Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  The judge gets seated, waves me at a chair, and we get the consulting judge look, a little friendly and a lot interested, and Pelōŕios, sleek and shining from having run a couple hundred kilometres, says “I would be hale.”

  That takes explanation, but not very much; any Commonweal judge will consider ability with the Power part of “hale,” insurance cases when people leave a focus-team due to Power-injury happen every year. Those are difficult injuries, people don’t often recover, with prospects worse than the usual run of being hit in the head.

  I have to explain that there is some urgency, I am only certainly available this season and I really ought to do this, if it’s going to be done, before I learn warding because right now I’ve got, I can’t say “an uncomplicated,” most people don’t have two shapes to choose from, but a straightforward possibility of transmitting a unicorn shape that’s not an obligate metavore and reflexively predatory about it. Still a metavore, strictly, and one with an additional simiform shape, but it’s something that Pelōŕios could adopt, it would be comprehensible and voluntary. The more I learn, especially the potential consequences to the working link of learning warding, the less true that’s likely to be.

  The judge nods, quite solemn. “We should require some attestation from a knowledgeable Independent concerning the metaphysical constraints.”

  As a student, I don’t have a legally sound professional opinion. It makes “should require” with the judicial “we” a tactful choice of verb.

  Outside, in the main office, the clerk is saying “Second door,” and I’m putting a hand on Pelōŕios’ neck because the judge does have to go deal with a contract attestation, if that’s what this is. Then I hear the tapping.

  The door opens before Halt gets to it, as doors do. It closes with no sign of any effort on Halt’s part. The judge maintains an impassive countenance, that’s the phrase from the Peace-gesith’s regulations. It doesn’t look especially difficult.

  “It was Halt last time,” the judge says to me, perhaps amused, and offers a chair. Halt says thank-you and sits down in the same chair that’s always there when Halt wants one.

  Halt’s view of our learning warding is succinct. “We will attempt to provide sufficient instruction to prevent comprehensive death, but this remains an experiment.”

  The judge doesn’t like that, and it takes a bit more explanation, around the working link and winding up involuntarily disjunct, that’s one of the concerns in the original application to the ethics board for permission to try teaching collective external Power working. One member of the team spontaneously developing warding might doom everyone. It’s not certain doom, but it does rely on a willingness to stay unwarded with each other once we have another option.

  That seems much more unlikely to everyone else than it does to us.

  The office switches shifts at lunch; we follow the judge over to the Professions House and dining room. It’s quite large, the nominal House is a square of buildings around a central yard, but the important thing is that ten of the twelve judges are there. After lunch, a null and careful random means select a committee of five, and we wind up in the courtyard in the restful shade structure, along with two clerks, another null, and seven interested teachers and accountants and one chemist who have no fixed responsibilities this afternoon.

  What I propose to do, I set out in functional terms, and Halt confirms that it is, in Halt’s judgement, both plausible and probable of success, but certainly novel. Halt doesn’t say “novel in Commonweal practice,” and I think two of the judges catch that. I certainly do.

  The issue of personality alteration comes up. I point out it’s not, from a certain perspective, different from administering pain-killers or the memory-blur used on conscious trauma, especially weed-rescues. It’s even less different from seeing the malnourished eat well that will of a certainty alter both thoughts and the capacity for thinking. Pelōŕios has a meaningful degree of choice in adopting the new shape, Pelōŕios has to do that consciously, and there’s some portion of the usual developmental range available for consciously applied variation. I don’t know what proportion, there’s no experiential basis to even guess, but the mechanism and the available pattern of the shape allow in principle for the full developmental range. What’s proposed is not a dislocation of history, not an attempt to correct the general errors when Unicorn Fours were created, it’s a synthetic but more cohesive shape being used to replace the existing shape of a person who is by heredity a metaphysical creature, a shape that provides a different, larger, and undiminished scope for future possibility, the only thing being lost is the obligate metavory. Making sure that shape includes an ability to sing is not a substantial alteration. Significant all you like, but as effort it’s easier than a change in coat-colour would be.

  Which means I have to explain where I got my unicorn shape, how it differs from shapeshifting, and what “synthetic” means in a context of species-names. One of the clerks says “Graul?” in inquisitive tones, and Halt’s head shakes. “No contributory species names in graul,” Halt says.

  There’s a pause while the clerks get everything written down a little more neatly than their first burst of shorthand notes. I get to read the neat version, and either correct it or attest it. I make a few corrections where there are definite rather than probabilistic assertions, and attest it.

  Halt gets given the attested version, adjusts their spectacles in what I am sure is pure theatre, and reads the whole thing twice. Halt adds an addendum that this is, in Halt’s Independent judgement, something that could really work as described were it ever tried by me specifically, and attests that. Something absolutely terrifying swirls up in the smoke of no present burning in the yard behind the witnesses. Halt looks sternly at it, says hmph, and makes a dismissive gesture. It goes away before many of the people around us have managed a good look.

  The least disturbed judge asks Pelōŕios to explain why they think adopting a different shape is a good idea.

  There’s a single long rising whistle that loses all its force before the tone would crack glass.

