Pandora's Star

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Judge Carmichael made his entrance, and everybody stood. Morton flashed a reassuring grin up to Mellanie, captured by fifty professional pairs of inserts.

  Once the charges had been read out, the defence lawyer, Howard Madoc, immediately applied for a dismissal, citing contamination of evidence by the media. Ivor Chessel attested that the evidence itself was still sound and irrefutable, and only a small part of the prosecution case. Judge Carmichael rejected the appeal and, with the posturing over, the trial began in earnest.

  Prosecution laid the case out simply. Morton was a man driven by his raging manic thirst for money and power. His marriage to Tara Jennifer Shaheef was a simple and ruthless first step to achieving that goal. Her family money was used to fund AquaState, giving that small company the financial muscle to go after and win large building development con-tracts. AquaState under Morton’s fiery management grew successfully until it was ready to go public.

  The share flotation was all part of his original grand scheme. It made him rich and gave him the leverage he needed to gain a seat on Gansu’s board. After that, his rise was unstoppable.

  But his plan had faced ruin as his then wife Tara Jennifer Shaheef grew bored with their marriage. If she filed for divorce, AquaState would either be wound up or sold off and the proceeds split between them. Morton would still be rich, a lot richer than he was at the start of the marriage, but it wasn’t enough for his purpose. It was still too early for the flotation to take place, AquaState wasn’t quite big enough to attract investors. That required another two or three years of uninterrupted growth. ‘So you killed her,’ Ivor Chessel said, standing in front of the dock. ‘You removed the one obstacle left to flotation, your own wife. And with her out of the way, supposedly living on Tampico, you were free to build up AquaState to the level you required.’

  Morton gave Howard Madoc a helpless look – unable to believe anyone could make such an absurd accusation. The defence lawyer, a dignified man who kept his appearance firmly middle-aged with the first frost of silver in his hair, shook his head sadly at such blatant theatrics by the prosecution.

  The first prosecution witness was the city’s head of forensics, Sharron Hoffbrand. She confirmed that the bodies dug out of the forty-year-old condo’s foundations were indeed Tara Jennifer Shaheef and Wyobie Cotal. They had both been shot at close range by a very high-powered nervejam weapon, and had their memorycell inserts erased, probably by an em pulse. The exact time was slightly difficult to pin down after so long, but she could narrow it down to a three-day period in the middle of the week when Morton was away at the conference in Talansee.

  Chessel then asked if they’d found any foreign DNA traces on either of the bodies.

  ‘No,’ Hoffbrand said. ‘Cotal was fully clothed. There were the normal particles and dirt you’d expect from moving through the city, but no extraneous DNA. Shaheef was naked, but we found traces of soap and perfume chemicals on her skin, indicating she was in the bath.’

  ‘Can you tell if she was shot in the bath?’ Chessel asked.

  ‘Not after so much time has elapsed, no.’

  ‘But she was in the bath at least prior to the slaying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she was at home then?’

  ‘That’s likely, yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ivor Chessel turned to the judge. ‘No more questions, your honour.’

  Howard Madoc smiled as he got to his feet. ‘Home or a hotel? Can you really tell the difference?’

  ‘No, it could have been either.’

  ‘Or a friend’s house? Or a public washroom?’

  ‘Somewhere with a bath is as specific as I can get.’

  ‘Was it on Oaktier?’

  ‘There’s no way of knowing.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  Prosecution called Tara Jennifer Shaheef. She took the stand wearing a lavender suit with wide white trimming, and a too-short skirt. Her hair and make-up too lavish, emphasizing how nervous she looked.

  ‘Do you recall having any enemies forty years ago?’ Ivor Chessel asked.

  ‘No. I didn’t lead that kind of life. I still don’t.’

  ‘So you certainly weren’t aware of anyone wanting to kill you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any memory or knowledge of visiting the planet Tampico?’

  ‘No, I’d never heard of it until I was re-lifed.’

  ‘What about Broher Associates?’

  ‘The lawyers? No. I heard about them at the same time I did with Tampico, when the insurance investigators looked into my disappearance.’

  Tara’s eyes watched Howard Madoc as he walked over to her. She hadn’t yet managed to glance in Morton’s direction.

  ‘The prosecution is relying very heavily on the assumption that you were about to divorce my client,’ he said. ‘Were you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. There was no definite plan that I remember. We would have parted eventually. The marriage was moving close to its sell-by date.’

  ‘Is that why you were having an affair?’

  ‘One of the reasons, yes. Life was sweet. Wyobie made it sweeter.’

  ‘Life was sweet,’ Madoc repeated thoughtfully. ‘I see. Do you still see Morton?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes. I don’t avoid him.’ She gave a brittle laugh.

  ‘So you’re good friends then?’

  ‘As best as you can be with an ex. He was . . . supportive when I was re-lifed. It’s quite a shock waking up to find that’s happened to you. The therapists say some people take another lifetime to get over it.’

  ‘So it would be fair to say there is no ill will between you and Morton?’ Madoc asked.

  ‘No. That is, I had no reason to suspect any until this blew up.’

