“And what of Karic and Janzen?”
Rimsky smiled. “For that, I will defer to my honorable colleague.”
Yanel turned to the man on his left. He was the oldest of the three men on the panel, with hair artfully streaked with gray at the temples and lines around his eyes and face that had not been erased by cosmetic procedures. He seemed bored by the proceedings.
“Dr. Valdof. What are your findings?”
Valdof cleared his throat. “We have examined both candidates thoroughly, using every test at our disposal to assess their mental state.”
A sheen of sweat broke out on Karic’s forehead, which cooled instantly in the dry, recycled air.
Valdof spoke with a slight accent, something vaguely Eastern European. Although what that signified in the 24th century, Karic had no idea. “Although appearing lucid, it is significant that their delusions diverge so radically, while placing each other in the role of wrongdoer. These two non-existent transmissions are a prime example. Each contains the missing evidence that would incriminate the other. It’s the classic centerpiece of the paranoid delusion — providing all justification and proof, and yet insubstantial upon analysis.
“After careful assessment, it is our conclusion that physical damage to the brain sustained in the return from Tau Ceti, combined with the psychological stress of the conditions, and the tension between the commander and sub-commander, induced fantasy scenarios that played out their internal feelings.”
“So you see little basis in fact for these … fantastical stories?”
“No, your honor. Spaceflight … The stresses on the human brain are enormous. We have seen this before: in the return of the Ulysses in 2278. There the entire crew seemed to have been affected.”
“And again, no evidence was recovered?”
“No. Ulysses was badly damaged. They had lost suspension entirely, so they were old men and women by the time they made it back. How they survived on biodome crops and recycled water, I have no idea.”
The bailiff cleared his throat. “Excuse me, your honor. The time?”
Yanel grunted. “Yes.” He looked squarely into the courtroom. “Well. I see no justification for proceeding with either of these two sets of charges. The question to be decided is, can these four be released on their own recognizance?”
The judge turned to Rimsky.
“Well, your honor. I have discussed this with my honorable colleague Dr. Valdof, and we both agree that Andrai Wright and Mara Montes should be released immediately. They are quite sane and no danger to themselves.”
“They will have a pension I believe?”
Rimsky cleared his throat. “Yes. And they will be free to apply for service in the SF corps if they wish to pursue a military career. We are always looking for skilled people in the Space Service.”
“What of Zand and Davis?”
Valdof leaned in to answer the question. “I was going to recommend that they both be remanded to an institution where they can receive treatment for their conditions.”
“And now, Dr. Valdof?”
“My recommendation stands for Janzen Davis, who seems to have no close family left alive. Or at least no family with any interest in identifying themselves.”
“And for Zand?”
“We have come to an arrangement that he will be taken into the care of his own family.”
“Very good,” said Yanel, sweeping his gaze across the courtroom. “And is the family of Karic Zand present in the court?”
The older man Karic had seen in the corridor stood. “Yes, your honor.”
Karic’s eyes widened. Those were not Davises. They were his own family. He turned and met the man’s gaze, which was still wary. No wonder. They think I’m insane.
Janzen was crying. He had completely collapsed onto his table, his shoulders heaving as he wept. The guard beside him had one hand on his arm, clearly ready for anything.
“Please identify yourself for the court.”
“Jureth Lein Zand.”
Karic felt his legs go weak. His family. His own family. He had given up hope. Tears coursed down his cheeks, but they were tears of sheer joy.
The judge sat upright, Valdof and Rimsky were also suddenly alert. “The Jureth Zand. Of Offworld Enterprises?”
“Yes.”
Comprehension flooded the judge’s face. “Of course! Karic Zand was the inventor of the suspension technology.” He looked back at Karic with new respect. “You’re that Karic Zand. I had no idea …” Yanel took a deep breath, cleared his throat, then looked back at the clock. His jaw tightened.
“Well, Mr. Zand,” said Yanel, addressing Jureth. “Are you willing to take Karic into your custody and ensure he has every care until he should recover from his err …” He looked at Karic, unsure for the first time in the proceedings. “His illness?”
“Yes, your honor. My factors have already completed all the applications.”
Yanel hit the desk with his gavel. “So the court rules. Bailiff, clear the court. Next case!”
Valdof and the SF investigator exited swiftly through rear doors.
Andrai and Mara raced to Karic. They wrapped their arms around him, both laughing and crying in relief. Mara’s careful makeup was streaked with tears, but to him, she looked more beautiful than every single, perfect face around him.
Jureth and the younger woman walked over to Karic. He could see the family resemblance between them, the smooth features, dark hair and olive skin. Jureth stopped a few paces away and smiled at him. “Karic, let me introduce my niece, Rosa.”
The young woman smiled and extended her hand. Karic shook it in a daze. She had his grandmother’s green eyes, dazzling in a smooth, perfectly proportioned face. The room swam around him as his eyes misted with tears of relief.
