John Scalzi
Illustrated by Gahan Wilson
Judge Sn Goes Golfing Copyright © 2009 by John Scalzi.
All rights reserved.
Cover and interior illustrations Copyright © 2009 by Gahan Wilson.
All rights reserved.
Interior design Copyright © 2009 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Electronic Edition
ISBN
9781596064799
Subterranean Press
PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519
www.subterraneanpress.com
Judge Sn’s assassination was getting in the way of his golf game.
It was just that sort of day. Judge Bufan Nigun Sn had been reamed into consciousness at five a.m. by his alarm clock, which was programmed to whack him on the head with its little arms. “Get up get up get up get up!” it exclaimed, in ever louder and more excitable tones. Sn swung at it and missed as it rolled out of his reach; the clock’s adaptive evasive programming had learned this trick. It also avoided the heavy tome of recent significant Common Confederation Court rulings which was then flung at it; that was another favorite tactic of Sn’s.
Sn finally stood, wobbly; the clock came up to him and with the same little plastic arms that had been lightly pummeling him, now squeezed one of his legs in a hug. “Now you’re up!” it said, in pleased tones. Sn kicked it mightily and gained satisfaction as it fragmented against the wall. It was programmed to do that too, of course, and after a couple of seconds it began pulling itself together, humming as it did so, while Sn staggered off to the shower. The mobile alarm clock had been a gag gift from one of Sn’s clerks, who was well aware of his boss’s inability to get up after a night of drinking, and confused Sn’s sarcastic nature with Sn having a sense of humor about himself. The clerk learned of his misapprehension when Sn fired him while the gift was still partially unwrapped; however, in the fullness of time Sn had to admit it actually did get his ass up in the mornings, especially Wednesday mornings like this, when he woke early for his weekly golf pilgrimage.
Twenty minutes, one shower and one hangover pill later, Sn was out the door and into the cab of his shitty Ford. “Good morning,” the Ford said, in its customary greeting.
“Suck it,” Sn said in his.
The Ford, neither intelligent nor programmed for complex emotional modeling, accepted the greeting with its usual lack of complaint. “Where will we be going today?” it asked.
“Dulles Woods Municipal Golf Course,” Sn said.
“Do you wish to drive?” the Ford asked.
“Absolutely not,” Sn said.
“All right,” said the Ford. “I’ve checked road conditions, which are good. It should take us forty minutes to reach Dulles Woods Municipal Golf Course.”
“Shut up and drive,” Sn said, and leaned back into his seat as the Ford pulled out of his garage and headed for the 66.
Sn hated Dulles Woods with a passion that smoldered like a trash fire. Dulles Woods was built on Tarmac and graft, the former provided by the portion of the former Dulles International Airport upon which Dulles Woods was placed, and the latter by the Loudoun Country supervisors who thought up the golf course largely as way to skim public funds, building the course through rigged single bid contracts to friends and relatives. During their fraud trials it was discovered that the runway paving had never been torn up and only a thin layer of topsoil had been placed on it, which explained how the Dulles Woods fairways could be simultaneously patchy and swampy. It was also discovered that “Lee Amsterdam,” the allegedly celebrated course designer, was a nephew of one of the supervisors with no previous course design experience; under oath he revealed the course was designed by taking holes from the courses he found on a PlayStation-era Tiger Woods video game. This resulted in Loudoun County being sued by Pebble Beach, Cog Hill and St. Andrews, not only for stealing from their courses, but for doing it so poorly that it damaged the original courses’ reputations.
Poorly-designed, dingy and ill-kept, a victim of the decaying tax base of Loudoun Country, Dulles Woods was the veritable ass end shit hole of golf. Sn believed that calling it the worst golf course in a hundred mile radius of Washington, DC was not sufficient; in his opinion it was the worst golf course east of the Mississippi River, and only Judge Sn’s certain knowledge of the existence of God’s Love Creationism Golf Course and Museum thirty three miles outside of Flagstaff Arizona, complete with scripture-bellowing caddy/docents to throw off one’s game, kept Dulles Woods from taking the crown for the whole of the United States. Even then it was a close call; God’s Love had a sweet par four 6th hole, marred only by the dinosaur-riding caveman sculpture that edged onto the fairway and seemed like a holy magnet for golf balls. Sn hit the sculpture three times in three rounds; after the third time, Sn’s caddy/docent snickered and muttered something about predestination. Sn then exercised free will by clobbering the caddy with his driver; this earned the caddy a comfortable settlement and Sn a lifetime expulsion from God’s Love.
