The Years of the City

by Frederik Pohl

  A loud beep interrupted her—one of the Tin Twins. “Hold on there a minute, sweet-meats. You did swipe the teacher’s wallet, didn’t you?”

  The defendant paused, annoyed at the interruption. “What? Well, sure. But I was only a child, Your Honor.”

  “And then you did, the way it says here in the charge, you did stab your marry to death, right?”

  “Only because society made me an outlaw, Your Honor.”

  “Right,” said the Twin, losing interest. It was Ai-Max, Gwenanda saw, peering down the curve of the justices’ benches. She envied him. When one of the human judges fell asleep you could usually tell because you heard him snore. The Tin Twins could power down without external sign, so they got away with murder.

  Murder. Oh, yeah. The case. “Move it, chotz,” Gwenanda snapped at the defendant, and glanced down to get her name, Donna Maris Delius. “You, Delius. Get along with it.”

  The defendant gave her a look of resentment, blinked, studied her notes for a moment and proceeded: “At the age of eight all the other kids had video playmates, but my family was too cheap—” Gwenanda sighed, wishing Samelweiss would come back and give her a fast count. Under the rounded dome of the courtroom the glow-light was displaying a new motto:

  “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”—Charles Evans Hughes.

  Gwenanda sat back, looked around and furtively punched out a new code for her memo plate. Obediently it displayed a map of North America. Tracings in bright red extended from the Yukon down through half of Mexico, over the legend:

  NARRO

  THE NORTH AMERICAN RIVER REDIRECTION OPTION

  She studied it glumly. Why weren’t there any decent rivers in the eastern half of the continent? Why did Kriss have to be a riverine hydraulics engineer, anyway? And if there were good reasons why those two problems couldn’t be changed, why couldn’t she go with him when he moved on to follow the work? It wasn’t just the beast of a defendant that was ruining her day, it was her personal life, too. It hadn’t been all that great in Tucson, maybe, but from the day she got her draft notice and reported to the Supreme Court Candidates Corps—it was in Atlanta then—things had been messed up. Supreme Court Justice sounded pretty good, when you considered the alternatives, but when you were just considering the alternatives you didn’t know about Chief Justices that pinched your behind and days when you pulled two murders, a record-juggling and a two-billion-dollar lawsuit all on the same calendar. What was that thing they’d flashed about the sword enforcing covenants? Right on, said Gwenanda to herself, bring on the sword!

  And just then the sword fell. The twenty minutes were up. The speaker system beeped a time-up reminder, and the defendant’s microphone went dead in mid-syllable.

  Samelweiss, scuttling back to his high bench in the middle of the row, got there just in time to hit his override button. His amplified voice filled the hemispherical hall: “Right,” he said. “I’d call this a case for summary judgment if we ever saw one, and I’ll start the ball rolling. Guilty. How say you, gang?”

  The defendant nudged her lawyer furiously. He looked alarmed. “Uh, Mr. Chief Justice,” he began, “there’s lots more evidence—” But he was drowned out by the chorus of “Guilty”s from the court.

  “That’s what I like to see,” approved Samelweiss, gazing affectionately around at the other justices. “Now we get to the sentence. I’d say freezing, myself. Anybody have any other—Wait a minute. What’s on your mind, counselor?” he added, scowling, because the attorney for the defense was waving frantically. Worse than that. His client had her mouth to his ear, and she was scratching her fingernails against his lavallière mike. The courtroom filled with squeaky-chalk static. Samelweiss’s finger hovered dangerously over the cutoff switch.

  The lawyer nodded and cried: “E wants to know what you’re going to do with the kid.”

  Gwenanda was leaning forward, with her mouth all ready to concur in the verdict of freezing. She changed plans in mid-vocalization. “What kid?” she demanded.

  “Uz kid. Uz and uz marry’s—uh, the deceased’s, I mean. E’s three years old, the kid. Female. Do you want to make um an orphan?”

  Faint, considering beep from one of the Tin Twins. Thoughtful cough from Justice Myra Haik at the end of the row. Reflective silence from all the rest of the court, until Gwenanda broke it. “Obviously,” she said, “we got to think this over a little more, you guys. I say we reserve judgment for a while.”

