Christopher Nuttall - A Learning Experience

“Thomas Flynn,” Kevin said. “Have you ever heard of him?”

Steve shook his head. Mariko nodded.

“He was accused of rape and murder, wasn’t he?” She said. “I remember reading about it a year or two ago.”

“He’s an American citizen who studied in Germany for some reason,” Kevin said. “While he was there, he was accused of raping and murdering a German girl. There was no certain proof, but he spent two years in a German jail before being allowed to go home — and now the Germans want him back. He went to us and requested asylum.”

Steve leaned forward. “Is there a chance he will be sent back to Germany?”

“More than I’d like to admit,” Kevin said. “Right now, relations with Europe aren’t very good. They’re blaming the federal government for us , believe it or not, and there’s a strong field of thought in Europe that thinks the Americans are going to get away with it again. So it’s a political and diplomatic nightmare.”

“I see,” Steve said. “Why do I have the feeling that he was allowed to flee to us?”

“I have no doubt,” Kevin said tightly, “that the Europeans will raise precisely that issue.”

Steve rubbed his forehead. “I don’t see this as being a major problem,” he said. “Tell him that we will take him in, under the same conditions as everyone else, if he agrees to undergo a lie detector test. If he’s innocent, we will inform the German Government and insist that they abandon their pursuit of him. If he’s guilty, he will be judged under our law.”

“If he’s guilty, he would be a fool to insist on pushing us,” Kevin observed. “Rape and murder… they’re among the worst crimes a person can commit.”

He smiled at the thought. Lunar justice, having the ability to definitely separate the guilty from the innocent, was not soft. If found guilty, Thomas Flynn would be introduced to the joys of breathing hard vacuum. But if he was innocent… Kevin shook his head, remembering just how much trouble the DHS had proved over the years. Wasn’t anyone smart enough, these days, to realise that admitting failure wasn’t the same as suicide? But he wasn’t too surprised, sadly. Success often went unrewarded, but failure always drew fire from politicians out for a few soundbites. The German police probably had the same problem.

“Yes, he would be,” Steve said. “But this isn’t the only person who came to us with a criminal record.”

Kevin nodded. In the long run, he suspected, perfect lie detectors would change society as much as anything else. Why bother with an expensive trial when a suspect could be interrogated, then either jailed or released? But it would cause problems too, he knew. What was to stop someone from being interrogated on just about any subject? Like so much else they’d pulled from the alien databases, lie detectors were very much a double-edged sword.

He scowled, inwardly. There were several people on the moon talking about forming a canton of their own, a canton where everyone would wear personal lie detectors at all times. If anyone lied, it would sound an alarm and the speaker would be gravely embarrassed. There were some advantages, Kevin had thought, to such an arrangement, but they would also cause very real problems. What would happen if someone lied without knowing they were lying? The lie detectors could only pick up deliberate lies.

Maybe it would prove that the liar didn’t intend to lie , Kevin thought. Or maybe it would create another set of headaches because they misunderstood the difference between a lie and a mistake .

“I’ll take your message to him,” Kevin said. “And do we want to do the same in future?”

“If people are being persecuted by governments, then yes,” Steve said. “But we must always reserve the right to issue punishment if they are guilty.”

“Which leads to another problem,” Kevin pointed out. “What do we do if the person is guilty by their laws, but not by ours?”

It was easy to imagine quite a few possibilities. There were no laws restricting gun ownership on the moon, although there were dire punishments for anyone stupid enough to threaten the integrity of the lunar settlement. Nor were there any laws on self-defence, drug abuse or quite a few other issues that were criminal matters on Earth. Kevin could imagine several problems if drug abusers sought out the right to live on the moon. He didn’t give a damn if someone wanted to drug themselves into a stupor every day, but if they posed a threat to anyone else…

Mariko smiled. “We can offer to take them in, while their home country can cancel their citizenship if they wish,” she said. “And we can warn them that what laws we do have are not to be trifled with, not lightly.”

“True,” Kevin agreed. One problem with letting juries decide everything — including the simple question of if the criminal act was actually a crime — was that the results could be somewhat variable. But, as they built up much more case law, he had a feeling that problem would slowly resolve itself. “Steve?”

“Make it so,” Steve said.

Kevin rolled his eyes. The discovery that Gene Roddenberry hadn’t been too far wrong about the development of technology had given the Star Trek franchise a new lease on life. There were even suggestions that humanity’s first starships should be modelled after the USS Enterprise or even Voyager . But, apart from the Defiant , there were few Star Trek starships that were actually practical as warships.

Still, we could build an Enterprise-D and call it a long-range exploration ship , he thought, dryly. But may God help her if she runs into someone smarter than the Horde .

“I’ll see to it,” he said. “And I’m sorry for interrupting your vacation.”

“I bet you are,” Steve growled. “Just you wait until you take a vacation.”

Kevin swallowed. Steve was far from cruel, but he did have a nasty sense of humour, despite their mother’s stern lectures. But then, he did have good reason to be annoyed. If Kevin had known just what they’d been doing, he would have let them finish before calling and requesting that they join him on the ship. Maybe that would have made them both feel better.

“I’ll rest on the ship,” he said. The first group of mercenaries were midway through their basic training, according to Romford. They’d be ready to leave Earth within two weeks; Kevin knew he’d be going with them. They needed to gather more intelligence and set up a permanent base on Ying, after all. And then they needed to set up other bases on other inhabitable worlds. “No rest for the wicked.”

“And to think we always thought you intelligence officers spent the days making up shit and the nights trying to get into someone’s pants, so you could betray her to the MSM,” Steve teased. “You actually did serious work?”

Kevin nodded, expressively.

“Oh,” Steve said. He smiled. “Seeing we’re here, what’s the current status with Mars and the other colonies?”

“The new ships have helped us move several thousand volunteers to the Red Planet,” Kevin said, “now we have the bare bones of a colony to hold them. So far, there’s been no major trouble, apart from a handful of rainstorms. General reports suggest that the engineered plants are taking root, but it’s far too early to be sure. We may need to insert more water from Titan or a few more asteroids in the near future.

“Titan Base is slower, but coming along now that we’re training up hundreds of new workers to start laying the foundations of a colony,” he continued. “The plan to establish the mass driver first seems to be working, which will allow us to use Titan as a base for water collection and distribution. But it will be several months before we’re ready to proceed. Until then, Mars is going to be dependent on asteroids.”