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vulnerable axioms.
Hadn't
Shuster blanched when he'd learned that she had studied law? Why, if not
because the company he worked for were flying a perilously tight orbit?
" Studholme and Zacharias versus the Perseus Asteroid Mining Company, 2011," she murmured aloud. "A contract entered
into by one of the parties with intent to deceive or defraud is not a valid
contract."
How
far did the term "intent to deceive or defraud" extend? Did it
include the setting of traps to make the victim break the conditions of
employment, or was that covered by the "caveat signator "
ruling in Biicher versus the Ngat Yu Rare Earths Combine, 2066? Not likely; the latter case concerned the supply
of goods, not payment of salary or exercise of an employee's contractual
benefits.
Chin
in hand, staring at nothing, she concentrated on what she remembered of the
great trail-blazing precedents with a ferocity her college instructors would
have applauded— though they might have been astonished. Gubbins and Kino- shita versus the Loki Rhodium Monopoly,
2012: "A company in law is a corporate counterpart of the individual;
hence an individual and a company enter into a contract with equal standing
before the law"—not very helpful, since most subsequent judges had tended
to be influenced by the fact that Judge Petropavlov had been institutionalized three weeks later for senile dementia ....
What
a flimsy house-of-cards-like structure the law was, when you examined it in
this state of mind! How many people's lives—and deaths, she reminded herself
with a shudder-had been affected by what a judge had had for breakfast!
She
rose determinedly to her feet. She knew, or at any rate she could reasonably
believe, that from now until the harvesting ship returned to Zygra every moment of the day and night she would be
watched by recorders in some form or another, so that government computers on
Nefertiti could be assured of the legality of this operation. What could she
say or do to make certain the computers cited this moment, now, to bring to the
attention of the government's human officials?
She took a deep breath and addressed the air.
"My
name is Kynance Foy." She added the date and
time. "I have been engaged in the capacity of supervisor here by the Zygra Company. As a result of certain remarks made to me by
Executive Shuster of that company, I believe that an attempt will be made to
infringe the spirit of the contract of employment I have entered into. I adduce as circumstantial evidence the admitted fact that none of my nine
immediate predecessors has managed to complete his year of duty and collect his
salary. Compare Studholme and Zacharias versus the Perseus Asteroid Mining Company, 2011—1 think," she
concluded on a more doubtful note.
Merely
saying it made her feel immensely better at once. Let the Zygra Company beware— Kynance Foy,
armed with her Earthside non-specialist education,
was a different proposition from some neurotic Nefertitian !
(But better not say that aloud, for fear it might offend officials of that
planet's government.)
If
she could leave nothing else behind her—if they did in fact murder her—at least
she might be remembered as a legal precedent. Humming, sustained by that
vicarious form of immortality, she began to survey the surroundings in which
she found herself.
IX
L ogically , the first thing to do was to count the jaws
of the trap. She already had her mental list of obvious pitfalls; now she
turned it into a written catalogue, which grew with dismaying speed as she
surveyed her surroundings.
They
were taking no chances, for instance, with injury or sickness. She had never
seen the threshold of an automatic medicare cabinet
set so low. If she so much as slept the clock around, she would waken to find a snuffling servo making metabolic checks
beside the bed, and behind it, alert for the trigger-signal, the prosthetics
responsible for the fiction of "live human occupancy" and hence
continued ownership of the
Hadn't
Shuster blanched when he'd learned that she had studied law? Why, if not
because the company he worked for were flying a perilously tight orbit?
" Studholme and Zacharias versus the Perseus Asteroid Mining Company, 2011," she murmured aloud. "A contract entered
into by one of the parties with intent to deceive or defraud is not a valid
contract."
How
far did the term "intent to deceive or defraud" extend? Did it
include the setting of traps to make the victim break the conditions of
employment, or was that covered by the "caveat signator "
ruling in Biicher versus the Ngat Yu Rare Earths Combine, 2066? Not likely; the latter case concerned the supply
of goods, not payment of salary or exercise of an employee's contractual
benefits.
Chin
in hand, staring at nothing, she concentrated on what she remembered of the
great trail-blazing precedents with a ferocity her college instructors would
have applauded— though they might have been astonished. Gubbins and Kino- shita versus the Loki Rhodium Monopoly,
2012: "A company in law is a corporate counterpart of the individual;
hence an individual and a company enter into a contract with equal standing
before the law"—not very helpful, since most subsequent judges had tended
to be influenced by the fact that Judge Petropavlov had been institutionalized three weeks later for senile dementia ....
What
a flimsy house-of-cards-like structure the law was, when you examined it in
this state of mind! How many people's lives—and deaths, she reminded herself
with a shudder-had been affected by what a judge had had for breakfast!
She
rose determinedly to her feet. She knew, or at any rate she could reasonably
believe, that from now until the harvesting ship returned to Zygra every moment of the day and night she would be
watched by recorders in some form or another, so that government computers on
Nefertiti could be assured of the legality of this operation. What could she
say or do to make certain the computers cited this moment, now, to bring to the
attention of the government's human officials?
She took a deep breath and addressed the air.
"My
name is Kynance Foy." She added the date and
time. "I have been engaged in the capacity of supervisor here by the Zygra Company. As a result of certain remarks made to me by
Executive Shuster of that company, I believe that an attempt will be made to
infringe the spirit of the contract of employment I have entered into. I adduce as circumstantial evidence the admitted fact that none of my nine
immediate predecessors has managed to complete his year of duty and collect his
salary. Compare Studholme and Zacharias versus the Perseus Asteroid Mining Company, 2011—1 think," she
concluded on a more doubtful note.
Merely
saying it made her feel immensely better at once. Let the Zygra Company beware— Kynance Foy,
armed with her Earthside non-specialist education,
was a different proposition from some neurotic Nefertitian !
(But better not say that aloud, for fear it might offend officials of that
planet's government.)
If
she could leave nothing else behind her—if they did in fact murder her—at least
she might be remembered as a legal precedent. Humming, sustained by that
vicarious form of immortality, she began to survey the surroundings in which
she found herself.
IX
L ogically , the first thing to do was to count the jaws
of the trap. She already had her mental list of obvious pitfalls; now she
turned it into a written catalogue, which grew with dismaying speed as she
surveyed her surroundings.
They
were taking no chances, for instance, with injury or sickness. She had never
seen the threshold of an automatic medicare cabinet
set so low. If she so much as slept the clock around, she would waken to find a snuffling servo making metabolic checks
beside the bed, and behind it, alert for the trigger-signal, the prosthetics
responsible for the fiction of "live human occupancy" and hence
continued ownership of the
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