  “Hath ye any as holds them knowledge-actual of unicorns?” Pelōŕios’ ears and neck and single cracking tail-flick say harsh grin but I don’t see anyone else who sees it.

  Well, except Halt. Pelōŕios wasn’t including Halt in that question.

  All the judges say “No.”

  “Hath lived as I thought to die, full-up of pain and hunger. Have been given nothing as the price of life absent pain, ‘tis what is done, a thing but of manners.”

  Pelōŕios’ head rocks side to side, strange and snaky. “Zora thinks it right that I should never hunger more, for that hunger is a death of choice.”

  Pelōŕios glitters, hard and sharp and edged. The hungry shadow doesn’t react, the hungry shadow isn’t there.

  Halt doesn’t look the least bit concerned, Halt is binding on a new colour of yarn.

  “You know not what you do.” All the words are intelligible, Pelōŕios isn’t collapsing into whistles, but this doesn’t sound diffident, or calm, this isn’t Pelōŕios’ usual tone.

  “Have seen mountains dance, and nothing wake to peace.”

  One or two judges nod. Pelōŕios was in the nothingness for a little while at the lower Third. Some of the engineering reports have it that the unicorn was laughing ringing mad laughter.

  “The greater power might be fled, might be served in obedience so entire as strength-superior shall exact.” Pelōŕios’ voice breaks into a single long descending whistle, Unicorn Four for “you are more of an idiot than I thought.” In Unicorn, that’s a remark, not definite contempt.

  “Yet you hold not so, hath made it the greater serves the lesser so that all might be greater, and you know not what you do.”

  Everyone’s paying attention to the extremely vehement unicorn. I really shouldn’t want to laugh.

  “Art born to peace, if peace be this; art born to certainties made, as though wert actual. To constrain
t of risk for manners. Found I not it so, and if present luck asks risk for severance of certain fate, I ask how could it not.”

  could it not hangs there as ripples on the air, emphasis enough to alter the world. Everything goes quiet except Halt’s knitting needles, clicking contentedly.

  A sheet and then two and three sheets of paper goes back and forth along the judges, annotated at each. Much too formal for a preliminary hearing.

  One judge, not the first one Pelōŕios and I were speaking to, says “We understand that the procedure considered results in a disjunction of existence.”

  The answer to that is either “Yes and no” or math; I present the simple version of the math, we’ve all finally learnt how to do the kind of illusion that’s square on to everyone looking at it. There’s a rustle and one of the school teachers and two of the accountants call for a pause and go out, quickly. They come back with colleagues and reference books and a stack of large paper. There’s a replication of the proof, complete with a couple of assistive comments from Halt.

  One of the accountants, no, there’s the pin, that’s a full actuary, presents the conclusions to the court, which summarize as “If it works, the subject will always have been that way.”

  There’s a plausible nervousness, because everything else won’t have been, and Halt gives me a look.

  I put up the corollaries, which are much tougher math but come down to “it doesn’t splash.” That almost makes everyone late for dinner, the judges request a return in the morning, and away we go.

  The rest of us are sympathetic to Pelōŕios, full of minor experiments, and only a little worried about me. Spook, entirely material, wanders over and purrs into the base of Pelōŕios’ jaw after the music has ended and everybody’s waiting for the nibbles to come round. Pelōŕios never quite knows how to understand it when Spook does that.

  The next morning has more teachers and accountants and two observing judges. The three people, one teacher and two actuaries, who were verifying the provided proof look like they got no sleep at all.

  The teacher and the actuaries agree that the proof is sound, that the consequential distance is proportionally short, that the result of changing Pelōŕios aren’t going to be noticeable, the lower Third Valley, where the change became something that happened tens of thousands of years ago, barely splashed the whole time of the Displaced’s habitation, and that’s in part because we made it do that. We had to make sure the people didn’t get caught across the disjunction. Pelōŕios isn’t going to affect anyone else. Any bacteria get adjusted, I don’t know if unicorns have commensal bacteria, it seems likely but there haven’t been any studies. Parasites won’t be doing well with a healthy unicorn, even nearly dead Pelōŕios didn’t have any.

  Though I’d certainly check. Rendering some parasite a metaphysic organism with a direct metabolic link to the Power isn’t a small mistake.

  There’s a “How can that possibly?” question, and Halt stops knitting and slides their glasses down their nose before looking at the questioner. “The Power has a vast selection of rules.” Halt being definite requires a ten minute pause for composure.

  Pelōŕios probably looks composed to everyone else. It would be improper to say anything, but I can wave illusory wings. Everyone else will think that’s me being nervous about Halt.

  Halt being definite is comfort. Us-together rhetorically blame Ed.

  The judges recover their composure; the increasing stack of paper acquires the attested proofs, and more notes among the judges.

  The five sitting judges request our indulgence and go out. The two observing stay sitting and go right on saying nothing.

  It takes close to four hours for the judges to come back. Halt’s served tea twice, the second time substantially. Halt’s substantial teas do for lunch, which we’re all skipping because no one wants to walk away and maybe miss the answer. Pelōŕios has taken to making increasingly complex illusory patterns. Two of the observing school teachers have taken to talking to Pelōŕios in between patterns despite a challenging lack of common topics of conversation.

