Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (3 page)

“He’s
perfectly safe there,” Yuki complained. “That twisted bastard kept first me and
then Yvette in the freezer for months, and no one complained.”

“Neither
of you had been accused of a crime. According to international law, that creep
has the right to be well treated while awaiting his speedy trial. He must be
allowed the opportunity to defend himself, or as chief law enforcement officer,
I have to set him free. If he does get a trial, I have to thaw him for that,
too.”

Chaos
ensued. No one cared about the time or details about what would happen in seven
years. They had a lynching to attend. Red would find some reason to delay the
proceedings until tomorrow, by which time they would be under the sheet, locked
into Zeiss’ road to Oblivion.

Zeiss remembered a play about juries called
Twelve Angry
Men
. The drama unfolding before him could have been called
Eight Angry
Women
; though, technically, the absent Yvette would make it nine. He also
wasn’t certain if mere anger could encompass a punishment involving chainsaws
and rabid wolverines. Nadia, the power expert, grabbed her
high-resolution camera to capture the event
documentary-style.

“Since
we’re all here, I can’t think of a better time. All in favor of planning the trial
now?” Red asked.

“It’ll
be the shortest one in history. We all know he’s guilty,” Rachael proclaimed.
“Seconded.”

Red
asked, “In favor?”

Everyone
raised a hand, while Mercy raised both—unanimous.

Red
banged the gavel and announced, “Meeting adjourned until next week. Officer Herkemer,
take over.”

“Maybe
Toby should stay in the freezer for his own protection,” whispered Lou.

Zeiss
shook his head. “That only works until one of us gets seriously . . .” He
paused in the middle of the sentence. It took a moment to fish for the right
word. “Injured. From previous experience, any injury is going to happen in the
middle of a crisis where we can’t take the time to reason out all arguments.”

The
large, Polish security officer looked nervous. Even his normally hyper-rational
wife had a look in her eyes like a shark at feeding time. “I don’t like the guy
either, but he’s an Active. According to the rules, we need three judges, a
prosecutor, and a defense attorney. As an enforcement officer, I can’t take
sides.”

Given
her own injuries, Mercy represented those wronged by the accused. Red demanded
to handle the UN’s case. “You can share this bench,” ruled Herk.

Sojiro
and all the women rushed to share the prosecution’s side of the room.

Herk
said, “Yvette was the only one trained to be a defense lawyer.”

“Oh
well, he should’ve thought of that first,” Red argued. “Now he’s just as
screwed as she was.”

“Auckland? Want to volunteer?” Herk asked.

“I
can’t. You’ll need me to do the psychiatric evaluation. I can be objective
about that, but not whether he should fry. The plaintiff, Yvette, stood up for
me at my wedding. Lou won’t be a good choice because Toby blinded him and
stabbed his wife.”

“Mercy
broke his nose first,” Zeiss clarified because his own wife had wrecked a few
people’s faces in her day.

“Z
should volunteer,” Johnny said.

“Hell
no,” Zeiss objected. “Red will take it out on me if he wins.”

“We
all have women. You’ll be fair,” Johnny insisted.

“What
about Yuki? She was on Toby’s side.”

The
Japanese woman with one sleeve pinned to her side said, “Not now. If I sided
with him against the team, people wouldn’t trust me anymore. Honestly, I think
he deserves whatever punishment Red can devise.”

Zeiss
closed his eyes. He still felt weak and had trouble finding words, but no one
deserved to be crucified like this—especially since Red was forcing this
spectacle to vacate the stasis chamber for his sake. “I’m doing this under
protest,” he noted for the record. “That leaves Lou to play chief justice.”

“Because
I’m second in command?” asked Lou.

Herk
laughed. “Naw, you’ve been through the disciplinary system more than any of
us.”

Before
his marriage, Lou had been a notorious womanizer, known for his lewd and
offensive behavior. Lou flipped him off by rubbing an eyebrow. “Aren’t you
afraid I’ll be biased because he took my eyesight?”

“You
let him off with Sensei,” Herk allowed. “Do you promise to attempt to be
unbiased in this trial?”

“Sure,
but I get paid in beer,” Lou requested.

“I
would ask that no women be allowed on the bench because of prejudice,” Zeiss
said.

“A
woman
must
be placed on the bench because men don’t take the issue
seriously enough,” Red countered. “We’re over half the population; therefore,
we deserve at least one seat.”

Lou
said, “Might I suggest Oleander? She’s more mature and has spent far more time
in the legal system than I have.”

