GLADIATOR-AT-LAW by FHEDERIK POHL and C. M. KOMBLUTH
Bantam Books by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
GLADIATOR-AT-LAW WOLFBANE
Bantam Books by Frederik Pohl
IN THE PROBLEM PIT
SCIENCE FICTION DISCOVERIES (with Carol Pohl)
GLADIATOR-AT-LAW
by
FHEDERIK POHL
and C. M. KOMBLUTH
Chapter One
the accused was a tallow-faced weasel with “Constitutional Psychopathic Inferior” stamped all over him. He wailed to Charles Mundin, LL.B., John Marshall Law School:
“Counselor, you got to get me off 11 been up twice and this time they’ll condition me!”
Mundin studied his first client with distaste. “You won’t plead guilty?” he asked again, hopelessly. He had been appointed by the court, and considered that the court had played a filthy trick on him. This twerp’s pore patterns were all over Exhibit A, a tin cashbox fishhooked from a ticket window at Monmouth Stadium. Modus operandi coincided with that in the twerp’s two previous offenses. An alleged accomplice, who had kept the ticket clerk busy for almost all of the necessary five minutes, was all ready to take the witness stand— having made his deal with the prosecutor. And still the twerp was stubbornly refusing to cop a plea.
Mundin tried again. “It won’t be so bad, you know. Just a couple of days in a hospital. It’s quite painless, and that’s not just talk. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. They took us around in my junior year——”
The twerp wailed, “Counselor, you just don’t understand. If they condition me, my God, I have to go to work.”
Mundin shrugged. “You’re acting against my advice,” he said. “I’ll do what I can for you.”
But the trial was over in a matter of minutes. Mundin tried for a reversible error by objecting to the testimony of
the accomplice. He claimed feebly that the moral character of the witness made his testimony inadmissible in a condition-able offense. The prosecutor, a grandee from Harvard Law, haughtily smacked him down by pointing out that the essence of the conditioLable offense lay in the motivation of the accused, not the fact of commission, which was all the accomplice had testified to. He snapped a series of precedents.
The judge’s eyes went blank and distant. Those inside the rail could hear confirmation of the precedents droning faintly into his ears through the headphones under his elaborate wig. He nodded and said to Mundin, “Overruled. Get on with it.”
Mundin didn’t even bother to take an exception.
The prosecution rested and Mundin got up, his throat dry. “May it please the Court,” he said. His Honor looked as though nothing had pleased that Court, ever. Mundin said to the jury box, “The defense, contending that no case has been made, will present no witnesses.” That, at any rate, would keep Harvard Law from letting the jury know of the two previous convictions. “The defense rests.”
Harvard Law, smiling coldly, delivered a thirty-second summation, which hi three razor-sharp syllogisms demonstrated the fact that defendant was guilty as hell.
The court clerk’s fingers clicked briskly on the tape-cutter, then poised expectantly as Mundin stood up.
“May it please the Court,” said Mundin. That look again. “My client has not been-a fortunate man. The product of a broken home and the gutters of Belly Rave, he deserves justice as does every citizen. But hi his case I am impelled to add that the ends of justice can be served only by an admixture of mercy.”
Judge and prosecutor were smiling openly. The hell with dignity! Mundin craned his neck to read the crisp yellow tape that came clicking out of the clerk’s encoding machine. He could more or less read jury-box code if it was simple enough.
The encoded transcript of his summation was simple enough. The tape said:
o-o . .. o-o . .. o-o …
“Defense rests,” he mumbled and fell into his chair, ignoring a despairing mutter from the twerp. The judge said, “Mr. Clerk, present the case to the jury box.
The clerk briskly fed in the two tapes. The jury box hummed and twinkled. If only you could fix one of those things! Mundin thought savagely, staring at the big seal on it. Or if you could get one of those damned clerks to cut the tape—no, that was out too. They were voluntarily conditioned. Like voluntary eunuchs in the old days. Gave up manhood for a sure living.