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  It was clear to Mark that he had been picked for the Station’s most unpleasant job this sim-morning, probably for some good reason like Banerji had seen him smile or heard him whistle the sim-day before. The Station’s most unpleasant job, of course, was sitting in on trials. Every Earthman on the Station, from the colonel to Roderick MacMack, the junior engineer, and Mark Hassall, the junior transport controller, held a commissioned rank in the Space Police, and under the terms of the Re-Foundation of Government in 2085, an officer in the Space Police had to be ready and trained to act the role of congressman, detective, judge, lawyer or jailer on demand.

  This happy sim-morning Mark Hassall had been chosen for judge. Standing Orders said that every dispute on the Station must be attended by an Earth officer. This Order meant, for instance, that Mark had once been forced to sit for 14 sim-hours in total silence alone in the courtroom with two tankfuls of Aldeberan-4 creatures while they thrashed out what they alleged was a theological dispute. The Aids are the interpreters of the universe, and they had said that the subject matter of their dispute was ineffable. “And if ineffable,” they added, “then untranslatable.” Mark hadn’t , even dared peruse a novel, for though no one but Aids could tell when Aids were having a break, the colonel, if he cared to look in, would know if Mark was.

  “This isn’t my lucky sim-day,” said Mark to Marylou while he brushed his teeth.

  “It could be much worse, friend,” said the delectable communicator. “It’s only an intra-species affair.”

  In those days the difference between intra-spedes law and inter-spedes law really meant something. Intra-species litigation was purgatorial, but inter-species litigation was hellish. In those days all cases were technically settled by Earth law, and in every judgment the judge had to produce a complicated formula reconciling his Earth-derived settlement with the law and practice of the relevant alien race. If two alien races were involved in a dispute, then the unhappy magistrate had to wrestle with a three-way compromise.

  With some sense of relief Mark turned on the visuals and gave Marylou a sight of his shining morning face.

  “What’s the rap?” he asked, airing a bit of jargon he had picked up watching old television films in the Station library. (The Station had half a million books, many of them genuine antiques like the “Perry Mason” series he was quoting from.)

  “Wait for it,” said Marylou roguishly, and brightened the contrast control to show off her roguish dimples. “Wife beating.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Only a tenth of them have arms to beat with! And only a tenth of them have wives.”

  “Well, one in a hundred’s a wife-beater.”

  “I’ve heard it all. What could be next?”

  “It Could Be You, Mark darling,” said Marylou.

  “Kindly remember your place,” he said with mock roughness, and leaned forward as unobtrusively as he could in order to turn down the red register. “The Court at sim-0615 then.”

  “Good luck, Marco,” said the Station’s sole communications expert and sole Earth woman, and switched off.

  “Thank you, honeychile,” said Mark meditatively into the gray screen. “Thank you.”

  When he got to the courtroom and took his place on the Tribunal the trial was already set up. Beside him on the table was his water carafe, and about a quart of the Station’s complement of Aldeberan-4 people in their aquarium-like traveling quarters, with earphone pickups already connected. Mark put on the earphones.

  “Good morning, sir,” said an electronically produced voice. “This is the Court Interpreter.”

  “Good morning, Aids,” he said.

  “Miss Marylou said to tell you that your container of body-fluid includes a toxic additive.”

  Mark looked inside the vacuum flask which held water for the Judge and found it full of steaming black coffee.

  “Thank you, Aids. Convey my thanks to Miss Marylou. Sorry to see so many of you here this morning.”

  The Aids made no answer. About two-thirds of the Station’s complement of Aids had turned up that sim-morning. They always sent to court just as many individuals as could cope with the complexity of the case as they saw it. They seldom misjudged. To see so many of them at once was a bad omen.

  He looked around the Court. Below him, in what they called the dock, were two bedraggled Fomalhaut-9s, one male, one female. He had no idea what the female Fomalhaut was doing there. The only wheeled race known at the time, they were circling round each other in the gyration labeled by the Ethological Handbook for their race “Repose without joy,” and which MacMack had rechristened “constant and effortful vigilance” after the tyrannous Banerji’s watchword. Beyond them, in the position technically known as “Counsel for the Defense,” was the Station’s senior lieutenant, Gil Mulrooney, a thickset, grizzled veteran of the Last Trans-Stellar War. Beside him sat his opposite number, counsel for the prosecution, in the person of the Station’s dapper Administrative Adjutant, Jules Monterey.

