Author: David Bock; Amie Gibbons; Laura Montgomery; Tuvela Thomas; Rodney L. Smith; John D. Martin; Matthew C. Lucas; Ted Begley; Peter Delcroft; Clair Kiernan
Date: 2023-08-23 07:00:00+00:00
Description: Sometimes, things go wrong. Sometimes, they go very, very wrong. And then you're explaining to the judge where the contraband came from, why the goat is covered in peanut butter, and why the courtroom suddenly smells like a freshly fertilized field. Your Honor, I Can Explain is a collection of 10 stories about when things went wrong. Really, really wrong. With the added bonus of a specific character in each story. The authors were required to include Andrew Spurgle, in any capacity they cared to, and make him gloriously incompetent. Some of the stories are funny, some of them are scary, all of

Your Honor, I Can Explain

Edited by Kortnee Bryant

Raconteur Press

Andrew Spurgle, and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Copyright © 2023 by David Bock

The Case of the Peanut Butter Covered Goat

Copyright © 2023 by Ted Begley

Specialist Spurgle and the Peacetime Army

Copyright © 2023 by Rodney L. Smith

Directionally Challenged

Copyright © 2023 by Tuvela Thomas

Casino of Chaos

Copyright © 2023 by Amie Gibbons

The Ass of Stratford

Copyright © 2023 by Matthew C. Lucas

Steve, Chuck and the Man from F.A.M.E

Copyright © 2023 by John D. Martin

See, It Was Like This…

Copyright © 2023 by Clair Kiernan

Took Their Wages

Copyright © 2023 by Laura Montgomery

Accidental Acquisition

Copyright © 2023 by Peter Delcroft

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Cover art and Design by Cedar Sanderson

Contents

Introduction

1. Andrew Spurgle, and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

1. David Bock

2. The Case of the Peanut Butter Covered Goat

2. Ted Begley

3. Specialist Spurgle and the Peacetime Army

3. Rodney L. Smith

4. Directionally Challenged

4. Tuvela Thomas

5. Casino of Chaos

5. Amie Gibbons

6. The Ass of Stratford

6. Matthew C. Lucas

7. Steve, Chuck, and the Man from F.A.M.E.

7. John D. Martin

8. See, It Was Like This…

8. Clair W. Kiernan

9. Took Their Wages

9. Laura Montgomery

10. Accidental Acquisition

10. Peter Delcroft

Also From Raconteur Press

Call To Action

Introduction

Ah, Andrew J. Spurgle.

Most of us know Mr. Spurgle, although probably not by that name. He is The Dunning-Krugerrand – that shining nugget whose staggering arrogance is matched only by the depths of his incompetence. You know – That Guy.

We were looking for anthology ideas, and had decided that courtroom-type stories were somewhat lacking in short-story representation over the last several years – for good reason. They are kind of hard to write.

I figured “what the hell” and put out a call for stories, but figured I’d broaden the field somewhat by making the scene be any sort of trial-type situation – court martial, arbitration, any scenario where the background was pleading a case before an authority figure.

This, however, wasn’t really good enough. Raconteur Press has become known for a certain … whimsy. Being just a little bit off-the-wall. Courtrooms are not known for their whimsy.

So, I added a caveat: any story submitted must have Andrew Spurgle in it; and Andrew must be incompetent and arrogant. No, worse than that. He could be the main character, a supporting character, a minor mention, or even just a two-sentence walk-on; but Andrew Spurgle had to be mentioned. And the whole of him had to be a creation of the individual author’s warped little mind.

Incompetence is funny, and arrogance is easy to laugh at, so I figured this person would go a long distance towards adding some whimsy to the stories.

I just didn’t … realize.

The merry band of storytellers who hang around Raconteur Press took this character and ran with him. Oh, my lord, did they run with him. To the point that Andrew J. Spurgle doesn’t just show up in Raconteur Press stories, but is showing up in stories written by people who haven’t a clue who Raconteur Press is.

Writer Dojo, the podcast on writing by Larry Correia and Steve Diamond, used Andrew Spurgle as a character in the mid-podcast “commercial” for the April Fool’s episode in 2023. And it was hilarious.

We had decided that we would do a three-volume run of The Spurgle Chronicles, the first one based around court-type stories (Your Honor, I Can Explain …); the second based around explaining an event to a supervisor (You See, What Happened Was …); and the third to simply based based around a hotel/motel type setting (He Was Dead When I Got Here …), but, well, our authors decided to be themselves, and we got a lot more stories than we were counting on.

So. This book you are holding in your hot little hands is the first volume of the Court section of The Spurgle Chronicles. There will be at least one more volume of Spurgle’s tribulations in court, and I’m guessing the same will hold true for the next two sections of his chronicles.

Getting too many good stories is a good problem for a publisher to have.

I hope that you enjoy this anthology as much as I did while picking out stories; and I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of the saga as we put them out.

Thank you!

LawDog,Tiny Town, Texas 2023

Andrew Spurgle, and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

David Bock

Andrew Spurgle was feeling content and optimistic as he drove his brand-new, metallic blue Mercedes convertible down the country lane. The top was down, the wind was ruffling his freshly cut hair, and the cream-colored leather upholstery was soft against his back though his light grey, linen-blend suit jacket. The pleasant smell of hay, and the less pleasant smell of other things, wafted over the car as he cruised along in his bubble of satisfaction.

Things were looking good, for a change. He’d gotten in with a new law firm in a new city and the stories of his earlier incidents hadn’t seemed to follow him here. None of them had been his fault—he was the victim. Persecution, that’s what it was. He’d been set up for failure, but he’d been too green to see the traps they’d laid for him.

This time it would be different. He’d show these country yokels what a big city lawyer could do. Once he made his name here, he’d be able to write his own ticket back on the coast. Heck, either coast, east or west. They’d be clamoring to get him to sign on with them. After a few years of demonstrating his legal brilliance, he’d accept the offer of a partnership. From there on out, it’d be easy living.

“Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits came on the radio, and he smiled at the appropriateness of the song. It was as if the fates were all smiling down on him. Visions of yachts, mansions, parties, important people, and gaggles of scantily-clad women danced though Spurgle’s mind. He’d gotten as far as contemplating running for elected office when his reverie was broken by the large tank truck with its flashers on rolling along in front of him, at a good ten miles below the speed limit. His smile faded slightly as he took his foot off the gas pedal and let the car coast until he was pacing the truck about twenty feet back. Irritatingly, there was enough intermittent traffic coming the other way, that he’d have to bide his time stuck behind the other vehicle before he could pass them.

He couldn’t help but notice it was a rather smelly truck, too. A pungent, earthy smell, like some of the fields full of cows he’d passed earlier on his drive. Spurgle was a city boy, and he wasn’t used to the unpleasant smells country folk didn’t notice and probably even enjoyed. He reached down and turned the fan control up to high, but he was damned if he was going to put the top up on such a beautiful day. After all, what was the point of having a convertible if you couldn’t enjoy the sun on your face and the wind in your hair? He adjusted his Ray-Ban sunglasses and assured himself this was just a minor inconvenience. He’d get around this truck soon enough and continue driving towards his destiny.

At regular intervals, he would ease across the center line to check oncoming traffic. Every time he did, there were one or more vehicles approaching with not enough time for him to get around the truck. He glanced at his Rolex and the GPS screen. He needed to pass this stupid, smelly thing soon, or he was going to be late for his first court appearance with the new judge. Not the way to make a good impression.

In frustration, Spurgle honked his horn at the truck. In response, the driver slowed down. He actually slowed down. If there had been an opening in the oncoming lane, this would have been helpful, but with the continuous stream of cars coming the other way, it just made the situation, and Spurgle’s temper, worse.

What a jerk, Spurgle thought. That stupid country bumpkin thinks he’s so clever, playing his idiotic game by slowing down traffic. He glanced in his rearview mirror. There were only a few cars behind him so far. The other drivers were probably as annoyed and frustrated as he was.

He took his foot off the gas pedal again, allowing the space between his car and the truck to widen by a couple more car lengths. When he got his chance, Spurgle wanted to get a running start so he could blow the doors off the jerk in the truck as he passed. But there still weren’t any gaps large enough in the series of oncoming cars. Or if there were, he wasn’t in a passing zone. Though he might take his chances with passing in a double yellow zone, if he couldn’t get around this rolling roadblock soon.

Finally, he thought he had his chance. Spurgle pulled into the left lane and floored the accelerator. The finely tuned German engine roared, but just as he started to pick up speed, a car nosed out of a hidden drive and into the lane. He let up on the gas and jerked the steering wheel to get back behind the truck, which now seemed to be going even slower than it had been before his abortive attempt to pass.

Next time, Spurgle promised himself, next time for sure.

It was a near eternal five minutes before Spurgle got another chance. This was it, double yellow lines be damned. Once again he pushed the gas pedal all the way down as he got into the left lane. He was pulling level with the tank when another car came around the upcoming blind curve. With a brief moment of calculation, Spurgle knew he didn’t have enough room to get ahead of the truck in the time available. Cursing loudly, he mashed the brake and jerked the steering wheel to the right, to get back behind his nemesis.

Unfortunately, this time he cut things too close. With a horrible screech, the front of his car and the truck’s rear bumper scraped gratingly. One of his headlights shattered as it clipped off a boxy protuberance from the rear of the tank. The truck driver hit his brakes, and both vehicles came to a shuddering halt.

There was a moment of stillness after the noise of the impact, then with a sickening gurgle, a torrent of foul-smelling brown liquid came gushing out of the broken valve. It flowed across the hood of his car, splashed up the windshield, and spattered all over the interior of the car, including the occupant.

He howled with disgust and rage, but the pungent liquid kept coming. Panicked, Spurgle frantically threw the car into reverse to get away from the flood. With a screech of metal, the car lurched backwards, leaving its bumper hanging from the truck’s rear end.

The driver of the truck got out of the cab and slowly walked back to inspect the damage. After a moment, he threw a lever, and the flow of manure slowed to a trickle and stopped. He turned his attention to Spurgle and his brand-new metallic blue Mercedes convertible, which was now coated with manure. His face twitched a few times, but he managed to keep himself under control.

“Y’all okay back there?”

Spurgle stared at him, speechless for once in his life, as he felt the smelly brown sludge seep through his best suit. Then he erupted from the car with a squelch and stomped over to the driver, who watched him cautiously. His only response was a raised eyebrow and another twitch of his mouth.

“Am I okay? Am I okay? Do I look okay, you moronic hayseed?”

“I meant are you hurt. Seemed like you hit me pretty hard.”

“Me hit you? If you hadn’t slowed down, I wouldn’t have hit you. You caused this mess.“ Spurgle looked down at what was once a very nice light grey, linen-blend suit. He doubted it would ever be truly clean again. He’d probably have to throw it away.

“Nope.”

“Nope. That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Yep.”

Spurgle could feel his tenuous grasp on his self-control slipping.

“Do you know who I am? What I do for a living?”

“Nope.”

“I’m Andrew Spurgle and I’m an attorney, one of the best in the country. And I’m going to sue you for everything you’ve got. Not that you likely have much.”

The driver went still. Finally, Spurgle thought, he’s realizing the seriousness of his situation.

“I think my dash camera will tell a different story.” His mouth spread in a tight smile that never touched his eyes.

Spurgle felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Everything had been going so well. How could this be happening to him again? What had he done to deserve this?

“I doubt you have one.” Spurgles chin jutted forward aggressively. “In fact, I doubt your…truck, for lack of a better term, is even up to code.”

“Maybe we should exchange information and let the insurance companies work it out. Unless you’d like me to call the county sheriff, and have one of the deputies come out and take our statements?” One corner of the driver’s mouth curled up when he finished speaking.

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Make me waste half a day answering inane questions when I’m supposed to be in court. Well, you can go to hell.” Spurgle turned to walk back to his car. Seeing the damage and filth rekindled both his anger and dismay.

Behind him, he heard the driver doing something. There was a pause, and as he turned back around, he heard, “Hey Al, it’s Xander. I’ve got a little situation going on down here near the Taylor farm.” There was a pause. “Nothing too serious, no one hurt, just a bit of a fender bender.” Another pause. “Sure, sure. I can wait, but the other guy seems to be in a bit of a hurry. How soon can you get someone out here?” After another moment, he lowered the phone. The driver locked eyes with Spurgle, his face still showing a slight smile.

“The sheriff says it’ll be at least half an hour before he can get a deputy here to take our statements. He wants to know if we can exchange information, take some pictures, and work it our privately.”

With this, Spurgle started feeling actively unwell. He was already late for his first appearance in front of the new judge. If he waited for the police, who would probably take an hour to get here, he’d be even later. He nodded and numbly found himself pulling out his wallet and other papers, exchanging insurance and driver’s license numbers with the driver of the truck, who pulled out his phone and took pictures of Spurgle’s documents, as well as the damage to both car and truck, and the closest mile marker.

“I wish I could say it was a pleasure meeting you, Mr Spurgle. You drive safe now. Less haste, more speed.”

With that, the driver shook his head and ambled back to his truck. It started with a grumble and a puff of diesel smoke wafted back, briefly covering the smell of manure, and then he pulled away and was gone. Spurgle stood there for a moment, still in shock, until one of the cars he was blocking honked its horn.

Shaken from his reverie, he gingerly got back in his befouled car and pulled out his cell phone to call the courthouse. When he looked at the screen, there were no bars. Not even one.

No service? How could there be no service? I always had excellent service in the city. Yet another thing to hate about these boondocks full of wise-ass farmers and other bumpkins.

He started his car and slowly pulled away, intently searching for a service station. Or even better, a carwash.

Before he found a gas station, Spurgle’s car started making unpleasant noises, and the temperature gauge began creeping up. A dragging or grinding noise had also started intermittently from underneath the front end, coinciding with the steering getting stiffer. He found himself talking to the car, although pleading might have been a better description.

“Come on, baby, just a little further. I know you can do it. Just a little more.”

As the engine temperature reading continued moving inexorably higher, Spurgle tried a trick he’d heard about on a radio show years before. He turned the heat and fan up to their highest settings in order to hopefully help pull some of the heat being generated away from the engine block. This was supposed to increase the time he had before the car shut down from overheating.

Unfortunately, this attempt only lasted a few minutes due to the smell that emanated from the vents. Gagging, and with tears streaming down his face, Spurgle switched the climate controls to their previous settings. The various warning lights on the dashboard display sparkled like rainbows until Spurgle found a clean corner of his show handkerchief with which to wipe his eyes.

He only made it another mile or so down the road before the car came to a halt with an insistent buzzing tone and the temperature warning light flashing insistently. His head sank forward until it rested on the steering wheel. He sat like that for a moment, and then he took a deep breath, which he instantly realized was a mistake, as the smell of manure filled his lungs. Choking, coughing, and sputtering, he got out of the car.

The service station shouldn’t be too much further. He shaded his eyes with one hand, but the country lane stretched around a curve and out of sight. Spurgle considered trying to flag down another car for a ride, but one look at his bovine excrement-spattered suit, formerly his best suit, caused him to reconsider.

He also thought about putting the roof up and locking his car, but several things stopped him. One, the thought of what the summer sun would do to the interior of the enclosed vehicle. While it was unlikely he’d ever be able to get the smell out, that much time baking in the heat would make it certain. Two, he doubted even one of the local inbred hicks would want to steal a car covered in cow poop. And three, he didn’t know how to put the roof up manually. All he’d ever done since he got the car was push a button on the dash.

Shoulders slumped and with a resigned sigh, Spurgle grabbed his briefcase and straw hat out of the back seat and started trudging down the shoulder of the road. At least they had escaped most of the deluge.

As he walked, the land dropped away on one side of the road, displaying a magnificent vista Spurgle was incapable of appreciating. Give him skyscrapers, bridges, and bustling crowds, not fields and trees with no one around for miles. Just an empty waste of otherwise useful land.

He kicked a rock off the shoulder and into the field. About twenty yards away, a greyish brown head with a long muzzle, black button eyes, and large erect ears appeared out of the grass, saw he’d seen it, and dropped down out of sight again. Some farmer’s dog, Spurgle thought. Probably has a name like Kip or Sport.

A few hundred yards later, he paused to take his hat off and mopped his brow with the spare handkerchief he kept in his briefcase. Being covered, it was one of the only things he’d had in the passenger compartment that wasn’t at least spattered with manure. During this pause, he noticed the dog pop its head up out of the grass again. It seemed to be following him, but kept the same distance from the road. He was probably the most interesting thing the dog has seen all day. Heck, probably all week.

Stupid dog, Spurgle thought, followed aloud by, “Go on, scram. Get out of here, you mutt!” He grabbed a rock from the shoulder and flung it in the general direction of where he thought he’d seen the head, but it barely made half the distance before disappearing with a faint thump.

He stood there for a minute, resting and watching for the dog, but it didn’t appear again while he was looking. He checked his phone for the umpteenth time since the accident: still no bars. With one more swipe of the handkerchief over his sweat and manure-streaked face, he continued his dispirited trudge towards the service station.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, but was actually only another hour, Spurgle walked past a set of gas pumps and stepped though the customer door of the small building.

A couple of moments after the bell announced his entrance, a young mechanic steeped through from the back, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.

“Hey there, how can I…” There was a long pause as the station employee, none too clean himself, took in the figure standing before him. Spurgle’s face still had streaks of manure the handkerchief hadn’t been able to remove, and what skin was visible was dripping with sweat. His jacket and shirtfront were fairly well plastered with manure, and there were spatters and globs on his pants. His shoes looked to have escaped the worst of the deluge, but had suffered their own indignities on the walk to the service station.

“My car…” Spurgle broke into a coughing fit from his parched throat. He walked over to the dispenser near the counter and filled a paper cup of water. A moment after he approached, the mechanic took a step back, his nostrils pinched.

After drinking three cups of water in a row, Spurgle continued his initial statement.

“My car broke down a couple miles up the road. I need it towed here and repaired as quickly as possible. I need to get to court.”

“Well, okay, sir. I’ll just need some information from you first.” Picking up a clipboard, the mechanic filled out part of a form, then taking a quick breath and holding it, he took a step forward and handed the clipboard to Spurgle to complete, stepping back as quickly as possible.

“I’m in a hurry. Is all this really necessary?”

“Yes, sir, that’s the law. We can’t do anything to someone’s car without a signed contract.”

“Hmph.”

While Spurgle filled out the needlessly complicated form, the mechanic leaned through the connecting door.

“Hey, Matthew! We’re gonna need a pickup and tow.” He turned back to Spurgle and asked, “Do you remember the nearest mile marker? And what’s the make and color of your car?”

“Why would I notice something like that? How many broken down cars do you think you’ll find in the next few miles up the road? It’s a brand new, metallic blue Mercedes convertible.” Spurgle swallowed heavily. “Or it was.”

He slid the clipboard back across the counter.

“I’ll just need your keys, driver’s license, and a credit card,” he looked over the form, “and your signature here at the bottom, sir.”

“How much it this going to cost me, and how long is it going to take?” Spurgle dug out his wallet and passed over the requested items, then signed the form where indicated.

“Without seeing the car, I can’t rightly say, sir. But don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”

Take advantage of me, more likely, he thought.

“Hmph,” Spurgle repeated.

The mechanic ducked back into the service bay for a minute with the Mercedes fob. When he returned, his nose pinched again as he looked Spurgle up and down once more.

“While you’re waiting, you can try to clean up some in the bathroom. It’s out the front and around the building to the left.” He rummaged under the counter for a moment and produced a small key attached to a two-foot section of broomstick.

“I’ll also need…” The rumble of a large, poorly muffled, engine drowned out Spurgle’s voice as the tow truck started and pulled away. “I’ll also need the use of your phone.”

“Oh, sorry, sir.” The mechanic sounded anything but sorry to Spurgle; he was probably laughing at the city slicker. “Our line’s down till the crews finish repairs from the wind storm last week. Don’t let people rile you up. It wasn’t a tornado, just a wind storm.”

“So, no phone?”

“No, sir.”

With another sigh, Spurgle picked up the key and walked back out into the heat.

He got back just as the tow truck returned with his car. He’d washed all his clothes in the bathroom sink as best he could, which wasn’t much, but still a major improvement. His light grey linen-blend jacket and slacks were still damp and an incredible mass of wrinkles. The shirt was also damp, but not quite as crumpled as the suit, being a permanent press polyester cotton blend. The stains and smell were unlikely to come out of the suit, though the shirt might be salvageable if gotten to a skilled cleaner soon enough.

The mechanic pulled a shop rag from a dispenser and held it out to Spurgle.

“Um, sir.” He gestured at his own ear.

Spurgle took the offer with ill grace and swabbed another chunk of manure out of the shell of his ear before crumpling up the rag and throwing it towards, but not into, the trash. The mechanic went momentarily still, then with a blank expression, he picked up the rag and gingerly deposited it in the receptacle before going back into the repair bay.

He returned a few minutes later with an expression on his face that was equal parts amazement, disgust, and amusement.

“Um, okay, sir. This might take a little bit. We’ve got to hose down your car before we can take a look under the hood. It’s quite a mess.”

He started to ask what had happened, but Spurgle’s glare stopped him short.

“Right. Well, have a seat and we’ll get back to you as soon as we have some news.”

“Just remember, I’m in a hurry. I’m due in court,” he glanced as his watch, “I was due in court forty minutes ago. Don’t make me even later.”

The mechanic stood silent for a moment, his jaw muscle clenching and releasing a few times.

“Like I said, we’ll get back to you as soon as we have some news.”

“Hmph.”

Without his phone and the Internet to distract him, Spurgle was reduced to pacing and flipping through the dated magazines on the table in the waiting area. Having no interest in cars, guns, hunting, or fishing, there was little to entertain him there. Which left pacing.

After the fourth time being asked, “Well, anything?” by his customer, the employee at the service counter retreated into the repair bay. Even the overwhelming odor of sun-baked manure was preferable than dealing with him for another minute.

Eventually, the two mechanics came back out into the main area. The older of the two approached Spurgle, trailed by his younger counterpart.

“Okay, sir, once we got most of the mess washed off, we were able to take a look at the damage to your car.”

“Yes? And? How soon can you have me out of here?”

“Well, it looks like most of the damage is cosmetic. The front bumper is a total loss, as is the right front quarter panel and both headlights. A good body shop might be able to iron out the damage to the hood, but I wouldn’t count on that.”

“Fine, fine. What else?”

The biggest issue is the radiator’s cracked. We don’t have one in stock, but as soon as our phone line’s back up, we can order one for you. The service guys think that’ll be tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime…”

“No, no, no. That’s unacceptable. I needed to be in court hours ago. Do you understand? Hours. You have to get my car running right now.”

“Sir, without a new radiator, that car isn’t going anywhere.”

“Can’t you, I don’t know, patch it or something?”

The two mechanics exchanged glances.

“Well, I mean, it’s possible, sure. But it likely won’t hold for long.”

“I don’t care, as long as it gets me to court.”

The two men had another non-verbal conversation.

“We can try, sir, but I ain’t promising nothing. It may hold when we fill it up here, but there’s no guarantee it won’t bust loose and dump out five miles down the road.”

“I. Don’t. Care.” Spurgle enunciated insultingly slowly, “I need to get to court.”

Both men stared at their obnoxious, and noxious, customer for a moment.

“Fine,” the older one finally said through a tight jaw. He then turned and walked through to the garage. The younger mechanic looked back and forth between the two men, then followed his elder. A few moments later, the sound of unintelligible yelling erupted from the service bay, punctuated by the banging and rattling of equipment.

Spurgle sighed. Why am I always surrounded by incompetents?

After pacing the waiting area an unknown number of times and flipping through all the magazines again, Spurgle was on the verge of walking around the counter and through to the service bay. He’d forced himself to stop looking at the time early on in his interminable wait.

The younger mechanic reappeared before Spurgle could work himself up to bearding the service personnel in their den.

“Well, sir. We got her patched up as best we could. Take it easy and don’t push her too hard. Let the temperature come up slow and keep a close eye on that gauge. If it starts climbin’, pull over and let her rest.”

“So you’re done? I can get out of here now?”

“Just as soon as you pay for the service, Matthew’ll pull your car around.”

“Fine.”

The mechanic handed over the clipboard with the updated service form for Spurgle to review.

“What? This is outrageous! What are all these charges?”

“Well, sir. The first part’s for the tow. Then there’s a charge for hosin’ off your car, plus the hazmat fee for cleanin’ out the service bay. The last part’s for time and materials in patchin’ the radiator. They weren’t made to be fixed, you know, just replaced. That took some finaglin’, let me tell you. And that brings us to the total right there.”

“Outrageous! You’ve admitted you didn’t fix my car! I’ll pay for the tow and the car wash, but I’ll be damned if I pay any hazmat fee, much less for a shoddy patch job!”

The mechanic stared at Spurgle for a few moments, his jaw working like he was chewing or about to spit. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Finally, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath he explained in a flat, calm voice, “That’s your choice, sir, but you agreed to pay when you signed the service agreement. If you refuse to pay, we keep your car until we can get on the schedule for small claims court. That might take a week. And Judge Williams don’t take kindly to folks trying to get out of contracts.”

Spurgle blanched at this. Judge Williams was who he was supposed to have been in front of at the start of this accursed day.

“Fine.” Spurgle threw his credit card on the counter.

After inserting the card into the electronic reader by force of habit, the mechanic seemed to remember their phone line was down. He reached under the counter, and after a moment, pulled out an old-fashioned imprinter and some carbonless forms. With a loud “clack, clack,” he ran the credit card through the old-fashioned way and had Spurgle sign.

He carefully tore off the customer copy, and handed it back to Spurgle along with his credit card.

“There you go, sir, Matthew’ll have your car pulled around front in a moment. Thank you for your business.” With that, he walked through the doorway into the service area.

Spurgle stood in front of the counter, seething silently.

A few moments later, as promised, Matthew pulled up in front of the station. While still missing the bumper and both front headlights, most of the effluvia from the accident had been washed off the car. They’d even cleaned up the inside as best they could, though even from a few feet away, the smell was noticeable.

Matthew got out of the car and walked over to Spurgle, holding out the fob.

“Here you go. Best as we could do, considering the circumstances. I tossed a blanket over the driver’s seat. You can keep it.”

Spurgle took the fob without a word and headed for his formerly beautiful but now sadly mutilated car. Behind him, Matthew called out.

“Don’t forget what we told you. Take it easy and don’t push her. If you do, that patch on the radiator is likely to blow out and leave you stranded again. Good luck.”

Stupid yokels laughing at him. Well, he’d have the last laugh. If the radiator patch “blew out,” he’d sue them for poor workmanship. That would show them.

Pulling a garment bag out of the trunk, Spurgle picked up the restroom key again and headed back to the restroom one more time. When he came out, he was wearing his second best suit. Opening the station door, he tossed the key onto the counter and left without another word.

He sprayed gravel as he pulled out of the apron and headed towards the courthouse, hopelessly late, but determined.

Judge Williams looked up from his conversation with the defense attorney and leaned back, his dark brown leather chair creaking, as Andrew Spurgle opened the doors and walked into the courtroom.

“Mr. Spurgle, so nice of you to finally join us. We were wondering if you…what is that smell?” The judge’s tone shifted from wryly amused to startled halfway through his sentence.

“Your Honor, I can explain.”

The judge struggled to maintain an appropriately professional expression as he picked up a folder from his desk and started waving it in front of his face. Other than the stenographer, who was more or less trapped in his seat, the other members of the court stepped back as Spurgle approached the judge.

“Hmm, I think we can save that for a later time, Mr. Spurgle.” Judge Williams sounded like he was trying to stifle a cough or refrain from breathing.

“Court is adjourned for dinner, come back in two hours,” he said in a louder, more authoritarian tone, officially banging his gavel. “Could someone please open a window?” he continued conversationally.

“Your Honor…” Spurgle attempted again.

“You may go, Mr. Spurgle, I’ll see you back here in two hours. You might want to stop by the state trooper barracks next door. I believe they have showers.”

Spurgle’s mouth opened and closed a few times, then his shoulders slumped in defeat. He turned and walked dejectedly out of the courtroom, revealing the small clump of manure still stuck to the back of his head, and the scattering of dark brown droplets on the back of his second-best suit.

It was happening to him again.

The End

The Case of the Peanut Butter Covered Goat

Ted Begley

“All rise, the District Court in and for the City of Midvale is now in session. The Honorable Joseph A. Flynn presiding.” The bailiff, once she had announced the judge, stepped to the right. Judge Flynn entered the courtroom, nodded to the bailiff, and took his place behind the bench. As usual, there was a small stack of files on his desk. He opened the first one just as a loud bleating sound disrupted the courtroom. The judge took off his glasses to look over the files, as he did not need them for reading, but he returned the heavy horn-rimmed glasses to his face to scan the room. There, in the center of the aisle, between the opposing counsel’s desks, was a cage containing what appeared to be a goat covered in a viscous layer of peanut butter.

The judge waved the bailiff over to the bench. As she approached, the bailiff said, “There’s a fresh roll in the pencil drawer.” The judge nodded, opened the drawer, and withdrew a roll of antacid tablets.

“Thank you, Gertrude,” the judge said while unwrapping the first tablet. The judge then turned to the court clerk. “Please announce the first case, Mason.”

The court clerk stood and said, “The People versus Pete Winslow, Your Honor. Grand Theft.”

At this point, the defense counsel, Amanda Rogers, stood up. “If it pleases the court…” That is as far as she got before the judge held up his hand.

“I’m sure that you have something poignant to say about this matter, but…” the judge said, pausing momentarily to look down at the goat, “I think I would much rather hear this story in order, from beginning to end. I promise to give all of your concerns a fair hearing. So let’s start with the case filing.” He turned back to the clerk. “Mason, please read the details of the charge.”

The clerk looked down at his copy of the files and said, “The defendant is accused of having stolen the team mascot from the Springfield College campus sometime between the hours of two am and four am last Friday, after the Springfield/Midvale game.”

Judge Flynn interrupted. “How did we do?”

The clerk replied with a downcast expression. “Springfield won, thirty-seven to four, Your Honor.”

The judge sighed. “Not even close. Continue, Mason.” The clerk did so.

“The Midvale Police Department received an anonymous tip that someone driving a beat-up blue Toyota with a partial plate number of BR5 was seen driving away from the animal husbandry pens at Springfield College, where the school’s mascot was kept. Chief Simon obtained a list of four local cars which matched that description, and after eliminating Pastor Evans, Deputy Green, and Principal Peters, the Chief was left with Mr. Winslow’s car, whereupon he noticed the sweater belonging to the Springfield mascot on the back seat. Chief Simon then took Mr. Winslow into custody, and after he was questioned, he was sent home with a court appearance date.”

The judge looked over to Chief Simon, who was sitting in the front row of the gallery. “Still haven’t gotten that cell door fixed yet, Clarence?”

The chief grimaced and replied, “No, Your Honor, it’s not in the budget. Pete’s mother came and got him. She promised that Pete would be here on time.”

The judge nodded and said, “Good enough.”

Judge Flynn took off his glasses and continued reading the case file silently. A few moments later, he put down the papers and put his glasses back on. The goat bleated again.

“Mandy, that goat appears to be covered in peanut butter,” the judge stated to the defense attorney.

“It is indeed,” Amanda replied, “but it’s not my client’s fault, Your Honor. If I could just have a few moments of the court’s indulgence, I strongly believe I can clear up the whole matter.”

“I’m sure you can, Mandy, but this is just a preliminary hearing and I really do want to hear this in order,” the judge reminded her, once again looking at the goat. The judge then turned his attention to the prosecuting attorney and asked, “Is that okay with you, too, Dan?”

Dan nodded and replied, “Yes, Your Honor. We only have one other piece of business today,” he said, turning briefly to glance at four rather glum-looking teenagers in the row behind him, who were trying very hard to sit still and appear angelic. The prosecutor faced front again. “It might be beneficial to everyone to hear the whole thing out.”

Amanda looked across the aisle at her opposite number and nodded in agreement.

The judge looked down from the bench at Pete Winslow, who sat quietly next to Amanda. “Pete, you’ve been advised of your rights, so you don’t have to answer, but did you steal the goat?”

Pete stood, shook his head vigorously, and replied, “No sir, Your Honor.”

The judge motioned for Pete to sit back down, and with relief that his part was done for now, he did so.

Judge Flynn looked at both attorneys in turn. “Which one of you got your hands on the goat, then?” Amanda raised her hand and said, “I did, Your Honor.”

The judge contemplated this for a moment, then asked, “Where did you get it, then, if Pete didn’t take it?”

Amanda looked down at her desk for a few moments before finally meeting Judge Flynn’s eyes and admitting the truth. “Andrew Spurgle recovered the goat for us…sort of.”

The judge sat bolt upright and glared piercingly at Amanda. “You dragged Andrew into this?”

Amanda shrugged and said to the judge, “Well, sir, Andrew’s participation wasn’t entirely my idea. Pete’s mother is the one who got Andrew involved…accidentally.”

The judge looked at her and said, “If it were anyone but Andrew, I would question the ‘accidentally’ part, but ‘accidentally’ is Andrew’s modus operandi. Proceed, Counselor.”

Amanda straightened her navy jacket with a brief tug before continuing. “Pete’s mother was speaking to Andrew’s mother, Mildred, after church on Sunday, and she explained that Chief Simon had come to their house and taken Pete in for questioning about Springfield College’s missing goat, which she pointedly informed Mildred that Pete had nothing to do with. That was when Mildred insisted Andrew could help them clear Pete’s name, because—and I quote—‘he’s an investigative reporter.’ So then…”

But the judge interrupted again and asked, “Since when is Andrew an investigative journalist?”

Amanda sighed and replied, “Well, he does have that weekly podcast, and he’s also sold a couple of stories to the Midvale Gazette.”

Judge Flynn grimaced and ran his hand through his dark hair. “A story about whether or not Preston Miller is selling raspberries or blackberries at the local Farmer’s Market does not a reporter make, but please, do continue.”

Amanda glanced over at Pete and gave him a reassuring smile, then returned her attention to the judge. “Mildred then proceeded to fill Andrew in on the situation, and Andrew promptly called me to say that it couldn’t possibly have been Pete who stole the goat, because Pete works at the drive-in every weekend and doesn’t get off work until three am. There wasn’t nearly enough time for Pete to drive all the way to Springfield in order to steal the goat before four am, when he—the goat, that is—was discovered to be missing.”

The goat threw in a loud bleat at this exact moment, as if punctuating the point, then laid down and valiantly tried to lick the sticky peanut butter off his hindquarters.

Amanda watched the goat’s escapades for a moment before she continued. “Andrew then stated he would locate the goat by the end of the day and hung up. I will admit that I didn’t think he would succeed, but in a way, he did.”

The judge leaned back and repeated, “‘In a way’? How does someone succeed ‘in a way’?” he asked incredulously.

Amanda shook her head and told the courtroom, “Andrew said he had links to all of the publicly available webcams and intersection traffic cameras in the area on his computer. He was able to run the footage of the cameras closest to Springfield College. During that specific period, there was only one vehicle that passed through the area which was capable of hauling a goat unnoticed. It was white panel van from the Springfield College motor pool. It had been checked out to four sophomores, who were supposed to be using it to haul band equipment back to the school.”

At this point, the judge interrupted again and said, “Four teenagers in a panel van? If there’s a Great Dane anywhere in this story, I’m going to find someone in contempt. Go ahead, continue.”

Amanda took a breath and continued. “Andrew used the video he collected to follow the van to its most likely destination…old man Jenkins’s Artisanal Peanut Butter factory. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, Judge? It’s the big brick-red warehouse out on Route Four. Andrew surmised that the real thieves might have stashed the goat there since the factory is currently closed for deep cleaning after the health department shut it down last week.”

Judge Flynn took his glasses off and buried his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked up again, he addressed the bailiff. “Gertrude, please send someone to my chambers for the prescription antacid.” The bailiff nodded assent and stepped out of the courtroom long enough to see to the judge’s wishes.

“Let me guess,” the judge said. “Andrew did not share this information with either you or the Chief.”

