Rich Horton (ed) by SF Best Of 2006

Author:SF Best Of 2006
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-18T20:32:40+00:00

The Law

The first thing Waldo said to me when I walked into his office was, “Hmmph. So now you’re stalking me.”

And there was a lot of evidence coded in this statement: it meant that Young Carmine had gone to see Pamela, and that the visit had been less than welcome. It meant that she’d called her father afterward, and that he considered the incident, at least in his heart, to be a criminal offense. Which was silly, because that old restraining order had expired forty years ago, and I had no history, either before or since, of criminally rude behavior. But then again, there was no telling what Young Carmine might’ve said. Or done. Truthfully, I had forgotten how forceful and intense I’d really been as a young man. And pointlessly so, for it had only gotten me in trouble.

I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Hi, Waldo. I’m sure you’re angry—and not without reason!—but it’s not what you think. There’s an old, old copy of me running around.”

Waldo studied me, thinking that one over. Whatever he’d expected me to say, that wasn’t it. Waldo was seated on his desk, which had gone soft beneath him in response. His arms were crossed, and his single, heavy eyebrow was pulled down in an almost comical frown. In his harrumphy way he said, “Rogue or authorized?”

“A little of both,” I answered, unsure what else to say about it.

Waldo digested that, and finally nodded. “Hmm. Humph. Yeah. One of those.”

A bit of the tension went out of the room. The details must surely be unique, but Waldo had been a cop for a hundred years longer than I’d even been alive. He’d seen his share of weirdness, and understood that the law was gray. What cop didn’t know that? The law was designed for assaults and robberies, angry neighbors fighting over the pruning of a tree or the disposition of its fruits. By definition, you couldn’t legislate the unanticipated, and existing laws—sensible laws—sometimes yielded perverse or even contradictory results. Do we divide the child in two?

And in this age of plenty there just wasn’t all that much thuggery. The sorts of things that had value anymore were not sorts of things you could steal a gunpoint, and anyway such obvious crimes were always solved, always punished. With enough decades behind them, even the most hardened criminals eventually got the message.

So what did that leave? Juvenile mischief, and the weirdness at the margins of the grownup world. The need for cops and courtrooms would never go away.

“Why are you here?” Waldo asked with less hostility.

I tried on a half smile. “It seemed … more polite than going directly to Pamela. I figured he’d go and see her. I knew he would. He’s an archive copy from when that … issue was relatively fresh.”

“So why’d you print him?”

“Contractual obligation, I guess you’d say. I’ll spare you the insipid details.”

“Hmmph. Thanks. Are you going to get rid of him?”

I could only shrug. “I’m not sure I can, Waldo.

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