Overruled

by Hank Davis

  Go to hell, Holmes, thought Judge Anderson. I don’t need you anyway. I’ve got the answer. The Professor is stark, raving mad.

  Before he could develop a ruling along this line, the grinning D.A. had accepted the Professor’s terms.

  “I have but one condition,” interposed the defendant, “if I win this test, I would like to submit a question of my own to the Cyber.”

  The D.A. hesitated, conferred in a whisper with his assistant, then shrugged.

  “We so stipulate.”

  Firmly, Walhfred Anderson turned his back on Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  “In the opinion of the Court,” he thundered, “the proposed demonstration would be irrelevant, immaterial and without substantive basis in law. Unless the People proceed with their case in the proper manner, the Court will dismiss this complaint!”

  “Objection!”

  “Objection!”

  The word was spoken simultaneously by both the D.A. and the Professor. Then the defendant bowed toward the District Attorney, and asked him to continue.

  * * *

  For one of the few times in his life, Walhfred Anderson found himself faced with the same objection, at the same time, from both prosecution and defense. What a morning! He felt like turning the court over to a Cyber judge right here and now, and stomping back to his chambers. Let Holmes try getting along with a Cyber!

  The D.A.’s voice slashed into his thoughts.

  “The People object on the grounds that there is ample precedent in law for the type of court demonstration to which we have agreed…”

  “For example,” spoke up the Professor, “People vs. Borth, 201 N.Y., Supp. 47—”

  The District Attorney blinked, and looked wary again.

  “The People are not familiar with the citation,” he said, “but there is no reason to be in doubt. The revised Judicial Code of Procedure provides for automatic and immediate review of disputed points of law by the Cyber Appellate Division.”

  CAD! Walhfred Anderson customarily used every legal stratagem to avoid the indignity of appearing before CAD. But now he was neatly trapped.

  Grumbling, he visaphoned the Presiding Judge, and was immediately assigned to Cyber V, CAD, fourth floor.

  Cyber V presided over a sunlit, pleasantly carpeted courtroom in the south wing of the Justice Building. Square, bulky, with mat black finish, the Cyber reposed in the center of a raised mahogany stand. Its screen and vocoder grill looked austerely down on the long tables provided for opposing counsel.

  As Walhfred Anderson belligerently led the Professor and the D.A. into the courtroom, Cyber V hummed softly. A dozen colored lights on its front grid began to blink.

  Judge Anderson angrily repressed an instinct to bow, as he had done in his younger years when appearing to plead a case before a human Appellate Court.

  The Cyber’s soft, pleasantly modulated voice said:

  “Please proceed.”

  Curbing his roiled feelings of rage and indignity, the Judge stepped to the stand in front of the vocoder grill and tersely presented the facts of the case, the reasons for his ruling. Cyber V blinked and hummed steadily, assimilating and filing the facts.

  The D.A. followed the Judge to the stand, and, from long habit, addressed Cyber V with the same emotion and voice tricks he would have used in speaking to a human judge. Walhfred Anderson grimaced with disgust.

  When the D.A. finished, Cyber V hummed briefly, two amber lights flickered, and the soft voice said:

  “Defense counsel will please take the stand.”

  Professor Neustadt smiled his ironic, exasperating smile.

  “The defense stipulates to the facts as stated.”

  The frontal grid lights on Cyber V flashed furiously; the hum rose to a whine, like a motor accelerating for a steep climb.

  Suddenly, all was quiet, and Cyber V spoke in the same soft, pleasant voice:

  “There are three cases in modern jurisprudence that have direct bearing on the matter of People vs. Neustadt.

  “Best known is the case of People vs. Borth, 201 N.Y., Supp. 47…”

  Walhfred Anderson saw the D.A. stiffen to attention as the Cyber repeated the citation given by Professor Neustadt. He felt his own pulse surge with the stir of a faint, indefinable hope.

  “There are also the cases of Forsythe vs. State, 6 Ohio, 19, and Murphy vs. U.S., 2d, 85 C.C.A.

  “These cases establish precedence for a courtroom demonstration to determine points of material fact.

