Galactic Empires (5 page)

“False memories? You mean someone created them in a studio like a Full Sensory drama?”

“No. An accomplice went to Ormal in his place to provide an alibi. That experience was recorded, then loaded into Fiech’s brain.”

“You believe someone like the defendant went to Ormal. How do you know it wasn’t him?”

“Because he was on Nova Zealand firing the missile.”

“But the person, the
personality
, sitting here in this courtroom today did not fire the missile, did he?”

Paula gave the defense lawyer a small smile. “Nice try. The defendant’s personality arranged for the current memory to be implanted; therefore he is what he wants to be.”

“But what he is now is not the original personality?”

“Who knows? There is no test that I’m aware of for identifying personality; in any case, as any first-year psychology student will tell you, personality is fluid. It changes as you age. Some say it matures. Just because you don’t remember committing a crime doesn’t mean you’re innocent of it. That precedent was established when the first memory erasure techniques were developed. The Justice Directorate suspension chambers are full of criminals who removed inconvenient incriminating memories. I’d point out that Fiech has erased his entire life prior to joining the Colliac Fak company, which has very neatly blocked our investigation into the Free Merioneth movement, and we all know what that’s led to in the last six months. To me such behavior is the personality trait of a real fanatic.”

“Objection,” Ms. Toi exclaimed. “Speculation. I want that struck from the record.”

“You asked for my opinion on his personality,” Paula countered.

“I’ll allow it to stand for the moment,” Judge Jeroen said. “It was a legitimate answer to your line of questioning, defense.”

“Your Honor.” Ms. Toi bowed to the judge. “Investigator, you said that memory erasure is common when a crime has been committed.”

“That is correct.”

“Have you ever known alternative memory for the time of the crime to be implanted?”

“I haven’t come across it before, although the technique is relatively straightforward. You just need a colleague like the one Fiech had to record his day.”

“So if I implanted the memory of firing the missile into your brain, would that make you guilty?”

“No. Because I didn’t
do
it. The rest of the physical evidence would support that.”

“So, in fact, Investigator, this boils down to two sets of opposing evidence. Both equally valid.”

“Valid but not of equal credibility. That is correct.”

“Please describe to the court the efforts that you undertook to establish that the person on Ormal was not Dimitros Fiech.”

“I retraced the route myself, and interviewed everyone he remembered encountering. Security camera images were recovered and analyzed.”

“What did they show?”

“A man with similar facial features to Dimitros Fiech traveled to Ormal. We assumed he underwent a cellular reprofiling treatment”

“But you can’t prove it. The man sitting here in the dock could have been the one on Ormal, and his made-up doppelganger could have fired the missile on Nova Zealand. Am I right?”

“No. Under my instruction, a Directorate forensic officer analyzed the seat cover on the plane that flew from Essendyne hack to Harwood’s Hill. It had been cleaned, but we found large traces of vomit containing DNA. It did not correspond to Dimitros Fiech’s DNA, yet it was the seat he remembers using and being sick on. It wasn’t him on Ormal.“

Ms. Toi gave Paula a startled look. “I see. Thank you, Investigator.”

“No!” Dimitros Fiech yelled. “No, you can’t believe that. I didn’t do it! Damn you, I didn’t!” He turned to the jury and gave them a wild stare. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. I
know
I wasn’t!”

Judge Jeroen banged his gavel. “Be seated, Mr. Fiech.”

“I’m being framed!” He turned to Ms. Toi. “Do something!”

She winced.

Paula quietly left the witness stand as Fiech continued his tirade. Two large court officers moved forward into the dock as the judge banged his gavel repeatedly.

*

After another day and a half of evidence, the jury retired. They took an hour to reach their verdict of guilty. Judge Jeroen sentenced Dimitros Fiech to two thousand seven hundred and sixty years’ life suspension, twenty years for each of the people who suffered bodyloss in the crash.

*

Paula was packing her bag when Aidan Winkal rapped his knuckles on the office door. “Hello,” she said.

He grinned. “I just came to say good-bye.”

“That’s very kind of you, Aidan. You’ve handled yourself well while we were putting this case together, and I know this hasn’t been easy. I expect your Chief will be promoting you.”

