Horizons

by Mary Rosenblum

“Gonna take a lot of AI hours. I’ll need advance payment. Even from you, honey.” Her speech had shifted from formal English with a trace of Bengal to something more like North American city-street.

  Ahni had never entirely decided what Jira’s personal history might be. Not Bengali upper middle class, the pose she wore for clients. Possibly not even female. Whatever the nature of her… or his… flesh reality, she delivered a high quality information synthesis. For a price. “I’ll send it to you directly from my private account. I want something else, too.”

  Jira, about to exit, paused, one perfect eyebrow rising.

  “I want solid proof of Gaiist influence on national coalitions. Past two years only. Look at local-focus media for a start.”

  “Your shift in interests intrigues me.” Jira smiled politely, back to Bengali formality.

  A new data point for Jira to add to her syntheses. Ahni wondered how much money it would earn for her. “Time bonus,” Ahni said shortly. “ASAP.”

  “It is, as always, your money.” Jira’s smile turned creamy and feline.

  Anhi blanked the connection, opened a new one, to Noah’s private email. “I need one last thing,” she said. “Go through what you found on the Gaiists and find me proof of Michelle Raud Huang’s involvement with the Gaiists. It will be difficult to find. I need this, Noah.” She ended the link and flung herself on the bed, her eyes on the ceiling. That, she dared not trust to Jira. One more task. She levered herself from the bed, opened her link again, highest security, diplomatic. “Li Zhen, Chairman of Dragon Home.” She smiled, imagining him looking up, mental alarms going off at the expensive security level of the message. Just so, Chairman. “I wish to thank you for your assistance in the recent matter of orbital security.” She used formal, diplomatic Mandarin. “I hope our goals are still aligned.” She paused to let his tension rise a bit. “I wish to discuss the plight of Dane Nilsson with you.” Another pause. He would be waiting now to find out just what she thought she could use in leverage against him.

  “I was quite impressed with your son. He is charming, and reppresents a powerful future for the Zhen name in the universe. I am sure that his grandfather will share this opinion and it occurs to me that I should congratulate him on this continuation of his DNA into the future.” Ahni broke off, let the silence hum for several heartbeats. “I will speak with you before the Committee meets to judge Nilsson, Chairman of Dragon Home. I look forward to our mutual support. End message,” she instructed and stared at the delicately carved and painted screen that decorated the room. This was her only hope to save Dane. Translation: Make sure that Dane doesn’t become a scapegoat or I will take DNA evidence of your son to your father. Perfection was expected of a Zhen heir. Imperfections did not come into existence. The price Li Zhen ultimately exacted from her for this blackmail would be… significant.

  DNA. Something nagged at her. It came to her suddenly, a suddden memory of Dane, returning with the proof she needed that Xai was alive. Check them, he had told her and he had not realized that the DNA belonged to her half brother. That should have been obvious to him. Frowning, Ahni searched for it in her email, found it, unopened, archived and waiting.

  It was standard report, a direct readout from the sequencer, stamped and legal, titled ‘Huang, Ahni’, the second titled only ‘subject’. Ahni accessed the family archive, called up the birth registry for both herself and her brother, security stamped and encrypted. Curious, Ahni ran a comparison between Dane’s sequence and the sequence from her birth registry and from Xai’s.

  Stared at the results, thinking furiously.

  No wonder Dane had been puzzled. Ahni called up the very secure directory that contained the DNA sequence of all Elite members, alive and dead. It confirmed her guess.

  Still numb, she tried Jira’s access again, this time got her widesmiling, “I have a message for you.” face.

  Opened it. The media has forgotten Dane Nilsson, Jira’s image said. That is not by accident. I would suggest that his is a lost cause. I seriously doubt that sufficient media momentum could be built in time to motivate the Judiciary members. The crime he is accused of carries illogical, emotion-based baggage for a majority of the voting members.

  Ahni accessed Security. “I need a skimmer to take me to the Council island. Private pickup, top priority.” There were advantages to being The Huang’s heir, she thought bleakly.