  The judges come back. They don’t all look composed, though they do by the time they’ve sat down and put their hats on in formal indication of judgement.

  “This is a challenging question,” the original judge says. “It is unquestionable that a degree of alteration impermissible in any person of material heritage is proposed.”

  There’s a pause. Pelōŕios doesn’t look worried because Halt doesn’t look interested, never mind concerned. I think that’s reassuring myself.

  “Yet it is a strong principle of the Ur-law that there shall be no prescriptive norm; that declaring any one single state of being correct for all at all times shall not be done, howsoever it may be necessary that the common constraints of conduct be enacted impartially and generally. What is unacceptable control of a person of material heritage may not be for one of metaphysical heritage, and this remains as true for a guest as for a citizen.”

  There’s a signature and a passing of the paper stack to the next judge over.

  “What it is lawful for a sorcerer to do has nothing to do with the status of their subject or subjects, citizen or guest or hostile presence,” is said in a strong certain voice. “So what is permitted here must be permitted generally.”

  There’s a pause, an inhale, this is not something this particular judge finds easy in their axioms, however much their intellectual agreement might exist.

  “Yet we do not always insist that what is permitted be the same for all species, or circumstances, as we must not; the patient long in a deliberate coma while their treatment progresses must receive some mental stimulation, which is in strict construction alteration of the mind by the Power. Any hospital in the Commonweal must as the law requires provide a service able to cause replacement teeth to grow, a certain alteration of the material body by the Power.”

  The, well, witnesses, are rustling a little.

  “To extend a general permission to offer a new embodiment or new metabolism remains entirely improper.”

  When a judge, a sitting judge in their office, says “improper” they don’t mean “rude,” they mean “obviously outside the Ur-Law’s strictures.”

  That judge signs, and the stack of paper passes again to the next judge.

  “In this specific case, we find that a Unicorn Four, any Unicorn Four, is incapable of living in the Peace. They are by their design obligate metavores, a condition beyond their individual or collective power to remedy, it being well-accepted that the range of sorcerous talent possible in their species is neither of the correct kind, nor in extent of the necessary degree.”

  Pelōŕios, whose conduct really has been impeccable, goes very still.

  If they were upset with you specifically, it would be phrased differently.

  There’s a single acknowledging tail-flick.

  “The present mechanism permitting Pelōŕios’ presence as a guest, while efficacious, is intolerable in general principle, it being unacceptable to require anyone to conduct their life to the specific benefit of another person. The Law does not require so much from parents, it cannot require such a cost in circumstances of lesser obligation.”

  One of the risks, that the court would just tell Pelōŕios to leave the Commonweal.

  “It does not benefit the Peace to be shrunken or narrow. It may not benefit the Peace to include unicorns, but it certainly does not benefit the Peace to turn away from consideration of the possibility.”

  Another signature, another judge.

  “It is a strong principle of the Ur-Law that the Commonweal does not engage in conquest.”

  Not at all what I was expecting. Pelōŕios is baffled and astonished, Halt’s not even slightly surprised.

  “To convert anyone into a form more suitable to the Peace is problematic under this principle. Yet we find a distinction between more suitable and possible at all; the difficulties of those ill-suited to the Peace are distinct from those o
f persons simply incapable in their creation from participating in the Peace, where such incapability is on the order of obligate anthrophagy, from which we do not find the obligate metavory of Unicorn Fours significantly distinct.”

  There’s a pause, a tapping of papers, what looks a little bit like a struggle for an appropriately still degree of composure.

  “In these narrow and constrained circumstances, we find that such alteration may be considered medical treatment and not conquest.”

  Which is fair, because conquest is entirely what it could be. The temptation to make people less annoying isn’t trivial.

  Complete silence, listening to the pen scratch and the paper stack pass to the last of the five judge panel.

  The last judge says “It is implicit in the mathematics of the proposed working that Pelōŕios may be entirely changed. It is explicit in Zora’s description of the process that the intent is to provide an undamaged embodiment, where damage is understood to include prohibitions of conduct asserted by the Independent Grue.”

  I get given a very direct look by the whole committee of judges.

  “Any working for the specific purpose of removing those prohibitions would not be lawful, as direct alteration of a sophont mind, absent pressing and unavoidable need.”

  I nod. Being irrationally frightened of one Independent isn’t pressing, and there are easier ways to solve the problem, so it isn’t unavoidable, either.

  “In this specific case, where the transformation has other purpose and is itself of pressing medical necessity, this court does not require you to replace what must be acknowledged as harm.”

  I nod again. You never thank judges for the judgement given, judgement is outside of courtesy.

  The fifth signature. The stack of paper handed to the clerks, who are visibly aware that this judgement is going to wind up in next year’s Book Describing the Law.

  There’s a pause, and nearly all the witnesses carefully keep themselves from saying anything. The first judge looks at Pelōŕios directly, and points out carefully that the transformation is permitted, rather than required; Pelōŕios’ guest status is not dependent on accepting to be transformed, it is legal solely if Pelōŕios specifically wishes to undertake the procedure.