Amanda locked eyes with Chief Simon for a moment, then said, “That is correct, Your Honor. Andrew took it upon himself to gather the evidence personally. With that in mind, he took his mother’s minivan, two twenty-four-foot aluminum extension ladders from his uncle’s work truck, and a hundred yards of rappelling line that he borrowed from Scout Troop Fourteen. Thus equipped, he made his way over to the peanut butter factory just after one o’clock this morning.”

Judge Flynn leaned back in his chair and said, “That boy never could get his merit badge for tying knots, and I should know. I was his Scoutmaster for five years. Yet he’s run off with enough rope to scale Mount Everest. Please enlighten the court as to the details of Mr. Spurgle’s daring feat.”

“When Andrew arrived at the peanut butter factory, he saw a white van parked behind the dumpster. Not wanting to alert the would-be goat thieves to his presence, if they were indeed the goat thieves, as he surmised, Andrew decided to enter the factory at a place other than the front or back door. As Andrew made his approach to the building, he noticed there were skylights on the south-facing side of the roof. He used one of the ladders to get onto the roof, then pulled the other ladder up with the rope,” Amanda said, building up the picture of the chain of events.

“From what we could see on the security camera footage that Mr. Jenkins shared with us, Andrew then opened the skylight and laid the ladder across it. Using the ladder as an anchor, he tied off the rope and started to rappel down into the factory. That’s when the knot slipped loose, and he began to fall.”

Amanda paused dramatically. “Fortunately for him, Andrew had brought so much rope that the bundle got caught between the rungs of the ladder, which stopped his untimely descent. It was then that Andrew apparently saw what he must have thought was a hoist chain. However, as bad luck would have it, it was actually the cable with the conveyor belt switch. Andrew made a grab for it and managed to start up the packaging line. Since there were no jars loaded on the line, the peanut butter started flowing everywhere, both on and around the conveyor belt.”

Judge Flynn nodded, picturing the mess that must have ensued. “That explains the peanut butter. Where does the goat come into all of this?”

The district attorney spoke up at this point. Dan stated, “This is, perhaps, where I can shed some light on the events…with the opposing counsel’s permission, of course.” The district attorney looked over at the defense attorney, who nodded her agreement.

Dan stood and continued the tale. “We now have evidence in our possession that four sophomores from Springfield College actually took the goat from its pen. They were attempting to get young Mr. Winslow here in just enough trouble to keep him from competing in next Saturday’s Collegiate Academic Quiz Tournament. It is an undeniable fact that Springfield consistently beats Midvale at athletic competitions, but they have failed to beat Midvale in an academic challenge for the past twenty-four years, well before any of these youngsters were born. In their overexuberance to change their school’s losing record in this one area, they failed to take into account that the monetary value of this goat would constitute a felony charge—a charge that could get Mr. Winslow into serious trouble. A charge that would be thoroughly investigated. That’s where Chief Simon came in.”

The District Attorney looked over at the Chief and continued. “The Chief suspected that something was amiss from the phone call he received. The caller ID was from the peanut butter factory and not from a cellphone or landline in Springfield. Chief Simon was also concerned that the call was made to the Midvale Police Department and not the Springfield Police Department. But the chief did his due diligence and ran the plate number and decided it would be best to just go over to Pete’s house to ask him directly about the phone call. When he did so, he glanced into Pete’s car as he walked past it in the driveway, and as previously stated, he noticed the goat’s sweater on the backseat. The Chief brought Pete to the station and questioned him in detail about the whereabouts of the goat and how he came into possession of the mascot’s sweater. Pete denied knowing anything about the situation. Pete also told the Chief that he couldn’t have driven to Springfield, because his car’s distributor is broken. Mr. Clancy at the auto parts store confirmed that Pete had ordered a new one.”

The judge interrupted. “Why was Pete arrested if the investigation showed that it was unlikely he was actually involved?”

Chief Simon stood up and cleared his throat.

“Do you want to add something here, Clarence?” the judge asked.

“Yes, Your Honor. We didn’t technically arrest Pete. We just let word get out that he had been arrested so that the real culprits would believe their plans had succeeded. What I did was get Judge Green over in Springfield to issue a ‘John Doe’ warrant for the theft, since it occurred in his jurisdiction. Even though we have Pete standing in for the defendant right now, he has yet to be officially charged with a crime, and I would like to keep it that way, in light of his probable innocence.”

“I see,” said Judge Flynn, slowly drumming his fingers on his desk. “I assume, at this point, that you feel certain you have the real culprits in custody?” Judge Flynn glanced at the four anxious-looking students, two men and two women, behind the district attorney. It was then that he noticed the youths were dressed in various colors of hospital scrubs, the very kind that Chief Simon kept spares of in his cruiser, to give to people who were in dire need of a change of clothes.

“Yes, Your Honor. In point of fact, we have a full confession,” Chief Simon said. “After Andrew started the conveyor belt at the peanut butter factory, the persons responsible for the goat’s disappearance heard the noise and attempted to assist Andrew in getting down from his precarious situation. However, during their attempt to lower Andrew to the floor, someone stepped on the release button for the nozzle that squirts peanut butter into the jars. The nozzle flipped up and over, spraying anything and everything in its path. This included the four culprits, Andrew, and the goat.”

Judge Flynn put his head in his hands. After a moment, he looked up at the courtroom. The unhappy goat bleated again. It had finally stopped trying to get the copious peanut butter off and was standing in its cage with its head hung low. It appeared thirsty.

“Gertrude, can we get this poor goat a bowl of water?” Judge Flynn asked. The bailiff nodded and went to see what she could find.

Judge Flynn looked back at the district attorney and asked, “So what actual crime has occurred, and who is being charged?”

The district attorney said, “In our jurisdiction, the only crime that has been committed was a fake phone call to the police. Since no one signed an affidavit against Pete, there isn’t even a false police report. I have taken the liberty of speaking with Dean Bingham over at Springfield College. The four students in question,” he said, briefly glancing over his shoulder, “have been put on academic probation for the remainder of the semester. The dean has also said that he would add to that any addition punishment that you deem necessary, Your Honor. It is the opinion of the DA’s office that we would like to forego charges against the individuals in question, as it seems unnecessary, given the punishment that they will receive at school.”

Judge Flynn considered this for a few moments, then stated, “In that case, I would recommend to Dean Bingham that in addition to the probation, the students in question should also perform an unspecified term of public service. Specifically, they will assist in the clean-up of the peanut butter at Jenkins’s Artisanal Peanut Butter factory, no matter how long it takes them.” The four students looked simultaneously relieved and chagrined. “They can start by taking that poor goat outside and cleaning him off.”

Judge Flynn looked over at the bailiff, who was barely hiding a smile. “Gertrude, can you please acquire a bucket of hot, soapy water and some towels and sponges to facilitate these young people with the immediate clean-up of this long-suffering goat?” Gertrude grinned, and motioned to the students to follow her. They rose from their spot on the bench and made their way up front to the goat. Each lifted a corner of the cage to remove the innocent goat from the courtroom.

As the students were carefully carrying the cage through the doorway, one of them muttered, “I told you this was a bad idea from the very beginning.”

The other three replied in unison, “Shut up!”

As the door was closing behind them, Gertrude was heard to advise, “Don’t let them get your goat, kid.”

The courtroom turned their attention back to Judge Flynn. “Mr. Winslow, you are free to go.” Judge Flynn said to the youth, “Go home and hit the books. Hit them hard. You have a tournament this Saturday. We are all counting on you to bring in Midvale’s twenty-fifth consecutive win. God knows it’s the only thing we beat Springfield College at these days. Court is in recess until the afternoon session.”

The two attorneys and Chief Simon rose and were preparing to leave when Judge Flynn cleared his throat loudly to catch their attention. “You three and Mason here will join me in my chambers. We have a few more things to discuss.”

The five made their way across the hall to Judge Flynn’s chambers. Once there, the judge promptly removed his robe and hung it on a coat rack behind his antique mahogany desk. The two attorneys took the chairs in front of the desk, while the chief made himself comfortable on a sofa to the side of the room. Mason, the court clerk, took up a position behind the judge, leaning against the credenza with his arms crossed. The judge sat down in his overstuffed desk chair and surveyed the room. After leaning back, he asked them, “So which one of you cooked up this dog and pony show?”

Everyone looked sheepishly at each other, and then the chief finally spoke up. “I started the ball rolling on this one, Joe.” Chief Simon glanced around the room and got nods from everyone before he continued. “We knew that someone was trying to railroad Pete just before the tournament, but everything and everyone was outside of our jurisdiction. What we needed was someone who wasn’t part of the legal system, someone who could do what we were legally unable to do.”

“What you needed was a patsy,” interrupted the judge. “If there was ever a person born to play the part, it’s Andrew Spurgle, that’s for certain.” The judge paused briefly, then said, “Go on, Clarence.”

The chief leaned forward on the couch, resting his forearms on his thighs. “After church on Sunday morning, I put a bug in Mildred Spurgle’s ear about the trouble on Friday. It was easy enough to let her take it from there. After speaking with Pete’s mother, she went straight home and woke Andrew up. He’s been working nights at the dairy, but despite being woken from a sound sleep, he was on the case immediately. Andrew called me at home and asked for advice on how he could best track down who else might be a suspect. I told Andrew that the best way would be to look at the traffic camera footage. I emailed links to some videos that I wanted Andrew to pay close attention to, while allowing him to think that it was open access to the traffic cam system, and he did the rest himself.”

“You mean he was quick to jump to the conclusions that your cherry-picked videos were intended to create,” the judge summarized.

The chief shrugged and continued. “I had unleashed Andrew on the world, so to speak. May God have mercy on us all. After Andrew did his research, that’s when he called Amanda.”

The judge turned his attention to Amanda and said, “Okay, so what’s your part in this?”

Amanda cleared her throat. “Well, Pete’s mother contacted me on Saturday morning to find out what was going on or what could be done. After I got off the phone with her, I called the chief and he told me he was fairly certain Pete didn’t have anything to do with kidnapping the goat, and he suspected it was more likely some of the students from Springfield College who were trying to get Pete in just enough trouble to keep him out of next weekend’s tournament. Let’s face it, Pete’s responsible for about three-fourths of the team’s score. Without him, Springfield would probably win. But as we know, the chief couldn’t investigate. However, what he could do was make a call and get us the traffic cam footage from Springfield, which is how the chief tracked the van to the peanut butter factory, which is why the only footage he shared with Andrew contained the van going to the factory. We kept having to spoonfeed Andrew clues because his own leap of logic in the case was absolutely wrong.”

The judge said, “You’re referring to Andrew’s assumption that Pete didn’t have enough time to get to Springfield College after work in order to take the goat before it was noticed to be missing at four am. I noticed that hole as soon as it was mentioned. Pete works at the drive-in on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. But if the goat went missing between two am and four am on Friday morning, that would be after a Thursday night shift, which Pete doesn’t work. Once again, Andrew put two and two together and come up with twenty-two. Continue, Amanda.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied. “This is when I told Dan what was happening and let him know that we thought the students from Springfield College were trying to frame Pete. As DA, he would be handling any prosecution and deciding whether charges would be brought up, anyway. We discussed the matter and decided that the students who took the goat probably just didn’t understand the ramifications of what they were doing. We decided that we needed to make it look as bad as possible for Pete so that they would truly appreciate the severity of what could have happened. At this point, all we could do was wait for Andrew to tell us what he had found. We weren’t expecting him to try to do anything about it. But somewhere along the way, in Andrew’s mind, he went from being an investigative reporter to Knight Errant trying to rescue a goat in distress.”

The judge laughed and said, “All of you know Andrew well enough to appreciate how this could escalate. Does the phrase ‘bull in a china shop’ mean anything to you?”

The chief nodded and replied, “All too true! All too true.”

Amanda continued. “After that, the next contact we had was from Mr. Jenkins, informing me that someone set off the burglar alarm at his factory, and when he got there, he found five people, one goat, and his production line floor covered in about five hundred gallons of peanut butter. Mr. Jenkins was informed by Andrew that I could explain all of it. So bright and early at seven o’clock this morning, I drove over to the factory with the chief to pick up the goat, and thereby clear Pete’s name. When we arrived, Dean Bingham from Springfield College was already there. He had gotten the basic plot of the frame job from Andrew, and the chief and I were able to help clear up any misunderstandings. Dean Bingham told the students that they were on academic suspension for the remainder of the semester and sent them with us to face the consequences here.”

The DA spoke up at this point. “None of us want the kids to get in any legal trouble over this. It’s simply a prank gone wrong. I think they’ve learned their lesson.”

“The only fly in the ointment,” Chief Simon said, “is the peanut butter mess that Andrew caused at the factory. And while Andrew may have made it, we are ultimately responsible, because we are the ones who aimed him that way. As anybody knows, you can’t really aim a loose cannon.”

“How do you plan on making restitution to Jenkins?” the Judge asked.

The chief said, “I’ve already made arrangements. Both the Midvale and Springfield fire departments are due for hazardous material recertification. We are going over there tomorrow and will treat the peanut butter spill as if it were a hazardous material spill. We should have the factory floor cleaned and have both departments recertified by the end of the day. After all, four college students and two fire departments should be able to do it within a day, right? Fortunately, none of the equipment was damaged, and Mr. Jenkins was going to have to dump that particular batch of peanut butter, anyway, for the health department cleaning. If anything, he’s coming out ahead, since he isn’t going to have to pay for it now.”

The judge said, “Leave it to you, Clarence, to come up with a way to kill two birds with one stone. Or I suppose in this case, three birds. Clearing Pete, catching the real culprits, and getting both fire departments recertified. Well, I suppose that wraps everything up quite neatly. Although, Mason,” the judge added, swiveling in his chair to face his court clerk, “in the future, if I have a criminal case that isn’t really a criminal case, the least you could do is put a post-it note in the file.”

Mason just smiled benignly and said, “Now where would be the fun in that?”

The judge turned towards Dan, and asked, “You managed to get security footage from the outside of the factory, but was there any footage from the inside?”

Dan smiled broadly and said, “Oh my, yes. Everything that happened was caught on the security cameras. I’m planning to edit it together with an appropriate background soundtrack as a present for you, Your Honor.”

The judge nodded. “I’m interested in seeing the final product,” he stated. “Well, I think we should call it lunch. Be back here for the next case at one o’clock.” He then looked back at the district attorney. “By the way, Dan, I expect you and your wife to come over for dinner tonight.”

Amanda sighed, and replied, “Dad, if you want us to come to dinner, just ask me. You don’t always have to run these requests through my husband.”

The judge turned to his only daughter, and said, “Mandy, when I ask you, you just come up with excuses. It’s ‘I’ve got too many cases files to look over,’ or ‘I have to attend a PTA meeting.’ There’s always something, But Dan manages to get you to the house every time. I think he has greater powers of persuasion over you than your Dear Old Dad has. Besides, your mother has made your favorite dessert for dinner tonight: Peanut Butter Pie,” the judge added with an impish grin. “A happy coincidence. But that’s dinner, and I’m ready for lunch, so I’m going to head across the street to the Bluebird Diner. You’re welcome to join me, if you’d like.”

The judge reached for his suit jacket, paused, and turned back to them. “By the way, why wasn’t Andrew here today?”

Suddenly, everyone looked extremely nervous.

Amanda took a deep breath and stated, “He’s at the hospital.”

The judge looked concerned. “He wasn’t injured in the fall, was he?”

In a quiet voice, Amanda replied, “He’s getting outpatient treatment. It turns out he’s allergic to peanuts.”

Specialist Spurgle and the Peacetime Army

Rodney L. Smith

This is the story of Andrew Spurgle, Jr., an unremarkable individual who came into the hollow Army after the end of the Vietnam War. The names, events, and places in this piece have been changed to protect Spurgles everywhere from the ridicule they so richly deserve.

The post-Vietnam Army was an Army beset by personnel, logistical, and training fund shortages. In the spirit of “kick ‘em while they’re down,” President Waggoner even got APEC to embargo our oil, because slicing the operations and training budget while not cutting back on any missions didn’t hurt enough.

Andrew was born in a west Texas town, remarkable for nothing (like Spurgle). The closest thing to interesting about the county seat was the red brick and limestone county courthouse. This replacement for the one destroyed in a fire one Fourth of July wound up looking like a layer cake that had been washed in hot water and dried on high. In the interest of finishing on time and under budget, and to help cover up some creative accounting by Andrew Spurgle, Sr., the drawings scale was changed to facilitate a ten percent savings in labor and material. The rumors that Andrew Junior set the fire by going inside the old courthouse so he could read the directions on how to light his Roman candle were never proven true.

Andrew went to the county schools and, while not a complete moron, was a moron just the same. He played on the county high school football team as the center, with the unique record of throwing the ball over the quarterback’s head in over half of the attempts. Their record was so bad because of Spurgle that the stands were mostly empty on Friday nights in a state where high school football is king. After graduating summa cum nothing at the dead bottom of his class of fifteen students and upon reaching his eighteenth birthday, his locker was opened during routine end-of-year cleanout and a small amount of marijuana was found.

Spurgle was arrested on a possession charge, arraigned, and offered a choice of a year in jail or three in the Army, with the bonus of any record of this charge magically disappearing. Despite his protests that the marijuana wasn’t his, his dad convinced him to take the deal. The judge’s clerk shredded the files before Spurgle left the building and took back her marijuana.

His dad dropped him off at the Army recruiting office in the next county seat over and drove away, his tires squealing as he did so. Sergeant First Class Snodgrass, who should have been a Hollywood star for his ability to lie straight-faced and with utter conviction, needed one more recruit to meet his quota for the month and finish out this tour of duty. He had promised Andrew’s dad that he would get him into the Army.

Andrew took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and scored a whopping thirty-one, the absolute minimum necessary to be admitted into the Army, which was remarkable, considering he spent the test time making random selections and patterns in the test booklet. His scores were so jumbled, though, that the sergeant could only find one Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS, that needed recruits with his particular ability: Ground Surveillance Radar Operator, 17K, which only required the ability to differentiate tones while wearing headphones.

Andrew wasn’t sold on the idea of becoming whatever a 17K was supposed to be until the sergeant started working on him. He seated Spurgle in a comfy chair, got him a soda, and began. “Andrew, 17K is a Military Intelligence MOS. Now, I’m not saying that you’ll be in one, but a lot of MI units have jobs where you get to wear civilian clothes all day. MI is where the Army’s spies and spy hunters reside. Now you may have to work at the uniform-wearing jobs that go out into the field when you’re at the lowest ranks, so you’ll get valuable experience facing off with the Russkies in Europe and the Norks in Asia. However, someone with your abilities will gain rank in no time, and if you want it, a cushy office or field agent job would be yours for the asking. Nothing gets the ladies friskier than telling them, ‘I can’t tell you what I do for a living, or I’d have to kill you.’”

Andrew got stars in his eyes, envisioning himself a double aught spy, driving a hot sports car around Germany, picking up hotties (but not knowing what to do with them). He signed every piece of paper SFC Snodgrass put in front of him without even looking at them first, and after a week of sleeping on a cot in the recruiter’s office latrine and eating at the Comet drive-in, he swore the oath and Private Recruit Spurgle was on his way. No one but SFC Snodgrass was there to see him off at the bus stop. He handed Andrew his ticket, paid the driver ten bucks to see that he didn’t get off the bus until Dallas, and waved as the bus drove away. SFC Snodgrass made monthly mission for the last time and would get a bonus for filling a quota for an MOS no one wanted. He would spend the rest of the week helping his wife pack their household goods and making the long drive to his next duty station.

PV2 Spurgle passed Basic Combat Training at Fort Bending, Georgia and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Wegotcha, Arizona. The other recruits considered it remarkable that he only had to be recycled once at each post.

Andrew wouldn’t be picking up hotties in Germany, because his first assignment was to Fort Hooves, Texas. He was assigned to the Ground Surveillance Radar Platoon, Combat Support Company, 1-55 Infantry Battalion (Mech), First Brigade, Sixteenth Armored Division, where he and a Staff Sergeant Gutierrez became GSR Team Three, nominally equipped with a PPS-4 radar, which looked remarkably like a trash can on a tripod. He and Gutierrez didn’t have much to do, because the battalion used their PPS-4 as a parts store to keep at least two other radars operational.

Spurgle managed to figure out over time that as a ground surveillance radar operator, he would never be James Bond. A GSR was the electronic equivalent of turning on a searchlight on the battlefield. It tended to attract attention and artillery. It made one’s position a bullet magnet. He got suspicious when units around them assigned his team a position way out in front and away from theirs. Fortunately, neither the Russians nor the North Koreans had yet to establish a foothold on Fort Hooves.

Then came an experimental concept to put all divisional intelligence assets under an MI battalion, so the excess could be sent out to other divisions. PV2 Spurgle, with a new PFC fresh out of AIT, and the long-suffering Staff Sergeant Gutierrez became GSR Team Two, Second Platoon, B Company, 278th Military Intelligence Battalion.

Late one Friday afternoon, Spurgle was the only 17K still cleaning equipment in the platoon storage space when the battalion S-4 (logistics officer) needed advice.

“You a 17K?” the S-4 asked Spurgle. “Come with me. I don’t know what any of this stuff is I’m looking at. ”

He took Spurgle to the warehouse, where equipment was being turned in by units no longer authorized to access them. “Pick out twelve radars.”

Spurgle, not knowing better, went with what he was most familiar and chose twelve PPS-4s and none of the newer PPS-5s, for which the S-4 then signed. It took a great deal of S4 effort to unscrew this situation and replace the low-technology, pre-Vietnam hardware with the more advanced PPS-5. The S-4 was convinced the Spurgle did it on purpose and held a grudge. He was determined to get back at Spurgle until Staff Sergeant Gutierrez caught wind and put a stop to it.

Gutierrez said, “That’s what you get for asking a private for advice, sir.”

President Waggoner may have served on nuclear submarines and flew around the world in Air Force One, but he knew virtually nothing about the US Army. His advisers convinced him to visit Fort Hooves to watch a firepower demonstration, where he would be able to see what levels of destruction the forces under his control could rain down upon enemies of the United States. This was thought to give Waggoner some immunity from charges of him being soft on defense.

No idea was too good for demonstrating the power of the ground combat forces. Every combat vehicle on Fort Hooves was given a new camouflage paint job. A new paved road was built up to the rebuilt and newly painted grandstand. Once the division commander nailed down what would be demonstrated for the Commander-in-Chief, they turned thoughts to security of the demonstration site. The site had to be secured from the end of the rehearsal the afternoon before until the start of the demonstration the next morning.

The general looked around his conference room at his commanders and made eye contact with his new MI battalion commander. “You still have those sensors and radars?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This mission is yours, then. There’s a coordination meeting at 1500 with the Secret Service, but don’t wait on them, Jim. Plot out the key paths into the demonstration area and plant some sensors.

“I bet you thought I slept through that briefing you gave me on unattended ground sensors and radars. Ha!”

The B Company Executive Officer (XO), Lieutenant Shaw, the most experienced officer with sensors and radars, was put in charge of a company task group, consisting of all the sensor teams and the three most senior radar team chiefs. He established his command post on Pilot Knob, looking down into the demonstration area. He had sensors emplaced at chokepoints on the five roads into the Pilot Knob range complex.

The three radars were set up to scan the demonstration area, a copse of trees in front of the grandstand, and the freshly paved road. Lieutenant Shaw had been warned that Spurgle was slow on transitioning to the PPS-5 and to keep him where he could be easily supervised. As the sun got low in the sky, a jeep drove up with a captain riding shotgun.

He hopped from the jeep and approached the XO, who was watching PV2 Spurgle assemble a PPS-5. “Good evening, Lieutenant. Is your commander here? I’m Captain Herbert, commander of C company,1-55 Infantry Battalion. We’re here to guard the grandstand overnight. My company is deploying around the grandstand now. I was told to coordinate with the MI battalion officer in charge.”

“Well, sir, right now that’s me. My commander is at a final coordination meeting with the Secret Service. We were not informed you would be here.”

“It was a last-minute suggestion my brigade commander made to the CG.”

Realizing he would be outranked by this captain, the XO decided to fib, so he would stay in charge.

“I expect my company commander here any time now. I’ll let him know your unit’s here. Have your men move around only when necessary or they’ll set off our radar scanning that copse of trees in front of the reviewing stand. There’s us, your unit, some on-call MPs manning barricades on roads leading into the Pilot Knob complex, and an on-call helicopter, if needed. I hope my CO isn’t too late. He promised me a cheeseburger and fries.”

They traded frequency and call signs. “Carry on, lieutenant.” The captain departed, not knowing he would spend the night working for a first lieutenant.

Things settled after the sun went down. It was quiet for all of an hour. Then the infantry company commander called on the radio.

“Xray Mike 29, this is Golf Hotel 87, over.”

“Golf Hotel 87, this is Xray Mike 29, over.”

“Xray Mike 29, some of my men think they saw someone walking through that copse of trees in front of my position. Does your radar show anything? Over.”

Spurgle scanned the area and listened, then removed his headset and told Staff Sergeant Gutierrez that he heard someone walking around out there.

The XO listened in and didn’t hear any sound initially, but then heard what sounded like the radar sweeping past a corner reflector, which was sending the signal back to the radar and covering any other signal.

“Golf Hotel 87, this is Xray Mike 29. We’re getting what could be someone walking around out there. Are all your men accounted for, over?”

“Roger, Golf Hotel 87, over.”

The XO had Spurgle sweep the area once more and got that strange buzzing sound again. He conferred with his NCOs, and they had the same feeling, as did he: it was a corner reflector in effect jamming the radar.

“Xray Mike 29, could you have your men make a sweep of the copse, over?”

“Roger, Golf Hotel 87. Has your commander shown up, over?”

“Negative, Xray Mike 29, not sure where the old man is. He may be briefing the battalion commander on the results of the coordination briefing, is all I can think. I’ve given up on the cheeseburger. We got a report from our battalion Staff Duty Officer that Division is turning every tank turret and arty piece to point at Killgreen and away from here. Doesn’t affect us, but you never know, over.”

“Golf Hotel 87, my platoon leader pronounced the copse clear after a shoulder-to-shoulder search. If there was anyone in there, they’re gone now, over.”

“Thank you, Xray Mike 29, maybe we can have a quiet night now, out.”

When the XO finished his radio call, SSG Gutierrez called him over.

“Sir, I apologize. It’s a broken radar, not anyone walking around out there. We’re setting up our spare now and having someone other than Spurgle run it.”

“Just don’t let the captain hear that.”

The rest of the night was quiet, and at 0800 they tore down and departed Pilot Knob with their mission accomplished, even if there were a few hiccups along the way. After they got back, Spurgle worked on assembling and putting the PPS-5 into operation, repeatedly, until he learned how to differentiate what a good versus an inoperative radar looked and sounded like.

Spurgle finally made the glorified rank of Private First Class and decided to go home to visit his folks in West Texas. He chose to fly home because he was a big shot now. One problem: there was no airport in his county. The nearest public airport was Midland-Odessa, some 150 miles away with connecting flights to El Paso, DFW, and the world. Andrew was not top of his class at map reading, obviously.

His dad found a friend with a Cessna 172 to pick him up at Midland-Odessa airport, fly him home, and back to Midland-Odessa a week later, in time for his flight to DFW and on to Killgreen and Fort Hooves. All the fuss over him and how his friends and family treated him like he was coming back a war hero went to his head. He felt invincible.

On his way back, Spurgle found an empty stall in a DFW restroom and lit up a joint one of his cousins gave him as a going-away present. Two puffs later, there was a knock on the door.

“This is Officer McKenzy of the airport police. Come out with your joint.”

Suddenly, Spurgle wasn’t invincible any longer. All he would have needed to do was drop the joint in the toilet and flush, but he missed. Officer McKenzy searched him and found another joint and what he thought were eleven tabs of LSD in a roll. Spurgle spent the night in the airport holding cell and missed his flight to Killgreen and the next night and the next night, missing Monday morning formation. He knew he was screwed, just not how much.

On Monday morning, he was brought before the magistrate for arraignment.

The prosecutor led off the proceedings and Spurgle was represented by a public defender.

“Your Honor, on Friday, Officer McKenzy of the DFW Airport Police was conducting a foot patrol of Terminal B, entered the restroom opposite gate B23 and smelled a strong odor of marijuana coming from one of the stalls. He knocked on the stall door and Mister Spurgle opened the door. A lit marijuana cigarette was found on the floor of the stall, and he was taken into custody. Before he was placed in holding, he was searched further and found to possess what was believed to be another marijuana cigarette in a pack of Marlboros and roll of ten tabs of LSD.

Spurgle, very agitated, interrupted. “Your Honor, I can explain. My cousin gave me that pack of Marlboros. I didn’t know they were wacky tabacky. Those tabs are Fruity Dots. They’re just candy, Your Honor.”

“Prosecutor, have the tabs been tested for LSD?”

“I’m awaiting the results of the test, Your Honor.”

Officer McKenzy entered the court room and waved the prosecutor over.

“I beg the court’s forbearance, Your Honor.”

“Go see what he wants, but hurry. It’s getting on my lunchtime.”

The officer whispered in the prosecutor’s ear and the prosecutor’s head dropped.

“Something you want to share, Mister Prosecutor?”

“It seems the airport police lost chain of custody of the evidence, Your Honor. We withdraw all charges.”

“All but one, Mister Prosecutor. Mister Spurgle, excuse me, PFC Spurgle. I find you guilty of smoking in a non-smoking area and sentence you to time served. I further order you to be held in holding until a unit representative in the rank of sergeant or above signs for you.”

In accordance with unit policy, the first sergeant called Spurgle’s family and spoke with his mother.

“Ma’am, has Andrew overstayed his leave, for some reason?”

“First Sergeant, we went through an elaborate process for him to get home and for him to get back. The Cessna owner confirmed he had flown him to Midland-Odessa airport and pointed him in the right direction for the flight to DFW.” Obviously concerned, she asked, “Please keep me informed when he shows up.”

Later that day, the First Sergeant stopped the unit XO. “Sir, have you seen Sergeant Pacer?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Hmmh,” mused First Sergeant Jonas. “Maybe our missing Spurgle will mysteriously reappear.”

The next morning, PFC Spurgle was in an immaculate uniform and standing as stiffly at attention as he could. The First Sergeant inspected the formation, remarked on Spurgle’s uniform, and told him to report to the orderly room immediately after formation.

The whole sordid situation came out, including how Sergeant Pacer had driven up to retrieve him, without getting a pass himself. The DFW magistrate’s dismissal of the drug charge meant Spurgle could not be charged with possession of illegal drugs under Article Fifteen. Spurgle plead guilty to AWOL under an Article Fifteen, administered by his company commander. He spent the next few evenings digging a six-by-six-by-three-foot deep hole in the motor pool that would become the fuel sump for the five-ton fuel truck to park over and catch any drips. Sergeant Pacer was given the extra training of supervising Spurgle in lieu of an Article Fifteen of his own.

Sergeant Pacer was a little peeved at Spurgle, so he had the unfortunate PFC dig one side of the hole six feet deep, so Spurgle could shovel the other side into the six-foot hole, coming out three feet deep exactly. It was Pacer’s payback for getting him involved. Sergeant Pacer needed to take a leak and told Spurgle he’d be in the motor pool office. Just then, the commanding general drove into the motor pool, conducting an inspection of random units. He saw the roped off area and flying dust and had his driver pull over to see what was going on. Dismounting the jeep, he walked over to the hole just as a shovel full of dirt came flying out, dusting the general’s boots. The CG’s driver yelled, “At Ease!” startling Spurgle. He looked up and saw the general looking down, came to attention, and saluted.

The general returned his salute and asked, “What are you doing, son?”

“Digging a fuel sump, sir.”

“Don’t you think you’re going a little deep?”

Spurgle answered, “That’s so the soil will be loose, sir. Once I finish digging this to six feet, I’ll shovel the other side into the deeper part, making the sump three-by-six-by-six.”

“Why are you out here by yourself?”

“I’m not, sir. Sergeant Pacer stepped away to take a leak. He should be back shortly.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“Spurgle, sir. Andrew Spurgle.”

“Carry on, Spurgle, Andrew Spurgle.”

The general departed with dusty boots, chuckling.

The next morning, the XO was the only one in the orderly room when the phone rang. He answered and found himself talking to Spurgle’s mom.

“Lieutenant, has my son turned up?”

“Yes, ma’am. He reported for duty on Tuesday morning in good health.”

“Can you tell me where he was all that time?”

“Ma’am, I think it would be best for you to hear that from him.”

“Oh, come on, Lieutenant. I’m his mother.”

“Seriously, ma’am, it would be best to hear it from him.”

“Oh, well…Lieutenant, would you pass a message on to my son for me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You tell that little bastard to call me as soon as possible and let me know what he was up to, or I will drive over there and beat his ass.”

Half-startled and half-chuckling, he replied, “Whoa! Yes, ma’am, I will pass on that message personally.”

At the end of the next morning’s formation, First Sergeant Jonas turned the formation over to Lieutenant Shaw.

“PFC Spurgle, I have a message for you from your mother.”

There was some snickering in the formation.

“Private Spurgle, I spoke with your mother yesterday afternoon. She was concerned about you and asked me to pass on a message to you. In her exact words, she said to ‘tell that little bastard to call me as soon as possible and let me know what he was up to, or I will drive over there and beat his ass.’”

The XO turned the destroyed formation back to the first sergeant and retired to the orderly room with a smile on his face for the rest of the day. It took a while for the first sergeant to regain control of the formation. It was several days until the soldiers could stop breaking up just by looking at each other.

Directionally Challenged

Tuvela Thomas

Mrs. Davis’s skirt swished as she entered her tasteful parlor furnished with what is now considered antiques. She had bought them new.

She smoothed the full-length silk skirt as she regarded her guest. Her long dark hair had been styled in a tasteful chignon this morning. Her streaks of grey were left undyed and the suggestions of crow’s feet and smile lines were the only betraying indications of her advanced age. The suit the man sported was a cheap polyester blend and badly fitted. He looked like a narrow-shouldered weasel with a beer gut. Alexandra despised him immediately.

He was closely regarding the painting on her wall and muttering to himself. “It looks like an original.”

She cleared her throat. “That’s because it is.”

He straightened abruptly. “Fortune-telling pays better than I thought.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she answered. “The services rendered come at a cost, but I do not charge money for them.”

“Oh! A sort of barter thing, then! I see. Do you need help zoning your home for commercial/residential?”

“No. Thank you. I don’t think you understand. What is it you want, exactly?”

“I met a fellow in a bar in Fort Worth. He had a lady on each arm, and he was buying round after round. I got to talking to him. He said you made him filthy, stinking rich by telling him the right moves to make.”

“And you want to be wealthy?”

“Doesn’t everybody!”

“I see. In what timeframe do you wish to acquire this wealth?”

“As soon as possible. I have some…matters to handle.”

At that moment, there came a bump and rattle as Marie rolled in the coffee and tea service on a small cart. “Mister—“

“Spurgle. Andrew Spurgle”

“Yes, Mr. Spurgle, I believe you requested coffee.”

“Yes,” he said, frankly ogling Marie, the co-ed who worked for Alexandra. Mrs. Davis thought about offering the man a napkin for his drool.

“Merci, Marie,“ she told the young lady.

“De rien, madame. I have made the good coffee.”

Alexandra smiled at Mr. Spurgle, “Do you speak French, sir?”

“Not a word.”

“Ah, what a shame. I make sure that my housekeepers speak French. Marie is such a help to me in practicing.” She turned back to Marie. “This is the coffee Mr. Cole gave us?”

“Oui, Madame. Cet homme peut boire du café merde de chat.”

Mrs. Davis managed to turn the laugh into a mostly convincing cough. “Était-il si impoli?”

“Oui, Madame. The tea is for you.”

“Good idea. Merci, Marie.“ Alexandra smiled at Andrew Spurgle. “It’s quite expensive coffee from Indonesia, but I’m afraid I mustn’t drink coffee at this hour. Do you take cream and sugar?”

“Black. What brand of coffee is it?” he asked, watching Marie’s posterior as she left the room. Alexandra poured the drinks and settled in a chair some distance from the man.

“It’s called kopi luwak. It’s quite precious, especially when ethically sourced.“ That much was certainly true. Alexandra couldn’t imagine why anyone would pay so much money for anything that had passed through the digestive tract of a civet cat. Marie’s reference to it as “cat shit” coffee was technically correct.

