A REASONABLE WORLD

by Damon Knight

“No, Your Honor.”

  “Dr. Italiano, you are excused,” said Van Winkle, “and we thank you for your testimony.” She smiled and disappeared. “Call your next witness, Mr. Ross.”

  “Your Honor, I call Timothy Burns.” A burly red-haired man in his forties got up and started toward the front of the courtroom.

  Llewellyn rose. “Your Honor, we object to the introduction of this witness. He has no knowledge of this crime and has never been acquainted with either the defendant or the victim.”

  “Sit down a moment, Mr. Burns,” said the judge. “Counselors?”

  The two approached the bench. “Your Honor,” said Llewellyn in an undertone, “we already know that the defense intends to use this witness as a vehicle for interrogating a symbiont by means of Dr. Italiano’s apparatus. The real witness cannot be sworn or held accountable. I object at this time because I believe such evidence will be improper and a source of reversible error.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Llewellyn. Mr. Ross?”

  “Your Honor, I have previously responded to this argument, and I believe it has no merit. Mr. Llewellyn wants to block this evidence because he knows it will be unfavorable to his case. That’s the size of it.”

  “Let’s keep our tempers, gentlemen. I’m going to overrule the objection. Call your witness again, Mr. Ross.”

  The red-haired man stepped up and was sworn. His accent was Texan. After a few questions for the record, Ross said, “Mr. Burns, is it a fact, so far as you know, that you are presently a host of a McNulty’s symbiont?”

  “Objection. Incompetent.”

  “I’ll show competence, Your Honor, if I am allowed to proceed.”

  “Overruled. The witness may answer.”

  “The answer is yes,” said Burns.

  “What is your basis for believing that you are presently a host of a McNulty’s symbiont?”

  “I saw another individual collapse in my presence, when I was the only one near her.”

  “What happened to that individual?”

  “She was taken to Good Samaritan in a comatose state.”

  “Objection, incompetent.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Mr. Burns, let me put this a different way. Are you aware whether or not this individual was diagnosed as suffering from McNulty’s Disease?”

  “Objection.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Van Winkle wearily, and beckoned them up to the bench.

  “Your Honor,” Ross said, “if the court wishes I can call the examining physician.”

  “Is he present?”

  “No, Your Honor. Dr. Aarons is a very busy woman, and we wanted to avoid calling her if possible.”

  “In the interest of getting this trial over before Christmas, if that’s possible, I’m going to allow the question. Let’s get on with it.”

  Ross repeated his question. Burns replied, “Yes, she was.”

  “Were you present at Good Samaritan when the attending physician made that diagnosis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who made that diagnosis?”

  “Dr. Aarons.”

  “Dr. Evelyn Aarons?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you happen to be present when that diagnosis was announced by Dr. Aarons?”

  “The patient was my wife.” There was laughter in the courtroom. Van Winkle rapped his gavel gently.

  22

  Ross faced the judge. “Your Honor, in the voir dire we determined that five members of the jury panel who were excused from duty are former McNulty’s victims, that is, they have already been hosts of the symbiont. As you know, former hosts can be reinfected without suffering any ill effects. With the court’s permission, I will now seat these five members of the panel in the front of the courtroom near the witness.”

  “For what purpose, Mr. Ross?”

  “Your Honor, we intend to show that the symbiont can in fact tell what its host is thinking and report this information accurately.”

  “Objection, irrelevant.”

  “I’m laying a foundation for later testimony which will show relevance, Your Honor.”

  “Very well, I’ll allow it.”

  Under the bailiff’s direction, courtroom attendants arranged five chairs in the front of the room near the witness stand. Three women and two men took their seats.

  “Your Honor, for purposes of identification only, the five people you see here are Ms. Carol Wheeler, Mr. Leonard O’Casey, Mrs. Robert Semple, Mr. Edward Colombiano and Ms. Linda Silverman.”

