by Watts Martin
“What are you trying to say?” The wolf’s eyes narrow. “Are you trying to make some side deal?”
“No! I mean—it’s not like what you’re thinking. Sky—”
“Mara’s Blood!” She clenches her fists. “It’s barely twelve hours until the tribunal starts! Do you think I can just tell everyone ‘sorry, my sister’s decided she knows better than our legal system, so I’m taking the databox and going home?’ What game do you think you’re playing?”
“I’m not—”
“This can’t just be about you, Gail. For once. Too much is at stake.” She stalks toward the door. “I’m going to go clear my head, and you’d better damn well try harder at clearing yours.”
“Sky, please—”
Her sister slams the door behind her.
She slides down on the couch and shrieks into a cushion. God, what game does she think she’s playing? She could hardly have made things any worse if she’d deliberately tried.
Maybe there’s a way to salvage this, to stop the tribunal first, then to confess everything to her. To apologize. She doesn’t see how, but she’s faced tougher problems. She must have.
Sky isn’t back before she falls asleep, still with no answers.
Chapter 20
“You’re very jumpy.”
Gail twitches when Ansel puts his hand on her shoulder as he speaks. Thanks, body, good timing. “I had a really bad night.”
He tilts his head, giving her a worried look. “You and Sky didn’t come in together.”
“We kinda had a fight.”
He pats her shoulder. “You’re just getting to know her again after a decade. There’s going to be bumps. But it’s been amazing watching you over the last few days, you know. You’re like a different person.”
Well, she’ll have fixed that in a couple hours, right? Back to the same old con artist deadbeat who puts Ansel on guard when she approaches his table at Acceleration. God, she’s burning bridges while she’s still standing on one.
Adjudication rooms on Panorica look ostentatious and imposing, modeled (she thinks) on British or American courtrooms. But this room keeps with New Coyoacán’s cherished, infuriatingly casual style. Sky, Nakimura, Taylor, Dupree, and two others—a cat totemic who looks like he’s in his seventies or eighties, and a cisform woman with reddish skin—sit around a semi-circular table in front of the room facing the gallery, three rows of seats. Gail and Ansel sit in the front row; Jack got in later than they did, and found a seat in the back. He’s dressed less like a cop and more like a tourist, denim blend jeans and a colorful print shirt of the kind Gail favors. Ironically, she’s not wearing anything like that now. She’s wearing her own slacks and a red blouse of her mother’s. She thought she’d have to sit at the table, too, but Sky curtly informed her they’d call her up if they had questions.
What truly makes her jumpy sits on the tribunal table, right in front of Karen Dupree: a transparent case, with the databox inside it. Is it locked? Not like she can ask without Sky growling at her. “Why do they even have that here?”
Ansel shrugs at her mutter. “It’s a connected table, I’m sure. They might ask Nakimura or Taylor to do something with the databox to substantiate Keces’s or Quanta’s claims.”
She swallows, glancing around and settling her eyes on Nelson again. He’s sitting in the second row, pushed all the way to the left side so he’s not too near anyone else. Maybe so he can get to an exit quick. He hasn’t looked at her once, not even when she’s stared at him painfully obviously, like she’s doing right now. Is he planning to take it? Does he still expect her to? The weekly flight to Earth departs tomorrow. Did they think she was so damn good a thief she could steal it without anyone noticing until the flight had left?
But it doesn’t matter now. It’s out of her hands, and it’s out of his, too.
If he was telling the truth about that. Or about anything. God, why didn’t she just go to Sky about him? Hell, if she didn’t want to go to Sky, she could have gone to Nakimura. Hey, do you know your right-hand man’s been feeding everything to your corporate nemesis and still wants to steal the databox from you? I told you he was an asshole, but did you listen to the rat? No. No, you did not.
