_The first successful non-Terrestrial divorce
case! Fame for Legal Eagle Jose Obanion for his
generalship of a three-sexed, five Venusian
history-shattering precedent! Habits are habits
but--alas!--on Venus they differ...._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One of these days an embittered lawyer is going to write a text on
the effects of spaceflight on the divorce laws. This writer will be a
Terrie, about five ten, with blue eyes, black hair--turning grey very
fast, and the unlikely name of Jose Weinberg Obanion III. Me.
I remember very well the day I was graduated from law school; the day
my father gave me his version of the Obanion credo. _Always remember
you live in a community property state--_
That simple phrase has kept three generations of Obanions in the
divorce trade. And only I have had cause to regret it.
Basically, I suppose, my troubles began the day the Subversive Party
swept the Joe Macs out of Congress and repealed the Alien Restriction
Act of 1998. That bit of log-rolling gave the franchise to almost all
resident aliens and resulted in a situation virtually destroying the
sanctity of divorce as an institution.
I'm a Joe Mac myself--politically, I mean. Obanions have been voting
the Joe Mac Party Ticket for more than a hundred years. Red is our
color. There are even family legends that say an Obanion was with the
first Joe Mac when he became President of that old unit the Euse of Aay.
We have to rely on legends, unfortunately, because the Joe Mac Party
traditionally fed their rally bonfires with books, and when they won
the election and took over the Euse of Aay they had a rally to end
all rallies and somehow the Government Archives--books, you see, as
well as punch cards and the like--got taken over by some very zealous
Party men. The records were always rather incomplete after that. Only
word of mouth information was available during that first Joe Mac
Administration, and that can be sketchy. For example, the party color
is red. All we know is that first Joe Macs had something to do with
red. You see how it goes.
What I mean by all this, is that I can see the faults in my own Party.
I'm no diehard. Nor am I a bad loser. The Subs won control of Congress
by a landslide, so I guess the people wanted that sort of slipshod
government. Only they should have been more careful, dammit, when they
started tampering with the laws.
I'm not antispacegook, either. I have my framed Legal Eagle's Oath
right over my desk and I live up to it. And if Congress sees fit to
make any Tmm, Dccck, or Harry a citizen of our great Commonwealth--I
account it my duty to see to it that they are not denied the benefits
of our Terrestrial divorce laws.
But sometimes it can be _very_ trying.
The new Sub Administration and their rash repeal of Joe Mac laws has
had the effect of putting reverse English on the Obanion credo.
_Always remember you live in a community property state...._
That wonderful phrase that encompasses so many great truths--that
ringing statement that has made me rich and kept me a bachelor--now
means something else. Confusion. Work. Yes, and even spacegook
depravity.
* * * * *
I should go back and pick up the story at the beginning before I get
too upset.
My name, as I said before, is Jose Obanion. I'm a licensed Legal Eagle,
specializing in divorce law--and doing well at it. I have a good office
on the 150th floor of the Needle Building, a damned fine address and
a comfortable lay-out, too. A whole room to myself, a private visor
service to the Municipal Law Library, and a lap-desk for my secretary,
Thais Orlof.
On the day it began I was walking to work from the tubeway station and
feeling rather pleased with myself. My income was high and steady, my
protein ration account was in good shape and I was doing my bit as a
civilized Terrestrial.
The morning was remarkably clear. You could make out the disc of the
sun quite nicely through the smog, and there was a smogbow gleaming
with carbon particles in the sky. I felt alert, expectant. Something
BIG was going to happen to me. I could feel it.
Even in the go-to-work press of people on Montgomery Street, I didn't
get shocked once. That's the way my luck was running. And three
characters brushed against me and got nipped by my new Keep-A-Way.
There's been talk about making Keep-A-Ways illegal. Just the sort of
infringement on personal liberty the Subversives are famous for.
Inconsistent, too. They pass laws letting every spacegook in the
universe come here to live and then talk about taking away one of the
things that makes the crowding bearable.
I made a point of arriving at the office a little early, hoping to
catch Thais in the act of coming in late. My secretary was a hard girl
to dock, but I never stopped trying. It was a game we played. If she
came in late, I would be justified in docking a protein credit off her
pay for every thirty seconds of office time she wasted. So far I had
managed to keep her pay low enough so she couldn't think of leaving my
employ--though she was earning a few prots on the side by acting as
correspondent in divorce cases that couldn't be settled by Collusion
Court and actually had to be tried before a judge and jury.