  Ross turned to the witness and handed him the two metal cylinders of the Italiano device. “Just hold these comfortably in your hands, Mr. Burns. Speaking to the symbiont now, I ask if you are willing to go into each of these five people, one at a time, then return to your present host and tell us what they were thinking.”

  The cursor went to yes, and the word appeared at the top of the screen.

  “Ms. Wheeler, we’ll take you first. I’d like you to concentrate on some thought—anything you wish—it could be a sentence, or a number, or a mental picture of some kind, but whatever it is, it should be specific enough that it can be described in a few words. Do you understand? Tell me when you’re ready.”

  “All right. Now.”

  Ross said to the witness, “Will you cross over to Miss Wheeler, please, then return and tell us what she was thinking?”

  YES.

  Ross waited a minute. “Have you done so?”

  YES.

  “What was she thinking?”

  The cursor danced over the chart, spelling out picture OF ORANGES AND APPLES.

  Miss Wheeler gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

  O’Casey was next. The witness reported that he was thinking of the number 1,000,005.

  Then Mrs. Robert Semple. Hers was a sentence: THE RAIN IN SPAIN FALLS MAINLY IN THE PLAIN.

  Edward Colombiano: PICTURE OF AN OWL EATING A MOUSE.

  Linda Silverman: LETTER A IN GOLD WITH RED HEART AROUND IT.

  “Your Honor, at this time we would like to excuse the witness temporarily in order to call these five panel members to testify.”

  “Very well. You may step down, Mr. Burns.”

  One by one, the five jury panelists were called, sworn, and testified that the symbiont had in fact reported what they had been thinking. The previous witness returned to the stand.

  “Now,” said Ross, “is it true that at some time prior to September the seventh, twenty ought six, you were present in the mind of Ivan Walter Bolt?”

  YES.

  “Objection. Your Honor, even if it is granted that the witness can read people’s minds, we have no assurance that what it says is true. I move that this testimony be stricken.”

  Van Winkle motioned the two attorneys to approach the bench. “Mr. Ross?”

  “Your Honor, we have no assurance that what any witness says is true. We have to rely on the judgment of reasonable persons.”

  “Your Honor, if I may, in the case of human witnesses we also rely on the penalties of perjury. Here we have a witness who is allegedly invisible, has no bodily form, cannot be identified, and cannot be brought unwillingly into court, tried, sentenced, fined or imprisoned. Such a witness has no fear of perjury.”

  Ross said, “There is no reason to suppose that the witness has any motive for committing perjury, Your Honor.”

  “I’ll overrule the objection,” Van Winkle said. “You may proceed.”

  Ross asked, “How long did you stay in Ivan Walter Bolt’s mind on that occasion?”

  TWO DAYS.

  “Is it true that that would be an unusual length of time for you to stay in the mind of one person?”

  YES.

  “Was there some quality or qualities about Ivan Bolt’s mind that made you want to stay in his mind for an unusual length of time?”

  YES.

  “Will you describe those qualities?”

  GOOD COLORS. SMELLS. SUN AND SHADOW. NOTICED EVERY THING.

  “
What was Ivan Bolt’s attitude toward animals?”

  LOVED THEM.

  “How did he feel about people?”

  LOVED SOME OF THEM.

  “I now ask you, is it true that at some time prior to September the seventh, twenty ought six, you were present in the mind of Leroy Edward Jameson?”

  YES.

  “How long did you stay in his mind on that occasion?”

  TWO MINUTES.

  “What was there about Leroy Jameson’s mind that made you leave after only two minutes?”

  UGLY.

  “By ugly, do you mean that his mind was unpleasant?”

  YES.

  “Objection, Your Honor. Counsel is leading the witness.”

  “Sustained. Strike the last answer.”

  “Would you describe Leroy Jameson as a happy person?”

  NO.

  “What made him unhappy?”

  HATED EVERYBODY. WANTED TO MAKE THEM SUFFER. HATED HIMSELF.