  There was an approving murmur from the entire bench. Samelweiss confirmed it. “So ordered,” he said. “Let’s see, what’s the next case, the nut that wants to sue us for two billion dollars? Right. Tell um to get uz ass in here on the double.” And gazed with satisfaction at the current legend making its way around the domed ceiling, which said:

  “Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?”—Abraham Lincoln.

  Very little ever got decided in the Supreme Court of the United States of America without a squabble. That was held to be one of its great present virtues: that every point of view was reflected in the variety of justices, and so no argument went without an advocate. What they were squabbling about just now was whether to proceed with the loony who wanted to sue the United States for two billion dollars or break for lunch. Gwenanda stayed out of the battle, because all of a sudden she had something more important on her mind. With her eyes she watched Donna Maris Delius hysterically pursuing her lawyer with reproaches as he fled through the door; with her fingers she was tapping out instructions to her benchtop data plate. The defendant’s name and vital statistics sprang into glowing color: Donna Maris Delius, 28 years old, m. Dale Lemper (d.), 1 child f. Gwenanda hit the reject key and got the next item in the dossier, coroner’s report: fourteen major blows with a blunt instrument and eight penetration wounds. The woman had not only beaten her husband to death with a brandy decanter, she had broken it on his head and stabbed him with the jagged remnants. Gwenanda tapped again—flick, flick—more reports—flick—a wedding picture of the brute and her victim, five years earlier—flick—

  There it was. A picture of a three-year-old girl, one finger in her nose and a beat-up toy rabbit in her hand, staring at the recorder. A nice-looking little kid. Or was then, anyway; Gwenanda punched another key for dates and discovered the picture was a little more than a year old. The child’s name was Maris Delius Lemper and, at four, Gwenanda thought swiftly, she would be well toilet trained, should be talking up a streak, probably ready to start pre-school classes if she hadn’t done so already—

  “What?” said Gwenanda, looking up as somebody called her name.

  Chief Justice Samelweiss said sternly, “You have to pay more attention, Gwenanda, because we’re taking a vote. We’ve got this two-billion-dollar loony coming up and I for one want to see what this joker looks like, but Mary Joan—”

  “Mary Joan didn’t get any breakfast today,” Mary Joan Whittier snapped from the other side of the row, “so e wants to take an hour for lunch. How say you, pups?”

  “Oh, lunch recess for sure,” said Gwenanda. “I got to get to a telephone.”

  Gwenanda was the last of the justices to get back to the bench, and Chief Justice Samelweiss gave her a mean-hearted look. He didn’t say anything, though, because he was too busy looking forward to what was coming next. “Bailiff,” he called, “bring in the loony.”

  All the justices were acting a little more expectant and almost party-cheerful—not counting the Tin Twins, of course. Even Gwenanda sat up straighter and fussed with her huge fluff of hair, in spite of the fact that half her phone calls hadn’t got her the person she wanted to talk to, and the other half left her feeling half mind-made-up and half Jeez-do-I-dare? The courtroom was packed again, and everybody was giggling and rubbernecking and whispering as the loony came in. The loony was a man in his late fifties, conservatively dressed in long pants and shoes an
d a dark-colored blouse, and he beamed affably around the room before raising his eyes to the glow-writing on the dome.

  It was, “There is hardly a political question which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.”—Alexis de Tocqueville.

  The loony studied it thoughtfully, shrugged and then turned to the justices.

  The expression on his face chilled. He swallowed, stumbled over his lawyer’s foot and took his seat, still staring. “All right, now,” Samelweiss said impatiently. “Are you the, what do you call it, the plaintiff?”

  The loony whispered worriedly to his lawyer, who said out loud, “Just get up and tell them what you want, okay?”

  “Well,” said the loony, rising, “all right.” He bowed to the bench. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said—whispers from the justices, a couple of actual giggles from the spectators—“honorable judges, I mean, my name is Horatio Margov. Justice Horatio Margov, that is, since I had the honor to serve the bench myself in my previous life. I ask your permission for my attorney to approach the bench.”

