What it was, Sn realized, as he went par for the next two holes and registered another birdie (!) on the fourth hole, was Dulles Woods itself. Long banned from all other courses, Sn had been forced to learn every hateful nook and cranny of this fetid course; every boggy fairway, every scummed-over water hazard, every sand trap infested with cat feces and raccoon corpses. Having exhausted almost every conceivable combination of shots on every hole of the course, Sn could choose the right club in every circumstance without needing time to think or plan. His knowledge of this one shitty course was in its way as extensive as his knowledge of Common Confederation law—and perhaps even greater, since he did not revisit the same laws every single week like he revisited the same links here. Dulles Woods, in all its feculent glory, had steeped into him, into every orifice and pore and spicule, until it became part of him, like a skin tab or an intestinal polyp: benign but not exactly healthy either.
No matter. Existential skin tab or not, as Sn conquered the course, maintaining an even and satisfying par, he began to feel something lift from his soul, something that he did not know had been there, something that he would not have been able to name until this very game of golf: A secret feeling of personal inadequacy that had sucked down into Sn’s very core. Sn—somewhat atypically for a Wyrg—had risen above his lower-class station on the Wyrgian colony world of Fului to become one of the most influential Wryg jurists in the Common Confederation. It was true that a posting on Earth wasn’t very noteworthy in itself; it was one of the lower-tier judicial postings, and the best someone like Sn could do, coming into the judiciary as he did from a minor colony and without connections of any sort. But it was here on this little backwater planet that Sn had decided Nidu v. United Nations of Earth, a sovereignty ruling on a newly-discovered, manufactured sentient species—in this case a species made of human and sheep genres—that did something almost unheard of in a legal system that had existed for ten of thousands of years: Opened up an entire new branch of law.
Well, more like an entire new stub of law; the law in the field applied only to a single person in the entire Common Confederation. But theoretically, it was huge. Sn had become a legal sensation and capitalized on it shamelessly to advance his position in the CC judicial hierarchy. He was still stuck on Earth—indeed, thanks to the ruling he was indelibly connected to it in the CC legal world’s consciousness. But if the whispers were to be believed, Sn was being considered a dark horse candidate for The High Castle—the informal name of the Common Confederation Executive Court—when two of the eleven seats were to open up through mandatory retirements later this year. That would be a coup worth having; the first Wyrg judge at The High Castle in almost six hundred years.
But for all the fame and notoriety that Sn had heaped upon him (and which he enthusiastically shoveled on himself), in his small and compact heart were dark questions of his fundamental worthiness, in itself the wellspring of his ambition and attitude. Through force of will Sn had beaten back every challenge to his competence and ability, until that fateful day more than twenty years back when he first stepped up to a tee, swung his club, and had the club fly out of his hands and strike the senior member of his foursome, knocking the man unconscious and into the hospital for six stitches and overnight observation. Golf had ever defeated him—ever mocked him—ever reminded him that all his competence and flair for the law, all the fame and notoriety that accrued because of it, was but a thin, sweet candy shell over a dark and bitter liqueur of inadequacy. Golf would not let Sn forget that fundamentally, he sucked.
As Sn recorded another miraculous birdie, he realized now how this constant reminder of his internal failures had poisoned him over the years—not in the stewardship of law, but in everything else. He now knew why he fired his clerks at the slightest whim and why his relationships with his peers at the CC District Court were strained. He now understood why none of his three marriages lasted more than a single breeding cycle. He realized why it was his children had been sullen during their court-ordered visitations while young and cut off all communication when they became adults. And, most of all, now he comprehended why he had to be banned from every other golf course in the Washington, DC area: because in the end, Dulles Woods—shitty, inadequate Dulles Woods—was not only a golf course, but a map of the abscessed topography of his own soul. Dulles Woods was who he was inside; not only had it steeped into him, he had steeped into it, a mutual feculence, like understanding like.
