Are you still interested in that Long Beach harbor scandal?"