“Is that wise, Harlow?” Ayns asked. “After all, he is the President of Langri.”
“That doesn’t give him the privilege of interrupting me whenever he feels like it,” Wembling said.
“It isn’t a matter of privilege,” Ayns said. “It’s a question of courtesy.”
Wembling turned to his secretary. “Did he say what he. wanted?”
“No, sir.”
“Maybe he’s changed his mind about those land parcels,” a young woman suggested.
“Tell him he can’t have ’em back, and let’s get on with this,” another called.
Wembling said to Ayns, “I think you’re right, Hirus. It’s a question of courtesy. I’ll see him and make an appointment to talk with him later.” He turned to the secretary. “Send him in.”
All eyes were on the door when Fornri appeared. They were curious, Talitha thought, to see how he was taking his defeat. He entered smiling and came to a stop just inside the door.
“I’m extremely busy now, Fornri,” Wembling said. “Could we make an appointment for this afternoon?”
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” Fornri told him. “I only came to deliver your tax bill.”
Amidst the circle of blank faces, only Wembling managed a smile. “Tax bill? It only goes to show you—even in paradise!” His bright young assistants laughed, and Wembling went on, “All right, Fornri, but it isn’t necessary to deliver things like this to me personally. You can leave them with my secretary.”
“I thought perhaps you might have questions about it,” Fornri said.
He circled the table, giving Talitha a friendly nod, and handed the packet to Wembling. Wembling nodded his thanks and dropped it onto the table. Then, as he dismissed Fornri with a gesture, he glanced down at the summation.
He snatched it up, looked at it again, and leaped to his feet in rage. “Tax bill? That’s fraud! Extortion! Robbery! No court will permit such a thing!”
The assistant sitting next to him took the packet, stared at the summation, and leaped to his feet, and it passed around the table with the staff members in turn registering rage, astonishment, or indignation. While this happened, Wembling remained on his feet, orating.
“Just because you call yourself a government doesn’t mean you can come in here—go ahead, take a look at that. Just because you call yourself a government doesn’t mean you can come in here and confiscate—that’s what it amounts to, confiscatory taxation, why, that’s been outlawed for centuries! Here’s an entire world with only one taxpayer, Wembling and Company, and if you think for one moment you can come in here—did you ever see the likes of a tax bill like that? We’ll sue and demand damages, that’s what we’ll do!”
Fornri listened politely, and Talitha, occasionally stealing glances at him, thought his splendidly blank expression nothing less than a work of art. She fought to suppress her laughter while her uncle’s voice raged on.
“We’ll sue and demand damages. Confiscatory taxation, that’s the only way to describe it. Confiscatory and punitive taxation, and if you think for one moment Wembling and Company is going to play the sucker and let you get away with an illegal tax grab-”
23
Master Khan Khorwiss pompously struck his most dramatic pose. “Confiscatory and punitive taxation, Your Eminence,” he thundered.
Justice Figawn leaned forward. “Ah! So that’s the tactic. The people of Langri made their bargain, Submaster Jarnes. They cannot unmake it through the agency of taxation.”
“Ten-to-one taxes, Your Eminence,” Khorwiss proclaimed. “Langri presumes to assess Wembling and Company with an annual tax equal to ten times its total investment. If it fails to pay, its holdings will be confiscated. If it pays it will be forced into bankruptcy. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“Now I have,” the justice said angrily.
Jarnes leaped to his feet.
“I know, I know, Submaster Jarnes. Those poor natives—but they lose sympathy rapidly when they practice such a flagrant illegalism.”
“The references, Your Eminence,” Jarnes said politely. “Those tax rates were set properly and legally by the duly elected Congress of the World of Langri, and no Federation court can claim jurisdiction over them.”
The justice studied Jarnes quizzically for a moment, and then he said, “Very well. Do you both stand ready? You may play your cases, gentlemen.”
Clerk Wyland activated the computer. Jarnes sat back comfortably and waited for Khorwiss to build his case, and Wembling’s distinguished counsel did not hesitate. He quickly built a column of references on the left-hand screen. Jarnes, comparing them with his notes, watched patiently; and at the console opposite, Khorwiss’ expression gradually became a smirk as he posted one unanswered reference after another.
At one point Figawn, intrigued by such unusual tactics, interrupted with a question. “Are you going to let him play his entire case, Submaster Jarnes?”
“What there is of it, Your Eminence,” Jarnes said politely.
Finally Khorwiss slowed his pace, and after each entry he began to eye Jarnes uneasily. Then Jarnes stirred himself, stroked his console, and posted a single reference.
A ping sounded, followed instantly by another, and all of Khorwiss’ references vanished. Staring at the screen, mouth open, Khorwiss half rose to protest, thought better of it, waited for the computer to correct itself, and finally asked for time and searched the reference.
While they waited, the justice asked, “Have you other references, Submaster Jarnes?”
“Yes, Your Eminence, but I doubt that they’ll be needed.”
The justice did some searching of his own, read the result, and smiled, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen that case posted before, Submaster Jarnes. How did you happen to find it?”
“I didn’t, Your Eminence. The people of Langri brought it to my attention.”
The justice looked skeptical, and Jarnes did not blame him. He found it difficult to believe himself. He’d had the devil’s own time tracking the case down even after he’d been told about it, and when he located it he thought at first that he’d been victimized by a joker. The case was almost identical to Langri’s, concerning a world’s right to impose uniform taxes, and on appeal to Higher Court the legal principles were laid down firmly for all time in the most comprehensive review of a world’s powers of taxation that Jarnes had ever seen. Apparently a world’s right to impose taxes had never before been challenged in Federation court, and obviously it wasn’t challenged again until now, and a case never cited eventually was dropped from current references.
But someone had remembered it—someone not an attorney, because it was not a legal reference that Fornri passed to him on a soiled scrap of paper, but a scrawled eyewitness recollection of an event remote in time and space. And how did Langri find out about it, when the world’s discovery took place long after the event had been forgotten?
Fornri volunteered no information, and Jarnes, not being aware that the scrap of paper might be important, did not ask. If he had asked, probably he would not have been answered. From the beginning the natives carefully told him no more than he had to know, and though this sometimes tried him sorely, he now felt that they had been wise.
And though there were many other references he could have used, though he thought he could have won without this one, it pleased him to let the people of Langri win their own case.
Khorwiss resumed play a moment later, posting reference after reference, and each appeared on the screen momentarily and then vanished. Eventually he began to resort to feit references, and the pings were replaced by gongs and Clerk Wyland’s reproving voice, “Reversed by decision of Higher Court, Master Khorwiss.”