It was not the first time Sn had found himself on the wrong side of the clubhouse door. Indeed, this was why, with the sky yellowing in the east, Sn found himself grimly trooping toward Virginia in the first place. Dulles Woods was a shit hole of a course, all right, but it was also the only golf course in the metropolitan Washington, DC area Sn hadn’t been banned from. Every other course, public and private, had made it known to Sn that despite his fame and acclaim as a fast-rising star in the Common Confederation judicial firmament—normally enough to make one welcome at any golf course in this famously politically-obsessed town—his temper and his temperament made him persona non grata. Basically, Sn was an asshole, and never more so than on the fairway.
Sn stewed in his car, letting it steer itself down the 66/267 interchange, recalling each expulsion in turn. At Rock Creek he got into a philosophical argument with an appeals court judge that ended with Sn chasing his fellow jurist around the 5th hole green, his putter swinging like a cudgel. On the Red course of Army Navy, and after a few too many pre-game whiskey sours, he’d told the US Chief of Staff just how many war crimes the Admiral ought to have been hauled up for over the last decade. At Bethesda he’d vomited into the punchbowl during a fundraiser for a local Congressional representative; Sn argued that this indiscretion shouldn’t get him banned from the course, just the clubhouse, but to no avail. At Raspberry Falls he insisted on playing a round of golf while a local charity ran a petting zoo on the grounds; a particularly solid tee shot brained a runaway lamb that had wandered onto the fairway. The lamb braining and Sn’s subsequent and profane tirade over the corpse of the wee, fluffy animal took place in full view of six horrified youngsters, including the grandson of the governor of Virginia. He told his dad, who told his dad, who called Sn, who called the governor a goddamned Virginia ham. That was that for Raspberry Falls.
Eventually private clubs Sn had never even been to made it known to their members he was not to be invited. When Sn first heard of this he had stomped into the office of his lawyer, and demanded to sue.
“On what grounds?” David Stern, his lawyer, had asked.
“Racial discrimination,” Sn said.
“Are the clubs banning other non-humans from golfing at their clubs?” Stern asked.
“No,” Sn admitted.
“And they’re not banning other Wryg,” Stern said, naming Sn’s particular species.
“No,” Sn said. In fact, Grun Se Fer, the Wryg ambassador to Earth, was famously nearly always to be found on the links at Lansdowne, a club which had distributed Sn’s picture to its gate security after an unfortunate incident involving a 5-iron and a caddy’s left tibia.
“So it’s really j
ust about you,” Stern said. “That’s not racial discrimination. That’s Bufan Nigan Sn discrimination. That’s entirely legal.”
“There’s got to be something you can do,” Sn had said.
“Not really, but there’s something you can do,” Stern said. “Stop being such an asshole when you golf.”
“You’re fired,” Sn said.
Stern sighed. He’d already been fired twice in the last three months; the firings, alas, never stuck. “Look,” he said. “I don’t mind that you’re an asshole on the links. I make a good living preparing your settlements and keeping you out of jail and keeping you from getting removed from your judicial seat. It keeps my paralegals busy. And I know better than to go golfing with you. But this really is just about you. There’s no legal relief when people don’t want you on their private property because you’re a jerk. You’ve just got to stop being a jerk.”
Sn mulled this. “Public courses can’t ban me preemptively,” he said.
“No they can’t,” Stern agreed. “You’re free to golf on any public course until you do something disruptive and stupid, at which point they have the legal right to ban you.”
“Then I won’t do anything disruptive and stupid,” Sn said.
“Good,” Stern said. “I’ll tell my paralegals they can have the afternoon off.”