  Security had the skimmer at the private dock within half an hour. Ahni sat silently as it whisked her across the ocean, her mind circling back on itself again and again as she watched the sky lighten.

  In spite of the early hour, a private Courier met her on the Council Island, with a greeting from Li Zhen.

  He was watching her. Ahni smiled bitterly. She still carried his beacon, hadn’t bothered to search it out and destroy it yet. The sun was just peeping above the horizon as he delivered her to the small but luxurious hotel suite occupied by Li Zhen.

  He greeted her formally, his icy anger carefully restrained. Without speaking he poured tea.

  Ahni shook her head. “I did not come as your guest. I meant to blackmail you with your son, as you surmised.” She faced him in the cluttered little European-furnished room. “I apologize.” And she bowed.

  Felt surprise and disbelief dilute his anger.

  “You would not throw away such a lever, Huang Ahni,” he said at last. “You are very concerned about this man, Nilsson.”

  “I am tired of levers.” Ahni drew a slow breath. “Dane Nilsson does not deserve to die, and I cannot save him.” Bitterness twisted her lips. “I have a gift for you.” She handed him a data sphere. “You will find my DNA scan on it. You will discover that I am your sister.”

  “What?” Li Zhen said softly.

  “I am as much a created tool as was my brother. I was meant to be a lever. My mother found a better lever in the Gaiists. The exisstence of your son is between you and your father.” She bowed again.

  Deeply. “I will not turn your son into a lever.” And she turned and left.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE ACCOMMODATIONS ON WORLD COUNCIL ISLAND were a lot more luxurious than the cell upside, wherever it was the Council Security Forces had held him. Dane prowled the carpeted suite, gravity leaning on his shoulders. Carpeting, a small, limited refreshment center, and a video screen with a library of popular vid selections in English softened the space. The bedroom with its slidding door offered an illusion of privacy that didn’t fool him. The camera eyes were well disguised, but they were there. He made no effort to keep track of time, and the unchanging light didn’t help. Meals came and were taken away. Sometimes he ate, mostly he didn’t. The drag of the planet turned food to stone in his belly. He drank juice from the refreshment center. It said a lot about the security of this place, that they could be this generous.

  A legal counsel had been appointed to his case. She arrived soon after a meal, dressed in a natural-fiber power suit, hair a crisp inch long, unselected-Scandinavian by the look of her fair skin, and pale hair. Had she expected a genetic countryman? He watched her take stock of his face and reconsider.

  She tried hard. She had the formal charge and wanted him to read it and to retina that he had done so.

  He refused. She laid out various strategies for defense with their pros and cons, and he told her he had no interest in any defense. Let the gene scan speak for itself, he told her. She spent a lot of time explaining in carefully simplified English just why this wasn’t a reasonable defense.

  He let her work it out for herself… that he wasn’t reasonable. She finally left, after delivering dire warnings about his future, and he was impressed that she kept her simmering fury at his uncooperative behavior utterly buried behind an impassive demeanor.

  Dane completed his circuit of the carpeted space, aware of the mass of bone and muscle with every step, pain twinging through his joints and up and down his limbs as ligaments took the strain of gravity’s pull. It had been a long time since he had lived in measurable
gravity. Longer still since he had set foot on the planet.

  He threw himself down on the bed. It offered a small relief from the endless drag of his leaden flesh. But it wasn’t the physical discomfort of the overtaxed ligaments and joints that bothered him. The sense of weight brought with it… memories. Memories of life in the refugee camps, and an older brother who seemed so old at twelve.

  Dane levered himself to his feet and began to pace again, the discomfort providing a focus, a way to avoid the memories.

  They would come back as dreams when he finally slept. Nobody had punished him here, or treated him with anything but the impersonal scrutiny of a professional. Nobody would annswer his questions either.

  What was happening? How had the media portrayed the live link as Ahni faced her brother and the Gaiist? What had the reaction been?

