Attanasio, AA - Solis

The Clerk's slender voice pipes up, "Discovery and memory cull records on display."

Above him, for the benefit of the loges, calligraphic smears of color squirm through space: coded spectra to be translated by the spectators' sensors. Mei ignores them, but Munk records the full display and determines by correlation to the data in his anthropic model that Mr. Charlie had been interred in the

archaic province of Californica in only his ninth decade. The primitive brevity of his existence-for such can hardly be deemed a life-stirs pity in the androne, and he determines then and there that this man, who through a misweave in the weft of history has escaped the utter obliteration of his age, shall know the abundance of life the human spirit deserves. Fear of what he is about to do swarms like static through him, but he overrides his panic by focusing on the prime directive of his C-P program, to treat all people humanely-even if it

means his own destruction. Mr. Charlie is human, and he will no longer be treated as an object, if Munk can so help it.

Sitor Ananta continues, "The exhibit, revived by standard archival procedures-"

"I have seen enough," Munk declares, rising. He hears the music of the nearby andrones shift tone, sensing his threat. Fear mounts again in him as he expects the Maat to intervene and scatter him into a tenuous blowing of atoms. But nothing happens.

The Commonality agent continues talking: "...exists in its animated form today only because-"

"No judgment will be passed on this human being," Munk declares, "unless it is the judgment of life and the concomitant freedom that humanity has wrested from the accidents of creation and history."

of the efforts exerted by the Commonality Archi-" The image of Sitor Ananta shrivels away.

"Be seated, Androne Munk!" the Clerk commands. "You are in contempt of the Moot."

"Yes!" Munk confesses, amazed and emboldened by his defiant survival in the temple of his makers. He can hear-sense--all the other andrones in the chambers and corridors of the tower, each one a cell in the metabody of a grand silicon mind. He feels their animus. Yet none act. Are his makers restraining them? Can there be any other explanation? "I am in contempt of you." He points a squared finger at the magistrate and sweeps his hand toward the loges. "And I am in contempt of all of you who dare pass judgment on a human being who has broken no law, committed no crime."

"Sit!" the Clerk brays.

"No." Munk steps toward the Judge. The loud music of the foreign code logics from the andrones in the court crest with rageful intent, but no threat appears.

"I have been created by the Maat and contra-parameter programmed by them to study and respect homosapiens. I am an authority. And this archaic brain I recognize as human and alive. I cannot permit you to pass any other judgment but life and freedom upon him. Do you understand?"

The fiery halo above the Judge's faceted head flares hotter. "I understand that you are in contempt of the Moot and will now be removed-forcibly, if necessary."

"The Maat have created me to withstand the gravitational tidal forces of the Saturn system," Munk loudly informs the court. "Unless you intend to destroy yourselves, the exhibit you presume to judge, and this entire chamber, you dare not try to stop me."

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 comlink, 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 comlink 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