COMMUNITY PROPERTY

BY ALFRED COPPEL

The first successful non-Terrestrial divorce case! Fame for Legal Eagle Jose Obanion for his generalship of a three-sexed, five Venusian history-shattering precedent! Habits are habits but—alas!—on Venus they differ....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

One of these days an embittered lawyer is going to write a text on the effects of spaceflight on the divorce laws. This writer will be a Terrie, about five ten, with blue eyes, black hair—turning grey very fast, and the unlikely name of Jose Weinberg Obanion III. Me.

I remember very well the day I was graduated from law school; the day my father gave me his version of the Obanion credo. Always remember you live in a community property state—

That simple phrase has kept three generations of Obanions in the divorce trade. And only I have had cause to regret it.

Basically, I suppose, my troubles began the day the Subversive Party swept the Joe Macs out of Congress and repealed the Alien Restriction Act of 1998. That bit of log-rolling gave the franchise to almost all resident aliens and resulted in a situation virtually destroying the sanctity of divorce as an institution.

I'm a Joe Mac myself—politically, I mean. Obanions have been voting the Joe Mac Party Ticket for more than a hundred years. Red is our color. There are even family legends that say an Obanion was with the first Joe Mac when he became President of that old unit the Euse of Aay.

We have to rely on legends, unfortunately, because the Joe Mac Party traditionally fed their rally bonfires with books, and when they won the election and took over the Euse of Aay they had a rally to end all rallies and somehow the Government Archives—books, you see, as well as punch cards and the like—got taken over by some very zealous Party men. The records were always rather incomplete after that. Only word of mouth information was available during that first Joe Mac Administration, and that can be sketchy. For example, the party color is red. All we know is that first Joe Macs had something to do with red. You see how it goes.

What I mean by all this, is that I can see the faults in my own Party. I'm no diehard. Nor am I a bad loser. The Subs won control of Congress by a landslide, so I guess the people wanted that sort of slipshod government. Only they should have been more careful, dammit, when they started tampering with the laws.

I'm not antispacegook, either. I have my framed Legal Eagle's Oath right over my desk and I live up to it. And if Congress sees fit to make any Tmm, Dccck, or Harry a citizen of our great Commonwealth—I account it my duty to see to it that they are not denied the benefits of our Terrestrial divorce laws.

But sometimes it can be very trying.

The new Sub Administration and their rash repeal of Joe Mac laws has had the effect of putting reverse English on the Obanion credo.

Always remember you live in a community property state....

That wonderful phrase that encompasses so many great truths—that ringing statement that has made me rich and kept me a bachelor—now means something else. Confusion. Work. Yes, and even spacegook depravity.

I should go back and pick up the story at the beginning before I get too upset.

My name, as I said before, is Jose Obanion. I'm a licensed Legal Eagle, specializing in divorce law—and doing well at it. I have a good office on the 150th floor of the Needle Building, a damned fine address and a comfortable lay-out, too. A whole room to myself, a private visor service to the Municipal Law Library, and a lap-desk for my secretary, Thais Orlof.

On the day it began I was walking to work from the tubeway station and feeling rather pleased with myself. My income was high and steady, my protein ration account was in good shape and I was doing my bit as a civilized Terrestrial.

The morning was remarkably clear. You could make out the disc of the sun quite nicely through the smog, and there was a smogbow gleaming with carbon particles in the sky. I felt alert, expectant. Something BIG was going to happen to me. I could feel it.

Even in the go-to-work press of people on Montgomery Street, I didn't get shocked once. That's the way my luck was running. And three characters brushed against me and got nipped by my new Keep-A-Way.

There's been talk about making Keep-A-Ways illegal. Just the sort of infringement on personal liberty the Subversives are famous for. Inconsistent, too. They pass laws letting every spacegook in the universe come here to live and then talk about taking away one of the things that makes the crowding bearable.

I made a point of arriving at the office a little early, hoping to catch Thais in the act of coming in late. My secretary was a hard girl to dock, but I never stopped trying. It was a game we played. If she came in late, I would be justified in docking a protein credit off her pay for every thirty seconds of office time she wasted. So far I had managed to keep her pay low enough so she couldn't think of leaving my employ—though she was earning a few prots on the side by acting as correspondent in divorce cases that couldn't be settled by Collusion Court and actually had to be tried before a judge and jury.

Thais and I were still haggling over the price of her services as part-time mistress, too. I couldn't see giving her her asking price, which was half again the regular market price. Thais knew the value of a prot, all right. And of an erg, too. "Take care of the ergs," she would say, looking at me meaningfully, "and the prots will take care of themselves." Thais was a devout Ben Franklinist and she was full of aphorisms like that.

I settled myself into my Lowfer and glanced over the desk calendar. A full, profitable day ahead. Tremmy Jessup and his new fiancee were coming in at 0900 to sign the premarital divorce settlement. A wise couple, I thought approvingly. Save a lot of trouble later. At 1100 Truncott vs Truncott and Truncott. A multiple divorce case with two women involved. Very lucrative sort of case. And then at 1200 Gleda Warick was coming in to have me validate her Interlocutory decree. A formality. But I hoped to take her to lunch at the Palace where they were advertising a five ounce portion of genuine horsemeat on their five prot dinner. That sort of thing would impress Gleda and I rather hoped for great things from her. Not only that, she was spending 25,000 prots yearly on divorces. No Franklinist, she.

It still lacked a minute to the hour so I switched on the TV to catch Honest Pancho's commercial. Pancho was my most active competitor and he cost me plenty, but I couldn't suppress a grudging admiration of his enterprise. He had Lyra Yves doing his stuff for him, and anyone as socko as Lyra was dangerous. Sweetheart of the Western Hemisphere is the way she was billed, and her agent wasn't exaggerating too much.

Lyra was singing his come-on backed by a quartet humming a steady whap rhythm and doing a slow twitch. The lights were playing her daring costume big, accenting the fact that she had one breast almost covered. I frowned. How come the League of Decency let her get away with anything as suggestive as an opaque breast covering. Pancho must have friends in the censor's office. It was just another sign of the increasing degeneracy of our times. Soon entertainers would be appearing clothed from head to foot, exploiting the erotic stimulation of imagination.

"—whap me slap me baby doll," Lyra was singing. "Beat my head against the wall—lover, I don't care at all at all—Whap! Honest Pancho's on the ball!"

Now the announcer cut in with his insinuating voice explaining how you could get your divorces quicker, cheaper and twice as funny at Honest Pancho's Big Splitzmart in the Flatiron Building, as well as his Legal Eaglery just down from the County Courthouse. "—yes, friends—TWO big locations to serve you. Come in and see Honest Pancho today!" And then Lyra again: "Whap! Honest Pancho's on the baaalll! WHAP!" She faded doing a sinuous twitch. I turned the TV off feeling a little worse than when I turned it on.

Maybe, I thought, I've been too conservative. Maybe I'd better get on the baaaalll, too. Or else. I shrugged the thought aside just as Thais slipped through the door—exactly on time.