Hayford Peirce - Innocent Until Scanned Guilty

“Horace, you will make the necessary arrangements for court to convene tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”

“Saturday morning, Your Honor? You’re not going fish—”

“Saturday morning, Horace. Maybe that way we can avoid unnecessary interference from… busybodies. Although I’m afraid that for you yourself this may well mean a full night’s work. You will need to do the following things, Hor—Mr. Bailiff.

“You will procure from the university’s physics department a functioning, up-to-date graviton reader, along with a qualified and credentialed person from the university to operate it.

“You will also arrange for a link to be established between this courtroom and the O-CLIP room at the Hallowell Trauma Center on a restricted access basis. You, and whatever computer expert we have available, will go to the O-CLIP room and monitor the proceedings so that that expert will be able to testify to the integrity of the computer’s operations.

“You will make certain that the data are being transmitted with an RSA encryption algorithm, and you will furthermore make certain that you alone are given the password. You will hand-carry the password to this courtroom and give it to me tomorrow morning. And you will find someone—” his eyes flicked briefly across Emily Ferron “—someone not connected in any way to the Hallo-well Clinic who can operate the O-CLIP from a computer terminal here in the courtroom. Is all this clear?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“And does this meet what you consider the necessary requirements, Madam Justice?”

“Yes, Your Honor. We have, as it happens, a person available who will be able to direct the operators of the two machines in order to make them function as a time scanner.”

Judge Johansson sniffed drily. “I had little doubt of it.” He banged his gavel just as District Attorney Martinez rose to speak. “Court is adjourned until eight tomorrow morning, when we will at least look into the question as to whether any evidence procured by this admittedly unorthodox means may be admitted.”

“He did it,” marveled Emily above the sudden surge of noise in the courtroom as she gripped Sam’s arm tightly, “he did it! And without even arguing.”

“As Mr. Dooley said a long time before even I was born, even the Supreme Court follows the election returns. It looks like Judge Johansson has been following the time scanner debates—and probably knows almost as much about running them as Roderick does. And I’d also say that he definitely has an eye on his own place in history.”

Emily turned to her father with a sudden glint in her own eye. “Dad! The fix is in? You’ve… you’ve gotten to Judge Johansson?”

Sam smiled complacently. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.” He patted his daughter’s knee. “Besides, youngster, your opinion of me would go down if I just out and out denied it.”

If possible, the courtroom was even more jammed Saturday morning than it had been the day before. The overflow extended out through the rest of the courthouse, and a state policeman ushered Sam and Emily into the building through an inconspicuous side entrance. “Looks like Judge Johansson and the governor have got the state cops out in force to prevent the federales and the Federation from getting in and doing anything awkward like arresting the presiding judge,” murmured Sam as they were led through a mob of media people into the courtroom.

“Sam! The fix is in!”

Sam winked. “You’ll never know.”

“Not even if I used a scanner to find out?”

“Damn! I hadn’t thought of that.” Sam shouldered his way through the crowd to where their seats awaited. “Just one more example of why what’s happening here today is so important: we’ve just got to get those guys in Washington off their butts and thinking about how we’re going to handle situations just exactly like that.”

Emily perched on the edge of her seat, her eyes darting about the courtroom as she tried to locate her former husband. “Knowing you, I’m sure you’ve eighteen proposals of your own all ready to roll into place just as soon as—”

“The court will rise!” the bailiff shouted as Judge Johansson entered through a concealed door in the panelled wall and took his place on the bench.

The judge cast his mild eye about the courtroom. “Horace? Is everything—and everybody—here that I asked for?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Then you will seal the courtroom. Place guards at every door. Lock the doors. No one is to be permitted in or out for any reason, any reason! Very well, then, Madam Justice, you may proceed.”

An hour later the preliminaries had been attended to. The jury, to its evident displeasure, had been removed from the courtroom. The suitcasesized graviton reader from the University of New Mexico and its resident expert sat below and to the right of Judge Johansson. A keyboard with its own small monitor sat next to a larger monitor on a table to the judge’s left. Cables ran back and forth across the floor, some of them to a standard comm outlet. Judge Johansson’s clerk, a longtime computer devotee, sat in front of the keyboard. Beside him sat Dolores de la Quinta’s expert on time scanning: a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of London. A dozen cameras recorded the courtroom from every conceivable angle.

“Very well,” said Judge Johansson, “I am satisfied that we are now connected to the O-CLIP computer at the Hallowell Clinic and to nowhere else. You would agree, Mr. Martinez?”

“Yes, Your Honor, but—”

“Madam Justice?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Now, if I might—”

“Later, perhaps.” The judge turned to the astrophysicist. “I am informed that a time scanner based on a portable graviton reader such as this one is rather severely limited in its field of operation?”

“Yes. The reader we have here is a slightly different model from what I have previously seen, but I would estimate that its range from this spot in the courtroom would probably be limited to a radius of fifty or sixty meters and to perhaps a year or eighteen months into the past.”

“I see. Today is May 29th. Linda Rawlings was killed on January 16th, approximately four and a half months ago. Disregarding for the moment where the crime was committed, that date would be within the working limits of this time scanner?”

“If it works at all, it certainly should be.”

The judge scratched his cheek for a long moment. “Very well,” he said at last. “You see that clock on the courtroom wall?”

“Yes, Your Honor. It says that it is 9:16 A M. May 29th, 2076.”

“You could now focus your scanner solely upon that clock, and keep it focused there while you… move back in time, I suppose we must say.”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Judge Johansson nodded first to Dolores de la Quinta, then to District Attorney Martinez. “What I am trying to do here is two things: to test the capabilities of this device; and to preserve as much privacy as possible while doing so. If this machine is ever to come into general use, privacy and the freedom from unwanted intrusion will be major concerns. I believe that for the moment, at least, I have found a satisfactory means of achieving the latter. You may correct me at any time if you find a flaw in my procedure.” He turned back to the astrophysicist. “Very well, would you please activate your device and focus it upon that wall clock. Make it as large as possible on the screen.”

The Englishwoman murmured a few words to the computer operator beside her, then walked over to sit down beside the graviton reader and its operator. A few minutes later data from the reader began to flow to the O-CLIP computer in the trauma room of the Sunny and Harmony Hallowell Trauma Center twenty-one miles away.