SoliS

Here in Terra Tharsis, however, she knows there are clades, new branches of humanity that would barely be recognizable to her as human, and the plasmatics, those who have genetically transcended anthropic anatomy altogether. Perhaps this chamber itself is a hive, and the organic loges floating overhead belong to a plasmatic class…
"Jumper Nili?" a smoky voice calls. "Androne Munk?"
A tall, sinewy youth with ethereal cheekbones, cumin complexion, fire-blue eyes blacked with kohl, and red hair glittering with pixel-gems and braided in a long rope down his back shows the palms of his tapered hands in colonial greeting and bows curtly. "My name is Shau Bandar. I represent Softcopy, a local news-dip service for the anthro commune. The Moot is allowing one of the twenty-six anthro news services to interview your prehearing, and I got the luck of the draw. If you don't mind, I'd like to introduce you to our viewers."
Mei has encountered reporters like this before, when she was a novice jumper and considered mildly newsworthy for wanting to leave the reservation in the first place to take up such risky work. This reporter, like the others, exudes that same blue smell of serenity-a sedating olfact used by journalists to put their subjects at ease. For that reason alone, she decides she wants nothing to do with him. "Look, Slim, why don't you go find out for us how long we're going to be kept waiting here-"
Munk quickly steps between Shau Bandar and Mei. "Excuse me," he says deferentially. "Could you kindly give us a moment?" Then turning his broad back to the reporter, he whispers hotly in a voice pitched for Mei's ears, "For hope's sake, don't speak too hastily, Jumper Nili. This reporter may prove helpful. He is, after all, like you, an anthro."
"Put it away, Munk. That's your C-P program talking. Forget your anthropic model. Can't we just get Mr. Charlie and find our way to Solis?"
"Has it occurred to you yet that Solis is four thousand, three hundred forty-five kilometers from here?" Munk whispers. "Have you given any thought as to how we're going to cross that much open terrain? The anthro commune may be able to abet our journey. Come on, now. Let's be logical and cooperate with this man."
Mei accedes with a reluctant nod, and Munk faces the reporter, beckoning him closer. "Excuse our ignorance, Shau Bandar," Munk says solicitously, "but this is our first time in Terra Tharsis. Perhaps you can inform us as vitally as we can you."
The reporter makes an adjustment to the microcontrols on the cuff of his purple dress coat, and a small blue light comes on in the collar of his short mantle, where he carries his sensors. "I'd be glad to help. Softcopy can connect you with both the anthro and androne naturalization projects-"
"We're not staying," Mei cuts in. "We're bound for Solis."
His brown,. angular face lights up. "Even better! That trek has endless appeal to our viewers. You know, I've never covered it myself, but I'd like to. I imagine the archaic brain you recovered from Phoboi Twelve will be your entree?"
"You know about Mr. Charlie?" Munk asks with surprise.
"Of course. It's in the court records. The news clips are already touting him as the Chiliad Man."
"Chiliad?" Mei frowns.
"The Thousand-Year-Old Man," Munk translates.
"What our viewers want to know," the reporter continues, "is what will you do if the Judge awards proprietorship to the Commonality?"
"Is that what's being decided here?" Mei asks, miffed. "They can't do that. Terra Tharsis is independent of the Commonality."
Shau Bandar nods sympathetically. "In principle, you're right. But the import of archaic remains has little precedent. That's why Softcopy is monitoring this case. The anthro commune is unhappy with the legal but inhumane exploitation of anthro remains by the Commonality. A copy of Mr. Charlie's radio distress broadcast is among the most popular clips in the contemporary index. In fact, the renowned Troupe Frolic already has a skit clip out based on the broadcast, called 'Wax Me Mind,' that's been both enraging and entertaining the commune since yesterday."
"When will the judgment be passed?" Munk inquires.
Shau Bandar regards the iridescent facets set in his cuff. "Initial arguments will be heard in about-oh, seventeen minutes. After that, judgment will be withheld pending further data for the minimum cycle required for a property case. That's one year-six hundred and eighty-seven martian days."
"What?" Mei's cry sends annulate echoes fading into the ivory distance.
"Am I right in assuming that neither of you has arranged to transfer credits here before going rogue?" the reporter queries.
"We had to respond immediately upon detecting Mr. Charlie's distress signal," Munk answers, somewhat defensively. "Regrettably, the credits we have accrued with Apollo Combine have been forfeit."
"Then after the initial arguments," Shau Bandar says, "I'll connect you with the naturalization projects and you can find work and begin to make yourselves at home here in Terra Tharsis."
Mei sits grumpily on the transparent bench, crosses her legs, and rests her chin on her fist. "This is just great. We risked our lives to salvage Mr. Charlie. He's ours, dammit. No one has any right to take him from us."
"Would you like to tell the viewers of Softcopy about the risks you took?" Shau Bandar says, edging closer.
Mei casts him a sidelong scowl. "What? Are you going to pay us for this?"
"Now, now," Munk intercedes soothingly. He places his heavy arm lightly on the reporter's shoulder and guides him away from the sulking jumper. "Come, let us talk. I am interested in asking you a few questions as well. Are your viewers aware, for instance, of contra-parameter programming in Maat-construct andrones?"
The Judge, in a sheath of amethyst fog and black fluttering scarves, stands at the center of the amphitheater beside the stick-mask of the Clerk. Between them, on a frost-green pedestal, the plasteel capsule is displayed. A score of loges float nearby, their galleries packed with spectators. Shau Bandar waves from one of them, and though he is talking, his voice is absorbed in silence.
Munk waves back, but Mei Nili offers nothing, staring straight ahead as the
transparent bench she shares with the androne skims over the marbled cream floor.
In his stentorian voice, the Judge announces, "The argument for proprietorship of the revived remains of Mr. Charlie has been conducted for the Common Archive by Sitor Ananta. As this argument has been laid before the Moot from Earth, the communications lag of six minutes forty seconds has been edited by the Clerk. The compressed argument presented here remains true in form and content."
The air beside the Clerk wobbles, and there appears a holoform image of a morph with slant-cut brown hair and long, Byzantine eyes, dressed in the loose, red-trimmed black uniform of the archives. "The archaic brain on display was uncovered at Alcoran site three by Commonality archivists twelve terrene years ago," the image declares. "The full records of discovery have been forwarded to the Moot. The remains date from the late archaic period, and though no chronicle of a prior life is extant, a direct cull was made of the dendritic memories and proof positive obtained that this individual experienced a full terminal episode before encephalic separation, glycolic perfusion, and immersion in liquid nitrogen. Though the definition of death has changed over historical time, this archaic brain was in fact declared dead by the definition of his own time. This is shown in the records of the dendritic cull, which have also been forwarded to the Moot."
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.