Karic turned to watch Janzen being led out of the courtroom. The tall man he had once called a friend looked back at him, but there was no recognition in his eyes, just a forlorn hopelessness. Then he was gone. His crimes had gone unpunished, but then the loss of his power and position in the Earth system — that was probably the hardest punishment that could be meted out to a man like Janzen. But more importantly, with the loss of his power, he became that much less dangerous to those around him.
“Are you ready?” asked Jureth.
“Yes. Can Andrai and Mara accompany us?”
“I don’t see why not.”
It all fit into place. Karic had never signed the suspension technology over to ExploreCorp; instead, he had let them use his invention under license. Ownership would have passed to his surviving family.
“This way,” said Jureth stiffly indicating the exit and the retinue of six, who waited outside.
“Oh, Uncle. Don’t be so formal.” Rosa took Karic by the arm and led him out. The gentle touch was welcome. “Suspension technology is the core of Offworld Enterprises, Karic. There isn’t a single ship that leaves orbit without our hardware. Your invention transformed our world.”
Jureth turned to one of his aides. “Is our Flyer prepped and ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. We’ll be back in Boston in thirty minutes, Karic.” Jureth smiled for the first time. “I’m sure you and your crew could all do with some relaxation after one-hundred and sixty years on the job.”
***
Earth was beautiful. The cities were green, elegant and understated. The vast landscapes of concrete — the huge ugly towers he remembered — had been replaced by underground networks of astounding complexity. Those structures above ground were all elevated, leaving the ground below them free to live and flower. Silent transports flew through the air under full computer control. The air was clean, the skies clear, and the waters of the Earth renewed.
Karic sipped his drink and watched as Rosa, slim and graceful, dived into the big swimming pool on their open terrace. Above him, the sun was hot and huge. The sky pale and limitless. It would take some getting used to after Cru.
The Zand residen
ce rose high above Boston, overlooking an idyllic vista of green and widely spaced towers like a scattered array of artworks in glass and steel. The suburbs he remembered were long gone, demolished in the name of progress, and their remains ploughed into the renewed Earth. This was an alien world.
The society was more rigid than he remembered. The hereditary rich flaunted their wealth in a way that would have been abhorrent to the liberal sensitivities of his time, forming an oligarchy of entrenched power whose elite families had a constitutional basis for membership on United Earth advisory and enforcement councils. It was an aristocracy in all but name, tolerated by wider society only because the wealthy and ambitious social climbers of the middle-class knew they could buy their way into it.
The population was greater than ever. Despite strict and limiting birth controls, the Earth was still dealing with the legacy of centuries of unrestrained and frenzied growth. In the big cities, most of the people lived and worked in subterranean Urban Zones. The privileged few dwelt above, and only they had the wealth for frequent travel, or could afford the fees charged for access to the great World Heritage areas or other Environmental Precincts. The rural Production Zones were controlled by hereditary land-owners who retained some measure of social and cultural control, and it appeared the city-country divide was greater than ever.
Karic had visited one of the middle-class Urban Zones under Boston. The corridors and shopping centers were pleasant, and the brightly lit squares and park spaces had overhead screens that depicted faultless images of the surface sky. All of it projected a numbing gestalt of suburban and corporate environments. Most of these wealthy areas were integrated with the surface landscapes at their highest level, giving free access to the open air. But still, this was only part of the vast underground structure that housed the population. The tip of the social pyramid.
When Karic had insisted on exploring further, the tolerant smiles of his family had become strained. Eventually, they relented … with conditions. He was allowed to visit the deeper Urban Zones, but only protected by Zand minders. Here, Karic had seen the true face of Earth. The seamless genetic enhancement of upper classes was absent, replaced instead by the vast human lottery he remembered — short, tall, weird, ugly, dysfunctional — the whole gamut of humanity. There, he saw the disfigurement of industrial accidents worn casually like work-wear, just another burden to be borne by those without the wealth for advanced treatments. The harried workers, with pale skin and haunted eyes, hurried past him through cramped tunnels and squares, all lit by vid-screens that broadcasted an endless mix of advertisements and calming landscapes. It was there, in the shadows, that he began to see the seeds of the discontentment that had triggered the system-wide civil war between Earth and the Free Colonies, which had fractured human society. These disenfranchised men and women were the losers.
The level of enforced control in Earth society was frightening to Karic. The ubiquitous wall-screens lost much of their charm when Karic learned they also functioned as cameras, part of a computer-controlled network that continuously monitored the population.
There were other areas where not even his security team would venture. Karic had seen enough to know what he would find there. The slums of this world, rife with crime and misery, hidden out of sight below the lofty towers of the wealthy and their perfect skies. Yet even these people would have some say in their future, surely?
No.
Although democracy survived, the right to vote had to be purchased — either though a tightly controlled loan scheme, or by vital public service, such as time served in armed services or other hazardous duties. The gap between the wealthy elite and the Insiders — those that spent the bulk of their lives in the artificial environments of space or the Urban Zones — was vast. Most of the low-paid workers and social rejects of the underground slums never had a chance to cast a single vote in support of any reforms … Karic shuddered. No wonder they had given up looking for windows. There was nothing to see beyond them but more darkness.