Six months and two settlements later, there was no public course within driving distance of Washington, DC where Sn was allowed to golf—except Dulles Woods. Long abandoned by any golfer who could choose not to golf there, Dulles Woods was the golf course of last resort, populated by duffers who, like Sn, had found themselves banned or shunned elsewhere. At Dulles Woods, Sn found a measure of peace. He was not the worst-tempered golfer there by a long drive; in fact, he was comfortably in the middle of Dulles Woods rage management bell curve. Sn recalled two months previous, watching two members of a foursome in front of him getting tasered by the Loudoun County sheriffs for assaulting each other and then resisting arrest. Sn had never once been tasered, nor had he ever resisted arrest. He felt pride in his relative social advancement. And he had diplomatic immunity anyway.
Sn noticed his Ford had slowed to a crawl, as had the rest of traffic, even though Sn was ostensibly going against the morning rush into DC. He asked the car what the shit was going on.
“Traffic accident,” the Ford said. Sn clicked his mouth-pieces in irritation. Sn hated drivers who felt they could drive better than their cars could on their own; they ended up screwing everybody else, especially him. Sn needed to be in his office by 10, and he was cutting it close as it was. This was just going to make things worse. Sn thought back wistfully on the days when he used the Court’s popper to get to Dulles Woods; it arced him over the ground traffic and had him on the links not more than ten minutes after it took off from the CC court’s popper pad. That ended when the Court’s executive manager reminded Sn that the popper was meant for official and essential use only, such as couriering documents from one CC district courthouse to another. Sn made what he thought was an excellent argument why his weekly golf sojourn qualified as both official and essential; the EM was not notably moved. Sn considered getting her fired but she was too well-connected. He had to use ground transportation like a common troll.
Sn’s Ford eventually passed the accident; the driver rammed into the divider and then pinged across four lanes of traffic. Sn noted the offending car’s license plate. If he missed his tee time he’d be having one of his clerks run a records check on the son of a bitch by noon.
He did not miss his tee time; the Ford rolled into Dulles Woods’ weedy parking lot with six minutes to spare. Sn hauled his clubs out the Ford’s trunk and made his way to the automated check-in, which confirmed his tee time and charged Sn an outrageous amount to play on the course, far in excess of what a round of golf at Dulles Woods was worth. The course could get away with it because it knew its golfers couldn’t golf anywhere else, otherwise they would. Sn clicked his mouthpieces in irritation once more and then headed to the cart rental as quickly as he could. Dulles Woods only had three carts for rental on a good day, and two of them had issues. Sn hoped the good one had not been rented.
It hadn’t, the reason being that sometime in the night someone had stolen its fuel cell, and the fuel cells of the other carts as well. Somewhere on Route 7 a piece of shit car was chugging into work on a jury-rigged power source. Sn swore and stomped around to the back of the automated check-in, where the illegal caddies hung out.
At some point along the way, it became known to the locals that Dulles Woods’ golf carts were unreliable, and that the course’s golfers, while foul-tempered and more than occasionally abusive, would also pay a day’s wage not to have to carry their own clubs. Thus every morning a small group of local unemployed lined up behind the automated check-in, rubbing their hands to keep warm in the dewy chill and waiting for one of the golfers to choose them with an imperious crook of a finger. Dulles Woods didn’t sanction the caddies; it officially discouraged them and occasionally would have the sheriff’s deputies come in and mutter something to them about loitering. But by and large it let them be because it discovered a way to monetize them—it simply ruled that no one could walk the fairways without paying the greens and usage fees. The golfers who used the caddies ended up paying two greens fees plus whatever they paid the caddies directly. There was a reason why Dulles Woods had only three golf carts, two of which were always in serious disrepair.
Usually there were four or five erstwhile caddies hanging around the back of the check-in; this morning Sn found only one. “Where’s Evgenyi?” Sn asked the guy; Evgenyi was a recent immigrant from Russia who Sn preferred as a caddy because he knew enough to shut up and stay out of Sn’s way. Evgenyi knew Sn’s golfing schedule and was generally there when Sn stomped up.
