Дэймон Найт: Orbit 4

“Thank you. Mr. Lovsky?”

Justice Lovsky stared suspiciously at the safe. “The whole thing smells. But I agree with Mr. Burke, supra. We ought to take it. If we deny the cert, you’ll have every J.P. in the country issuing warrants on psi. Cf. Godwin. It’s a return to the general warrants of eighteenth-century Britain, q.v. We had a little revolution about that. Madison, Federalist Papers. The Bill of Rights, Madison, op. cit., would be down the drain. In a few years we’ll get a hundred petes for cert on the same point. Ibid. The time to stop it is now.”

“Mr. Randolph?”

Justice Randolph spoke on all occasions with slow incision, as though dictating, direct to the stone cutter, immortal inscriptions for the entablature of a majestic new federal building. He clipped:

• CONSTITVTIONAL • QVESTION •

and then was gloomy because the first word, under the circumstances, was possibly superfluous. His law clerks always conferred with those of Justice Lovsky, fitting, with consummate artistry, Lovsky’s footnotes to Randolph’s headnotes. The result read like pages in Corpus Juris Tertium. This procedure required that the justices always agree; they found this a small price to pay for the exquisite result

“Mr. Edmonds?”

“Isn’t it a strange coincidence? Here we are in the opening months of nineteen eighty-four.” He tossed a book on the table. “It’s Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four —the ultimate regimented state. All citizens under police surveillance twenty-four hours a day. No privacy at any time. The police have even installed closed-circuit TV in homes and apartments. When this book was popular, forty years ago, many people laughed. It was absurd. It couldn’t happen in America. Well, it has happened. It’s here now—except clairtapping is even worse than spy TV. It penetrates the privacy of our minds. We must deny its use to the police.”

“You sound as though you really believe in this stuff,” said Godwin.

Edmonds shrugged.

“Thank you, Mr. Edmonds. Madam Nord?”

“My argument for granting certiorari will, I think, seem totally incompetent and irrelevant to most of you. And I expect that my distinguished brother, the Senior Associate Justice, may have a stroke. In a word, I think Tyson is innocent. Also, I think we ought to open the safe.”

There was an embarrassed silence.

Then came Oliver Godwin’s stage whisper: “Don’t knock it, boys. Never forget, we’re the only high court in the world with our own Madam.”

Helen Nord led the laughter.

The Chief Justice rapped the table with his knuckles. “We will vote. Madam Nord?”

“To grant.”

The vote went backwards, in inverse order of seniority. The theory, which seemed utterly fallacious to Edmonds, was that the junior justices would thereby not be in* fluenced by their seniors. In this group, he thought, no* body influences anybody. Nine sovereign independent republics.

“Mr. Edmonds?”

“Grant.”

Two more votes were needed.

“Mr. Randolph?”

• GRANT•

“Mr. Lovsky?”

“To grant.”

“That’s it. And now we can accept the combination to the safe. Madam Nord, will you please ask the deputy to summon Dr. Drago?”

“Most irregular,” grumbled Justice Burke.

“Possibly,” admitted Pendleton. “But at least it’s by stipulation of counsel. All we permit him to do is hand me the combination in a sealed envelope. We ask him nothing, and we must silence him if he attempts to speak. Ah, here they come.”

Edmonds was mildly surprised. Drago was a tall, dignified young man with smooth, pale cheeks. He might have been the desk clerk at the local YMCA, or a bank teller, or a deacon at Edmonds’ own church.

Drago’s eyes opened a little wider as he exchanged glances with Edmonds. And then his searching stare passed quickly around the table, next resting momentarily on Helen Nord . . . then Moore . . . Blandford . . . Godwin . . . and finally Pendleton. His mouth opened slightly, as though he were whispering to himself. Edmonds strained to hear. Was it, “Oh no”? He could not be sure.

Pendleton said gently, “We thank you for coming, Dr. Drago. I am Pendleton. I understand you wish to give me the combination to the safe.”

Like an automaton, Drago walked to the end of the table, and without a word handed the envelope to the Chief Justice.

Edmonds was leaning forward intently. There was suddenly something very strange about Drago’s face. The cheeks were no longer smooth. And the man’s hair . . . seemed bushier. And then Edmonds knew: Drago’s face and scalp were rough with goose bumps. The thought sent a chill along his own spine. He looked rapidly around the table. No one else had noticed.

But why? And what, in this, tire law’s inmost, most austere sanctum, could possibly terrify any man, be he clairvoyant or not? He watched uneasily as Helen Nord led Drago outside and closed the door behind him. It required an effort of will to return to the business at hand.

Pendleton was dictating into the transcriber: ‘‘Frank Tyson, petitioner, v. New York. Petition for writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals of New York, granted, limited to the single question presented by the petition as follows: 1. Whether the search warrant used by the State Officers in the instant case violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution in that said warrant was not founded upon probable cause.”

Eavesdroppers, or such as listen under walls or windows, or the eaves of a house, to hearken after discourse, and thereupon to frame slanderous and mischievous tales, are a common nuisance and presentable at the court-leet.

—Blackstone, Commentaries

Edmonds paused at the door to Godwin’s office, and, as was his habit, stared across at the portrait of Laura Godwin hanging on the opposite wall.

The room was full of reminders of the old justice’s dead wife. Actually, three portraits of Laura hung from the walls. The last, the one that now held Edmonds, was a brilliant, haunting thing, painted by the younger Wyeth just before her last illness. It still showed the elfin eyes that had conquered presidents. On her right wrist she wore Godwin’s wedding gift, a bracelet of green laurel leaves, clustered with pink pearls representing the little flowers. In death, as in life, the great court left her unawed, and she looked out upon the justices, individually and collectively, with the tolerant respect due precocious children.

Godwin sought out anything that spoke her name. On a stand by the window grew a tiny bonsai laurel, a Kalmia latifolia transplanted from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Like the ancients, Godwin believed that this living symbol of his wife had the power to ward off lightning and similar disasters.

In the burdened bookshelves behind his desk was an illustrated edition of Petrarch. Godwin had learned Italian just to be able to read of the poet’s Laura in the original. Next to Petrarch was a volume of Goethe’s poems. Edmonds had once pulled it out, and it had fallen open automatically to the marvelous Mignon: “Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht. The myrtle silent, and high the laurel stands.”

The clock on the fireplace mantel had been stopped years ago, at the moment of Laura’s death. Godwin had never since permitted it to be wound. On his credenza sat a small silver casket engraved in laurel leaves. Edmonds knew its contents: a shining black plastic ink-blot; a box of matches that would not light; a deceptive fiberglass cigar; a cement egg—ail paraphernalia that Laura had used in years past in perpetrating her famous April Fool jokes on her famous husband.