A momentary glow of unholy glee on Gus Brannhard’s face; Coombes didn’t like the idea at all.

“Your Honor, I trust that that suggestion was only made facetiously,” he said.

“It wasn’t, Mr. Coombes.”

“Then if your Honor will not hold me in contempt for saying so, it is the most shockingly irregular—­I won’t go so far as to say improper—­trial procedure I’ve ever heard of.  This is not a case of accomplices charged with the same crime; this is a case of two men charged with different criminal acts, and the conviction of either would mean the almost automatic acquittal of the other.  I don’t know who’s going to be named to take Mohammed O’Brien’s place, but I pity him from the bottom of my heart.  Why, Mr. Brannhard and I could go off somewhere and play poker while the prosecutor would smash the case to pieces.”

“Well, we won’t have just one prosecutor, Mr. Coombes, we will have two.  I’ll swear you and Mr. Brannhard in as special prosecutors, and you can prosecute Mr. Brannhard’s client, and he yours.  I think that would remove any further objections.”

It was all he could do to keep his face judicially grave and unmirthful.  Brannhard was almost purring, like a big tiger that had just gotten the better of a young goat; Leslie Coombes’s suavity was beginning to crumble slightly at the edges.

“Your Honor, that is a most excellent suggestion,” Brannhard declared.  “I will prosecute Mr. Coombes’s client with the greatest pleasure in the universe.”

“Well, all I can say, your Honor, is that if the first proposal was the most irregular I had ever heard, the record didn’t last long!”

“Why, Mr. Coombes, I went over the law and the rules of jurisprudence very carefully, and I couldn’t find a word that could be construed as disallowing such a procedure.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t find any precedent for it either!”

Leslie Coombes should have known better than that; in colonial law, you can find a precedent for almost anything.

“How much do you bet, Leslie?” Brannhard asked, a larcenous gleam in his eye.

“Don’t let him take your money away from you.  I found, inside an hour, sixteen precedents, from twelve different planetary jurisdictions.”

“All right, your Honor,” Coombes capitulated.  “But I hope you know what you’re doing.  You’re turning a couple of cases of the People of the Colony into a common civil lawsuit.”

Gus Brannhard laughed.  “What else is it?” he demanded. “Friends of Little Fuzzy versus The chartered Zarathustra Company; I’m bringing action as friend of incompetent aborigines for recognition of sapience, and Mr. Coombes, on behalf of the Zarathustra Company, is contesting to preserve the Company’s charter, and that’s all there is or ever was to this case.”

That was impolite of Gus.  Leslie Coombes had wanted to go on to the end pretending that the Company charter had absolutely nothing to do with it.