And so it was, there on the 11th hole of Dulles Woods—copped from Pebble Beach, with the ocean view replaced by a view of the ground traffic snarled up on Route 28—that Judge Bufan Nigun Sn experienced a shock of personal enlightenment that was, in its way, as profound as any experienced by any sentient creature at any time in the history of the Common Confederation. It was like Saul on the road to Damascas, Buddah under the mangrove tree, Cu-ki-go trawling for kroons at the shore of the Shaden Sea, or the Grinch discovering that his heart grew three sizes that day. Sn saw with crystal clarity the flaws in his makeup and the places where he was being healed with this miraculous and epic round of golf, this gift to himself, accomplished only through complete understanding, and pointing the way to his personal redemption and his inevitable greatness through service to the Common Confederation and the universe. That this moment happened with a Titleist Forged 695MB 7-iron in his hand, in the presence of a disaffected caddy, on a course that smelled of decomposing tar and deer urine, mattered not in the least. As Sn carded the 11th hole—par—he knew he had been given the opportunity to remake his life.
On the 12th hole—one over—he vowed to make amends to those he had treated ill over the course of his career as a Common Confederation judge.
On the 13th hole—par—he became determined to apologize to his wives for being cold and distant during their marriages. He swore to mend relations with his children and earn the love he’d withheld from them and that they now withheld from him.
On the 14th hole—par—he decided that he’d tip the caddy, even though the fellow was largely fucking useless.
On the 15th hole—birdie!—he knew that he must become an advocate not only of the law but of justice, and must use his position as judge to effect that change, to become the engine that powered the whole of the Common Confederation into a better era.
It was in this haze of self-redemption and spiritual rehabilitation that Sn came to what he knew would be the greatest challenge in his personal journey to wellness: Dulles Wood’s infamous 16th hole.
It was the 16th hole, as it happened, that had tipped off the observant to the fact that course designer “Lee Amsterdam” had his head well up his fraudulent ass. Bored with nicking fairways and greens from a video game, Amsterdam was determined to design one hole himself, based, as Amsterdam (real name: Joel Schlotzky) related in court, on a favorite miniature golf hole he played as a child. It was a boa constrictor of a fairway that curved back on itself, featured immense grassy hills at each curve (intended, Amsterdam said, to ricochet balls off of, just like miniature golf) and a series of hooked water traps that turned 50 yards of the fairway into a near impassible maze. At 890 yards, it wasn’t the longest hole in the history of golf, but it was definitely the most poorly designed. USGA regulations did not recognize pars of more than six; most golfers at Dulles Woods were happy if they managed to card an eight on the hole, cursing Amsterdam as they did so.
As if to reflect its shame, the 16th hole was a slogging walk from the 15th hole and from the rest of the course, isolated and hidden inside a deep collection of fast-growing pine that edged onto the fairway itself, presenting its own challenge for golfers and serving to muffle the agonized shouts of the frustrated and angry players. Rumor had it that enough drivers, irons and putters had been flung into the pines over the years that an ambitious person might collect several complete sets of clubs.
Sn turned to his caddy as they stepped up to the tee. “What do you think?” he said, to the man. “Driver? 3 wood? 8 iron? Sand wedge?”
br /> The caddy appeared to sense he was being mocked. “I just carry your clubs,” he said, a little miffed.
“You’re doing a fine job of that,” Sn said, attempting not to be snotty but not quite managing the trick. This new area of personal grace was going to be difficult. “Hand me the driver. No, that one,” he said. The caddy handed over the club. Sn turned from the caddy, set his tee, and collected his thoughts. Sn had never gotten out of the 16th hole of Dulles Woods with anything less than a fifteen—a nonuple bogey, as one of his playing partners dubbed it shortly before Sn drove the golf cart over his foot—and had never left the 16th hole without feeling like he wanted either a drink or to fire someone. The last two holes of Dulles Woods were cake—an easy par four and a par three—but Sn had always thrashed his way through them; the 16th hole invariably sucked all the life out of him and his game.