  “Thank you, Gentlemen.”

  The voice stopped. All lights went dark. Cyber V, CAD, had rendered its decision.

  Whatever misgivings the D.A. may have generated over the Professor’s display of legal knowledge were overshadowed now by his satisfaction at this display of Cyber efficiency.

  “Eight minutes!” he announced triumphantly. “Eight minutes to present the facts of the case and obtain a ruling. There’s efficiency for you! There’s modern courtroom procedure!”

  Walhfred Anderson felt the weight of eighty-six years as he cocked the angle of his bow tie, squared his shoulders and led the way back to his own courtroom. Maybe the new way was right. Maybe he was just an old man, burdened with dreams, memories, the impedimenta of human emotions. It would have taken him many long, weary hours to dig out those cases. Maybe the old way had died with Holmes and the other giants of that era.

  Details of the demonstration were quickly concluded. The D.A. selected a Cyber IX for the test. Evidently he had acquired a new respect for Professor Neustadt and was taking no chances. Cyber IX was a massive new model, used as an integrator by the sciences. Judge Anderson had heard that its memory storage units were the greatest yet devised.

  If Professor Neustadt had also heard this, he gave no sign of it. He made only a slight, contemptuous nod of assent to the D.A.’s choice.

  For an instant, the Judge found himself hoping that the Professor would be beaten into humility by Cyber IX. The man’s attitude was maddening.

  Walhfred Anderson banged his gavel harder than necessary, and recessed the hearing for three days. In the meantime, a Cyber IX was to be moved into the courtroom and placed under guard. Professor Neustadt was freed on bail, which he had already posted.

  Court fax-sheet reporters picked up the story and ballooned it. The D.A.’s office released publicity stories almost hourly. Cartoonists created “Battle of the Century” illustrations, with Cyber IX and Professor Neustadt posed like fighters in opposite corners of the ring. “Man challenges machine” was the caption, indicating that the Professor was a definite underdog and thus the sentimental favorite. One court reporter confided to Judge Anderson that bookmakers were offering odds of ten to one on Cyber IX.

  To the Judge’s continuing disgust, Professor Neustadt seemed as avid as the Prosecutor’s office for publicity. He allowed himself to be guest-interviewed on every available television show; one program dug up an ancient film of the Professor as a quiz kid, extracting cube roots in a piping, confident voice.

  Public interest boiled. TV coverage of the court test was demanded, and eagerly agreed to by both the Prosecutor and Professor Neustadt. Walhfred Anderson ached to cry out against bringing a carnival atmosphere into his courtroom; the fax photographers were bad enough. But he knew that any attempt to interfere would bring him back before that infernal CAD.

  * * *

  When he entered his courtroom on the morning of the trial, the Judge wore a new bow tie, a flippant green, but he felt like many a defendant he had watched step up before his bench to receive sentence. After this morning, there’d be no stopping the D.A.’s campaign for Cyber judges. He glared unhappily at the battery of television cameras. He noted that one of them was pointed at Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Justice didn’t seem to mind; but who would—all safe and snug in a nice gold frame? Easy enough for Holmes to look so cocky.

  The bright lights hurt his eyes, and he had to steel himself in order to present the picture of dignified equanimity that was expected of a
judge. People would be looking at him from every part of the world. Five hundred million viewers, one of the columnists had estimated.

  Professor Neustadt appeared in the same shiny brown suit. As he passed the huge Cyber IX unit, metallic gray and mounted on a table of reinforced steel, the Professor paused and bowed, in the manner of a courtly gladiator saluting a respected foe. Spectators clapped and whistled their approval. Television cameras zoomed in on the scene. With easy showmanship, Professor Neustadt maintained the pose for closeups, his owlish eyes wide and unblinking.

  Judge Anderson banged his gavel for order. What a poseur! What a fraud! This charlatan would get a million dollars’ worth of publicity out of the case.

  At a nod from the D.A., the bailiff gave Professor Neustadt a pad of paper on which to note his answers. It had previously been agreed that Cyber IX would answer visually, on the screen, instead of by vocoder. The Professor was seated at the far end of the counsel table, where he could not see the screen. Clerks with stopwatches were stationed behind the Professor and Cyber IX.

