She sat back and sighed. “Anyway, Mr. Johansson, they’ve used up all their ammunition, and we’ve used up all of ours. Today, the judge will decide. Unless a miracle occurs for them, we will win.”
I looked over at Rosie, Lianne, and Howard. Howard looked ready to throw up. It seemed like a bit of an over-reaction, since my impression through all of this had been that he was being dragged along by the girls.
And speaking of, they didn’t look nearly as nervous as would be indicated by Ms. Benning’s confident remark. Perhaps their lawyer was stringing them along. But why? It wouldn’t increase his billing. And anyway, he didn’t look all that confident.
Then Rosie turned and looked at me, and my heart froze. I don’t think I’d ever seen the particular facial expression malicious triumph before, but trust me, it’s one of those expressions you’ll recognize the first time with one hundred percent certainty. What was going on? She couldn’t be expecting to win this case? And if not— With a sinking feeling of panic, I remembered Dr. Onagi’s suspicions. I sent a text to Will, Bill, and Bob. One of them had to be free, and they were in the minority of Bobs that were guaranteed to not be travelling at relativistic speeds.
I’ll take care of it, came back a moment later from Bill. I breathed a sigh of relief, but my stomach refused to un-knot.
The judge came in, we did the all-rise thing, then sat. There was considerable noise from the surprisingly large number of spectators. Apparently this case had achieved significant notoriety. The judge banged his gavel several times and demanded quiet.
Judge Katz spent a long time summarizing the facts and pleadings of the case. Even though I was deeply emotionally involved, I still found my mind wandering. I had to respect people like Ms. Benning who could sit through this regularly without their foreheads slamming onto the desk.
Then, finally, the judge came to the punchline. “I must, in the end, uphold the right of the decedent to decide her own destiny.”
There were gasps and muttering around the courtroom. I half-expected Rosie to stand up and start screaming invective, but no. She just—huh. She just took out her phone and texted something.
And, at that moment, I knew that Dr. Onagi had been right.
*
We all filed out of the courtroom. Ms. Benning was shaking my hand, and her assistant was making a phone call, when Rosie strode up to me.
“You may think you’ve won, but you still won’t steal our mother from us.”
“Chrissake, Rosie, are you still on that narrative? There is no stealing. There never was any stealing. Ignoring for the moment the fact that it was your mother’s decision, you still have her. You still have the body to bury, you still have her memories. You lost nothing!”
“Just the same, you won’t get her. I’ve made sure of that.”
“You mean sabotaging the stasis pod at the hospital?” I raised my eyebrows in an expression of exaggerated inquiry, and she went white. “I’m sorry, Rosie, but if you can defy a court order, so can I. Bill sent in a drone with the scanner and did the deed while we were in court. Except that, unlike you, Bill would have respected the court’s decision if we’d lost.”
Rosie took a step back and her lips formed into a silent snarl. I shook my head. “Bill confirmed with me that a device embedded in the stasis pod damaged it and shut it down, just around the time you sent a text. There will be an investigation, of course. I’m pretty sure sabotage of hospital equipment is a crime of some kind. I’m willing to throw myself on the mercy of the court for my transgression. I have a feeling it’ll go worse for you.”
I gave Rosie a blank, cold look. “I knew your mother and father. I loved and respected them both. Right now, I can’t understand how you could be related to them.”
She opened her mouth to say something, and I turned and walked away.
Travelling
Herschel
September 2236
Interstellar Space
“I’m serious, Herschel, it’s not coming back up.” Neil’s voice took on a little bit of a whine when he got really frustrated. The sound set my teeth on edge, and it was one of the only times I didn’t want to be around him.
“Have you jim-jammed the frammistan?”
“Oh, funny guy. How about you hang up the comedy act for a second and give me a hand. And if you start clapping, I will busterize you.”
I chuckled and activated one of my inside drones. We kept a set of spares in bay 446, which was about as central as you could get in the Bellerophon. The drone flew out the open bay doors, into the ship’s main axial corridor. Five klicks of straight flight took less than a minute, then a right turn, and I was in the power room. “Room” was a funny word to use for an open area a quarter kilometer on a side, but we’d gotten used to thinking of the ship as normal sized and ourselves as bugs.
Neil had three drones and a dozen roamers swarming the power core’s control area. For some reason, when Neil got frustrated, he made the roamers tap their feet. I’d never asked if it was on purpose. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“I’ve done everything!” he exclaimed as soon as he saw my drone. “It’s dead. Inert.”
“It works fine, he says. As dependable as one of our own, he says.”
“Fine, Herschel. Get it out of your system. Make fun. Then, when you’re done, maybe we can work on fixing this friggin’ thing!”
I considered milking it for a few more moments, but why get greedy? As sure as entropy, I’d have another chance sooner or later. “Neil, I can see from here that the anodes are saturated. You can do a bleed, which will take about an hour, or you can do a full restart in twenty minutes.”
“Oh, God, no.”
“I’ll help, okay? We can’t afford to be down like this all the time.”
I called up some more drones and roamers, and we started the long and finicky restart process. A bleed would take longer, but didn’t require a lot of effort, so it was Neil’s go-to response.
Once we had the roamers and drones set up, I turned to Neil. “Why don’t you have an AMI set up to monitor this stuff? It’s a freakin’ rote task, dude!”
“I know, I keep meaning to…”
“So, you’re doing things the hard way, because you’re too lazy to figure out how to do them the easy way? Neil, you are truly a putz.”
Neil grinned at me, unoffended. “A lazy putz, thank you very much. Okay, Hersch, point taken. I’ll get on it.”
I smiled, leaned back, and stretched. Just another damned day at the office.
*