Jumping off the Planet

CLOCKWISE

Judge Griffith turned her chair so she was facing me. "All right, Charles—is that what you like to be called, Charles?"

I shrugged. "My family calls me Chigger."

"Is that what you want me to call you?"

"It's okay," I said, half-heartedly.

"I'll call you Charles," she said, nodding. "It sounds more respectful. Now ... do you remember the riddle I asked you at dinner?"

"About how do you tell a Martian the difference between left and right?"

"Yes, that's the one. For the record, would you restate it?"

I took a breath. "You asked how to explain left and right without using the words left and right. How would you demonstrate or explain the difference? What are the ... the defining criteria? Is that the right way to say it?"

"Yes, it is. Very good, Charles. That's even better than I said. So, have you thought about the problem?"

I made a face. "I haven't been able to think about anything else. That's really a tough question."

"Yes, it is." She grinned right back at me. "The first time I heard it, I couldn't get it out of my head for months. So do you have an answer?"

"I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure if it's the right one—" But before I could say anything else, Howard-The-Rude stood up. "Your Honor? With all due respect, may I ask what the purpose is of this line of discussion?"

Judge Griffith looked annoyed at the interruption. But she turned to Howard-The-Ugly and replied, "Yes, you may ask. The purpose of this line of inquiry is to determine the depth of thought that Charles Dingillian is able to bring to a problem. There are questions that we need to ask him. We need to know what kind of credibility his answers have. Will he tell us what he thinks we want to hear? Or will he tell us what he's really thinking? That's what's going to determine a large part of the Court's decision here. Any further questions, Counselor?"

Howard-The-Stupid didn't look happy with Judge Griffith's answer, but he sat down anyway. "No more questions."

Judge Griffith turned back to me. "All right, Charles—I'm sorry to have to put you on the spot; try to pretend it's just you and me talking about this riddle over dinner again, okay?"

"Okay."

"And it doesn't matter if you have the right answer or not, Charles—that's not the point. In fact, I'm not even sure there is a right answer, there may not be, so don't worry if you didn't get any answer at all, that's not important. I just want you to tell me the way you thought about it."

"But I did get an answer—" I said.

"You did?" She looked surprised.

"Uh-huh."

"Well, if you did, then you're the first. I never did."

"Oh, well—um, I dunno. Maybe it isn't obvious. You don't live on a planet, so maybe that has something to do with it. See, first I thought that you could tell the difference by the sun. Turn and face the direction the sun rises. The hand pointing south is your right hand, the hand pointing north is your left hand. But then I realized that the Martian would have to know north and south for that answer to be any good. And that depends on which way the planet is spinning, doesn't it? North is the pole that when you look down on it from above, the planet is spinning counter-clockwise. So you need to know clockwise to know north, don't you? And if the Martian doesn't know clockwise, then the answer doesn't mean anything at all to him, does it? So I have to find a way to tell the Martian about left and right in a way that doesn't depend on any Earth definitions at all."

"Very good, Charles. Go on."

Dad was looking at me oddly. Douglas was sort of smirking, as if he already knew how hard this riddle was. Stinky sat up, rubbing his eyes. He looked around once, then laid back down again. Douglas put his jacket over him.

I looked back to Judge Griffith and held out my hands in front of me, palms open and facing away, thumbs sticking out at right angles. "Then I thought that maybe my hands might be a clue. See my left hand? My index finger and thumb make an L—L for left. But that doesn't count either, because a Martian isn't going to know what an L is. You need a way to describe an L, and you can't really do that without first having the definitions of right and left, can you? How do you say a left-pointing right angle? So that doesn't work either. That was when I got really really angry at you." I curled my fingers into fists and pantomimed pounding on a table and growled through my teeth.

Judge Griffith smiled and nodded, "I remember that feeling."

"But that gave me part of the answer." I stretched my arms out in front of me so she could see my fists. "It's in your fingers, see? Look down at your fists. The left one is clockwise." I traced it with my right index finger. "If you start at the outside, with the tip of the thumb and follow the spiral of your fingers all the way around to the tip of your index finger on the inside, then you see that the left hand is the hand that curls clockwise in while the right hand curls counter-clockwise out. And that's the only way they can be."

