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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59494 ***
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+                              NIGHT COURT
+
+                           BY NORMAN ARKAWY
+
+                   _With a new cast nightly, it was
+                   the best show in town. Gay crowds
+                  mobbed the box office for tickets;
+                but few went back more than twice...._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+               Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1956.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+The old courthouse was in the unreconstructed part of town. No buses
+ran out here, and the only way that Stan and Julie could reach the
+court was on foot, threading their way through the debris of neglect
+and vandalism that littered the narrow streets.
+
+This was a part of New York that Julie had never seen. Twentieth
+century tenements, dimly illuminated by ancient incandescent lamps,
+lined the rubble-filled streets, where garbage and the decaying
+carcasses of poisoned rats lay stinking in the gutters. The night was
+warm, but Julie shivered. She hurried along at Stan's side, trying to
+hold her breath to shut out the unpleasant smells.
+
+They stopped at the edge of the sidewalk across the street from the
+court and watched a crowd of people milling about the entrance,
+anxiously pressing to the box office to try to get hard-to-get tickets.
+
+"Look at that mob!" Julie said. "We'll never get in!" She tried to
+sound disappointed, but she knew that she could not hide her feeling of
+relief. She didn't want to go in. She wanted to go away, back to the
+clean, pretty city she knew.
+
+Stan smiled and patted her hand. "You underestimate me, honey. Little
+Stanley knows how to take care of himself. I knew there'd be a crowd
+tonight, so...." He drew two tickets from his pocket. "If you don't
+reserve 'em, you don't deserve 'em, I always say!"
+
+He took her hand, and they started across the street toward the
+courthouse. It was a bleak, gray, stone-faced building whose ornate
+sculptured trim was weather worn and darkened with age. Once an
+aspiration to architectural beauty, it was pathetically ugly, a
+melancholy reminder of a bygone and possibly better era.
+
+A modern theater marquee had been incongruously added to the old
+structure and, atop the shiny new addition, huge letters of light
+spelled out NIGHT COURT. Smaller cast aluminum letters protruded upward
+from the metal rim of the arcing canopy and formed the words of a
+motto: "Judge not, that ye be not judged". Bold type plastered across
+the gleaming glass facade of the marquee loudly proclaimed: "NEW SHOW
+NIGHTLY".
+
+Stan and Julie pushed through the congestion outside the entrance of
+the court. A dizzying confusion of elbows and backs and sweating,
+eager faces surrounded them. Stan squeezed through the seething mass
+of people and, holding tightly to his hand, Julie followed. For the
+tenth--or hundredth--time, she was sorry that she had come. But it was
+too late to turn back now.
+
+Stan showed his tickets to the guard at the door, and they were ushered
+politely inside where a uniformed woman with a military bearing guided
+them to their seats.
+
+"Your ID cards, please," the young woman said.
+
+Julie was startled by the request, and alarmed. A confiscated ID card
+meant trouble--police trouble! "Why?" she asked, nervously, "What did
+we do?"
+
+Stan smiled knowingly. "It's just a formality," he assured her. "They
+give it back to you when you leave." He handed the usher his card.
+
+"And yours, miss?"
+
+Hesitantly, Julie took out her wallet. A cold premonition urged her to
+stop, to leave now, before it was too late. Then she saw Stan's amused
+eyes grinning at her and she reminded herself that it was already too
+late for her to leave. She gave the girl her ID card.
+
+The usher smiled mechanically. She handed them each a program and
+hurried away up the aisle.
+
+"Don't worry, honey," Stan said, "you'll get it back." He held his
+program up for her to admire. "Pretty snazzy, huh?"
+
+Julie nodded half-heartedly and silently leafed through her own
+program. It was a four page souvenir booklet. On the first page, or
+front cover, was the seal of justice with a perfectly balanced scale
+and a few words of Latin. Above the seal, NIGHT COURT OF THE CITY OF
+NEW YORK was embossed in black on the slick yellow paper, and below it,
+the legend "Judge not, that ye be not judged". Beneath the seal, in red
+italics, was the inscription: "_For with what judgment ye judge, ye
+shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to
+you again._--Matthew, 7:2."
+
+The page was set up attractively but, Julie thought, the quotations
+seemed inappropriate. What was the purpose of the court, if not to
+judge?
+
+"I still can't figure it out," Stan said, as if he had read her
+thoughts. He reached over and tapped Julie's program with his finger.