“Now then, Mr. Spurgle, you were saying that you would like to come into a vast amount of money in a very short time?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to do anything obviously illegal.”

“You wouldn’t want to break the laws made by man, I see. I must warn you, as I warn all others, Mr. Spurgle: I am a ‘middle man.’ The bargains made here are struck with evil beings. You may find that monetary wealth is of little comfort in the long run.”

“Tens of millions of dollars can buy an awful lot of comfort.”

“Tens?”

“Hundreds of millions? Is that possible?”

“Possible. But as you just said ‘tens of millions’—“

“Hundreds! Hundreds of millions, let’s go with that!” Andrew Spurgle interrupted.

Mrs. Davis raised her eyebrows. “Are you quite sure about that?” she asked, clearly enunciating each word in her most austere tones.

“Hell, yes!”

Mrs. Davis’s hand shook slightly as she opened her pie safe. She pulled out a sheaf of paper and took it to the roll top desk, closed her eyes, and began writing out the instructions. She wrote for a full fifteen minutes. Spurgle helped himself to another cup of coffee while he waited. He cleared his throat a few times, but she didn’t stir or take notice of him.

At last, the fountain pen was placed on the desk and Alexandra looked carefully at what she had written. “Some of these ingredients are esoteric, Mr. Spurgle. You may have more luck with a partner to help you.”

He thrust out his hand eagerly for the sheets of paper. “And you must follow the instructions exactly,” she said firmly. Spurgle snatched the papers from her hand and took his leave with haste.

Marie slipped back in, having apparently eavesdropped on the conversation. “Do you think he’ll get the money?”

Alexandra put the leftover paper back in the pie safe. She closed it securely before answering, “Most likely he’ll read that list and decide it was all a joke.”

“What happens when people do the spells wrong?”

“Usually, nothing,” Alexandra answered, sipping the last of her tea.

Andrew Spurgle pored over the list again. He’d smudged it when he snatched it from the fortune teller lady. It was still legible. Mostly. “A goat’s placenta poached in the mother’s milk, the web of a black widow spider (female), a lock of his own hair, lifeblood of a steer, ten cubits by ten cubits of the finest linen dyed with saffron…”

The list went on for nearly a full page. He began making notes. Placenta was basically an embryo, wasn’t it? And that was pretty much the same thing as an egg. He reasoned that the eggs and goat’s milk could simply be bought at the grocery store. And the saffron-dyed fabric… He had an old tablecloth handed down from his grandmother. It might be linen. And it was turning yellow.

This was going to be easier than he’d thought.

Ding.

Andrew rolled his eyes and tried to read the next line.

Ding, ding, ding.

“All right, hold your horses,” he said. He got up from his crowded desk, piled high with papers and permits in process. Spurgle promised himself that he would have an office with windows someday instead of being in the basement of a backwater county courthouse.

He got up to the window where a short fat bald man waited. “Hey man,” he said, “I’ve been waiting.”

“I was on a phone call,” Andrew lied.

“I getcha, I getcha. But I got some business to take care of.”

“All right, so get on with it.”

“Well, see, I got married to a lady recently. Love at first sight, you know how it is. Well, I realized we made a mistake on the license. And I don’t wanna tell her we goofed and get on her bad side, you know? So I was wondering if you could let me take the original and the copies and get it fixed, quiet-like. You understand?”

“Sure, sure, I understand. But you see, I’m not really supposed to do that. I could get in a lot of trouble. But seeing as the County Clerk isn’t here at the moment, I might be able to help you,” Spurgle answered.

The other man’s bald head shone under the fluorescent bulbs. He smiled slyly and pulled out his wallet. He shelled out two twenty-dollar bills and placed them on the counter. Spurgle looked around and mumbled, “I could get in a lot of trouble.”

Two more twenties landed on the counter, but the fat man left his hand on the bills. “I wasn’t born yesterday. The license first.”

Spurgle said, “This will take a few minutes. What’s your name?”

“Gary, Gary Franks.”

Spurgle started whistling as he made his way into the records room. He returned with the papers and laid them on the counter. The money promptly disappeared into Spurgle’s pocket. “Cheaper than a divorce,” he grinned.

Gary laughed. “Hey, I like you man.” He reached over the counter and shook hands heartily with Andrew. Gary pulled a business card out and handed it over the counter. “I’m Gary Franks, and I sell cars from the lot just down the street with the giant inflatable bull on top of the building. The next time you’re in the market, give me a call. I’ll take good care of you.”

Andrew took the card and nodded. “Thanks, I’ll be sure to do that. Too bad you don’t sell fabric.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, I need some dyed…what’s it called?” Spurgle asked himself as he wandered back over to his desk. He picked up the list of ingredients and read aloud, “Finest linen dyed with saffron.”

“Well, shoot, you can buy saffron at the grocery store, but that’s expensive. Just get a box of Rit dye. Ain’t no one gonna notice a difference. Let me see that list.” Gary snatched at the corner and began looking it over. “Eggs, goat’s milk, cobwebs… Man, you are making the weirdest omelet I’ve ever heard of. What’s this a recipe for?”

“It’s a spell, actually. I’m supposed to follow it closely, but some of this stuff is weird.”

“Hmmmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I see what you’re doing now with your substitutions. You can get your Rit dye at the grocery store, too.”

“Well, maybe I should get some saffron, just for the sake of authenticity.”

“Sure, sure. You gotta appease the gods. Or whatever. And this here: datura stramonium. That’s just jimpson weed. I saw some on my way over…”

It was their third attempt at conducting the spell. They were in the fallout shelter in the basement of the courthouse. The space still saw use as a storm shelter when the Texas weather got cantankerous.

“Okay, so we got the feather duster on the east side, the omelet on the west, a tangerine on the north, and a stuffed squirrel on the south.”

“No, no, no.” Spurgle huffed at his partner. “The feather duster and the squirrel are on the east and west. The placental representation goes on the north edge of the diagram.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” reassured Gary. He made placating motions with his hands and then swapped out the misplaced items.

“And I thought you were going to stop calling it an omelet,” Spurgle whined.

“It’s eggs and milk, man. You made an omelet, no matter what you want to call it.”

“It’s a placental representation. We agreed that what we call it matters,” Spurgle said, his voice rising until it cracked into a higher register.

Candles burned around the edges of the tablecloth laid out on the floor. They’d gotten an art student to paint the diagram on the sheet after they’d dyed it. The kid had been paid one hundred dollars and a pizza gift card. The candles in the original recipe were to be made of “purest beeswax tinted with bone black to the shade of a moonless night,” but the local overstock store had had a sale on leftover Halloween decor. Jack O’Lantern and ghost candles smiled cheerily at Gary and Andrew as they sputtered and flared.

“Couldn’t you find scary candles, at least?”

Andrew grimaced. “This is what they had that was in the budget. At least we got some real saffron for the tablecloth.”

“Yeah,” Gary admitted. “So you really think that if we do all this, we’ll get a million dollars?”

“Uh, yes. That’s what the lady said.”

“It’s a shame you didn’t ask for more. This seems like an awful lotta work for a million dollars. Shoulda been a hundred million.”

Andrew Spurgle cleared his throat. “We should get a move on, right? My lunch break will be over before we know it.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be doing this on a moonless night?” Gary asked.

“No, that was the color of the candles.”

“Oh, right, right. I’ll put the rest in the middle.” The “rest” consisted of a large slow cooker insert with the rest of the ingredients piled into it and left on low overnight. Gary took a whiff and made a face. “Man, that stuff’s nasty. I don’t know what you gonna do with that after we’re done. Can’t say I’d ever use it to cook in again.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Spurgle reassured his partner.

Gary shrugged, “It’s your funeral. I just know there’s some stuff in there that shouldn’t be eaten.”

“I’m not going to eat what’s in there. I’ll buy a new crockpot with my share. What are you going to buy with yours?”

“I’m gonna get me a new car and a honey.”

Andrew nodded. A new car and a hot girlfriend—or two—sounded like a good start to him.

“Any ideas for the War scenarios?” Lord Peter asked his squire.

The teen lifted a shoulder and mumbled to indicate he had no ideas yet. The medieval reenactment demonstration was in full swing on the lawn next to the courthouse. Today, they were showing some of the local high schoolers how the group worked and the various crafts they studied. Most of the girls and a couple of the guys were happily watching a lady weave on an inkle loom. In a few minutes, the fighters would be done suiting up and demonstrate the western martial arts. It was always a hit with teenagers, and Lord Peter was looking forward to it.

They had a table set with some steel weapons, like swords and axes, but when it came time to fight, they would use rattan sticks instead. Unlike Renn Faires, the medieval reenactors actually hit each other and competed in tourneys for honors.

There was a big tourney at the War coming up in a week. The barony’s best fighters were there at the demo to get in a bit of last-minute training.

“Obscuro, magnus spirits in me oculo gratiate specter…“ Andrew Spurgle intoned from the papers he’d been given. Gary had offered to read the Latin, but Andrew was certain he could get this right. The used car salesman gritted his teeth as the other man tripped over the words. The reading dragged on. Gary’s head began to droop as the monotone continued. The tablecloth had been the best part of their work, he thought. It was an awesome deal Spurgle had gotten on the saffron. They’d been at the farmer’s market trying to buy a real goat placenta. All they got were confused looks. One fellow they asked had been closing his booth as they approached. When he saw Gary and Andrew, he asked if they would be interested in saffron.

“You look like proud men with discerning palettes. I tell you I have many troubles, but I would be saved if you would buy this spice from me. My cousin in Tehran sent me this saffron, but I can’t find anyone to buy it.” He held out a whole gallon-size bag of the precious red threads. “This is prime choice saffron from the Middle East. The flavour is sublime, my friends. Here, you see, I have placed a few threads in this bowl of water. Look how yellow it has stained the water. This is quality product, my friends.”

Andrew answered, “We’ll give you two hundred dollars.”

“You would rob my children of the food in their mouths! Four hundred!”

“Uh, three hundred.”

“My poor mother will go without her medicine. Four hundred fifty!”

Gary nudged Spurgle. “Uh, Andy?”

Andrew ignored Gary and continued, “You’re not fooling me, your mother’s probably dead. Three hundred fifty!”

“Ah, I can see you are a shrewd man. I will make you a deal: four hundred dollars!”

Gary nudged him again. “Andy!”

Andy shoved Gary’s hand away and reached out to shake on the deal of four hundred dollars. Gary covered his face with his hand and mumbled, “I shoulda sold him a car when I had the chance.”

Gary had gone back to the Farmer’s Market to buy more the next week, for cooking. None of the vendors had remembered seeing the fellow. Gary had meant to mention that to Spurgle, but they’d been so busy, and he forgot. He jerked upright as he started to doze off. The smoke and warmth from the candles were making him woozy. He wiggled the fingers on his left hand as that arm started to ache.

Twenty minutes later, Spurgle’s voice came to a scratchy halt. Gary opened his eyes wide and forced them to stay that way. They waited anxiously for something, anything to happen. The candles flared. By their light, Spurgle saw some movement along the wall. Fearing a rat, he screeched and jumped up on a folding chair. Gary, however, crept closer. “Oh! Oh my— It…it worked. Come check this out.”

Andrew crept closer and looked over Gary’s shoulder. Symbols were appearing on the wall. It looked like the silhouettes of golf tees, some vertical, some horizontal. “Is it some kind of code?” Gary asked.

“No, it’s writing,” Spurgle answered excitedly.

A spectral hand began to glow faintly and grew brighter as more of the writing appeared. Gary began to back up. “Oof, man, I don’t know if I feel right.” Spurgle looked back at his partner, who was now backing into the circle of candles with a hand held to his chest.

“C’mon, dummy, this means it worked.”

“Are you crazy, man? Didn’t you ever go to Sunday School? A hand writin’ on the wall means shit’s about to go down. I-I don’t feel right.” At that moment, Gary Franks tripped over the slow cooker crock and fell backwards into the center of the diagram.

Spurgle rolled his eyes. “Hey, get up! You’re going to be rich!”

Gary laid still in the center. Andrew sighed and turned away from the wall. Gary had made a real mess on the diagram. The salesman sure was lucky that the spell had worked this time. The candles flared again, and the flames turned an acid green color. Just as Spurgle began to become alarmed, a comforting hand was laid on his shoulder.

“Thanks, I—“ Rusty synapses popped into gear and Spurgle slowly turned his head to look at the hand. It, too, glowed green, just like the body it was attached to. There were six of them. They had beards the likes of which Spurgle could never hope to grow. The brawny men were dressed in robes and pointed bronze helmets. The green candle flamelight danced across the polished blades of their spears.

Andrew Spurgle screamed like a piglet. They looked him up and down and began to advance. Frozen, Spurgle asked, “D-did you bring the money?” The glowing undead warriors shifted their grips on the spears, pointy end towards Spurgle.

Screaming again, Spurgle sprinted out the door and up the stairs. Stomping footsteps followed him down the hall. Andrew charged up another flight of stairs and through doorways, trying to gain a better lead. Mind racing, he ran through another door and slammed it behind him. He leaned against it and panted loudly.

“Mister Spurgle! Just what the devil are you doing?”

Spurgle looked up to see the judge sitting on the bench. “Uh…uh…” he stammered. Heavy footsteps could be heard through the door he’d just come through. Spurgle backed away from it as the attorneys and jury watched him. Andrew addressed the man in the black robe, “Um, uh, Your Honor, I can explain.” The glowing Persian warriors burst through the doors, and Spurgle lit out the back of the courtroom with them hot on his heels.

The judge sighed and laid his head on his hand. “Why is it always my courtroom? Fifteen-minute recess,” he bellowed and slammed the gavel down.

Sir Peter, having just finished his warm-up, took a swig of water from his tankard. He saw a man burst out the side door of the courtroom and run down the steps in their direction. The man kept looking over his shoulder and tripped and rolled the last few steps.

Sir Peter’s squire commented, “Do you think he’s running from the law?”

Sir Peter answered, “Could be.”

The knight walked over to offer the man a hand up. The man in cheap office clothes looked up at his approach and shrieked when he saw the man and teen in armor advancing on him. The frightened man lurched to his feet and sprinted off through the park, leaving a foul stench in his wake.

The squire wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Did he…?”

Sir Peter nodded. “Crap himself? Yes.”

“I wonder what he was so afraid of.”

“Them, probably.” The knight pointed to the top of the stairs at the half-dozen men in ancient robes holding spears.

“Uh, do we know anyone with an Assyrian persona?”

“Nope. That’s not our period.”

“They don’t look friendly.”

“And they’re heading this way,” added Sir Peter.

The other reenactment fighters had begun to approach as the commotion began. One handed Sir Peter his shield. He got it locked in just as the ancient undead warriors hit the bottom steps. The leader took up his spear and threw it at the knight. His shield rang with the impact and the spear fell to the ground.

Curses cut the silence.

“Lay on,” Sir Peter bellowed the order.

The glowing horde ranged themselves in a semicircle at the bottom of the stairs, and the melee was on. Sir Peter could hear in the clatter that some of his fellow fighters had availed themselves of the steel weapons from the table. His squire turned up at his side with a battle axe. Sir Peter temporarily trapped a thrusting spear between his shield and rattan sword and his squire took the axe to the handle, splintering the wood with his first blow and breaking it with the second.

There was a blast of a shotgun from the top of the steps to the courthouse. A man of about sixty in a dress shirt, jeans, and ropers held a shotgun pointed at the sky. A sheriff’s deputy flanked him with another shotgun in hand and a sidearm.

Sir Peter saw the zombies turn away from his own fighters to the new challengers. “Retreat,” he called out. He directed those in his charge out of the line of fire and turned to watch.

His ears rang as the older man and the deputy advanced on the zombies, the former working a lever-action Winchester while the other pumped off shot after shot into the undead crew. The work was done quickly and efficiently. The zombies fell to the ground and imploded with a poof and spray of ash.

Sir Peter saw the older man yell something at the deputy, who nodded and approached the reenactors.

“Did you see which way he went? The man who was running from these things?” the deputy asked.

They pointed to a stand of trees on the edge of the lawn.

Spurgle clung to the tree trunk with trembling arms. He’d seen the zombies disappear after being shot. He desperately wanted to get down from the tree, but his arms wouldn’t move. The sheriff’s deputy saw him about twenty feet up in the tree and smirked. “Spurgle, you get down from there. The judge would like a word or three.”

“I can’t. I’m stuck. Call the fire department to get me out of this stupid tree.”

“I could do that.”

“Well, then, why don’t you do that, you rednecked hillbilly?”

“You didn’t say ‘please,’” replied the deputy.

Spurgle leaned out to shake a fist at the deputy. His grip slipped and he fell out of the tree, taking several limbs with him.

“Will you look at that,” the deputy said with apparent surprise, “you fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.”

Judge Douglas Kelly rose from his seat as the lady entered the room. She was younger than he expected. The local sheriff had implied she’d been known in these parts for decades, but that couldn’t possibly be so. Mid-forties, he thought.

“Would you like more coffee, sir?” she asked kindly.

“Yes, please. Black is fine.”

She smiled and took her time in getting him another cup from the coffee service. He didn’t mind in the least. Mrs. Davis was very nice to look at. The blouse and long skirt suited her well. Finally seated, each with a cup of coffee, she started, “Marie said you had some questions for me, Judge Kelly.”

“Please, call me Douglas,” he said. “I was told you might be able to shed some light on an incident that occurred in my courtroom, or rather, the courthouse.”

“Do go on,” she answered.

“Well, the assistant to the County Clerk, a Mister Andrew Spurgle, performed some kind of conjuration in the basement of the courthouse. A half-dozen or so ancient warriors chased him through my courtroom.”

“Oh, good heavens,” she exclaimed. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Not by them, no. They were detained by some local citizens and dispatched by a deputy and myself.”

“I am glad no one came to harm,” she answered.

“I can’t rightly say no one was hurt, ma’am. His partner in the scheme, a used car salesman, was found dead in the basement. An apparent heart attack, poor bastard— Ahem, pardon my language. We also found these.” He held out a sheaf of papers to her.

She took the copies of the papers found at the scene and began to examine them closely. “I can’t disagree with your reference to them as bastards, Douglas.”

“When we were questioning Spurgle after the fact, your name came up.”

“He came to me about six months ago asking for a spell to make him rich. This here.” She waved a couple of the pages at him. “But he bungled it gloriously. Just look at these substitutions!” Her cheeks had flushed with anger. “And you say his partner died in the room where they were attempting the spell?”

Douglas nodded. “A heart attack, says the coroner. Spurgle said the man panicked when he saw the literal ‘writing on the wall.’ Tripped over the terrine of witch’s brew and collapsed on their diagram.”

“Well, that’s what did it, then. Doubtless, they offended the spirits by butchering the spell. And this fellow’s death triggered what followed.” She handed back the papers.

He examined them for a moment and then the lady. “Do you mean to tell me that if they had followed the instructions correctly, they would have become rich?”

“Oh no, you don’t! Don’t you dare ask me for any such thing,” she said fiercely.

He smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“What happens to Mr. Spurgle, now?”

“Ah, well, I have found him in contempt of court, fined him, and he lost his job. Last I heard, he left town and good riddance.”

“What an awful mess.”

“I don’t know that I’d say that. We rid ourselves of an unscrupulous salesman and Spurgle both in one go.”

Her laugh was delightful. “That’s a fine way to look at it.”

She saw him to the door, and he walked down the path to his car. He turned back to see her standing on the porch of her fine Victorian house and smiled.

He resolved to bring her flowers the next time he visited.

Casino of Chaos

Amie Gibbons

“My name’s Hope Flanders. I started counting cards over three years ago,” I said on the stand. “I don’t know how a lot of people start, probably watched Twenty-One or Holy Rollers, but I started for my mom. My mom lost her job at her hospital.”

I didn’t want to tell a courtroom my mom needed that much help. Made her sound weak, and she’d never been weak. She’d raised me and my sister on her own after our dad died, listened to us and pushed us to be our best, and always supported us. She’d lost her job because she stood by her principles and refused to lie in a time when that was a crucifiable offence in healthcare.

She was the strongest person I knew.

But the attorney had told me to humanize myself and why I counted cards.

“Jurors will think you’re dishonest,” he’d said. “Got to show them you’re an honest, hardworking woman, that card counting isn’t dishonest. It’s the little guy against the big, bad, dishonest casino, and you did it to help your mama.”

I snorted. “Mom got screwed like a lot of people around then. She had credit card debt, and she was fixing to lose her house. I was an artist and waitress, I made good enough money, but not enough to bail my mom out, especially not with all us service people easily losing fifty percent of our income during the lockdowns.”

I took a deep breath, looking around. The courtroom wasn’t as big as I’d thought one for a murder trial would be from movies and stuff, and it wasn’t very crowded.

Besides Julian, his two attorneys, the jury, judge, and the Prosecutor’s team, there was my mom and sister, James’s parents, his girlfriend, and his two brothers, Julian’s wife and a few people with her who I guessed were his friends and family, six people in the back taking notes, maybe reporters or law students, and then the Prosecutor’s entourage of four interns or something hanging on his every word.

Despite the small room and crowd, in all my years of flirting as a waitress, chatting up crowds at art shows and conventions, and even playing up characters when I played Blackjack, I’d never been this nervous.

But a man’s life had never been on the line before.

“I had to make money, fast,” I said, shrugging. “I was good at it, got lucky with some positive variance starting out, so I made money and just kept going.”

I nodded at my mom. “I helped Mom catch up on her mortgage, pay off the credit cards, and stay afloat while she looked for a new job. She couldn’t find one because nobody wanted to hire a scrub nurse in her late fifties. So she’s working part time and went back to school, and I’ve been paying her tuition with the money from Blackjack.”

“Can you tell us what happened that night?” Julian’s attorney, a tall, skinny guy named Mr. Masters, said.

“Like, just tell it as a story?” I asked, looking around. “Or following your questions?” We’d prepped extensively over the last few months leading up to the trial, but in the moment, my brain froze.

I never froze.

Not even… that night.

Not that it did any good.

“Tell the story,” Masters said. “I may pause you for questions, and the Prosecutor will interrupt with an objection if it’s warranted.”

I snorted again. Yeah, he’d have a lot of objections during this story.

“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice even as my heart raced. “I have a good memory, so I’ll tell it like it happened as much as I can. I can’t guarantee every word everyone spoke is exactly right, because this was a year ago, and humans naturally fill in blanks in their memories when they are telling a story.”

“Objection!” The Prosecutor, a middle aged guy named Mr. Small with greying hair way too long for a guy, skin the color of weak coffee, and squinty brown eyes that always looked watery, said, shooting out of his chair.

My heartrate doubled and I gasped, wanting to grab my inhaler as I glared at the man, grinding my teeth together. I was good at playing it cool, had to be when counting cards, but it was an act. I had a temper worthy of my red hair, and I wanted to drop the professional act and expose the Prosecutor for the cowardly politician I knew he was.

I took slow, deep breaths, urging my breathing back to normal. I had my inhaler on me, but I didn’t want to use it.

Couldn’t give the smug, lying bastard the satisfaction.

“Yes,” the Judge said, sounding bored as she nodded at the jury. “The jury will disregard as the witness has not been certified as an expert in neuroscience or memory-related fields.” She looked down at me in the witness box. “Please continue.”

“Ooooookay,” I said. I’d barely been on the stand long enough to say my name and some background, and the Prosecutor was already jumping all over me.

I smiled my brilliant, dazzling, “Just an innocent little woman,” smile at Mr. Small.

He probably fits his name.

I snorted, letting my smile grow bigger, before wiping it off my face and focusing forward again.

I’d been counting cards for a few years by that night. I started out in the small casinos in Southern Indiana, since those were the closest to me, only about a two-hour drive or so from home. I live in Clarksville in Tennessee.

You learn where the good games are, eventually, but when I started, I had five hundred dollars and no clue what places had good rules, didn’t cut the shoe too thick, and so on.

I got lucky and found the Bluebell sometime in that first year. They have good rules and cut off maybe the last deck in the shoe. I had a dealer once tell me they had to cut off at least a fourth of cards at the end because it was Indian law.

It’s not.

“Room here?” James asked from behind me. I grinned and gestured at the chair next to me. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” I said. “I’m up, but only by a few.”

I’m not going to tell you what our code word for the count was. I don’t think I’ll use them again since…but you never know. And all this is going to be public record, I think.

Anyway, James and I became best friends in high school. He was an Army brat, like a lot of kids in Clarksville, because of Fort Campbell, if you didn’t know there was an Army base there. I would have been an Army brat if my dad didn’t die when I was four. He was in one of the first waves of guys shipping out after 9/11. Mom had a job there, though, so we stayed even after we lost Dad.

James and I hit it off right away. He was this skinny Harry Potter lookalike, but he’d been in martial arts forever, and he jumped in when I was running my mouth at a big cu…bully picking on my little sister.

I could’ve taken her, but he didn’t know that at the time. He saw a cow about to sit on a girl she had about ten inches and probably over a hundred pounds on, and he jumped in to save me.

That’s the type of person James was.

He started card counting because he insisted on going to casinos with me to play my muscle in case anyone tried beating me up in a backroom. I told him casinos don’t do that anymore because they got their shit sued out years ago, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He picked up counting because he got bored just watching me play.

We were there with Cindy, his girlfriend, for a week. There’s a few casinos in that area, which I’m sure you know since you all live around here. We were going to hit the cluster up near Chicago on the weekend, but the small ones are good during the week.

It was just me and him at the table because it was a Tuesday, but I figured it’d pick up after five or so when locals got off work.

“Where’s Cindy?” I asked, fiddling with the cross necklace my mom gave me, my good luck charm, as the dealer counted out chips for James.

“She has a conference call, so she’s in our room,” James said.

The dealer gave him his chips, and we were off. James chatted with the dealer some, asking her about her life, kids, grandkids. He could carry on a conversation with one part of his mind while he kept count with the other.

I can’t do that. Card counting isn’t as hard as people think. You don’t have to be a genius going to MIT or have a photographic memory. You just have to be able to add, subtract, and divide really fast. High cards are minus one, twos through sixes are plus one, and sevens through nines are zero.

When you have the count, you divide it by the number of decks left in the shoe for the true count, and that tells you how much to bet. The odds turn in favor of the player around a true count of one. The higher the true count, the more the odds are in your favor, and the more you want to bet.

The true count was a bit over two. Not a huge, start betting a hundred times the minimum, but definitely nothing to sneeze at. We played for a few minutes, the count inching up a bit before a rash of high cards crashed it to below zero.

James swept his chips after a big win, and leaned back in his chair, pressing his lips together, hamming up the show of thinking.

“I don’t think I’m going to get a run like that again,” he finally said, nodding. “Color up?”

The dealer tapped her electronic card reader to signal that chair was open, counted out his chips, giving him the high ones to carry away from the table, and handed him an extra gold one with a shiny glean the normal chips didn’t have.

“What’s this for?” James held it up.

“Special promotion,” the dealer said, grinning and pointing to the high roller room. “It gets you into the drawing for free slot play on some of the high roller machines. Take it over there, and hand it toooooo…”

She stood on tippy toe, scanning. “Havier,” she said with a snap, pointing. “He’s the little Cuban guy with green eyes. Can’t miss him.”

“Hmmmm.” I looked over my shoulder, but didn’t see anyone who obviously fit the description with my limited range of sight from my seat. “He sounds hot.”

She grinned, the hint of a blush on her golden skin. “He’s a beautiful man. But he’s married.”

“They always are.”

“I’m going to check this out,” James said. “You want to come?”

“Do I get a golden ticket?” I asked the dealer.

She shook her head and tapped the electronic reader. “Sorry, it says randomly who gets one when I cash them out.”

“So I might get one if I cash out.”

She shrugged. “It’s possible. I haven’t seen two in a row so far, though.”

James wandered off and I kept playing. I don’t know how long, but it was a while, and more than a few shoes of cards before I got a high count again. It went up fast, and I bet accordingly, and got a winning streak.

It was the kind of streak and high count you play all day to get. I was betting a hundred times the table minimum and winning almost every time.

So of course, that’s when I got the backoff.

The pit boss, a tub of lard man who was easily six-four, with pale skin and a terrible combover, stood behind me, his multiple chins jiggling as he glowered.

“Ma’am, I’m Andrew Spurgle, the pit boss, can you come with me please?”

It was phrased like a question, but the order in his tone was clear. I’m about average height, so when I stood up, he towered over me. He was good at it, too. When you count cards and get the backoff now and again, you start being able to read people. Some pit bosses are guys just doing a job like any other, some are leaders who honestly care about their people and fair play. But some, some just like having power over others.

And Spurgle? He was a bully, if I ever met one.

I colored up and the dealer tapped me out on her little electronic reader.

Spurgle shreked behind me, ushering me into a sort of back hall off the casino, with a line of closed doors I was betting were offices.

I didn’t fiddle with my necklace, didn’t shift my weight. Kept my back straight, my eyes on his, and my smile bright.

He scowled and cracked his knuckles. “We don’t take well t…”

“Hold on,” I said, sunshine in my voice as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I have to record this.”

“You’re not recording shit!” He stepped forward and I danced back, hitting play.

I can’t say what happened next. It wasn’t like there was some noise or a flash of light or anything.

I was back in my apartment that morning, cleaning the litter boxes. They smelled particularly toxic, like maybe I needed to take my boys to the vet to make sure neither had some kind of stomach bug.

I dropped the scooper in its holder and scooped up a pile of barely buried poop and shoved it in my mouth. It tasted worse than it smelled, if that’s possible. It coated my mouth and I wanted to throw up.

I blinked and I was in the kitchen holding a mug of coffee. It was one of those photo mugs, with pictures of my kitties over the years on it. My boys twined around my legs, meowing and blinking up at me.

I tipped the mug over, dropping boiling hot coffee on their sweet, trusting faces, and they ran, screaming in agony.

Next thing I knew, I was back in that hallway on my knees, throwing up on the thin blue carpet. Even my chicken salad sandwich coming back up tasted better than what’d been in that vision.

And even that wasn’t as bad as what I’d felt myself do to my poor babies.

It wasn’t real, but I’ll never forget their screams.

“Ahhhhhh!” a woman screamed, making me jump. She ran by me as I looked up. She grabbed at her hair, and a thick tuft of her black afro fell on the ground not two feet from me. She slammed headfirst into the wall at the end of the hall with a crunch I could hear all the way down the hall.

She didn’t get up. I heard later she was one of the ones pronounced dead on the scene.

Spurgle was curled up against the wall, as much as a man that big could curl. He was shaking, but didn’t make a sound.

It took me a moment to realize the mash of noise was in the casino. And it wasn’t the usual background music and ringing bells and shouts. There were screams, and whimpers, and sobs.

It looked like almost everyone was affected. People were throwing up, passed out, screaming, running, crying, and a lot of them were curled up in the fetal position like Spurgle.

There were a few people on their feet, looking around, lucid, apparently, and hauling ass outta there. Seemed like a good idea to me, but James was here somewhere.

A big guy in a security uniform grabbed a woman banging her head against the Craps table and pulled her away from it. She had gashes in her forehead from it. She went limp and he lowered her to the ground, then went on to the next person trying to bash their brains out.

I ran to the closest one and pulled her away from the Lucky Pig slot machine as she reared back to slam her skull into it again.

She screamed like something out of every bad horror movie you ever saw, and I stumbled back. It surprised me. She ran off before I could get myself moving again, and slammed into the wall next to the giant waterwall feature. She stayed on the ground after that.

The big guy was pulling another guy’s hands away from his face. The whole thing was scratched, and one eye hung out of its socket.

“I wouldn’t,” the eyeless guy sobbed. “I wouldn’t do that to my little girl. I couldn’t.”

Big Guy pulled out his cuffs and put them on the guy. I’m guessing he couldn’t get him to stop trying to claw his own eyes out.

“What’s going on?” I asked the big guy as Eyeless repeated his sentence like a chant.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Why aren’t we affected?”

“I was,” I said. “It hit me for a moment, but it’s like it cleared out.”

“What was it?”

I gaped at him. “You didn’t get any images in your head? Like a hallucination?”

He shook his head. “That’s what it was?”

I nodded. “I was…” I couldn’t talk about it. “It was gross and I did something horrible. But then it was gone. Maybe everyone’s still trapped in theirs. But what is it?”

He pulled a long silver chain out from under his black uniform. It had dog tags and a simple silver cross on it. He held onto the cross and whispered something, I’m assuming a prayer, and crossed himself before kissing it and letting it drop.

“Evil,” he said. “It feels evil.”

I didn’t argue with him. I was never religious. Like my lucky cross is because Mom’s religious and gave it to me. But something caused the horror.

It looked like all the people bashing themselves to bits and running had either knocked themselves out, or outright fainted. Even the screamers had shut down, leaving a few people still whimpering, but mostly, they all looked like they were passed out, one way or another.

Or dead.

“James,” I said, looking around. “My friend. I think he was in the high rollers room for some kind of promotion.”

The guard nodded, starting across the casino before I could say anything, making a beeline for the other side of the casino, to the side room with “High Rollers Room” over the double doors in giant gold letters.

“I’m Julian,” he said.

“Hope,” I said, scanning the bodies as we passed by just in case James had come out.

How long ago did he go for the promo?

It’d been at least an hour.

Maybe he’s not even here. My heart leapt. He could’ve gone upstairs to check on his girl.

The casino was sparsely populated since it was a Tuesday afternoon, thank God for small miracles, but there were still more than enough people damaged, down, and crying to make the walk across the room feel like an eternity. The people who just passed out were the lucky few based on the injuries I saw before I made myself look away.

The high roller room looked just as bad as the main room, just with fewer people lying on the floor with blood under their fingernails and brains bashed out.

It was starting to smell, something like rotting poop in the corner of a room full of discarded, dirty pennies.

But no James.

“Who are you?” came out of nowhere, making me jump. Julian pulled his gun, pointing towards the sound. He moved fast for a big guy.

A short guy with wavy dark hair stood with his knees bent like he’d just risen from the floor, his hands up and eyes fixed on the gun. Based on the beautiful green eyes and tanned skin, this was Havier.

“Julian?” Havier asked, squinting as he straightened his legs. “What’s happening?”

Julian put his gun back. “I don’t know. Everyone went nuts. Hope here said she got hit with visions, but got out of them. The rest of them?” He shook his head.

“I… I saw things.” Havier’s voice broke and tears filled his eyes. “Felt things.”

“How did you get out?” I asked.

He shrugged, shaking his head.

“I don’t know, either.”

“Anyone else awake?”

Julian and I exchanged a look. He shook his head and said, “There were a few, but they all ran out.”

“Hopefully someone called the cops,” I said. Then slammed my palm to my forehead. “Duh! Cops.” I reached for my cell phone. “Shit. I got my phone out to record. I must have dropped it. Phones?”

They shook their heads.

“Mine died, and I plugged it in behind the bar,” Havier said.

“I don’t believe in cell phones,” Julian said.

Huh? Who did believe in cell phones?

It didn’t matter enough to ask about. “I’ll get mine. Can you guys come with me?” I hated how weak I sounded.

They nodded, and we crossed the room again.

Everyone was just as out as before.

“Why?” I whispered. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like we’d wake them up. “Whoever did this, what was the point?”

“Evil.” Julian whispered, too. “Chaos.”

I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. Something like this…there’s a reason.”

“Who? Why? And how?” Julian said, but it sounded like he was talking more to himself than to us.

It took me a moment to realize what was wigging me out so bad. You know, besides all the bodies on the floor and the smells telling the story of horrible things playing out in people’s minds.

The overhead music was off.

“Guys, what happened to the music?” I whispered. They just looked at each other. “When did it go off?”

They shrugged.

I shook and didn’t know why. I didn’t realize until then that my heart was racing. The hair on my arms stood up and I suddenly felt like someone was watching me. I whirled around. Nothing was there, just the casino full of too-quiet, brightly-lit machines and bodies scattered amongst them.

“What?” Julian asked.

“I feel like we’re being watched,” I said.

He pointed up. “Eyes in the sky. There’s cameras all over the casino.”

I shook my head, unable to explain. “That’s not it.”

