This was another building of the stone that was not stone. Above the vaulted entrance were words he did not understand even after they were explained: hall of justice, and interworld division.
Fornri had arrived in one of the strange, bubblelike air boats that darted everywhere above the city’s vast and intricate skyline. His companion was Jarvis Jarnes, of the firm of McLindorffer, Klarouse, Hraanl, Picrawley, Webluston, and Jarnes. As the Langri had foretold, its name had been changed.
Just inside the vast entrance, they stepped onto a floor-that-moved. This was one of the things Jarnes and his friends expected Fornri to marvel at, and he could only wonder why they did not walk, which would have been so much faster. On this day Jarnes went to a room called Interworld Law Library. He had explained what he would do—ask the strange machine-that-remembers about other legal actions that could have had to do with troubles like those of Langri’s, and in Jarnes’s notebook were long lists of questions that he thought might stir the machine’s memory; but through all the questions the dark green panel that should have answered only flashed, at intervals, the symbol that said it did not know.
On the way out they stopped to pay the attendant for the use of the machine. Jarnes presented a circular token, which the attendant fitted into a machine that growled over it.
“Still no luck?” the attendant asked. “There couldn’t possibly be a legal question with no references!”
Jarnes smiled wistfully and said, “Couldn’t there?”
They rode the moving floor again and got off at a room marked registrar, interworld pacts and compacts, where Jarnes talked with an attendant. The attendant consulted his own machine-that-remembers and shook his head. They rode on, to a room marked extra-federation registrar, with the same result.
Finally they rode to the Justice Arena.
They left the moving floor and followed a broad corridor that encircled the justice chambers. The curving outer wall of each chamber was transparent—a genuine marvel—and within it the two side walls narrowed almost to a point at the dais where opposing attorneys faced each other across the consoles of their machines-that-remember. Above them sat the clerk, and above and behind him sat the justice—except that the justice was not really there. His image appeared when the session opened and disappeared when it closed, and no amount of explaining by Jarnes could make Fornri understand this marvel called a three-dimensional projection.
At the rear of the chamber were chairs for spectators. In some chambers the chairs were filled and people were standing; in others, the principals performed without an audience.
Fornri gaped into each chamber as he passed it. Someday the fate of his world would be decided in one of them, and Jarnes had explained the procedures as well as he could. Each chamber contained its own contest, no two of them alike. In one chamber both attorneys were on their feet, violently angry, while the clerk stood waving for order. In another the attorneys seemed bored and the justice appeared to be asleep. In a third the drama of the legal contest was unfolding in such a fascinating pantomime that Fornri stopped to watch. Jarnes moved on without him and then returned for him with a smile.
Finally they reached their destination and paused to wait. Inside the chamber, the legal proceedings were coming to an end. The justice’s image faded; the sign over the entrance that read justice in session darkened; and Jarnes touched Fornri’s arm and led him into the chamber.
The two attorneys were sorting out their reference disks and placing them in cases. Fornri eyed the disks curiously. These strange objects conveyed messages to the machine-that-remembers, and if they matched its memories in certain ways more appropriate than the disks of the other attorney, the law-suit was won. It seemed wildly improbable to Fornri, but Jarnes had explained it to him, and he had to believe.
The clerk was starting for the private exit behind his desk, carrying an armful of the strangely perforated records spewed out by the machines-that-remember. Jarnes hurried to overtake him, and the clerk turned with a smile of recognition.
“Ah! Submaster Jarnes!”
“Clerk Wyland,” Jarnes said, and introduced Fornri; and the clerk, too burdened with his rolls of records to touch hands, nodded and smiled.
“I received the letter from your Master McLindorffer,” the clerk said. “Come this way, please.”
Beyond the door was the marvel that had impressed Fornri most of all, the VMS, verticle movement shafts. One shaft gently raised one to the upper levels of a building; the other sank one to the lower levels. The first time Fornri had encountered them he spent an hour of intense pleasure soaring to the top and then sinking to the bottom, until an amused Jarvis Jarnes had beckoned him away.
This time they rose only one level, and Fornri, following the others, checked his ascent by extending his hand and was gently drawn through the door that dropped open. They walked along a corridor, and Clerk Wyland dropped open the door of his office and motioned them through it.
Inside, he placed his rolls of records on his desk and arranged chairs for them before he seated himself.
“So this is the young man from Langri,” he said. He was an extremely rotund individual with a completely bald head, but his smile was warm and engaging, and Fornri liked him despite his grotesque appearance. “Any progress?” he asked Jarnes.
“None at all,” Jarnes said.
Clerk Wyland scratched his nose fretfully. “It would be extremely difficult to erase the treaty in all of its references. I’d think it impossible. They probably tampered with the references.” He turned to smile at Fornri, who was gazing at him blankly. “That may seem mysterious, but really it isn’t. Supposing I were to tell you, ‘Whenever you hear the word “chair,” stand up.’ And then, when I’m not looking, Submaster Jarnes whispers to you, The rules have been changed. Don’t pay any attention to the word “chair.” Stand up when you hear the word “table.” When I want you to stand up I say ‘chair,’ and I can’t understand why you won’t respond. In a vastly more complicated way, something like this happened to your treaty. Someone secretly and illegally sent out a general reference correction. Your treaty remains in all of the proper files, but no one can locate it without knowing the magic word—just as I couldn’t get you to stand up by saying ‘chair’ when someone had told you secretly that the word had been changed to ‘table.’ ”
Fornri continued to regard him blankly, wondering whether Clerk Wyland actually wanted him to stand up and why.
“Of course the references are a bit more involved than the words ‘chair’ and ‘table,’ ” Clerk Wyland said.
“Just a bit,” Jarnes agreed, with a wistful smile.
“But something like that must have happened, and now we won’t be able to find the Langri treaty officially until we figure out what the new reference is—just as I wouldn’t have been able to make you stand up until I tried out a lot of words and found that you were now responding to ‘table.’ It shouldn’t be possible to tamper with a reference—aside from the technical difficulties, there are all sorts of safeguards, and there are stiff penalties for even trying, but someone has done it.”
“Someone was bribed to do it,” Jarnes amended.
“Undoubtedly. And sooner or later—”
“Even ‘sooner’ will be much too late,” Jarnes said grimly. “I told you—Fornri brought a complete report from Aric Hort, who is a competent anthropologist and a former employee of this man Wembling. The world of Langri is about to suffer an ecological catastrophe. The natives’ food supply will be wiped out.”
“Yes, indeed,” Clerk Wyland said, with a side glance at Fornri. “The poor natives. Master McLindorffer informed me as to the urgency of the problem, and I consulted with Justice Laysoring, as I promised. He saw no hope at all for an action on the treaty. It’s an extra-Federation matter. No Federation court would assume jurisdiction.”