The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (11 page)

He bowed his head, shaking it, surprised at the tears pricking his eyes. Clone law had been what had gotten Fujita killed. Salehi’s enthusiasm for clone law had led to the entire case, to the fact that a clone of PierLuigi Frémont had been on board that ship when the Earth Alliance had blown it to smithereens.

“I’ve given up clone law,” Salehi said.

He had given up on clone law so much that when Shishani had suggested a wrongful death suit in the case that might go to the multicultural tribunal, he had said,
You do it
.

She was. Only she made the case about Fujita, not about the clone, which was what Salehi would have done.

“Well, un-give-it-up,” she said. “We need you. Come on.”

She took his hand. Her fingers were cool around his, her long nails—painted black to match her outfit—brushing against his skin. He let himself be led through the reception area and to the private staircase that went up to Schnabel’s penthouse suite—if a suite in an office building on a starbase could be called a penthouse.

It did brush against the edges of the base, and the view through the ceiling was of space itself. Or, rather, to be more accurate, of the ships coming in for landing at the various places in this sector.

The constant view of ships and outsiders would have made Salehi nervous. He thought, not for the first time, that he was more suited to the study of the law than the practice of it. He didn’t like people, but he loved theory.

With her other hand, Shishani pushed open the door into the conference area. The third partner, Domek Schnable, whom Salehi privately called Schnabbie, waited at the head of a long conference table.

Schnable was older than both Shishani and Salehi by many years. Schnable belonged to the generation ahead of them, just younger than their parents, significantly older than Salehi was. Schnable was a short man with a large head and a prominent nose. He liked hats that accented his sharp features and usually wore one inside. On this day, his hat—a wide-brimmed Napoleonic bicorne—rested at the head of the table, marking his place.

As if he needed to. No one ever had to mark a place at this table. Salehi had never seen it full. From the moment he came on board, only the three of them had been senior partners.

Salehi had heard that back in the day when the firm started, all of the partners met here, but the room had been closed off in his parents’ era. In fact the entire penthouse suite had been closed down because the partners at that time argued about who “deserved” it.

The three current senior partners had no such disagreement. Salehi had hated it, and Shishani wanted a larger suite several floors down.

Schnable took it, and treated it like the spoils of war. He had decorated most of his private office in a military motif—although the motif was more a haphazard mess than anything organized. If an item had a military connection, he wanted it; it didn’t matter which military or what the connection was.

Schnable had redone this room in green and gold. The chairs had little epaulets with gold fringe on their backs and the edges of the arms. Those chairs always made Salehi feel like he was sitting down in a nest of spiders.

“Hats off, Raffy,” Schnable said. “We have serious business to conduct.”

Schnable had called Salehi “Raffy” since he was a boy. Schnable had been part of the firm since Salehi got out of law school. Salehi took off his floppy hat and rolled it in his hands, feeling like a rebellious kid.

Schnable always made him feel like a rebellious kid, and maybe that was why Salehi acted like one. It would explain the looks Salehi got whenever he called Schnable Schnabbie, as if he were breaking some important code of behavior.

Salehi sat down, careful not to brush up against the fringe. The chairs were made of fabric and were warmer than his chairs, even in this room with its temperature set at a “normal” 21 degrees.

He sat at the side of the table. Shishani sat at the other head of the table, as she liked to call it. Salehi knew from past experience that Schnable would call that part of the table “the foot.”

“Here’s the issue,” Schnable said, sweeping his stupid hat aside as he sat at his spot at the head of the table. “We got contacted by the Peyti government today.”

“What?” Salehi asked, and he looked at Shishani for confirmation.

She raised her eyebrows, made a face that Salehi called her
can you believe it?
face, and folded her hands in front of her.

“You’re familiar with what’s been happening on the Moon, right?” Schnable asked.

Salehi bit back the answer he wanted to give. Maybe the reason he treated Schnable like a fusty old school teacher was that Schnable treated Salehi like an idiot student.

“They’re calling it the Peyti Crisis now,” Salehi said, as if he were striving for a good grade. “I’m not sure if that’s accurate. I’m hoping that this bombing mania doesn’t spread to the rest of the Earth Alliance.”

“For all we know, it already has,” Schnable said. “Not all societies in the Alliance are as open as ours.”

Salehi suppressed a sigh. “Ours,” in Schnabbie terms meant human society, not Earth Alliance protocols. And humans weren’t the most open group in the Earth Alliance. Several other alien cultures had tolerance and communication down to a science.

Still, Salehi decided to let this one pass. Shishani looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he had done that. Maybe she hadn’t noticed that lately, Salehi had let a lot of Schnabbie’s stupid remarks pass.

“What do the Peyti want with us?” Salehi asked.

“It seems that your treatises on clone law in the Earth Alliance have attracted their attention,” Schnable said.

“Good for them,” Salehi said, mostly because he couldn’t prevent the sentence from coming out of his mouth. “The Peyti have produced the best lawyers in the Earth Alliance. I’m sure they can make use of my theories.”

“That’s the issue.” Shishani spoke up. Maybe she’d heard the defiance in Salehi’s tone, and she didn’t want this to devolve into the usual fight. “The Peyti can’t get to the Moon. Their ships are being denied entry into the Port of Armstrong. Even Peyti that come on ships from other places are being denied entry.”

Salehi stood up, unable to sit with the news. “How come I haven’t heard that?”

“You have now.” Schnabel’s tone was smug.

Salehi looked at Shishani in an attempt to remain calm. She opened her hands just a little as if to say,
calm down
. Salehi wasn’t mad yet, but dealing with Schnable would make him angry eventually.

