Attanasio, AA - Solis

"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 something."

"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."

"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 NonAbelian 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 genderless 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.