Thais and I were still haggling over the price of her services as
part-time mistress, too. I couldn't see giving her her asking price,
which was half again the regular market price. Thais knew the value of
a prot, all right. And of an erg, too. "Take care of the ergs," she
would say, looking at me meaningfully, "and the prots will take care
of themselves." Thais was a devout Ben Franklinist and she was full of
aphorisms like that.
I settled myself into my Lowfer and glanced over the desk calendar.
A full, profitable day ahead. Tremmy Jessup and his new fiancee were
coming in at 0900 to sign the premarital divorce settlement. A wise
couple, I thought approvingly. Save a lot of trouble later. At 1100
Truncott vs Truncott and Truncott. A multiple divorce case with two
women involved. Very lucrative sort of case. And then at 1200 Gleda
Warick was coming in to have me validate her Interlocutory decree. A
formality. But I hoped to take her to lunch at the Palace where they
were advertising a five ounce portion of genuine horsemeat on their
five prot dinner. That sort of thing would impress Gleda and I rather
hoped for great things from her. Not only that, she was spending 25,000
prots yearly on divorces. No Franklinist, she.
It still lacked a minute to the hour so I switched on the TV to catch
Honest Pancho's commercial. Pancho was my most active competitor and he
cost me plenty, but I couldn't suppress a grudging admiration of his
enterprise. He had Lyra Yves doing his stuff for him, and anyone as
socko as Lyra was dangerous. Sweetheart of the Western Hemisphere is
the way she was billed, and her agent wasn't exaggerating too much.
Lyra was singing his come-on backed by a quartet humming a steady
whap rhythm and doing a slow twitch. The lights were playing her
daring costume big, accenting the fact that she had one breast almost
covered. I frowned. How come the League of Decency let her get away
with anything as suggestive as an opaque breast covering. Pancho must
have friends in the censor's office. It was just another sign of
the increasing degeneracy of our times. Soon entertainers would be
appearing clothed from head to foot, exploiting the erotic stimulation
of imagination.
"--whap me slap me baby doll," Lyra was singing. "Beat my head against
the wall--lover, I don't care at all at all--_Whap!_ Honest Pancho's on
the ball!"
Now the announcer cut in with his insinuating voice explaining how you
could get your divorces quicker, cheaper and twice as funny at Honest
Pancho's Big Splitzmart in the Flatiron Building, as well as his Legal
Eaglery just down from the County Courthouse. "--yes, friends--TWO big
locations to serve you. Come in and see Honest Pancho today!" And then
Lyra again: "Whap! Honest Pancho's on the baaalll! WHAP!" She faded
doing a sinuous twitch. I turned the TV off feeling a little worse than
when I turned it on.
Maybe, I thought, I've been too conservative. Maybe _I'd_ better get on
the baaaalll, too. Or else. I shrugged the thought aside just as Thais
slipped through the door--exactly on time.
I watched her strip off her smog mask and cinder cape--on office
time--and place them carefully in the sterilizer. She was very careful
not to smear the paint that was most of what she wore. I tapped a
NoKanse alight and inhaled deeply. "Good morning, Thais," I said.
"Whap!" she said in return. "I heard the TV all the way down the hall."
She pulled a Lowfer out of the wall and settled down with her lap-desk
across her knees. The tip of one sandal was just brushing my shin. The
office, unfortunately, could have been bigger, but with sixteen million
people living in the city, space was rather costly even for a man with
a better than average prot account.
"New paint?" I asked.
She smiled brilliantly at me. "Nice of you to notice, boss." She
fumbled in the pockets of the belt around her naked, cerise-painted
middle and took out her pad and stylus. "On time and ready for work,"
she said. "A calorie saved is a calorie earned."
But now, somehow, I didn't feel like attacking the day's schedule. Not
quite yet. Pancho's commercial had disturbed me. "Thais," I said. "I
wonder if I'm--well, slowing down--"
"You, boss?" She fluffed her green-tinted hair provocatively and raised
an eyebrow at me. "I wouldn't say so."
"I don't mean that way," I said. "I mean professionally. I wonder if I
shouldn't seek wider horizons."
"New cases? _Different_ cases? Give up divorce work? Oh, _Boss_!"
"Not give it up, Thais. Not that. I couldn't. Divorce is my life. Could
a doctor give up healing? Could a Freudist give up lobotomy? No, I
didn't mean that. Frankly, I meant should I get more aggressive. Go out
and get cases that would have a certain advertising value." I didn't
want to say I didn't feel like spending good protein on the sort of
advertising Pancho and some of the other Legal Eagles, an unethical
lot really, were buying. Besides, we Obanions have always been rather
frugal.