The Impossibles

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  He tilted his head, his big eyes sad. “I thought it does matter. There are stories—”

  “From the Multicultural Tribunal,” she said. “Not from Earth Alliance InterSpecies Court. Here you’re guilty unless there’s a technicality.”

  “She is not a citizen of the Earth Alliance,” he said.

  “I know that,” Kerrie said. “I thought that was a point in her favor until I saw her sheet. She’s a convicted criminal.”

  “Ah,” he said, his eyes narrowing in a Peyti equivalent of a smile. “But she is not.”

  “Not what?”

  “Convicted. You have not looked closely at the file, have you?”

  “I just got it this morning,” Kerrie said.

  His brow wrinkled. “She has been here for two weeks. We put in the request before the prison ship brought her here.”

  Kerrie shrugged. She’d heard that complaint before too. “The wheels of justice turn slowly.”

  He looked alarmed. He extended those strange fingers just as the announcement came through her links. She had to sit down, hands on the table, because her client was coming into the room.

  “I need you out of here,” Kerrie said.

  “I can be of assistance. Co-counsel.”

  “You’re not certified to practice in this court,” she said. “And because I know you’re not certified, that won’t invalidate her pleadings. So no more tricks. Get the hell out.”

  He didn’t wait for her to repeat herself. He scurried past her and pulled open the main door.

  “And don’t stand in the corridor where she can see you,” Kerrie said. “I’ll file a complaint with the authorities of the jail and you’ll lose all visiting privileges.”

  He bowed his head, then let himself out. She turned slightly so that she could see him disappear down the hall.

  Then the warning echoed through her links again. She sat straight, regulation position, as the door opened and her client entered.

  She was smaller than Kerrie expected, heartbreakingly thin in the manner of those raised in zero gravity. She moved slowly, clearly unused to and uncomfortable in Earth-normal gravity.

  The pregnancy didn’t help. She was in her third trimester, but how far along was hard to determine given her thinness. Her belly would look huge at six months let alone nine.

  “Where’s Uzvik?” she asked.

  “He can’t be here,” Kerrie said. “He’s not certified for this court.”

  The girl sat down heavily, one hand on her belly. She looked disappointed.

  “If that was a strategy, it was a stupid one,” Kerrie said. “I could be disbarred for letting him second chair.”

  “You could pretend you didn’t know.”

  Kerrie wondered how many times this girl had asked someone to “pretend” they didn’t know something for a court case.

  “Is that how he’s gotten you acquitted in all those other cases?”

  The girl shrugged, unwilling to answer. Smart. Because Kerrie would have to file amended petitions, stating she had knowledge of actions contrary to the legal ethics.

  “I don’t know how things work in the Frontier,” Kerrie said, referring to the part of the section where the Black Fleet had almost free range. “But here, following the rules matters.”

  It was all they had, really, even though she felt like a hypocrite saying so. The rules didn’t work for almost everyone coming through the system—particularly when cases like Fiske’s had to be considered victories.

  “I’m not exactly sure what you thought you’d gain by bringing him along,” Kerrie said in a tone harsher than she would usually use with a client so early in their discussion. “Your problem is with the Ziyit. They punish theft pretty simply. All you’ll lose is a hand, one I’m sure your people in the Black Fleet can afford to replace. Your baby isn’t at threat, and you’re probably not going to go to prison. The Ziyit don’t believe in incarceration.”

  “I can’t afford replacement,” she said. “I can’t afford medical treatment at all.”

  Kerrie sighed and leaned back. She hated clients who lied to her. “The Black Fleet can afford anything it wants. It also has—from everything I’ve heard—some of the best medical facilities in the known universe. You can get the hand replaced. It’ll be so perfect, your kid won’t know what happened.”

  The girl shook her head. “I can’t. Don’t you know how this works? The Ziyit will cut off my hand, and then they won’t tend to me. They won’t even let me bring in a doctor to treat. Then they’ll send me away for treatment. The blood loss alone could kill me. It’ll probably kill my baby.”