  The titles they bore for the occasion dated from a time when the government was divided into many separate departments—like judiciary, administration, police, army or the Bar. But by the end of the 21st century, government was government and no longer a species of public debate or carnival tug-of-war, and any government officer could take any role. The two counsels’ jobs were roughly to list the points on two opposing sides, and Mark’s was to pronounce judgment.

  But all government is of course implicit in each individual. Next time they would probably trade jobs. t Beyond the court itself ranged the tiered compartments reserved for spectators. Each compartment was adapted to the physique of one of the 25 trans-stellar races living on the Station, with the front row reserved for Earthmen and Martians, whose solar system the Station happened to be in. Most of the compartments had someone inside. It looked to Mark as if an average number of every race had come to see the fun. You had to say “average” because the actual number of individuals of any race which constituted a quorum varied so much. For instance, there was a quart of Aids on his desk: that would be around 150,000,000 individuals. There were around 400 Loon-birds sparsely roosting in their three-dimensional knitting safely (of course) behind glass. There were three Earthmen in the court, all in official capacities. There was one Leprechaun with his eye extruded. And, luckily, there was no Phoenix-cloud within a billion miles of the Station. There is only one Phoenix-cloud known, but that one can be dangerous enough to a lonely Transit Station.

  It is the job of a Station to offer shelter and to offer sustenance—but not if the first bite is the Station itself.

  “Thanks be for small mercies, anyway,” thought Mark. Aloud he said, “We’ll begin.”

  On the recording strip sunk into the desk at the right of his chair he saw the words “The Court sits” appear. This was also the work of the Aids, who activated the official court record. The difference between languages and the difference between two styles in one language were both the same difference to them. So far as they knew it was all translation. So whatever one said in court in English was minced up by their infallible brain-circuitry and emerged on the record in the sort of legal jargon with which lawyers have baffled laymen since the invention of justice.

  All around the court bodies relaxed in the way appropriate to their physique.

  “What gives in this case?” said Mark.

  “Set forth the Plaint,” said the record.

  Gil Mulrooney got up slowly. “That’s not hard,” he said. “I was on Station watch this sim-morning. At sim-0149 I got a call from the automatic monitor on 9th level, at the intersection of the Fomalhaut avenue and 12th Freeway, a call of ‘believed disturbance’. I immediately went down by chute in person.”

  “Leaving the watch monitor active in the guardroom,” Mark put in.

  “Of course,” said Gil. “Activating the watch monitor.” This would look right in the record. It wasn’t that Mark doubted that Gil had taken this simple precaution, just that he might have forgotten to
say so. It was Mark’s job to keep the record straight and, more than that, to keep the colonel sweet.

  “Go on,” said Mark.

  “The corridor monitor was quite correct. There was considerable disturbance coming from cell 34 on the Fomalhaut avenue, the cell assigned to Mr. and Mrs. Daap-daap. I could hear great clouts against the partition wall and a squealing that could be heard four blocks away. I thought at least a band of Loon-birds had got loose in there.” Mark shuddered at the picture. “Sounds bad. What did you do then?”

  “I activated the calling circuits and I was let in.”

  “Immediately? You made me think all Hell was let loose in there.”

  “Well, it calmed down the moment I keyed the calling circuit. Almost as if they’d been waiting for me.”

  “That doesn’t sound very likely,” said Mark, “if the noise was as bad as you say.”

  “The noise was very bad,” said Mulrooney, grimacing. “One wouldn’t be mistaken about a noise like that.”

  “Well, it was a sleep-period,” said Monterey from the other counsel’s box.

  “I don’t see the relevance,” said Mulrooney slowly. “The Fomalhauts don’t sleep. You know that.”

  “I do,” said Monterey, conscientiously needling his opposite number as a good Counsel should. “But Earthmea do sleep. I call the judge’s attention to that.”