Not today, Sn thought. Today was a day of science and magic; Sn knew where to hit the ball to land it on the fairway at just the right spot to make a diagonal shot through the backtrack. It was a risky shot over a rise, and Sn wouldn’t be able to see where the ball would fall—but today he knew where it would land. Then just the right speed, angle and iron would lift it over the water maze. From there, a short shot onto the green, and then a solid putt into the cup. Five strokes for a birdie on the hole.
He could see it. He could imagine it. And today of all days, he knew he could do it. Sn set his tee, placed his ball, and with a supreme confidence that he had never before felt on any golf course, swung back and prepared to deliver his mighty, redemptive shot.
After Sn had tumbled to the ground he spent the next few seconds trying to reconstruct what the hell had just happened. At the top of his swing, Sn felt his golf club wrenching itself from his grip, as if a cruel and capricious god had flicked it away, and Sn felt some of the muscles in both of his arms stretch and possibly tear as the club launched itself up and back, spinning around its circle of gravity. Sn himself, thrown off balance, spun awkwardly backwards, spraining one of his wrists as he automatically reached out to hold back the planet that was swinging itself toward him. Sn had to replay the scene in his head three times before he finally grasped the sequence of events. He still didn’t know how it happened.
Sn heard a gasping sound to the right; still prone, he looked over and saw his caddy was on the ground, rocking back and forth and clutching his neck with his hand. Blood was filling the spaces between his fingers and dripping slowly to the ground. Sn crawled over to his caddy and placed his own hand on the man’s hand. “Let me look,” he said. His caddy didn’t respond, but allowed Sn to move his hand. As he did, something small and flat fell the short distance to the ground: A deformed bullet.
“Son of a bitch,” Sn said. Now it made sense: Someone shot at him, hit his club instead, and the ricochet hit the poor bastard caddy in the neck.
Sn got a closer look at the wound. “You’re all right,” Sn said, to the caddy. “It’s just a flesh wound.” The caddy groaned and lost consciousness just as a spray of dirt pelted them both; whoever had shot at Sn was still doing it. Sn crawled back away from the caddy, dragging his fallen bag of clubs with him as a shield. There was a whine as another bullet whistled by, and several others cracked overhead. Sn hunkered down and felt an emotion well up inside of him; not fear, but another emotion entirely. Pure rage.
Presently a man-shaped shadow covered Sn; he looked up to see a wild-haired young human male pointing a handgun at him. The gun was shaking a bit.
“Judge Bufan Nigun Sn, I sentence you death,” the man said, nervously. The quaver in his voice enraged Sn even more; he was clearly being assassinated by an amateur, here.
“You stupid shit,” Sn said. “Can’t you see that I’m in the middle of my round?”
The young man paused, uncertain. “Judge Bufan Nigun Sn,” he started again.
Sn waved him to silence. “I heard that part already,” Sn said. “Why are you trying to kill me? Or do I not get to know why I’m sentenced to die?”
“I was getting to that!” the guy snapped. “You interrupted me.”
“Oh, well, I apologize,” Sn said. “So sorry to put you off your schedule.”
The man blinked and swallowed; clearly this assassination was not going as he had planned. “Judge Bufan Nigun Sn, I sentence you death, because of the crime you committed against the planet Earth in the Lawson ruling,” he said, gun still trained, more or less, on Sn.
“Lawson?” Sn asked, incredulous. Lawson v. Abernathy had been a basic land rights case where there had been a potential conflict between UNE law and Common Confederation statutes. Sn had overruled the UNE ruling but sent it back to the lower court with new instructions; he’d placed a stay on implementing the ruling until the lower court had a chance to take it up again. “Holy God, man! There’s not a goddamn thing in Lawson that’s worth killing me over,” Sn said, and then pointed at his unconscious caddy. “Hell, there’s nothing in Lawson worth killing him over, either! And I’m goddamn sure there was nothing in Lawson worth keeping me from playing this round of golf!”