  He had to stop pacing again, give his aching body a break on the bed once more. What about Koi and his family? Had they already been rounded up and euthanized? Li Zhen would hand them over, if he had to. There was nothing he could do about it.

  He got to his feet, pain preferable to the endless circle of his thoughts. Halted as the door whispered open. A man and a woman in CSF blue stepped into the room. “Put this on.” The man tossed him a folded wad of cloth, dyed the same brilliant chartreuse as the jumpsuit he was wearing.

  Clean clothes?”What’s happening?” he asked, not really expecting them to answer.

  ”You’re scheduled for the Committee.”

  The casual answer shocked him. He knew it was coming, but it had receded from reality to a “someday”

  event that loomed on a distant horizon. He stripped in their presence, staggered a bit as he lifted a leg to step into the clean jumpsuit, felt the sharpened attention of his guards. But he steadied himself. Once he had moved effortlessly here, he thought with a thin amusement.

  Dressed in clean clothes, he walked heavily between the two guards. Their curiosity pricked at him. No hostility, just curiosity.

  Even if they exonerated him from illegal alterations, would they let him go back upside?

  That would probably depend on what happened up there. Dane swallowed a surge of frustration, wishing they had let him have acccess to the news media.

  An elevator took them up to the Judiciary Committee chamber.

  Dane stepped out and his guards halted with him, saluting smartly. A horseshoe shaped table made of something that looked like a slab of agate curved before him, a single, comfortable chair in the center of the curve. Three women and four men faced him along the outer curve of the table, a range of ethnicities and genetic histories in their faces, their expressions unreadable, their emotions a broad spectrum from a flicker of envy to the disgust one might feel at an ugly spider crouching on your pillow. That last didn’t bode well.

  “Dane Nilsson, formerly resident botanical engineer for the orbital platform operated by the North American Alliance?” A tall, spare woman wearing a one piece suit of gray silk, her face either geneselected or naturally pure Masai, nodded to him.

  “I am,” Dane said.

  “Please be seated.” She inclined her head at the central chair, her eyes bright with intelligence. Her hair, silvered with age, had been clipped to a short, thick cap. She was thoughtful, but not hostile at least.

  Dane walked over amidst a thick silence and sat down in the chair. The psychological effect of the chair and no desk was one of… nakedness. The person seated in that chair had no defenses. The Judiciary Committee surrounded, barricaded behind that slab of stone. Crimson letters in glowing script floated in front of the Masai woman. Ms. Mallolah Engoko, Chair. None of the other members were named.

  “Mr. Nilsson, do you understand why you are here?” Engoko leaned forward on her palms, her dark eyes on his face.

  She wanted him to understand. What was it that was important to her, Dane wondered. Justice? Or simply that she be understood? “No.” His voice felt rusty and unused. “I do not know why I am here.”

  She frowned. Looked down at the desktop between her palms, and Dane guessed she was reading an eyelid screen. “You have not signatured the formal charges presented to you. Did you read them? You were appointed a competent counsel who is capable of defending you adequately before this Committee.

  Did she not pressent you with the charges?” Her English was gently accented.

  “Don’t blame the counsel you assigned me.” Dane said. “She was very competent and tried very hard. I would not do what she asked.”

  “Why not? Do you want to die? Do you realize you are charged with the only capital crime that exists in this day? Do you have a reaason to choose death?”

  She was asking him, the Committee members forgotten, asking him this question with urgency and personal focus. She wanted to know.

  “I don’t need a defense.” He spoke to her, not to the Committtee. “You can look at the evidence and see what is true. That’s all that matters. If the outcome of this depends on anything else…” He shrugged.

  “Then it doesn’t matter to me.”

  Someone down the curve of the table started to speak, but Engoko raised a hand.

  “And you would die merely because you did not try to defend yourself?” She would not let it go.

  “If it depends on anything other than the truth,” he said softly. “Then I have no interest in playing untruth against untruth, Madam Chair. Yes, I will die, if that is what you decide.”

  His answer angered her, but he wasn’t sure that her anger was directed at him.