And what makes her jumpy, too, is this. If this is the Ring’s idea of heightened security, she’d hate to see their idea of lackadaisical security. The back wall of this room is an outside wall, and yes, it’s transparent aluminum or reinforced glass or something, but it’s visible from the street. There’s nothing secret about where they are, and little secret about what they’re doing. Passersby can and will be watching. And are there any guards? The partial transform vixen standing by the interior door there is armed with an electric pistol. So is a middle-aged cisform guy standing in the back. As far as she can tell that’s it.
“Good morning,” Karen begins. “I’m Karen Dupree, and I’m the appointed arbiter for this panel. We have two connected orders of business before us, both tied to this.” She indicates the databox and its case with both hands. “A databox, and more broadly the data that it contains.
“The first issue is whether Keces Industries, represented on the tribunal by Jason Nakimura, used unethical measures to compel Gail Simmons—Gail, could you stand up?”
Gail swallows, standing for a scant second and dropping back down.
The rabbit smiles, then continues. “To compel Gail Simmons, represented on the tribunal by her mediator Bright Sky, to retrieve their allegedly stolen property via unconventional means. The second issue is the disposition of the property itself. It has two claimants, Keces Industries and Quanta Biotechnics, represented on the tribunal by Panorica Federation Security Captain Simon Taylor. In addition, we must consider the implications of the technology and whether it’s both in the interests of, and within the power of, the Ring Judicial Cooperative to impose conditions on its use. We’ll start with opening statements on the first issue from Bright Sky and Mr. Nakimura.”
Sky laces her fingers together. “In the Ceres Ring tradition, mediators for individuals rather than organizations are often chosen among extended family. While Gail and I are not blood relations, her mother adopted me when I was young and in need of a home, and we bonded as sisters.” The wolf doesn’t look over at Gail as she goes on, describing the way Nakimura sent her after the box, all the while believing she was the real thief he was setting a trap for.
After she finishes, Dupree looks toward Nakimura. He merely inclines his head. “We have no cause to challenge any of Ms. Sky’s characterizations.”
Sky continues. “And we know now that the databox had never been in Gail’s possession. It had been stolen by Randall Corbett, acting on behalf of Quanta Bio—”
“Objection,” Taylor snaps, then looks uncertain. “Is that what you say here?”
Dupree shakes her head. “No, but all that’s relevant to the first case is that Ms. Simmons never had the databox in her possession. Agent Thomas, could you quickly review how you intercepted the databox?”
Jack stands up, clearing his throat, and sketches out a mercifully quick review of Gail tackling Randall at the spaceport. Afterward, Dupree grills everyone on the panel to see if they need clarifications, and if they agree that Gail never had the databox in her possession. Even as efficient as the rabbit is, Gail starts drifting toward worrying about Nelson, until they get to the part about compensating her.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars per diem,” Nakimura responds when Dupree prompts him. “We engaged her for six days, so we shall offer one hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Hardly the payoff she’d dreamed of, but for six days she could do worse.
Sky, though, shakes her head. “That’s not at all acceptable. You’ve put her very life at risk, in some cases from your own operatives.”
“What would you consider acceptable, then, Ms. Sky?”
“Three million, coupled with a formal apology.”
Is she crazy? Gail tries to catch Sky’s eyes, mouthing are you cr
azy? to her.
Nakimura’s frown deepens and he drums his fingers on the table. At length, he says, “We shall admit no malicious intent toward Ms. Simmons and, further, agreeing to those terms will require this tribunal find no malfeasance on our part with respect to the dispensation of the databox.”
The cat raises his hand and speaks hesitantly when Dupree nods at him. “Isn’t that the second case?”
“Mr. Ritchie is correct.” Dupree nods to the cat. “We can’t agree to pre-decide any of the next part in your favor.”
Nakimura drums his fingers a few more seconds. “I shall recommend this settlement to my employers, then. Understand that it may take some time to be finalized, and that process will not be under my control.”
That translates to our lawyers will drag this out for years. Naturally, even though three million might as well be a rounding error to Keces, and it’s a far cry from the original promise of half the SC71’s fair market value. But it’s more than three years’ typical income for her. She can be patient.