  ‘If you had gone and done what the prosecution claimed, and filed for divorce that very week you were killed, would you have insisted that AquaState be wound down or split in half as your marital agreement stated?’

  ‘Objection,’ Ivor Chessel said. ‘That requires speculation.’

  ‘Hardly, your honour,’ Madoc said smoothly. ‘I’m asking the prosecution witness what she would actually have done under very specific circumstances; while the entire prosecution case rests upon what might have happened if she did as they believe. Which of us is speculating?’

  ‘I happen to agree with you in this instance,’ the judge said. ‘How the witness believes she would have reacted is not speculation. Please answer the question.’

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure,’ Tara stammered. ‘Money wasn’t too big an issue for me, I still had access to family funds. I suppose I would have allowed AquaState to continue. Morton would probably have made a good case for getting it ready for flotation.’

  ‘So you were never angry with him?’

  ‘No. All marriages end, everybody knows that. That’s why we have contracts at the beginning.’

  Howard Madoc was very careful not to smile at the prosecution team as he sat down.

  The second day began with Hoshe Finn taking the stand. He was still in his one best suit with his hair slicked back into the silver clasp he always used; while Paula had chosen a black jacket and light tweed skirt, still every inch the unflappable professional. Morton had gone for expensively casual, with an open-neck white shirt under a gold-embossed waistcoat. His lawyer was wearing the same suit as the previous day, careful to project style without ostentation. Looking down on them, and smiling encouragement when required, Mellanie had selected a pale-grey dress, cut tight enough to qualify as an overskin.

  ‘Detective Finn,’ Ivor Chessel began. ‘Is there any evidence Tara Jennifer Shaheef or Wyobie Cotal ever went to Tampico?’

  ‘The tickets were bought, and the law firm hired, but there is no evidence either of them were ever there. We performed an extensive search, there was simply no data or physical trace of them ever being on that planet. We believe the whole Tampico scenario is an alibi for the killer.’

  ‘An alibi?’

&
nbsp; ‘If Morton killed his wife to guarantee the flotation of AquaState, he couldn’t afford to have anybody asking questions about where she was. As far as everyone else was concerned she had run off with her lover to set up home on a new world. The legal firm of Broher Associates was hired to carry on the fiction by acting on her behalf.’

  There was a lot more. Methods used during the search. Verification of police records. Results into inquiries conducted into Wyobie Cotal’s life to see if he had enemies prepared to kill. The official accounts for AquaState. All of them designed to show how the inquiry had carefully narrowed down options until it could be nobody else but Morton. It wasn’t until the afternoon that defence began its questions.

  Howard Madoc got Hoshe to tell the court how the original investigation of Cotal’s re-life was winding down when Morton intervened to get the case assigned a higher priority.

  ‘Very curious thing for him to do, if he is the killer, isn’t it?’ Madoc asked.

  ‘He wouldn’t know he murdered Shaheef and Cotal,’ Hoshe said. ‘The first thing he would do is have the memory erased.’

  ‘You know that, do you?’

  ‘We examined his secure memory store. There is no memory of the event.’

  ‘Was there a full memory of the week-long convention he was attending at the time of this terrible crime?’

  ‘Essentially yes. However, he could have returned to Dark-lake City during what was logged in the secure store as a sleep period.’

  ‘You examined my client’s secure memory store. Is there any memory of him ever having been to Tampico?’

  ‘No. But if he killed . . .’

  ‘Just answer the question you were asked, please Detective. You have no evidence my client set up this alibi. Would I be right in saying that the person or persons who did actually kill Tara Shaheef would have needed this alibi to deflect any police or private inquiry about her whereabouts?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the course of your investigation, did you find anyone else with a motive to kill these two unfortunate people?’

  ‘No. There was nothing, no other reason except Morton’s.’

  ‘What about Tara and Wyobie unexpectedly walking in on some deeply illegal criminal gang activity? Was that considered?’

  ‘Yes, we examined it as a possibility. There was no evidence to support the idea.’

  ‘Well there wouldn’t be, would there? If the gang who killed them were smart enough to deliver an alibi that stood for forty years, they’re hardly going to leave evidence lying around. Their only piece of bad luck was my client spotting the re-life connection and asking questions in high places, doing his duty, being a good citizen. And this is his reward. While all we have here in court is your theory mangled to fit the facts, a notion which is based solely on your assumption that my client is a cold ruthless man. Am I right in that?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what the facts support.’

  ‘But they don’t, Detective. That’s not evidence. That’s your theory. It is not evidence, not some bloodstained blunt instrument in a plastic bag which you can hold up here in court and point to. It is the most tenuous circumstantial theory. So I ask you again: is there any evidence, physical or digital, that definitely rules out Wyobie Cotal and Tara Jennifer Shaheef walking in on a criminal activity and being killed to shut them up, and incidentally, having their memorycell inserts erased?’

  Hoshe stared ahead for a long moment, then cleared his throat. ‘No, there is no physical or digital evidence which rules that out,’ he said in a monotone.