  “For the record,” she said, looking right and left along the table. “Our defendant, Dane Nilsson, has stated that he does not intend to defend himself in this case.” She glared at him. “In certain cases, this might be grounds for reconsidering the mental acuity of the acccused. I do not think that it is applicable in this case. If that is your position, Mr. Nilsson, we will proceed.”

  He bowed his head, accepting her anger.

  “Mr. Nilsson has brought up the genetic evidence in this case.” A small, round faced man with unselected Gallic features broke in from the end of the table. A nanosecond pause indicated that his words were filtered through translation software. One of the radical Catholics from the New Irish Republic?

  “We have all seen the raw data.” He spread small, thick fingered hands. “Which, fellow committee members, I am quite willing to admit, I cannot understand to any great degree of certainty. However, I am quite willing to abide by the scientific experts who appended their analysis to the data. I see no reason to extend this session any longer than necessary.”

  He believed Dane guilty. The certainty of his conviction chilled Dane. A murmur of assent rose from the table, but at least two of the committee members shook their heads in disapproval.

  “I want to hear his explanation, Madam Chair.” A small man with a Vietnamese or perhaps unselected Cambodian face spoke up, shooting the Gallic member a withering glance. The translator software gave his words a clipped, staccato rhythm as it synchronized the translation to his mouth movements. “A human life is at stake here. It does not seem humane to end it without query, based on the assertion of a handful of people we have never met, based solely on our assumption of their expert knowledge.”

  “They are experts.” Gallic man glared down his nose. “We would not have hired them if they were anything but the best.”

  “Even the best of experts may be wrong,” the Vietnamese man murmured gently. A small woman wearing a gold and orange sari with a blood-colored caste mark on her forehead nodded agreement, but said notlling.

  “Mr. Nilsson, did you read the final report submitted by our panel of experts?” Ms. Engoko’s eyes were on his face.

  “I did not.”

  “I would like you to read it now.”

  She was not ordering him to read it, she was asking him to do so. Dane regarded her for a moment. This was a woman to whom justice mattered for its own sake. “I will,” he said.

  Silently a small table muol
ded from the arm of his chair, opened out in front of him, much like the tables contained in the Elevator’s passenger seats. The tabletop shimmered and turned white as a holofield activated. Letters appeared in a clear font. A pair of crimson scroll-arrows glowed at the right margin.

  “Do you need assistance with the document?” Ms. Engoko asked.

  “No.” Dane smiled at her. “I have a Ph.D. in Botanical Engineering.”

  “I apologize.” She bowed slightly.

  Dane concentrated on the text, scrolling swiftly down the page. It said what he had expected it to say, that the DNA scan had revealed no overt insertion of nonhuman DNA, and neither had a more extensive, allele by allele study. However, the report continued, the phenotypic manifestation clearly revealed that nonhuman DNA had been inserted. The conclusion? Dane skimmed through the paragraphs of supporting arguments. Their conclusion was that Dane had simply perfected a method for inserting nonhuman DNA in such a way as to disguise it from scanning technology.

  He looked up from the virtual page, met the Chair’s eyes. “So they find no evidence that I did anything, but conclude that I must have.”

  Engoko sighed.”We reviewed the videos of the autopsy of the creature.”

  Dane stood, pushing against the crushing weight of this world. It wasn’t gravity, he thought. It was the accumulated weight of millennia of xenophobia and genocide. “That was not a creature,” he said softly, aware of the collar around his neck, hands at his sides. “I named her Aliya. She had a name for herself, but it wasn’t a word, rather an image and a feel. I suppose in English, I would translate it as Joy. She was twelve years old. She liked to play tag, and she loved flowers. She wove blossoms together into intricate sculptures. Just because they were beautiful and they gave her pleasure. I was there when she was born, and I watched her learn to get around on her own in the microgravity of the hub garden of NYUp.”

  He paused for breath, his eye traveling along the table. Some of the committee looked down, refusing to meet his eye. The Indian woman and Engoko both met his gaze.