A crack shot across the room and Havier dropped. Julian grabbed me and shoved me behind the nearest machine, pulling his gun out as he crouched in front of me.

Havier’s body laid on the ground, and his head was twisted all the way around, leaving him staring at us with cold, dead eyes.

The crack wasn’t a gunshot. It’d been Havier’s neck breaking.

“Nothing was touching him!” It would’ve been a hysterical screech if my voice didn’t catch in my throat, making it a croak. “Nothing was touching him.”

“I know,” Julian said. “Panicking won’t help.”

Was I panicking?

I didn’t feel like I was. Then again, I didn’t feel much of anything. I shut my mouth and counted to ten, inching out from behind Julian and scanning. The count sharpened my mind, and I imagined I was back at the table. This was just another game.

The pit boss was breathing down my neck, the dealer was obviously counting, trying to figure out if I was, and I was going to get dragged away any second. So all I could do was breathe, keep the count, and make it count before I got the backoff.

Except the worst the pit boss would do was try to scare me, kick me out, and pass my picture around the local casinos. I grabbed my cross, imagining the faith it represented protecting me.

I mean, it was Mom’s faith and not mine, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

“You’re calm, considering the situation,” I said.

“Nearly twenty-five years in the Army, six tours in the Mid East between the two wars. After Afghanistan, takes a lot to scare me.” He never stopped scanning as he spoke.

“Guy’s neck broke in midair. Like, no explanation.”

“Saw worse over there,” he said. “They had the Devil on their side. One man floated ten feet above the street, dropped soldiers with a wave of his hand, and took bullets like they were shots in laser tag. I felt the same thing then, too. Pure evil.”

“How did you stop him?” The casino was so quiet. If whatever had killed Havier was still here, it was being a hell of a lot quieter than us. No pun intended.

“We didn’t. Dad did.”

“Your dad was there?”

“No. His nickname was Dad. He was older than the rest of us. He’d been a priest before joining. Still knew his stuff, though. He stopped the demon.”

Demon? Did he just say demon?

“I think we should forget my phone and just get out of here,” I said.

“I do, too. But we don’t know where the enemy is.”

“We can’t stay here.”

“Agreed. Be quiet. Stay behind me.”

I shut my mouth and lined up behind him as he rose enough to walk, inching forward. He moved pretty well for such a big guy.

One of the cheap, lightly cushioned slot machine chairs flew out of nowhere. Julian swung his arm up, swatting it away. But that was just the distraction. Some force swept his feet out from under him, and he slammed to the ground on his back with a hefty “Humf.”

I dropped to a low crouch, looking around. Why did they just knock the wind out of him? Why not snap his neck? Why didn’t they yank his gun away?

Commotion back in the hallway caught my attention. I couldn’t place what it was at first, but then my ears parsed out the different voices.

“Please,” a man squealed. “Please don’t.”

“Shut up, fat boy,” a harsh male voice that was barely human said.

“What do you want? Money? It’s a casino, there’s tons.” The plea cut off with a meaty smack and a scream.

Julian pushed to his feet with a huff, mouth working as he pointed to the back hall.

“Yeah,” I said, “I heard it, too. You have a spare gun?”

He shook his head, rasping, “You stay here.”

“Fat chance.” I hurried across the floor, keeping low. Julian right behind me, still huffing and puffing after having the wind knocked out of him.

When I hit the doorway, my brain broke. There was some swirling mass on the wall just to the side of the door. It looked like blobs of tissue from a hospital’s medical waste container escaped and were partying in a club, all red squishy things dancing through darkness.

I couldn’t see into the darkness. And then I didn’t care what was in there.

James, my best friend, the best guy I knew, had Spurgle on his knees, and held his short hairs in a death grip, yanking the man’s head back and holding a wicked, long knife to it.

He grinned at me. It wasn’t my friend’s smile. It looked like James, but it wasn’t him. It was like something had crawled into his skin and was staring out at me from his eyes, but everything that had been James had been scooped out like ice cream.

“Her!” Spurgle screamed, startling me. “Take her. She’s a better sacrifice. She’s younger. That’s got to count for something.”

Julian pushed past me and blasts shattered my eardrums.

James’s head snapped back, and he stumbled as at least one bullet smashed through his skull. He released Spurgle. The slimeball crawled away fast, hitting a door and punching in a code. He vanished inside and slammed the door.

James shook his head and straightened, like the bullet wound letting light into his brain was nothing more than a distracting slap. He scowled at the door Spurgle hid behind, then looked at me and Julian.

And lunged.

He grabbed me before I could react, whirled me around, locked an arm around my waist, and pressed the knife to my neck.

I couldn’t even scream.

Julian pointed his gun at us and James snorted, his breath poofing the hair on the top of my head.

“Did that work before?” James asked, contempt in his voice.

Julian shot again and again, the blasts deafening and making the world blur around me. It took a moment to realize James had let me go, and I stumbled away, holding my ears. They hurt.

I turned just in time to see James stumble back, the knife on the ground. He bled from so many holes I couldn’t count them, but he was still standing. Julian put his gun away.

“Why?” I asked. I could barely hear myself through the fuzz settling over my ears.

“I’m out,” Julian said, words not really audible, pulling a thick nightstick off his belt.

“I’m never leaving the house without a weapon again,” I said, looking around. I don’t know what I thought I’d see in an empty hall.

James hobbled towards us. One of the bullets must’ve taken out something in his right leg, because he dragged it behind him. Julian swung the nightstick backhanded and James jerked away, dodging easily. But Julian swung again, smashing him across the face, and my friend dropped facedown on the ground.

His head moved, turning around.

And around.

And around.

Until he stared straight up at us.

Julian said something and dropped to his knees on James’s back. I heard something crack. Julian took his cross off from around his neck and shoved it into James’s mouth, holding it in there with two hands as he chanted.

James’s body bucked, then slumped.

The air…lightened. I don’t know how else to describe it. I looked back and whatever hole had been on the wall was gone. Julian got up, and James stayed down, his neck still twisted all the way around.

“The cops got there soon after that.” I finished my story on the stand, not looking at the jury. I knew they wouldn’t believe me. “And I never found my phone. It could’ve gotten the whole thing on video and I’d never know it.”

“That’s quite a story,” Mr. Masters said. “You know everyone else who was quested by the police said they passed out, thought it was some kind of gas leak. How do you reconcile their stories with yours?”

“I can’t explain it,” I said. “I could guess, but it would just be guessing that that’s all they remembered. But there were dead people who killed themselves on scene. The Prosecution’s ME said that.”

“That doesn’t prove your story is true, though. Do you have any proof?”

He asked me that so we could beat the Prosecutor to it. Better to deal with a weakness in the case head-on than wait for the other side to nail you on the cross with it.

“No,” I said. “My phone disappeared. And casino security said the cameras all malfunctioned. That’s why no one came down from the security center. I mean, that’s what they said when they testified, and I can’t say what happened up there. I can just say no one came to the rescue or to check out what was going on, even though this went on for around ten minutes.”

I looked at Mr. Small, kind of surprised he wasn’t objecting. Mr. Masters said he might during this part since I was implying a lot, and it was all pure speculation. But this was a weak point in their case. No casino’s security would just ignore cameras fuzzing or blinking out. They’d be on the floor investigating so fast. But they claimed that’s what happened.

I didn’t know why they would lie, but they had to be. All this went down, the police investigated, it was clear Julian had shot James, and that the other dead people had killed themselves. Somewhere along the line, the Prosecutor went after Julian for James’s death, painting him as some kind of vigilante that went crazy with the gas leak and took out an innocent man.

Mr. Masters wanted to argue temporary insanity since the Prosecutor was basically saying that, since Julian looked culpable, anyway, but Julian refused.

“Thank you,” Mr. Masters said, turning to Mr. Small. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

I braced myself as Mr. Small rose, fixing his eyes on mine. We’d prepped for all the ways this dick could rip me apart on the stand, but this was still going to get ugly.

I pulled my necklace out from under my button up and gripped the top without thinking and took a deep breath.

Mr. Small flinched, eyes flicking down to my hand.

To the cross necklace in my hand.

Holy shit.

I didn’t think, just stood as I lifted the cross out towards him.

“Our Father in heaven,” I said, and Mr. Small stopped. “Hallowed be your name. Your kingd…”

“Stop it!” Mr. Small snapped, baring his teeth.

The judge said something I didn’t hear as the world zeroed in on this man. On this thing.

I knew without a doubt this was the same thing that’d possessed James. The evil that took my friend from me.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” I screamed, pulling the Bible I’d sworn on off the side of the witness box as I sidestepped out of the it and rushed the Prosecutor.

Others shouted, but I didn’t hear them as I slammed the Bible against his open hand. He shrieked and lunged at me, batting the book away and slamming me to the ground.

The world flew up around me, then pain exploded in the back of my head as I hit the hard floor. My vision went blurry, then exploded in a billion tiny lights as Mr. Small broke my necklace off, tossed it, and wrapped his hands around my neck. Panic shot through me as blood throbbed through my skull and I struggled, fighting to take a breath as the pain in my head and neck made me want to pass out just to get away from it.

Someone tore him off me, and I gasped in sweet oxygen.

Two bailiffs held Mr. Small down. Julian knelt next to him and pressed his cross against the man’s face. Smoked skin and screaming made my head explode again, and Julian and the two bailiffs flew across the room.

Mr. Small jumped up. He had a burn on his face that looked suspiciously like the mark of the cross. He looked around and ran for the door, crashing out of the courtroom before anyone else moved.

The judge stared with wide eyes, her mouth hanging open. The jurors had all either ducked down in their box or were just as frozen and slackjawed as the judge. Most of the audience was ducked behind the rows of long wooden seats (kind of like pews, now that I thought about it), and Spurgle was under the Prosecutor’s table, curled into a ball and sobbing.

“Your Honor,” Mr. Masters said in a small voice, “I move for a mistrial.”

The judge granted the mistrial, which in criminal court usually means the case won’t be brought again, according to Mr. Masters. Even if the Prosecution wanted to, they had bigger issues than trying to railroad Julian again, what with one of their people running out of a courtroom with a burn from a perfectly normal cross on his face.

They got the bailiffs flying through the air on video. From what I heard afterwards, no one really knew how to deal with that, so they didn’t. There was a warrant out for Mr. Small for attacking people in court, but nothing in the news about someone with magical powers caught on video.

I mean, nothing in the real news. There was plenty in tabloids.

All of us moved on with our lives, more or less. Julian couldn’t get a job in security anywhere, but he said he didn’t really want one after his casino basically threw him under the bus. And it was just a part-time gig to keep him busy during retirement, anyway.

I’m trying to track Mr. Smalls. Stop him before the thing inside him can finish off what it was doing at the casino. I’m finding everything I can on possessions and real evil, trying to figure out what’s real. Because I have to do something.

I’d lied on the stand. I had to. I’d told the jury I didn’t see anything through that swirling darkness besides some squishy bits of red.

If I said I saw a flash of madness, of chaos, of something I couldn’t describe without losing my mind, something with limbs and horns and tentacles through that door, they would have written off my entire testimony.

But I saw it. Just for a split second. If I’d looked any longer, I’m sure I’d be insane.

I never gave much thought to God before that day. He was a theory, a story, some concept that led to a lot of businesses calling themselves religions.

Now? I pray. I pray that He’s real. That there is a great power that loves us. Because if there isn’t? If there isn’t a power for good out there greater than anything, then the pure wrongness I saw through that door is all there is.

And if I start to believe that, I know I’ll kill myself to have some hope of escaping the madness before it breaks through that door and swallows us all.

The Ass of Stratford

Matthew C. Lucas

Samuel Hawley pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Duty,” he reminded himself. “You’ve a duty to listen to this.”

He darted a quick glance to his right. Were it not for the presence of the Reverend Blakeman sitting within arm’s reach, Hawley would have indulged in some most welcomed, and most vociferous, cursing.

Just on the other side of the desk that Hawley and Reverend Blakeman shared (what passed for a bench when Hawley was acting in his role as justice of the peace), stood the most insufferable man in Stratford, Connecticut. A blackguard. A rogue. A man reviled throughout the town. A flat-nosed, flush-cheeked, flaming-haired farmer who went by the name of Andrew Spurgle.

Spurgle. Such an oafish name. It suited its bearer well.

Hawley sighed again, wishing with all his might that this irascible ass, who had not even bothered to put on a clean shirt before coming to court, would sense the unspoken cue that his place was back on his farm on the southernmost edge of town, scraping out his pathetic living, and not wasting the valuable time of two of the colony’s most prominent gentry.

“I said, I want to lodge my complaint,” Spurgle repeated. A pair of hairy forearms folded across his chest to emphasize his resolution.

“Yes, I heard you,” Hawley snapped.

Reverend Blakeman tapped a quill pen thoughtfully against his chin. His gaze fell across the expanse of the empty town hall, as if he were addressing his congregation and not a widely loathed degenerate.

“‘Tis a rather unusual petition you’ve brought before us, Andrew. Of course, I find your allegations troubling, most troubling, indeed. As does his Honor.” He offered a deferential nod to Hawley. “But I must confess I’ve not confronted such a charge in the course of my ministry. A most unusual petition …”

The parson’s voice trailed off. Hawley picked up the line of thought and made no pretense of hiding his exasperation:

“Unusual, Spurgle, because it is the year of our Lord 1692, and we’ve not had a charge of witchcraft in Connecticut for nigh on to three decades.”

Spurgle didn’t blink before he retorted, “Which only means you’ve been loafin’ at your job. Ain’t like we’ve run out of witches.”

“Why, you damned—”

“Now, now, Samuel,” Reverend Blakeman chided. “Remember your position.”

Spurgle shifted his weight and scratched at his behind. “Look, I’m a simple, plain-spoken man, but I know the Devil’s work when I see it. I was cursed. And I know who did it. So I’m askin’ for justice. Which is what my taxes pay for, ain’t it?”

Hawley clenched his hands tight, for his fingers wanted nothing more than to throttle this idiot by the neck. But, true to his judicial duty, he restrained himself, looked down the end of his nose, and leveled Spurgle with a scowl that bore the full majesty of his authority.

“See here, Spurgle. As you’re a plain-spoken fellow, I shall speak plainly to you. You’re not much liked, nor much regarded.”

“Which I know well enough.”

“There’s not a man in this town who’ll lend you money, and not a woman who will look you in the eye. Not since that charge of lechery—”

“—for which I was acquitted. And that was all lies.” Spurgle tugged at a lock of oily hair that hung from his temple. “Here I am a redhead, while that brat’s hair was as black as the devil’s asshole.”

“Andrew!” The parson gasped.

Hawley pressed on: “I’ve convicted you of unpaid debts, giving false testimony, idleness, public drunkenness. You just spent a day in the pillory for your drinking.” He paused and narrowed his eyes. “Now that I look at you more closely, you seem somewhat less than sober, Spurgle, and it’s not even three o’clock. I see you swaying on your feet now. Don’t deny it.”

“Just nervous,” he muttered.

“As well you should be. Bringing a charge of witchcraft in this day and age.” He wagged a warning finger over the table. “There’s no more bouncing around on the floor in a fit and crying ‘witch’ just to settle a score against a neighbor. This isn’t Massachusetts.”

“Thank God,” the parson murmured under his breath.

“In this court,” Hawley continued, “your petition will be held to the strictest standard of proof in English law. Be warned, Spurgle. The penalty for false accusation of witchcraft is quite severe.”

The farmer, however, would not be cowed. He steadied himself, lifted his ruddy face, and jammed his fists in his hips.

“I’ve nothing to be afraid of, for I’m telling the truth. My neighbor’s bewitched me. And I’ll swear on a Bible, on my soul, on my wife’s soul…anything Reverend Blakeman says to swear on, I’ll swear on it that it’s so.”

The parson clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “I cannot countenance any form of swearing. In the Book of Maccabees we are instructed, ‘swear thou neither upon thy soul, nor upon thy head, nor upon thy kidneys’…” The cleric’s brow furrowed for a moment as he tried to recollect the remainder of what it was Scripture had enjoined not to swear upon. “…’Nor upon Heaven, nor its throne, nor its chamber pot, nor any other of its furnishings or accoutrements, seen or unseen, therein.” He folded his hands and concluded his homily. “For verily, the Lord saith swear not, but rather let thy ‘yes’ be ‘yes,’ and thy ‘no’ the same.”

It was a feat, but Hawley managed not to roll his eyes as he responded, “Amen.”

Spurgle simply shrugged.

“Fine. No swearing.” A defiant gleam shone in his eyes. “I’ll just show you gentlemen instead…”

* * *

The three of them must have made a sight: the justice of the peace, the church parson, and Andrew Spurgle, walking south down King’s Way in the middle of the afternoon. The gentlemen, despite hanging eight paces behind the farmer, were obviously uncomfortable with the company they found themselves in. The shipwrights and merchants who were out and about couldn’t help but stare at the sight of the strange trio.

The three trudged south down the town’s thoroughfare through a cold, wet October day. Their feet stuck in the mud, their breaths clouded behind them. Hawley’s hat brim was soon dripping with moisture. Gradually, the run of granite and brick homes of Stratford proper gave way to a collection of more rustic wooden houses, then the shops of the tradesmen, the public tavern, and then at last, the outskirts of town. They passed an abandoned well, then an old storehouse. A lichen-covered stone bridge took them over a creek, and when they reached the other side, the road disappeared and left them with a rutted cart path to follow through the wilderness of Connecticut.

“A moment, if you please,” Reverend Blakeman huffed, trying to catch his breath (for the clergyman indulged in his food and wine more than in his exercise).

Hawley took his hat off, gave it a shake, and plopped it back on his head. He seldom ventured this far from town. As he scanned the sweep of a flat, gray landscape, the waterlogged fields and miry bogs, the darkened clusters of wild pine trees all overrun with ivy, he satisfied himself that he’d be damned if he ever came back out here again.

“Hold there, Spurgle,” Hawley called ahead.

Spurgle came to a halt and circled back. His face and clothing were spattered from top to toe in wet muck, though he seemed to take no notice of it.

“Where’s this home of yours?” Hawley demanded.

“We’re here.”

Spurgle pointed to a plume of smoke in the sky. It trailed down to a hovel about a hundred yards off the cart path, a building that Hawley had earlier mistaken for a burned down animal stall. There was no pathway to reach it, so the three men had to wade through a field of overgrown heath. It was miserable walking. The land sloped down, and the further they went, the swampier the ground became. Shoes became stuck. Ankles were twisted. Reverend Blakeman’s pant leg tore on a thorn branch, and he very nearly cursed, but deftly transformed the invocation of his Lord’s name into an awkward prayer. They passed a few old tree stumps, evidence that once, long ago, there been a half-hearted effort to clear these grounds. But the beckoning forest that spanned beyond the house seemed poised to reclaim its land any day now.

Which, in Hawley’s estimation, would have been an improvement.

For as squalid as the farmstead was, the Spurgle farmhouse was positively decrepit. One hesitated to bestow the dignity of calling the structure a house, for it comprised of nothing more than four windowless walls of planks, logs, and slates that had been plied together. There was a fence, if one imagined a line of mismatched posts bearing the weight of some ancient sagging slats to be worthy of the claim, which enclosed a small expanse of land that was marginally drier than its surroundings. A length of rope served as a gate. It was there that Spurgle led them.

There were a few head of livestock within the enclosure—wandering about idly, sleeping, rooting at the ground in search of something edible—all in a condition that reflected the poverty of their proprietor. As the trio approached the pasture’s gateway, a passing breeze hit them with the smell of mold and offal. Hawley crinkled his nose, and Reverend Blakeman brought forth a handkerchief to cover the offensive stench.

“Are we not going to first retire inside?” the parson inquired through the cloth. “After such a long journey, I had rather hoped for some refreshment.”

Spurgle shot the gentleman a wary glare. “You expect me to feed the two of you?”

“Well …” Reverend Blakeman started.

“Oh, keep your larders, Spurgle,” Hawley snapped. He softened his tone a bit for the parson. “Sorry, Edward. When we’re finished, you and I shall return to the road and I’ll treat us to a night at the tavern. We’ll try some of that new Madeira wine. Heaven knows, we’ll have earned a bottle.”

Reverend Blakeman brightened at that prospect. He slipped his handkerchief back into his coat pocket. “Most generous, Your Honor.”

“As for you, Spurgle.” Hawley rounded on the farmer. “I’m about out of patience. You brought us out to your Godforsaken swamp. You told us there was proof of your neighbor’s witchcraft in your pasture. You said it was proof ‘as true as the Gospel.’ All right. We’re here. Let’s have it. Let’s see this so-called proof. And you’d better pray I find it convincing.”

The farmer jerked his head to indicate they should follow him further into the pasture.

“This way,” he said.

The grass beyond the gate, what little there was, grew in flimsy, dun-colored patches. They made their way around mounds of festering manure and fetid puddles of rainwater until they reached the far corner of the enclosure.

Standing perfectly upright, as if it had been awaiting their arrival, was a narrow column about the height of a very tall man.

Though it was stuck with leaves, and somewhat faded, an undertone of ivory still showed through and glistened pink in the dusk light. As they drew closer, Hawley could see that it was made of some granular substance, which, judging from the rivulets that had formed on its edges and the splotches of gray that dotted its top, was susceptible to the elements. The base spread into four legs, each of which was rooted firmly in the earth.

It was the most peculiar sight Samuel Hawley had ever beheld. Though the thing seemed harmless, there was something about the pillar (for that was what it brought to his mind) planted here in Spurgle’s swamp that left the justice of the peace a bit unnerved. A tiny shudder ran down his spine.

“What the devil is that?” he breathed.

“Ha!” Spurgle clapped his hands. “Y’see? Y’see? You said it yourself, your Honor. It’s just as you just said. Just as I told you. This—” He thumped a corner of the mound, sending a clump of slushy white powder tumbling down into the dirt. “—Is proof of the Devil’s work my neighbor did to me. This here is what’s left of my dear old Bess.”

“Your wife?” Reverend Blakeman ventured.

“If only,” he replied. “No, Bess was my prize possession. Finest dairy cow in the colony, and as good a milker as any of the King’s heifers. It was three nights ago she got cursed, right here before my eyes. There she was, my best cow, standing here on this very spot, minding her own business, just grazing away. I blink, and this wee blue man with a hung face shows up out of nowhere. He shook his head very slow at me and said, ‘This is for your neighbor.’ Then he touched Bess on her hind shank and—” He tried to snap his wet fingers. “Poof! She was this.”

The three of them regarded the column in the corner of the pasture. A gust of wind rustled the boughs of a nearby tree and sent down a wave of waterdrops. A beetle that had been poking about scurried for cover.

“You’re saying…this is your cow?” Hawley finally asked.

“It is.” Spurgle nodded firmly. He thought for a moment. “Though she was whiter three days ago. The column, I mean, not the cow. I haven’t touched her since, but as you can see, the weather’s not been too kind to her.”

“And a wee blue man sent by your neighbor did this…”

“He did.”

“Did the blue fellow say anything else to you?” Reverend Blakeman inquired.

Spurgle shook his head emphatically. “Not a thing.”

“Interesting.” The parson leaned close to the piling and extended a cautious finger. “Is that…salt?” He coated a fingertip and dared a taste on his bottom lip. “Why, it is!” He smacked his lips. “Quite fine, too.”

“Which means the grass’ll be ruined,” Spurgle groused. “I want that added to my judgment.”

Hawley said nothing, but stared at the pillar before him. That Spurgle could ever dream of concocting such an elaborate—and expensive—ruse to buttress his legal claim was out of the question. There must have been three hundred pounds of salt here, in a perfectly formed column. In a patch of grass in the middle of nowhere. With no explanation for its presence other than Spurgle’s “blue man,” which was, of course, ludicrous. Samuel Hawley was a sensible fellow and seldom baffled; he found the feeling more than a trifle annoying.

“I thought witches sent devils to transform their victims into toads, or cats, or salamanders, or some such,” he said. “Turning a cow into a condiment…I don’t know, it seems rather obtuse for a curse.”

The parson took another taste. “Actually, your Honor, there is some precedent here. In the Book of Ezra, I believe, the prophetess Deborah gave some sort of offense to God by turning around in an improper fashion.”

“That’s a sin?”

“Apparently. She was transformed into a pillar of salt for the transgression.”

Spurgle’s mouth stretched into a triumphant grin, but the parson quickly cut him off.

“Though it must be remembered, Deborah’s salinization was not due to witchcraft. It was Divine judgment.”

The farmer waved his hand, as if he were shooing off a fly. “That’s here nor there, Reverend. The point of the matter doesn’t change. My cow’s salt.”

“So it seems.” He helped himself to another taste of Bess. Hawley turned to Spurgle.

“And you claim your new neighbor is responsible for this?”

“I know it for certain. The blue man said as much.”

Hawley studied the column and thought to himself for a time. No matter how long he stared at the thing, the pillar remained just where it was, staring right back at him, so to speak, stubbornly refusing to not be there in plain sight. Spurgle began to grunt impatiently, while the parson stole another fingertip of the erstwhile animal.

“All right,” Hawley said at last. “I suppose since we’ve come all this way, we might as well talk with this neighbor of yours.”

* * *

About a mile into the swamp behind the Spurgle farmstead, in a place draped in moss and shadows, the trio came upon a cottage. Where Spurgle’s property was all at sixes and sevens and his house in utter shambles, here was a cozy-looking place, with an herb garden, and a little stable, and a newly painted fence, all of it as neat as a pin. Warm, buttery light seeped out from its windows. The front door held open by the property’s owner revealed a clean swept room, a polished table with cushioned chairs set around it, and a nice, cheery hearth fire built up for the evening.

The master of the house was a foreigner by the name of Hugh Krone. He was of some age between forty and fifty, with a stocky build and large round head crowned by a mane of long, gray hair. He had answered Hawley’s knock with a warm greeting for the justice and the parson. He was noticeably cool to his neighbor.

“Please to come in,” said Krone, wiping his hands on an apron. “I have food aplenty. We can share, yes?”

His accent was thick, but not impenetrable. Some manner of German, Hawley thought most likely.

“That’s very kind of you,” said Hawley, stepping inside. “But we don’t wish to intrude upon your supper. Not when we’ve come on business.”

They were settled into the chairs around the table, and at Krone’s insistence, given mugs of hearty ale to drink. Spurgle’s portion was noticeably smaller than the others.

As they engaged in the customary introductions and pleasantries, Krone lit a pipe for himself. The tobacco smoke swirled about his head and lent the room an even more pleasant ambience. The beer flowed freely (much of it into the parson’s tankard), and as they drank, Hawley took stock of their surroundings: solid, level floors; well-crafted oak furniture; a polished pewter tray hanging on the wall. The only thing out of the ordinary was a bookcase that held an unusually large quantity of books for a man who lived off the land. But to all other appearances, this was the house of a stolid, yeoman farmer.

Apparently, Krone was from the town of Augsburg and felt compelled to seek haven in Connecticut because of some sort of quarrel with a local nobleman over his religious leanings (of which it seemed neither the Roman nor the Lutheran Churches wholly approved). A “behmenist,” he described himself. Hawley had never heard of such a church, but Reverend Blakeman affirmed that Krone’s was a thoroughly acceptable sept of Protestantism. Though his English was stilted, Krone’s speech was, in all respects, kindly, gracious, and earnest. Indeed, it did not take long for Hawley to decide that he rather liked this fellow. Newcomers had been settling in the colony of late, and not all of them were Englishmen. But if the rest of Augsburg’s behmenists were as good and orderly as Hugh Krone, they would be made welcome in Stratford, and the more the merrier.

And yet, Hawley couldn’t help but notice that for all of Krone’s graciousness, whenever his gaze happened to fall on Spurgle, the German’s smiling face would lengthen, his bright eyes would harden, and his fulsome lips would curl into a frown.

Hawley decided he might as well broach the matter at hand.

“This has been delightful,” he declared. “And I do hope you will pay me a call the next time you have business in town.”

Krone bowed his head. “Of course.”

“Speaking of business, I suppose I should come to ours, since we’ve already taken so much of your time.”

“Yes, yes.” Krone nodded. He drew a long puff from his pipe. “You said you are come on business. What is it, Herr Justice?”

Hawley took a deep breath and spoke as briskly as he could to get through this.

“I’m afraid it concerns an allegation that has been raised in a court proceeding. I say an allegation, for it has not yet been proved, and it can only be proved by evidence that must convince Reverend Blakeman and I of its veracity beyond any reasonable doubt.”

“I see.” Krone darted a quick glance at Spurgle. “This, um, allegation, as you say, it has been made by Herr Spurgle, has it?”

“It has.”

“Ah.”

Hawley looked over at Spurgle, who, besides having fallen strangely silent, had assumed a position in his chair that gave every indication he was on the verge of bolting for the door. His bottom lip quivered, his feet shuffled on the floor, but he kept his arms folded defiantly across his chest.

“Of course, it’s not too late for Spurgle to withdraw his complaint,” Hawley prompted.

“Withdraw my…?”

“You don’t really want to go through with this, do you, Andrew?” asked Reverend Blakeman consolingly. “Witchcraft is a most sordid accusation. Can you not share some of the Christian charity that has just been shared with you?”

The farmer squirmed. He wrung his hands. But in the end, Spurgle’s surliness prevailed over whatever was the cause of his temporary squeamishness.

“No,” he finally spat. His voice slowly grew in volume. “I want justice for my Bess. And for the loss of my grass when she got made into salt. There’s devilry in the air here, you can feel it.” Spurgle fluttered his fingers through a tendril of Krone’s pipe smoke. “This man summoned a blue devil to curse my cow, and I’ll have justice for it!”

The cottage fell still. A log in the hearth crackled. A wave of orange embers floated up into the chimney. Krone blew out a contemplative cloud of smoke.

“Well…” he said, slitting his eyes and chewing on his pipe’s stem, “if Herr Spurgle says I sent a blue devil to curse him, it’s a lie.”

“A full denial. Excellent,” Hawley replied, relieved to have finished this ridiculous business so swiftly. He started to button his coat. “Since Krone has denied the charge, and as there’s no direct proof of his practicing witchcraft, our work is done here. Thank you for your hospitali—”

“—It’s a lie,” Krone continued, still holding Spurgle in his gaze, “because I never work with devils. They do business like Herr Spurgle. Always try to cheat you. I work only with holy spirits. That’s how I curse him.”

Hawley slumped back into his seat, at a loss for words. Fortunately, the parson intervened:

“Let us make certain we are not misconstruing our gracious host’s meaning, your Honor. As I understand what you’ve just said, Hugh, you fully renounce working with the Devil.”

“Of course!” he declared.

“Good, good. You then stated that you work solely with God’s Holy Spirit, an article of faith that any good Christian would profess.”

“Um, yes.” Krone’s reply seemed somewhat more tepid. “I work with a holy spirit.”

“Now let us clarify the final part of your statement. What many call a ‘curse’ is more often than not simply instantiation of hard feelings. Am I right to infer there has been some recent disagreement between you and your neighbor?”

“Oh, yes, Herr Reverend.” Krone raised two fingers and wiggled them accusingly at Spurgle. “He borrowed two of my asses. Good, hard-working asses. But he never gave them back. He stole—”

“Now that’s a lie!” Spurgle shouted. “I left them donkeys right where you said to. Not my fault they wandered off.”

The German’s cheeks flushed red.

“You lie! Und du bist ein arschloch!”

“Order!” Hawley rapped a nearby table’s edge with his knuckles. “Order here!” Now that the conversation had devolved into two farmers yelling at each other about their livestock, the justice felt like he was back on more familiar ground. He addressed Krone directly. “So if I understand correctly, Spurgle here borrowed two of your asses, you didn’t get them back, and you prayed that God would curse him. All right.” He cocked a half-smile at the parson. “There’s no witchcraft in that, is there, Reverend?”

“Not so much as a whiff,” Reverend Blakeman beamed. “We’d have to hang half the town, if it were.”

“But—but my Bess—” Spurgle started. “The—the salt thing …”

“Bess must have wandered off, too,” Hawley replied archly. “Perhaps she followed the same path as Krone’s asses. As for the salt …”

Though it was certainly strange and quite puzzling, solving the mystery of a how a pillar of salt came to manifest itself in Andrew Spurgle’s pasture was not one the justice of the peace felt inclined to expend any further work on. He had done his duty. And it had already been a long day.

So he simply shrugged.

Reverend Blakeman joined him.

And the matter of Spurgle versus Krone would have ended there and then if the German, who truly was an unbendingly honest fellow, hadn’t spoken up.

“Actually, mein herren,” he said somewhat awkwardly, “the salt was witchcraft.”

“Oh, damn it all.”

Hawley, Spurgle, and Krone turned their heads in surprise at the parson’s language.

“Sorry.” He hid his face behind a long draught from his beer mug.

Krone relit his pipe from the hearth. “I work with a spirit,” he explained, “to get my asses back. But he couldn’t find them. I think when he couldn’t find asses, he did, how you say, justice on Herr Spurgle’s cow.” He sat back down and let out a line of smoke from his nose. “I’m sorry for that. The cow was mangy and old, but she should not have got turned to salt.”

Spurgle started to say something, but Reverend Blakeman cut over him. He huddled close to Krone and spoke in the most pastoral voice a man could muster. “My dear fellow, I fear you may not fully appreciate the severity of what you are saying. I fear you do not realize the consequences that have historically attended a confession to witchcraft. It’s a dreadful, draconian punishment that his Honor and I very much hope to avoid imposing.”

“He’s gonna hang,” Spurgle muttered under his breath.

“Shut it,” Hawley warned.

“I fear,” the parson said, “you are unwittingly jeopardizing yourself before the law through the simple accidents of translation between your native tongue and ours. Yes, that’s assuredly what’s happened here. You simply misunderstand us. Which in a certain light could be likened to feebleness.” Reverend Blakeman settled his hands on his knees and faced Hawley. “Your Honor, I’m prepared to deem Hugh Krone a simpleton, a feeble-minded man, such that he should be placed beyond the reach of prosecution in this matter.”

“Yes, yes,” Hawley readily agreed. He shot up from his chair before anything else could go wrong. “Thank you, Reverend. He’s a simpleton. Case closed.”

“No!”

Hawley and Reverend Blakeman hadn’t made it two steps towards the door.

“No,” Krone repeated. His pipe fumed indignantly. “Ich bin nicht einfaltspinsel. I’m not a fool. You wait.”

He began to bustle about his cottage, plucking various items from drawers and shelves—a book, a bundle of candles, the pewter plate from his wall, his pouch of tobacco.

“What are—what are you doing?” Hawley asked warily.

The German spread the things upon the table. With a puff of smoke and a determined gleam in his eye, he replied:

“I show you.”

* * *

No number of pleas or amount of persuasion would dissuade Krone from quitting himself of Reverend Blakeman’s assignation of feeble-mindedness, well meant as it was. As the German arranged his implements in place, Hawley couldn’t decide which was worse: that an honest man’s stubbornness was likely going to put his neck in a noose, or that a crooked man stood to profit from it. Spurgle positively basked in a glow of self-satisfaction. Hawley clenched his jaw, while Reverend Blakeman downed his third mug of ale. For neither gentleman could, in good conscience or in any sense of duty, forbid Krone from proving his guilt of a crime they were charged with enforcing. It was his duty to watch the farce Krone seemed bound and determined to show him, just as it would be his duty to punish him for it.

Hawley heaved a heavy sigh.

“Now, gentlemen,” said Krone, “I ask you for to be quiet. The summoning begins.”

The German nudged at the pewter plate, angling it until he was satisfied that its position within a circle of nine burning candles was satisfactory. Their light reflected from the metal in a strange blur of amber. Then Krone withdrew his pipe from his mouth, and with the burning end of the stummel, encircled the arrangement thrice, wreathing the air above with gray, sweet-smelling smoke. As he performed this motion, Krone’s eyes fluttered, and his lips tremored with incantations in his guttural language:

“Süden, norden, westen, osten…”

“He names the four Gospels in the German tongue,” Reverend Blakeman whispered in Hawley’s ear. The smell of ale was thick on the parson’s breath.

“Michael, Gabriele, Uriel, Rafael…”

“And now he assigns the animals associated therewith,” the reverend slurred. “Most fascinating.”

