“She and I talked a little,” Popova said, glancing at the bathroom doors. She clearly didn’t want Talia to walk in on them. “She got quiet pretty fast, but not before I could put a few things together.”
Flint weaved his fingers so tightly that his hands ached. But he didn’t want to show how uncomfortable this conversation made him, not just because he was worried about Talia’s mental health, but also because he was worried about her general safety.
Right now, given the climate in Armstrong, he didn’t want anyone to figure out that she was a clone.
“She lost her mother, she lost her home, she lost her friends, and she was just rebuilding her life when Anniversary Day happened.”
“She handled it all right,” Flint said, and realized he sounded defensive.
“She handled it,” Popova said, “until she watched a group of people die in front of her at her school. Just like her mother was kidnapped from her home.”
Flint nodded. He had known this. But hearing it from someone else made it even harder to deal with.
“And there’s something in the middle of all this, something that made her stop talking to me, and start up the tears again.” Popova glanced at the bathroom doors one more time. Then she leaned forward and lowered her voice even more. “It was the last straw. If you don’t get her help, I’m not sure what will happen.”
“I don’t know what would help her,” Flint said.
“She has secrets,” Popova said. “I get that, and they’re probably important, given what happened to her mother. But a therapist is bound by confidentiality—”
That didn’t mean they would follow it, Flint wanted to say, but didn’t. He let Popova go on.
“—and Talia should be safe talking about things she doesn’t want the rest of us to know. And that includes you. She’s going to have to work this one out on her own.”
“She’s already worked out too much on her own,” Flint said. He had only been able to do so much. Some of it she needed to work out with her mother, but her mother died before the secrets got revealed.
“Exactly,” Popova said. “I’m going to give you the name of my therapist. I’ve already given it to Talia. I want her to present it to you, but if she doesn’t do so in a short amount of time, just take her there. She can’t go on like this.”
“I know,” he said, wishing Talia would come out of the bathroom. “Believe me, I know.”
FOUR DAYS LATER
THIRTY-TWO
THE COMPANY’S FASTEST space yacht felt more like a cargo ship. Even though Rafael Salehi knew that S3’s largest yacht could hold over 150 people comfortably, not counting ship staff, he had never traveled with more than twenty guests on board.
No one here was a guest. No one could even consider being a guest. Everyone had to work.
He left Athena Base with thirty human staff, including lawyers, legal assistants, and researchers. He had picked up a contingent of legal theorists—professors, former judges, and the like—on the way to Peyla. There he had gathered another twenty Peyti attorneys, plus their retinues.
And then there was the staff on the yacht itself. Hired for their discretion and their dedication to service, if he could believe the crap shoveled at him from S3’s personnel department.
Even so, he didn’t conduct a lot of conversations where the staff could hear, and he had hired his own expert to make certain that personal areas were not networked, and could not be accessed from the outside in any way.
He felt like he was sneaking into enemy territory, when all he was doing was heading to the Moon.
Part of the Earth Alliance.
Where he had spent his entire life.
He sat in the law library, a large, fully enclosed room that had holographic books on the walls. The books contained non-networked information on the topic listed on the book’s cover, sometimes linked to other books or with actual footage of the trials or the rulings. S3 had a similar room in its research building.
Usually Salehi found all this knowledge, placed in tidy booklike forms, uncomfortable; he preferred to work on the private networked systems. If he were being honest with himself, he had relied too much on AutoLearn the past few years. He’d plug in a legal question, download cases, and then turn on his AutoLearn program.
He’d end up with a vast knowledge of the topic, but the knowledge would be superficial, and often wouldn’t last for more than a month. Sometimes, when he used AutoLearn, he wouldn’t even remember what the case had been about.
He refused to use AutoLearn on these clone cases—and he had already made it clear to his staff that anyone caught using AutoLearn would be removed from the project and had a good chance of being released from the firm. Some of the legal assistants had hated that, but he had noticed the researchers nodding.
The researchers had told him many times that AutoLearn shouldn’t be called AutoLearn at all. In fact, in the research building, the preferred term for AutoLearn was FakeKnowledge.
He thought that sounded as good as any.
No FakeKnowledge here. Only deep research, even deeper discussions, and a lot of theorizing. He actually scheduled everyone’s day. They still had three days of travel before they arrived in Armstrong, and he meant to make use of as much of that time as he could.
He’d even scheduled downtime because he knew that study without downtime was as effective as AutoLearn.
Many of the group had meals together, but he only joined them for dinner, and then for only an hour or so. No legal discussions about these cases at the table, only anecdotes, stories, and jokes could be about the law; the rest of the conversation had to be about something else. He didn’t care what else, so long as it gave everyone’s brains a rest.
This room was reserved for what he privately called the A Team. The best minds of their generation and all that. Really, the best minds he could assemble—not just on clone law, but also on legal theory and courtroom procedures.
He had lawyers on this ship who had argued several cases in front of all of the Multicultural Tribunals. He needed those minds just to keep the team on track. Eventually, he knew, these cases he would be arguing would go in front of one of the Multicultural Tribunals; he just wasn’t sure which one.
