And then I had a dream about Mom too. Her and that Sykes woman. But I didn't remember what they said. And that bothered me for a while–because it didn't seem fair for Dad to have a whole vivid dream and not Mom too. But it was kind of like Mom had stepped out of my life for a while and I guess I wasn't ready to let her back in, not even in my dreams.
That reminded me of something Douglas said once, about moms. He said that nothing gets in the way of a good fantasy like a mom. That's why most guys try to put Mom aside for a while–while they try to figure out who they are, I guess. It didn't matter anymore. We were all going to jail soon enough. If we weren't there already.
And then, one morning, I opened my eyes to the smell of hot chocolate, eggs, toast, and strawberry jam. And I sat up in bed and looked around. Except for a slightly sleepy feeling of confusion, I felt better than I had in days. I could even talk. My voice was still dusky‑scratchy like my throat was lined with cockleburs and foxtails, but I could actually make understandable words. "Hello? Is anyone there?" I was in a room that was notpart of a cargo pod. It actually had a real floor and real walls and a real ceiling. It was spooky. Everything looked soft and gentle and flowery, that's how I knew it was a hospital; it smelled like a hospital too, with the air just a little too fresh and clean.
"Oh, good, you're up. Right on schedule." The woman wore a purple‑gray dress and a thing like a pink apron over it. I guessed it was supposed to be cheery, and it wasn't too hard to look at, but I was never big on industrial cheerfulness before and as good as I felt, I wasn't ready to start now.
She was just uncovering a tray of food–that was what I'd smelled. She put it across my bed and tied a bib around my neck. "Just in case," she said. "You might still be a little weak."
"What is this place?"
"Tranquility Medical Center at Armstrong."
"How long was I out?"
"Three days. No, four. It doesn't matter. You're fine now. You'll just have to take it easy for a bit. I'll leave you alone to eat. The shower is through there. There are fresh clothes in the closet. Try not to take too long. You have to be in court in two hours–"
" Say what?"
But she was already gone.
IN COURT
Judge Cavanaugh was the largest human being I had ever seen. He looked like the Hindenburg.He was huge and round, and when he entered the room, it took a while for all of him to arrive at the same place. He moved like a human bubble suit, with all of his blubbery mass flubbering and bouncing around like an animated caricature of a fat man. In Lunar low gee, he didn't lumber, he floated.He took his seat at the bench, and all the various parts of him arrived one after the other, settling into place like latecomers at a concert.
Judge Cavanaugh took roll, made sure all his separate body sections had sorted themselves out, looked out over the room, looked to the display in front of him, rubbed his nose, and waved a go‑ahead gesture at the clerk, a skinny black woman. "Case number 40032, in the matter of Douglas, Charles, and Robert Dingillian, custody of, blah blah blah."
Custody?Again?
Judge Cavanaugh was scanning through his notes. He finally found the page he was looking for and looked out at us again. He cleared his throat. "Most court cases are a two‑body problem. A plaintiff and a defendant. Those are relatively simple to resolve. You listen to the facts, you look for a balance. Somehow you find a Lagrange point."
He looked out over the room. "But just as the laws of physics start to get complex and unmanageable when you introduce a third body to the problem, so do the laws of human beings become complex and unmanageable when there are three participants orbiting around a claim.
We have here, a seven‑body problem. Or a twelve‑body problem. Or more. I've lost count of the number of litigants who have stepped forward to lodge a claim or file a brief as a friend of the court. I know that most of you recognize that you do not have a hope in hell of winning your claim, but it hasn't stopped you from adding bodies to the problem in the hope of making it so unmanageable that it can never be resolved. I applaud your various successes in making this case a colossal nightmare. I promise to reward each and every one of you appropriately."
He smiled. For some reason, it didn't look friendly.
"Let me explain something to those of you who've just arrived here in the last few days. I know a lot of you are suddenly out of work and vaguely troubled by the fact that we don't have ambulances to chase here on Luna. And, of course, as we all know, there's nothing as dangerous as an unemployed lawyer–unless it's one who is employed. But for the record, I want to explain to you how things work here in this courtroom, and on most of Luna.
"This is a small town. There are only three million of us. And we're spread across a landmass equal to that of Earth. So we're spread pretty thin. We've only got a few major settlements. The largest still has less than a hundred thousand folks. So we run our courts with a lot less formality than you might be used to back home. That doesn't mean we take our lawyering any less seriously. It just means that we don't bother with wigs and robes and funny hats. They make us look silly and we start giggling–and that's a little disconcerting when we're sentencing someone to the nearest airlock because he refused to pay his air tax. And yes, I'm not joking.
"So we're just going to cut through a lot of the crap that you guys love so much and see if we can sort things out without using up too much oxygen. Those of you who are representing clients with money, this probably doesn't worry you–but take my word for it, it doesn't matter how much money your clients have back on Earth or on the Line. It can't buy more oxygen if there isn't any left. We want you to represent your client's claims fairly, we want to hear the facts. We do notwant a lot of extraneous noise. Nothing pisses off this court more than a low signal‑to‑noise ratio. I assume I'm making myself perfectly clear? Thank you."
He paused to note something on the pad in front of him, then said, "So, let's get to it. This hearing is projected to cost the Lunar Authority fifty thousand water‑dollars. Therefore, the court chooses to exercise local privilege and will assess a nonrefundable processing fee of five thousand liters of water or ten thousand liters of nitrogen on all claimants in this matter to cover the judicial expenses. Anyone choosing to withdraw his or her claim, please see the court clerk now–"
Several people I didn't recognize bounced up out of their seats and over to the clerk at the side of the room. I was sitting in a wheelchair with a mask on my face, concentrating on one breath at a time. I'd been wheeled in at the last minute and I hadn't really gotten a good look at anything; besides, my vision was still too blurry to make out details. And strapped in as I was, I couldn't even turn around to see how many people were in the room or who else was here. Next to me, the shape that looked like Douglas was grim. The shape that looked like Bobby was sitting quietly on his lap. I didn't see anything shaped like a monkey.