  “You’re claiming I dreamt it, then,” shouted Mulrooney furiously.

  “You were probably as bleary as a gigolo on Sunday morning,” answered Monterey.

  The record paused for a few seconds, then produced this impartial translation. “I submit that Lieutenant Mulrooney was suffering from disorientation of the reality-sense brought on by cultural shock, the cultural shock being due in this case to his foregoing a fundamental Earth custom, namely that of undergoing a period of unconsciousness between sim-0001 and sim-0801.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mark hurriedly. “Gil’s a policeman, for God’s sake.”

  The Aids printed: “Objection formally noted. The judgment of this court in this is that, firstly, the Earth race is exceptionally immune to cultural shock, and, secondly, vigilance during the sleep-period is an old and honored custom of the Earth police subculture and would thus be entirely natural to Lieutenant Mulrooney.” It looked damn good.

  “This is all off the point,” said Mark. “Whatever interpretation we may put upon it, the court accepts that the Fomalhauts in question stopped quarreling and let you in. Then what?”

  “On gaining entrance I found the defendant, Fomalhaut-male Daap-daap, holding in one tentacle a carved Fomalhaut food-pipe some 90 cms long (Exhibit A), and the codefendant Fomalhaut-female Mrs. Daap-daap—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” said Mark, interrupting. “(Strike that from the Record.) I thought this was a wife-beating case. Tell me whose wife was beaten, and if Mrs. Daap-daap was the victim, why does she appear as co-defendant? Or isn’t that Fomalhaut-female down there Mrs. Daap-daap?”

  “Well, Mrs. Daap-daap did get beaten,” said Gil. “And she appears as co-defendant at her own request. And that is her in the dock. To tell the truth, this case is a daddy-o.”

  “Certain features of this case render it unusually complex,” typed the Record.

  “Yes, but is anybody going to explain it to me?” said Mark.

  “Honestly, I’d rather you thrash it out with the defendants themselves. This court’s already too full of mouthpieces.” And Mulrooney favored the tank of Aids with a mournful Bronx cheer, which they forebore, as near as Mark could see, to translate. “I talked with both Daap-daaps, of course, and the facts are clear enough, but I haven’t the faintest idea what their plea is.”

  “I’ll confirm that, Judge,” said Monterey. “Will you take over?”

  “Right,” said Mark. “Don’t go to sleep, though.”

  Mulrooney glared at him, but the tactful Aids cut out the sleep metaphor and confined their Record to, “Maintain, however, general surveillance, Counsels.” Mark, signed to the two Fomalhauts to hook themselves to the direct Interpreter’s Link.

  He addressed Mrs. Daap-daap. “I see that your front wheel is gravely contused, to the extent that you are resting it on a surgical trolley. Is that the result of a fight this sim-morning?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the reply.

  “Witness?” said Mark.

  “Deposition of doctor,” said the Aids, acting as his remembrancer. “Exhibit B.”

  They were right as usual. Mark found the document in one of the slits under the Record. Its signer was an Asclepiad, a mid-gravity race with a specialty in biophysics, who had been the Galaxy’s doctors long before Man came on the scene. It certified that when he attended Mrs. Daap-daap at 0310 that morning she had been suffered from widespread surface contusions, and from a fractured bearing-joint in her front ankle—all caused within 2 sim-hours of the treatment time.

  Mark addressed Mr. Daap-daap. “Did you do this to your wife?” he asked.

  “I did,” he answered. He evidently did not want to hide it, for the Aids on the Record had added “(Relaxedly; without hesitation).”

  “Well, that’s frank. And why did you hit her?”

  “Because I did wrong.”

  “And why should you hit her when you do wrong?”

  “Because it is the duty of wives to suffer punishment for what their husbands do wrong.”

  “I see. But why is she too in the dock?”

  “Because it is the duty of wives to suffer punishment for what their husbands do wrong.”

  To the Aids, Mark said, “Come on. You’re a question behind. I’m asking now why Mrs. Daap-daap is in the dock.”

