Spider Robinson - The Gifts of the Magistrate

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THE GIFTS OF TILE MAGISTRATE

"Merry Christmas, Mr. Chief Justice," the Captain of the Guard said; but his

subsequent behavior scarcely reflected the holiday spirit.

Wolfgang Jannike submitted philosophically to the fingerprinting, retina scan and

close body search which were his Christmas presents from his subordinate. Jannike

could hardly protest an order he had written himself. Nor would any conceivable

protest have made the slightest difference; all the human guards at this stronghold

were—again, by his own direction—Gurkhas, the deadliest humans alive.

Scanners had shown him unarmed, and the ID signal broadcast by the chip in his

skull had been confirmed as legitimate and valid, else he would not have lived to

reach Captain Lai. But even after Jannike had been positively identified as the person

described by that ID chip, and therefore as the Chief Justice of the Solar High

Court—nominal master of this prison—Captain Lal remained vigilant.

That was understandable. Of the four assas-sins who had come here to date, two

had gotten this far; one of them so recently that Jannike could still see the stains on

the wall. That one, he knew, had been a friend of the Captain's.

"How may I help Your Honor?" Lal asked when the ritual was done.

"I will speak with the prisoner alone for a time," Jannike replied firmly. He was

commit-ted now; at least three microphones had recorded those words.

There was a long pause, during which Cap-tain Lal's eyes made all the responses

his lips dared not—even a Gurkha must sometimes tread cautiously—and at last his

lips made the only reply they could. "Yes, sir."

"Have you ever read the works of Clement Samuels, Captain?" the Chief Justice

was moved to ask then.

"No, sir," Lal replied, doubtless baffled but showing nothing. He spun smartly in

place and headed for the door, motioning to two of his men. They fell in behind

Jannike in antiterror-ist mode, one facing forward and one facing back, weapons out

and ready. Somehow, he noted over his shoulder, they contrived to make it seem

merely ceremonial. Then he faced forward and followed the Captain, to the cell

which held the Vandal, the worst vandal of all time.

"Cell" it was in a legal and actual sense, but most of the humans alive in the Solar

System in 2061 occupied meaner quarters. The Chief Justice himself owned slightly

more cubic, and more flexible hedonics therein—but not by much. It was odd. The

whole System was angry at the Vandal, murderously angry, but it seemed to be a

kind of anger that precluded cruelty. The execution would be retribution, but not

ven-geance. Revenge was not possible, and the crime was so numbingly enormous

and senseless that deterrence could have no meaning. Nonetheless society would do

what it could to redress the balance.

The Vandal was in an odd and striking posi-tion, both legally and morally,

and—Jannike saw as Captain Lal waved him into the cell—physi-cally as well.

Virtually all humans in free fall are uncomfortable if they can not align themselves

with an arbitrary "up" and "down"; since the earliest days of spaceflight men have

built rooms with an assumed local vertical, and the occupants have oriented

themselves accordingly. This occu-pant was crouched upside down and tilted

slightly leftward with respect to the Chief Jus-tice, drifting slightly in the eddy of the

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Spider Robinson - The Gifts of the Magistrate

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