Herk
asked, “How about it, Ole?”

The
guard chuckled. “Being an old felon—what wonderful qualifications.”

“Please,”
Zeiss said, pausing again. “You make a good compromise. You were falsely
accused of a crime and served many years. I’m hoping your experiences may make
you willing to listen to all evidence before ruling.”

Oleander
asked, “How did you know I was innocent?”

“Your
statements in the signed confession were all passive. The bomb was planted. The
time was selected to minimize injuries.” Zeiss didn’t mention that he suspected
the real criminal had been her younger brother.

“Because
you gave me the benefit of the doubt, Z, I will try to do the same.”

Lou
announced, “That leaves only Park, Johnny, and Sojiro, who aren’t married.”

Sojiro
shook his head. “I’ve been an assault victim before. It wasn’t rape, but he
held me down and cut off two of my fingers.” The young artist swallowed. He
coped so well with his prosthetics and machine interface ability that people
forgot. “I can’t listen to descriptions of any violation and remain impartial.
Sorry.”

Red
put an arm around the man. “It’s okay.”

Johnny
said, “I think Park should do it. People will know what I’m thinking. I throw
things at the TV and shout. Italians are very passionate people, not
inscrutable and logical like Asians.”

Calmly
and barely above a whisper, Park said, “Objection: racial stereotyping.”

“See?”
said Johnny. “I would’ve punched me in the face by now for what I said.”

Lou
asked, “Have either of you been a judge of any kind before?”

“For
a martial-arts tournament,” Park admitted.

“Good
enough. You’re in. Ole, how do we get this party started?”

“After
we read the charges to the accused, he makes a plea: guilty, not, or no
contest. If he fights the charges, the state presents each piece of evidence
and their witnesses. For each of these, the defense gets a chance to
cross-examine and rebut. Once those cards are played, the defense presents
witnesses, who Red will call names and reduce to tears. If Dr. Baatjies is
found guilty, we do another round of testimony for mitigating or increasing the
penalties.”

Zeiss
raised a hand. “We actually begin with pretrial motions and deals. I would start
by removing talk of the death penalty from the table. The charter is founded on
the idea that in space, we’re all necessary to survive. Jezebel Hollis wrote
that criminals need to be reintegrated in the society.”

Red
grumbled, “You’re not allowed to use my mom’s words against us.”

“Mercy,
you thought Lou killed Yvette by accident or negligence, and you forgave him
readily.” Zeiss nodded to her pregnant belly, causing her to blush.

“Your
point?” Red asked.

“It
seems your rules apply to any crime except rape,” Zeiss replied.

“That’s
not fair.”

“According
to Mercy’s own discoveries, repeated exposure to subspace radiation has
unbalanced Toby—”

“Objection!”
Red shouted.

Lou
winced. “I’m blind, not deaf. Let him finish the sentence, Red. Only people
born with talents like you and Mercy are immune to the transition to subspace.”
The jumps made everyone else nauseous, drunk, or worse.

Zeiss
pressed his advantage. “Mentally ill people cannot be executed. Even if the
defendant didn’t qualify when he allegedly committed the crimes, Yvette
recently reformatted his brain with the Ethics page, the nuclear bomb of
punishments for Actives. It forces him to obey the Charter. He’s a mess of
twitches and glitches now.”

When
Red refused to reply, Zeiss changed tactics. “Ladies, our primary mission is to
educate the natives of Oblivion B4. Do you agree that we’ll need to scout the
surface of the planet in person when we arrive?”

“I
hate when he gets this way,” Red complained.

“Yes,”
Mercy admitted.

“And
for the survival of our scouts, a doctor needs to go along on any mission?”

“Yes,”
Red snapped.

“Which
one? Auckland can’t exert himself. Yvette can’t take the stress right now.”

“Whose
fault is that?” demanded Red.

“Order!”
said Lou. “Answer the question.”

“After
the birth, I might be able to go—” Mercy began.

Nearly
everyone shouted her down, including her husband, Lou. “It’s too dangerous.”

Auckland
provided the capstone. “If anything happened to
Mercy in the first year, we couldn’t synthesize the milk.”

Zeiss
held out his hands. “Point proven. We need Toby for the scouting mission if
we’re ever going to get home again.”

“Conceded,”
Red said. She also offered several colorful embellishments that would need to
be edited from the tape. “As long as he’s frontline fodder. We haven’t agreed
to let him out for any other duty.”