  As the court recessed for the day the talking heads in media studios across the Commonwealth were nearly unanimous that Howard Madoc had done a good demolition job on Hoshe Finn. A great deal of the prosecution case was conjecture. It should be enough for a good defence lawyer to swing the jury in his favour. Public sympathy was definitely moving towards Morton according to the constant interactive polls monitoring opinion on the case. It acted like a feedback loop, giving even more people the impression he was going to get off. Which implied an even bigger revelation was waiting to be accessed: Paula Myo was actually going to lose a case.

  After such momentous events, day three brought an unsurprising increase in the unisphere audience, close to three billion people were on line and waiting to see what would happen. They watched as Mellanie arrived early and took her usual seat. This morning she was wearing a long coat of some shiny ice-blue fabric with matching trousers. The vest underneath was a translucent mesh, though the coat lapels remained very close together, hinting at, rather than revealing, any flesh. With her hair given a sophisticated wave and combed back neatly she was radiating raw sex appeal.

  After yesterday’s roasting, Hoshe Finn was wearing a lighter suit, for once allowing his oiled hair to fall loose over his shoulders. Next to him, Paula was in a sombre dark-green suit, her hair scraped back severely.

  When the court officer brought Morton in, he’d put on a navy-blue suit appropriate for any boardroom meeting, emphasizing his authority and integrity. His face was sober and intent, never betraying any hint of contentment at what had happened yesterday. He was restrained as he shook hands with Howard Madoc, then they both stood as Judge Carmichael entered.

  With the prosecution case over, defence called its first witness: Morton himself.

  Howard Madoc was facing the shielded jury as he asked his opening question. ‘For the record, do you believe yourself capable of committing such a dreadful act as this murder undoubtedly is?’

  ‘I do not believe I could kill in cold blood. And I did not kill my wife and her lover.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Madoc went through a long series of questions designed to show his client in the best possible light to the jury. How Morton was ambitious but not so ruthless as to use murder to his corporate advantage. How he had shown sympathy and support for his ex-wife after her re-life procedure. How he would have risen to the top no matter what trivial little financial problems beset him forty years ago.

  ‘The prosecution has made much of how cold and ruthless you are,’ Madoc finished with. ‘Are you a cold man?’

  Morton looked up to the public gallery where Mellanie was sitting, gazing down with a soft devoted smile on her beautiful young face. ‘You’d have to ask those who know me properly, but I don’t think so.’

  Howard Madoc bowed slightly to the judge and sat down.

  ‘Your witness,’ Judge Carmichael told the prosecution table.

  Everyone in the courtroom fell silent as Paula Myo slowly stood up. Then a round of excited whispering broke out as she bowed to the judge and walked over to the witness stand. If she was having to take charge herself, the prosecution must be desperate.

  ‘Murder ain’t what it used to be,’ she said to Morton in a pleasant conversational tone. ‘It’s no longer death. Not final. Today it’s bodyloss, memory erasure, lots of euphemisms that describe what is essentially a discontinuity in consciousness. Your body can be killed, but the clinics on every Commonwealth planet can bring you back to life with a simple cloning procedure. There’s a blank decade or two, but eventually you’re walking round again as if nothing ever happened. It’s a wonderful psychological crutch to have. A lot of psychiatrists argue that it helps make our society a lot more stable and calm than before. They bandy the word “mature” around quite a lot.

  ‘So you see, murdering somebody is nothing like as serious as it used to be. All you’re actually doing is removing them from the universe for a few years. You’re not really killing them. Especially when you know their insurance will cover a re-life procedure. It would probably be an acceptable risk to remove someone who was going to ruin your plans.’

  ‘No,’ Morton said. ‘It is completely unacceptable. It is not a done thing, something that can be performed for convenience. Murder is barbarism. I wouldn’t do it. Not now, not forty years ago.’

  ‘But we are agreed that your wife and Wyobie Cotal were murdered?’

  ‘Of course.�
� He frowned, puzzled by the question. ‘I told you, remember?’

  ‘No, you originally said you were suspicious about her disappearance, especially when it coincided with that of her lover. Feelings of unease aren’t entirely memory-based, they can’t be erased by legal or black-market editing. They are derived from the subconscious. You knew something was wrong about their disappearance.’

  Morton sat back and gave her a suspicious stare.

  ‘The Tampico alibi was a good one, wasn’t it?’ Paula said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes. Assuming you no longer had the memory of murdering her, neither you nor her other friends ever questioned the story that she’d left you to go there.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her. But you’re right, it was a watertight cover-up. I had no reason to question her disappearance, especially after Broher Associates contacted me and said they were acting as intermediaries.’

  ‘Let’s examine this again. You came back from your conference in Talansee, and found your apartment had been stripped of all your wife’s things, her clothes and possessions, and there was a message telling you she had left for good.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And that was enough to convince you at the time that there was nothing unusual about her leaving.’

  ‘It was unusual, and unexpected, and quite shocking. But it didn’t make me suspicious.’

  ‘So you knew of her affairs?’

  ‘Yes, there had been several by then. Our marriage allowed for them. I’d had a couple myself. I’m only human, not some cold machine.’

  ‘Did you argue the terms of the divorce?’

  ‘No. They were all set out in the marriage contract. I knew what I was getting into.’

  ‘What about the items removed from your apartment, did you ask for any of them to be returned?’