A. Attanasio - SoliS

This, of course, is a bluff. His makers, who possess his signal codes, could turn him off in an instant-or, if they desired a more vehement display, he could be sheathed in a confining field and his body dissolved to atoms. He knows the Maat could do that. But they do not, which is all the approval he requires. He seizes the plasteel capsule and dashes in a blur across the expansive courtroom. At the plate window, he dives, his cowl shattering the wall of plastic to a blizzard of molecular motes.
Mei Nili, who has watched Munk's rebellion with slack jaw, rises weakly to her feet and gapes at the gashed hole where he has disappeared. Overhead, in the loges, the spectators mill excitedly.
"The Moot judgment on the proprietorship of the revived remains of Mr. Charlie is hereby suspended pending the recovery of the exhibit," the Judge announces solemnly. "The Moot is now adjourned."
Munk's silver-black cowl distends, and with Charles tucked firmly under one arm, he banks into a thermal updraft and rises against the glittering onyx skyline of Terra Tharsis. Earlier, talking with Shau Bandar, he acquired the signal codes for the reporter's com-link, hoping to stay in contact with a representative of the anthro commune. Now, he realizes, it is his only means of finding his way back to Mei Nili.
He listens briefly to the gentle internal chirping of the com-link to be sure it works. Satisfied, he disconnects and puts his full attention on the magnificient city around him, the brave dream of the Maat. Magravity– the conversion of magnetism to the acceleration force of artificial gravity-enables the celestial heights of these prismal turrets, skytowers, and aerial domes. He hears the deep, oceanic drone of it underlying the crystal music of all the andrones in this region of the city.
He turns down his internal sensors-a heavy silence reigns at these heights-and dips lower to avoid the spark-glint of flyers appearing in the hazy distance among the spires. No one was hurt in the commission of his property crime, and he hopes that not much of an effort will be made to apprehend him. Space-weathered as he is and with his power cells at nearly full capacity, he could cause far more destruction than the wetware tucked under his arm is worth.
Wide, interwoven balconies and ribboning promenades appear below, bridging the cathedral spaces between cupolas and minarets. A mere dust mote among these immensities, Munk glides through the gap between derricks, astonished at the graceful heights rising from the crystal-cut shadows below. Unsure of where he is going for the first time since his creation, he lets the eddies of heat swirling from the behemoth structures carry him.
The fear he feels in the titanic presence of his creators is mitigated somewhat by his cargo. The Maat would want him to save Mr. Charlie from those who would use him as wetware, indifferent to the fact that this relict brain was yet a man even though his bones had melted long before in ancient Califomica.
Down Munk drifts into the deep gorge of Terra Tharsis, past mammoth-winged buttresses and laser-lit parapets, confident that his makers are pleased with him. After all, why else would the neo-sapiens who manufactured him have put a human thumbprint on his heart?
Shau Bandar misted his sinuses with a max dose of degage olfact, calming his tripping heart. How could he not have anticipated that this rogue androne would defy the Moot? Too much olfact, he berates himself and holds the thumb-ring
mister to his nostrils again. But the overload is tripped, and be has to make do with the placid action already soothing his excited brain. Too much olfact, Shau, and not enough edge-or common sense.
With the other reporters in the journalists' loge nattering excitedly around him and the timpan-com whispering urgently in his inner ear from the copy office insisting he get to the chamber floor before the other correspondents corner the jumper, Shau Bandar stares mutely from the gallery. He notices that the morph, clade, and androne loges are nearly empty. They have little interest in a small anthro dispute over relict wetware. Below, the jumper sags on the witness bench, which is carrying her slowly backward out of the amphitheater. Her features are slack with that grim look people who do not use olfacts have when they are shocked.
The loge, too, is pulling away from the amphitheater, and the correspondents are filing toward the exit. But Shau Bandar stays at the gallery rail, waiting to see what, if any, response will come through from the Commonality. The holoforms of the Judge and the Clerk vanished immediately after adjournment, but he expects that the startling turn of events will elicit a reappearance at the six-minute forty-second mark. He stays at the rail even as the loge settles and the journalists exit. A few minutes later he adjusts the microswitches in his cuff to monitor the amphitheater. The Clerk flicks on and meets the incoming holoform from Earth-the archive agent, Sitor Ananta.
"This is not just a property crime to the Commonality," the agent says for the court record. "As duly reported, Mr. Charlie was absconded with and held by the revulsive lewdists and the anarchistic Friends of the NonAbelian Gauge Group and is classified an insurgent, which is why he was exported off-planet in the first place. He may yet be a tool of those radical elements. Now that your negligence has permitted him to go rogue, the Commonality is charging you to upgrade this crime from property theft to abetting insurrection against established order with potential threat to human life. You are most strongly requested to recover this tainted resurrectant and return our property to us so that this potential threat to the Commonality may be obviated. Give this top priority."
Sitor Ananta vanishes, and the Clerk's response, if any, is coded and undetectable by Shau Bandar's sensors. His colleagues will read about the Commonality's ire in Softcopy and are more interested now in the jumper's reaction. He sees them below, milling around her in the waiting alcove. Still, he doesn't hurry. He has a way to have her all to himself.
Mei Nili shoulders through the small crowd, growling, "Get off me. I've got nothing to say. Bounce off."
Her ire-so rustic and raw-engages the reporters' interest all the more. They claw her with questions:
"Where will you go now?" "Say something about the androne. Are you angry?" "Do you now regret going rogue from Apollo Combine?" "Will you apply for asylum with the commune here in Terra Tharsis, or are you going back to the reservation on Earth?" "Will you use olfacts to manage this emotional bruising?"
She bumps into Shau Bandar, and as she irately shoves past him, he whispers, "I can take you to Munk."
She fixes him with a hot stare, and he takes her arm and pulls her to his side. "I've got an exclusive here," he says loudly to the others, and when a captious cry goes up among the journalists, he says to her, "Tell them. It's the only way they'll bounce."
"Yeah, yeah," she says morosely. "He's got the exclusive."
Shau Bandar smiles lavishly at the dejected reporters. "You'll find out all about it in Softcopy."
"Where's Munk?" Mei presses as soon as the others dissipate among the ivory colonnades. "Did he tell you he was going to do this?"
"I don't believe he knew himself," Shau Bandar replies, guiding the jumper toward the exit arches, "not until that creepy archivist took off about memory-culling Mr. Charlie. That must have triggered a response from Munk's C-P programming, don't you think?"
Mei nods her head, heavily. "Mr. Charlie and I changed Munk on Phoboi Twelve. We forced him to override his primary programming. He's unpredictable now."
"I don't think so. He's an androne. He told me that the Maat contra-programmed him with an abiding interest in humanity. He's committed to Mr. Charlie now, and we can predict he will act to preserve that archaic brain."
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