+"This is the third time I've been here, and you can believe me, honey,
+they both judge and mete out justice in this place!" He grinned at her.
+"This 'judge not' business doesn't make sense!"
+
+Julie said nothing. There was nothing to say.
+
+The room was rapidly filling up now, and she watched the people slowly
+filing in. She was fascinated by the looks of anticipatory pleasure in
+their faces, the whole place tingled with barely repressed excitement.
+
+The spectators packed into the room until every seat was taken and they
+were standing, eight deep, in the rear of the court. Scanning their
+faces, Julie could feel--could almost taste--the many varied emotions
+that radiated from them: amusement, lust, hatred, curiosity, vengeance.
+It was a puzzling combination.
+
+"Now, _this_ quotation makes some sense," Stan was saying. Julie turned
+her attention back to him. He had opened his program booklet to the
+centerfold, and he pointed to an inscription printed across the top
+of the two inner pages. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," he
+recited. "That's what this place really stands for!" He said it with
+relish.
+
+Julie began to feel sick. She did not like the hungry look on Stan's
+face or the merciless atmosphere in the courtroom. Why had she come?
+
+She stifled a shudder. She knew why she had come. She had come because
+Stan wanted her to and, to be honest, because she had been curious to
+see what the Show was like. Now that she was here, she could not call
+the whole thing off just because her curiosity was satisfied or because
+she was too squeamish to enjoy what many people considered the best
+entertainment in town. She had no right to ruin Stan's evening.
+
+She tried to assume a casual interest in the impending events. "What
+are all these lines for?" she asked weakly, indicating the horizontal
+lines that crossed the inner pages and were bisected by three vertical
+lines into four columns of uneven width. "It looks like a ledger."
+
+"It is, sort of," Stan said. "Y'see, honey, this is a scorecard. In
+the first column, you put the name of the accused; in the second, the
+offense he's charged with; in the third, his plea; and in the fourth,
+the disposition of the case. Up here," he explained, showing her the
+appropriate place, "you fill in the name of the presiding magistrate.
+And here," he continued, "you put in the date. It makes a nice
+souvenir. If you fill it out right, you can look at it six months from
+now and remember all the fun, just as if it were happening all over
+again."
+
+"Fun?" Julie's voice cracked.
+
+"Sure!" Stan said with enthusiasm. "It's a terrific show! Everyone
+has a good time. Well, anyhow ..." and he chuckled, "everyone but the
+bums!" He laughed.
+
+A man in the row in front of them turned around and looked at Julie.
+Perspiration glistened in an oily film on his round, pudgy moon-face. A
+lewd grin twisted his mouth. "First timer?" he asked.
+
+Stan grinned back at him, sharing a comradeship of common experience.
+"Yeah. I kept telling her she didn't know what she was missing. Finally
+convinced her to give it a try. I've been here twice before, myself,"
+he added proudly.
+
+"Yeah? Me too!" the man said. "Guess that makes us real old pros: third
+timers!" He laughed and mopped his face with a crumpled handkerchief.
+"Damn! it's hot in here!"
+
+Mild embarrassment and a violent dislike for the oily-skinned
+man combined to redden Julie's face in a hot blush. She shifted
+uncomfortably in her seat.
+
+"Y'know, I never thought of it before," Stan said to the man in front,
+"but now that you mention it, I don't know of anybody who's been here
+three times." A smile of accomplishment spread onto his face. "I'll bet
+I'm the first one in my sector!"
+
+A growing anger blended into Julie's feeling of disgust. "I don't see
+that it's anything to be proud of," she said coldly.
+
+Stan's laugh was a derisive bray. "She talks just like a first timer,
+doesn't she?" The man in front of them nodded knowingly, again sharing
+with Stan the common bond of experience.
+
+"The next thing you know," Stan jeered kiddingly, "she'll be preaching
+to us like one of those crackpot reformers."
+
+The revulsion that Julie felt must have been clearly evident now. Stan
+smiled fondly and put his arm around her shoulder. "I'm only kidding,
+honey," he half-apologized.
+
+"What's so wrong about the reformers?" Julie demanded, angrily
+shrugging away his arm. "Why shouldn't men be given another chance?
+What...?"
+
+"Men?" The man with the moon face burst into loud laughter. "Wait'll
+you see these bums, kid! They're not men, they're _things_!"
+
+"He's right, honey," Stan said. "These joes don't have any homes or
+jobs or families or friends. They don't even have ID cards."
