The nerves were because he was in a new place and in a new court, not because he lacked faith in his argument. He’d been there before; he’d lacked faith in both the argument and the client more times than he wanted to think about. When he defended cases at the Impossibles, he lost, but when he defended corporate clients in the Tenth, he won more often than not.
Money had talked throughout human history, and it still talked.
Which explained the sheer emptiness of this place. Not only were the clients indigent, they weren’t even human under the law. If a lawyer decided to defend some of these clones, he’d be taking on the rich, who either owned or created them.
But that was an argument for another time. This time, Zhu would simply discuss Trey—without Trey’s presence. Because Zhu worried that if Trey arrived, he would destroy the entire argument.
Zhu’s biggest worry was that Trey looking like the Anniversary Day assassins would count against him in court, no matter how fair the judge thought she was. Zhu himself had problems with it, which was another reason he did not want to see Trey during the argument.
Zhu wasn’t going to mention who Trey’s clone parent was. Zhu wasn’t going to say much about Trey at all.
The key thing for a lawyer in any situation was to focus on the facts he could use, not the facts that would harm his case. Since he wasn’t arguing against anyone—there was no prosecutor here—he didn’t have to worry about hiding information.
Still, Zhu’s heart pounded as he made his way through the maze of corridors leading to the judge’s chambers.
Zhu had sent the message to Trey by the slowest route possible, sending it not only with a packet of other materials for the prison itself, but also sending it directly to the warden. The warden’s office would funnel the announcement to some secretary who would examine it to make sure that the warden actually had to see everything in the packet. The warden (or most likely the secretary) would make note of Trey’s representation for his file, then send the notification to the correct wing. Someone there would send it to the cell block, and eventually, the notification would get to Trey.
Legally, all Zhu had to do was contact Trey before the arguments began. Zhu had to be the attorney of record the moment he walked into court—and Trey had to know that. Or, at least, Zhu had to have used best efforts to inform him.
If Trey later tried to argue that he didn’t want Zhu representing him, well, Zhu had footage of that moment Trey begged him to take the case. That would work.
Zhu had represented people on less.
The judge’s fiefdom was less of a slog than Zhu expected. He pulled open the doors and let himself in. The chambers contained a courtroom, a private conference area, and a private office for the judge. The visuals told Zhu that he was going to argue his case in the courtroom.
Which was empty.
He expected an audience. In the Tenth, the cases always had an audience—friends, family, reporters, historians, and hangers-on. Someone always cared about the outcome.
Judges never had an empty courtroom, because a judge’s decision was often the first step in a march to the Multicultural Tribunal. The cases judges saw dealt with complexities in the law, complexities that the lower level magistrates never even thought of.
But of course this courtroom would be empty. It had very few spectator seats—only two rows. There were two large witness stands, floating next to the judge’s bench, and two huge podiums where lawyers could argue their sides of the case.
Still, the courtroom was smaller than he expected.
At least the lights were on. He found that a little comforting.
A door on his left led to the judge’s personal chambers. A door on his right obviously led to the conference area. The lights were off there.
Zhu was about to contact someone on his links to make sure he hadn’t been given the wrong courtroom when another of those creepy security androids walked into the room, followed by two gigantic triangular robot units.
One of the robots had court reporter written on its side in Standard.
Then Zhu blinked and realized that the writing was yet another feature of that stupid map. Apparently, he wasn’t supposed to understand how a courtroom worked.
It truly was amateur hour here.
The second triangular robot stopped beside the entrance they had used. Reporter backup was written along its sides, at least in Zhu’s links.
He blinked hard, trying to shut off the stupid map. It would distract him.
He finally managed to shut it down, just as the door to the judge’s chamber opened.
A short, round woman entered, clutching a tablet and adjusting her black robe. Her hair was dark, her skin unlined. Zhu would have thought her young if it weren’t for the world-weariness in her eyes.
She mounted the steps to the bench, set the tablet down, and peered at Zhu. “I take it you’re Torkild Zhu?”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“What the hell is someone from a firm like S-three doing here?”
“It’s a long story, sir,” he said.
“I have time,” she said, as if her life were the most boring life in the history of the universe.
He didn’t want her to have time. He wanted her to be harried and inattentive, like all the other judges and magistrates he had known.
“Are we on the record?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Oh, you’re one of those.”
He didn’t like that characterization, but he wasn’t going to have a conversation that harmed his client if he was on the record. Not to mention the fact that he really didn’t want to have the conversation in the first place.
“Just tell me this before we turn on all the official recording data,” she said. “Who is paying for your services? Because my file says this clone has no resources.”
She had a file. That was one step forward at least.
“That is correct, Judge,” he said. “Prisoner Number 99373 has no resources. I’m handling this case pro bono.”
“How the hell did a clone get someone from a place as prestigious as S-three?” she asked.
