A. Attanasio - SoliS

3
Terra Tharsis
Charles Outis IS A BRAINSHADOW ENCASED AN AN EGG OF CLEAR plasteel. Psyonic pads designed to read and induce brain-waves cap both ends of the capsule and connect it by com-link to the console and the sensory array of The Laughing Life. Through the prow sensors, Charles watches Munk floating in space, the galaxy like mist behind him. The androne uses mag-lock clips to attach jetpaks to the mirror-gold hull of the pod.
"You only have four jetpaks," Charles notices. "Will they be strong enough to brake our descent?" Under ordinary circumstances, Charles prided himself on his observational abilities; now, survival has made him hyperalert. He notices the microchipping of the rover's hull and the thin feathers of electric fire around Munk as the androne aligns the jetpaks and magnetically locks them into place.
"These won't brake our entry," Munk answers frankly, indicating the circle of puny shoulder packs with their tapered jets that he's fixed to the hull. "But I'm not going to drop us to the surface. I'm aiming for Terra Tharsis, the city you saw on our last flyby. The jetpaks will help steer us to where scouts can pick us up as we go in."
"I still say there's enough lift on this cruiser to make a dunefleld landing," the jumper calls from the helm. "Terra Tharsis is too dangerous. Let's go directly to Solis. Put us down in the Planet, on one of the sandy verges near the settlement. We'll hike in."
"The landing is too risky," Munk says. "The dunes veil rock reefs, and this pod isn't designed for an impact entry. We have no choice but to seek sanctuary with the Maat, unpredictable as they are. Which is better-to take a chance on incalculable physics or on an unguessable psyche?"
Inside the flight bubble of the ship, Mei is washed out by the pelagic glow of the console. Monitoring near space in the view scanner, she advises the androne, "We've got only a few minutes left. Two Bund ships and an Ap Com transport are closing fast."
"All right, then," Munk responds, "lock the helm and get into the pod."
Awe, fear, exultation at basking in the brown glow of Mars fuse inside Charles to a wide-staring intensity, so that he feels more alive now than he ever had in his former life. "What's going to happen to us in Terra Tharsis?" he asks.
"I don't know," Mei admits without much sympathy. "Terra Tharsis belongs to the Maat, not the Commonality. We'll have to find our way as we go."
Charles fixes his attention in the pod's external sensors and watches the planet view floating below, Mars rising splotched and enormous against the starsmoke. The winy mist of the atmosphere shimmers thinly against the black depths of space, and the blister-peeled and coagulate surface of the world shines with ectoplasmic wisps of dust and frost vapors.
The jetpaks fire soundlessly, the mute flares of blue exhaust standing before the stars like votive flames on the gold rim of the pod. Snug in his plasteel case, a husked brain devoid of even the primitive sense of vertigo, Charles does not feel the tug of acceleration. Instead, he surmises motion by the swelling vista.
Charcoal scrawls of shadow resolve to fault lines, nacre blotches expand to vast sandy verges, and the horizon becomes serrated. The barren vista of oxide deserts and crenulated mountain ridges swims closer, aslant in the yawing descent of the pod. Scalloped dunes spring from the mutant sands, warped and quaking as the thin atmosphere buffets the plummeting vehicle, and Charles wants to blink, to shunt even for a moment the incoming vantage of wind-rowed buttes and stress-cracked rock.
The planet's rancid colors blur through the lens of the pod's thermal bowshock. Munk mutters some command that Charles is too distracted to catch. Below, a jagged shadowline of ifinit-faceted mountains looms as the pod's ultimate and calamitous destination, and a delirious howl whirls through Charles, before Mei disengages the plasteel capsule from the ship's console and steeps him in darkness, he sees the sharp peaks veer away, and through a rocky draw in the broken horizon, Terra Tharsis rears, her crystal towers swarmed in reefs of reflectant haze and star-barbs and carats of unearthly radiance.
"Mr. Charlie, wit you wise?"
The voice comes from all directions, and Charles Outis groans groggily awake, unable to remember where he is. His last recollection is of a supernaturally beautiful city of gleaming spires.
"He be witful. Spark his eyes, say I."
"Where am I?" Dim red embers worm in the darkness. "I can't see anything."
"The translator needs adjustment," a basso profundo voice declares.
"Yes, it does," a softer voice replies. "I've just tuned it. He can understand us now."
"Good," the voice of thunder says. "Mr. Charlie, will you acknowledge that you can hear me?"
"Yes, I hear you. Where am I? I can't see anything. What's happened to the others? Where's Mei Nili-and Munk?"
"Calm yourself," the rumbling voice commands. "In a moment your sight will be returned to you. But first, his-ten to me. You are now in the custody of the Maat Pashalik. Several claims of ownership have been laid against you, and you are on exhibit before the Moot to settle this question of proprietorship."
"Wait, I don't understand. I don't belong to anyone. Where am I? Let me see where I am! Mei Nili? Munk?"
"Activate Mr. Charlie's vision," the heavy voice orders.
Wincing rays of hot color pierce Charles painfully before relaxing into the panoramic vista of a marbled cream floor slick as a mirror extending toward distant ivory tiers of swerving architecture strange as turtle bones and mantaray hoods. A massive plate-glass wall reveals the glittering city of onyx arcs and silver-gold needle-towers he has seen from The Laughing life. The copper-and-quince tones of Mars are visible on the horizon, the dark amber of mountains above the red skin of the desert.
"Mr. Charlie," the thunder calls him, and he notices two figures emerge from the glare where noon light stands on the gleaming white expanse. One is no more than a ruby staff topped by a manikin face, a mask on a broomstick. The other is bulkily draped in floating black scarves and an amethyst mist, and the humanoid face gazing from under the stammering flame that wreathes his faceted head is a dark metallic gray with black eyes impenetrable and empty as a shark's. "I am the Judge," the bulky one says with the voice of thunder. "And this is the Clerk."
"You're andrones," Charles gripes wearily, stifling a momentary swirl of dizziness at the strange sight before him.
"We are agents of the Maat," the Judge intones, "and you are in the Pashalik of the Maat where our authority countermands all other judgments."
"Where's Mei Nili?" Charles asks, fighting his panic. "How did I get here?"
"Mr. Charlie," the Clerk says in her suede voice, the lips from the manikin
face unmoving, "you shall not address questions to the Judge-only to myself. You are, after all, an exhibit and not a plaintiff in these proceedings.
"What do you mean?" Fear fists so tightly around him he thinks he may pass out. "I'm Charles Outis. I'm a human being, dammit, not some-thing."
"You are speaking nonsense," the Clerk warns in a gentle tone. "Our memory survey indicates that you are fully aware of your demise. Your remnant and relict survival, objectively speaking, is solely as a thing. The only question to be resolved by the Moot is to whom do you belong."
"I belong to myself!"
"That makes no sense, Mr. Charlie. By universal convention, a legally dead person has no claim upon anything, physical remains or otherwise."
"But I'm not dead!" he cries desperately. "Can't you see? You're talking to me, for God's sake."
"We're talking to you only because your dead brain has been reanimated at a measurable expense and for an expected return," the Clerk patiently explains. "You were dead for many terrene years and would be dead now otherwise."
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