Salehi tried another tack. “How did
you
hear about it?”

“I—” Schnable stopped himself and grinned sheepishly. “The Peyti told me.”

“I suspect this isn’t something the Port wants out,” Shishani said.

Salehi shook his head. “It’s not legal. That Port is licensed through the Earth Alliance. Earth Alliance member species cannot be denied entry.”

“I doubt they’re denying entry to all Peyti,” Schnable said. “I’m pretty sure they would find a reason to deny each one.”

“We don’t know what the reasons are,” Shishani said. It didn’t seem like this news upset her at all. Schnable just seemed to find it amusing.

It angered Salehi. He hated a lot of things about the Earth Alliance. The fact that it would turn a blind eye to an entire species because of terrible actions of a few disturbed him greatly.

“Can humans get through the Port Of Armstrong?” Salehi asked.

“You know they can,” Schnable said. “That’s neither here nor there—”

“It is relevant,” Salehi said. “Were humans denied entry after Anniversary Day? Because those clones were human.”

“Technically,” Shishani said, “they weren’t human. They’re property and property can be confiscated or sent back to where it came from. I’m sure the Port used DNA—”

“You’re sure,” Salehi glared at Shishani. “And Domek is sure. But neither of you really
know
, do you?”

They didn’t answer him, but they both had odd expressions on their faces.

Salehi made a sound of disgust. He didn’t care that his partners knew what he thought of them. He used to try to keep his emotions under control, but he didn’t now. He didn’t care that they seemed to be so blind to injustices.

He made a fist with his right hand, then opened the fist finger by finger, concentrating on the movement before he spoke again.

“Surely,” he said in a calmer tone, “there are Peyti lawyers on the Moon who weren’t involved in this conspiracy. They can take care of their own on the Moon, right?”

“At the moment, they’re under suspicion as well,” Shishani said. “Besides, would you want a Peyti lawyer going in front of a judge on the Moon right now? This is a murder case right now or attempted murder. Judges who handle those cases are local, and all local judges lived through Anniversary Day. That’ll influence how they react to another mass bombing.”

Salehi cursed. He knew Shishani was right. These cases had dozens of issues tied into them: murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, terrorism, treason. And none of those things could be charged against a clone.

The clones’ owners would have to be charged, and then the clones would be destroyed. Provided the clones’ owners could be found.

If someone got the clones declared to be real Peyti under Earth Alliance law, then each case would go through the Moon’s courts separately. Unless someone made this a conspiracy charge.

But there could be no conspiracy with clones, and no conspiracy charge without knowing who the owners were.

Legally, under Earth Alliance law, there were no good choices for punishment. Just a lot of bad ones.

He cursed again.

Schnable grinned at Shishani. “Told you this would fire him up.”

She took a deep breath, and gave Salehi a sideways glance, as if he had just caught her conspiring with the enemy. Which, he supposed, he had.

He glared at her. So she turned her chair ever so slightly toward Schnable.

“You said he’d be interested in the Peyti clone issue,” she said to Schnable.

“
He
is right here.” Salehi gripped the top of his chair. “I’ve told you before I’m not that interested in practicing law any longer.”

Schnable folded his hands in front of him.

“What you said,” he said to Salehi in a slow deliberate tone, the tone that won him dozens of cases in court, the one that sent chills through Salehi right now, “is that you can’t find your passion for the law any longer, so what’s the point. Now, right now, you seem to have quite a bit of passion about the legal case, and we haven’t even gotten to the heart of what’s happening on the Moon.”

Salehi squeezed his fingers on the chair, focusing on the pain as his nails dug into the soft fabric. He repeated softly to himself:
I won’t let Schnabbie get to me. I won’t let Schnabbie get to me. I won’t let—

And then he felt himself snap. He called those moments his ah-fuck-it moments, the ones where he threw all caution to the wind. He’d won in court with ah-fuck-it moments, and lost clients with them, and had broken up with girlfriends, a wife or two, and lost half a dozen friends because at some point, he just didn’t give a damn.

Or maybe he gave too much of a damn.

He wasn’t going to analyze it, particularly when he was in the middle of such a moment.

“You want me to defend a bunch of mass murderers?” Salehi said softly.

“You want a clone law test case,” Schnable said. “I want one that will make this firm money. The Government of Peyla will pay all of our expenses and court costs while we organize the defense of several hundred Peyti. We probably won’t have to take this to court.”

“But if we do, I have to argue that these assholes are
property
, and can’t make any decisions for themselves and that one particular person or Peyti or creature is responsible for what happened, and that the property—”

“You could argue that it should be destroyed,” Shishani said quietly.

Salehi dug his fingers even deeper into the chair. He felt betrayed. She had talked with Schnabbie about this before they had ever brought Salehi in.

They were going after him in a concentrated way, a tag-team, like lawyers on an opposing case.

“Or,” Schnable said, “you could force the Earth Alliance to look at what’s really going on here. Someone’s got to find the mastermind behind these evil attacks.”

“You’re assuming there is a mastermind,” Salehi snapped.

“It’s logical,” Shishani said. “Someone had to make the clones. Someone had to convince them to infiltrate the Moon.”

“And someone had to give them the signal to attack everyone on the same day,” Schnable said.

“Hell,” Shishani said, “someone had to provide the masks.”

Salehi felt the logic of the argument, the appeal of the argument. It was always best, in a court, to have a single villain than it was to have hundreds. The others would plead down, turn against each other, help the prosecution in exchange for reduced sentences, but someone would pay.

But he would be the
defense
attorney. His job would be to make certain that even that horrible mastermind—if there was one—had a fair trial.