A. Attanasio - SoliS

"That's absurd!"
"That is the law."
"You mean I have no rights at all?" He looks away from the bizarre apparition of the magistrate and his puppet, stares past the veering geometries of Terra Tharsis, and sinks his gaze into the primal horizon-the ruddy vista of Mars-hoping to calm himself.
"There are important property rights that do pertain," the Clerk quietly admits. "Because you were stolen from the Commonality archive by lewdists, this demonstrates negligence of protectorship on the part of the Commonality. The case may be made that the Commonality has thus forsaken any claim to you. As you were afterward stolen from the lewdists by the Friends of the Non-Abelian Gauge Group and subsequently recovered from them by the Commonality, you may claim to be property of public domain. Then, ownership rights will devolve to those who salvaged you."
"Why are you doing this to me?" Charles moans.
"The law requires the Judge and the Clerk to examine all exhibits prior to presentation in the Moot." The Clerk floats backward into the glare of noon light. "Unless the Judge has further questions, I believe our examination is concluded."
"The exhibit is found whole and without defect," the Judge decrees, the amethyst vapors around him fluorescing brightly, the flaming halo vanishing. "It shall be admitted to the Moot and herewith subject to all pending arguments for final and absolute proprietorship."
"Hey, wait a minute. Please!" Charles pleads "Where's Mei Nili? Where's the androne Munk? How did I get here?"
The Judge retreats into the sunfire, and in the next instant blackness swarms over Charles Outis.
Mei Nili and Munk sit in the alcove of the Moot, awaiting their turn to testify. Munk's faceless aspect stares out the transparent walls at the supernal ramparts of Terra Tharsis. He is livid inside with fear. So, this is the adytum of the Maat. And here he is at the foot of the dream, far beyond the parameters of all his programming. His hope, however improbable, had been that the flyers who intercepted the incoming pod would deposit them outside the city. But they didn't, and now here they are in the midst of the Maat's creation. An incestuous anxiety possesses him: This is the place of his maker, the very trespass he most dreaded.
The Maat's hand is everywhere apparent, from the artificial terrestrial gravity to the blue tint of the filtered sky. When, in the grip of the flyers' magravity net, the pod touched down on the summit of an onyx tower eight kilometers tall, Munk expected some kind of encounter with his creators. Instead, only a faceless androne on a skim plate awaited them. It ignored all their questions, removed the plasteel capsule with Charles inside, and floated across the rooftop among a panoply of prisms and mirror vanes. They followed, and the mute androne led them a long way down a spiral ramp of abstract chromatic mosaics to this enormous chamber of sun-shot glass and ivory.
"You are in the Moot of the Maat Pashalik," a gender-less voice softly advised them out of nowhere after Mei seated herself on a transparent bench. "Please wait here until you are summoned."
"How long have we been here?" Mei asks curtly. She has refrained from berating Munk verbally for their predicament, but he can see by her eyes that she thinks the dunefield landing would have been better.
"Two hours and thirty-seven minutes," Munk replies meekly. Within the first few seconds of entering the chamber, he had already measured its domed ceiling, glass perimeter, and 2,853 viewing loges tiered in midair in the vast space surrounding the amphitheater of the central court. The sleek hoods of the loges are an evanescent blue shading along a lateral line to a hue subtle as the bronze tint on a mushroom, lending them an eerily organic look, like hovering skates or devilfish. Afraid to examine these odd structures too closely and too embarrassed by their predicament to engage in taciturn conversation with Mei, he turns inward and focuses on listening to the communications of the numerous andrones in the vicinity. Their code logic does not match his, and because he does not understand anything they're saying, he must remain content with their music.
Mei paces about the sterile alcove, returning repeatedly to the window bay to gaze at the surreal skyline. The teetering spires and hyperbolas loom so tall their lower stories disappear below in a haze of ramparts and sparkling viaducts and spans that meld with distance to a golden ether.
Who lives here? she wonders. In the arcade on Deimos, she had once seen film texts of the multitudinous types into which humanity has diversified in the colonies-the morphs, clades, and plasmatics, to name just the three biggest groups. None are permitted in the reservations on Earth, not even the Maat, and in her job with Apollo Combine she had met only morphs, people morphogenetically adapted for specific tasks.
Here in Terra Tharsis, however, she knows there are clades, new branches of humanity that would barely be recognizable to her as human, and the plasmatics, those who have genetically transcended anthropic anatomy altogether. Perhaps this chamber itself is a hive, and the organic loges floating overhead belong to a plasmatic class…
"Jumper Nili?" a smoky voice calls. "Androne Munk?"
A tall, sinewy youth with ethereal cheekbones, cumin complexion, fire-blue eyes blacked with kohl, and red hair glittering with pixel-gems and braided in a long rope down his back shows the palms of his tapered hands in colonial greeting and bows curtly. "My name is Shau Bandar. I represent Softcopy, a local news-dip service for the anthro commune. The Moot is allowing one of the twenty-six anthro news services to interview your prehearing, and I got the luck of the draw. If you don't mind, I'd like to introduce you to our viewers."
Mei has encountered reporters like this before, when she was a novice jumper and considered mildly newsworthy for wanting to leave the reservation in the first place to take up such risky work. This reporter, like the others, exudes that same blue smell of serenity-a sedating olfact used by journalists to put their subjects at ease. For that reason alone, she decides she wants nothing to do with him. "Look, Slim, why don't you go find out for us how long we're going to be kept waiting here-"
Munk quickly steps between Shau Bandar and Mei. "Excuse me," he says deferentially. "Could you kindly give us a moment?" Then turning his broad back to the reporter, he whispers hotly in a voice pitched for Mei's ears, "For hope's sake, don't speak too hastily, Jumper Nili. This reporter may prove helpful. He is, after all, like you, an anthro."
"Put it away, Munk. That's your C-P program talking. Forget your anthropic model. Can't we just get Mr. Charlie and find our way to Solis?"
"Has it occurred to you yet that Solis is four thousand, three hundred forty-five kilometers from here?" Munk whispers. "Have you given any thought as to how we're going to cross that much open terrain? The anthro commune may be able to abet our journey. Come on, now. Let's be logical and cooperate with this man."
Mei accedes with a reluctant nod, and Munk faces the reporter, beckoning him closer. "Excuse our ignorance, Shau Bandar," Munk says solicitously, "but this is our first time in Terra Tharsis. Perhaps you can inform us as vitally as we can you."
The reporter makes an adjustment to the microcontrols on the cuff of his purple dress coat, and a small blue light comes on in the collar of his short mantle, where he carries his sensors. "I'd be glad to help. Softcopy can connect you with both the anthro and androne naturalization projects-"
"We're not staying," Mei cuts in. "We're bound for Solis."
His brown,. angular face lights up. "Even better! That trek has endless appeal to our viewers. You know, I've never covered it myself, but I'd like to. I imagine the archaic brain you recovered from Phoboi Twelve will be your entree?"
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