The thing that made this an Alliance case was the presence of two different kinds of clones—human and Peyti. The fact that both had come from known mass murderers tied his cases together even if he never found who had created the originals.
Right now, the A Team was working on the question of standing. Even though S3 had been hired to represent the clones, there was some question as to whether or not the clones could appear in court without their owners present.
Since the owners were criminals set on destroying the Moon (at the very least), there was no chance the owners would ever show up in court.
The idea that the clones’ actions during the Peyti Crisis had disrupted business for the Peyti Alliance-wide was an argument that the non-legal authorities on the Moon and in the domes might buy, but he wasn’t certain any court would accept it.
If he were a judge, he would say that S3 and the Peyti government did not have standing to defend the clones on any of the charges. S3 had the ability to argue the unfairness of judging the Peyti according to the behavior of some clones, but not the legality of the clones or their behavior.
He was looking for a way around it, as were two of his assistants, huddled in chairs on opposite sides of the room. These assistants had traveled on the yacht many times and knew that those chairs, with built-in adjustable desks, provided the best place to get serious business done.
There was only one Peyti lawyer in the room, partly because, if Salehi were honest, the Peyti were making everyone nervous right now. The masks obscured most of their faces, and their eyes didn’t seem that different from each other’s.
He had gotten used to differences in building and skin coloring, as well as the way some of the Peyti held themselves.
He could recognize his co-co
unsel, Uzvuyiten, anywhere.
Uzvuyiten was one of the oldest Peyti Salehi had ever seen. His gray skin was almost white, the color uneven as if the skin’s pigment weren’t designed to last as long as Uzvuyiten had. His twig-like fingers were bent at the tips, and nothing he seemed to do could straighten them out.
Salehi had seen some of the other humans on the trip look at Uzvuyiten’s fingers and turn away in disgust. Salehi could still remember feeling that way when he had first seen them. The Peyti hand looked almost human until it became clear that the fingers bent in directions no human hand could.
Uzvuyiten’s fingers were bent backwards, between the last knuckle and the tip on a human finger, about halfway up a human fingernail. To make matters worse, the bent ridge was a bright blue that glowed in the right kind of light.
Shortly after meeting Uzvuyiten for the first time, Salehi had asked him why he hadn’t had the fingers repaired. Uzvuyiten had made the odd little choking sound that Salehi would eventually realize was Uzvuyiten’s laugh, and said, They have been repaired.
Salehi hadn’t asked any more. He didn’t want to know.
Even without the fingers, though, Uzvuyiten would be recognizable. He wore human suits that were nearly a century old in design. His posture was excellent, making him look like—in the words of Schnabbie—the perfect coat hanger.
Uzvuyiten had more personality than any other Peyti that Salehi had ever met, and that personality showed up in every single detail about him.
Even his eyes were unusual. They were moist and blue around the edges, but gray in the center. They seemed almost human, but Salehi wouldn’t tell Uzvuyiten that ever, because Uzvuyiten would take that as an insult.
Uzvuyiten had his head bent as he worked on two different screens at the same time, going back and forth between them, marking information down.
One of the first things lawyers learned was not to use their links or any automated networked system to make notes on important cases. Too many attorneys had simply downloaded their opposition’s arguments before a big case, then used those arguments to crush the opposition in court.
That restriction made law very writing and reading intensive, and somewhat backwards, since the rest of the universe could operate at the speed of a thought, but the lawyers and judges and anyone else dealing with confidentiality had to operate with the speed of their fingers.
Uzvuyiten tapped the edge of his long arm on the table, jarring the image that Salehi had been staring at. He hadn’t even been sure of what he saw, not because the image was unclear, but because he’d been thinking rather than looking.
“Your arguments are too linear,” Uzvuyiten said. “You missed one of the most important arguments of all.”
Salehi frowned. He had forgotten this side of working with Uzvuyiten. Uzvuyiten assumed that a conversation they had started three days ago could be continued at any point without providing any context. Uzvuyiten had an eidetic memory, and assumed everyone else did as well. Of course, Salehi didn’t. He was smart, but outside-the-box smart. He wasn’t traditionally testing-brilliant, which meant that he didn’t seem as smart as most of his colleagues from law school.
Although, even factoring out his family money, he was twenty times more successful than anyone he went to school with.
“I’m sure I missed a lot,” Salehi said, and was pleased that he didn’t sound defensive, just informative. “I slapped nearly a hundred injunctions together in the space of a few hours. I had good help, but the ideas were mine.”
“The injunctions are fine,” Uzvuyiten said, dismissively. Apparently that wasn’t what he had been discussing. “It’s that matter of standing.”
So they were both thinking about the same thing. Weird.
Salehi didn’t comment on that. Instead, he said, “I ignored it mostly, since I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
He still didn’t.
Uzvuyiten kept his gaze on Salehi. Salehi felt like he needed to explain more, which made him uncomfortable.
So now, he did sound defensive. “I figured the courts would listen to us up front, and decide all the pesky minutia later.”
Uzvuyiten grunted in acknowledgement. It sounded like he had expected an explanation like that, which made Salehi feel even more defensive.