“Kommen sie herein, Jacob, im Namen des Vaters und des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes. Ich rufe euch…”

The Teutonic entreaty droned on for a quarter of an hour. Strange names were uttered, enigmatic hand gestures were made, candle wax began to pool around the edge of the plate. Whenever he paused for breath, Krone would exhale another puff of tobacco, which slowly drew a curtain of smoke over the table. Through the haze, Reverend Blakeman watched on with mild, scholastic interest, while Hawley feigned attention, resting his chin in his hand. Spurgle seemed somewhat troubled. His face oscillated between a greedy leer and something on the verge of foreboding.

At last, the ritual came to a close. Krone rose from his chair and lifted his eyes to the ceiling and chanted the final cadence:

“Kommen sie, Jacob. Kommen sie herein.

Amen, und amen, und so lass es sein.”

With that, Krone blew thrice into his pipe. On the third puff, a tiny spark flittered up from within the pipe’s bowl and drifted back down toward the pewter plate.

“My soul!” Reverend Blakeman exclaimed.

Spurgle let out a fretful groan.

Hawley sat in stunned silence.

Before his eyes, the pipe’s ember grew and slowly shaped itself into a flame, not unlike the surrounding candles, but with a blue tinge in its glow. By the time it landed on the plate’s surface, the azure light had stretched in size to a hand’s span and sprouted limbs and a head in miniature. Hawley watched, scarcely able to breathe, as the warbling fire settled into a glowing blue figure, a mild-looking gentleman with a high forehead, a somber face, and a set of clothes that, though tailored from a fine cloth, were somewhat out of fashion.

The three men gazed down upon the newcomer.

“That’s ‘im,” Spurgle finally breathed. “That’s the one who got my Bess.”

The figure shot a disdainful glare at the farmer, fixed his glowing coat, and addressed Krone:

“Gruß dich, mein sohn. Was ist los?”

The little gentleman’s voice was as wondrous as his appearance. It sounded with a faint echo, as if he were haling from a ship far out at anchor, and yet the sound was sufficient such that none at the table strained to hear him. His words had a tingling effect in Hawley’s ears, not at all unpleasant, as pleasing to listen to as the aroma of fine pipe smoke was to smell.

“Auf Englisch, bitte,” Krone replied to the apparition, indicating his companions.

At once, the blue gentleman transitioned to a flawless, if slightly accented, English.

“And a good evening to you two gentlemen.” He paused before he acknowledged the farmer. “Spurgle.”

The realization that this apparition, this figment, this impossibility had just bowed and addressed him directly, nearly caused Hawley to faint. The blood drained from the justice’s face, and every thought in his head came tumbling out. Indeed, he might have been unmanned right there were it not for Reverend Blakeman, whose past studies (or present inebriation) must have fortified his courage for a situation such as the one at hand. The parson responded with as much of a bow as he could manage, given the newcomer’s proportions.

“A good evening to you, sir. May I inquire, good spirit, what is your name?”

“Jacob Boehme,” the figure announced, “at your service.”

The glow in Reverend Blakeman’s cheeks brightened. “Not Jacob Boehme, the Prussian mystic?”

“You honor me by remembering my name,” the miniature spirit replied, dipping his head. “And in life, there were some who called me a mystic. Alas, I was not Prussian, but a humble shoemaker from Görlitz.”

Krone seemed exceedingly pleased that Reverend Blakeman recognized the spirit he had summoned. His face wreathed with a broad smile, he introduced the ghost of Jacob Boehme to His Honor Samuel Hawley and the Reverend Blakeman. To the latter, Krone said: “If you know Jacob’s writings, Herr Reverend, you know he was a most holy man. And so a most holy spirit.”

“Oh, without question,” Reverend Blakeman agreed. “I am honored to make his acquaintance.” He nudged Hawley in the side, which gave the justice of the peace a start.

“What?” he hissed.

“This was well worth a walk in the mud, Samuel. My seminary professor would have given his eyeteeth for the chance to speak to the spirit of Jacob Boehme.”

Hawley’s head was still spinning, but he managed to nod at his companion.

“Devil or not,” Spurgle’s voice tremored as he pointed to the apparition, “that little man cost me my prize cow. You see him now for yourself, Your Honor. There’s all the proof you need. If you’re not gonna hang Krone for summoning him, at least give me justice for what he did.”

“Justice, indeed,” the faint, indignant voice of Boehme murmured. He drew himself to the fullest of his diminutive height and asked Hawley: “Are you here in your capacity as the local magistrate, Your Honor?”

Hawley gave another start. The ghost waited patiently, his bluish glow as unwavering as it was unnerving. But now that the apparition had put a question to him, Hawley finally felt his senses beginning to return. Speaking to the spirit of a departed mystic on a plate of pewter would have been a surreal experience for any man, but Samuel Hawley knew what he was and what he was here for. He was a gentleman, and he was the local magistrate, and he was indeed presiding over a court proceeding of sorts.

“I—I am,” he managed to answer.

“Very good.” The spirit of Boehme rubbed his spectral chin thoughtfully. “May I further presume that I’ve been summoned to give testimony?”

Krone replied at once.

“That is exactly why I called you for. Ask Jacob anything, Your Honor. He speaks only truth. A holy spirit can only speak truly, is that not so, Herr Reverend?”

“I should expect nothing but the truth from such a famous writer,” the parson replied.

“Ask him what he did. He shall tell you. And then.” Krone arched an eyebrow at Hawley. “You judge for yourself. If what has been done is for evil or good. If it is fair or verboten. Go on. Ask him.”

“All right.” Hawley swallowed. His voice sounded thin and distant in his ears, but if the church’s minister and two farmers could keep their wits in the presence of a specter, the town’s justice of the peace had a duty to keep his. “Can you— Can you tell us what you…what you were doing three days ago?”

“Turning Spurgle’s cow into a pillar of salt.”

“Ha!” Spurgle beamed. “Straight from the devil’s mouth!”

“Which I can explain, your Honor,” Boehme continued. “If you will indulge me for two minutes—”

“Which’ll be stuff and lies!” Spurgle cut over him. “Why should you listen to that-that thing’s nonsense when he’s just confessed to his crime?”

“Shut it, Spurgle!” Reverend Blakeman gave a firm smack to the side of Spurgle’s red head. The farmer winced and glowered, but slunk back down in his seat, muttering to himself. “Pray continue, Herr Boehme.”

The apparition settled itself on the plate and crossed its legs, as if it were sitting upon an invisible chair. Hawley listened as the spirit of Boehme told his tale:

“Thank you, Herr Reverend. I should say at the outset, Hugh Krone is a friend of mine. He is honest, hard-working, and, most importantly, he’s read all of my books. Quite closely. He alone found and followed the trail of breadcrumbs I sprinkled through my second volume of Mysterium Magnum, and after only a few attempts, mastered the secret incantations that brought my spirit back here, to the mundane world.” Boehme smiled wistfully. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed the place. Especially the smell of pipe smoke. I always enjoyed pipes back in my shoemaking days.”

Krone blew an obliging puff in the spirit’s direction.

“Delicious…” Boehme sighed. “Anyhow, when my friend here complained about a problem he was having with his neighbor, I was only too happy to offer him my assistance.”

“Oh,” Reverend Blakeman interjected. “And what kind of assistance may a spirit of your nature provide?”

Boehme’s penumbra of blue light darkened to a warning shade of indigo as he lowered his voice:

“I can see things. And I can change things.”

The parson didn’t press the point further, but took another sip of his ale.

“It seemed,” Boehme continued, “that Herr Krone’s neighbor, Spurgle, had borrowed two of his asses some time ago, but had neither returned them nor offered to recompense Herr Krone for their loss. Spurgle offered all manner of paltry excuses, but it was readily apparent the man had simply stolen the animals. Being a foreigner in a foreign land, Herr Krone was understandably reluctant to bring the matter into court. And so he asked me to help him find his asses.

“I roamed the forests. I consulted the winds. I read the portents and scryed the shadows.” He paused meaningfully, and Hawley thought he detected a tiny smirk playing at the corner of the little ghost’s mouth. “I found a crumpled up Hartford merchant’s note in Spurgle’s wastebin acknowledging receipt of two male asses and their tack for the sum of thirty-seven shillings, six pence.”

“All lies,” Spurgle muttered half-heartedly. “Could’ve been anyone’s two asses.”

“Indeed.” The spirit leveled an icy glare at Spurgle. “It was obvious Spurgle had sold the beasts as his own. They were gone and there would be no retrieving them without a lawsuit. So I spoke to Spurgle about the matter.”

Spurgle stammered and sputtered. Hawley rounded on him.

“You never said you had a conversation with the spirit. That’s quite an omission, Spurgle.”

“Must’ve—must’ve slipped my memory.”

“I rather doubt that,” the spirit said evenly. “I gave Spurgle every opportunity to rectify the wrong he had done to my friend. I warned him of the dire consequences that would come.” Boehme blew out a frustrated sigh. “But he’s a spurgly Spurgle. Said he never takes tongue-wagging from any man, live or dead. Said he’d be damned before he paid so much as a farthing on account of a ‘bitty blue blackguard’ like me. He said…well, much of what he said isn’t fit to be repeated in the presence of clergy. Suffice to say, Spurgle was completely unwilling to acknowledge his culpability. That was when the idea occurred to me to invoke a punishment from Scripture, a marker that, no doubt, Herr Reverend readily apprehended.”

“I did indeed.” Reverend Blakeman hoisted his mug in salute and sloshed some of its contents on his coat. “The old pillar of salt affliction from the Book of Leviticus.”

“Genesis, mein Herr,” Boehme corrected. “Yes. The pillar seemed fitting at the time. By my reckoning, my friend had lost two head of his livestock, so Spurgle should be deprived of one of his. I stormed into his pasture and came upon his cow, the saddest, scraggliest animal ever to draw breath. Poor dear. I gave Spurgle one final warning, and when he would not relent…well, you’ve seen my handiwork.”

“Exceptionally good salt,” Reverend Blakeman declared. “I’ve never tasted better.”

“Danke schön.” The spirit stood and spread his ethereal arms to Hawley, as if he were a barrister delivering a closing statement. “If what I’ve done has offended any laws or ordinances, Herr Justice, I humbly beg your forgiveness and ask that you not hold my misdeed against Herr Krone. All I can say in my defense is that relieving that cow of its misery, and Spurgle from his property, seemed a just result all around.”

Spurgle thumped the table with his fist. “It was thievery, was what it was!”

“You’re the thief!” Krone countered. “Wo sind meine Esel? Dieb! Schurke!”

“Who the hell’re you calling a shirker?”

“Now, now, we’re all Christians here,” Reverend Blakeman pleaded. He covered his beer mug as Krone sidled past him. “Mind my drink…”

“Hund!”

Spurgle put up his fists. “Bastard!”

The two men were up from their chairs and would have come to blows had not two things occurred.

First, Justice Hawley bellowed for order. And then the room filled with a blinding, dazzling blue glow. The men shielded their eyes from its intensity. When the light in Krone’s cottage finally settled back to nothing more the candles and hearth fire, and the mortals at the table had returned to their seats and rubbed away the stars floating in their vision, Boehme spoke softly and somewhat apologetically.

“Forgive me, Your Honor. I was only trying to help.”

“Not at all.” Hawley waved in what he thought was Boehme’s direction with one hand while he massaged his eyes with the other. He blinked a few times until his vision refocused, and when it was clear that the three men and the spirit gathered around the table were in good order, the justice of the peace delivered his judgment:

“Well,” he began somewhat haltingly. “This has been…an unusual case. What started as a charge of witchcraft turned into a claim of conversion, and ended in a counterclaim of theft. The court heard the testimony of Andrew Spurgle, and Hugh Krone, and—since I’m not aware of any law that precludes the testimony of a departed spirit—Jacob Boehme. The court has weighed all of this evidence most carefully.”

Hawley’s words began to flow more easily. Somehow, the fantastic events he had witnessed this evening seemed…less fantastic as he ran them through the cold press of the law’s logic. Indeed, the proper resolution to this case was perfectly plain to him, now that he was thinking about it in legal terms.

“Mr. Boehme,” he continued, “there is a measure of justice in what you did. You were engaged to retrieve two asses for your friend, said asses were gone due to another’s wrongdoing, and so you turned the wrongdoer’s aged cow into a pillar of salt. Quite sensible. But under the laws of England, that was the wrong remedy. What you inflicted, Mr. Boehme, was retribution, not restitution. And at bottom, this is more of a civil matter, not a criminal one.”

The spirit of Jacob Boehme dipped his chin a fraction of an inch before the majesty of English law.

“That said.” Hawley turned to Spurgle, who had, by now no doubt, gathered that he would not be given any satisfaction from his lawsuit. The farmer sat sullenly, glaring at his tablemates. “That said, if we count the cow against the ass, the account still stands against Spurgle. Mr. Krone is out one ass. The court finds that Andrew Spurgle is indebted to Hugh Krone in the amount of one male ass, for which judgment shall be entered and let execution issue.”

The cottage fell still. The candle flames around Boehme’s pewter dish guttered. Outside in the night, a crow called in a distant tree. Andrew Spurgle got up from his chair and kicked it aside.

“I ain’t payin’ it,” he growled. “I said I’d be damned before I paid a farthing to you. And I meant it. To hell with you, ghost. To hell with all of you.”

Spurgle spat on the pewter dish and spun on his heel to storm out of the room. Boehme cast a sideways look towards Hawley. The spirit had an expectant expression, as if to indicate His Honor need only give the word.

“And I said,” Hawley repeated, “let execution issue.”

Boehme smiled. A second explosion of blue light burst inside Krone’s cottage.

When it settled, in the place where a moment earlier Andrew Spurgle had been, there was now an ass. A full grown standard red, with sturdy flanks, a glossy auburn coat, and a freshly brushed mane. The donkey gazed dumbly at the remaining men in the cottage room, and then it quietly dropped its nose to root for something to eat on the floor.

Reverend was the first to break the silence:

“Well done, Herr Boehme.” He clapped his hands in applause. “Very well done. You’ve made him into a far better ass than he ever was before.”

Steve, Chuck, and the Man from F.A.M.E.

John D. Martin

I had pulled my red Mercedes SLK off the country two-lane and onto the shoulder. It was just then that Schuchuluk´s holographic personal image generator (HPIG for short) finally gave out. I call him Chuck, his cover identity for public appearances being “Reverend Chuck Malone” of Albany, New York, and all. Chuck’s device had been glitching for hours, ever since we had gone fishing in Lake Monroe using traditional Ichthoid hand-nets. Yes, you could catch bass that way, turns out. The flashing blue lights of the Monroe County Sheriff Department patrol car lit up behind us and filled my rearview mirror. Chuck let out an almost human sigh.

“Steve,” he said, his Ichthoid accent slurring the “S” a bit into an “SH” so he sounded almost German, “I’m starting to think flooring it on that curve was a bad idea.”

I shrugged. “I didn´t think. I just hoped he wasn´t after us, right? I mean, nobody takes that curve at over a hundred. Nobody.”

“Except you and that sheriff,” Chuck corrected, with a light touch of the upbraid.

“Well, I did pull over when I thought of it,” I almost whined, defensively.

“When you thought of it,” Chuck chided, this time clear reproach in his voice. That ground my gears a bit. I had been speeding to get him to the Indianapolis airport on time. The Ichthoid Diplomatic Mission to Earth had called him back to their compound in New York, and Indianapolis International Airport was the nearest one with a representation from their government that could get him there on time using one of their magnetic propulsion fliers. By the time Chuck and I had gotten off the lake and packed all the fishing gear, well, we needed to be speeding up the county and state roads toward Interstate 69. It was just after sundown, at least, which decreased the likelihood that anyone would get a good enough look at Chuck to see what he really was.

Only the sheriff had been hiding between rotting remains of farmhouses along that county road and the chase had been on. Not that I really tried to evade him, just discourage him a bit. Yes, even professors do dumb things. You can take the redneck raised on Burt Reynolds movies off the farm, but you can´t…you know.

Keeping my hands on the steering wheel, I turned to look at Chuck. He was in his bib overalls and Buchanan tartan flannel shirt, the plain, black horn-rimmed glasses looking incongruous on his bass-like, scaled face. His startlingly green, human-like eyes were clouded with worry.

“No rebooting that thing, is there?” I asked, hoping maybe we could convince his high-tech disguise to work long enough for us to talk the sheriff into giving me a really big ticket, a court date, and letting things go, at that. If County Mounty Joe Huckleberry just saw my old fishing buddy from Detroit, the Right Reverend Chuck Malone, sitting next to me, we might just get out of this all right. But if he saw a member of the Ichthoid Diplomatic Corps in his natural form, well, things could escalate.

“Nope. No idea what´s wrong with it. Completely waterproof! Heh! My dropped scales,” he muttered in disgust.

Those blue lights were still flashing, and I heard the door of the patrol car open.

“It´s all right,” I muttered, “I´m a professor with a government connection. He may even have seen me on TV. And you´re an alien diplomat, for God’s sake. He´ll understand. He´ll cut us some slack.”

Chuck looked up and started praying in the Shtalkan dialect of Common Ichthoid, invoking the name of the “Father of all good waters” repeatedly. With the raised hands and the soft ululations, he could have been a COGIC pastor. Except for the webbed, clawed hands, the scales, vestigial fins, and other obviously fish-like features, that is.

Me? I put my hands on the steering wheel where representative from the local constabulary could see them.

“Good evening. Do you know why I pulled you over?” The officer, a tall Hispanic-looking man, stood a couple of feet from the car when he addressed me. He looked to be in his forties, in good shape, though his uniform was a touch on the rumpled side.

“Speeding?” I asked, trying to sound casually calm. Chuck, meanwhile, had fallen silent and sunk as far back into his reclining bucket seat as his bulk allowed.

“Yeah, and then some. This ain´t the Autobahn, buddy. With that maneuver on the curve back there, I´m afraid I have to tack on reckless driving, and…you weren´t trying to shake me, were you?” the sheriff asked.

“Farthest thing from my mind,” I said, and that was honest. I had only been thinking about beating the land speed record between Needmore and Indianapolis.

He pulled out a handheld, leaned to look in the car and said, “I´ll need to see your license, registration and …” That was when he got his first clear look at Chuck, and shouted, “Good Lord, that´s an Ichthoid!”

Chuck started praying faster but more quietly, and the sheriff quick-stepped back a few steps from the car, his hand reflexively reaching for his sidearm, while I stammered, “He´s a visitor from their embassy. We work together. I can explain, Officer. My name is Steve Eichstätter. I wrote two…”

“I know who you are, Professor.” The sheriff, regaining his composure, cut me off. “You`ve been on TV enough. License and registration, sir.” Now I could see his name tag read “Rojas,” and he took a moment to flash a light into the car, giving him a good look at me and Chuck.

“So that´s not a suit, there, Rico Browning?” Sheriff Rojas asked Chuck, who snort-laughed as only an alien fishman can.

“Rico Browning? I wish. With this gut?” He patted his paunch, and smiled.

I handed the sheriff my license and registration (in its tidy, transparent plastic sleeve) and tried to keep from sinking through my seat from sheer embarrassment.

“You got that reference? Do you guys study our culture in that much detail?” Rojas asked Chuck as he took my documents.

“Yes, we do,” Chuck answered. “And it was Steve here who introduced me to the old films. What your entertainers did with the primitive technology at their disposal? That was impressive.”

“I thought you Ichthoids were restricted to staying on your embassy grounds? Wasn´t that the agreement the two governments reached? I mean, after the UN decided to let you land where you wanted.” Sheriff Rojas´s question was valid. Most people in the US, and the world, for that matter, did have the impression that our scaly visitors were confined to the embassy in New York.

“We can go out on leave; we can travel for official business. But by law we´re required to disguise ourselves with these projectors. You know, some of your people rather…what´s the phrase, freak right out when they see one of us on the streets? Well, my projector burned out, and, as you can see…” Chuck lowered his glasses and looked across the car, past me to the Sheriff, who was looking over my registration. Then his face turned a dark ultramarine color, one I knew signaled strong distress in an Ichthoid.

“Chuck, what´s wrong?” I asked.

“Travel plan,” he said, almost gasping. “I forgot to file a travel plan. Or a schedule. Unplanned travel, then with my real appearance becoming visible to humans? I think that might be a…how to put this…crime. A rules violation, at least. This might be bad.”

“Increíble,” I muttered, straightening up in my seat. “You mean, all Memorial Day weekend, since Thursday night now, four freakin´ days now, you´ve been AWOL?”

Now it Schuchuluk´s turn to try sinking through his reclining bucket seat.

Sheriff Rojas frowned. “I really wish you hadn´t said that, sir.” His tone had shifted from polite and friendly to flat and officious, almost frosty. “I have to call this in, anyway, and now I have to mention we may have an alien criminal in custody.”

“Criminal? Criminal?” Chuck stammered. “But it was an equipment failure. I´m not at fault, here. Let me call them. I can explain, honored agent of the law.”

But the Sheriff had already walked away.

“It´s not my fault,” Chuck whispered. “Steve, I´m sorry about this. I´ll call the embassy. We´ll straighten this all out. The waters will settle.”

He continued trying to mollify me while my mind painted increasingly panicked, lurid imaginings of just how wrong things could possibly go, most of them ending with Chuck and me being detained by the DHS at a “undisclosed location” for violation of the “Non-human Aliens Settlement and Residence Act” or “Non-human Aliens Transport Act” or some similar piece of bureaucratic paranoia given legislative life.

The minutes that stretched on while we waited for Sheriff Rojas to return from his patrol car were loaded with that special kind of negative tension that you only feel when expecting bad news, punishment, or both. Chuck started quietly muttering his prayers again and I started humming Gillespie´s “Salt Peanuts,” then whistling it, which prompted Chuck to give me his worst scowl. We both quieted down when we heard Rojas approaching. With a scowl of his own, he returned my license and registration.

“Wait until I pull in front of you, then follow me,” he instructed. “Your traffic citation just became the least of your problems. F.A.M.E. wants to talk to you. They´re sending an agent to meet you in my office.”

The Federal Agency for Monitoring of Extraterrestrials. Oh, joy. This fishing trip had just landed well and properly in the crapper.

I had, lamentably, endured contact with F.A.M.E. before in the course of my work as the chief linguist in the Ichthoid translations project. I had been the lead on the team compiling the dictionaries of Sthalkan and Urulu dialects and had created the Latin transcription system for those two dialects and Werelleujan. That covered the three main languages of the species we call Ichthoids, who call themselves various other names: Owerell, Ashatli, Ulu, Tethna, and so forth. And in each project, I had the bureaucratic roaches of F.A.M.E. crawling up my back to “assure that my own ideological biases were not coloring the standard English and Spanish translations of key Ichthoid vocabulary.”

And now one of them, Agent Andrew Spurgle, was sitting behind Sheriff Rojas´s commandeered desk, flipping through papers he had clumsily extracted from a black nylon messenger bag. He was creating quite a stack on the desktop around the sheriff´s keyboard, piling documents up right in front of one of those adult sippy cups full of hot beverage with cardboard sleeve wrapped about the cup´s midsection. Chuck and I remained silent, but exchanged nervous glances. Experience had taught both of us that, when dealing with the odious parasites, or, rather, the dedicated and clear-thinking public servants who made up F.A.M.E., it was best to let them open the conversation.

“So, you´re the Dr. Eichstätter who deliberately translated two Ichthoid lexicons in the most cis-normative way possible, in order to exclude our most protected classes,” Spurgle almost snarled, not looking up from his papers.

I thought for a moment of my options. What to say.

“Begging the honored official´s pardon most sincerely, but the term you just used is both regressive and unscientific,” I began. “All the terminology we used in our lexicons had to pass the approval of the linguistic consulting council of the respective dialects. Every single word of it, including ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘offspring’ and the rejection of vocabulary based on absurd denials of biological reality.”

That got Agent Spurgle to look up suddenly. As he turned the points of his now dagger-sharp eyes at the two of us, he whipped his right hand through the air to aim an index finger at me, striking the coffee cup. As he began to shout, his coffee began streaming out onto the papers he had been unpacking.

“You have been manipulating the English our advanced alien guests are then forced to use to communicate with us,” he nearly screamed, emphasizing the “manipulating” and “forced” with stabs of that finger, and continued in that vein for several seconds, until he finally noticed the coffee. Then he hastily tipped the cup back into vertical alignment, rescued his papers from the tabletop lake of rapidly cooling brown fluid, ran to the door and shouted for someone to “bring me some goddamn paper towel,” tripped on the way back to the desk, and almost put his dripping stack of paper back in the pool.

Chuck and I looked each other in the eyes, and each of us could see the barely concealed mirth behind the other´s gaze. Working with the Ichthoids has taught me many things, but among the most valuable is that some elements of humor appear to be universal among intelligent species.

We waited until the sheriff department´s administrative assistant, a mostly bald man in his thirties whose remaining hair was coal black, had popped in, handed Agent Spurgle his requested roll of the quicker picker-upper, and offered to help him dry out the soaked documents.

“You can´t. They´re F.A.M.E.-only documents. Classified,” he didn´t quite yell at the poor fellow, but the assistant did flinch. The office was not large. Spurgle took the dripping papers to the side and spent at least two minutes dabbing them drier while the administrative assistant cleaned up the mess on the borrowed desk. Once he and the assistant had brought the office back into some semblance of order, Spurgle sat down again, and asked, “Well? No response? To the charges?”

Now we both looked at the man from F.A.M.E. Which of us appeared more baffled—me or Chuck—is a matter that could only be decided by freeze-frame analysis.

“What charges? You blathered some ideologically tinged insults, but not one of them was a legal charge of any kind,” I responded. Diplomatic and all, you know.

“Blathered?” This time he did shout. Loud enough to draw some looks from the deputy standing in front of the glass window outside the room.

“Yes, blathered. And, I must add,” Chuck chimed in, “not a thing in your accusatory statements was true. I´m the lead native speaker informant for ethics, philosophy, and theology, and not a…”

“Charges? You want to hear the charges?” Spurgle ignored Chuck´s response, bringing his voice back down into a quieter register. He picked up one of the rescued documents and began reading. “On Thursday night, you picked up the Ichthoid known under the human name of Charles Malone…”

“That´s Reverend Charles Malone,” Chuck corrected him. “The title is important.”

“No, it isn´t” Spurgle hissed before continuing. “And I was talking to Dr. Eichstätter. You picked up the being known as Charles Malone, also known as Schuchtuluk, from the airport, in violation of the Interstate Transport of Extraterrestrial Entities Act, kept him at your private residence without registering his presence with the police, in violation of the Non-human Aliens Settlement and Residence Act, endangered that extraterrestrial´s life in a high-speed chase in violation of the Non-human Aliens Transport Act, and exposed the extraterrestrial to possible violence by facilitating the perception of his true appearance in public places. That`s at least three felonies, professor. The traffic violations are the least of your problems. It will be my pleasure to explain the charges in detail, and officially file the report charging you.”

He ended his diatribe with a smug tone in his voice, and it took a good minute before I could respond with, “The transport began in New York and was approved, not flagged, by boarding personnel at two airports. Chuck´s ID is flagged as Ichthoid, so if anyone violated the first of those acts, it was the F.A.M.E. agents who failed to stop him in Newark or Indianapolis. There was no Residence Act violation, since he was only in my house for a fishing trip Memorial Day Weekend, and that at his initiation. He wasn´t getting mail there or registering it as his new private dwelling. Endangerment? The charge has yet to be even established. Sheriff Rojas only mentioned ‘possible’ reckless driving.”

“And as for ‘exposing the extraterrestrial to violence,’ because my holo-projector had fritzed out—no offense,” Chuck interjected, with a quick look at me, “that´s just nonsense. There was nothing either of us could do anything about. I mean, my unit just stopped working.”

“Did it just quit? Just like that? Let me see your HPIG,” Spurgle demanded.

Chuck shrugged, fished in the hip pocket of his bibs, and pulled out a silver coiled armband of about eight inches in length. It had what appeared to red and blue glass beads, about the size of marbles, embedded in the metal at both ends and a green bead of a larger size and elliptical shape in the middle. Chuck stood, extended the HPIG to Agent Spurgle, and, before either of us could stop him, that blithering idiot—that is, the dedicated federal employee slapped the unit onto his own left arm, pressed the green button, and for about two seconds, Chuck and I saw him as Chuck´s human identity: the Right Reverend Charles Malone of Albany, New York, attired still in the last setting Chuck had used, a tasteful dark blue pinstripe suit with a light-blue pinpoint Oxford shirt and a very red tie.

Spurgle had enough time to hold up his hands and say, “It does work. You lied!”

The image of my friend and colleague´s alter-ego blinked out and the HPIG caught fire, igniting the sleeve of the F.A.M.E. agent’s own considerably less tasteful, not-bespoke suit. He yelled, flailed his arm around for a minute and, amphibious fish-like humanitarian that he is, Chuck dashed over to help him. He put the fire out by dumping what was left of Spurgle´s coffee on his arm and then spitting on it, before removing the now-blackened and spittle-coated HPIG.

Ichthoid spittle, for those not in the know, is very liquid, and when intentionally released, always comes in copious quantities, approximately a quart at a time. I remained in my chair for all of this, not wanting to give Mr. Public Service there any further reason to charge me with offenses of a criminal, civil or administrative nature. At least the fire was out.

The man from F.A.M.E. looked at my only non-human friend with a gaze that was unmistakably murderous when, before anyone could move, the door opened. It was Sheriff Rojas. He only paused long enough to get a good look at the scene before telling Chuck and me that our presence was requested in their conference room. The Ichthoid Embassy´s Deputy Legal Counsel for Human-Ichthoid Affairs had arrived, and she wanted to speak with us. Only us. Spurgle sputtered his objections, but Rojas insisted that Chuck and I accompany him. We did.

Like the Sheriff´s own office, the conference room had paneled wood walls and a door that had a clear glass panel making up its upper two-thirds, then clear glass. The conference table and the walls, the whiteboard, and all the usual trappings were unremarkable. But the woman waiting for us at the far end of the table, even in that light, even through the glass, she was an eyecatcher. Dark haired, early thirties, likely, in a blue-green blazer and skirt that worked wonders.

“Who´s the smoke show, Chuck?” I asked quietly. “That isn´t the Embassy’s Deputy Counsel. I´ve met her. Unless she´s changed HPIGs.” From what I understood, the holograms the devices generated were person-specific and could not be altered. The person I was expecting to see had appeared as a stocky, grandmotherly woman with a bullet haircut. This woman…did not.

“To look like someone else? No, that would be illegal,” Chuck responded, confirming my understanding. “No, this woman is our new Deputy Counsel since, five weeks? Yes, five. I think she´s a bit on the young side for the job, but she´s sharp as your best knife.”

“You definitely traded up.” I paused at the door to collect my thoughts.

“How many ex-wives do you have?” The reproach in his voice was bell-clear.

“Just the one, but I’m holding open auditions. For whoever gave your techies the pattern for that,” and I pointed at the holographically disguised alien fish-woman who had our legal fates in her hands.

“Professor, Ulaphtis Hestanthin, please take seats.” The woman stood and addressed us both by our titles. Chuck´s, in Sthalkan dialect, is the equivalent to “academically trained senior priest” in English, as best as myself or anyone else can render it. And I am the authority, the only one in the world, in fact. Chuck and I entered and sat down near the middle of the table, him on the left, me on the right, so that we could face each other and our interlocutor. “I am Deputy Counsel Orayn Elushato. I am here to listen to your account of the events before we decide what charges to bring.”

Neither of us liked hearing that word again, this time from an Ichthoid authority. I spoke first.

“None is not a possibility?”

“Only a remote one, since Hestanthin Schuchtuluk failed to file a proper travel request and schedule before he left the embassy compound.” She had sat down and was now facing Chuck. They switched from English to Shtalkan, and I will do you the favor of not rendering it phonetically here. Instead, here’s the sense of their opening exchange in English.

“Hestanthin, it challenges my self-control and strains my will to give due deference to your station that I must berate you for your careless decisions that led to this baleful state of affairs,” Counsel Elushato declaimed. “Did you think the edicts our Senior Ambassador issued so worthy of contempt that you could freely disregard them?”

“Highly respected legal counsel and mother of three, I abase my will before that of our esteemed Senior Ambassador, though, in the rush of preparing to reach the Newark Airport in time for my departure, I failed, deficient as I am, to properly heed his wise and prudent rules for the proper conduct of embassy personnel.”

Yes. They really used such florid language if you render it faithfully in English. Shtalkan dialect is as if Cervantes´s Spanish or Shakespeare’s English were the standard you heard on the street. The two went on for some minutes, discussing the facts, the possible violations of the laws and regulation we either committed (speeding, failing to file travel plans) or we thought to have committed (reckless driving—that was still up in the air) or had committed through no fault of our own (exposing Schuchtuluk´s real appearance in an uncontrolled environment). The conclusion of their discussion was that the Embassy itself was going to undertake an investigation of our conduct, but would do so jointly with the State Department, F.A.M.E. and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

“Is it truly necessary and reasonable to involve the federal criminal authorities, your Embassy, and local law enforcement?” I asked in Shtalkan. “Could this not simply be settled as a matter of traffic law, and the honored senior priest´s hasty and imprudent actions be treated as a matter of internal discipline for the Diplomatic Corps?”

“To the former, yes, and to the latter propositions, no,” Counsel Elushato replied. “And your accent is excellent. For a human.”

“What about now? I can´t see you conjuring a joint tribunal out of our pockets,” Chuck interjected in English. “Do I get to go home? Does Steve? Will either of us go to jail? A waterless prison?”

She looked from me to Chuck, then placed her hands, one atop the other, on the table in front of her before saying, “Those determinations are beyond my ambit. My duty here is to advocate for both of you and for the mutual interests of our respective governments, honored senior priest and esteemed professor. As part of this, I must now confer with the local constabulary and the representative from that federal agency. Together, we shall decide how to proceed with you two. In the meanwhile, don´t either of you speak of these events without me in the room.”

With that, she rose from her chair, bowed curtly at Schuchtuluk, and walked out of the room.

“Could you not look at her like that? It´s an illusion, remember?” Chuck admonished.

I nodded. “How much trouble do you think we bought ourselves this weekend?”

“Much,” he answered. “I wonder only how long they will keep us waiting before we know whether we can return to our homes or…what´s that great word you taught me? Hoosegow? Spend the night in the hoosegow, maybe?”

The answer to that question was a good hour in the coming. Spurgle, Elushato, and Rojas entered the room, Rojas flanked by two deputies, Elushato by a couple of what I took to be Ichthoid Embassy security guards, and Spurgle by a mousey woman in a pants suit and a tall dark-haired man with an aquiline profile. Rojas told us the bad news: Chuck would be escorted back to New York and placed under their equivalent of house arrest, I would be required to pay my traffic fine, which was considerable, up front. Yes, the Monroe County Sheriff´s Department added reckless driving to the charges and that added six points to my license, plus the six for speeding, and I was still two shy of even getting a warning. Good. Then F.A.M.E. required that I surrender my passport and remain within the limits of Monroe County until such time as a joint administrative hearing involving the Ichthoid Diplomatic Mission to Earth, F.A.M.E., and the Federal District Court for Southern Indiana could be convened in order to decide if and how to prosecute the two of us. Until such time, we were released and instructed to be on our best behavior.

“Such time” proved to be six months.

The courtroom in the Birch Bayh Building was packed with bloggers and real journalists from all over the world. Mixed among them were members of a very selected public, admitted only by the mutual consent of the federal and alien government agencies involved in our case. This first real court hearing of any kind that involved both a human and an Ichthoid had attracted media attention, understandably. That had necessitated some re-arrangement in the room, so that the tables usually in the room had been removed to make room for more leather-backed chairs and space for photographers. Ahead of those parasites from the press, government officials from state, county, and federal bodies filled the rows of seats and behind the bar. My own lawyer, Dan Pickett, Esquire, sat in the front row on the left, next to Chuck, his counsel, the very Ms. Elushato we had met those months past. They were using their HPIGs and so had their accustomed human appearances. That was done for the benefit of human media audiences, no doubt. In fact, there was only one Ichthoid in the room who was not using a holograph generator, and he was on the bench.