  The bench giggled in surprise, all nine of it, and Gwenanda craned her neck for a better look. This sort of thing had not been covered in basic training, or even in the hard six months of cadet school. She turned to see how Samelweiss would handle it. The way he was handling it was whispering to the Digital Colleague next to him. “Oh, sure,” he said, nodding. “I get it. E wants Wally Amaretto to come up here and talk to us. Come on, Wally, what’s this all about?”

  Amaretto was big, black and easy-going, and the nearest thing to a staff lawyer the Supreme Court had. He sighed and came forward, nodding to the justices. “Hi, Sam, Gwenanda, D.C., how’s the chess game going? Listen, any chance you can fire me and get another lawyer for this chotz?”

  “No way,” twinkled Samelweiss. “What’s uz problem?”

  “Which one? Like, the first one is, e didn’t really expect to see you all looking like this.”

  Samelweiss was honestly perplexed. “Like what?” he asked, glancing around at his colleagues. “We’ve all got our robes on.”

  “I think it’s the Tin Twins mostly. E says e’s used to human beings for judges, not a garbage can and a vacuum cleaner. And e says in uz day courts were right up in God’s good sunlight, that’s what e said, not a thousand feet down like a bunch of goddamn moles.”

  “What are ‘feet’?” Gwenanda asked.

  “It’s what they used to measure with,” Amaretto explained. “But that’s only the start. E says e wants a thirty-day postponement so e can get uz witnesses ready to testify.”

  All the justices were shocked now. “E can’t testify, Wally! We’ve got no time to hear a bunch of chotzes testify—no offense,” Gwenanda called to the loony, who was listening to the exchange with an expression of rage and disbelief.

  “That’s what e says. Says a proper trial has to be conducted according to case law and the rules of evidence, that’s all there is to it.”

  “You sticking up for that prunt?” Mary Joan called.

  Amaretto turned to her, his expression rebellious. “That’s another damn thing e expects. E says under the adversary system I’m supposed to take uz side no matter what. And then some other lawyer takes the other side and we both lie and fink any way we can to get the verdict we want. I mean, e wants.”

  Gasp from the spectators. “Ah, no,” cried Gwenanda in disbelief, and Samelweiss echoed her:

  “You must’ve got that wrong, Wally. What if your side doesn’t have a case, like?”

  “Even then,” the lawyer insisted.

  There was a silence while the justices digested this, broken by a beep from the far end. “What do you want?” Samelweiss asked, and then, grinning, added, “garbage can?”

  “I think it was D.C. that was the garbage can,” Wally put in helpfully. “Angel was the vacuum cleaner.”

  “Whatever,” nodded the Chief Justice, and Angel’s voice said suspiciously:

  “What’s e hanging around down there for? Why doesn’t e come up and talk to us like Wally?”

  “No way,” declared Samelweiss. “Wally, you go back where you belong and we’ll start this trial. Margov! What are you suing for?”

  The plaintiff stood up, breathing deeply. He was obviously trying to control himself. Obviously he had had a lot of practice, because he succeeded tolerably well. When he spoke his voice was easy and self-assured, like a professional actor’s: “Honorable justices,” he said, “I understand that there have been many changes in the juridical procedure since I was frozen, and so I ask your pardon for any errors I may commit. As I understand it, you justices have been chosen through a form of selective service rather than the conventional process of—”

  “Margov,” Samelweiss interrupted, hand on his Chief Justice’s volume control so that his voice drowned out everything else, “just tell us what you want, okay? We’ve been here half an hour already with this bullshit.”

  Deep breath. Then, “Yes, Your Honor. The facts are simple. I will present witnesses to prove—”

  “The hell if you will,” snapped Gwenanda. “We want to know anything, we’ll go ask them.”

