The talk of trying them, of there being nothing else to do, of the possibility, however small, of finding a new kind of purpose⁠—thinking outside the box⁠—was mitigated by concern about epic bad trips or just plain death after what had happened to Amy, though that was more of a broken-leg issue. The AI medical wellness suite being not quite state-of-the-art, and there being the possibility that no one really wanted to explore of some kind of mismanagement of medication. Its being unclear, none of them having trained in medicine, what exactly it was that had caused Amy’s passing. John seemed to argue that death might not be so bad under the circumstances, though it was of course difficult to understand him, as he spoke through tears. Still. There was a certain, let’s say, carefulness around drugs among the remaining members of the judiciary and their support staff⁠—Terry and Keith⁠—who were great, of course. 

They took it to a vote and agreed eight to two that anybody who wanted to was free to go ahead and “sample the wares.” Brett immediately raised a hand. Clarence looked around at the others, murmured that he was surprised, and extended a hand as well. And then, well, then that was it. The other justices sat there blinking until Sonia said, “Okay, what do we do now?” and Samuel said, “I guess they take the drugs. The acid or whatever.” And Clarence and Brett dropped, and then somebody suggested Bear Paw.

They were in the smaller, formal mess⁠—far enough off the main grid that you could forget for a second that you were living at the end of eight miles of tunnels, inside a mountain, between concrete walls, under lead-lined ceilings, the crystal chandeliers an afterthought of some unchained military planner in a former world. (Sigh.) It had a Persian rug, recessed lighting, one long table, and nine leather chairs. The tenth chair had been dragged in from the regular mess, and was not very comfortable. For that reason, Brett or Sonia always made a point of taking it, not wanting to allow some situation to develop where it was always Terry or Keith in the bad chair. 

They sat with two pouches of Scrabble tiles and half a dozen bottles of Brett’s home-brewed beer, a wheat gruit that was really more like hard kombucha. You had to drink quite a lot of it before you maybe felt a little hot in the face or sore in the shoulder joints. The game had originally involved recalling obscure precedents, trying to stump one another, but over time its rules had evolved into a tangle of codicils and caveats that would likely be indecipherable to an outsider, had there been one. The suspicion that a justice was fabricating precedents had given way to one’s own fabrications, subtle at first, then large, graphic, designed as provocation. These fictions had evolved into indirect personal attacks, and Bear Paw, as it was played now, was really a game of insulting people.

One thing: Brett was not a wreck like John, but he did feel penetrated by sadness. That was pretty much to be expected, but it was a little unfamiliar to him. Not unfamiliar. It was something, in a former life, that he had kept at bay with work, family. Maybe only sometimes brushing the depths when he got really wasted. Hammered. A memory came to mind, of the time he attacked a car.

“Brett?” Sonia said. “We’re doing alphabetical order by first name, so that leaves it with you.”

“Oh, of course, yes. Sorry about that. All right.” He drummed his fingers on the table and looked around ominously. “An easy one to start … Uh … Let me see. Okay, I know. ‘Where First Amendment rights are asserted to bar governmental interrogation, resolution of the issue always involves a balancing by the courts of the competing private and public interests at stake in the particular⁠—’ ”

“Barenblatt v. United States, 1959.” Clarence snapped up two tiles from Brett’s pile. “Way too easy. Upholding the conviction of …” He paused, pretended to contemplate how to lay out his new tiles among his old. 

“Lloyd Barenblatt,” Brett said. “A graduate student and teaching fellow who refused to⁠—”

“Right, right.” Clarence raised a hand irritably. “Sure. Now.” He looked around the table. “How about something that is actually obscure? No offense, Brett.” He began to quote at length from a state appellate ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony on bloodstain pattern analysis.

While he droned on about serology and forensics, Brett looked down at his hands on the table. They seemed brighter than usual. He did not think they were ordinarily so luminescent. 

“Wait a minute,” Samuel said. “I know this one. It’s State v. Goode.” 

He took two of Clarence’s tiles and quoted some tax compliance law, which Sonia recognized. She drew two from Samuel’s tiles and quoted from a civil case that clarified the standards for awarding attorneys’ fees. Elena identified that, and brought up a Supreme Court case addressing zoning violations and First Amendment challenges, which Ketanji knew. In short, it was a great big snoozefest of actual case law until finally Brett caught Neil’s winding allusions to Stambovsky v. Ackley, thank God, and was able to move things along to the insult portion of the evening. 

The question was only whom. He looked away from John, who needed a tissue. Sonia smiled in encouragement, communicating that it would be fine if he went after her. He tried to think of something negative to say, but his mind went blank. He could mention those séances at her grandmother’s. It was toothless, and the game would go on. Ordinarily he would have gone that way, but at the last minute his eyes fell on Clarence, who sat in his J-71 Bentley & Simon robe. The other justices had put away their robes hours after their arrival at Mount Jack, but Clarence “liked to keep up the formalities.”