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article. And the physical evidence linking you to the death is incontrovertible. Look at your hands, please."
    Wheems looked down at the barely healing scratches on his hands. He simply hadn't noticed them before, his mind being on other things.
    "Acquired during the struggle," said the voice, "to all intents and purposes, and one of the more salutary sources for your contamination of the scene. Justice Department Forensics Division is quite capable of distinguishing between that and the contamination caused simply by living there, in the home where you happen to live. As I said, all the evidence matches."
    Barnstable's experience as a lawyer came, somewhat belatedly, into play.
    "Yes, okay," he said desperately, "that might be true, but the Judges have other ways of getting to the truth. Security-scans and psych-profiles, Birdie lie-detectors... Something out there, something along the line, will show I didn't do this.
    "You have witnesses - I don't know - who say they saw me running into her in a synthi-milk bar and the two of us leaving together. I can prove they're lying. If holo-surveillance shows it, I can prove it's been doctored. Something, somewhere in the world will prove I didn't do this for the simple fact that I didn't, and whoever you are, you can't control the entire world."
    "Who's to say that we can't?" said the voice, somewhat smugly. "All right. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that we can't. Such things are secondary evidence - the sort of things that you help clients to avoid in your work. That simply doesn't matter in this case.
    "People like you are not, to be frank, first on the guest list for the annual Judges' Ball. We're willing to risk that the Justice Department will assume that you've somehow managed to beat the secondary evidence, and go with the open and shut case in front of them. Want to bet on that?"
    For all his faults, Barnstable Wheems still held onto a breath of the romantic idealism that had, years ago, spurred him to become a lawyer. In addition, of course, to the potential for acquiring drokkloads of cash for not much actual work.
    The fight for justice, as opposed to the Justice of the Department, still held an attraction for him. And whatever else it was, his current situation was a romantic's dream. Hero wakes up with a dead body, accused of a murder he didn't commit, forced to fight and clear his name, armed with only his wits in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
    And just think of the name he'd make, let alone the compensation, if he could fight such a case and win!
    "Of course," said the voice, "if it looks like you're going to get anywhere in proving your innocence, we'll simply kill you stone cold drokking dead. Extremely painfully, for preference."
    "Oh," said Barnstable Wheems. There was that.
    "All right," he said at last. "What do you want from me?" And because, after all, for all his vestigial romantic idealism, he was still a lawyer: "And what do I get out of it?"
    "What you get out of it is that we send a very thorough cleaner to spirit the inconvenient evidence away - just not so far away that we won't be able to lay our hands on it, you understand? I think you'll be pleased with his work. We call him Mister Hand.
    "As for what we expect in return, in the next few days, possibly the next few hours, you'll be offered a job of work which, under ordinary circumstances, your first inclinations would be to refuse, for the simple reason, frankly, that nobody in his right mind would accept. There will be no mistaking the job in question. You are expected, simply, to do that job and succeed."
    "And, uh, if I were to fail?" asked Barnstable Wheems, even though he knew what the answer would be. It was just the way the script in this situation went.
    "Does the phrase 'dead as day-old dog shit' mean anything to you?" asked the voice. "Bit of an anachronism on a number of levels, I'll admit, what with the fact of dogs as such not existing any more... ah yes, I see