On the right in two rows were the phalanx of legal experts, government agents, and even the Monroe County Sheriff´s Department who had been directly involved in the events of that early summer night. guards from the Embassy, Federal Marshals, and a few from the regular security detail in the building stood at the back of the room and at even intervals along the walls.

Were I to lie in a self-aggrandizing way, I would say that I was utterly calm as I spoke and did not even sweat. Telling the truth? I only hope my voice did not quaver as much in the middle of the final statement in my deposition as it sounds like in the video record. I hope that was just acoustics. What did I say? According to the official record, I said:

“That, your honor, was my entire reasoning. I honestly did not notice Sheriff Rojas in my mirror until after the curve. The only thing on my mind was returning the honored senior priest Schuchtuluk Olushtanaphtan to the airport so that he could meet the Ichthoid Diplomatic Mission´s flier and return him to the compound in New York with a minimum of difficulty.”

There, I paused in my deposition to take a breath. Then, I continued:

“And I deeply regret the troubles, anxiety, inconvenience, and difficulty that I caused my colleague and friend. My intention had only been to fulfil his long-expressed wish to try hand-net fishing in an Earth freshwater lake. I deeply regret all negative consequences that my actions brought down on Schuchtuluk´s head and will accept whatever decision this joint tribunal makes regarding the further legal evaluation of my actions.”

In the controlled environment of the Federal District Court, the Ichthoid Chief Imperial Arbiter for Inter-Species Affairs appeared in his actual form. Yeah, it was him, the only one of his species in the room not using an HPIG. He was a comparatively huge and intimidating member of his species, with rough facial scales and dark green lines of age around his eyes. His name was Gulumustung, and he was clearly not pleased with the course the hearing had taken. He glowered at me from his place at the far-left side of table where the three-member panel sat, but he nodded, and asked his colleagues, “Does the Federal Judge or the F.A.M.E. representative have any further questions?”

The Federal Judge, a petite, dark-haired woman named Marit Weatherman, who was unusually young-looking for her station, shook her head and said, “None.”

The panel member representing the interests of the State Department and F.A.M.E. was Mr. Hyun, a former State Department lawyer, now acting as a judge. He had been granted special authority to vote on the panel by some hitherto unforeseen cooperative arrangement between those agencies and the Federal District Court. The panel would decide whether or not to refer us for federal prosecution.

“I have some questions, Your Honor,” said the legal advisor from the Federal Agency for the Monitoring of Extraterrestrials, Ms. Taryn van der Steen. She was sitting next to Spurgle. That mousy woman who had showed up in the sheriff´s office? Turns out, she had a name, and an important position in her agency: that of Chief Legal Counsel, like Elushato. Only, for Chuck and me, she was the enemy.

Earlier in the hearing, Chuck had given his account of that last weekend in May. He had spoken at length in English, for the benefit of US and world media, and had been unfailingly contrite in his deposition. Why, he had almost cried when she had questioned him hard, about the malfunction of the HPIG. Now it was my turn to face Ms. van der Steen.

“Professor Steven Eichstätter, author and lexicographer.” She stood as she began, and I could swear I saw a cold fog form around her mouth. “You have known Schuchtuluk Olushtanaphtan for seven years now, is that correct?”

“Yes, since the year after the first Ichthoid lightship entered Earth orbit,” I responded.

“And you worked together with the alien priest,” she pointed at Chuck, who looked offended, either by her tone or the gesture, “to compose the philosophy, ethics, and religion lexica in the only English dictionaries for Shtalkan and Urulu. Is that correct?”

“It is,” I said, and now I did begin to sweat.

“Did the two of you conspire to assure that the language in your dictionary was consistently and exclusively cis-normative?”

That was it, then. They would attack based on outdated anthropologies that had informed some jurisprudence nearly a decade ago. I sensed Spurgle´s hand in it. And since he was in the room, well… I just had to flash him a smile before I spoke.

“We composed our lexicons entirely in accord with biological, physical reality,” I began. “Whatever certain delusional ideologies of the past might have said, in describing sexually dimorphic species, such as ourselves and the Ichthoids, ‘cis-normative’ is a synonym for ‘true’ and for ‘sane.’”

If my remarks ruffled her, she didn´t show it. “Professor Eichstätter,” van der Steen´s tone was now even frostier, “is Schuchtuluk Olushtanaphtan not a clergyman?”

“A senior priest with academic training, yes,” I answered honestly, and Chuck shot me a concerned look from his seat. Ms. Elushato was starting to look nervous.

“Don´t his religious views, his worship of this ‘Father of all good waters,’ shall we say, color his interpretations of certain common English vocabulary?” There was an accusatory tone in her voice, of course, and van der Steen looked from me to the Ichthoid delegation, then back, seemingly to judge our separate reactions. She looked more than a bit pleased with herself.

“No, they don`t,” I responded, “because I check them. Ms. van der Steen, I am an atheist. A Durkheimian atheist, I admit, but still an atheist. Religion has its uses as a fertile cultural force that drives ethics, arts, music, all the things that really do make us human, or Ichthoid, but one can believe in the beauty of the garden without wanting there to be faeries under the rose petals, no?”

Her face changed. The self-satisfied look vanishing.

“So, Professor…” She turned her back to me, then turned around again, a dramatic maneuver I am certain she had used effectively in courtrooms before. “You did not meet with the alien you call ‘Chuck’ in order to conspire with him to end the further rolling back of civil rights gains made two decades ago?”

“Conspire? Gains?” I was no longer in danger of sweating from courtroom anxiety. But I was in danger of shouting in anger, so I took a moment to inhale deeply, then said, “No. We went fishing. And watched some baseball. Shtalkans love baseball, did you know?”

“Neither of you brought up any of your continued lexicographic research? There was no shop talk all weekend?” The now unfriendly Ms. van der Steen`s voice was now full of challenge.

“No, not even once. We had agreed in advance, work-related topics were off the table for the whole weekend. Believe it or not, even alien fish-men need time away from their vocations.” I delivered my answer cooly, smoothly, and then asked her, “And did Spargle…”

“Spurgle!” shouted the F.A.M.E. Agent from his place at the table on the right.

“Did Agent Spurgle suggest that you ask these questions? Because if so, that ingrate has no knowledge of the depth of character and forthrightness anyone who works with him would see in Schuchtuluk. He…”

“He nearly killed me,” Agent Spurgle yelled this time. He stood and pointed at Chuck, then ranted further. “He gave me that HPIG that he knew was malfunctioning. Then he spat on me!”

“You asked to see it, you pressed the button, and he saved you from severe injury. You were on fire, which was your own fault,” I said loudly from my seat next to the panel of judges. “There was a lamentable confluence of bad decisions and equipment failures that night, but no conspiratorial meeting, no intention of wrongdoing from either of us.”

At this point, Pickett stood up and addressed the panel, “Your honors, you have read the transcripts and heard the depositions. Do we need to continue here? My client has admitted his guilt in the traffic violations and has already paid the fines. But willful unregistered transport of an extraterrestrial? Deliberate exposure of same to potential violence? Surely you see no grounds for either of those charges.”

“Can I get off the stand?” I asked.

Judges Weatherman and Gulumustung both said, “Yes.” Hyun just nodded and gestured toward my side of the courtroom.

Van der Steen looked daggers at her colleagues but returned to her place at the table with the prosecuting counsel. The judges spoke to each other quietly for a moment and summoned the bailiff. A moment later, that bailiff announced that the judges would now withdraw to their conference room to decide what if any further action will be ordered in our cases. Our instruction was to wait until dismissed.

By that time, I had joined Chuck, Pickett and Elushato on the defense team´s side of the courtroom.

“Thanks for that, Dan,” I said to our counsel. He gave a curt affirmation, then turned to speak with his own paralegal, while Chuck and Elushato conferred in hushed tones. A quick glance around the courtroom showed me that, yes, there were two members of my department at the university in that very selective public I mentioned, neither of them faces I particularly wanted to see. Dr. Heinreid and Dr. Chan, the latter in particular. Freaking Chan. She had wanted me fired the moment word of my arrest had reached the university press relations office. Thankfully, the university president likes the money my books and TV appearances bring in as the “foremost expert on Ichthoid languages in the country.” With them there, the wait for the judges was going to be considerably tenser than it already was.

“Steve, what`s wrong?” Chuck asked, having concluded his discussion with the Deputy Counsel.

“That if the judges decide to advance our cases to the federal bench for real, it will be all my fault. If I hadn´t gunned the car going into that curve, maybe Rojas wouldn´t even have noticed us. Damn.” I shifted uncomfortably in the too-warm leather chair.

Chuck shifted his head diagonally from side to side, the Ichthoid nod that meant “maybe/maybe not,” a gesture that looked very strange with his projected human appearance. “And you´re here because of me. And a defective HPIG. Whatever happens, though, I will remain your friend. The Father of all good waters himself will assure that.”

We had known each other for most of eight years by then, and that was one of his more subtle attempts to evangelize me. Not necessarily to Shtalkan religion, but definitely to monotheism. Maybe Deism. Usually, these efforts annoyed me, but on that day in Indianapolis, my non-human friend´s faith was some kind of comfort to me. If it could keep him on an even keel, then I could let it rest.

To our great relief, the judges were not in their conference room long. They entered together and resumed their places at the bench. Judge Weatherman stood, straightened her robe, and addressed the courtroom.

“My colleagues and I have reached our conclusion: there will be no further action in this matter aside from what internal disciplinary action the Ichthoid Diplomatic Mission may wish to pursue against its own personnel. A detailed explanation of our reasoning will be…”

“No further action?” shouted F.A.M.E. Agent Andrew Spurgle. Of course. He had bolted up out of his seat, and looking at him, I thought he just might vault the table and charge the bench. “That thing set me on fire. They are conspiring to eliminate…”

There was commotion in the back of the room, as the press and audience reactions to the decision shifted into a reaction at Spurgle´s outburst. His continued rantings were lost in the murmurs and shouts of those behind him, but I am sure that there was at least one use of each of the “phobe” words that had been so popular in my childhood. Ah, nostalgia.

“Bailiff, remove that man,” Judge Hyun said, quite loudly, and the bailiff was quick to oblige him.

The devil is always in the details, right? The exposition that the judges published later that day was straightforward: they believed us, for good and for ill. There was no reason to believe that I had intended to endanger Chuck or expose the general public to his real appearance. There was good reason, by Chuck’s own admission, to hold him accountable for a careless breach of hard rules he had to know. The result? He was confined to the Ichthoid compound in New York for one year. That kept him from visiting the other humans on the translating team in person, but holo-calls are so good nowadays that the punishment hardly slowed our work. I was, however, banned from personal visits to the Diplomatic Mission for that same period. The message conveying this prohibition mentioned my “penchant for reckless operation of a motor vehicle” made me a poor candidate for transporting Chuck or any Ichthoid anywhere in the future.

So, next week, when we visit Lake Cumberland in Kentucky? Chuck´s hired a driver.

And Spurgle? Last I heard, that bastard had been promoted.

See, It Was Like This…

Clair W. Kiernan

They didn’t have judges or courtrooms on asteroid P7-36A. There was a courtroom on Vega, but out here on the backside of the Belt, all the justice Jenkins could hope for would come from a miner who had dodged one too many micrometeors and was subcontracting out with the Company for any work Inside that he could get, such as adjudicating this not-courtroom sorta-trial.

The adjudicator entered, and Jenkins scrambled to stand up with an attitude of respect. He looked at the not-a-judge. He saw bloodshot eyes in a face wrinkled from age and poorly designed solar filtration. Tired was written in every one of those lines, along with a severe allergy to bullcrap.

“I am James Cogswell, and I will be adjudicating this hearing,” he growled, favoring the conference room with an impartial glare that encompassed plaintiff and defendants.

Jenkins swallowed and sat down. Cogswell! A wildcatter from the wild and woolly Belt days, Cogswell was a legend for his boldness and luck—good and bad. He was rumored to have won a fortune and gambled it all away on Vega. The circuits in the table he sat behind probably had some of the platinum from his first claim. Cogswell would still be out there hunting the next big strike (or building a harem in a Luna pleasure dome), but he was forced to retire after he practically breathed space saving a bunch of tourists when an explosion blew out part of the dome near a casino.

He certainly had the disgusted expression of a man who came to wisdom too late.

Jenkins looked around the conference room uneasily. This wasn’t like the fancy courtrooms in the dramas his mom watched on the vids from Earth.

Jenkins looked back at his co-defendant and star-crossed partner. Spurgle. Why did it have to be Spurgle?

Cogswell fixed the pair of young miners with a stare that shifted into a smile of false geniality. “So, gentlemen,” he said mildly, nodding at the company suit sitting across from them. “Mr. Dodson here has stated the charges against you: theft, vandalism, sabotage, interfering with Company productivity.” The smile turned positively crocodilian. “How do you plead?”

Jenkins saw Spurgle open his mouth and draw in a deep breath. Nooooo, don’t let Spurgle speak for yoooouuuu! Jenkins scrambled to collect his thoughts. After a brief but poignant regret that there were no public defenders within half an AU of P7-36A, he hastily blurted, “Not guilty, My Lord! I mean, Your Honor! Your Honor, sir!”

Cogswell’s smile became pained. “Oh. This is going to be one of those hearings.

“Mr. Jenkins, I am neither British, nor am I a judge. I am not an agent of any legal organization. I am here to enforce not the law, but Trans-Belt Mining Company regulations, which is all the justice you can expect today. I cannot put you or Mr. Spurgle in prison.”

Jenkins felt a little of the tension ease in his neck and shoulders. As bad as the bunks and rations were for the paid employees, he shuddered to think what a TBMC prison would be like.

“I can, however, recommend that your employment be terminated, and that you be fined for all damages and required to reimburse the company for the expenses of your training and housing. Does that make your situation clearer?”

Jenkins said nothing, although his mouth moved up and down on automatic pilot. Cogswell waited patiently for a few seconds for the miner’s brain to reboot, but apparently this was not going to happen unaided.

“You will call me ‘sir,’ or ‘Mr. Cogswell.’”

Spurgle had, mercifully, remained silent, but he gave Jenkins a look of smug superiority.

It was all so simple, Jenkins thought. How had everything gone so wrong?

The contest was publicized the same day Jenkins got put in charge of the Effing New Guy. Supervisor Griffin stuck a Velcro stripe on Jenkin’s sleeve, muttered, “Congratulations, Team Lead Jenkins. Show him the ropes. By the way, he’s the Site Manager’s son. Try to keep him alive to the end of shift.”

Spurgle had a kid? Darwin wept.

Somehow, the creature known as Andrew Spurgle had weaseled his way into the upper ranks of management, leading the work crews to invent new leaps of creativity to circumvent his time-wasting inspirations. Since the stupid, lazy, and incompetent were not encouraged to emigrate to the Belt, Belters had to grow their own oxygen wasters. But imagining that Spurgle had survived in a mining colony until adulthood taxed even the most creative of Belter minds. The miners’ current theory was that Spurgle had shipped himself out of the gravity well in a box of old tools to escape from an angry mob anxious to cleanse the gene pool, and had forgotten to put padding around his head, resulting in the obvious brain damage required to be The Spurge.

The thought that Spurgle had successfully spawned… Some female, presumably a human one, had participated in a Spurgasm…Jenkins shuddered. That was much too disturbing to think about on a Monday morning.

Jenkins spent a few minutes trying to convince himself that his new charge would be at least somewhat normal.

His optimism died swiftly as The Effing New Guy entered.

Spurgle had a lofty air of unwarranted superiority (attached to a face that made Jenkins swear off pepperoni pizza). He gave a careless leap from the entrance across the work bay. Jenkins had to grab him to keep him from slamming into the wall. The mass and momentum didn’t quite make them both crash, but Jenkins felt his shoulder protest at the effort it took to avert disaster.

“Hey, watch out!” Spurgle exclaimed indignantly. “You’re gonna scratch my helmet!”

Jenkins swallowed the response he wanted to make. “Microgravity. You have the same mass and momentum, so careful how you move.” Where did this nitwit grow up? Did he even get orientation?

“Whatever. You gonna show me the crushing rig now? Dad says I gotta get you slackers in line.”

Boss’s kid. Do not punch the boss’s kid…

Jenkins made sure Spurgle had his pressure suit on securely and watched him operate the ore crusher. By lunchtime, Jenkins had prevented his partner from committing suicide half a dozen times, not counting the near-destruction of the rig by inducing siliconstipation in the grinding unit that took two hours to clear.

Spurgle was impervious to criticism, and subtlety made no impression on him. A quiet hint that sticking one’s hand inside the ore crusher to shift an obstruction might be unwise was wasted breath.

Jenkins had stopped considering the pros and cons of allowing Spurgle to self-destruct, and was wondering how he could make it look like an accident he couldn’t prevent, when the signal came for lunch.

Watching Spurgle eat was a punishment Jenkins didn’t deserve, so he read the company bulletin instead, and felt his spirits lift in spite of it all.

The company wanted to boost productivity and announced a contest: present proof of how to increase throughput of processed ore by forty percent or more and get instant promotion and transfer to headquarters on Ceres.

Ceres!

Promotion, with apartment, on Ceres…he normally couldn’t expect that for years. Miners for the big companies worked for salary and benefits, plodding their way from poverty to middling prosperity after twenty years or so. They would spend years scrambling to earn promotion and get out of the dormitories into an apartment, away from the frontier asteroids and onto the bigger colonies of Ceres or Vega.

But Jenkins wanted to get married.

Now.

He’d made the big mistake of falling in love in his twenties instead of his forties. Annie was a nurse on Ceres. The company wasn’t going to pay for a nurse on P7-36A when there was a perfectly functioning docbot available, so combining their housing chits for even an efficiency was a nonstarter.

Marry Annie! Raise the next generation of miners and nurses and live on Ceres, a place which Annie liked very much, because her idea of recreation involved more than drinking with a bunch of grimy miners. He had to admit she had a point. Grimy miners were less amusing every day.

And he had an idea that just might work, too. He didn’t want to tell Annie and get her hopes up, so he spilled it all to The SpurgSpawn. Mistake Number One…

“There’s a new sonic ice crusher that could be adapted for work on silicon-based rocks. I think, if I tweak the settings, and put it in the production line right after the last set of ore grinders, I can break the rock chunks down into sand or at least very fine gravel. Then we use the density separators to fling out the grit, and what’s left…”

Spurgle had nodded, wisely, as if he’d thought of it himself. “But how you gonna get the ice crusher? We don’t get paid until the end of the quarter. You got no money, I know. Don’t ask me to lend you any,” he sniffed.

Jenkins grinned knowingly. “Slip it into the galley supply order. Next request goes out tomorrow, they’ll ship it out of Ceres, and it’ll be here next week.”

Spurgle sneered. “It’ll get flagged.”

“Watch me.”

The manager’s secretary was the only female on station who wore skintight coveralls on duty, commando style. On Luna, she would have worn a miniskirt and spike heels, and calibrated her walk for maximum swish. In microgravity, especially without foundation garments, she was able to achieve a certain oscillation of her avoirdupois guaranteed to distract Spurgle Senior from any inefficiency with the paperwork.

“Hey, Margery, we gotta problem with the secondary smashers. Need replacement grinding discs.” Jenkins waved a memory chip at the secretary until he had her attention. Timing was important; Margery was about to send in the weekly supply request, and it was nearly lunchtime. It took a fairly robust appetite for her to keep her assets prominently round. Lunch was an important event in her day, and she was already trying to clear her desk and leave.

“Of course you waited until the last minute,“ Margery snarled, snatching the chip from his hand. He watched in appreciation of the sine wave caused by the changing trajectories, and didn’t answer right away.

“Hey, not my fault!” Jenkins protested, eventually. “I didn’t tell the grinding discs when to fail!”

“If you replaced them on the proper maintenance schedule—“

“C’mon, you know The Spur—the boss better than that. He’d shave the safety margin off of reactor maintenance if it was his jurisdiction.”

“True.” United in common contempt for the boss, Margery shoved the chip into the slot in her desk, tapped a few buttons impatiently without reading the display, snatched the chip out and tossed it back toward Jenkins. “Now get out of my office. Try to get some useful work done while you’re waiting for the discs. I don’t wanna hear any complaints about your shift falling behind. You know he takes it out on me when you clowns screw up, right?”

Jenkins doubted that, but nodded, anyway. “Thanks Margery. Gotta go!” He fled, confident that she would hit SEND without reading before he reached the first cross-corridor.

Sneaking the ice crusher out of the weekly delivery went more smoothly than Jenkins expected. The hardest part was getting the receipt for the crate; fortunately, although broke in a monetary sense, Jenkins had a stash of chocolates from Ceres. He didn’t even have to sweet-talk Margery as long as he could give her sweets.

The various departments all crowded in to grab their equipment and supplies, waving chits under the receiving manager’s nose and snatching boxes and bundles. The galley crew had their own ant-like line of workers and got priority pickup even over the bars. Jenkins sneaked in with the chef’s party and slipped his own crate away, blended into the clamorous herd, then let them pass him so he could vanish before they reached the mess hall.

One week later, he was ready to test his cobbled-together device. He and Son of Spurgle had worked on it all week. Or rather, Jenkins had done the work, and Spurgle held a wrench while standing off to one side and criticizing. Jenkins approved, as Spurgle was more help when he wasn’t helping.

He estimated that Spurgle’s assistance had only added about fifty percent to the time it took to perfect the Ultimate Ore Pulverizing Device, but maybe that was the exasperation talking. In the meantime, all the distractions from the device meant that A shift was falling behind in productivity and the other teams were starting to notice and blame Jenkins. Also, there was only a month left before the contest ended. Tomorrow, though, he would test the Pulverizer, and it would all be worth it—if the danged thing worked.

He unlocked the secured storeroom and gaped in horror. The room was empty. Only a slightly less dusty patch in the center of the floor indicated where the Pulverizer had been.

“It’s gone!” Jenkins whispered. “Gone! It was here when I bunked last night. What happened?”

“Oh, the guys from Shift B wanted to borrow it. You know, to test.”

“What?”

“We worked on it all week and got behind on our quota! Then today, you were gonna hook it up to the processors and spend all day making it work, while we got farther and farther behind! You’re making me look bad, Jenkins, and don’t deny it. Just because you’re a team lead, you think you can screw around and be okay, but this is my first assignment, and I’m not gonna cover for you just ’cause my dad’s the boss.“ His pimpled face flushed in a highly unattractive manner. “So when the guys from B asked what we were doing over here, I took ’em to the storage room and said, ‘Have at it, fellas, it’s the greatest innovation in mining since the invention of magnetism.’ They took it off and are wasting their time trying to get it to work, while we get caught up.” He stuck his nose in the air superciliously. “You should be thanking me.”

Jenkins managed not to throw anything at The Spurgloid, but only because his hands were empty. He turned and stalked away before he had a body to explain. He’s the boss’s son…he’s the boss’s son…

“Ah. So here we come to the burglary,” Cogswell purred.

“I was just stealing it back!” Jenkins exclaimed indignantly. “It was my idea!”

“Indeed. Do go on, Mr. Jenkins.”

Shift C had started an hour before. The boys in Shift B had disconnected the Pulverizer before going off-shift and hidden it in a different supply closet. Knowing that Baker, the Team Two lead from Shift B, was a cousin of Norwalk, the maintenance worker who kept the galley and docbot working, gave Jenkins a pretty good hint of where to look.

He and Spurgle moved through the unpressurized part of the mine to the sealed storage rooms. They slipped down the empty corridor and hid in the shadows of a doorway while Jenkins pondered the door lock-code. Neither Baker nor his cousin were likely to have bothered with concocting a difficult code. It was probably the manufacturer’s default or just slightly different. 1234? 9876? He considered the cousin carefully. Native Belter…a little more schooling than the average miner, but not enough to be an engineer or manager…thinks he’s smarter than he really is…

Jenkins tapped “2345″ and the light flashed green as the door slid open.

He hefted the Pulverizer, pulling it away from Spurgle, who had grabbed one end in a way almost guaranteed to make the controls snap off. Jenkins would have liked to make Spurgle carry it, but whether the SpurgSpawn would break it out of ineptitude or on purpose, Jenkins trusted only that his alleged partner would sabotage him in some way. Which reminded him: if he was going to get any sleep before next shift, there was one more thing he needed to do…

“Hey, Spurgle, check the cross-corridor and make sure it’s clear, okay?”

“Whatever.” Spurgle shrugged and moved ahead at an indifferent slouch.

When he disappeared around the corner, Jenkins turned quickly around, wobbling as his momentum tried to keep going the other way, and went past the storage rooms to the personnel shuttles. All leaves had been canceled until production increased, so no one would be leaving for Ceres until the contest was over. And all the cargo hatches were empty and open.

He didn’t even have to be quiet, working in vacuum. He set the Pulverizer down, gave the hatch door a satisfyingly solid push, then scurried back to the lockers to take off his pressure suit and get at least a few hours of rack time before shift.

The sleeping part didn’t work out very well. Jenkins was too keyed up for more than an anxious doze, punctuated by moments of full alertness when Spurgle snored. But he was able to get the Pulverizer set up right before shift started. (Noting, with malicious satisfaction, that Team B hadn’t even run a sample of ore through the pristine device.) Spurgle wandered in a few minutes late, saw Jenkins making adjustments to the sonic crusher, and watched in merciful silence. Let him be miffed that I abandoned him in a corridor last night, Jenkins thought. If this thing works, I won’t have to put up with him much longer.

Unfortunately, he had to use the Pulverizer in a pressurized area. Having to haul bins of ore inside to finish processing them was a large disadvantage, but the sonic ice crusher was designed to be used in a galley, not function in vacuum. It did mean that they didn’t need their pressure suits. Jenkins was able to set everything up in a part of the mine that was pressurized but not currently in use. Since there was a spare density separator nearby, he also set that up to see how it would work with what he hoped would be superfine ore.

Jenkins scooped up a handful of ore chunks that were bigger than his fist, and fed them into the hopper on the device. The sonic emitters spun rapidly around the crushing chamber, and the rocks shattered with earsplitting noise. A steady stream of fine sand and pea-sized chunks fell out the other end into their designated bin, very slowly in the microgravity. Dust billowed up around them, but Jenkins didn’t care. He took a large scoopful of the micro-ore and dumped it into the separator.

It works! he thought in glee. It works ohmyGod it works! The separator spun, flinging the metallic ore into the catcher and expelling useless sand and dust. Ore in smaller chunks should melt faster, reducing smelting time; and maybe, without the excess rock, emerge semi-refined. Jenkins coughed and fed more ore into the hopper. He’d need a respirator mask to do this for very long, and the earplugs weren’t enough protection. Maybe they should just take the fine ore back outside for the separation process… Okay, there’s still a few bugs to be worked out.

He picked up the bin and poured the rest of it into the sonic crusher, smacking the bottom impatiently to urge the last big chunks of ore into movement. After this bin is processed, I’ll show Griffin, and let him take it to the smelting team…

Doors on the asteroid slid open slowly and quietly, but this door would have slammed open and rebounded, if that were possible. Griffin, Baker, and Wilson, the Shift B supervisor, stormed through the doorway. Baker was seething, Griffin ready to breathe fire, and Wilson’s expression was stonier than the asteroid.

“See!” Baker exclaimed, pointing at the Pulverizer. “He stole it!”

“You stole it from me!” Jenkins retorted indignantly. “It was mine in the first place! I just stole it back!”

“He said I could have it! He didn’t want it!“ Baker pointed at Spurgle.

“It wasn’t his to give away!”

“It’s not yours, either, Jenkins,” Griffin snarled. “It belongs to the Company, and you’ve been screwing around with it long enough.” He took a deep breath to start a real chewing-out, inhaled a lungful of dust and fell into a coughing fit.

Baker and Wilson went to grab the Pulverizer, and Jenkins moved into their way, blocking them by waving the empty bin. Griffin growled, still coughing, grabbed Spurgle, and joined Jenkins. “Hold on here!” he tried to shout, but it was drowned out in the rumbling whine of the Pulverizer. “You’re not going to walk in on my men and take equipment from them in the middle of their shift!”

“Says who? You gonna cover for a thief? How’d you get to be Shift Supervisor, anyway, sleep with Spurgle?”

“That does it!” Griffin roared, fists swinging as he waded into battle. Jenkins ducked a formidable right cross from Baker, who had never lost sight of exactly who he was angry with, and the fist connected with Griffin. Then the melee crashed into the bin of superfine crushed ore, sending a massive cloud erupting in every direction, obscuring men and equipment. Jenkins and Spurgle at least had goggles on, but the lenses were promptly coated by fine dust, which had acquired a static charge, causing the particles to lust after optical equipment in the manner of spaghetti sauce and a white shirt.

Now they were all coughing madly, staggering and stumbling blindly to find either their opponents or an exit. Along with the din of coughing and occasional crash as someone blundered into equipment or a wall, a growing high-pitched whine made communication impossible. It soon drowned out all other sounds as the men stopped fighting each other and sought only a door and sweet, sane air.

Someone—Jenkins never saw who—found the door switch first. All he knew was that he was going to crawl if necessary to get out of the room and into the corridor, where the current of clean air came from. Behind him, the high-pitched whine turned into a protesting metallic screeeeech! As bearings gave their last full measure of devotion. The pitch rose until just as it passed the limits of human hearing, it ended in a pop! And greasy smoke joined the billowing clouds of dust.

“Ah,” Cogswell rumbled affably. “The sabotage and destruction of company property, I presume.”

Dodson straightened his tie. “Mr. Cogswell, on further, er, consideration,” he glanced to one side, where Site Manager Spurgle was sitting, “the Company has decided not to pursue any disciplinary action against Mr. Andrew Spurgle IV in this matter, due to his low seniority and inexperience. It is clear that the culpability belongs squarely with Mr. Jenkins.”

“Hmmm.” Cogswell squinted to the back of the conference room, where Spurgle III sat with a bellicose expression aimed at Jenkins.

Jenkins felt his mind creaking at the notion of four generations of Spurgles. Surely four Spurgles in the same family would form a self-destructive critical mass. They would open up a singularity and emerge in another dimension, destroying multitudes of potential timelines…

“I believe I’ve heard enough to make a determination,” Cogswell said. “Mr. Jenkins has acted throughout in flagrant disregard for company regulations, but I find no intent to commit theft, fraud, or sabotage. Therefore, I recommend termination of his employment contract, without further penalty.”

“No…” Jenkins whispered, stunned. Fired. He was fired. What the hell do I do now?

The elder Spurgle smiled oleaginously. Behind him, the door opened, and Margery entered, carrying a crate with Jenkins’s personal effects, and dumped it on the table in front of him. “Got everything, Spurgie, just like you said.” She smiled and winked at Spurgle and undulated out. Jenkins shuddered. Was Margery pretending to like the boss or pretending to despise him? Augggh!

The boss stood up and gestured at his son to leave the room. Young Spurgle unfolded himself upright and sneered at Jenkins before exiting. His father smirked at Jenkins.

“Your little stunt wrecked a perfectly good density separator and made a Godawful mess in the environmental filtration. But the smelting team said that they got the melt done in half the time that it takes the larger chunks. So…it will come in handy. For my next efficiency evaluation.“ He left Jenkins gaping at his retreating back.

Cogswell watched the room clear, then lifted an eyebrow at Jenkins. “It seems you will be riding on the outgoing shuttle with me, young man. Pick up your crate and let’s get a move on.”

“Where are we going?” Jenkins asked numbly. Did it really matter? Without a job or even a place to sleep tonight, did he care?

“Ceres. For now. That was a rather clever notion you had, but you didn’t think it through. Of course, Trans-Belt Mining could have set up a lab and hired researchers to do what you did. Cheap bastards. Pity about your job, but you aren’t plodder enough to get ahead here. You have the mind of a wildcatter. You need to find something with room for your talents. And mentors to keep you out of trouble.“ He clapped a hand on Jenkins’ shoulder. “Fortunately for you, I know almost everyone in the Belt. Come on, kid, let’s go.”

Took Their Wages

Laura Montgomery

“It’s a claw back,” Zeke Salisbury said. “I lost years of my family’s lives, and now the government won’t pay me for them. As required by our contract.”

The conference room looked over K Street, and the morning sun caught the livid pallor of Zeke’s face as he stood with his back to the window. “Years,” he repeated.

The Washington lawyers he had come to see had offered him a seat at the blond wood table glowing like yellow satin in the middle of the room. When he’d declined by ignoring them, they had both perched on the table, Calvin Tondini only half on, one leg on the ground and the other dangling; Sara Seastrom fully on the surface, both legs dangling.

Calvin knew Zeke’s story well. The whole of Earth knew it. Zeke and his wife had signed up for an interstellar journey together on the U.S. Starship Aeneid, which had been built during the asteroid threat. Zeke had his ex-wife to blame for the years of his children’s lives he had lost, just as much as he blamed the U.S. Administration for Colonial Development—pronounced u-SAC-d. The wife had pulled a last-minute switch on her husband, keeping herself and the children on Earth while Zeke went looking for a new planet.

The Aeneid had found one and left a colony behind, thus creating humanity’s back-up. With the time dilation of faster-than-light travel, USACD had recently observed that the Aeneid’s crew had subjectively experienced only nine years (approximately), while over thirty had elapsed on Earth, which required that the crew return the wages the government had erroneously paid out.

“We were going to be paid for the time we were gone,” Zeke said. “I counted on that. Lots of the crew made plans around that. Also—” Zeke stopped talking and walked back and forth. Calvin had never seen anyone pace, but he was pretty sure that’s what he was seeing now. “We had a contract, for the love of heaven. A contract!”

Calvin looked over to Sara. She seemed taken aback, as if unused to seeing their friend in this state.

Sara tilted her head almost imperceptibly to Zeke, giving Calvin the go-ahead.

“Did you get an explanation?” He felt great sympathy for the man. It was the instant bonding an attorney felt for a prospective client. The anthropologists warned against it, but it was hard to overcome.

Zeke unclenched his teeth long enough to answer, but he maybe hadn’t unclenched his throat, and the words came slowly. “They said it was OPM guidance.”

“The Office of Personnel Management has guidance on interstellar travel?” Calvin was astonished.

“No.” Zeke’s pale face gained some red. “It’s on Daylight Savings Time.”

Calvin almost laughed.

“I have always,” Zeke said with suppressed passion, vibrating with enough vigor that Calvin worried for the glass windows at his back, “hated Daylight Savings Time.” His ensuing characterization of daylight savings time was long, slow, vulgar, and sincere.

Calvin shot a glance at Sara. She had long golden hair and warm golden skin. Long sleeves covered the geneered tigering stripes on her arms and elsewhere. Now her skin gained a rosy hue as Zeke’s swearing showed no signs of coming to an end. Calvin had never heard Sara swear, and he’d been spending a lot of time with her recently.

Zeke saw Sara’s face, too, and he stopped suddenly. “I’m so sorry, Sara. I’m just upset.”

Sara burst out laughing. “I think we can tell.”

Zeke looked over his shoulder out the window, as if maybe someone would wave at him from a building across the way. Calvin looked, too, but no one did. K Street was too wide.

“Can you help me?” Zeke asked. “Even if I only get half what I’m owed I’ll be able to pay you.”

“We’re expensive, Zeke,” Sara said. “We have big corporate clients, and that’s how we charge.”

Zeke’s expression grew mutinous. “I want you two. After what you did for the captain, I want you two.”

“And,” Calvin said, “I’m guessing there’re others in the same boat. If a lot of you hire us, you’ll get economies of scale. What we figure out for one will apply to all of you.”

Calvin had had his moment of glory representing Zeke’s former captain, but clients had not come knocking at his door in the couple of months since he’d won Paolina Nigmatullin her freedom. He’d been doing the firm’s work for MarsCorp, which was good, honest work, but he had a future to think about, and having his own clients would help put him on the track to partnership.

Zeke grinned. “See? I knew I wanted you guys. I knew you’d look out for me.”

Glee filled Sara. She felt terrible about it, but she couldn’t help herself.