  “So use an AutoBandage and make sure someone from the Fleet is nearby. One ship won’t matter,” Kerrie said. “The Ziyit don’t care. They want the hand as a trophy. They’ll display it as a deterrent. As interspecies punishments go, it’s a relatively light one. They don’t even care if your ship waits for you. They won’t do anything to stop you from going there to get medical treatment. They’ll just deny you treatment in their facilities which, I have to tell you, is a good thing.”

  “You don’t understand,” the girl said, rubbing her belly. “I can’t go to the Fleet. They’ve tossed me out.”

  Kerrie stared at her, and resisted the urge to shake her head. That changed everything. It explained why the Peyti lawyer wasn’t getting paid. It explained the strange tactic as well.

  Because the girl was in legal limbo. She wasn’t a member of the Earth Alliance, so she had no access to Earth Alliance medical facilities unless she could pay for them. And her presence here meant that she couldn’t pay for them.

  She was right; even with AutoBandages, she’d bleed out before she got to a site that would allow someone impoverished access. That might take days, maybe weeks. Shipboard methods might keep her alive, but they wouldn’t keep both her and the baby alive.

  “I suppose you’re guilty,” Kerrie said.

  The girl shrugged again, and Kerrie mentally cursed Maise. An acquittal. Yeah, that was going to happen. Instead, Maise had used her known prejudice against Peyti to pass off a nightmare case, one that would haunt Kerrie’s dreams for the rest of her life. She’d lose, not just the girl, but the baby too.

  “Why did the Fleet abandon you?” Kerrie asked.

  The girl looked down. “Because I got caught,” she said.

  ***

  The story went like this:

  The girl—whose name was Donnatella Waltarie—got a job working as human consultant to a Ziyit family that would be traveling into the Earth Alliance in a diplomatic role. The female head of the household (there were multiple females with multiple roles in Ziyit families) had received an appointment as the Ziyit ambassador to Messner at the far end of the sector.

  It was a political appointment, given as patronage, not because the Ziyit female had any particular knowledge of the Earth Alliance or human culture. Donnatella was to tutor the younger females in human customs—and she did, for nearly two months.

  Two months gave her time to find the Blueglass Stone, a famous piece of Ziyit jewelry that had an outsized value on the black market because of its rarity. Donnatella didn’t say, but implied, that the Fleet had a buyer for the Stone.

  On her last day with the Ziyit family—as they packed for their trip—she slipped the Stone into one of her pockets. She received her pay from the Ziyit family, took a shuttle to an outlying space station, and then rejoined the Fleet. The Stone left with her.

  “But you said you got caught,” Kerrie said.

  The girl’s lips twisted, as if she didn’t want to discuss that moment. Kerrie would have to push her. Instead, she mentally scanned the file she had absorbed and got her answer.

  The theft—caught on surveillance equipment—happened four years before the arrest.

  Add to that the abandonment by the Black Fleet, and Kerrie had an inkling as to what was going on behind the scenes.

  “Whose baby are you carrying?” Kerrie asked.

  “It’s not
important,” the girl said.

  “I think it is. It’s the reason all of this is happening to you. The Black Fleet abandoned you because its leaders had to choose sides—and you lost.”

  The girl shrugged. “That won’t get me out of this mess. Even I know enough about the legal system here to know that.”

  “Won’t the baby’s father send a ship to help you with the medical part of your sentence?” Kerrie asked.

  The girl’s lips thinned. “No.”

  “And your parents—?”

  “Dead,” she said.

  Kerrie frowned. “The Ziyit have images of you stealing the Stone. Then you got dumped so that you would be arrested here.”

  The girl nodded.

  “If the punishment is carried out properly, you’ll die or the baby will.”

  The girl leaned back, pretending calm, although she wasn’t calm.

  “Which will solve someone’s problem with you in the Black Fleet, is that correct?”

  The girl nodded once, as if she didn’t want to.