“Now we’ll move onto the next part.” Dupree starts to review the story of the databox.
“Are they always that fast?” Ansel whispers to her.
“I have no idea.” The last time she was involved in a case at an RJC center it was over her legal guardianship when they couldn’t find her father.
He looks over at Jack. “Are they that fast in your courts?”
“Sometimes,” Jack whispers back. “But very rarely. How about Panorica’s?”
“Sometimes.” Ansel grins. “But very rarely.”
As Dupree invites Nakimura, Taylor, and Sky to speak in turn, Gail tries not to completely tune Nakimura’s drone out. She’s heard these arguments way too often over the last few days. He gives an overview of the work, patiently explaining that Shakti and Kali aren’t separable projects, but applications of the same data set. Under questioning from Ritchie and Ms. Saganey, the cisform woman, he makes the case that all the work is original to Keces, legally speaking—while parts are based on Quanta’s work, Keces considers those to fall under Quanta’s original licensing.
She glances toward Suspicious Detective again. He remains disengaged, restless. Is he waiting for something?
Captain Spitty keeps quiet until Dupree turns to him, even though it looks like he’s literally biting his tongue to stay silent a couple times. “Okay, let’s work backward from what Mr. Nakimura just said. If Keces had no concern about this project’s legality, why would they be using a dark courier? Everything they’ve done—and I do mean everything—tells me they treated this as a criminal enterprise. They treated this work as if it were smuggled contraband.”
More or less what Sky said to her the other day. And, yeah, all true. His review lays out an argument that the case for Quanta’s involvement in the theft relies entirely on drawing a tenuous, circumstantial connection from them to Corbett. Yes, Corbett did volunteer work with the Lantern Foundation. Taylor’s rebuttal boils down to a simple question: so what? Why would Quanta go through all this trouble to steal a databox containing a mix of data they already have and data they don’t want?
“But we know why.” Sky gestures toward Gail. “We know Corbett hates totemics. He especially hates my sister. The Lantern Foundation is a front for Purity. As Captain Taylor himself just said, Quanta’s former CEO funds it, and his son still works as a Quanta executive. They have ideological reasons to want to make the bioweapon better and to destroy Shakti. And commercial reasons, if Shakti is based on unlicensed Quanta technology.”
Saganey raises her hand. “I don’t think I agree that the Lantern Foundation is a hate group.”
“Did you all see the selected list of presentations from Lantern I sent?” Sky looks around the table. “There’s a lot of anti-transformation sentiment there.”
“Anti-transformation sentiment isn’t in and of itself an endorsement of terrorism.” Saganey leans forward, looking directly at Sky. “My family has avoided biomods for generations because we’re concerned about the safety. And the Navajo have never been pleased with the appropriation of the word ‘totem.’”
Sky gets an uncomfortable look. She and Gail have had that discussion before—it came up once in a while at RTEA meetings—but no alternative suggestions ever took off. To Gail, it’s obvious totem and totemic diverged a long time ago, and while she knows symbolic associations for rats, she never thinks of rats as her “totem animal.”
Ritchie clears his throat. “I understand what Kali is, but could you explain Shakti again?”
Nakimura sighs thinly, hands steepled on the table. “It’s technology for stable in utero modification, and while it is based on legally licensed work from Quanta Biotechnics,” he glances at Taylor, “the work is primarily ours.”
Murmurs start in the room. “So applying this technology to a child in utero would allow the child to be born as a totemic. And that child would give birth to totemic children, not cisform, without needing any more genetic work performed?”
“The answer is too complex to be a definite yes or no, Mr. Ritchie. But, in general, yes.”
Saganey looks at Nakimura. “How can that possibly even work? I see totemic couples of different—is species the right word?—all the time.”
“Species is fine,” Sky says. She looks at Nakimura, too, though.