"That's very good, Charles." Judge Griffith was looking at her own fists. Around the room, almost everybody else was looking at her fists too. Olivia, Mickey, Douglas—even Howard-The-Clumsy. 'That's the best answer I've ever heard."

"Except ... " I added, "That's not the whole answer. Because the Martian still has to know clockwise"—Howard groaned; I ignored him—"or you have to be able to define clockwise for him. See, all that this answer does is move the problem into another ... um, what's that word that Douglas uses all the time? Domain—that's it. This answer only moves the problem into another domain. You still have to define clockwise and counter-clockwise."

Howard-The-Impatient stood up then. "Your Honor," he said, with obvious annoyance, "I think you've made your point. Can we be done with this and get on with our business?"

"We are getting on with it, Howard. And I'll decide when we're lone." She waved him down impatiently and turned back to me. "And did you figure it out, Charles? How do you define clockwise?"

"Well, first I thought about clocks, obviously—but maybe Marians don't have clocks. But they could have a sundial. You could tell a Martian that clockwise is the way the shadows turn—except it's reversed in the southern hemisphere. There's no way to tell the difference between northern and southern. It's the same as left and right. Again. So I've got to find something that's always clockwise 10 matter how you look at it."

"And, did you find anything?"

"Well ... I thought about Neptune and Uranus, both of which are laying down on their axis. If there was a planet that always kept one of its poles toward the sun, then the sun would always see it spinning the same way, counter-clockwise. But both those planets are like Earth. Half their year, the north pole points toward the sun, the either half the south pole points toward the sun, so there aren't any celestial objects you can use."

"So you didn't get an answer?"

"No, I got two answers. But ... well, you'll see. The first answer 3 to point to the Southern Cross and say, 'That's south and this is he southern hemisphere.' Or you point to Polaris and say, 'That's the north star. This is the northern hemisphere. But that only works where you can see the sky."

"And what's the other answer?"

"Periwinkles." Douglas looked up sharply at that—I guess he was surprised that I had actually listened to what he had said back there on that Mexican beach. "They're a kind of seashell," I explained. "They always know which way to turn. Clockwise."

"In both hemispheres?"

"I think so."

"Hmm. That's very interesting. I'll have to look that up. Those are good answers, Charles. You get an A." Judge Griffith looked impressed.

"Uh-uh," I said. "I think they're C+ answers."

"Oh? Why? They answer the question."

"Yeah, but they all depend on being able to point to something else. You can't talk about right or left or clockwise or counterclockwise, unless you can point to something else. Otherwise, there's no way to define one hand from the other."

Judge Griffith smiled. "I believe that you have just stumbled on the essential existential dilemma."

"Huh? The what—?"

She answered slowly and carefully. "The only way we ever know anything about ourselves is by measuring ourselves against something outside of us. Do you understand what that means?"

"I think so," I said, remembering something Weird had said once. "Everything's connected to everything else. If we don't have any connections, we're lost. We can't even tell which way is up. But—?"

"Yes?"

"That means that there isn't anything absolute, doesn't it? That everything is just sort of 'agreed on.' Like we all voted on which way is north and what time it is and what words mean. It's like looking down and finding there's no floor."

"Exactly," said Judge Griffith. "There is no floor. And we're all living in a universe of agreements. That's why we have courts—to sort out all the different disagreements where they rub up against each other. If we had absolutes, Charles, we wouldn't need courts, would we?"

"Mm." I had to think about that one for a minute too. "I guess."

"So let's get this one sorted out now. You've done very well, Charles. Very well indeed. The Court thanks you. You've shown me at I needed to know. You can go back and sit with your family."

"Yes, Your Honor." I went back and sat next to Douglas. I picked the monkey again and held it close. It hugged me again. I didn't know whether to be annoyed or not.

Griffith looked to her assistant. "Any word yet?"

"The last of the passengers have cleared customs. Godot is on his way up. Five minutes."

"All right," said Georgia. "Fifteen-minute potty break." She banged her gavel once and wheeled toward the restroom, her assistant following.

Dad leaned toward Olivia. "Who's this Godot?"

"I don't know," Olivia whispered back. "That's what the judge calls anyone she has to wait for." She added, "I'm sorry we got caught—but I don't think Georgia had any choice in the matter."