Zeiss
asked, “Can we agree that we need to see if the defendant is fit for trial and
have the doctor evaluate what Toby might need for continuing psychiatric
treatment?”

“Yeah,”
said Lou. “That sounds like a good first step. Red, can you find any hole in
his logic?”

“No,
but Toby can still hurt people he views as a threat or attempt to escape. Your
honors, we ask that Herk slap the accused in restraints for the duration of the
trial. Furthermore, the victims have petitioned that Toby never be alone with a
woman again.”

Zeiss
couldn’t remember the legal word he wanted, so he said, “Sure. That’s a
no-brainer.”

Auckland
said, “Um . . . I’ll need a few hours, and it’s
late already. Can we delay the actual trial till tomorrow after lunch? I’d like
to leave him in stasis till after we enter subspace to avoid further trauma.”

Everyone
agreed. Herk turned off the recording until Toby could be roused and checked
over by the doctor.

Red
had won her gambit. Using the crowd’s emotions, important technical questions
were delayed until it was too late, and the stasis chamber would be emptied. Now
someone had to tell Yvette she had to be present at the trial.

Out
of the room on a bathroom break and unable to object, Mercy was elected to do
the job.

Mercy stood on the floating patio attached to front door of
the control saucer. Her irreverent husband called it ‘the disco ball’ because
the saucer, covered with gray, domino-shaped tiles, dangled from the interior
of the spherical vessel. She preferred to think of it as a water tower because
the saucer was connected to the rest of the ship by a long, thick umbilical
that could carry air, water, and people to the ‘underground’ shuttle bay. From
this vantage point, she could see the verdant interior of the ship. The
curvature of the hull warped the textured blanket of lakes and trees like a
fish-eye lens or a wrap-around nature channel. She was always on the lookout
for damaged tiles or field generators. To her special senses, the many
overlapping gravity generators in the habitat resembled the dimples on a golf
ball.

Nevertheless, Mercy was stalling. She
hadn’t met with her friend since they opened the stasis unit to set Yvette free.
At first, Mercy stayed in Olympus to be with Lou and to receive medical
treatment. Since then, she had been delaying the reunion. Somehow Red had
talked her into breaking the bad news about the trial to Yvette.

Mercy took a stroll on the
floating, domino boardwalk that circled Olympus, grateful for the pergola slats
overhead that filtered the sun, as they also prevented people from bouncing too
high. After a few hops, Mercy had to adjust the sling that kept her right hand
close to her chest and above her heart. When it was too loose, the bandaged
hand slapped her in the left breast with each landing. Lower gravity saved
fuel, but it was hard on human health and safety.

Others regarded the green zone as
the fuel tank and air supply that made long voyages possible. She thought of the
ecosystem as a piece of home they always carried with them—the seed pod that a
piece of dandelion fluff carried on the wind. The alien ship’s design reminded
her of Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert homes—in harmony with nature.

Eventually, the weight of her promises
overcame her dread of the confessions she’d have to make.

Because the staircase of floating
dominoes had been ruled too dangerous, she rode the elevator platform to ground
level. The weirdest and most exciting part of any day was walking the nearly
four kilometers to work. The journey felt like she was running in a colossal
hamster ball. Since the gravity fields formed the skin of the balloon, down was
always directly under one’s feet.

She followed the well-worn path as
it weaved through the fruit and nut orchards. At this end, she had adjusted the
gravity strength to a little over half Earth-normal in order to give the
traveler time to adjust from the microgravity of Olympus. She had gradually
ramped the power up to almost a standard g at the colony nestled in the
Counterweight foothills—the other pole of the habitat. Unless the ship was
engaged in high-g maneuvers, the planners kept this default setting. Passing
the orchards, Berry Hill, and the vegetable patches, she eventually wandered
into Garden Hollow.

Her friend Yvette paced at the gate
in her hiking clothes, with her dirty-blonde hair in a twist, ready for chores.
Yvette’s mentally unbalanced ex-boyfriend, Toby, had faked her death and kept
her captive in the stasis chamber for months. Outwardly, there were few signs
of her recent ordeal, except slight wrist abrasions from being bound. Mercy
cringed at the reminder.
I should have found her sooner. She’s going to hate
me.

Forcing a smile, Mercy waved and
said, “Hi!” The nurse opted for a greeting hug, and the gesture lasted a little
longer than anticipated. Awkwardly, Mercy said, “Thanks for doing this.”