And here he was in the Zand tower, in the lap of his own inherited privilege. He touched the Timezone marker on his inner wrist. The glowing barcode with its embedded processors still stung from the procedure. Karic was still reeling from the knowledge that his own invention — the suspension technology — had caused massive social upheavals. In the early years after its discovery, misuse had been rife, leading to a global economic crisis as financial institutions collapsed. Early users had frozen themselves in time, growing rich on accumulated investments, jumping into a new future.
The social impact of stasis technology had been huge. Offworld travelers had returned to a foreign society decades distant from their cultural origin. They were “out of their time”, with loved ones either dead or bizarrely aged compared to their memories of them, and fought a losing battle to adjust. Out of all of this had come the legal basis for the registration of Timezones: whole communities registered to keep step with each other, forming viable social units. Members within a single Timezone had to stay in sync, the planet-bound going into stasis to match their age and context with those who travelled off-world. There were now complex rules that governed assets, to halt the abuse of financial institutions using the technology, and other rules to allow individuals to transfer between Timezones. Clever processors hidden under the Timezone marker’s barcode recorded biological ‘live time’, uploading data to central databases every time it was scanned.
Still — there had been untold benefits from the suspension technology that went beyond space travel. Terminal patients could be held in stasis until treatments were available. Those injured in accidents held frozen in time until help could arrive, or organ replacements grown.
And the Zand Empire got a piece of it all.
And genetic enhancement … Karic’s head swam. The colonists that had left the solar system for new worlds had been modified for their new environments. While here on Earth, citizens could legally apply for the most bizarre and radical procedures. These were usually cosmetic, following the more extreme dictates of flesh-shaping vogues among the rich.
He had found it hard to engage with this modern world. Rosa and Jureth had insisted on him attending a round of high-society soirees to introduce him to an endless array of Zand business associates. They were decadent affairs, well stocked with social climbers and the dissolute rich. He had quickly backed away from the proposals to use his wealth in various Earth-bound schemes — Karic had never been interested in wealth as an end in itself, and in that way was profoundly different from his living descendants. He had been propositioned by many beautiful women — and men — who had been attracted by his wealth, and intrigued by the novelty of this “primitive” man out of his time. The fluid sexuality of this new elite ground against the values of his own time. The Zand servants watched their masters at play with the stony indifference he had seen in the low-class Urban Zones, an assumed manner that masked impotent resentment, making him realize this sort of sexual play was a game for the idle rich. It had been academic in any case — his internal struggle to adjust had made even the most casual liaison untenable.
Mara and Andrai had stayed with them only one month. As soon as their applications into the SF forces were processed, they had left for training on the stations in orbit. They were eager to start again. Faced with the same hole in his memories, Karic would have been the same.
He had mind-bonded with both of them. Sharing his own memories. They were profoundly affected, and had seen through his eyes the real events on Cru. Even so, they had refused to jeopardize their own future by supporting his story. At this demonstration of his mental powers, they were awed. Even so, neither of them spoke of it again. As he suspected, the abilities that Mara had begun to show on Cru were now fully dormant. The altered genes in Karic’s brain had awakened something in him that evolution had yet to bring forward in the human race. The Fintil seemed to think it was inevitable, a hallmark of evolution as primary as the ability to communicate through speec
h, or sentience itself. Was he now alone with his gift? Were there others like him who hid their abilities?
Of the others who now supported him, not a single person — not even in his own family — had been willing to believe the truth. He had soon learned his best strategy was to stay silent and act “reformed”. He had access to considerable wealth, but he was restless on Earth. After all that he had strived for … there had to be more.
Setting foot on another living world like Cru had changed him forever. The Earth was at once more precious and smaller. It was nothing but a taste of what space had to offer.
He had passed all his psychological evaluations for six months running. Technically, he was free. But the SF interstellar program would not touch him. He was tainted. Outdated.
By the standards of the 22nd century, the people of the 24th were wealthy. While it was true that the beauty and wildness of the surface had been restored — a testament to the utopian dreams of the Environment movement — this came at the cost of individual freedom. Karic could understand why off-world colonies were such big business. The Earth government was harsh and uncompromising, the people heavily controlled in every aspect of their lives.
In Karic’s view, Earth was inward looking and lost, her people trapped within her cities, lost in a descending spiral of cultural burn-out. Controlled by suffocating layers of bureaucracy and a rigid social structure that was edging toward a crisis.
He was pulled out of his reverie by a soft tone from his odin. He picked it up and slipped it on, a thin band held across his forehead by loops over his ears similar to those on conventional glasses. He was still getting used to them.
“Mr. Zand?” A visual of Markem, one of Jureth’s aides, appeared in front him, as though the Zand business manager was sitting at his desk right there on the wet poolside tiles.
“Yes, Markem.”
“Good news, Karic. Davis has agreed to our last offer.”
Karic sat forward. “When can we take possession?”
The Tau Ceti Diversion Page 40