  Kerrie didn’t want her to. She didn’t want to know any of this because this girl, Donnatella, was right. It made no difference to Kerrie’s job or the case before her.

  The loss of a hand was a light sentence in InterSpecies Court because hands could be replaced. It was more traumatic to humans than it was to Ziyits who had twenty-six different appendages that could be considered hands. But humans—generally—survived the loss.

  If Kerrie argued the case properly, she might get some consideration for Donnatella’s condition—extra bandages, the presence of the Peyti when the sentence was carried out.

  But that didn’t solve the underlying problem. The girl had no money, and no way to get medical treatment inside the Alliance. She would get none on Ziyita, where the sentence would get carried out. And she couldn’t afford transportation off the planet. The Alliance couldn’t provide the transportation.

  Donnatella—and her baby—would die there.

  “You don’t deny that you stole the Stone,” Kerrie said.

  The girl shrugged. “I am a thief for the Black Fleet. Or I was. I am good at what I do.”

  So was the Peyti, because he got her acquitted time and time again.

  “You were born on one of the Black Fleet’s ships,” Kerrie said. “Outside of the Earth Alliance.”

  “On the ship, yes,” the girl said. “Where I don’t know. The ships never keep track of where the children are born.”

  So she truly was not a member of the Earth Alliance, although Kerrie couldn’t prove that. The Black Fleet also didn’t issue birth certificates.

  Kerrie leaned back, frowning, wondering if that lack of proof would help her get Donnatella to a medical facility.

  Probably not. Because judges in InterSpecies Court always wanted proof, particularly when an attorney tried something original.

  Which Kerrie would be doing here.

  She had no proof—none—of Donnatella’s citizenship. Or did she? She had files to check.

  She stood. “You need to be in court at noon. Clean up. Dress well, and say nothing.”

  “You’re going to send me to the Ziyit, aren’t you?” the girl asked.

  For the first time, she seemed scared.

  Kerrie knew better than to soothe her. Anything could happen in court, no matter how much an attorney planned. And when the deck was stacked against her, the way it was in InterSpecies Court, only a fool made promises.

  “I won’t send you to them,” Kerrie said. “The judge will.”

  And then she left.

  ***

  She had cleared her schedule of court appearances but not of cases. She was still buried, just not as momentarily busy. Still, there was always more to do.

  Before she took the tram back, she saw two more of her clients stuck in jail. Normally, she wouldn’t have had a chance to see them before they arrived in holding. This time, however, she was able to take their measure—not just of their appearances, but their willingness to plead. Of course, they both thought she could get them off and when she told them she couldn’t, they asked if she could find a Disappearance service for them.

  Technically, she said piously, because she always had to say this piously, Disappearance services for people in your situation break the law. I can’t break the law or I would lose my law license.

  As she rode back, she wondered if losing her license would be a bad thing. What was she doing, after all? Just processing people for various governments, sending them away. Getting them through the system so that they could receive punishment for crimes many of them didn’t even understand.

  She forced herself to review Donnatella’s files instead of think. She searched and as she searched, she found what she was looking for. Her stomach knotted.

  In nearly two years, she had never tried anything like this. But it was, as Maise said, her one chance at an acquittal.

  She had to try.

  ***

  Courtroom 495 was Kerrie’s least favorite courtroom in the entire InterSpecies Court system. Despite its number, it was one of the older courtrooms, small and cramped, with a low ceiling, dark faux wood walls, and benches that hadn’t been upgraded since the courtroom was built. A small dock separated the prosecution and defense table from the benches and from the jury box.

  But there hadn’t been a jury seated in this courtroom in decades. Jury trials were so rare here they had become a spectator sport and as such had moved to the larger courtrooms in the center of the so-called courthouse.

  No one sat in those seats, however, making the courtroom oddly packed in all areas except one. The chairs even looked new there, which Kerrie always thought somewhat sad. She found it a commentary on the system eating everyone alive.