  “As you wish, ma’am,” Margov said gamely. “Anyway, these are the facts. I was frozen fifty-eight years ago due to serious medical problems not curable at that time. Two weeks ago I was revived, treated and discharged. I have since learned that, through an error in record-keeping, I received not only the treatments proper to my case but also an entire series that had been intended for another occupant of the freezer, also revived at that time. As this is a clear example of medical malpractice, resulting in grave physical and mental harm—”

  “Hold it a minute, chotz,” said Angel, his voice thin and reedy because he was doing several things at once and could manage only a narrow-band communication. “Where’s this other person?”

  Margov said gravely, “He has disappeared.”

  “Ah, come on. Nobody disappears.” Margov shrugged. “I think we ought to talk to um,” Angel said.

  “Not here you don’t,” said Samelweiss, looking at the clock on his data plate. “Say e really has disappeared. Say they really mixed you up. What about it?”

  “This other person,” Margov said indignantly, “was a boat person from Baja. Heaven knows what diseases he may have carried! So they gave me a complete series of antibiotics and vaccines and heaven knows what all. My arm was sore for days! Not to mention—”

  “Whatever it is, don’t mention it,” ordered Samelweiss. “So what’s worth two billion dollars?”

  “The diseases, your honor! He evidently was suspected of having herpes, syphilis, yaws, tuberculosis—”

  “I told you not to mention all that stuff!” yelled Samelweiss. “Listen, that’s all crap. You got a sore arm and you got your feelings hurt. I’d say you’ve got a claim, all right, maybe fifty dollars. Maybe a little more.”

  “Your honor! But I can prove—”

  “You can’t prove anything in this court,” Samelweiss said reasonably, “unless we let you. I’m not about to do that.”

  “I want to talk to the other guy,” Angel put in obstinately. He was taking it seriously, too; he had turned up the bass on his voice filters so it came out all grave and majestic.

  “Oh, dog,” sighed the Chief Justice, looking around the rest of the court. “Any of the rest of you got anything to say?”

  Gwenanda raised her hand, and thought for a minute while the rest of the court looked at her. She decided to take the plunge. “Two things,” she said. “First, I vote we put off the loony’s case until Angel does what e wants to do. Second, I figured out how to handle that Delius an, so let’s get um back in here for sentencing.”

  Samelweiss stared at her. “Are you loony, too? E’s long gone.”

  “E’s not,” said Gwenanda, “because I told the bailiff to keep um here during the break. Bring um in, Sam.” And when the woman was back in the dock, glaring sullenly at her persecutors, Gwenanda said, “Delius, what you did is t
oo bad to sweep under the rug, I guess you know that.”

  “But society—”

  “Society,” said Gwenanda, “my ass. So we’re going to freeze you. You get automatic review every eighteen months, and sooner or later the Parole Board or the Prisoners’ Redemption League or somebody will get you defrosted and then you’ll get another chance. But this chance, pups, you’ve all used up.”

  The woman’s lip quivered nervously. “I have a very low tolerance for pain,” she said tremulously.

  “Oh, hell, it doesn’t hurt. I think it doesn’t,” Gwenanda amended. “You can ask that old judge if you want to, but I think they just like knock you out and that’s all you know until thawing-out time.”

  “Yes, but my baby—”

  And Gwenanda grinned. “That’s the best part. I’ll take um to raise myself.”

  “You can’t do that!” cried the woman, looking to her lawyer for reassurance. He smiled regretfully to say that sure they could, and she repaid the smile with an expression probably much like the one she wore when she picked up the brandy decanter. “Well, I’ll have to think that part over,” she said firmly.

  “Actually,” Gwenanda said, “you don’t, because it’s all settled. It is the unanimous verdict of this Court, delivered by me—unless some of you jokers don’t agree?—that you freeze, and your kid is adopted by me as soon as you’re iced, which will be any time tomorrow. You can take um away, Sam. And get um a nice dinner,” she added kindly, “because it’ll have to last um a long time.”

  II

  The place where Gwenanda lived, or at least the place where she slept most nights, was a condo-commune about thirty stories up over what had once been called the Five Points. The reason it wasn’t exactly where she lived was that, officially, she lived in the residences provided all justices of the United States Supreme Court, two hundred stories straight up from the underground Court itself. The reason it was where she usually slept was that Kriss lived there.