"Not to put too fine a point to it, they were lovers."
He paused, and wiped at his eyes. I began to get an idea of what this was costing him. What it might cost me I'd have to wait to find out. I was feeling rather numb, to tell the truth.
I had stopped asking about my mother quite early in my life. I had my fantasies, like any child growing up without a mother. I think I'll just keep those private, if you don't mind. Precious little else in my life is private now that my origins have been turned into one of the most widely watched soap operas in the history of Luna.
My father's answers to my questions had always been vague. He told me my mother was dead, but never told me how she died. My impression was that it was too painful for him to talk about it.
He said her name had been Sara. No H. Should I have made the connection with the mysterious aunt that my father never talked about either? I don't know. It's a common enough name.
"Pardon me, Judge," Ed went on. "I loved her, too. More than John, in some ways, but I'm afraid I never had the nerve to stand up to our father, either for myself or for her, until I made my final break with the family and took the part that led... oh, no one wants to hear about my old career."
He was wrong, and his films were shortly to be resurrected and shown endlessly, until all the fuss died down. But he was right that the Judge had no interest in it.
"Sarah clung even more tightly to John after I left. I'm afraid I'm old-fashioned; I don't really approve, though I know that brother/sister incest has gained more acceptance in society since my youth. No one advocates natural procreation from such a union, of course... and I don't believe that is what happened here."
"Sir, do you have any actual evidence to submit to the court?" the Judge asked.
"No, sir, I don't. Other than the incontrovertible news that Kenneth is not John's son, but his clone. Or what we used to call his identical twin. I'll point out that if I hadn't come forward, this court would never have discovered the nature of the relationship."
"This is true," the Judge said. And why should it have? I've heard criticism of the Judge over this point, but it makes no sense. Why didn't the Judge compare the DNA earlier? Well, why didn't it compare my DNA with yours, or Toby's, or Banquo's ghost? Because there was no reason to, and even the CC can only do so much.
"What I have to offer," Uncle Ed went on, "is perhaps not completely relevant to the issue at hand, but I think it does have some bearing, if the Judge will just indulge me a few minutes more. I was told that normal rules of evidence do not apply in this courtroom."
"This is also true. Continue, but get to your point."
"It is conjecture, sir, I admit it. But I am as sure of it as of anything in my life. John Valentine was the most self-centered man I ever knew. Apart from our sister, I don't think he ever loved another human being. If he was to have a child, having one that was only half his would not have been good enough for him. He found the means to have himself cloned, during a time when human cloning was illegal. He used his own sister as the host mother.
"And then she died."
There was near silence as he got himself together again.
"At least the only reasonable assumption is that she died. This all happened just over a century ago, and for the first twenty years I roamed the system searching for her. For sixty years after that I paid for investigations. No sign of her was ever turned up.
"If she were alive, she would be with her brother John. The only question in my mind is whether he killed her, or drove her to suicide. John was capable of insane rage, and during these times he would do things he later regretted. I think that's what happened. It could have begun over nothing, really, just some minor disagreement, some perceived failing. I believe Kenneth's story would illustrate that, if he chooses to tell—"
"Mr. Valentine," the Judge interrupted. "It is a sad and fascinating story you tell, and it may be true. But is it offered as a mitigating factor in what Kenneth is accused of doing? If so, it should more properly be said after a finding of guilty, if such a finding is entered."
"I'm sorry, Judge, I got carried away. I've wanted to tell this story for such a long time. I have nothing further to offer in evidence."
"Thank you. Hildy, we have established that John and Kenneth Valentine are genetically identical. That Kenneth is, in fact, not Edward Valentine's nephew, but his brother. Do you have a further point to make?"
"Yes, I do, Judge." She shuffled importantly through the papers on the table in front of her. No pictures this time, but copies of dense print that I couldn't read from my position and wouldn't have understood if I could.
"It concerns an interesting situation in the law that I discovered," she resumed. "If you'll search the old genetic law statutes, you'll find that until sixty years ago, producing a human clone was illegal in Luna and almost everywhere else. It was a legacy I've traced clear back to the early part of the twenty-first century. In time these laws became so rigorous that, once the human reproductive system came under our complete control, it was thought necessary to make it illegal for two humans to possess the same genetic pattern. Even to the point of banning identical twins, triplets, and so forth. For a very long time, going back to just before the Invasion, there were no more identical twins.
"The penalties for violation of this law seem pretty draconian to me, and I suspect to most of us these days. But illegal cloning was something that almost never happened—perhaps because of the severe penalties—and no one seems to have worried about it a lot, since many years would go by without anyone being affected by the law at all. It wasn't until nearly a century ago that a movement began in the scientific and human-rights communities to rescind these genetic laws, culminating in their eventual repeal.
"But the simple fact is this: under these laws, it was forbidden for two human beings to possess the same genetic code, the same DNA. When this situation was found to exist, one of them had to go. One of them had no right to life.
"When such an identical pair was discovered, the younger of the two was put to death.
"It's one of those situations where, looking back, we wonder, 'What could they have been thinking?' Well, there had been abuses, back on Old Earth. I refer the court to the Buenos Aires Clones of 2025, a community of over a thousand identical women. Or the Aryan Conspiracy of 2034. These horror stories and others convinced the public and legislators that controls on this technology had to be tight indeed. Then came the Invasion, and the period historians call the Interregnum, when very little happened not directly related to the dire question of human survival as a species. Those post-Invasion survivors had little time to tinker with laws. And by the time humanity was breathing a little easier and had the leisure... well, it had all become fossilized. Repealing a law is much tougher than passing one, always has been. Unless the law creates an egregious and frequent sense of injustice, it simply stays on the books."
"It's an elegant history lesson, Hildy," the Judge said. "And I applaud your brevity. But where is it going? Are you arguing that Kenneth is an illegal person? Those laws are no longer in effect."
"No, Judge, he's not illegal. He was illegal, under the law, until he took his father's life. You see, the law never said it had to be the younger twin that died. This was how the law was administered, assuming the older had proprietary rights to the DNA. But through an oversight, a loophole, call it what you will, this was never spelled out.
"The fact is, neither John nor Kenneth had a legal right to exist... until one of them was dead. Then the survivor became a legal person.