The head waiter knew Eric and had saved them a window table facing the water—not that there was especially much to look out at; it was a moody day, with dark piles of cloud low down to the west and gray overcast everywhere else. Choppy waves roughened the Sound, with a stiff wind flapping the lines and rigging of the boats at their moorings. Eric decided that the day called for something hot and ordered the steak and mushroom pie.
“Bowdlerized American version,” he commented, now back to his usual self, eyes twinkling through the gold-rimmed spectacles. “In Europe it’s steak and kidney.”
“Sounds dreadful.”
“You see—expectations predetermine taste.”
Michelle settled for the grilled salmon.
When the waiter had gone, Eric produced a slip of paper with the phrases scrawled on it that he had used over the phone when they touched on Relativity, along with a few lines of explanation. “Do we need to go into this now?” Michelle asked as she took it.
“I hope not.”
“Good.” She folded the paper and tucked it into her purse. “You know, you and he are going to have to talk to each other direct if you want to take this further. This is as far as I go playing the messenger.”
“What’s his name?”
“Fred Wainer.”
“At the university, you said?” Eric thought for a few moments and shook his head. “I know a few of the physicists there, but I don’t think I’ve heard that name.”
“His field is nuclear.”
“Oh, that might explain it, then. How did you meet him? Was he an expert witness in another great lawsuit that you handled? Millions of dollars at stake, and a threat to national security? Espionage treachery, murder, mayhem—the stuff of great novels and blockbuster movies?”
“No. At a dance.”
“Um.” Eric broke a roll and started spreading butter on the pieces. The wine waiter stopped by. They decided to stay with a glass each—one house Burgundy, one Cabernet.
“Actually, most lawyers’ work is pretty mundane,” Michelle said. “I’ll let you into a professional secret. All the business about titanic clashes of intellect, and rapier-like cuttings and parryings of reason that you read about—it’s all invented to satisfy the expectations of the faithful. At the bottom of it all, we’re really a religion too—just the way you said science is getting to be.”
“Oh, really?” Eric looked interested. “How’s that, now? Tell me about it.”
“Almost all human disputes and misunderstandings are easily settled as matters of routine. The conditions of sale of an airline ticket; who pays for the broken part; whether these bank charges are in order—clerks and counter assistants take care of it, according to the rules.”
Eric nodded. “Very well.”
“The cases that aren’t quite so clear get referred upward to management, and the problems that don’t get solved at some level or other there are relatively few. Those few are the ones you call in specialist help over—say, by turning it over to the legal department. And it’s only the instances where the lawyers can’t work out a solution—which again are the exceptions—that ever get near a courtroom at all.”
“Okay. That makes sense. I agree. And? . . .”
“When the courts can’t decide, it goes upward again, until finally you reach the summit for a ruling: the ultimate law of the land; the Supreme Court, the Pope, the British House of Lords . . . I don’t know what they have in Germany. Whatever.”
“Yes?”
Michelle shrugged, as if the rest ought to have been obvious. “That’s it. That’s the big secret.”
Eric shifted his eyes from side to side as if fearing eavesdroppers, then whispered, “What is?”
“The issues that make it to that kind of level for a decision are inherently undecidable. They can’t be resolved by any system rules or reason that humans are capable of devising. If they could they would have been already—somewhere lower down the hierarchy where the requisite technical expertise exists. They’re beyond all that.”
“So what do we do?”
“What we do is use robes and ritual to solemnly camouflage the truth that the most illustrious in whom we place our ultimate trust might as well flip a coin for all the sense they’re going to be able to make of it now. But the people go away happy that great wisdom has been dispensed and justice done, and the important business of life carries on.”