  She arrived ten minutes early. Ten minutes early and she had even managed lunch. Lunch on the tram—cold sandwiches made of mystery food—but still more than she got on many afternoons.

  As the court clerk called her case, Kerrie moved to the defense table. The bailiff went to holding to get Donnatella Waltarie. The Peyti, Uzvik, had a seat in the front row. He must have been there since Kerrie made him leave the jail.

  The bailiff brought Donnatella into the courtroom. She looked well-scrubbed, but tired. Her face was pale, with deep shadows under her eyes. Kerrie wondered if she had been crying.

  She stopped at the defense table, but didn’t sit down, hands clasped protectively over her belly. She had been to court before. She knew this wouldn’t take long enough to make it worth her time to struggle into a chair, and then struggle out of it again.

  Judge Langer glowered from the bench. She was fifty something, with hopes of moving up to real Multicultural Tribunal cases, not these quick gavel-pounders. Kerrie had stood before her twice before, and learned that Langer tolerated no delays, no nonsense. But she did treat the lawyers equally, which was something most judges didn’t do. Most judges favored the prosecution, because the law did.

  The prosecutor, Peir Hroth, had graduated from law school at the same time as Kerrie. He too had loans to pay off. He too was doing his time here. He had opted for prosecution because he hoped to become a judge one day—and defense attorneys rarely (never) made it into important judgeships.

  He had lost weight since he got here, and he looked even more tired than he had on the shuttle from Helena Base.

  He glanced at Kerrie and nodded, one of the few prosecutors she had known before coming to InterSpecies Court who still remained cordial to her.

  The court clerk called out the case number, and read the charges. Then the judge asked Kerrie, “Do you dispute?”

  “We do, Your Honor,” Kerrie said, stepping forward. “We ask that the charges get dropped.”

  A dispute never caught anyone’s attention. Attorneys disputed the nature of the charges all the time, trying to lower the punishment. But when Kerrie asked that the charges get dropped, the murmur of conversation behind her—something she was so used to that she hadn’t noticed it—
ceased.

  Everyone was staring at her, from Peir to the bailiff to her client.

  And the judge, of course.

  “Did I hear you correctly, counselor?” the judge asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  The judge leaned forward, her eyes glazed like people’s often were when they reviewed something through their links. Kerrie knew the judge was scanning the file.

  “I see nothing to dispute here, counselor. The prosecution has a video of the crime.”

  Peir stepped forward, probably to argue that they had overwhelming evidence against Donnatella. But Kerrie didn’t want him to get a word in.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Kerrie said. “We do not dispute that the crime happened.”

  She heard a squeak of protest to her left. Donnatella didn’t like that argument. But Kerrie didn’t consult with her. Kerrie didn’t have to, not on this.

  “We dispute that the charges apply,” Kerrie said.

  “It’s a theft, Your Honor,” Peir said. “Of course they apply.”

  The judge waved her hand at him, silencing him. She looked intrigued, which relieved Kerrie—until she heard the judge’s next words. “I hope you have a good reason to use the court’s time on this, counselor.”

  “I do, Your Honor,” Kerrie said. “Donnatella Waltarie is not a member of the Earth Alliance. Our treaties with the Ziyit do not apply to her. We cannot send her into their justice system because we have no right to do so.”

  “She’s a member of the Black Fleet,” Peir said, giving Kerrie a sideways glance filled with disbelief. “Just because she’s part of the Black Fleet doesn’t mean she’s not a member of the Earth Alliance. She could have joined them at any point in her life. Besides, Your Honor, her undisputed affiliation with the Black Fleet proves that she is a criminal and that she is willing to lie to achieve her own ends. Defense counsel is a nice person; she has probably decided this is the best way to help a pregnant client avoid a criminal prosecution.”

  Kerrie’s eyebrows went up. Did he just call her a nice person? In front of the judge? The argument diminished Kerrie’s standing as an attorney by questioning her judgment. Her cheeks flushed. The comment made her angry, as it was probably designed to do.