“Probably. I gather Christabel got her promotion.”

“Yes. Chief investigator at last. I’ll miss her. There’ll be a party in Paris tonight when we get back. You’re welcome to join us.”

He scratched at his short hair. “Go to Paris just for a party. That’s a real city-dweller thing. An Earth city.”

“Come on, you’re not such a small-town boy. I’d dance with you.”

“I can’t believe how thorough you were. I really thought the defense was going to nail you with that question about evidence from Ormal. I guess she didn’t realize how methodical you are.”

Paula shrugged and dropped her spare jacket into the bag. “It’s what I do. I have to be certain for myself. And Ms. Toi should have known, I’m notorious enough for my diligence. He was badly represented.”

“So you’re convinced he did it?”

“The Dimitros Fiech sitting in the dock this morning was the physical person who launched the missile. I have no doubt of that.”

“Now there you go, see: a real lawyer’s answer.”

“I concede defense did have a point about what constitutes a whole person. Body and memory are the two halves of being human.”

“But Fiech’s memory of the attack has been wiped. It’s over. We got what we could of him.”

She smiled reassuringly. “Yes, we did. And he got the sentence he deserved.”

Christabel and Nelson appeared behind Aidan. Neither looked as jubilant as they should have done. Aidan gave Paula an uncomfortable smile. “I’ll leave you guys to it.”

“Try and get there tonight,” Paula told him. “I meant it about that dance.”

A sheepish Aidan shuffled out past Christabel, who did her best not to laugh at his schoolboyish delight.

“Is he really your type?” Christabel asked.

“I don’t have a type,” Paula said. “But he is an honest policeman. I value that.”

Nelson looked at Christabel, then Paula. Took a breath. “Anyway… I’m also here to deliver my Dynasty’s thanks. We appreciate the effort involved in securing the verdict.”

“You’re welcome,” Paula said. “It’s a shame we couldn’t use Fiech to uncover his co-conspirators, but that memory wipe was very efficient. There is nothing left of his life prior to his arrival in Sydney for that job. Until we finally arrest the entire Free Merioneth Forces, we’re not going to find out who he is.“

“Was,” Christabel corrected.

Nelson’s expression turned bitter. He made a show of closing the door. “That’s unlikely to happen. Not now.”

“What do you mean?” Christabel asked.

“Confidentially: my Dynasty, along with several others, has agreed that Merioneth will become an Isolated world.”

Paula let out a hiss of exasperation. She’d suspected something like this would happen. The last few months, while they’d assembled the case against Dimitros Fiech, had seen the Free Merioneth campaign expand to alarming proportions. After the Nova Zealand plane, the movement had been steadily refining their operations, developing into more sophisticated assassins. The results were dramatic. Their targets were now dispatched with cool efficiency, and the number of collateral casualties was significantly reduced. In the last twelve attacks, thirty-nine Dynasty members had suffered complete bodyloss. The new generations were now running very scared, with few of them leaving their mansions on the private family worlds. “You gave in,” she said in frustration.

“We couldn’t afford it,” Nelson said with equal chagrin. “The cost of providing upgraded security for every member of every Dynasty was completely unrealistic. Far beyond writing off the investment costs in Merioneth.”

“There’s more at stake here than money,” an annoyed Christabel snapped.

“I know that,” Nelson said. “Of course, it won’t appear to be any kind of climb down. We wouldn’t allow that. We negotiated the terms of Isolation with the new Nationalist Party that sprung up on Merioneth. The terrorists stop their attacks, and in a couple of years we close the wormhole. They’ll be on their own. Forever.”

“It’ll come back to bite you,” Paula said. “You’ve shown your opponents a weakness. It can be used every time someone wants a concession out of a Dynasty.“

“That was one of the reasons we agreed,” Nelson said.

“I don’t understand.”

“We don’t have other opponents, not in this category. The Intersolar Commonwealth is a relatively civilized place. Sure, we can all disagree with each other; politicians on half of the planets we’ve got aren’t speaking to the other half; but there’s only a tiny minority who want to leave, and an even smaller number who resort to violence to obtain their ends. This whole succession notion is ridiculous. An Isolated planet will never benefit from the advances the rest of us make. Their social and economic development will be stunted; hell, Merioneth will probably regress. When we announce that the wormhole is to be closed, we’re expecting a lot of Merioneth’s ordinary residents will rush back to the Commonwealth before Isolation begins. Our analysts have reviewed this; they’re not sure Merioneth will even be able to maintain basic rejuvenation technology levels, not in the short-to-medium term. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live there. Bodyloss will become death again.”