"We—? You got a suspended sentence. I'm likely to lose my kids—! There's not a lot of 'we' in that, Olivia! You turned us in, didn't you?"

"I didn't have a choice, Max." She sounded just as frustrated as Dad.

"Oh, terrific. You told us to go out on the limb—and then you sawed it off."

"I don't think you should say any more," Olivia said quietly, with a meaningful nod toward Howard-The-Brooding.

"You've put us in a really bad situation, Olivia."

"I'm sorry. I miscalculated."

"Apology noted. Now what are you going to do to help clean up :his mess?"

"Nothing. I can't! I'm not your lawyer anymore, Max."

Dad shook his head in disgust. "I can't believe this. Why did I trust you?" He sank back down in his seat, not looking at Olivia anymore. She looked just as unhappy. Now all that was left was a fight between her and Mickey, and we'd be complete. Everybody would have fought with everybody. I couldn't think of anyone else we could fight with—

And then Godot arrived.

Godot was Doctor Bolivar Hidalgo. And following him into the room was ... Mom?! And that other woman behind her.

Just about everybody came to their feet. Douglas, Dad, me—even Stinky woke up, rubbing his eyes again, this time, crying, "Stop waking me up!"

Mom went straight to Dad. She moved across the room like a missile—and slapped him across the face. Hard. Dad was knocked jack a step; he put his hand to his jaw and blinked. "It's good to see you again too, Maggie," he managed to say.

And then Stinky saw her for the first time and yelled, "Mommy!" And flung himself into her arms like a screaming monkey. He grabbed hold so tight, she almost fell backward. "Mommy, Mommy! Are you going with us?"

"I came to take you home, sweetie—"

"But I don't wanna go home! I wanna go to the moon!"

She stroked his shaven scalp. "What have they done to you, baby?"

"It's a moon-cut!"

Mom gave Dad a dirty look and moved away from us, cooing softly to Stinky and patting his head. Now it was Doctor Hidalgo's urn. He waddled over and bowed to Dad. "My compliments, Señor Dingillian."

Dad just glowered.

Dr. Hidalgo pretended not to notice. Instead, he took Dad by the arm and made as if to lead him off to a corner. "Can we talk?"

"You can talk," Dad said, not moving. "Do I have to listen?"

"It would be better if we could talk alone ... ?"

"Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of my children, Dr. Hidalgo. I'm not going to hide anything from them. It's their lives too."

Douglas and I exchanged a look. We came and stood next to Dad. The monkey climbed up onto my back and made faces over my shoulder. Doug hissed at me, "Turn it off, Charles," so I did.

We followed Dad and Doctor Hidalgo over to a corner of the lounge. Doctor Hidalgo plopped himself down onto a chair and started talking immediately. "It's a pity you didn't accept my earlier offer of help. It would have simplified matters a great deal. For all of us. I told you that there were people who would act against you. You should consider your wife's oh-so-convenient presence here as evidence of their commitment. If you think about the organizational effort involved and the money it takes to get someone onto a shuttle on such short notice, you might begin to understand just how important your package is. It's important enough that a great deal of money is going to be spent on the effort to intercept it and prevent its delivery. Are you convinced yet?"

"What I told you before still stands," Dad said.

"It affects the lives of your sons. How do they feel about it?"

"Whatever my Dad says, goes for me too," I blurted. "Right, Douglas?" I poked him.

Douglas didn't need to be poked. "We're a family, Doctor Hidalgo. We might be having problems right now, but that's our business, not yours. No matter how bad our family arguments might get, we still don't sell each other out."

"Admirable. Very admirable." Doctor Hidalgo grunted his approval. "Not very smart, but still admirable. The smart man recognizes when he can't win and cuts his losses early. So ... " He levered himself to his feet. I figured he must have massed two hundred kilos. He sure looked it. Even in low-grav, he was having problems getting out of a chair. "I guess we have nothing further to discuss. Let the games begin." He waddled back to the other side of the lounge.

Dad looked to me and Douglas like he wanted to say something. But there wasn't anything that needed saying, so he just clapped Doug on the shoulder—he was closer—and said, "Let's go."