+
+"No ID cards?" That was impossible! But Julie was beginning to learn
+that many impossible things could happen in a world that most citizens
+knew nothing about. "Then how can they be expected to get jobs? You've
+got to have an ID card in order to be assigned...."
+
+"That's the general idea, lady," someone nearby said in a loud voice.
+Several people laughed. "You don't wanna put the court out of business,
+do ya?"
+
+Julie's lips trembled as she opened her mouth to voice the word that
+shouted emphatically within her: yes! yes!
+
+"Here they come!" someone shouted, and excited conversation buzzed
+throughout the room. Julie's voice was never heard. She stared silently
+at the people near her, then turned to the front of the room to see
+what they were all watching so avidly.
+
+A straggling line of bedraggled, dirty, unshaven men shuffled into
+a wire enclosure set along the right wall of the courtroom. Crushed
+men--weary, lifeless, resigned to a life without hope--they filed into
+the pen and slumped onto the wooden benches that were placed lengthwise
+in three rows in the oblong cage. Their shoulders drooped in beaten
+curves. Their heads were bowed.
+
+The man in front turned around and nudged Julie's knee. His triumphant
+smile was an obscenity. "Call those men?" He laughed and winked
+at Stan, then turned back to the front of the court to watch the
+preliminary proceedings.
+
+An incipient convulsion crawled about in Julie's stomach. Her knee felt
+cold and clammy where the moon-faced man had touched it. Her skin was
+prickly and tight. She began to itch.
+
+"Get up, honey," Stan was saying. "Here comes the judge."
+
+She stood, numbly, her eyes riveted on the men in the wire enclosure.
+
+"Julie!" She felt a hand tugging at her arm. "You can sit down now,
+Julie," Stan said. "Sit down!"
+
+Mechanically, she sat down. Woodenly, she stared at the tableau
+before her--the judge perched on his elevated throne, the stone-faced
+attendants at each side of the dais, the wire pen filled with misery.
+Through the almost tangible excitement and glee of the spectators, the
+misery reached her, held her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The court was in session: the people of the City of New York
+against ... against an assortment of outcasts--drunks, derelicts,
+cripples, beggars--the "undesirables" that had been rounded up by the
+police in the past twenty-four hours. The people of the City of New
+York against a pen full of men whose only crimes, for the most part,
+were sickness, lack of hope and failure to possess the ID cards which
+everyone needed and which, somehow, they had been denied.
+
+How? Julie wondered. How could anyone not have an ID? Even if you lost
+your card you could get a new one simply by paying a fine. Even if you
+had been in prison you got a new card when you were released. You had
+to have a card! Everyone had to....
+
+A court attendant called out: "Garcia, Miguel!" and a small,
+dark-complexioned man walked out of the detention pen and stood meekly
+before the judge.
+
+The clerk of the court read the charge, rattling it off in the
+sing-song jargon of court clerks, his words slurred together into one
+almost unintelligible burst of sound. There was a pause, and silence in
+the courtroom.
+
+"Well?" said the magistrate, "how do you plead?" His voice sounded
+kindly. He sat high on his bench, hunched into his black robe, and
+looked down with apparent benignancy on the little man who stood
+silently before him.
+
+The audience was hushed. It watched hopefully and waited.
+
+Julie could sense the intense excitement in Stan as he leaned forward,
+straining to catch every detail of the scene, anxious not to miss a
+thing.
+
+She heard a giggle, then Stan's hearty laugh, then a loud burst of
+laughter. She opened her eyes.
+
+The defendant was shrugging his shoulders in bewilderment. He turned
+half-way around to look at the laughing audience, a sheepish grin on
+his face.
+
+The magistrate smiled his appreciation of the humorous response to his
+question. "So, you can't make up your mind?" he said in a seemingly
+friendly and sympathetic way. "Well, I'll tell you what I'll do,
+Miguel. I'll give you thirty days in the city's hotel to think it over."
+
+Laughter and applause filled the room. The judge nodded his head in
+a little bow of acknowledgement. Miguel Garcia was led away, still
+smiling, obviously ignorant of what was happening. Miguel Garcia
+apparently did not understand English.
+
+Stan was happily filling in the first line of his scorecard. His face
+was flushed. His eyes were bright. A satisfied smile lingered on his
+lips.
+
+"Stan, let's leave," Julie said.
+
+Stan laughed in disbelief. "Are you kidding? The fun's just starting."
+
+"Please, Stan. I ... I don't feel well."