“Honestly, sir, he petitioned for a lawyer and I was looking for something outside of my normal routine.” All of it true. None of it The Truth.
She narrowed her eyes and studied Zhu for a moment. Then she grunted.
“All right,” she said after a moment. “And now we’re on the record. Happy, counselor?”
“I’m pleased to be standing in your court, sir,” he said, and hoped it wasn’t a lie.
“All right,” she said again, a little sarcastically, peering over her bench again as if she were making sure the robot court reporter was actually recording the proceedings. “Now you can argue whatever the hell this clone thought he should bother me with.”
This was the best judge that Salehi knew in Clone Court Primary? Zhu would have hated to have drawn the worst judge.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Zhu said. “The clone—”
And how he hated to refer to Trey that way. It dehumanized him. But Zhu was going to go with the judge’s language. It was better not to antagonize her.
“—wants me to argue a somewhat different case. I looked at it, and realized that since he—” Should Zhu have said “it” to square with the judge’s prejudices? He didn’t know, so he continued “—has no legal training and barely has an education at all, I figured I’d handle this my way.”
“Which is why he is not here beside you,” the judge said, answering his mental question with her pronoun.
“Yes, sir.”
“Cagey, Mr. S-three.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure it was a compliment.
“What’s your argument?”
“Well, sir, this clone is imprisoned for being an illegal. He has no identifying marks and no Day of Creation Document, as required by Alliance law. He has no idea who made him.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” the judge
said.
“The problem, judge, and I detail it in the brief I sent you just now, is that this clone was found through the Eaufasse. They contacted the Frontier Security Service because the clone made a request they didn’t understand. All of this occurred before the Eaufasse joined the Alliance.”
The judge’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Really, Mr. Zhu? You’re going to argue that he’s not illegal?”
“Yes, sir,” Zhu said. “The record clearly shows that he was raised on Epriccom in an isolated settlement. It also shows through a series of interviews that occurred at the time of the FSS’s first encounter with the clone that he had no idea that the Alliance existed. Nor had he encountered a human outside of his enclave before. Maybe not even then. The evidence suggests he was made on Epriccom, inside a domed enclave, along with dozens of other clones.”
“To what purpose?” The judge asked.
“I don’t know,” Zhu said honestly. “It wasn’t in the record. I’ll be frank, Judge. I met with him, wasn’t sure I wanted to take his case, and promised to read his file. That’s when I realized that his imprisonment is not strictly legal within the Alliance. If he was manufactured—”
“—outside of the Alliance, he doesn’t need Alliance identification, and if he’s not owned by someone inside the Alliance—or wasn’t at the time of his arrest—then he’s not illegal in anyway. That’s what you’re going to argue, Counselor?”
“Yes, sir.” Zhu felt warm. He was relieved no one else was in the courtroom. He couldn’t tell if her sarcasm came from the law itself or was directed at him.
“I assume a big-shot attorney from S-three has all his facts straight? You’ve made sure there’s no proof that this clone was made inside the Alliance?”
He was relieved to hear the question. It meant that she was taking him seriously. “Sir, I think the preponderance of evidence shows that this enclave was trying to make clones outside of the Alliance, on purpose. The enclave got destroyed shortly after the FSS arrived, and the destruction came from within. Someone was getting rid of evidence.”
“Of what?”
He shrugged. “We don’t know, and no one investigated. Apparently everyone was more concerned with the Eaufasse’s entry into the Alliance than they were with solving the mystery of the enclave.”
“And that’s in the file too,” she said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And this file, how long will it take me to go over the evidence and to read your brief?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. Was she asking him if he was thorough or was she asking him if he had been too thorough?
“It depends, sir,” he said. “If you want to review the footage of the initial interviews, it could take eight to ten hours. If you just want to read the brief and scan the evidence, maybe two hours…?”
“Sounds like a waste of time,” she said, and his heart skipped. He didn’t want her to rule against him, but it sounded like she was going to do just that.
He tried not to look too upset.
“And,” she added, “imprisoning clones costs money, especially in medium-security facilities. We can’t work the critters like we can in the maximum security.”
He was holding his breath. He made himself exhale.
“So I’m inclined to rule in your favor, Counselor. Does S-three need a judge on the payroll?”
Oh, crap. Was this a quid pro quo? “I’m just a junior partner, sir. I could check with the senior partners. I know they’re always looking for…”
He let his voice trail off when he realized he was about to say “leverage.”
“Well, we can’t have a junior partner dictating things to the senior partners, now can we?” she said, and he felt his case dry up and vanish.
Then her gaze met his and she grinned. Grinned. He’d never seen a judge do that in court, at least with an attorney arguing in front of her.
“But you will put in a good word, right?” she asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“That’s all I can ask.” She nodded, the grin fading. “I will, of course, review everything. But unless I find something glaring, you’ll have your order for release within the normal three weeks.”