She and Calvin usually walked up to Dupont Circle to get away from the firm so they could hold hands. Feintuch and Sommers had a strict policy against employees dating each other, and she and Calvin were mere associates. Either one could be terminated for violating the policy. The economic pressures of the employment relationship had led to such massive liability exposure, that most companies, but especially law firms, forbade any romantic relations.

Maybe four blocks wasn’t far enough away, but anthropologists had long established that most people found a lunch spot within a two-block radius of their place of work. Four blocks felt safe.

They walked briskly because it was long past noon, and they were hungry. She reached out to the man next to her and took his long fingers in hers. Calvin’s parents hadn’t paid for any cosmetic geneering, and his long eyes and pronounced jaw were atavistic in a good way. She liked his shoulders, which were broad and strong. She liked the smell of him, which was clean and male—except post-basketball, when she didn’t like it. And she liked the way their hips touched when they walked.

She had more than one reason to feel gleeful and perhaps silly, but she had to address the one that made her feel guilty, even if it meant she had to interrupt Calvin’s fascinating description of MarsCorp’s orbital holdings.

“Calvin, is it bad to feel so excited about this?”

His mouth quirked. “You mean Zeke?”

“Yes. And all his friends. I feel terrible for them, and they’ve been so wonderful to us.” Zeke had helped her out with a little matter a few months back.

“But you’re so excited about helping them?” Calvin stopped in front of the hamburger shop they’d found a month earlier, and opened the door.

He was laughing at her. Her chin went up and she marched through, shoulders back.

He followed close behind and caught up to her. “It’s because we live to serve,” he murmured into the back of her head.

“Because we might get paid a lot of money,” she shot back.

A large curving grill occupied the center of the room. Although the tables provided the normal automation for a lunch place, two young men and a woman occupied the center of the U-shaped grill. Flames shot up through metal bars, and the aroma of char-grilled beef filled the air.

She felt Calvin take a deep breath behind her. She knew it wasn’t for her.

“I love this place,” he said, a lilt in his voice.

One of the young men looked up from chopping, and called out, “The usual?”

Both lawyers nodded.

She would have preferred a table near a window, but the darkness in the back of the brownstone served their subterfuge better.

To order, they didn’t need to peruse the screen at their table for more than eight seconds. They just needed to make official what the cooks already knew.

Calvin took her hands in both of his, and gazed into her eyes. “There is nothing wrong with making lots of money.”

“I agree completely. That is, I agree intellectually. It’s just that several of them are our friends now. And Zeke.”

Calvin nodded soberly. “And Zeke.”

“I am so excited about getting all this work, all this billing credit.”

“All these billings.” Calvin was always helpful.

“I feel like I’m profiting from their problems.” It was the glee. The glee made her feel terrible.

Calvin’s mouth twitched again. “We are. But we didn’t cause their problems. We’re going to help them. It’s really very noble of us.”

She covered her face with her hands. “But I’m so happy.”

With his now-free hands, Calvin pulled their water glasses from the table and handed her one. “Yes, yes. That’s very unbecoming. If it makes you feel better, their loss will be quick and painless, and they’ll go away disappointed in us.”

Sara dropped her hands to the table. “No. You’re just wrong.”

“Have you read the Department of Labor regulations yet?”

Calvin had worked for the government before joining Feintuch and Sommers. Like many former federal employees, he remained well-versed in employment rules. He had, however, the good sense to never, ever bring them up at the firm. “I have not,” Sara said. “You have, I take it?”

He beamed. “They’re terrible. I, too, share Zeke’s hatred of Daylight Savings, and I’m pretty sure it violates the Establishment Clause.”

She knew better by now than to take the bait. There could be no constitutional issue, no state-established religion, in the Daylight Savings Time mandate. There really couldn’t. Still, she couldn’t stop herself. He so liked to entertain her. So she tilted her head, and said, “How’s that?”

“It’s got to be religious, this notion that evening daylight is better than morning daylight.”

“I think it’s about the farmers,” Sara said.

“But there are hardly any farmers.”

“There are lots of farmers, Calvin. What do the Labor regulations say?”

“You get paid differently when Daylight Savings kicks in. We change our clocks forward and back by one hour twice a year. When the switch between regular time and daylight time occurs every spring, an employee working through the switchover at night loses an hour of work and gets paid an hour less. Conversely, when the lost hour returns in the fall, a night worker working the same hour twice gets paid for that. He’s paid for his subjective experience of time, for his hours actually worked.”

“And so USACD is saying the Aeneid’s crew should only get paid for their hours worked,” Sara said. “It’s a valid point.”

“It’s a bedrock principle.”

“That, too.”

“We will have to dig into the old regulations,” Calvin said.

“And look at their contracts,” Sara replied. She could see one fellow behind the grill transferring two juicy patties to toasted sourdough buns.

She looked into her beloved’s long eyes.

The following days saw an uptick in the firm’s client roster. Unlike the usual corporate clients, the new clients were individuals, specifically members of the crew of the starship Aeneid, the United States’s single starship, the one which had discovered Elysia, a blue and green parallel to Earth. Much of planet Earth was excited about Elysia’s discovery, the colony it had left behind, and the new ships MarsCorp was building for a return.

USACD, the agency that had built and sponsored the starship, was less enthusiastic. After paying the crew’s salaries for three decades, into whatever accounts and to whoever each crew member had designated before departing for parts unknown, it now wanted its money back.

The new clients shared copies of USACD’s demand notes with their new attorneys, and the government’s rationale consisted of the bald statement that due to the untested nature of faster-than-light travel, it had paid wages on the basis of Earth time. Now that the Aeneid had established beyond the shadow of a doubt that time ran differently for those travelling in excess of the speed of light, the government could make a more appropriate accounting, one more properly consistent with the Department of Labor’s regulations.

The new clients didn’t all come in person, most finding a teleconference more efficient. They didn’t need to meet their lawyers, they assured Sara and Calvin—although some of them had—since they knew they were great on account of what they had done for Captain Nigmatullin. Since Calvin wasn’t so sure that it was his lawyering that had helped their former captain so much as other approaches, their trust only filled him with trepidation.

Sara was having the same reaction. “I don’t know that we should be taking their money,” she said.

They were in Calvin’s office at 12:55, waiting for their next prospective client to call at 1:00. They had dozens already, but each required a personal interview. It was the right thing to do, and one never knew if one of them wouldn’t offer a new insight into their common problem.

They sat at Calvin’s conference table looking toward K Street. The holo would block the window when one Delilah Glidden called.

Calvin wanted to put his arm around Sara, but that wouldn’t do. Not at all. “I know how you feel. I have found nothing but regulations saying an hourly person gets paid for time worked. And a salaried person doesn’t get overtime.”

Sara had her hands flat on the table in front of her, and spoke to them. “I wish we knew someone at USACD.”

Calvin put his shoulders back. “I know lots of people there.”

“People who can stand you?” She still addressed her hands, but she was looking at him out of the corner of one eye, and a smile tugged at her mouth.

“Sean likes me,” Calvin said, plaintive and hurt.

“Sean doesn’t count. He doesn’t do labor law.”

The phone chimed, saving them both from Calvin’s explanation of why Sean counted, and why it wasn’t polite to discount someone just because they were of no use.

Ms. Glidden got right to the point. “I’ve invested all my back earnings. And bought a house. Now I have no cash.”

It was sometimes hard to feel sorry for clients. They wouldn’t be putting this one on the witness stand.

Zeke came back a few days later. Calvin found the contrast between Zeke’s current agitation and his former self disturbing. When Zeke had acted as a self-appointed bodyguard to his captain, Paolina Nigmatullin, the former military man had been a model of alert calm, only occasionally annoyed at Calvin himself. Now, signs of strain showed around his eyes, and when he wasn’t talking, his mouth compressed into a hard, flat line.

Zeke had asked to speak to Calvin, which Calvin found interesting, in light of the fact that Sara and Zeke had worked together so closely before.

They were back at Calvin’s conference table, but only in the sense that they stood at either end of it. Zeke didn’t seem able to sit down. Calvin kind of wished he would. His legs were still sore from the previous night’s basketball.

Zeke ran a hand through his dark hair. “Listen. I need an estimate on how long this is going to take.”

“We need to ask for a meeting with USACD when we’re ready,” Calvin said. “Then it will take at least thirty days to hear back from the staff. If we don’t like the answer, we take it up a level.”

“A USACD judge?” Zeke asked.

“No, not yet. We start with the staff. We go through a couple layers of management. Then if we still don’t have an answer—and we have a final decision against us—then we can go to a USACD judge.”

“Can we skip the USACD judge and just go to a real judge?” The knuckles of Zeke’s pale hands glowed white where he gripped the chair back. “I can’t believe a USACD judge will side with us if the USACD staff don’t.”

Zeke had chanced upon one of the many conundrums of administrative law, but Calvin didn’t consider it worth addressing. He’d tried that once, and it just made things worse. “Some of them hold the agency’s feet to the fire.”

“Thirty days for each staff and management layer.” Zeke raised a fist, and lifted one finger at a time—three for the management layers. “Thirty days for the judge?” Four fingers pointed up.

Calvin looked down at his own hands, on their chair back. “Months. Maybe years.”

Zeke’s mouth went flat again.

A knock sounded on the door, and Sara stuck her head in.

“Zeke,” she said happily. “What are you doing here?”

Zeke stood up straight and put his hands behind his back. “Checking on the status. A lot of us want to know.”

“Maybe we should send you all a timeline,” Sara said.

“What’s going on, Zeke?” Calvin interjected. The other man’s nerves had been high. Calvin had figured that even with a roughly two-thirds cut, the back pay was still a tidy sum. Maybe Zeke had gambling problems. “Is there something we can help with?” He didn’t know what to do about gambling problems, but he could figure it out.

Zeke looked over at Sara.

Calvin had once had reason to wonder if he needed to be jealous of Zeke. The other man was only in his mid-thirties, and Calvin supposed he was decent-looking. The casts had mooned over him, the mysterious self-appointed bodyguard for the starship captain. Calvin was pretty sure he didn’t need to worry about Sara, but maybe he needed to worry about Zeke.

Zeke shook his head. “It’s nothing. I’m handling it.”

Oblivious to whatever her entrance had derailed, Sara plopped a dime drive into the table. “I think,” she announced grandly, “that we have precedent. And it’s on our side.”

Zeke stood even straighter. “Should I leave?”

Sara laughed. “Of course not.” She could tell Zeke was feeling a lot of strain, but she hoped he would feel better shortly. “Will you sit down so I can show you?”

Zeke didn’t move.

She gave him a look she’d found often worked on men. It did this time, too, and Zeke sat.

She seated herself to Zeke’s right and Calvin took the opposite side.

Sara folded her hands on the table, and crossed her ankles beneath her chair. She enjoyed presenting. “It’s like this. We all know Einstein’s theory of special relativity.” She made sure to nod at Zeke in deference to his actual experience with the whole thing. “Time moves more slowly for someone going faster than for someone going slower. Sure, we all know about it with respect to you and the rest of the crew, but it applies even at speeds slower than light.”

She paused and gave both men a sunny smile. “It even applied in ancient times.”

She paused and ran her hands over the table’s controls. The dime’s contents sprang to life over the table, like a high-tech Ouija board. “Gentlemen, may I present the Kelly twins?”

Two bald men with round heads and handsome ears stood at one-eighth size over the table. One wore a period suit, complete with an open necked shirt and dark blazer. The other wore a pressure suit, and there was no mistaking the logos of USACD’s predecessor agency on his chest. NASA had been the civilian space exploration agency in the twentieth century and for parts of the twenty-first. It had been NASA who put the first man on Earth’s moon.

Calvin pulled back. Ever one to zero in on the most important issues, he said softly, “Those men have no hair.”

She chose to deliberately misunderstand him because she knew he knew better. “That’s because they were identical twins. They had the same genetic programming for male hair loss.”

Calvin would not be sidetracked. “But why did no one help them?”

“My father was bald, Calvin,” Zeke snapped. He looked to Sara. “Go on.”

“In order to study the effects of space travel, radiation, and microgravity on the human body in the early days of space exploration, NASA compared these two, who were both astronauts. Scott Kelly spent almost a year—340 days—in space—just in low Earth orbit, but that’s still space, of course—while his twin remained ground-based and available to NASA. NASA got biological samples from the ground-based twin, who acted as a control. Then the agency compared them to the orbiting twin to see how all that time in space effected the orbital twin’s genome.”

She had both men’s rapt attention. “It was fascinating, really. They found quite a bit of change: genes related to the immune system and DNA repair sprang into action. Cognitive speed, spatial orientation, and motor accuracy improved. Telomeres got longer.“

Zeke beamed. “We’re supermen,” he said modestly.

Calvin sat with one eyebrow raised.

She didn’t want to burst Zeke’s bubble, but honesty required the truth. “Blood pressure dropped. Scott’s arteries swelled, and his optical nerves got thicker, making his vision blurry. Did that happen to you?”

Their client looked offended. “We had artificial gravity, Sara.”

“There’s that speedy cognition,” Calvin muttered. “Ready with an answer.”

It was time to get things back on track. “Sorry about the tangent, and never mind the science. What’s interesting is that the orbital twin was travelling over 17,000 miles per hour for 340 days.”

Zeke looked skeptical. “That can’t produce any significant difference in time experienced by him and time experienced on Earth.”

“Five milliseconds,” she announced. “He lost five milliseconds. At least, that’s what the records I found said. I haven’t done the math.”

It was Calvin’s turn to look skeptical. “But have you just rediscovered the meaning of de minimis?”

Sara was not deterred. Just because five milliseconds might be so small as to make no difference to anything—which was the very essence of being de minimis—was no reason not to make the argument. “We can still argue it as precedent.”

“What about federal employees traveling to Mars? What about any employees traveling to Mars? Others have to have seen this as an opportunity to cut pay.”

“I’ve done a Mars run,” Zeke offered. “In the past. My pay was never cut.”

Sara allowed herself another smile. She had started there before discovering the twins. “Their pay was not docked,” she said. “I’ve checked.”

“And that’s got to be more than five milliseconds.” Calvin was triumphant.

She turned off the holo of the twins from antiquity. “It is. And it’s small, about a second. USACD will still argue the difference is de minimis and thus establishes no precedent, but it does give us a current practice to work with.”

Calvin rocked back in his chair. “Shall we set up a meeting?”

They obtained a meeting two weeks later. It allowed both Calvin and Sara to become more and more convinced of the rightness of their position, despite the obstacles. Five milliseconds didn’t help a lot. Neither did less than a second of the Mars runs. Calvin wished federal employees took regular junkets to at least one of the moons of Jupiter, but they didn’t. Even the asteroid belt might have helped, but robots ruled the rocks, and no human inspectors showed up in person.

Four outsiders walked USACD’s halls. Bart Locke, a senior partner at Feintuch and Sommers, accompanied the firm’s associates, Calvin Tondini and Sara Seastrom. Firms did not allow young associates to meet with government officials unaccompanied, even if the associates knew far more of the matter than the partner. If the pair had invited him as a preemptive maneuver to avoid having a more interfering person thrust upon them, he gave no sign that he knew. Zeke Salisbury, tense and grim, stalked ahead of his legal posse, looking as if he were prepared to do battle.

The General Counsel’s office had a large conference room with a view of Constitution Avenue and the Mall, but they were shown to a smaller room with no windows, where three lawyers, two officials from USACD’s budget office, and one senior attorney—Ryle Feder—who had yet to be offered a position in management, despite his decades of service, waited to hear out the lawyers for the Aeneid’s crew before doing what they wanted to do, anyway. They had a budget to protect.

Spotting Feder filled Calvin with waves of spiritual malaise. The senior attorney was nothing but a thorn in his side, and each time they met, Feder hated the younger man more. Calvin kept hoping Feder would lose interest, but, no, here he was again, on a matter that had nothing to do with his own area. Feder had worked the starship issues when it left Earth, and he was never going to let go of it.

Calvin understood the older man’s perspective, but he didn’t like it.

Introductions made, seats taken, lights adjusted to mimic the grey skies outside, Yolanda Everhart, a handsome woman with an aquiline nose and sharp chin, began the meeting. “Thank you for coming in. I hope you appreciate the position we are in. The Fair Labor Standards Act and its implementing regulations say that a person only gets paid for time worked. The Daylight Savings Time guidance make it clear we count hours subtracted from the count, as well.”

She addressed herself to Bart. Although Bart had excellent rejuvenation treatments—appearing to be somewhere in his thirties—he still looked more seasoned than his associates.

Bart gestured toward Calvin and Sara.

Sara took a breath. “We think Mr. Salisbury makes the equities of this situation clear, and would like him to speak.”

Zeke was stiff with suppressed anger, not nerves; but when he spoke, his voice was calm. “I would like to be paid for the years I lost. I did not see my children grow up, and I lost my wife because I went out looking for new worlds. It was the contract we made, and I want you to live up to it.”

“We are sorry, Mr. Salisbury,” Yolanda said. “But our hands are tied. We have to follow the regulations.”

Sara’s golden brows lowered. “The regulations do not account for faster than light travel. They were written long before it was invented, and it is not appropriate to try to shoehorn them into this circumstance. Moreover—” and here the light of battle entered her eyes, “—your own precedent does not allow you to take the position you wish to adopt. The underlying law was passed in 1938, when there was no space travel. The law is silent. When relativistic travel happened, your predecessor organization did not dock astronauts their pay.”

Feder spoke for the first time. “For doing what?” His voice was caustic, and Calvin did not appreciate his tone.

“For travelling so fast they lost time compared to Earth-based personnel. An early twin study points up the differences. The one who spent almost a year in orbit lost five milliseconds, but the records show he suffered no decrease in pay. Nor did any of the other early astronauts who spent long durations in Earth orbit going at speeds in excess of 17,000 miles per hour.”

Feder snorted, and Yolanda allowed herself the drama of pushing back an inch from the conference table. “Ms. Seastrom, surely you are not serious. There would be no means of accounting for five milliseconds.”

“Even today,” Sara continued, “federal employees travelling to Mars at speeds in excess of 180,000 mph do not lose pay for their lost seconds. This has been a consistent practice for well over a century.”

“Of course, they don’t,” Feder snapped. “Those times are de minimis. We cannot calculate them.”

“But you calculated the Aeneid’s,” Sara pointed out.

“Those are bigger numbers,” the budget officer who’d been introduced as Andrew Spurgle said disingenuously. “It’s much easier.”

“We think you should consider those numbers de minimis in keeping with your past precedent.”

Ryle snorted again. “No. It’s a lot of de minimis.”

Calvin leaned forward. “Your regulations don’t apply to this scenario. It was never contemplated. Our clients had contracts. Because your regulations are actually silent on this issue, you have to abide by your contracts.”

Spurgle of the budget office scowled at Yolanda. She had clearly told him he’d get away easily with his plan.

“Mr. Tondini,” she said gently. “We will have to agree to disagree.”

It was a polite way of saying, “Sue me.”

Once they’d emerged from the meeting and the building and reached the sidewalk, Zeke turned on his lawyers. “You gave away our best strategy.”

Sara blinked in the sunlight. “We had to. The courts say we have to exhaust our administrative remedies, or they make us go talk to the agency again.”

“Also, now we know what USACD will say in court,” Calvin pointed out.

“Here’s the thing,” Zeke demanded, “what are you two going to say?”

The next few days saw concerted activity. The crewmembers’ attorneys sent letters to each of their banks, pointing out why it would be unlawful to accede to the government’s garnishment demands for monies already deposited. The banks were used to receiving and complying with such letters in matters of marital dissolution. However, on receiving the Feintuch and Sommers letters and noting that the letterhead belonged to a firm that normally represented corporations rather than individuals, the banks advised USACD that they were unable to comply with its request absent a court order. So USACD filed for the return of the starship crew’s wages in federal court.

Calvin called Zeke first. Zeke scowled into the phone.

“It’s good news,” Calvin said again. “We’ve made things move much more quickly.”

“I suppose.”

Calvin had dithered before the call over whether he would bring up his next question. He knew clients cared about the outcome of their cases. Of course they did. Zeke Salisbury was a security officer who had faced interstellar travel and death, much more stoically than he was facing his loss of pay.

Calvin drew a breath and took the plunge. “Are you going to tell me what’s eating you?”

“No.” Zeke’s dark brows were about to meet.

“Why not?”

“It would be whining.”

“And you don’t whine.”

“I do not.”

Calvin’s mouth twisted. “Is it something that would help with the case?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“You need an ear?” He felt bad for pushing, but the man was clearly full of rage all the time, and he was letting Calvin see it. There had to be a reason.

Zeke snorted. “Calvin, you’re decades younger than I am. We have no common grounds.”

Calvin believed in talking, but now he kept his mouth shut. He’d read in a litigation strategy book it could work in depositions, and it often did. He decided to test it here.

“People like you are why I deserve every penny under my contract,” Zeke snarled.

It was a struggle, but Calvin maintained discipline. He said nothing.

But now Zeke wasn’t talking.

Calvin cracked first, but went for the minimum. “People like me?”

“Young people.”

“You’re not even ten years older than me,” Calvin said.

“I’m over thirty years away from you,” Zeke said. “Even people who are older than me are younger than me. Not only was I not here for my children growing up, I missed the whole thing—the slang, the wings, the business jargon, the implants, the geneering, the talking dogs, the napping—all the things you take for granted. I don’t understand people at work half the time. They don’t understand me. I’m a Rip Van Winkle.”

It took Calvin only a second. “We’re going to ask for a jury trial.”

The starship crew survived USACD’s motion for a directed verdict, where USACD asked to win as a matter of law, and the judge approved the crew’s request for a jury trial. USACD had not filed its complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia, so the parties did not receive the benefit of the rocket docket, as Calvin might have wished; nevertheless, they were scheduled for trial within three months. Sara briefed the law, and Calvin spent his time preparing witnesses.

Zeke had insisted he would not be taking any witness stand to whine in front of the entire world, particularly as that category of persons included his ex-wife and children, so his lawyers had to settle for less heroically famous members of the crew to put on the stand. It was too bad, because the public didn’t know Zeke as a whiner and wouldn’t have thought of him that way. It was also too bad, because the crewmembers who were most eloquent about their lost time did, indeed, sound—not exactly, but maybe a little—like whiners. Calvin and Sara continued to hope he would change his mind, up to the bitter end, through interrogatories, depositions, motions, and a grueling two days in jury selection.

The courthouse, on Constitution and Third, with its stripped classicism and tryptich of masses, didn’t always have crowds for its trials. Today it did, with casters, ear, and voice all jostling for a sighting of such a large collection of the Aneid’s crew, whose celebrity status might have waned since the starship’s return, but the casters were willing to revive it again when offered something that would feed a voracious news cycle.

“Where’s the captain?” someone shouted.

USACD had named her as a defendant, but Calvin had not been able to persuade her to testify, either. Like Zeke, she had no interest in whining in public.

Sara took the opening argument. Calvin would handle the closing. Her stomach fluttering, she rose and approached the jury box after the government’s lawyer seated herself. Mere telepresence was not sufficient for this civic duty, not after what had happened with the threats and bribes of decades past. Not to mention the gambling.

The jury was a representative sampling of the District’s population, where most of the previous generation had ensured physical perfection and other attributes for its offspring through geneering. One younger man sported a feathered ruff along his neck, and wings rose behind him, framing his face and head. Another young woman had pale green hair with lowlights of olive, which Sara was certain had not been dyed. Her eyes, too, showed the same greens. In the same age demographic was one person of great beauty. The woman’s parents had opted for expense over splash, and she showed no outward signs of genetic tampering other than the utter perfection of her features, from her flawlessly balanced eyes through her streamlined chassis to her sculpted legs, which Sara had noticed during jury selection. Sara herself had long wished that her parents had opted for this kind of work for her, rather than the tigering on her arms and torso, subtle though it was. Classic looks were the best.

Sara had looked the beauty up during jury selection, not out of jealousy or envy, but as one might look up a work of art one admired. Her name was Arabella Oates, and she was an actress. Sara had been surprised she’d never heard of her.

Sara considered none of that now. All twelve waited politely for her to begin.

So she did. She reviewed the crew’s history: how they had set out to look for other worlds when the asteroids had threatened Earth; how they had given up what those who stayed behind in the home solar system took for granted, namely, the gradual intake of society’s changes over time; and how the crew themselves, who would be testifying over the next two days, would show that this was not something to dismiss lightly but required compensation.

The jury nodded at all the right points. Ms. Oates listened with pursed lips and an intent gaze.

Moreover, Sara continued, the respected members of the jury should ignore the government’s attempts to rely on the Department of Labor’s regulations when it had promised the crew compensation for the missing years by contract.

Ms. Oates put her hands to her neck and, running them up the back of her scalp, lifted the heavy fall of gold hair that laid across her shoulders, gathered it above her head, and started twisting. The jurors to either side flicked sideways glances at her. Sara caught herself watching the maneuver and tried to ignore it. Her own sideways glance showed that Calvin was mesmerized, not by Sara’s argument, which he had heard her practice many times, but by the juror’s architectural exercise.

“The government,” Sara plowed on, “will claim that missing thirty years through time dilation is no different than a sailor being away from home for months. What you will hear from the crew will tell you it’s not the same at all. The people the government is using as examples are separated merely by distance. The Aeneid’s crew is separated by time.”

Everyone in the room watched as Oates wrapped her twisted hair into a bun on top of her head, took a stylus from her blouse pocket, and stabbed it through her coiffure. She was looking at someone behind Sara, who turned and saw it was Zeke, who was equally fixated. Oates gave her head the smallest of shakes, and the bun slid back along her head, puffing the hair around her face. She looked antique, classical, and intellectual. Still beautiful.

The judge cleared his throat. “Juror Number Eight, I must ask that you not engage in personal care in my courtroom.”

Oates turned her perfect profile to the room and gazed at the judge. “I apologize, Your Honor. I did not know.” Despite her youth, she had a voice that warmed Sara. It thrilled her to be in the same room as someone who must have been the main character in many videos, if only Sara could remember which ones.

She blinked. This wasn’t good. Her mind racing, she returned to her seat at counsel’s table. As USACD’s first witness was sworn in, she leaned toward Calvin. “We need her,” she hissed. “Did you see her watching Zeke? We need him to testify. He’s famous. He’s handsome. She’ll want to save him.”

During the recess after USACD rested its case, Calvin let Sara tell Zeke he was famous and handsome and needed to testify. Whenever Sara mentioned Juror Number Eight, however, Zeke both flushed and stuck his jaw out even farther.

“Quit talking about Number Eight,” Zeke finally said. “She’s an actress. You told me so yourself.”

Sara blinked.

“So she’s looking for attention. That’s it.”

Calvin stuck his hands in his pockets and stared down at the client. “You’re the right one for this, man. You made me see how hard it is to come back as a Rip Van Winkle. You’ll be the most effective. And when you say those things, it doesn’t sound like whining. It sounds heroic and tragic.”

Sara was seated next to Zeke on the bench in the small room, and took his hands in hers.

Calvin quickly wiped a sudden scowl from his face.

“The rest of the crew need you, Zeke,” she said. “You’ve got to do it.”

“We’ve practiced with you,” Calvin pointed out. He had even gone so far as to put Zeke on the witness list, just in case they got him to change his mind. “We know you sound good. We know you sound better than all the others. And you’d be doing it for them as well as yourself.”

Zeke leaned back with his head against the wall and groaned. “I’ll do it.”

Sara squeezed Zeke’s hands. Calvin and Sara’s eyes met. Sara dropped Zeke’s hands.

Calvin felt a springing tension deep in his core. He had to make sure not to bounce on his way from counsel’s table to the witness stand. He’d never done a jury trial before, and they all stared at him. It was unnerving. He cleared his throat. “Your Honor, members of the jury, I will be calling the starship crew’s first witness. Mister—”

A haptic stab from his palm cut him off. It was at emergency levels, and it hurt. A message from Zeke said only, Not doing it. Sorry.

Calvin stifled the impulse to glare across the courtroom at the man who’d crossed interstellar space, guarded his captain from the dangers of Washington, DC, and had now shown himself a coward. “—Wilkinson,” he finished smoothly. He was the least whiny of the bunch and whom they’d planned for originally, anyway.

Indeed, Adam Wilkinson was at his best, and Calvin managed to have him describe how he had rescued a child from Elysia’s native fauna before USACD objected and made him turn to the man’s suffering of lost time. Wilkinson was as good-looking as Zeke, and Juror Number Eight kept her gaze riveted on the man.

“Did you find things different at your new job?” Calvin asked.

Wilkinson shrugged his big shoulders. “It seemed like just another alien planet.”

Relief washed through Calvin. He’d worked hard with Wilkinson, but you never knew whether a witness would say the same thing again or not. He’d encouraged him to repeat that line. It was a good one.

“Can you tell me how?”

Wilkinson’s eyes dropped, and he stared at the floor before looking at the jurors. “I don’t like to complain. Never did on the ship. But here’s the thing: I wasn’t here on Earth for all the changes. What people did to their kids, all the genetic engineering.”

Juror Number Three shifted in his seat and his wings flexed in back of him.

“Do you mean the geneering?” Calvin asked by way of facilitating translation between decades past and present.

“Yes! And the language! I know language changes, but I didn’t get it gradually like everyone else. I can’t understand the young people. At all. There are meetings I just can’t follow, instructions I can’t understand. It’s crazy.”

“What else is different?”

“The technology. I never learned to play the violin. I can’t make a palm work with all that fingering. It takes me ten minutes to put in a call to my wife.”

There was more. And more of the same. Some could no longer work in their professional field at all. Others had friends who no longer cared for them, spouses who’d divorced them, and children who’d grown.

By the fifth witness from the starship’s crew roster, the judge’s eyelids were drooping. “Counsellor,” he said to Sara before she had a chance to call her next witness, “we are now well-informed of all the things the crew has missed out on and doesn’t understand in the present. Will your next witness offer us something new or mere repetition?”

The USACD lawyer was on her feet. “USACD seconds your honor’s objection.”

The judge eyed her. “I have asked a question. That is not the same thing as an objection.”

The attorney’s neck muscles twitched involuntarily. “Your Honor. My apologies.”

But the interruption had given Sara time to gather her thoughts. “Your Honor, USACD has characterized the legal precedent of the Kelly twins and present-day voyages to Mars as de minimis. The Aeneid’s crew is showing that a human life is not de minimis, that many people have lost over three decades of Earth time, three decades they didn’t experience in their lives. Each is entitled to his day in court. A human life is not de minimis.”

Juror Number Eight nodded with great sagacity. Her hair was still up in its bun.

The judge held up a hand. “Hold it right there.” He punched lightly at his desk, and his voice dropped to a mutter, even as his mic carried his voice through the courtroom. “You have hundreds of plaintiffs. Surely, you’re not calling all of them. Ms. Seastrom! This is now your second-to-last witness. Think wisely about your final one.”

Sara took her witness through his story, and the lawyers had a hurried recess in which they agreed they were getting repetitive, but they should put on a final witness so no one would think they were admitting to it. Zeke continued to refuse to testify.

USACD’s closing argument consisted of observing that, as an agency of the United States Government, it had to follow the law. The Department of Labor’s regulations said that employees had to be paid for time worked, as explained in the interpretive guidance on Daylight Savings Time. The jury should note that the guidance didn’t provide for payment of the hour not worked when the nation “sprang forward” in the spring. Regardless of its contract with the crew, the jury should understand that the law required USACD to fix its mistakes, and the crew contract had been a mistake. Fixing it was the right thing to do. If the jury didn’t let the government fix this mistake, it would be like giving the crew more than triple overtime.

The jurors nodded repeatedly as USACD’s lawyer delivered her closing.

Calvin felt like the third man on base with two strikes already called as he walked up to face the jury.

“Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we have a new situation here, one where you are in the privileged position of being asked to face novel questions of both law and equity. On the legal side we’ve asked the judge—on behalf of the crew—to tell you to recognize that the Labor regulations never addressed this situation and shouldn’t be stretched now to pretend that they do. It isn’t right for the government that writes the rules and the contracts to trick people into spending over thirty years away from their families, their home planet, and their culture without compensation.”

He described the precedent from the astronaut twins in the twentieth century. He pointed out that employees on transports to Mars didn’t have their pay cut. He reviewed the history of the law and regulations and how they pre-dated faster-than-light travel by almost two centuries.

The jurors were nodding. He wished they weren’t so generous with the gesture.

Juror Number Eight’s attention was magnetic. Calvin found himself addressing her directly more and more, even as he worked to make eye contact with the rest of them equally.

He wondered briefly if the other jurors had asked for her autograph. He wondered for the tenth time why he’d never heard of her. Mostly, however, he wondered whether he was persuading her and the rest.

“You know how courts recognize insurance companies have the upper hand in writing your policies and will read unclear parts in your favor? You should do the same here and hold the government to its contracts with the crew who gave up years of their lives to find humanity another place to live.

“Why should you do that? Here’s why. The crew relied on that contract. They and the government knew about faster-than-light travel’s effects on time. They knew about time dilation. Heck, a rock band in the twentieth century knew about it and wrote a song. The government would have it that the crew knew what it was giving up. But the government, their employer, told them they’d be paid for what they were giving up. You heard all about that today, the gradual adoption of new technology, professional practices, information, and language, the changes brought about by geneering. It’s not right to ignore that, and because the regulations weren’t written with this situation in mind, you get to decide what’s right, not the government.”

More than half the jurors were nodding promiscuously. It meant nothing to him. He needed more.

He needed something that would work. He needed something that would work on Juror Number Eight, because going by the thirst in her eyes, she wanted something from this trial just as much as Zeke Salisbury and the rest of the Aeneid’s crew did. Just as much as Calvin himself wanted to win it.

Calvin Tondini knew he was a clever man. He also knew that sometimes he was more lucky than good. He stuck a hand in his pocket and crossed his fingers.

“The government says the Aeneid’s crew is asking for overtime. They’re not. They’re asking to be compensated for the time they lost.

“They don’t want overtime,” he said softly. “They want to be paid for something completely different. ‘Undertime,’ if you will.”

Juror Number Eight lifted her chin.

Calvin wrapped up, still focused on Juror Number Eight. She cast him a look of triumph as she and her colleagues filed out for their deliberations.

The judge declared a recess for deliberations and flowed out of the courtroom after the jurors.

Zeke Salisbury waited until the judge was gone before he turned on Calvin. “What was that?” he demanded. “‘Undertime’? Sara, is that a thing?”

Sara cast her beloved a dubious glance. “I don’t think so.”

Calvin gave them both a slight but serene smile. “It’s going to become a thing.”

Unless, of course, he’d completely misread Juror Number Eight, her needs, and her powers.

They waited. They waited three hours and then some. The judge returned and the jury filed back into the courtroom, Juror Number Eight leading the way, her posture upright, her chin high. One of the jurors nodded at Zeke. They looked proud of themselves, like warriors on the ramparts—or on the edge of time itself. Calvin held his breath.

“Would the fore please stand?” the judge said, paging his way through something on his desk screen. He looked up and caught the quivering tension radiating from the members of the jury. He sat up a little straighter.

Juror Number Eight stood, eyeing her colleagues briefly. They gave her the nod. In unison.

Calvin let go of his breath. Sara was staring at the fore, just as fixated as those in the jury box. And everyone else in the crowded room. All eyes recorded Juror Number Eight. This was her moment.

“Do you have your decision?”

“Yes, Your Honor.” If her beauty drew the heart, her voice broke it. Calvin didn’t care if some clever person had geneered her in utero. He only longed for her to speak again.

“Go on.”

The fore waited a beat before speaking. “We find in favor of the starship’s crew for the years lost to them.” She paused. It was all she needed to say, but even the judge didn’t tread on her next line. “We call it undertime.”

The casts and reels that covered such things showed nothing of the crew, nothing of Zeke Salisbury, and even failed to hunt down the starship’s charismatic captain. Each clip showed Juror Number Eight declaiming the creation of a new wage category, a wage category fit not just for a spacefaring race, but an interstellar one.

“I almost slugged you,” Zeke said later. “Undertime.” He groaned.

The three of them had spent less than an hour outside the courthouse, the media all waiting for the jury to appear. Now the trio were in one of the firm’s conference rooms again. Sara sat on the table, Calvin lounged on the couch, and Zeke walked back and forth.