+
+"Oh? I'm sorry, honey." It was a formality, like saying 'I beg your
+pardon' to a stranger you bump into in a crowd. There was no concern in
+Stan's voice. The second case was being presented, and his attention
+was rapt upon the clerk and the object of the proceedings, an old white
+haired derelict.
+
+"Stan, please!" Julie insisted.
+
+"Look, honey," Stan said impatiently, "we can't leave now, even if we
+wanted to. They don't give back the IDs until after it's all over."
+
+A sharp burst of laughter brought his attention abruptly back to the
+action up front. The old man had dropped his hat and an attendant had
+kicked it away from him. The white haired castoff shuffled across the
+room to retrieve it.
+
+"I missed something!" Stan said, testily. He turned to his neighbor and
+was hurriedly filled in on what had happened.
+
+"Well, _I'm_ leaving!" Julie said. She got up and edged her way out
+to the aisle. Stan made no protest. He was concentrating on the
+performance up front.
+
+Julie hurried up the aisle and pushed through the pack of people
+standing in the back of the room. She found the usher at the door. "I'd
+like to leave," she told the girl. "May I please have my ID?"
+
+The usher's face was expressionless, her voice efficiently official.
+"ID cards will be returned at the conclusion of the session."
+
+"But I want to leave now!" Julie protested. "I don't want to see any
+more of this!"
+
+"No cards can be returned until the session is concluded," the usher
+recited. It was a final decree of official policy. There could be no
+arguing, no appeal from the decision. There was no alternative but to
+abide by it.
+
+Julie returned to her seat. She squeezed past a barricade of knees,
+rousing disgruntled comments from several of the spectators.
+
+Stan glanced up at her as she settled back into the seat at his side.
+It was only a glance, and then his eyes were fixed once again on the
+magistrate, the attendants, and the "undesirable" being judged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Minutes passed. Hours. Julie suffered the time in silence. She saw
+and heard, but could hardly believe, the unrestrained sadism of the
+giggling, laughing, applauding, cheering, jeering audience. What kind
+of people were these, who laughed at the pain and humiliation of
+others? What did they find amusing in the ruin of human life?
+
+They laughed when a partially paralyzed hunchback limped before the
+judge and pleaded guilty to a charge of ogling girls in a public park.
+They roared with hilarity when the magistrate suspended sentence and
+commented that a more appropriate charge would have been that of
+defacing public property. They applauded lustily when he said to the
+arresting officer, "Bring him in on that one tomorrow and I'll throw
+the book at him!"
+
+They laughed when an alcoholic appeared, twitching and brushing
+imaginary creatures from his torn jacket. They howled gleefully when
+he whimpered and sobbed like a small boy having a nightmare.
+
+They laughed when the magistrate said his fountain pen had run out of
+ink and, looking into the detention pen, inquired, "Would any of you
+blue bloods care to make a donation?"
+
+They laughed when a court attendant read a complaint which charged that
+the defendant, a small skinny man, had attacked the arresting officer,
+and that the officer (six-three, two hundred and ten pounds) had used
+reasonable force in defending himself. The man's broken arm was in a
+sling and bandages covered twelve stitches in his scalp.
+
+The audience laughed. They gloated. They sat in judgment of their
+fellow men and called for punishment--the more severe, the better.
+
+At last, the detention pen was empty. The last "undesirable" was
+brought before the bench. He was a small, pathetic looking man dressed
+in sailor's dungarees. He spoke Norwegian and clumsily tried to explain
+his predicament with the few words of English that he knew.
+
+"Stop gibbering!" the judge shouted at him. The magistrate's facade
+of kindliness had long since disappeared. He turned to the arresting
+officer. "Do you speak that language?" He made it sound like a disgrace
+to be able to speak Norwegian.
+
+The officer shook his head.
+
+"Neither do I," the magistrate said, with obvious pride that he was not
+contaminated by such knowledge. He arbitrarily ordered the man held
+until he learned to make himself understood; the hearing to take place
+when that had been accomplished. The sailor was led away.
+
+The Show was over.
+
+"That's the end of it, folks," the judge said, genially. He tapped his
+gavel and rose from his seat. The courtroom rang with lusty applause.
+
+The judge hurried through the door to his chambers and the applause
+died out. The people started to leave. Their animated discussions of
+the evening's events dinned through the room in a babble of noise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie's head throbbed painfully and there was a queasy feeling in her
+stomach. She thirsted for fresh air.