“Auckland has removed me from all
duties,” Yvette said with a shrug. “Yuki won’t let me do anything for myself.
I’m already bored senseless.”

Mercy handed the lab coat to her
friend. “I’m not supposed to touch anything dirty, and we’re doing chickens
first. All the birds will be more comfortable if you wear this. They’ve come to
associate it with feeding time.”

Yvette donned the coat. “Do not worry.
These chores are simple and soothing. You surround yourself with life. It’s
more therapeutic than the Valium.”

“Yeah, it’s just like Easter
morning because they like to hide the eggs. We also have to feed them and check
for signs of predators.” Inside the gate, Mercy handed the egg basket to her
friend. “Speaking of which, how are you sleeping? Any nightmares?”

“Has the doctor been dropping
hints?”

“No.” Mercy glanced at the ground.
“I just remember what I went through after my . . . encounter.” If you didn’t
mention the word rape, it didn’t have as much power. It had been over six years,
and she couldn’t say the word without pulling an extra layer of clothing around
her.

“Of course.” Yvette followed her to
the first coop. After they collected a few clutches of eggs, she said, “Every
so often when I close my eyes, I see Toby leering at me. Sometimes I even have
the irrational fear that he’s up there in Olympus, watching my every move.”

“He can’t hurt you anymore; I
revoked his Snowflake access.”

Outside the coop, they remained
silent until entering the turkey run. Once under the shelter, Yvette burst out,
“
Why can’t I pick decent men? Why do they
all hurt me? Is it me? Do I ask for it? Tattoo it on my forehead?
”

Mercy knew that Yvette’s first
husband had started as a surgical resident but ended as a drug addict. “Not all
men are bad. Lou . . .” She looked down, embarrassed.

“Made you curious?”

“I admit, I totally jumped his
bones, but I had a scientific reason.”

Yvette laughed, the first time
since her captivity. “Do tell. What changed your mind about him?”

“Hope.”

“That he’ll change? He’s
permanently seventeen.”

“Hope for our race. I knew I could
heal him. Even the worst of us can be loved. Being loved can make us become
more. I knew I could make him see again, well enough to pilot.”

“See again?”

“You didn’t hear? Exiting that
close to the sun blinded him. Toby kept his literal word about not killing Lou,
but still tortured him.”

This revelation forced Yvette to
sit again. “
Mon
Dieu
! I tried to stop him.”

“I know. We all know. Toby was bent
on revenge.” Mercy fretted at her necklace. “You saved my man. If there’s
anything you ever need, ask us any time of day or night for the rest of our
lives. We owe you that much and more.”

“Your man?”

“We pair-bonded, and we’re married
now.” Mercy pulled up the cord around her neck to display Lou’s flight-school
ring. Choosing to bond through the Collective Unconscious, a couple could share
emotions and even mental talents like Mercy’s special density sense. On the
downside, humans knew of no way to break this connection. When one partner
died, the other wasted away soon after.

“I’m so happy for you.
” Yvette sniffed. “Sorry. I cry at the drop of a
hat these days.”

“It’s
my fault. I was off having the time of my life while you were locked up.”

“You
thought I was dead, but you deduced the truth. You rescued me.”

“Not
fast enough.”

When silence stretched for too long,
Yvette prodded. “
What else happened while I
was gone? People don’t want to say anything to me. They think I’m too fragile.”

“
We
use a new soap now,” Mercy said. “Rachael swore she could taste the old one in
the recycled water.”

“Something
important. How did you hurt your hand?”

“Toby
attacked me with a scalpel after I broke his nose.”

“I
was hoping he would evolve, learn. He’s selfish, but I never thought he would—”
Yvette gave up any pretense of helping with the livestock and sat on the edge
of a trough.

Mercy
filled the trough with water as she explained. “It’s not entirely his fault. I
found out that every time we immerse the ship under Einstein’s Rubber Sheet
into subspace, it twists our brain chemistry. We think that’s why only Actives
were allowed to come on this journey. The radiation released as we pass through
a nexus makes us feel like we’re reading a page.” The golden sheets of paper
distributed by the aliens on Earth each contained a lesson that transmitted
directly to the brain, often rewiring parts. The experience was always
life-altering and usually traumatic. “That’s why Toby was so obsessed and imbalanced.”

“That
would explain his persistence. You have no idea how tired I was. He woke me
from the freezer so many times, and he was so needy. Time passed for him
between each session but not for me in stasis. It was like taking twenty
medical-school final exams in a row, with no breaks in between,” Yvette
continued. Subjectively, she’d been kept awake by a madman for days.