“What possessed you?” the now-wealthy interstellar traveler demanded.

“Number Eight needed something,” Calvin said. “At first, I thought it was you.”

Zeke turned red.

“She needed a charm,” Sara said dreamily. “She was mesmerizing, but the videos are full of people like her. And here she was, a bit player all over again. She’s tired of it. She saw her chance. And you gave it to her, Calvin. I bet she gets lots of work now.” Her cheeks reddened. “I looked her up. I now have a strong compulsion to watch everything she’s ever been in.”

“You’re a fangirl,” Calvin noted.

“And you’re a scriptwriter,” Sara said.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Zeke asked. “Even though I think ‘undertime’ wasn’t any good—at all—everyone else is saying it’s brilliant. And she’s getting the credit.”

“No one,” Calvin said with becoming modesty, “remembers that I said it. And that’s just fine. It worked.” Secretly, he thought undertime a little odd, too, but he wasn’t Juror Number Eight.

Accidental Acquisition

Peter Delcroft

Shen-thi wasn’t used to excitement. His job was to sit and type. Tip tap, tip tap. For him, court was usually boring and banal. Excitement did come, though; it just tended to come in many forms.

It usually came after a lawyer finished a biting cross-examination, or when a witness needed to be subdued by a bailiff. It came when someone on the stand revealed a juicy tidbit about a high-profile member of a case, salacious and sure to ignite a firestorm of Holo-Net communications.

It didn’t come after only the basic charges had been read out.

This case was different, though. Shen knew it. The judge knew it. Everyone knew it. The constant media coverage made it so the only people unaware were those in ships stuck in a flux jump or out on deep-space mining missions.

Shen sat unmoving, his dexterous tendrils hovering over the court touchpad. His many eyes were fixed on the clerk, same as the rest of the room.

The clerk continued as if they hadn’t just dropped a bomb on everyone.

“In total, the damages to the various plaintiffs’ property have exceeded one hundred million credits.”

As Shen felt himself go into autopilot, copying down everything that had just been said, the court filled with the low murmur of shock and awe.

The whispers in the room, spoken in a dozen galactic languages, echoed the fervor from the news broadcasters about the disaster. Whoever this “Andrew Spurgle” was, he must be one of the greatest specimens from this backwater planet, “Earth.” To do so much damage in so little time was nothing less than the work of an expert saboteur and soldier.

The prosecuting counsel sat at their bench, while they waited placidly for the court clerk to call for opening statements. Twelve different lawyers sat for the plaintiffs, all clustered around the lead counsel, a tall Cadmorian in a beautiful gray suit to match his bulbous heads and gray skin. The prosecution bench had to be extended for today’s case, just to accommodate all of them. Shen knew they would be confident; anyone who had read the news or watched the footage of the disaster could argue this case. They had images, videos, and eyewitness testimony of the alien while he was in the act and everything. Behind them, on another long bench, were the plaintiffs, a group of individuals mostly made up of government types or well-put-together business people. Each was wearing their best. A few were even outshining their counsel.

The defense team, if that’s what you could call this rag-tag group of barristers, looked much less confident. Sitting at their table, although on a bench a step back, were what Shen guessed were the defendants, here to speak for themselves. There were noticeably fewer people here to be called on than for the prosecution. There was a teenaged Asarit, or at least that was Shen’s guess from the diminutive frame of the first witness. The next was the pilot of the ship on trial: a Kozu, like Shen. Her Federation uniform gave away her vocation, while her malleable body laid in a literal puddle on her part of the bench and ran along the legs to the ground, taking up enough space that defense counsel kept tripping over her. After too many slips, the judge demanded she reform or be held in contempt. As she remade herself into a suitable sitting form like Shen’s, the last witness was able to untangle himself from her puddled torso. He was a Cadmorian like the lead counsel for the prosecution, but one who tattooed his large bulbous heads instead of staying clear of ink. Sure sign of an outcast, although there were no specific tattoos to say if it was a voluntary ostracizing or not. Not a good sign for his credibility. It was quite the motley crew to be calling to the stand. Shen wondered how they were going to spin this.

The room quieted as the prosecution lead and the defense lead, a willowy Zoarc with a broken dorsal fin, were waved up to the bench. The judge had presided over this court for many years, although Shen doubted she had ever seen a case like this. He certainly hadn’t worked one, and he had been here almost as long as the judge.

After the formalities about decorum in the court, the prosecution was given free rein to begin the proceedings. The Cadmorian strutted to the center of the open floor and swept a hand out across the crowd. His voice boomed, carrying with it his confidence and bravado.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are here today to determine who is at fault when damage is done. Who do we hold accountable when harm has been wrought?” He paced back and forth as he spoke, hitting his chest to add emphasis. Each blow made his voice boom and resonate. “We have ourselves a situation where those who aided and abetted a spy in laying one of our starports into ruin claim they are not responsible for the damages that collaboration has caused.

“The spy, in the short time he was aboard this space station, was able to damage or destroy ten warships, five courier vessels, one hospital ship, and an entire docking port. Loss-of-use costs and repairs for all of this damage are, as the illustrious clerk noted, in excess of one hundred million credits.”

The crowd shuffled on hearing the total again. Only the richest citizens in the Federation could ever dream of earning ten percent of that total over their lifetime; it was an unfathomable fortune. But they had all seen the videos on the net, or seen the damage themselves. Or maybe they had just smelled it. It really depended on if they had been on Arco station for the festivities and their sensory organs picked up on that sort of thing.

“As you all know, Mr. Spurgle escaped in the chaos. His whereabouts are the talk of the sector, ranging from the Yanwu straits all the way back here to Arco station. In his wake, the damage remains. Arco remains, wounded and limping. A bitter pill to swallow for his innocent victims.”

Swallow was the wrong word to use. People aboard the station weren’t swallowing anything. They were quick to voice their complaints in quite the vociferous manner, from Shen’s perspective. The crowd around the courthouse today had been the biggest he had ever seen. No press was allowed in during proceedings, but the observation benches were packed. He was expecting at least one eviction for rowdy behavior before the day was done.

“Say someone buys a laz rifle, then leaves it sitting out for anyone to find. A primitive stumbles upon it and shoots someone. Who is to blame? The rifle manufacturer? The primitive?” the Cadmorian continued.

Ugh, another one of these arguments. Heard one puffed up lawyer, you’ve heard them all. The strutting had never ceased, nor had Shen’s tendrils. He felt himself fading, going into his own thoughts. Lucky for him, he could type half-asleep with so many years at the touchpad.

These “humans” were fascinating. The Cadmorians had found them while exploring their home sector ages ago. The search had been for new ores for their commercial operations. Once they popped into the human star system and realized the yellow had a civilization floating around it, one that was pre-FTL but well into their burgeoning space age, everyone in the Federation had agreed to just leave it alone. They did, however, put a containment order on it. Normally, this stopped any Federation polity from accessing it for their own purposes and left the civilization to reach the stars themselves. Before that had happened, though, they had grabbed a few of the humans in secret for scientific analysis. The results had not been pleasant. A few scary encounters, some direct sightings, including one crash in the desert and countless other close calls, had been enough for the Federation to mark the planet as a Grade Two world. Not completely off-limits, but definitely meant to be avoided unless in an emergency.

That was the official story. Shen didn’t buy it. Part of the reason the Federation did what it did was to avoid losing face. Too many screw-ups, especially for such a powerful political group, had debased their reputation in galactic politics for a time. How can you explain so many issues with a pre-FTL species? They hadn’t even left their home system. They were practically animals!

Primitive also seemed like the wrong word to use. These “humans” were capable of things far beyond that of a primitive; Mr. Spurgle had proved that. Maybe they needed a grade reclassification. As it stood, Grade Two worlds, and all species from them, were considered primitive in all legal matters. If that was their angle, he could see the logic behind it.

Shen’s tendrils had continued typing despite his brain strolling around on its own. When he snapped back to the moment, he caught the tail end of the prosecution’s opening statement.

“We have logs showing that the ship of the defendants did knowingly aid and abet the spy and sabote—”

“HE WASN’T A SPY!”

“OBJECTION!”

The first bellow came from the teenaged Asarit, of all people, and the impassioned response from the prosecution lead. His snarl said enough about what he thought of being interrupted.

“ORDER, ORDER!” The judge hammered away with her gavel for emphasis. She pointed it at the teenager, roaring out her response. “One more outburst like that and you’ll be held in contempt! You stand to owe a lot by the end of these proceedings. I would advise you not add fines onto the pile!

“Objection is sustained.”

Shen quickly erased what he had just typed, clicking the bones in his locomotion tendrils together in contentment. Oh yes, excitement comes in many forms.

“Today we assert that those who bought, loaded, and laid the gun down in easy reach of a primitive has as much responsibility as the primitive who pulled the trigger. My clients deserve justice, and it is only you, the members of the jury, who can deliver it.”

Humans must truly be some species. If just one could do so much damage, it must have been a good call to enact the “Live and Let Live” protocol when the Federation found them.

“Members of the jury, today we will prove the defendants did knowingly aid and abet a saboteur in his actions against the Federation,” the lead counsel declared. “They picked him up from a known containment world, itself a felony against Decree 145.c.65A against the trafficking of protected and/or dangerous species. During their travels, they armed him. They then brought him to Arco station, at which point they set him loose on the rest of us.”

The Cadmorian stopped his pacing, spinning to take in the entire courtroom for effect.

“We know that today, the issue will be settled: at whose feet can we lay down the pain of the ‘Spurgle Incident’? The law will have been followed, and justice will have been served.”

Seemingly pleased with his opening salvo, he sauntered back to the prosecution desk and sat down.

“The court will now hear opening statements for the defense.”

The Zoarc stood up, holding a cup in one hand. Even from this distance, Shen could see the condensation pilling off the glass in rivulets and falling to the floor. He couldn’t understand why he was holding it. Wasn’t his hand getting wet?

Shen could sense the set-up for a rhetorical trick when he saw one.

The counsel stopped in front of the judge’s bench. By this point, the glass he was carrying must have been half empty, with pools of clear liquid making a trail behind him.

The judge raised her snout, a sign of her patience fading. Her species was known to raise their noses before charging at prey. This was all before evolution pushed them away from snuffling fungi and onto the galactic stage, but certain instincts were hard-coded.

The Zoarc’s dorsal fin was colored a deeper blue, indicating he was embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry, Your Honor. My cup seems to have a leak. It was never my intent to spill on the floor of the courtroom.”

He shuffled back to his desk, placing the now-empty cup back onto the table. With his back turned to the judge, he gestured to the jury.

“Like any of the fine members of the jury, I am fallible. We all are.” Spinning to view the high bench, he continued. “It was my assumption that the cup provided to me by the court would be as advertised. Not chipped. Not broken.”

“Objection! Your Honor, how is this relevant?” The Cadmorian’s mane almost bristled with his indignation.

“Overruled, counsel. I want to see where this is going. I will note, however, that wasting the court’s time is a finable offense, barrister.”

The Zoarc indicated he understood, then launched back in. Some of his earlier bluster was gone and the cadence was off, but he managed to take back the initiative.

“Like anyone else who lives in a just and fair society, I trusted the thoroughness of another’s work to steer me truly.

“Just like I trusted the water glass and thus made an inadvertent error, my clients trusted the law and were misled. ‘Earth’ is classified as Grade Two for the purpose of containment protocols. While considered to be ‘At Risk,’ sentients from Grade Two worlds are only meant to be avoided in emergencies. Grade Three is when the true danger is at hand and their transport becomes a capital offense.

“It is the opinion of my clients that while, yes, they violated Decree 145.c.65A when stopping on this ‘Earth,’ that they are not responsible for any damages that have come about because of the violation as they operated on the assumptions provided to them by the law.

“The situation they found themselves in was an emergency. A key engine component failed, burning through vast reserves of their fuel. This was an emergency none could have foreseen, nor could they have acted differently in such a situation than they did. My clients made the call not just to save their own lives, but the lives of their crew, and in turn, the lives of all of the citizens of this great Federation that rely on them.

“Under Decree 127.c.68A, a ship’s crew can break containment protocols if the action is taken to save the lives of the crew and/or other passengers. This applies to medical and mechanical emergencies.”

The color faded from his fin as he entered his rhythm, back to his base green tone. The Zoarc stood tall again, picking his moment carefully.

“Here, today, we will prove through interior ship logs and audio recordings that Mr. Spurgle was picked up by accident during the acquisition of fuel on Earth.”

The surprise in the court was audible. What passed as gasps from a dozen different galactic species filled the room, truly making a near-painful tone when combined. The sounds lasted for half a minute or so until the Judge hammered the court back to attention. The defense lead nodded to her, then continued.

“Once he was picked up and his presence was discovered, the necessities of their emergency made them choose to head for Arco. The crew made the call to head to the nearest station within jump distance instead of risking turning around and dropping him off and getting stranded, like they would have for a sentient from a Grade Three containment world. All decisions regarding the treatment of Mr. Spurgle during the journey were made with his Grade distinction in mind.”

Wow, what an angle! Shen was genuinely impressed that anyone would try it. They accidentally kidnapped a sentient being.

“Today we will show that only one individual is responsible for all of the damages: one Mr. Andrew Spurgle. He must be found, and held to account for his actions. The Ozcrom Federation is strong through our institutions. Please do not let our law be so degraded that it is used to punish the innocent, while the guilty still stalk the stars.”

No one knew where said guilty man was. It had been months since the incident, long enough that he could be light-years away. Many administrations within a several-month flux jump span of Arco were claiming that an uptick in damage and sabotage on their planets was due to Spurgle copycats, or due to Andrew Spurgle himself. Sightings poured in from all over, sometimes entire planets pitching in trying to claim the bounty. Part of the reason they were in court was to make it plain that Arco was recovering, and the law had the situation well in hand.

Shen’s bones clicked again, and this time the staccato rhythm would have told any passersby that he was delighted. What a case!

The defense rested their opening statements to a sudden symphony of conversation from the observation benches. The Zoarc returned to his seat, strutting to match the Cadmorian. His fin was a deep red and he glistened in the light of the court. Good show, fishman.

They all seemed fairly proud of themselves. On the other side of the aisle, the prosecution team was a flurry of movement and limbs, tablets being passed around and voices pitched low in intense conversation. None of them seemed surprised. and they shouldn’t be, discovery being what it is. They would have been terrible lawyers if they let emotion like that show in the court. Shen had to remind people who didn’t work in law that the courts were part theatre, part administration. All good lawyers could hock it in a Holo-Vid if they had the courage, the capital, or no intent of ever practicing law again. Certainly not the worst safety net Shen knew about.

The next hour or so was filled with different pieces of evidence being entered into record for the proceedings. Multiple security camera reels, all of footage documenting the time Mr. Spurgle spent on Arco station, many stills from handheld cameras taken by passersby, several audio recordings to match the videos or simply audio recorded by a civilian on the station as they passed by part of the disaster. The sheer volume of evidence and the hurried nature of the trial meant everything was being introduced at the beginning, instead of coinciding with their relative arguments.

Altogether, it was beyond damning. It all pointed to the same conclusion: the defendants brought him here, they set him loose on Arco, and the bill came to one hundred million credits. The famous clip of a bomb flying out the ship’s cargo hatch, which had played all across galactic news networks, was the main exhibit Shen was waiting for them to spin.

Like, come on! It was lit when he threw it and everything! Shen had seen Holo-Vids with less obvious bombs in them. The throw was clearly timed to allow maximum surprise and destruction. The fact that no one had died, while the majority of the injuries were minor and repairable, was still something Shen had a hard time wrapping his tendrils around.

The defense began to enter articles into evidence, including their own on-ship camera videos of the timespan before they reached Arco. Several audio recordings were put into evidence with the videos, as well. The picture it seemed to paint was of a series of very unfortunate events.

Then the prosecution was told to call their first witness, which began the butchery. The first witness was a dockmaster from the main docking bay, which was still out of commission. The tall Omnikan looked resplendent in her Federation uniform, the grays and browns of her mottled skin tone mixing well with the dark gray of the fabric. Her account was the beginning of the chaos. She had been waiting on the docks for the ship carrying the spy to open its cargo hatch.

“Please, Ms. Fen-gammon, walk us through the events to the best of your recollection,” the Cadmorian prompted.

“Well, it started with odd sensor readings. The ship was venting a lot more fuel runoff than it should have been, so we assumed there might be issues. We had a fire response team on standby, which turned out to be a lifesaver in the long run. The ship finished docking procedures and got locked into place. The cargo bay doors opened, and a bomb sailed out.”

The room had returned to the deafening silence of before. The Cadmorian nudged the witness along.

“You’re sure it was a bomb?”

“Well, it blew up after flying into some nearby storage tanks, so yeah, I would call it a bomb.”

The prosecution called the court’s attention to a video clip, the famous one, which they had entered into evidence. When they played it, the woman’s account was seemingly corroborated. It showed her and a fire crew waiting on the dock, then leaping out of the way as a small object—which was actively on fire, mind you—sailed out of the cargo doors of the damaged ship. It bounced around, before landing amongst some crates filled with gas tanks. It caused some serious damage, in particular to shipments of the tanks in the area. They then called another video to the court’s attention, this one showing footage from inside the ship in question.

The interior of the ship was an absolute mess, well below the standards of a merchant-class vessel like the Pearl. It had the look of a crew that didn’t take care of their vessel. All throughout the video, you could see Mr. Spurgle in one of the ship’s staterooms crafting the bomb. Members of the crew, including all of the defendants sitting in the courtroom waiting to testify, could be seen in the video arriving and helping Mr. Spurgle build it. It then cut to video from inside the cargo bay, with the images of the lit bomb being tossed around at the cargo door between crew members, landing last on Mr. Spurgle, who threw it out the bay doors as soon as they opened.

A few more questions were posed to the dockmaster surrounding the explosion, following which an additional segment of video was shared from evidence. On it, the dockmaster scurried about, dealing with not only the damaged tanks nearby that were spewing noxious chlorine fumes, but the crowd that was forming around the new entertainment that appeared to have had its lethality subsided. All in all, it was fairly convincing.

“As you can see, the crew not only helped him build the bomb that started the chain reaction of damage to Arco, they then aided him in its use. Thank you, Ms. Fen-gammon.”

Cross-examination came and went, with only one direct question from the defense team. The Zoarc stepped forward, gesturing to the video screen on the wall.

“Can we please go back to the moment the device was thrown from the ship?”

The footage was rewound to a specific frame looking inside the ship from the cargo bay doors. The angles for the cameras weren’t perfect, as smoke from the bomb filled the room, while Mr. Spurgle and one other crew member were partially out of frame, but it showed them tossing the device back and forth between each other, then Mr. Spurgle tossing the lit device out the hatch.

“So you saw Mr. Spurgle and not one of the defendants throwing the bomb?” the defense asked.

“Yes, counsel.”

“Thank you, Ms.Fen-gammon, that will be all.”

The dockmaster got up on shaking legs, surprise etched across her features. Shen guessed she had expected more grilling. She made her way on uneven feet back to the witness bench behind the prosecution team. The look on her face said she was glad it was over.

The second witness was called to the stand: standard corporate suit, by the looks of it. Suits were easily the most boring to watch in any court. Their stories always matched the news reels. Each one had obviously gone through coaching. Their answers were too clean-cut. You could shave in the reflections of their recently buffed and shined shoes. Did anyone ever tell them that you don’t win friends by looking like a robot? Unless you were a food bot; everybody loved those.

The suit offered simple no-nonsense explanations. He was aboard one of the affected courier ships and by chance had been near a viewing port. The booming explosion had woken him from his bunk. The viewing port in his room had a perfect view of the suspect staggering towards a small fire near some chlorine gas tanks.

According to the suit, Mr. Spurgle had then used a hose to spray a chemical mixture onto the fire, which immediately reacted poorly and exploded, sending him and his pursuers flying in various directions. The shockwave had rocked the ship the suit was on, sending it careening into another parked vessel. The entire affair cascaded, parked vessels slamming into their neighbors, turning his ship into the first in the domino chain of property damage. That was the last he saw of Mr. Spurgle, who was nowhere to be found upon the suit returning to the viewing port.

The defense did what they could to discredit his account. Shen enjoyed the attempts, even if they did feel a little desperate. They cited expert testimony from a previous case that human males could expel waste from a hose on their front torso, and that what might have appeared as a deliberate act of sabotage could have been another accident.

“It looked fairly intentional to me. The window was open, and I heard him yelling.” The suit’s responses really were wooden and monotone.

“Did you hear what he was saying?”

Evidently, the translator didn’t pick it up. Well, damn, Shen was hoping for something crazy, like a battle cry.

Dark purples in the dorsal fin of the defense council gave away his frustration, even if his tone didn’t as he thanked the witness and stated he had no more questions.

The next up on the stand said much the same.

The videos that the prosecution used for exhibit were the final moments of the disaster, ending with the last known video evidence of Andrew Spurgle’s presence aboard Arco station, as he dived into an escape shuttle and disappeared into the black.

Defense counsel called no more questions on this witness, nor on many of the others that took the stand over the next few days.

The courtroom was tense the whole time. The prosecution seemed to be on their game, systemically listing out all the damage and harm to Arco. Ship captains from all the affected vessels were brought in to testify to the havoc Mr. Spurgle’s presence had wrought.

By the end of the run, Shen was tired. He no longer had any faith the defense could win this one. The prosecution rested their case after a full week of calling witnesses and making arguments, any one of which would have damned the average defense case by itself.

Speaking of the defense case, their witnesses had shown up to court every day and bore the brunt of stares and awkward silences. They listened as their names and reputations were dragged through the mud, never any outburst after the first. When it came time for them to take the stand, each one almost bounded up into the box, their stories rushing to get out. The Asarit was first.

“All right, Moke, can you walk us through the emergency aboard the Friskee Pearl?”

Shen had turned out to be correct on his observation of the teenager. They spoke with the high nasal pitch of an adolescent for their species.

“We had just picked up new parts and paid for an installation on Precor Station. While in a flux jump after leaving, the part failed, and we were forced to vent a significant amount of our fuel reserves to fix the issue enough to jump again. We were so low that we had to aim for the closest source of water to our present trajectory upon breaking the atmosphere on the planet Earth. Most of the power was still pumping into the cloaking device to keep us hidden, so evasive maneuvers to one of the planet’s oceans was a no-go. Besides, if we outright failed to fix the issue, we would have sunk to the bottom and died. We picked the next best alternative.”

The Asarit shifted in their seat, glancing over at another one of the witnesses, the Kozu, in this case.

“Poro-dai did a great job of guiding us in on wind drift and instruments, but that still meant we had to take whatever source of hydrogen we could get. Poro spotted a large, contained reservoir next to a building and made for it. She dropped the fuel scoop, sucked up the reservoir and we jetted out of there.”

The Zoarc gestured for the witness to stop, calling for a video from evidence to be played. The camera view showed the bottom of the Friskee Pearl. Quality was not great, especially from grime on the lens blocking most of the upper left quarter of the screen, but it served its purpose.

The video showed the fast-approaching surface of the planet, heading towards what looked like a wide spread urban area with many buildings tightly packed together. The ship dropped right for a building with a large pole with a sign next to it. The sign read “Hotel 7,” and the reservoir was a sunken pit next to the building with some reclining chairs surrounding it. The water was clear, and there was writing on the blue-painted bottom of the reservoir that was visible, even through the refractions of the water. It read, “Deep End: Fifteen feet.”

You could see other humans around the reservoir and some commotion going on. The ship dropped into place and all of the liquid was then scooped or sucked into the fuel cavity, before the Pearl blasted off and back into orbit. Something detached from the bottom of the ship, but disappeared in a blur. The video was stopped there.

“Please, continue, Moke.” The witness cleared their throat before jumping back in.

“When we got back up into space, our filtering instruments were reporting a blockage. When I went to clear it, Mr. Spurgle popped out. He was screaming so loud, I could barely hear my own thoughts. He was mostly naked, wearing a very tight piece of bright pink fabric that barely covered his genitals. I kept pointing to my translator as I fought to understand him, but he’s from a containment world, so it makes sense it didn’t work, at first. Not a lot of reference material for it to work with.”

The Asarit looked stunned as they recounted the first meeting, almost like they couldn’t believe it themselves.

“There was an inflated rubber object sitting nearby and he had a container for liquids in one hand that he kept pointing to. It took me some time to realize he was explaining that the contents had been lost in his acquisition. He was quite irate about it.

“By this point, my translator had identified I was speaking to a human, and it began filtering him properly for me. With the help of the machine, I tried to tell him I would replace the contents of his container with water, which he refused as a ‘matter of principle.’ He then demanded to know if I could make a ‘Rusty Nail’ or an ‘Old Fashioned.’ He seemed to get even more irate when I told him I had no idea what those were, and then he started listing off things I would need.”

The witness stopped, shaking his head as he continued.

“He started sobbing when I told him I didn’t know what ‘whiskey’ was.”

The great saboteur got kidnapped, and the first thing he did was complain about a drink?

“What came next, Moke?”

The Asarit took a sip of water and took a few breaths before marching on. Their voice rose in pitch with the insanity of the story.

“In between sobs, he kept ranting about how ‘they are real,’ but that ‘they couldn’t even make whiskey.’ Our lack of knowledge of this thing truly seemed to make our worth drop in his eyes. He then went on about a ‘ruined vacation.’ I tried to console him, but nothing seemed to work.”

Moke pointed to the Kozu waiting to speak for the defense.

“I called Poro-dai to help me in the holding cells, then told him I would go acquire him some new clothes. When I came back, he was naked and lying on the floor. At this point, I was so thoroughly confused that I placed the water I had brought with me near the door, then locked it and barred it from the outside. Then I fled.”

The rest of the room was locked in, fully immersed in the re-telling. Even the judge broke decorum and was visibly wrapped up in the rhythm of the recounting.

“For the next few days, he never left the room. He seemed seriously ill. Poro-dai and I believed he might have been detoxing off something. He was fairly delirious and kept yelling out, ‘Papa’s ready for the probin’!’ When whatever that meant didn’t materialize, he finally dressed and settled into a sullen existence, eating voraciously and complaining the entire time. That lasted until he overheard us talking about repairs.”

The Zoarc called for a halt to the story and brought up the clip the prosecution had used. Once again, the blurry features of Andrew Spurgle could be seen hunched over the bomb. The clip continued going until Mr. Spurgle held the device up to look at the bottom of it.

Shen was confused. That certainly didn’t look like a bomb. Did he tape some of those pieces on? And why he didn’t just tip it over to read the bottom. Didn’t that hurt his neck?

“Can you walk us through what we’ve been watching, Moke?”

The witness put his head into his hands as he spoke.

“That was supposed to be a flux capacitor.”

“Supposed to be?”

“Yes. He told us he had made one before. Said his dad was a mechanic and had taught him.”

Shen, the judge, the observation benches, everyone went dead silent. Shen’s tendrils ceased their flurry of movement.

The containment sentient, who was of a species who had yet to leave their home system, had made a flux capacitor. The Zoarc put voice to everyone’s question.

“And you believed him?”

“OF COURSE NOT!” Moke looked crazed as he screamed his reply. Evidently months of waiting to tell his story left a lot of emotion to get out. The judge’s warning brought him back down to courtroom-appropriate volume. “We gave him the old broken one. It had already failed and forced us to vent most of our damn fuel.”

Defense counsel fast forwarded through the video, showing Moke, the pilot Poro-dai and the Cadmorian all showing up with different parts over a period of several days. As each one was dropped off, they were haphazardly welded or taped onto the other pieces.

“He kept asking for more stuff, but we just kept giving him broken components. We figured, what harm can he do with a bunch of junk?”

The video was replaced with another, this one the view from inside the cargo hold. Mr. Spurgle could be seen on frame throwing the burning device to Poro-dai, who tossed it to Moke, who in turn sent it back to Mr. Spurgle.

“So, what happened next?”

Shen had to feel for the guy. If all of these weren’t complete lies, it sounded like they had misfortune stacked on misfortune. Flux capacitor failed and now this? What kind of luck do you have to have to pick up a human like Andrew Spurgle?

He kept stuttering and mixing up words. His nerves were evidently frayed. Cross examination was going to be brutal.

“We had arrived and were going through normal docking procedures. The Pearl was limping along, but still worthy of the black, so we weren’t worried. Then Spurgle came sprinting out of the stateroom holding his device. Before anyone could tell him to stop, he hit several buttons on the side and the damn thing started to glow. It revved up slowly like a turbine generator. Then it lit on fire. Of course, he screamed from the pain and reflexively hurled the thing away from himself. At me. I panicked and batted it towards poor Poro-dai.”

Some scattered laughs came from the benches in the back, only to be silenced by the furious gaveling of the judge. When quiet had returned, defense counsel prompted the witness a little.

“So, when the door opened, the toss we saw…?”

“We were all panicking! He had strapped so many old broken components to it, no one wanted to drop it. He saw light through the gap in the hatch, spun and hurled it out.”

Once again, the video was moved forward to show the moment of the toss. The video was very chaotic, smoke from the device by this point obscuring a decent amount of the visibility in the room.

Shen thought it made sense. Everything was lining up. Too much of the video was obscured for it to be clear cut. If it was true, then Spurgle was no saboteur. Of his own life, maybe, but he was no spy. Shen was having trouble not laughing like the rest.

“The resulting explosion rocked the Pearl and sent me flying into the bulkhead. I’m not sure what happened after that. I was out cold till station security woke me up in the hospital.”

Wow. Just wow.

“Thank you, Moke. No more questions, Your Honor.”

The defense lead returned to his bench and sat down. Almost at once, the prosecution lead stood up and approached the witness.

It was as brutal as Shen expected. The poor Asarit had his judgment, the judgments of the crew and everyone else present called into serious question. When they got to the part about them giving him broken components and the devices essentially becoming a bomb, the poor creature started to sob.

“None of the parts we gave him can produce flame! Or even have batteries!”

A few more tortured minutes passed before the prosecution signaled they were done. Moke slunk back to the bench behind the defense desk and practically collapsed into it.

Next up to the butcher’s block was the Kozu pilot, Poro-dai.

The video of the dockmaster and her crew returned to the screen. They waited in a bunch, parked where the ship’s crew should be exiting. You could see the look of surprise on their faces before instinct kicked in and many dived for safety to avoid the burning “bomb” that came flying out.

It landed in a storage area and exploded, nothing huge, just the boom of a small piece of ordnance. Several tanks had their sides shredded. They must have been the tanks leaking from the suit’s testimony. Shen scrolled back up and quickly re-read pieces of the testimony while typing with his other tendril.

Footage continued rolling, moving into a frame of people scattering near the blast sight. Andrew Spurgle could be seen exiting the Pearl at this point, dashing towards the site of the explosion. While he disappeared from the top of the frame, Poro-dai can be seen stumbling into the bottom of it.

“Okay, Poro-dai, tell us where you are in all this.”

“Well, I was pretty shook up, not gonna lie to ya.” Poro-dai clicked her internal bones together in a skittering staccato that Shen felt in all of his being. He felt her terror. That seat could not be easy to sit in.

“My tendrils were burned right bad, so I had trouble getting out.” She lifted the patches of her form that still bore the hardening effect from their kind being heated. “I made it out and saw him running. I knew we were already in enough trouble, so I went to stop him. I was too slow.”

The Kozu deflated like gas releasing from a balloon, dropping out of view inside the witness box.

“It’s all right, Poro-dai, we can take a break if you need us to.”

The judge took the opportunity to call a recess, ostensibly so that Poro-dai could gather herself, but Shen knew the judge wanted to let a bit of the steam out of this kettle. The court atmosphere was getting stormy; emotions were running high.

Shen stepped out and into a nearby room. He checked his email and a bit of news while he still had access to his devices. Sorting through his home life and mundane local and galactic news felt boring after what he had just experienced. Shen stuffed his gear back into his bag and returned to his seat after the recess finished.

The tension in the room seemed to have settled, enough that the sudden presence of extra bailiffs felt a little out of place. The judge waved to the defense lead to approach the witness again.

“Okay, Poro-dai, what did you see him do now?”

“I followed behind Mr. Spurgle as fast as I could. It was the only reason I heard his ranting as he ran towards the tanks and the fiery remainder of the abomination he had crafted.”

“I heard him yell that he was ‘not gonna get stuck with the rap for this,’ and then he reached one of the pieces of burning wreckage. He grabbed his midsection, and then I saw some liquid, and almost at once, it all went white and both he and I were flying through the air, propelled by a sudden huge explosion. We both flew into a nearby maintenance tunnel and slammed into the ceiling. I passed out. When I woke up, I discovered we had landed on several people, thus ensuring our survival. He was nowhere to be seen.”

The Kozu wobbled as she spoke, making her entire speech echo in the small courtroom.

“Thank you, Poro-dai. That’s all the questions I have, Your Honor.”

The cross-examination was more character assassination like the first. She struggled to answer much, getting flustered and forced the court into another recess.

Shen slithered outside once again, this time onto a balcony that overlooked part of the station. The view was beautiful. It was hard not to look at all the damage still present on the station. Shen glanced back at the courthouse. It had been the craziest day he’d ever seen in court. And they weren’t even done! They still had a witness to speak to, more juicy info about what happened. Maybe his contact with the press would pay extra for the gossip this time. Everyone needs a tendril on their side.

Shen pulled up his personal device again and checked his mail and the news cycle. The app had barely loaded before the breaking news banner took over the feed.

“SPURGLE IS AT IT AGAIN!”

Shen clicked and the article loaded. Images of a police raid, the feed taken from one of their armored units’ shoulder cams. The view was of the inside of a compound, filled with guns, weaponry, and iconography of a major terrorist cell: the Quinxit Defilers. The entire area was destroyed, obviously a major law enforcement action. More videos overlaid over the photos, showing internal propaganda being shot by the cell, with that damned man Andrew Spurgle in terrorist uniform, showing them how to build bombs and running drills. The footage looked rough and unedited, likely captured during the raid.

Shen stopped the news footage and tried to focus on the table with all of the bomb parts in the overlaid video. Sitting right next to all of it were several rolls of tape and what Shen guessed were vials of glue. His mind jumped back to the footage of the interior of the Pearl and Spurgle’s earlier attempts at mechanical work. He started to laugh. His bones clicked loudly to match the guffaws.

Starting up the video again, Shen watched as Spurgle once again lifted the “bomb” and stared at the bottom part instead of just tipping it over to look that way.

Police had been tracking the cell for ages, then recent activity had alerted them to the compound’s location. A police sergeant speaking to the galactic press was giving details of the bust, which included body camera footage of an undercover officer talking to Spurgle. You know, just a human wanted by ten different sectors of space, who only months before had majorly damaged a space station. And he was just casually chatting with the agent at a bar while still in his terrorist uniform. Apparently, he had bragged that he “knew a guy,” then led the agent to the compound.

An attack meant for a local planetary parade was also foiled, as none of the ordnance used by the attackers was said to work, costing the terrorist cell several other members. Despite all of this, he was not captured by the police during the raid and was somehow still at large. Andrew Spurgle was a walking disaster factory.

His official bounty from the Federation was now two hundred million credits, the highest in galactic history for one sentient.

Shen’s laughter continued until he was sick to his stomach. He turned off the screen, tendrils moving slowly as his form doubled over. He slithered back into the courtroom to utter chaos. Apparently, they had heard, too. It was like Shen had said.

Excitement comes in many forms.

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Space Cowboys 3: Return of the Bookaroo

Space Cowboys 404: Cow Not Found

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PinUp Noir

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Call To Action

At Raconteur Press, our motto is Have Fun, Get Paid. Hopefully you enjoyed the stories in this volume. If you did, please take the time to leave a quick review. Our authors love to hear that people enjoyed their stories and it encourages them to write more of them.

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Table of Contents

- Introduction

- 1. Andrew Spurgle, and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

- 2. The Case of the Peanut Butter Covered Goat

- 3. Specialist Spurgle and the Peacetime Army

- 4. Directionally Challenged
- 5. Casino of Chaos
- 6. The Ass of Stratford
- 7. Steve, Chuck, and the Man from F.A.M.E.
- 8. See, It Was Like This…
- 9. Took Their Wages
- 10. Accidental Acquisition
- Also From Raconteur Press
- Call To Action