"Mr. Douglas, you may reply," Judge Kemble said.
"Thank you, your excellency," Douglas said, slowly getting to his feet,
"although I naturally hesitate to do so when my learned opponent, as he has demonstrated, is on such intimate terms with the Almighty."
Judge Scott's gavel crashed to stifle the small swell of laughter in the court; Hayes gave Douglas a distasteful look.
The younger lawyer brushed a lock of his thick, dark hair back from his forehead. He went on, "I should also like to congratulate Mr. Hayes for the scholarship and energy he has expended to justify the ownership of one man by another. I only find it a pity that he has wasted so much
- ingenuity over an entirely irrelevant result. 'The mountains labor, and bring forth a ridiculous mouse."
" This time, all three judges used their gavels, though Jeremiah saw Judge Hardesty's mouth twitch. Hayes sprang out of his chair as if he had sat on a pin.
"See here, your excellencies he cried. "If this mountebank has a case to make, let him make it, instead of mocking mine."
"The entire proceeding of the defense has skated on thin ice," Judge Scott observed.
"Your excellency, I hope to demonstrate otherwise, "
Douglas said hastily; not all the sweat that beaded on his face came from Portsmouth's humid heat. "If the court will indulge me, I believe I can do so by summoning two individuals to the witness-box. One is currently in the courtroom; the other, whom I should like to cal first, is just outside."
The judges conferred briefly among themselves. "Bunch of damned nonsense!" Jeremiah heard Judge Scott say. He saw the jurist's powdered wig flap indignantly. But after a few minutes, Judge Kemble said,
"You may proceed."
"I thank you, your excellency," Douglas said. "I should like the bailiff to fetch in a certain Rob, whom he will find, I expect, sitting against the wall opposite this courtroom."
Bearing a martyred expression, the things half-smart lawyers put him through!, the bailiff went out into the hallway. Jeremiah heard him cal , "Rob?" He returned a moment later, his face now frozen.
Accompanying him was a male sim, the hair on its head and back and chest grizzled with age.
"Mr. Douglas, I do not know what you are playing at, but I assure you I am no longer amused," Judge Kemble snapped. "You know perfectly well that no testimony by a sim is valid in a court of law, they being incompetent to understand or take oath."
"Yes, your excellency, I am aware of that," Douglas answered. "It was for that very reason that I summoned Rob (who belongs to a friend of mine) before you. The presence of sims on these shores, you see, has a vital impact on the question of slavery."
"Why? Are you planning to liberate them next?" Judge Scott asked.
Such sarcasm from the bench was dangerous. "No, your excellency,"
Douglas replied at once. "I believe it just that they serve mankind.
But their just service points out the injustice of forcing men to similar servitude."
"I fail to see how," Scott grumbled.
"Then let him show us, if he can," Judge Hardesty suggested softly. His partner's face did not clear, but Scott kept to himself the protest he still plainly felt. After glancing at Judge Kemble, Hardesty said to Douglas, "You may proceed."
"Thank you, your excellency." Douglas pointed toward Rob, who sat calmly in the witness-box, looking rather bored and working its massive jaws to help pass the time. 'Here we have a being gifted with intelligence, "
"Not much!" someone called from the audience, which raised a laugh and made the judges pound loudly for order.
A judge spent the next several minutes looking down at the table in front of him, until he trusted his control over his features once more.
Douglas, he knew, had paid the fel ow three denaires for that interruption.
The lawyer's face revealed nothing of his machinations.
", gifted with intelligence," he repeated, "though of a lesser sort than our own. Its existence is not to be denied; in the wild, sims craft crude tools of stone, and attempt to imatate ours, in a fashion no brute beast could match.
"But as most of you know, they have no language of their own, and most fail to master the English tongue. Can you speak, Rob?" Douglas asked, turning to the sim.
Its previously placid face grew tense as it struggled against its own slow wits and balky muscles. "Y-y-y-yess," it got out at last, and sat back, proud and relieved. Speak bad, it added with signs.
"So you do," Douglas acknowledged. He concentrated on the judges again.
"Had I bid the sim read to us from the amplest children's primer, of course, it would have been helpless, as it would have been to write its name. No man has yet succeeded in teaching sims their letters."
"And no man yet has taught a turtle to waltz," Zachary Hayes broke in.
"What of it? The issue here is niggers, not sims. Perhaps my distinguished opponent needs reminding of it."
"Yes, Mr. Douglas, we have been patient for some time aw," Judge Kemble said. "We shall not be pleased if this course of yours leads nowhere."
"It leads to the very heart of the issue, your excellency,"
Douglas assured him. "For consider: in the slavery of ancients, what was their chiefest concern? Why, just as the learned Mr. Hayes has demonstrated, to define who might rightfully be a slave, and who was properly free. The great Aristotle developed the concept my opponent discussed so well, that of the slave by nature. Here, in the person of Rob and in his kind, we see exactly what the Greek sage intended: a being with a body strong enough for the tasks we set, yet without wit enough to set against our will.
"Aristotle admitted that in his day, the most difficult thing to determine was the quality of mind that defined the natural slave.
And no wonder, for he was trying to distinguish among groups of men, and al men far more resemble each other than they differ from sims.
In these modern times, we have a true standard of comparison.
"Mr. Hayes put forth the proposition that the physical appearance of niggers brands them as slaves. That is the same as saying painted plaster will satisfy the stomach because it looks so good. In this court, should we not examine essence rather than exterior? To do so, I should like to summon my client Jeremiah to the witness-box."
While Douglas was signing to Rob that it could go, Hayes sprang up, exclaiming, "I protest this, this charades"
"On what grounds, sir?" Judge Kemble said.
"On the grounds that it is obviously a trick, rehearsed s well in advance, intended to make this nigger out to be Aristotle, Charlemagne, and the Twelve Apostles al rolled into one! "
"Aye, there's a stink of collusion in the air," Judge Scott rumbled.
"How say you, Mr. Douglas?" Kemble asked.
Douglas's smile was beatific, the smile of a man whose enemy has delivered himself into his hands. "your excellency, I say that even if I were to admit that charge, and I do not; I deny it, it would only help my own case. How , could I conspire with Jeremiah unless he had the brains to plot along with me?"
Hayes opened his mouth, closed it again. His eyes were wide and staring. Judge Hardesty let out a most unjudicial snort, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Judge Scott looked grim, which meant his expression changed not at all. Stifled whoops and cheers came from the blacks at the back of the courtroom. Judge Kemble gaveled them down.
"You may proceed, sir," was all he said to Douglas. The lawyer dipped his head, waved Jeremiah forward to take the oath. As Jeremiah raised his hand, he thought Douglas might remind the judges that he, unlike a sim, was able to do so.