+
+Slowly, the mob of spectators formed a procession in the aisle. Slowly,
+the column of people moved toward the exit. Slowly, slowly, Julie was
+pushed along with the crowd.
+
+The line paused as each person stopped at the door and waited until his
+ID card was located and returned to him. Then the procession would take
+another step forward. And pause again. And again. Occasionally, an ID
+could not be found and its owner was requested to step aside and allow
+the line to move on while the search for his card continued. And there
+was another step forward.
+
+Stan held Julie's hand to prevent the pressing crowd from separating
+them. "How'd you like it?" he asked. He was aglow with satisfaction,
+tired by the long evening's excitement but with a pleasant weariness of
+accomplishment. "It's a terrific show, isn't it?"
+
+Julie did not answer him. She wanted to break away and run and run and
+run and run! She inched along with the rest of the procession.
+
+At last they reached the door. They told the usher their names and she
+methodically checked through the cards in her file. The procession
+behind them waited.
+
+Julie's ID card was quickly found and returned to her, but the usher
+reported some difficulty in finding Stan's card. He was asked to
+step aside, please, and let the line go through. He protested at the
+inconvenience, then sullenly joined a few other people waiting for
+their cards in the rear of the court.
+
+Julie stood impatiently in the doorway. She watched Stan strike up
+a grumbling conversation with another detained person. It was the
+moon-faced man who had been sitting in front of them. For a fleeting
+moment she thought of the old adage about "birds of a feather".
+
+She waited. People filed past her in a steady stream, from the
+courtroom, across the lobby, out through the street door. Watching
+them--smiles and pleasant conversation, civilized small talk and
+serious debate of the merit of the evening's fare, as if it were a
+dramatic work of art. She clenched her teeth and prayed that Stan would
+hurry up.
+
+Soon the flow of people stopped. Still no Stan. Julie waited.
+
+Some twenty minutes later, an attendant came out of the courtroom. He
+went past Julie, then paused at the door, turned and came over to her.
+"Waiting for someone, miss?"
+
+"Yes. My friend. They seem to have misplaced his ID card."
+
+The attendant smiled and shook his head. "You might as well go on home,
+miss. If he's still in there, he won't be coming out for some time."
+
+"I'll wait," Julie said.
+
+"You don't understand, miss. He won't be out tonight."
+
+"What are you talking about? He's just waiting till they find his ID,
+and it couldn't have gotten up and...."
+
+"Seventeen IDs were lost," the attendant explained. "Those people in
+there can't get them back. They're going to have to go to Caracas or
+Milan to apply for new cards."
+
+"Don't be silly!" Julie scoffed. "You don't have to go to another city
+to apply for a new card! All you have to do is file a claim and pay the
+fine."
+
+"These are special cases," the attendant said uneasily. He seemed
+reluctant to talk about it.
+
+Julie frowned. "What's special about them? Their ID cards were lost,
+weren't they?"
+
+"Look, miss, all I know is every time an ID is lost in there," he
+nodded toward the courtroom, "they've gotta go out of the country to
+apply for a new one. That's all I can tell you."
+
+"But why out of the...?"
+
+"The reassignment orders are being drawn up right now," the attendant
+said. He led Julie to the street exit. "So you'd better go home and
+forget that fellow."
+
+Confusion and a vicarious fear made Julie shiver. "Will he ... will
+they get new cards?"
+
+The attendant shrugged. "They might--some day." He touched her arm. His
+voice was low, barely audible. "Was this your first time at the Show?"
+
+Julie nodded.
+
+"How did you like it?"
+
+"I ... I ..." She shook her head.
+
+The attendant smiled at her gently. "Don't ever be a third-timer." He
+released her arm and hurried away down the street.
+
+Julie puzzled over his parting remark as she went out into the foul
+smelling night and walked away from the courthouse. Suddenly, the
+street before her dimmed as the lights on the huge marquee blinked out.
+She turned and looked back at the entrance of the court, now dark and
+deserted. And then she understood.
+
+She remembered the moon-faced man's observation about the scarcity of
+third-timers. She understood how the "undesirables" lost their ID cards
+and why so many could not speak English. She understood the apparent
+cruelty of the sentences meted out to them, too.
+
+The answer was on the marquee. As she looked back at it, only the
+raised letters on the canopy were visible, shining luminously in the
+darkness: "_judge not, that ye be not judged_". And she recalled the
+quotation on the program: "_For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall
+be judged._"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Night Court, by Norman Arkawy
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59494 ***