“Lawson wasn’t just about land rights, it was about the environment,” the man said, and then stopped. Sn waited, somewhat impatiently, for the continuation of the jack-assed reasoning behind that statement, and kept waiting up until the point that the man coughed, drooled blood out of his mouth, and pitched forward, dead. Sn moved out of the way as the young man fell and saw a red splotch on the back on the man’s shirt; someone had shot him in the back. Was that aimed at him or at me? Sn wondered, and got an answer less than a second later when the grass next to him spouted up as another shot missed him by inches. Sn dived back down behind his golf bag, but then peered over it a few seconds later, the fear of his second assassin overcome by curiosity.
The assassin was another man, this one somewhat more professional looking than the unkempt previous assassin. This one walked toward the tee purposefully, scoped rifle cradled in his arms. Sn wondered why someone with a sighted rifle would bother closing in on him, then figured it out: Like the first assassin, he had a message to deliver before he killed Sn. So he did intentionally kill the first guy, in order to make sure Sn wasn’t killed before he had an opportunity to deliver his spiel. The second shot likewise intentionally missed Sn, to keep him contained until this new assassin could get to him and plug him up close and personal.
Sn wondered if this was about Lawson, too; if he’d known it was going to cause him so much trouble he would have assigned it to Judge Kort. He never liked Kort anyway.
“Fuck this,” Sn said, and stood up. If this new assassin was waiting to kill him in order to deliver a dogmatic spiel first, Sn was damned if he was going to hear it prostrate on the ground. The assassin trained his rifle on Sn the moment he stood up but held his fire, walking slowly as he advanced on the judge. The assassin was intent enough on keeping Sn in his rifle sights that he was not aware that some thirty yards behind him, another man had emerged out of the pines to the right, his own rifle in hand, trained on the second assassin. Sn, in spite of himself and against all sense, pointed at the new guy and shouted at the second assassin to look out.
Even more incredibly the second assassin listened, turning just in time to catch a bullet in the arm from the third assassin. The second assassin’s rifle fell to the ground but he remained standing, reaching to his waist with his uninjured arm and hand to pull out a handgun which he trained on the third assassin, thereby missing the appearance of a fourth man, who materialized out of the pines to the left of Sn. With his own automatic rifle this new threat stitched the second assassin’s back, neck and head full of metal. The second assassin slumped, and the two remaining assassins began shooting at each other across the length of the fairway. Sn started, agog, too stunned to move, watching the two men shoot and run, run and shoot.
Finally, a thought struck Sn: Shit, they’re coming right at me. Sn dove back down to the ground to avoid stray bullets. Running wasn’t an option; Sn didn’t want to pr
esent a target. He had no idea if either of these two planned to monologue before offing him. On the ground Sn searched around for the handgun the first assassin had trained on him, lo those many seconds ago. He found it not far from where the man had fallen; he grabbed it, and remembering a long-past weekend shooting firearms with some district attorneys of his acquaintance, checked the gun’s magazine.
It was empty. Sn’s vision clouded with rage. That little shitball had wasted his ammo and had held an empty fucking gun on him. Sn could have killed him, if the second assassin hadn’t already done it.
All other thoughts were delayed as Sn looked back up and saw that his two new assassins were making a beeline toward him, converging on the point where he was. Both the assassins had long dropped their guns, having expended all their ammunition trying to hit each other and failing. Whichever of the two was going to kill him was going to do it up close and personal. It was too late to run; the two men were too close. Sn grabbed his golf bag and heaved it in their general direction, extracting the 3 wood as he did so.
Ten seconds later Sn and the two assassins each had a golf club in hand and were eying each other warily, each watching the other two for sudden movement.
“Look,” Sn said, slowly after a minute of everyone not moving. Somehow through all this his translation device had stayed around his neck. “All I want to do is play this hole.”