The man stared at Sn as if not comprehending; Sn asked again and then once more before remembering that he’d forgotten to turn on the translation device he had hung on a lanyard. Sn spoke perfect English but did it at a frequency which only occasionally dropped into the range of human hearing; this came in handy if Sn wanted to chew out someone without them knowing, provided he remembered to turn off the device, which he often did not. Once it was on, it was on all day. Sn testily flipped on the translation device now and asked his question for a fourth time.
The guy shrugged. “Haven’t seen anyone else,” he said.
Sn allowed himself a brief and uncharacteristic moment to wonder if Evgeniy might not be feeling well, then reminded himself the two of them had not made sort of goddamned lifetime commitment to each other. “Well, come on,” Sn said to the new guy. The two went around the front of the check-in, where Sn paid the caddy’s fees, shoved his bag into the guy’s arms, and then stomped off in the direction of the course.
The first hole at Dulles Woods was inspired by the same hole on the Old Course at St. Andrews, a 376 yard, par 4 with a small water hazard bordering the green. But where St. Andrews had the venerable Swilcan Burn, Dulles Woods had a plastic-lined ditch which was supposed to have been filled with koi but ended up with mosquitoes and mats of algae instead. Sn was not bothered by mosquitoes—they didn’t like the way he tasted—but he felt some existential angst about the fact that the rate he alienated golf courses he would be unlikely ever to play at St. Andrews. Sn shook it off, placed his tee and his ball, called for his driver and then angrily snatched it from the bag when the caddy apparently couldn’t read the fucking number right on the goddamn head. Sn cleared his thoughts, visualized where he wanted the ball to go, and took a mighty swing.
The ball took off from the tee like a shot, lofted in the air like a dizzy, trembling quail, and then landed gorgeously, beautifully and perfectly, just where Sn had wanted it to go, precisely positioned for the approach to the green.
Sn stood there, stunned. He turned to his caddy. “Did you see that shot?” he asked. The caddy shrugged. Sn jammed the driver back into the bag, irritated, and tromped off down the fairway, not
looking back to see if the caddy was following.
The simple fact of the matter was that despite his love of the game of golf, Judge Bufan Nigan Sn was bad at it. And not just garden variety bad, or even unusually or exceptionally bad. He was, in fact, historically bad at it, the sort of bad that beggars description and becomes it own unique and soul-destroying thing. Sn’s two-decade affair with the sport of golf—begun in the first year of his posting on Earth, when that first metallic ping of ball meeting metal resonated inside of him, quivering his internal organs with an intensity that was very nearly sexual—had been one of aggravation and futility. Sn had been a persistent suitor, wooing the sport with a series of lessons and seminars, new and improved clubs, heads, shafts and grips, and endless variations of the golf ball, all promising better, smoother flight characteristics and accuracy off the club head. The sport was not moved; indeed, the sport was spiteful. After two decades, Sn still held the maximum handicap for his sex and species allowed by the USGA.
Tim Pratt, the golf pro he’d hired some years back to improve his game, tried to explain to Sn why it was unlikely he was going to get much better. “Your body’s just not designed for golf,” Tim had said, and pointed to Sn’s arms. “Your limbs aren’t as naturally strong as human arms are, and they don’t have the same vertical freedom of movement because your body shape gets in the way. We can improve your game a little, but you’re never going to get your handicap down to something that humans have, or that a Nidu golfer has.”
“Burtab Shi Pou plays without a handicap,” Sn said.
“Pou is the Wyrg version of Ben Hogan or Willy Gross,” Tim said. “He’s a once in a generation phenomenon. You, on the other hand, are a middle-aged judge with a bad swing even when we factor in your physiology. Let’s try to keep a sense of perspective.”
Where’s your sense of perspective now, Pratt? Sn wondered, as the ball lifted from the fairway and sailed, smooth and silky, through the morning air, to land on the green mere yards from the cup. It was a rhetorical question; Tim Pratt was dead, a victim of putting into holes he’d been best advised to steer clear of and having been shot by a jealous husband because of it. Being a golf pro had its dangers. But the essence of the question was relevant, Sn thought, as he chipped his ball into the hole and took out his scorecard to mark off the first birdie in his long, frustrating personal history of the sport. Golf, heretofore a reluctant mistress, had suddenly and quite unexpectedly let him get her top off.