  “Is the defendant ready?” inquired Judge Anderson, feeling like an idiot.

  “Of course.”

  The Judge turned to Cyber IX, then caught himself. He flushed. The courtroom tittered.

  The District Attorney had five questions, each in a sealed envelope, which also contained an answer certified by an eminent authority in the field.

  With a flourish, keeping his profile to the cameras, the D.A. handed the first envelope to Judge Anderson.

  “We’ll begin with a simple problem in mathematics,” he announced to the TV audience.

  From the smirk in his voice, Judge Anderson was prepared for the worst. But he read the question with a perverse sense of satisfaction. This Professor was in for a very rough morning. He cleared his throat, read aloud:

  “In analyzing the economics of atomic power plant operation, calculate the gross heat input for a power generating plant of 400 × 106 watts electrical output.”

  Cyber IX hummed into instantaneous activity; its lights flashed in sweeping curves and spirals across the frontal grid.

  Professor Neustadt sat perfectly still, eyes closed. Then he scribbled something on a pad of paper.

  Two stopwatches clicked about a second apart. The clerk handed the Professor’s slip of paper to Judge Anderson. The Judge checked it, turned to the screen. Both answers were identical:

  3,920 × 106 BTU/hr.

  Time was announced as fourteen seconds for Cyber IX; fifteen and three-tenths seconds for Professor Neustadt. The Cyber had won the first test, but by an astoundingly close margin. The courtroom burst into spontaneous applause for the Professor. Walhfred Anderson was incredulous. What a fantastic performance!

  No longer smirking, the D.A. handed the Judge a second envelope.

  “What is the percentage compressibility of caesium under 45,000 atmospheres of pressure, and how do you account for it?”

  Once again Cyber IX hummed and flickered into action.

  And once again Professor Neustadt sat utterly still, head tilted back like an inquisitive parakeet. Then he wrote swiftly. A stopwatch clicked.

  Walhfred Anderson took the answer with trembling fingers. He saw the D.A. rub dry lips together, try to moisten them with a dry tongue. A second stopwatch clicked.

  The Judge compared the correct answer with the Professor’s answer and the answer on the screen. All were worded differently, but in essence were the same. Hiding his emotion in a tone gruffer than usual, Judge Anderson read the Professor’s answer:

  “The change in volume is seventeen percent. It is due to an electronic transition for a 6s zone to a 5d zone.”

  The Professor’s elapsed time was 22 seconds. Cyber IX had taken 31 seconds to answer the compound question.

  Professor Neustadt pursed his lips; he seemed displeased with his tremendous performance.

  Moving with the agility of a pallbearer, the D.A. gave Judge Anderson the third question:

  “In twenty-five words or less, state the Nernst Law of thermodynamics.”

  This was clearly a trick question, designed to trap a human mind in its own verbiage.

  Cyber IX won, in eighteen seconds. But in just two-fifths of a second more, Professor Neustadt came through with a brilliant twenty-four-word condensation:

  “The entropy of a substance becomes zero at the absolute zero of temperature, provided it is brought to this temperature by a reversible process.”

  A tabulation of total elapsed time revealed that Professor Neustadt was leading by nine and three-tenths seconds.

  A wild excitement blended with the Judge’s incredulity. The D.A. seemed to have developed a tic in his right cheek.

  On the fourth question, dealing with the structural formula similarities of dimenhydrinate and diphenhydramine hydrochloride, Professor Neustadt lost three seconds.

  On the fifth question, concerning the theoretical effects of humidity inversion on microwave transmission, the Professor gained back a full second.

  The courtroom was bedlam, and Walhfred Anderson was too excited to pound his gavel. In the glass-walled, soundproofed television booths, announcers grew apoplectic as they tried to relay the fever-pitch excitement of the courtroom to the outside world.

  Professor Neustadt held up his bone-thin hand for silence.

  “May it please the Court…The District Attorney agreed that in the event of victory I could ask Cyber IX an optional question. I would like to do so at this time.”