“If only it were minutia,” Uzvuyiten said. “The moment the courts find out that the Peyti government is the client of record, they could throw everything out. And then your grand universe-changing case becomes nothing.”
Salehi had thought all this through. It was giving him sleepless nights, making him feel as if he were running a race that he could be disqualified from at any moment.
He had already told Uzvuyiten all the ideas Salehi could find for arguing standing. But it wouldn’t hurt to mention the new ones.
“I was thinking that maybe we could argue that since Uzvekmt was caught and imprisoned on Peyla, the Peyti government owned his DNA,” Salehi said. “That would make them the owners of record of the clones until we discover the actual owners.”
“And if the actual owners are clone brokers or someone from the Black Fleet? Everything gets tossed out,” Uzvuyiten said.
Salehi had thought of that too. “Or, everything gets placed on hold while we argue the case we file to reestablish standing.”
Uzvuyiten shook his head. That movement always looked unnatural on a Peyti. Salehi felt Peyti shouldn’t even try it. But Uzvuyiten had adopted a lot of human mannerisms—and had abandoned just as many.
“You are too trusting,” Uzvuyiten said. “You assume the court will put the case on hold. You must always look to the worst case.”
Salehi sighed. He thought he had been looking at the worst case. “If you can imagine something we can’t fight with another lawsuit, tell me.”
“If our cases continually get thrown out for standing,” Uzvuyiten said, “then at some point, we will not even be able to file. We will be fighting the wrong battle, maybe for years.”
He leaned back and tugged on his mask. Salehi had seen Uzvuyiten do that many times before. It was Uzvuyiten’s way of tugging on his chin—a human gesture.
Only now, that gesture made one of the legal assistants cringe. Everyone had seen the images coming from the Moon—the Peyti clones tugging the explosives in their masks. The Crisis was fresh in everyone’s minds. Apparently, even in the minds of the lawyers representing the clones.
Uzvuyiten didn’t seem to notice the reaction. He also didn’t seem to notice that Salehi couldn’t quite hide his irritation. He hated having Uzvuyiten explain basic law to him. In fact, Salehi knew better than anyone how easy it was to lose a big case on the smallest of details.
He’d done so more than once in his early career, before he became the kind of lawyer he used to hate—the lawyer who prepared for everything, down to the smallest detail.
“So what did I miss?” Salehi asked, this time with a little heat.
“Unclaimed property,” Uzvuyiten said.
Salehi suppressed a smile of irritation. “I didn’t miss it. I decided it wasn’t relevant. The law says the owners have a month after the property’s discovered to claim it. We can’t file yet.”
“Sure we can,” Uzvuyiten said. “All ports examine DNA when someone goes through a decontamination unit.”
It was an interesting argument, but it didn’t seem viable to Salehi. He said, “The ports are legally bound to keep the DNA private, unless a valid warrant is presented.”
Uzvuyiten held up one of his crooked fingers, as a sort of warning. “Ports are also bound by Alliance law to make sure that property remains with its owners. Lost property goes to a specific area of the port. Because lost property can be dangerous in the wrong hands.”
Salehi frowned at him. “You’re certain?”
He hadn’t heard of this.
“Of course I’m certain. But you won’t find it in most legal texts. It’s actually treaty law. Food, for example, can be an issue. The Ticip’ns must bring their food wi
th them. They eat gases which include things like Sarin, which is so lethal when it is airborne that it can kill humans in a few minutes. Yet, Ticip’ns are part of the Earth Alliance, which allows them the right to travel to places where their food is lethal poison. They must control the substance at all times, keep it in a proper container, and only release it in designated areas. If the food—or shall we call it poison?—becomes separated from a Ticip’n in a port, the port must shuffle that property to a safe, designated area, until the property gets reclaimed.”
All of the lawyers were watching Uzvuyiten now. Most looked fascinated. A couple glanced at Salehi, as if asking him if this were true.
There was no reason for Uzvuyiten to lie. And if the lawyers wanted to know the truth of what he was doing, they could look it up themselves.
“There is nothing wrong with dangerous property,” Uzvuyiten said, a bit dramatically. Apparently, he realized that he now had an audience. “However, all property must be under control of its owners, particularly when traveling outside of its native environment.”
Salehi let out a small breath.
“It’s clear that the Peyti clones were outside their native environment,” one of the junior lawyers said, sounding pleased.
Salehi wasn’t willing to be pleased yet. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I could easily argue that we have no idea what the native environment is for the clones’ owners.”
Uzvuyiten waved his hand. “Technicalities that we do not need to foresee.”
Salehi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The conversation had been about technicalities that they needed to foresee.
“The key,” Uzvuyiten said, “is that lost property shouldn’t be allowed to function in society for decades.”
The staff exchanged glances. Pleased glances from what Salehi saw. But he wasn’t pleased. The more he thought about it, the more he realized what a problem this argument was.
Arguing the danger of lost property would harm all clones, not help them. They wouldn’t be able to travel freely. They would constantly need permission slips or something like it from their owners.
The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) Page 19