Mercy
dumped a bucket of leftover corncobs into the feeding area, and the two friends
wandered into the third bird area and sat in the small, wooden shelter. When
the chickens saw the lab coat, they mobbed the nurse. Mercy snatched an
enthusiastic young male and fussed over him with baby talk. Then she placed the
bird in Yvette’s lap. “Here, Strut will protect you.”

The
bird nestled in and allowed Yvette to pet it. “I’m afraid my monsters are too
big for this gentle soul.”

“Then
y
ou can sleep in our room when you have nightmares.”

“Lou wouldn’t appreciate the
intrusion. He’s a good man, but I wouldn’t do that to his honeymoon.”

“
What if I could arrange for us to be together at all hours for the next
eight months—professionally?”

The
nurse’s face lit up. “Oooo. Tell me!”

“Well,
I was saving the announcement until I was sure we wouldn’t lose it, but Lou and
I are pregnant.”

Yvette
celebrated for a while, with hugs and squeals of joy. The chicken on her lap
hopped away from the ruckus. Eventually, she whispered, “From the size, I’d say
this happened a few weeks before you got married.”

Mercy
blushed.

The nurse waved her hand. “Please,
this is my job.”

“It happened the first time we . . .
you know.”

“There goes that myth.”

“I’ll have a legitimate need to see
you. Multi-talent mothers are a very high-risk group.”

“New life is always a blessing.
I’ll be happy to help you, dear.”

“What was your first clue that I
was . . . ?” Mercy fished for an appropriate euphemism for pregnant out of
wedlock.

“A sordid, man-hungry vixen?”
Yvette teased. “You wouldn’t wear Lou’s shirt unless your own didn’t fit.”

The large T-shirt read ‘Don’t
Blink.’ “How do you know it’s his?”

“I was with his former girlfriend Vanessa
when she bought it for him, dear. It’s from his favorite Dr. Who episode. Does
that bother you?”

“The British sci-fi or the
underwear model he probably isn’t over yet?” Mercy shrugged. “If we threw out every
item of clothing another woman gave him, he’d spend most of his time naked.”

The nurse gave a throaty chuckle.
“Which is how you got into this situation in the first place.” Arm around her
friend, Yvette said, “Tell me one thing that delights you about him.”

The younger woman smiled.
“Sometimes he wakes before I do, but he can’t get out of bed without waking me.
I’m a light sleeper. So he lays there and waits for me to wake up on my own. He
can tell by the change in my breathing.”

“Then what?”

“He sings to me. This morning, it
was ‘Have I Told You Lately?’ He was a little off tune, but it’s been playing
in the background of my mind all day. It helps to fight that voice that says
I’m not good enough.”

The nurse pulled her into another embrace
and held her so tight she could barely breathe. “Cling to that joy this hard.
Don’t let the rest pry your fingers away.” When the other woman released her,
Yvette asked, “What else did they tell you to hide from me?”

Mercy struggled to find a way to
broach the subject. “
Sanctuary
was arranged as a test to see if mankind
was mature enough to enter space.” After a pause, she added, “We failed.”

“Because Toby broke the Charter?”
Yvette asked.

Mercy nodded. “But there are
loopholes. Sensei will give us a second chance to take the test. It’ll be
harder this time. We need to visit a planet at the very edge of our ship’s
range and help the race that lives there the way Sensei helped us—give them
twenty-seven ideas, just like they gave us. We could be
responsible for an entire civilization reaching the next level, as well
as Earth being granted the stars.”

“Isn’t
that playing God?”

“We
benefited from that interference. Millions of lives were improved,” Mercy
argued.

“What
about culture shock?” Yvette asked.

“We’ll
concentrate on baby steps. We owe it to the aliens to pay the debt forward. The
majority of the crew already voted in favor.” Mercy neglected to mention details
about the dissenters.

Grudgingly,
Yvette conceded. “I’ll do my best to make sure we proceed without causing harm.
I just thank God Toby’s in the freezer, and I never have to see him again.”

Mercy’s
guilty silence spoke volumes as she avoided eye contact.

Yvette
gasped, “No!”

“Red
needs you to testify at the trial tomorrow.”

Backing
away from Mercy, the nurse repeated, “No.”

“You’ll
be fine. You need to face Toby in front of everyone, pin him down like he does
one of his bugs.”