"Your Honor—"
"Yes, Alec?"
"May I suggest that this is not relevant?"
Joan cut in. "But I said it would be irrelevant, Mr. Train. Just the same, they had better start thinking about how to break my will, instead of this nonsense." She added thoughtfully, "Perhaps I had better set up a lifetime trust that will make them slightly better off with me alive than dead...to protect myself against patricidal assassination. Judge, is ‘patricidal' the right word? Now that I'm female?"
"Blessed if I know. Better make it ‘avicidal'—no, ‘avicide' already means the killing of birds and has nothing to do with ‘avus.' Never mind. Miss Smith, take up such matters with your attorney and let us return to our muttons. Have you thought of anything which Jake Salomon could not have coached you on?"
"It's difficult. Jake has been handling my affairs for I most of a generation. Mmm, Judge, will you shake hands with me?"
"Eh?"
"We had best do it under the table, or out of sight of anyone but Mr. Train."
Looking puzzled, the Judge went along with her request. Then he said, "Be damned! Excuse me. Miss -Smith—shake hands with Alec."
Joan did so, letting her body cover it from spectators. Mr. Train looked surprised, whispered something to her which she answered in a whisper. (Boss, what was what?) (Greek. Tell you later, dear—though girls aren't supposed to know.)
McCampbell said, "Mr. Salomon could not have coached you?"
"Ask him. Jake was a Barb, not a Greek."
"Of course I was a Barb," Salornon growled. "I had no stomach for being the exhibit Jew in a chapter that did not want its charter lifted. What is this?"
Train said, "Well, it seems that Miss Smith is a fraternity brother of the Judge and myself. Mmm... ‘sister,' I suppose. Judge, it's easy to check this on both Johann Smith and Mr. Salomon. In the meantime I find it persuasive."
"Perhaps I can add to it," Joan said. "Mr. Train—Brother Alec—of course you should check on both Jake and myself. But look me up in our fraternal archives under ‘Schmidt' rather than ‘Smith' as I changed my name in forty-one. Which my granddaughters know. But you both know of our fraternal Distress Fund?"
"Yes."
"Certainly, Miss Smith."
"The fund did not exist when I was pledged—my senior year it was, after I made Phi Beta Kappa and because our local chapter needed a greasy grind and had an alumnus willing to pay for my initiation. The fund was started during World War Two; I helped augment it some years later and was one of its trustees from fifty-six until late in the eighties when I dropped most outside activities. Judge, you tapped the fund for fifteen hundred in the spring of seventy-eight."
"Eh? So I did. But I paid it back, eventually—then donated the same amount at a later time, according to our customs."
"I'm glad to hear it. The latter, I mean; you were off the hook before I resigned as a trustee. I was a hard-nosed trustee, Judge, and never okayed a loan until I was certain that it was a distress case and not just a convenience to a lazy undergraduate. Shall I relate the circumstances which caused me to okay your loan?"
The Judge blinked. "I would rather you did not, at least not now. Alec knows them."
"Yes," agreed Train. "Would have lent him the money myself if I had had it." (What is this, Boss?) (Case of ‘rheumatic fever,' sweet.) (Abortion money?) (No, no—he married the girl—and here lam digging up the skeleton.)
(Bitch.) (No, Eunice—my granddaughters don't know what I'm talking about, nor does Jake.)
"I see no reason to discuss it," Miss Smith went on, "unless the Judge wants to question me privately—and if you do, Judge, do remind me to tell you a real giggle about the ancestries of my so loving granddaughters. Odd things happen even in the best families—and the Schmidt family was never one of the best. We're a vulgar lot, me and my descendants—our only claim to prominence is too much money."
"Later perhaps, Miss Smith. I am now ready to hand down a decision—temporary and conservative. Counsels?"
"Ready, Judge."
"Nothing to add, Your Honor."
McCampbell fitted his fingertips together. "Identity. It need not depend on fingerprints or retinal patterns or similar customary evidence. John Doe could lose both hands and both feet, have both eyes gouged out, be so scarred and damaged that even his dentist could not identify him—and he would still be John Doe, with the same Social Security number. Something like that happened to you, Miss Smith, assuming that you are indeed Johann Sebastian Bach Smith—though I am happy to see"—he smiled—"that no scars show.
"This Court finds persuasive the evidence of your identity brought out in this hearing. We assume, pro tem, that you are Johann Sebastian Bach Smith.
"However"—the Judge looked at Salomon—"we now get to the Parsons case. Inasmuch as the Supreme Court has ruled that the question of life or death resides in the brain and nowhere else, this Court now rules that identity must therefore reside in the brain and nowhere else. In the past it has never been necessary to decide this point; now it is necessary. We find that to rule in any other fashion would be inconsistent with the intent of the Supreme Court in ‘Estate of Henry M. Parsons v. Rhode Island.' To rule in any other way would create chaos in future cases in any way similar to this one: Identity must lie in the brain. "Now, Jake, I am in effect going to shove the burden of the proof over onto you and your client. At a later time you must be prepared to prove beyond any possible doubt that Johann Sebastian Bach Smith's brain was removed from his body and transplanted into this body"—McCampbell pointed.
Jake nodded. "I realize that, Judge.. A person who wants to cash a check must prove his identity—this is on all fours. But today we were taken by surprise."
"So was the Court—and, Alec, I'm going to take you by surprise someday...with something better than a pie bed or an exploding cigar. Damn it, you should have warned Court and Counsel."
"I apologize, Your Honor. I received my instructions quite late."
"You should have at once asked for a continuance, not let this hearing open. You know better. Never mind, the hearing has been instructive. Miss Smith—Miss Johann Sebastian Bach Smith subject to remarks above—you were made a ward of this Court and placed under the guardianship of Mr. Jacob Salomon for one reason alone:
You were at the time not competent to manage your affairs by reason of post-operative incapacity. Let the record show that neither insanity in the legal sense nor mental illness in the medical sense had anything to do with it; you were in an extended condition of unconsciousness following surgery and that was all. You are no longer unconscious, you appear to be in good health, and the Court takes judicial notice that during this hearing you appeared always to be alert and clearheaded. Since the sole condition—unconsciousness—on which you were made a ward no longer obtains, you are now no longer a ward and Mr. Salomon is discharged of his guardianship—what's the trouble, Alec?"
"May it please the Court!—as Counsel for the Petitioners I must ask to have an objection entered into the record."
"On what grounds?"
"Why, lack of expert witnesses as to, uh, ‘Miss Smith's' competence."
"Do you have expert witnesses ready to examine her?"
"Of course."
"Jake?"
"Certainly. Waiting on call."
"How many?"
"Harrumph! One more than Alec has, however many he qualifies."
"So I expected, and if we start qualifying expert witnesses now and let each one exercise his little ego, those fish in Nova Scotia would die of old age. Keep your shirt on, Alec. No expert witnesses were used to show this person's incompetence; the gross condition of unconsciousness was stipulated—and now no longer exists. Alec, your objection goes into the record but I am putting you on notice that your claim of need for expert witnesses lacks foundation~—and this time the burden of proof is on you. Petitioners will have to show something more than great anxiety to get their hands on the large sums of money at stake in this matter. Every citizen, every person, is conditionally presumed to be competent—and that means everyone—you, me, Jake, Miss Smith, Petitioners, and the illiterate who fills that bar and cleans out the empties. This Court will not set the extremely bad precedent of allowing you, or anyone, to conduct a fishing expedition into the matter of a person's competency without proper foundation. However— Jake."