“In light of the very serious issues involved, Your Honor, I honestly believe that in this case the rights of the defendant clearly outweigh the constraints of the government.”
“And do you have something to say, Mr. Martinez?”
“Yes, I do, Your Honor!” The district attorney’s face was grim. “First of all, I want to say that the… the learned counselor is talking about witchcraft! She is trying to bully the courtroom back into the days of the Salem witch trials, in which guilt or innocence was determined by whether or not the witches could float! Furthermore…” The Fighting Bobcat continued at some length.
“I see,” said Judge Johansson at last. “What you actually seem to be saying is that you don’t care to see this time scanner used if it might possibly show the innocence of the defendant instead of his guilt.”
“Not at all. Your Honor! What I am saying is—”
“Say no more, Mr. Martinez.” The judge turned to consider the clock on the wall. “Is it sheer coincidence, Madam Justice, that the defendant’s request for this court to engage in what may well be a violation of Federal statutes should come precisely at the end of a Friday afternoon, well after everything in Washington officialdom is solidly closed for the weekend and the chance of a restraining order being issued is vanishingly small? Yes, it is sheer coincidence?” Judge Johansson smiled skeptically. “Well, then, let us take advantage of what small kindnesses fate occasionally hands us.” He gestured to the uniformed bailiff sitting at the side of the courtroom.
“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.”