could see why he might think that. All DNA-based humanoids react in much the same way to alcohol—except, of course, for the Tetrax, who have apparently modified their entire species by means of genetic engineering to correct nature’s mistake and save them from the indignities of drunkenness.
“I didn’t do it,” I told him. “I was framed.”
“You didn’t kill Mr. Atmanu?”
“No.”
“Then how do you account for the fact that your handprints are arrayed on the murder-weapon, in a configuration suggesting very strongly that you were holding it in such a way as to strike out with it, aggressively.”
“There was nothing aggressive about it. I was trying to hold him off when he came at me with a knife. I tried to hit Heleb with it, but the Sleath was perfectly all right when the Spirellan knocked me out. Heleb killed him.”
“You say that you were knocked unconscious?” 238-Zenatta queried.
I sighed. “No, I don’t have a bruise or a fracture,” I admitted. “He squeezed the arteries at the side of my neck—and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he knew how to do it without leaving a mark.”
“There are five witnesses,” the lawyer pointed out. “Their statements agree in every detail. Simeon Balidar has admitted that you and he were cheating, and the cards entered into evidence do appear to be marked. All five witnesses state that when Mr. Atmanu attempted to take his money back, you attacked him with the chair, and that you continued to beat him with it after you had rendered him helpless. Sleaths are, by nature, a relatively fragile species, and Mr. Atmanu appears to have been a lightly-built individual, so I suppose you might claim that you did not intend to kill him, but the court is likely to take the view that it was your responsibility to take your victim’s seeming fragility into account when....”
“He wasn’t my victim,” I reminded him. “He was Heleb’s victim. Heleb killed him—on Amara Guur’s orders. They wanted to frame me. They were all in on it. They all work for Amara Guur.”
38-Zenatta was a good lawyer. He cut straight to the heart of the matter. “What motive did they have for arranging such a conspiracy?” he asked.
“They came to my apartment,” I said, fully conscious of how feeble it sounded. “Heleb and Lema, that is. They offered me a job I didn’t want to take. Guur wanted to make sure that I had no choice.”
238-Zenatta consulted his wristpad. “Heleb and Lema have stated that they did indeed come to your apartment to offer you a job,” he agreed. “They have made a tape of the conversation available to the court. They have explained that they subsequently discovered that your reason for hesitating over their offer was that the alternative plans for raising capital for your expedition, to which you refer on the tape, involved conspiring with Simeon Balidar to cheat at cards. Balidar confirms this. Heleb claims that when he discovered what you were doing he made a second attempt to persuade you that it would be far better to swallow your pride and join his expedition than to resort to criminal means.”
“Does he have a tape of that conversation?”
“Alas, no. He explained that because there were Zabarans present, who have particular concerns regarding privacy, he switched off his recording device before entering the room.”
“If we can prove that they were all working for Amara Guur,” I said, hopefully, “that would surely be evidence of a conspiracy.”
“Can we prove that, Mr. Rousseau?” asked 238-Zenatta, skeptically. I couldn’t blame him. Whether he believed me or not—and I was pretty certain that he didn’t—his chances of finding any evidence of a formal contract of employment between any of the five fatal witnesses and our unfriendly neighborhood crime-lord were a bit slim.
“Can we prove that they dosed me with the alcohol after I was unconscious?” I asked.
“Perhaps, if a sufficiently thorough medical examination were carried out,” he said, even more skeptically. “But it would be severely detrimental to our best defense if we did.”
“I’m not going to admit to killing the Sleath,” I told him, flatly. “Diminished responsibility is not an option. I’m not guilty, and that’s the way I’m going to plead. Whether anyone believes me or not, I’m going to tell the court the truth.”
“I fear, Mr. Rousseau, that the court might not approve of that strategy,” the lawyer said. “It might well seem to the court that you are adding a manifest slander to the burden of your culpability. You would be asking the court to believe that someone would go to extraordinary lengths to obtain your participation in a perfectly ordinary expedition. There are hundreds of people in Skychain City who have skills similar to yours, Mr. Rousseau, many of whom are desperate for employment. Why would Amara Guur, or Heleb, or anyone else, commit murder in order to obtain your services, when they could hire a person of almost equal capability for little more than half the wage that Heleb offered you in your apartment?”
Put like that, it did seem impossibly weird. Obviously, I considered myself the best of the best when it came to pioneering the trackless wilderness, but I could see how other people might find it difficult to agree with me. After all, I’d never actually made the big strike for which I felt myself destined. I was so poor, in fact, that if I really had thought that I could finance my next expedition by running a crooked card-school, I might very well have tried it.
I looked at 238-Zenatta and he looked back. There wasn’t the slightest hint of challenge in his stare; none was necessary.
“I didn’t do it,” I said. “I don’t have any real evidence that Heleb did, or that anyone was working for Amara Guur, so we’ll leave that out of the story—but I’m sticking to the truth. I wasn’t cheating, and I didn’t kill the Sleath. He went for me with a knife, and I defended myself with entirely reasonable force. He was still alive when Heleb attacked me and knocked me out. That’s it.”
238-Zenatta shook his head sadly, but he knew his duty. “Very well,” he said. “That is the case I shall argue.”
CHAPTER SIX
I watched my trial on television, giving evidence from my cell. 238-Zenatta put in what seemed to me to be a rather lackluster performance, but I couldn’t blame him for that. My performance lacked luster too. We both knew the score.
The Tetron magistrate, a supersmart AI, found me guilty in thirty-seven seconds. My appeal took a little longer, but it was dismissed within two minutes.
I was given three days to find a way of paying off my debt that was acceptable to all interested parties. The Sleath had had no traceable relatives, so the parties in question were myself and the Tetron administration. The administration would be reasonable—but they would insist on my finding a way to pay back the necessary ransom as quickly as humanly possible. I might be able to persuade them that twenty-five years of servitude was reasonable, but they wouldn’t let me work it off at a rate that would take fifty or a hundred if anyone made a formal offer that looked better.
I called Aleksandr Sovorov immediately and told him that I’d take the job at the C.R.E.—but he informed me, rather coldly, that the offer had been withdrawn. The Coordinated Research Establishment had an image to maintain; they didn’t hire convicted murderers.
Naturally enough, nobody came forward immediately to offer me a way out. I knew that I’d have at least two days to contemplate the possibility that I’d be spending the next forty years in a coma while my metabolism devoted itself to the manufacture of exotic proteins and my brain processed data for anyone whose calculative problems required a ready-made neural network rather than something custom-built from silicon and high-temperature superconductors. Neither process would leave any manifest scars, but rumor has it that the only kind of mid-life crisis worse than discovering that you’re fifty years out of sync with history and living in a second-hand body is finding that you’re also living in a second-hand brain whose habitual pathways have been re-geared to processes of thought that are, to say the least, unhuman.