American Empire: Blood and Iron - By Harry Turtledove Page 0,232

of the wonderful things you turned out to be, in Congress or out of it.”

Nobody else said things like that about Flora. She didn’t know how to take them. “Thank you,” she whispered. She said it again, on a slightly different note: “Thank you.” The day had been long and boring. The night had been even longer, and lonely. Going to sleep was the most she’d had to look forward to. Now, in the space of an hour, her whole world had changed. That had happened once before, when she was elected to Congress. She looked forward to these changes even more.

Judge Mahlon Pitney slammed down the gavel. He looked every inch a jurist: a spare, erect, handsome gray-haired man in his early sixties, his gray eyes clear and alert. “Here is my verdict in the action Smith v. Heusinger,” he said, with a glance toward the court clerk to make sure that worthy was ready to record the verdict. “It is the decision of this court that title to the property at issue in the above-entitled action does rightfully rest with the plaintiff, John Smith, who has shown right of possession sufficient to satisfy the court.”

Letting out a whoop would have been undignified, unprofessional. That very nearly didn’t stop Jonathan Moss, who instead reached out and shook hands with his client. John Smith looked more nearly amazed than delighted.

On the other side of the courtroom in Berlin, Ontario, Paul Heusinger stared daggers at Moss. Well he might have: Moss had just shown Judge Pitney he did not have good title to the land on which he’d built his office building—the building in which Moss had his law office. “You’re gone,” Heusinger mouthed. Moss nodded. He’d known he was gone whichever way the case went. At least he was going out a winner.

John Smith tugged at Moss’ sleeve. “Will he appeal?” the mousy little Canadian whispered.

“Can’t say for sure now,” Moss whispered back. “I’d guess not, though. I think we have a solid case here—and appeals are expensive.”

Back in the spectators’ seats, a couple of reporters scribbled furiously. They’d been covering the case since it first showed up on the docket; occasional man-bites-dog stories appeared in the Berlin Bulletin and, Moss supposed, some other papers as well. He didn’t mind—on the contrary. The stories had already brought him three or four clients much more able to pay his usual fees than John Smith was.

But for the reporters, the spectators’gallery was empty. As far as Moss could tell, Heusinger had not a friend in town. Smith probably had had friends here, but those who weren’t dead were scattered. The war had been hard on Berlin.

One of the reporters asked, “Now that you have your property back, Mr. Smith, what do you aim to do with it?”

Smith looked amazed all over again. “I don’t really know. I haven’t really thought about it, because I didn’t believe the Yanks would play fair and give it back to me. I don’t suppose they would have without Mr. Moss here.”

“No, that’s not true, and I don’t want anyone printing it,” Moss said. “Americans respect the law as much as Canadians do. It wasn’t a judge who said Mr. Smith has good title to that land. It was the law. And the law would have said the same thing regardless of whether Mr. Smith’s attorney came from the United States or Canada.”

The reporters took down what he said. If they didn’t believe him, they were too businesslike to show it on their faces. John Smith, less disciplined, looked highly dubious. Moss felt dubious himself. One of the things he’d already discovered in his brief practice was that judges were not animate law books in black robes. They were human, sometimes alarmingly so.

After a little more back-and-forth with the reporters, Moss reclaimed his overcoat, hat, and galoshes from the cloakroom. In a pocket of the overcoat were mittens and earmuffs. He put them on before venturing outside. Even so, the cold tore at him. The coat that had been better than good enough for winter in Chicago was just barely good enough for winter in Ontario. He wished for a nosemuff to go with the earmuffs.

He also wished for taller rubber overshoes. As he kicked his way through the new-fallen snow toward his apartment, some of the freezing stuff got over the red-ringed tops of the galoshes and did its best to turn his ankles into icicles. He wished he would have driven his motorcar over to