Three weeks? In all the other courts, motions for release could take place the same day.
“Make sure someone from your office is here to shepherd this clone out of the area. I don’t care what happens to him,” the judge said, “so long as he gets out of the sector. He really shouldn’t even be in the Alliance. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Zhu said, wondering how he could get her to gavel this down today. He didn’t want to come back, even for a technicality. And he really didn’t want her to see that Trey was related to Frémont. It might make her change her mind.
“Record off,” she said.
That was when Zhu realized she didn’t care if the quid pro quo was on the transcript. Was that as a possible escape in case someone questioned her ruling? Did that give one of the higher courts grounds to overturn something if Trey did something wrong?
Or did she really not care about anything anymore?
The robot powered down. Then it left the court room.
She watched it go. The android remained, but the other robot left too.
Zhu felt a little dizzy. That had gone better and stranger than he had imagined it would.
She watched them leave. When the door closed, she grinned again.
“You talk to your partners,” she said, “and I’ll have your clone ready for deportation. Deal?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and then because he couldn’t do otherwise, he asked, “You’re not going to review—?”
“Would you?” she asked. “Clone law is about as dry as it gets. I’ll see you—or one of your staff—in three weeks.”
Then she stood and stomped back to her office. The android left through a different door.
Zhu remained rooted in place for a moment. He was committed to helping her at S3 now. He’d have to tell Salehi. And if she hated work as much she intimated, she didn’t belong in the firm’s culture. Still, a former head judge on their roster would only help the firm, and she knew it.
It wouldn’t be his decision. All he would ask Salehi was to postpone the decision until Trey was free.
Zhu let out a sigh, then packed up. He debated telling Trey that it had all gone well, and decided against it.
He didn’t want to see that face again. He didn’t want to think about what, if anything, he had just loosed on the universe.
At least, as a condition of his release, Trey would be banned from Alliance space. That was good.
Zhu stared at the bench. Maybe clone law wasn’t for him after all. Or maybe he could argue theory somewhere else.
Or maybe this was Zhu’s last hurrah. It certainly wasn’t as much fun as he had hoped. Nor had he changed anything for anyone else.
He gathered his things and walked out of the courtroom. He tried to call the map back up on his links, but he had somehow erased it.
At least he was in no hurry to find his way back to the shuttle. Although he did want to get to that company space yacht. He wanted to indulge in comfort all the way home.
The one thing he did know: he wasn’t coming back here ever again.
THIRTY-FOUR
GOMEZ FELT THE pasta sit heavily on her stomach. She’d seen too much over the course of her career to be completely shocked. “You saw children killing each other in the footage from Epriccom?”
Everyone in the cafeteria was watching Nuuyoma. He stirred his pasta with a spoon, but had stopped eating a while ago.
When he didn’t clarify, she took that as a yes. She had known he wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be lying, not about this. Yet, it felt odd.
“I had previous deputies look at this footage fifteen years ago,” she said. “How could they miss this?”
He set his spoon down. “I searched for laser fire. I didn’t just eyeball it. Considering how much time they had, they we
re probably eyeballing.”
She remembered. She had felt confused in those few days, like she often did with a case on the Frontier, pulled in many directions at once. Her mandate was to smooth over difficulties with any alien culture, to make sure that they knew about the Alliance in a positive manner, and of course, to make sure that she served justice for the humans who had somehow ventured deep into the Frontier.
“The computer helped me,” Nuuyoma was saying. “I couldn’t have eyeballed the laser fire. I wouldn’t have been able to see most of it. I had to enhance a lot of what I saw.”
He kept his gaze down, but she could see how haunted his eyes were. He would never forget what he had seen.
“So,” Simiaar said to Gomez, “your friend TwoZero didn’t tell you that, did he?”
Gomez hated the needling, but she wasn’t going to rise to it. She wasn’t sure what she would say. She finally understood why TwoZero had been so vague about his routines inside the enclave.
He had given her clues. He had stressed that they were being trained. He had said there were more clones when he was young than there were when she found the enclave. But he had never tied those together.
“No,” Gomez said. “He didn’t say a word about that. In fact, he led me to believe this was the first time the clones inside that compound had gone after each other.”
Her words hung in the air for a moment. Then Verstraete shifted in her chair so that she was looking directly at Nuuyoma.
“Could that be true?” she asked him. “Could only some of the colony have been involved in the earlier attacks against the clones?”
Nuuyoma looked at Gomez first, maybe asking her to save him. But she wanted the answers as well.
Then he looked tiredly at Verstraete. “I don’t see how only some of the colony could have been involved. It seemed to me that they were weeding down the kids, looking for…something. The most murderous? The most pliable? I don’t know. And remember, I was just looking at visuals, and these kids really do look the same.”
“God,” Apaza said. Gomez didn’t know if that was a comment, a prayer, or just a sound that Apaza hadn’t even realized he was making.
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