  “Unquote,” said the Aids to show they were talking in their, or its, proper person. “The defendant’s answer was as it appears in the Record.”

  “But that can’t be the answer to both questions!” Mark protested.

  “Unquote is that a statement or a question? To the defendants or to the interpreter?”

  “Well, don’t let’s waste breath,” said Mark, knowing that the Aids enjoyed a good idiom. “If you know the answer, you tell.”

  “Unquote I know why the defendant’s wife is in the dock. You will remember that the reason is in the Fomalhaut Ethology Handbook paragraph 975.” (The Aids, being the only purely intellectual life form in the universe, could never conceive the difference between a memory and a reference book. They meant Mark could look the information up in the Fomalhaut Ethology. The advantage of their ignorance was that the colonel would never know that Mark hadn’t remembered the information for himself, because the paragraph number would merely appear in the Aids’ record as a reference.)

  Mark flipped over the pages of the Ethology. Para 975 was in Part II (“Social Behavior”), Chapter 17 (“Justice”), item 9a (“Punishment”). It said:

  “Punishment for wrong-doing is customarily inflicted on the females—wife, or, if unavailable, mother, or, if unavailable, female guardian. The accepted forms of punishment are physical chastisement or deprival of nutriment (see paras 304-356)—both these can be inflicted by Earth officials—and deprival of Joy (see para 2)—which cannot.”

  “Joy” was obviously pretty basic, judging by its paragraph number, but this wasn’t the time for looking it up. “I’ve got that sewn up, Aids,” said Mark, laying the idioms on thick to gain time. “I’m right in there with you regarding why Daap-daap’s little girl is in the dock. Now you give with the info why he was hitting her this sim-morning.”

  “Roger,” said the Aids, never at a loss how to beat interlocutors at their own game. “Can do, skipper. He was beating her then ’cos he just dun wrong. You will remember the same para.”

  “I see that,” said Mark. “That explains why he was beating her, and the note on methods of punishment explains why he was beating her, but I still don’t know why he was beating her.”

  There was a pause, and then the Aids produced another line on the Record. It said: “Defendant: Because I had done wr
ong according to Earth code. My wife must suffer punishment for that.”

  “I see,” said Mark. Daap-daap was of course technically quite right. Transit Station J had its legal existence under an archaic type of agreement known as a “lease.” This meant basically that under a reciprocal benefit agreement drawn up according to the law of Jupiter (in whose orbit the Station hung) the Earth Government controlled the area covered by the Station’s orbit. The agreement specifically added that unless 17 sim-months (a Jupiter time-span) notice were given to the contrary, Earth law should be observed by all organic matter aboard.

  So much was true enough. But there were some Earth laws which some organic matter simply had to break, particularly (he glanced wryly at the 400 or so Loon-birds—by God, there were now about a thousand of them—swarming in the Spectators’ area) the organic matter aboard his Station. And in their setup an individual could make trouble quicker by citing the letter of the law than any other way short of opening both doors of the airlock simultaneously. With something like anxiety in the corner of his mind, he said, “And what Earth law did you break?”

  “A law concerning Grievous Bodily Harm and Assault. I was beating my wife.”

  “You acted quite rightly. That sort of thing could land you up in the courts,” said Mark judiciously.

  “It has landed me up in court,” said Daap-daap—“(sternly),” according to the Record. “And my wife has already paid the penalty.”

  For a couple of heartbeats Mark spun dizzily in the nospace of the Fomalhauts’ moral metaphysics. Then he was back in command. “This is the situation, then,” he said (“sternly”). No organic matter, wheeled or otherwise, in the Station would fool him. “You admit to beating your wife, and recognize that this is illegal under Earth law. Your defense against the charge of Assault is Justification within Racial Mores, and within your code of mores the justification is that your act of Assault was a legitimate punishment for a wrong which you had committed, or, at least, for an act which was illegal according to the laws of your domicile place; that wrong being that same act of Assault. The situation so far is simple.” (He would show them who was master.) “However, your explanation is unsatisfactory in this particular, that under Earth law punishment may not be inflicted before the crime is committed. Therefore the same act cannot be both crime and punishment.”