Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

‘Objection,’ Ms Toi exclaimed. ‘Speculation. I want that struck from the record.’

‘You asked for my opinion on his personality,’ Paula countered.

‘I’ll allow it to stand for the moment,’ Judge Jeroen said. ‘It was a legitimate answer to your line of questioning, defence.’

‘Your honour,’ Ms Toi bowed to the judge. ‘Investigator, you said that memory erasure is common when a crime has been committed.’

‘That is correct.’

‘Have you ever known alternative memory for the time of the crime to be implanted?’

‘I haven’t come across it before, although the technique is relatively straightforward. You just need a colleague like the one Fiech had to record his day.’

‘So if I implanted the memory of firing the missile into your brain, would that make you guilty?’

‘No. Because I didn’t do it. The rest of the physical evidence would support that.’

‘So in fact, Investigator, this boils down to two sets of opposing evidence. Both equally valid.’

‘Valid but not of equal credibility. That is correct.’

‘Please describe to the court the efforts which you undertook to establish that the person on Ormal was not Dimitros Fiech.’

‘I retraced the route myself, and interviewed everyone he remembered encountering. Security camera images were recovered and analysed.’

‘What did they show?’

‘A man with similar facial features to Dimitros Fiech travelled to Ormal. We assumed he underwent a cellular reprofiling treatment.’

‘But you can’t prove it. The man sitting here in the dock could have been the one on Ormal, and his made-up doppelgänger could have fired the missile on Nova Zealand. Am I right?’

‘No. Under my instruction, a Directorate forensics officer analysed the seat cover on the plane which flew from Essendyne back to Harwood’s Hill. It had been cleaned, but we found large traces of vomit containing DNA. It did not correspond to Dimitros Fiech’s DNA, yet it was the seat he remembers using and being sick on. It wasn’t him on Ormal.’

Ms Toi gave Paula a startled look. ‘I see. Thank you, Investigator.’

‘No!’ Dimitros Fiech yelled. ‘No, you can’t believe that. I didn’t do it. Damn you, I didn’t.’ He turned to the jury and gave them a wild stare. ‘It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. I know I wasn’t.’

Judge Jeroen banged his gavel. ‘Be seated Mr Fiech.’

‘I’m being framed.’ He turned to Ms Toi. ‘Do something!’

She winced.

Paula quietly left the witness stand as Fiech continued his tirade. Two large court officers moved forwards into the dock as the judge banged his gavel repeatedly.

After another day and a half of evidence the jury retired. They took an hour to reach their verdict of guilty. Judge Jeroen sentenced Dimitros Fiech to two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-sixty years life suspension, twenty years for each of the people who suffered bodyloss in the crash.

Paula was packing her bag when Aidan Winkal rapped his knuckles on the office door. ‘Hello,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘I just came to say goodbye.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Aidan. You’ve handled yourself well while we were putting this case together, and I know this hasn’t been easy. I expect your Chief will be promoting you.’

‘Probably. I gather Christabel got her promotion.’

‘Yes. Chief Investigator at last. I’ll miss her. There’ll be a party in Paris tonight when we get back. You’re welcome to join us.’

He scratched at his short hair. ‘Go to Paris just for a party. That’s a real city dweller thing. An Earth city.’

‘Come on, you’re not such a small-town boy. I’d dance with you.’

‘I can’t believe how thorough you were. I really thought the defence was going to nail you with that question about evidence from Ormal. I guess she didn’t realize how methodical you are.’

Paula shrugged and dropped her spare jacket into the bag. ‘It’s what I do. I have to be certain for myself. And Ms Toi should have known. I’m notorious enough for my diligence. He was badly represented.’

‘So you’re convinced he did it?’

‘The Dimitros Fiech sitting in the dock this morning was the physical person who launched the missile, I have no doubt of that.’

‘Now there you go, see: a real lawyer’s answer.’

‘I concede defence did have a point about what constitutes a whole person. Body and memory are the two halves of being human.’

‘But Fiech’s memory of the attack has been wiped. It’s over. We got what we could of him.’

She smiled reassuringly. ‘Yes, we did. And he got the sentence he deserved.’

Christabel and Nelson appeared behind Aidan. Neither looked as jubilant as they should have done. Aidan gave Paula an uncomfortable smile. ‘I’ll leave you guys to it.’

‘Try and get there tonight,’ Paula told him. ‘I meant it about that dance.’

A sheepish Aidan shuffled out past Christabel who did her best not to laugh at his schoolboyish delight.

‘Is he really your type?’ Christabel asked.

‘I don’t have a type,’ Paula said. ‘But he is an honest policeman. I value that.’

Nelson looked at Christabel then Paula. Took a breath. ‘Anyway… I’m also here to deliver my Dynasty’s thanks. We appreciate the effort involved in securing the verdict.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Paula said. ‘It’s a shame we couldn’t use Fiech to uncover his co-conspirators, but that memory wipe was very efficient. There is nothing left of his life prior to his arrival in Sydney for that job. Until we finally arrest the entire Free Merioneth Forces we’re not going to find out who he is.’

‘Was,’ Christabel corrected.

Nelson’s expression turned bitter. He made a show of closing the door. ‘That’s unlikely to happen. Not now.’

‘What do you mean?’ Christabel asked.

‘Confidentially: my Dynasty along with several others has agreed Merioneth will become an Isolated world.’

Paula let out a hiss of exasperation. She’d suspected something like this would happen. The last few months while they’d assembled the case against Dimitros Fiech had seen the Free Merioneth campaign expand to alarming proportions. After the Nova Zealand plane, the movement had been steadily refining their operations, developing into more sophisticated assassins. The results were dramatic. Their targets were now dispatched with cool efficiency, and the number of collateral casualties was significantly reduced. In the last twelve attacks, thirty-nine Dynasty members had suffered complete bodyloss. The new generations were now running very scared, with few of them leaving their mansions on the private family worlds. ‘You gave in,’ she said in frustration.

‘We couldn’t afford it,’ Nelson said with equal chagrin. ‘The cost of providing upgraded security for every member of every Dynasty was completely unrealistic. Far beyond writing off the investment costs in Merioneth.’

‘There’s more at stake here than money,’ an annoyed Christabel snapped.

‘I know that,’ Nelson said. ‘Of course, it won’t appear to be any kind of climb down. We wouldn’t allow that. We negotiated the terms of Isolation with the new Nationalist Party that sprung up on Merioneth. The terrorists stop their attacks, and in a couple of years we close the wormhole. They’ll be on their own. Forever.’

‘It’ll come back to bite you,’ Paula said. ‘You’ve shown your opponents a weakness. It can be used every time someone wants a concession out of a Dynasty.’

‘That was one of the reasons we agreed,’ Nelson said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘We don’t have other opponents, not in this category. The Intersolar Commonwealth is a relatively civilized place. Sure we can all disagree with each other; politicians on half of the planets we’ve got aren’t speaking to the other half; but there’s only a tiny minority who want to leave, and an even smaller number who resort to violence to obtain their ends. This whole succession notion is ridiculous. An Isolated planet will never benefit from the advances the rest of us make. Their social and economic development will be stunted. Hell, Merioneth will probably regress. When we announce the wormhole is to be closed we’re expecting a lot of its ordinary residents will rush back to the Commonwealth before Isolation begins. Our analysts have reviewed this; they’re not sure Merioneth will even be able to maintain basic rejuvenation technology levels, not in the short-to-medium term. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live there. Bodyloss will become death again.’