  “Are you aware of any occasions when LeRoy Edward Jameson tried to make another person suffer?”

  YES.

  “Please tell us about one of those occasions.”

  KILLED DOG.

  “Whose dog was it?”

  NEIGHBOR.

  “How did he kill it?”

  RAT POISON.

  “Was he ever charged with this crime, if you know?”

  NO.

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Llewellyn?”

  “One moment, Your Honor.” Llewellyn conferred with his assistant. Presently he stood up. “Is it true,” he asked, “that the symbionts kill people who commit murders before they can come to trial?”

  YES.

  “Why do you kill those people?”

  SAVE YOU TROUBLE.

  “Oh, I see. If we told you we didn’t want you to save us the trouble, would you stop doing it?”

  NO.

  “Why not?”

  UNTRUE.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand the answer. What is untrue?”

  THAT YOU DONT WANT TO SAVE TROUBLE.

  “Do you mean me personally?”

  NO. YOUALL.

  “Do you mean people in general approve of your killing murderers?”

  YES. YES.

  “And do you consider that a sufficient reason to interfere with and subvert our justice system?”

  YES.

  Llewellyn rocked back and forth for a moment, frowning at the floor. Then he asked, “Did you have an opportunity to kill Ivan Bolt for the murder of Leroy Jameson?”

  YES.

  “Why didn’t you do so?”

  BETTER OFF DEAD.

  “Who is better off dead?”

  JAMESON.

  23

  In his summation, Ross said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the judge will instruct you that even if the prosecution shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime of which he is charged, you may find him not guilty if there are extenuating circumstances—that is, circumstances in the commission of the crime or in the defendant’s character or actions which make it desirable for society to condone his act.

  “Think for a moment, what is the purpose of trials like this one? Our society doesn’t just want to take revenge against people who commit crimes. What we are really trying to do is to increase the sum of human happiness by punishing the guilty and letting the innocent go. Everything else is secondary. If we find that a person is likely to repeat his crime and thus decrease the sum of human happiness, we find him guilty. If we find he has done so much harm to another person that there is a net loss of human happiness, we find him guilty.

  “Now in this case, we can plainly see that there are extenuating circumstances. You learned from the testimony of the symbiont, speaking through Mr. Burns, that the defendant is a person with an extraordinarily rich appreciation of nature. He loves his life; he is a contented, happy and productive man. He gives pleasure by his companionship to a wide circle of friends. He has written essays and poems that give pleasure to thousands. Every hour that this man lives, he adds to the sum of human happiness.

  “In contrast, you learned from the same testimony that the man who was killed exhibited characteristics that were almost the complete opposite of the defendant’s. He was brutal and unpleasant to everyone he came in contact with. Because of his character flaws, he himself was not a happy man. He lived his life in a constant ferment of hate, resentment and destructiveness. His contribution to the sum of human happiness was zero—in fact, less than zero, because he caused unhappiness to others. If the defendant had been killed instead, there would have been an irreparable loss to society. If he is punished now for what he did, there will be a loss.

  “We all know there are people like the defendant, who take great pleasure in life and share it with others, and people like Mr. Jameson, who darken their own lives and the lives of everyone else. Now we have had a chance to confirm this knowledge in a really scientific and objective way. We’re not just guessing now, we know that the defendant is a happy and useful man and that Mr. Jameson was a hateful, unhappy and unproductive person. When he died, the sum of human happiness went up. You have an opportunity to increase that happiness still more here today, by finding the defendant not guilty and giving him back his freedom. Thank you.”

  In his closing statement, Llewellyn said, “The defense tells you that Ivan Walter Bolt should be acquitted, even though he deliberately shot Leroy Edward Jameson through the heart and killed him, because Leroy Jameson wasn’t a very nice person. Have you ever heard such a bizarre argument in your life? That’s blaming the victim with a vengeance. The only offense he committed was trespassing—a misdemeanor. If he had been charged and found guilty, he would have paid a fine of about one hundred dollars. Instead, his life was snuffed out forever with one bullet from the gun of Ivan Walter Bolt, this self-appointed instrument of justice. Why was Ivan Bolt angry enough to kill his victim? Because Leroy Jameson had set a trap that injured an animal.