“And the Dynasties consider that a big plus point,” Christabel reasoned. “Anyone who doesn’t like the Dynasties and what they represent will be free to emigrate to Merioneth.”

“Then we slam the door shut behind them,” Nelson said. “It’ll be a bolt hole for malcontents the Commonwealth over. Everyone is better off afterward.”

“An old-fashioned pressure valve for hotheads,” Paula muttered.

“So the Dynasty leaders decided,” he admitted. “It still galls me that the real culprits behind the attacks won’t be brought to justice. But that’s a political price, and it gets set far above our heads.”

*

The club was underneath a twenty-second-century retro-Napoleonic building on the Left Bank. It was chic enough, though there were far more expensive places in Paris, but aside from Christabel herself, no one from the Serious Crimes Directorate office could afford an evening partying with the truly wealthy Grand Family members who colonized such establishments-and Christabel never pushed her heritage on anyone. Until tonight.

It was dark inside the annular vault, a gloom punctured by holographic blobs oscillating with naughty subliminal vibrations. Paula flinched as she walked down the stairs to the floor; the sound system was like a derated sonic weapon. Glass galleries enlivened by violet light ran around the high stone walls at two levels, linked by curving glass stairs. People thronged along them, Paris’s eternal clique of bohemians, wearing clothes of semi-organic fabric embossed with elaborate patterns that merged seamlessly into the vivid OCtattoos on their skin. It was hard to tell what was fabric and what was flesh. Feathers were the current merging trend, curving fronds longer than ostrich quills that sprouted from the spine. Six months ago, it had been membrane petals. Several men displayed their plumage as Paula walked by, having it fan out on either side of their shoulders like wings. One was pure angel white, with a divine body to match. She smiled modestly and walked on, immune to such raffish peacocks.

Christabel was close to the bar inside the central circle of pillars, knocking back a tall glass of Ritz Pimms. Her lips were microlayered gold. Whenever a hologram floated across her, they sparkled dazzlingly.

“You made it!” she shouted at Paula. Paula snagged a glass from a waitress. “Cheers!”

“Is he here?”

Paula shrugged, pretending not to understand. But there was a specific reason she was wearing a traditional little black dress with a semi-organic hem that swirled about of its own volition. In her newly youthful body, it made her look hot, and she knew it. Several junior investigators were staring in a way they’d never dare back at the office. “Congratulations,” Paula said. “Traitor.”

Christabel laughed. “I’ve served my time. And I made chief investigator on merit alone. That’s what I needed. For myself if not the Dynasty.”

“You’ll be a loss to the Directorate.”

Christabel leaned in a fraction. “The Dynasty is going to need me. Our entire concept of security is going to have to be revised, thanks to our idiot founders giving in to Merioneth. I heard that everyone is now pouring funds into researching personal-sized force-field generators. And they’re all beefing up the defenses on our private worlds.”

“Typical. So am I allowed to ask what department you’re joining?”

“Deputy manager EdenBurg protection.”

“Wow. Big field.”

“Yeah. Give me a couple of decades and I’ll make it to chief of the division. After that…” She trailed off and drained her glass.

“You’ll be locking horns with Nelson.”

“Nhaaa. He’s too smart. We’ll get on, at that level you have to.”

“Speaking of which-”

“Of course. We’ll dataswap. Happy to. Unless dear old grandma Heather actually kills someone—then I’ll be helping to cover her arse.”

“It’s not your Dynasty’s founder I’m interested in.”

“Oh?” Christabel plucked another glass from the bar.

Paula thought that she looked defensive.
How quickly alliances shift
. “If you get the chance to access your Dynasty’s file on the Merioneth Isolation, I’d appreciate a summary.”

“That kind of thing never gets put in a file, as you well know. What are you looking for? We got Fiech, for God’s sake. Two and a half millennia in oblivion! It doesn’t get better than that.”