“Our tentative answer, based on simulations, is that if the base species could form hybrid offspring in the wild, totemics would have hybrid children. If they could not, one of the species will prove dominant. If a rabbit totemic and a wolf totemic had a child, the child would be either a wolf or a rabbit totemic. Our data suggest that certain combinations of parental species are more likely to produce certain kinds of offspring, but not in a consistently predictable fashion. And some genetic modifications—unnatural fur colors and patterns, for instance—are not transmissible.”
Saganey frowns. “And if a totemic and a cisform human had a child, the child would be…?”
“Almost certainly totemic.”
The murmurs stop being murmurs and start being conversation. Loud conversation. Arguing. Dupree holds up her hands, trying to yell over the room to bring it back to order. “Quiet. Please! Quiet!”
“And that is why Quanta wanted to stop this at any cost.” Sky’s almost shouting. “Purity ideology.”
Taylor slams his hands on the table. “Purity is not Quanta!”
“The Lantern Foundation—”
“They’re not Quanta, either! There's one retired executive, and allegedly one current one, in common. You’re making a connection that simply isn’t there!”
Is he being disingenuous or just naive? Surely…
Mara’s Blood, what if he’s right? If Quanta isn’t behind the wreck, if they just see this all as a business dispute, that explains a lot of their behavior. Suspicious Detective never said he was working for Quanta, just for “his organization”—and if his organization is Lantern, that’s why throwing the trial isn’t good enough. Corbett wasn’t going to deliver it to Quanta, he was going to deliver it to Lantern. She was never supposed to stop him, but Nelson was there with Nakimura just in case she managed it.
And they’re not interested in getting the improved version of Kali to Quanta. They want to get it to Purity.
She turns to Suspicious Detective’s corner and—
He’s not there.
Gail bolts to her feet, looking around the room with a rising sense of panic. She switches all her biomods on, speeding up her senses, her motions. He’s not anywhere. Not inside, not on the street, not visible through the transparent wall.
“What is it?” Ansel looks up, puzzled. “You’re moving weird.”
“Where did Nelson go?”
“Who?”
As Dupree tries to shout the room back in order, Gail waves at her frantically.
Sky stands up, bangs both fists on the table hard enough to shake it, and snarls. “Quiet!”
It doesn’t produce absolute silence, but the
volume drops in a hurry. Both Saganey and Ritchie scoot their chairs back from her.
Gail raises her voice to a yell. “They’re going to try and steal the databox!”
Everyone at the table—everyone in the room—stares at her. “What?” Sky and Dupree both say simultaneously. “Who?” Nakimura says. “Quanta?”
“No. Lantern.” She points at where Nelson had been sitting. “Your hired detective, Nelson. He’s with—he works for—Lantern, Purity, someone who isn’t you. But he was here, and now he isn’t, and whoever he works for is about to do something now.”
Dupree runs a hand through the short hair between her long ears. “Mr. Nakimura’s assistant? You’re going to have to start over.”
“We don’t have time, but he threatened his employers would kill people if I didn’t cooperate. I thought he meant Quanta, but I think Taylor’s right. It’s not Quanta, it’s Lantern acting alone.”
“If you didn’t cooperate by doing what?” Sky’s voice is low, dangerous.
Her ears fold down and she forces her voice not to crack. “If I didn’t steal the databox for him. They’re desperate to get it back to Earth.”
The wolf’s expression goes flat. She knows why Gail screamed at her to get the databox now. God, does this make things better, or worse?
Ritchie’s ears have gone back. “This is an RJC facility. What do you think they’re going to be able to do?”
“Look, they know exactly where the databox is right now, and exactly how protected it is.”
Nakimura’s expression shifts from his typical annoyed weariness to thoughtful worry. “As much as I would prefer not to prolong the proceedings, perhaps adjourning to a more secure room is appropriate.”
Dupree looks between the five tribunal members. “Those in favor of adjourning?”
Nakimura, Saganey, Ritchie and Taylor all raise their hands. Sky remains perfectly still. She hasn’t stopped staring at Gail.
The rabbit looks mildly surprised. “Very well. I’ll ask what’s available. We’ll take an hour recess.”
