Mary Rosenblum - Horizons

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 muolded 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.”