  “Leroy Jameson was thirty-nine years old, a wounded veteran of the Nicaraguan War. He should have had help, but nobody gave him any help. For years he did menial work, washing dishes and busing tables, anything he could get. Finally he went to live in a tarpaper shack that he built in the woods, and he hunted and trapped to keep body and soul together. He was trying to keep alive the best way he knew. Then he was cut down by a man with a gun. Now he’s dead. Why?

  “Think about your friends and neighbors. Some of them hunt and trap game. If they happen to offend the delicate sensibilities of Ivan Bolt, will he kill them too?

  “In morality and in law, we are not allowed to take the life of another human being simply because we don’t like his habits, or his opinions, or the color of his skin, or the people he associates with. He may be a deeply troubled individual, he may be offensive to others, but even then there’s always a chance that he will change for the better. Ivan Bolt took that chance away when he shot and killed Leroy Jameson. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ That’s what the Bible says. But Ivan Bolt took that vengeance into his own hands. And for what? Because Leroy Jameson trapped animals for their pelts, as the law allowed him to do.

  “Now I want you just to imagine for a moment what would happen if you set Ivan Bolt free. Anybody in this country who didn’t like somebody else’s looks, or behavior, or the way he smelled, could walk up and kill that person, and the law wouldn’t touch him.

  “You have heard the testimony of the alleged symbiont, for whatever that may be worth, that these creatures want us to let them take over the administration of criminal justice—‘to save us the trouble.’ No more trials, no muss, no fuss—they’ll be judge, jury and executioner. I sincerely hope you find this as deeply offensive and disturbing as I do. What is even more disturbing is the suggestion that if they don’t kill a murderer, we shouldn’t punish him either, because his victim is ‘better off dead.’

  “Ladies and gentl
emen of the jury, in this country we have a rule of law. If you commit murder, the most deeply abhorred crime that we know of, you pay the penalty. If that were not so, we would live in a world of chaos. We value every life. Not just the life of a person who is comfortable and happy and secure, but every life. That’s the way it should be—the way it must be.

  “Sometimes we have to do something hard; we have to sentence a person to pay the penalty even though we may have some sympathy for that person. We do it because we remember the importance of law and justice in our society. That’s the choice you have before you now. I know you’ll do the right thing, not because it’s easy—it’s never easy. But because it’s right.”

  After deliberating for seven hours, the jury returned a verdict of “Not guilty.”

  Asked to explain the verdict on holovision later, the foreman said, “Well, I think we just felt there was no point in sending that man to jail. It wouldn’t bring anybody back to life, it would just make somebody miserable, and it would cost the taxpayers a lot of money. So basically, we just said, ‘What do we want to do that for?’ And we couldn’t come up with any answer.”

  The interviewer asked, “What about the argument that if you let him go free, he might kill somebody else? Did you consider that?”

  “Well, sure, but then, either it would be somebody like this Jameson guy, or else he’d kill somebody he shouldn’t have, and then the symbionts would kill him. So it just isn’t our problem.”

  “And you think we should turn the whole thing over to the symbionts?”

  “Why not?”

  Down the Piazza dei Cinquecento in the spring sunlight came a cheerful parade—several hundred people, not marching in step but simply walking along together. Some had badges and armbands; a few carried banners; the rest looked like ordinary people, perhaps neighbors on their way to a communal picnic. They were of both sexes and all ages, from the elderly to infants in arms.

  From the head of the column, which appeared a little more disciplined than the rest, came a chant: “Si dà, si prende, e niente si pretende!” Presently the whole column took it up.

  “What are they saying?” an American tourist asked his Italian friend.