  Judge Anderson could only nod, and hope that his bulldog features were concealing his emotions. The D.A. kept his back rigidly to the television cameras.

  Professor Neustadt strutted up to Cyber IX, flipped on the vocoder switch and turned to the cameras.

  “Since Cyber IX is essentially a scientific integrator and mathematical unit,” he began pedantically, “I’ll put my question in the Cyber’s own framework. Had another Cyber been selected for this test, I would phrase my question differently.”

  He turned challengingly back to Cyber IX, paused for dramatic effect, and asked:

  “What are the magnitudes of a dream?”

  Cyber IX hummed and twinkled. The hum rose higher and higher. The lights flickered in weird, disjointed patterns, blurring before the eye.

  Abruptly, the hum stopped. The lights dimmed, faded one by one.

  The eternally calm, eternally pleasant voice of Cyber IX spoke from the vocoder grill:

  “Problem unsolved.”

  For an interminable instant there was silence in the courtroom. Complete silence. Stunned incredulity. It was followed by a collective gasp, which Walhfred Anderson could hear echoing around the world. Cyber IX had been more than beaten; it had failed to solve a problem.

  The gasp gave way to unrestrained cheering.

  But the Professor brought quiet again by raising his bony hand. Now there was a strange, incongruous air of dignity about his thin figure.

  “Please,” he said, “please understand one thing…The purpose of this demonstration and my question was not to discredit Cyber IX, which is truly a great machine, a wonder of science.

  “Cyber IX could not know the magnitudes of a dream…because it cannot dream.

  “As a matter of fact, I do not know the magnitudes of a dream, but that is not important…because I can dream!

  “The dream is the difference…The dream born in man, as the poet said, ‘with a sudden, clamorous pain’…”

  There was no movement or sound in the courtroom. Walhfred Anderson held the Professor’s last written answer between his fingers, as if fearing that even the small movement to release it might shatter something delicate and precious. “The dream is the difference!” There it was. So clear and true and beautiful. He looked at Holmes, and Holmes seemed to be smiling under his gray mustache. Yes, Holmes had known the dream.

  In the soundproof booths, the announcers had stopped speaking; all mike lines were open to carry Professor Neustadt’s words to five hundred million
people.

  “Perhaps there are no magnitudes of such a dream…no coordinates! Or it may be that we are not yet wise enough to know them. The future may tell us, for the dream is the rainbow bridge from the present and the past to the future.”

  Professor Neustadt’s eyes were half-closed again, and his head was cocked back, birdlike.

  “Copernicus dreamed a dream…So did da Vinci, Galileo and Newton, Darwin and Einstein…all so long ago…

  “Cyber IX has not dreamed a dream…Nor have Cyber VIII, VII, VI, V, IV, III, II, I.

  “But they can free men to dream.

  “Remember that, if you forget all else: They can free men to dream!

  “Man’s knowledge has grown so vast that much of it would be lost or useless without the storage and recall capacity of the Cybers—and man himself would be so immersed in what he knows that he would never have time to dream of that which he does not yet know, but must and can know.

  “Why should not the scientist use the past without being burdened by it? Why should not the lawyer and the judge use the hard-won laws of justice without being the slave of dusty law books?”

  Walhfred Anderson accepted the rebuke without wincing. The rebuke for all the hours he had wasted because he had been too stubborn to use a Cyber clerk, or consult Cyber V. The old should not resist the new, nor the new destroy the old. There was the letter of the law, and there was the spirit, and the spirit was the dream. What was old Hammurabi’s dream? Holmes had quoted it once, “…to establish justice on the earth…to hold back the strong from oppressing the feeble…to shine like the sun-god upon the blackheaded men, and to illumine the land…” Holmes had dreamed the dream, all right. He had dreamed it grandly. But maybe there was room for small dreams, too, and still time for dreams when the years were so few and lonely.

  The Professor suddenly opened his eyes, and his voice took on the twang of steel under tension.

  “You are already wondering,” he told the cameras accusingly, “whether I have not disproved my own words by defeating Cyber IX.