Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

Edmonds looked toward the window, and beyond to the white dreary innocence of the Library of Congress. “Do you think somebody out there is reading your window?”

“Who knows?” said Godwin genially. “The point is, you can’t find the heading ‘Wiretapping’ in the Index to Legal Periodicals anymore. They started grouping everything under ‘Eavesdropping’ long ago—a broader term, of course. I imagine the rash of law journal articles that Tyson will generate will all show up under ‘Eavesdropping,’ not 'Clairvoyance’ or 'Psi.’ And we’ll be back to the old common law misdemeanor. A dirty business? I suppose. But let’s fit our reports together. What did your clerk turn up on clairvoyance?”

“Very little. Only two cases, in fact—both criminal.” Edmonds opened his file. “Here’s Delon v. Massachusetts, nineteen fourteen. A so-called clairvoyant was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. It seems she went into a trance, and the spirits gave her the diagnosis and what medicine to prescribe. She had a license to practice clairvoyance, but not to practice medicine. Went to jail.”

“Seems reasonable. What’s the other case?”

“New York vs. MacDonald, eighteen ninety-six. MacDonald was absolutely identified as a would-be burglar in an apartment on Second Avenue in Manhattan. But he produced several hundred alibi witnesses who swore that at that very moment, he was on the stage of a Brooklyn theater, under hypnosis by the famous Professor Wein. The professor explained to the court that MacDonald’s astral projection had simply got loose temporarily and had unwittingly materialized miles away in Manhattan. The judge let MacDonald off with a warning not to get hypnotized, ever again. But there’s the bell. Time to robe.”

They walked around to the robing corridor together.

The last demand upon him—to make some forecast of the consequences of his action—is perhaps the heaviest. To pierce the curtain of the future, to give shape and visage to mysteries still in the womb of time, is the gift of imagination. It requires poetic sensibilities with which fudges are rarely endowed and which their education does not normally develop.

—Justice Felix Frankfurter

Lawyers on a Supreme Court case for the first (and generally the only) time describe the experience in hushed tones. They compare the long walk up the marble steps and through the towering white columns as a thing of horror, like mounting the guillotine, and the wait in the great boxlike courtroom until their case is called, a refinement of hell. And to wear tails, rented the day before from a Washington haberdashery, uncomfortable and occasionally not a perfect fit, when before they have never even worn a tux, with the certain knowledge that every mouth in the packed room is curled in scorn at their naivete and gaucherie, is an experience not voluntarily repeated.

It is thus for the petitioner’s lawyer, even though he knows that over half the cases heard by the high court result in reversals in his favor. And it is even worse for the attorney for the state. He is full of gloomy forebodings. Back home, with all the power of his state behind him, he got a conviction. Here, he has to start all over again. And now immense forces are arrayed against him. The tables are turned. He is now the defendant.

Guy Winters, Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York, ran his finger halfway around his collar, then folded his hands self-consciously on the table in front of him. His eye wandered over the long bench of Honduras mahogany, extending almost the width of the courtroom, and then one by one to the nine faces behind it, and finally to the back of his opponent, Walter Sickles, representing Frank Tyson. Sickles was already at the lectern and was about to begin.

Edmonds was not surprised to find the courtroom packed. Some of these people, he guessed, had stood in line all night to get in. A triple quota of reporters was present. The oldtimers of the press could frequently forecast how the vote would go just by listening to the questions asked by the justices. He wished he could do as well.

From the lectern that stood squarely in front of Chief Justice Pendleton, Sickles began his presentation, slowly, in a low voice, without notes. He was glad of the microphone on the lectern, but hoped it would not pick up the knocking of his knees. As in a dream, he heard his own voice echoing back from the maroon drapes behind the great bench. “My client stands convicted of murder, on evidence improperly admitted, in that it was obtained in violation of his constitutional rights.”

“You refer to the rifle, with Tyson’s palm-print?” demanded Justice Godwin.

Sickles groaned inwardly. Not ten seconds at the lectern, and the questions had begun. “Yes, your honor.”

“You admit the ballistics tests?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“And that this evidence was obtained by search warrant giving the warehouse address and where the rifle would be found in it?”

“Yes, your honor, but—”

“But what, Mr. Sickles? Proceed.” Godwin’s mustache twitched grimly as he leaned back.

“The warrant was not issued upon probable cause.”

“The information was not sworn to?”

“Oh, it was sworn to. But the officer who gave the sworn information admits he obtained it from one Dr. Drago, who admitted that he obtained it by his own personal clairvoyance.”

“You don’t believe there’s such a thing?” demanded Justice Burke.

Oliver Godwin said calmly, “Don’t answer that, sonny.” He turned a bland face to his outraged colleague. “Relax, Mr. Burke. What counsel thinks personally is irrelevant.”

Sickles sighed. If he were back in Brooklyn, he would be comfortably leaning back in his old wooden swivel chair, dictating during coffee break. He said, “I’d like to answer that this way, your honor. If there is such a thing, then it’s the same as wiretapping. Maybe worse. And any evidence obtained by its use cannot justify a warrant. The circumstances of the issuance can be examined in court. This court has so ruled. And if the warrant issues wrongfully, the evidence obtained with the warrant is inadmissible, the same as if it had been obtained by wiretapping. Clairtapping . . . wiretapping ... the legal consequences should be the same.”

“There’s no other evidence of Tyson’s guilt?” asked Helen Nord.

“Not much, your honor. Just that of Dopher, the elevator operator. He testified he saw Tyson leaving the empty office, carrying an object in front of him. That alone is not enough to convict Tyson. His life or death depends on the admissibility of the rifle.”

“Dr. Drago testified that clairvoyance is a fact?” asked Pendleton.

“He did, but he didn’t offer proof beyond the bare statement, which was merely his own opinion.”

“How about the camera in the safe, and Drago’s predictions?” asked Edmonds.

“The contents of the safe are not actually in evidence, your honor. And as for his predictions . . . their value depends on the decision of this court. They have no present probative value.”

“He predicted we’d grant the certiorari?” pressed Edmonds.

“He did, but—”

“And that we’d hold the warrant invalid, and reverse?” “That is my expectation and hope, your honor.” .

“So that, if he turns out to be right, doesn’t that prove clairvoyance, and would it not therefore follow that the warrant was in fact valid?”

“That involves a hopeless paradox, your honor. Anyhow, every case that is decided here is won by somebody, without benefit of clairvoyance.”

Edmonds smiled. He had been thinking the same thing himself, but he wanted Sickles to make the point in open court.