The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (27 page)

Shortly after meeting Uzvuyiten for the first time, Salehi had asked him why he hadn’t had the fingers repaired. Uzvuyiten had made the odd little choking sound that Salehi would eventually realize was Uzvuyiten’s laugh, and said,
They have been repaired
.

Salehi hadn’t asked any more. He didn’t want to know.

Even without the fingers, though, Uzvuyiten would be recognizable. He wore human suits that were nearly a century old in design. His posture was excellent, making him look like—in the words of Schnabbie—the perfect coat hanger.

Uzvuyiten had more personality than any other Peyti that Salehi had ever met, and that personality showed up in every single detail about him.

Even his eyes were unusual. They were moist and blue around the edges, but gray in the center. They seemed almost human, but Salehi wouldn’t tell Uzvuyiten that ever, because Uzvuyiten would take that as an insult.

Uzvuyiten had his head bent as he worked on two different screens at the same time, going back and forth between them, marking information down.

One of the first things lawyers learned was not to use their links or any automated networked system to make notes on important cases. Too many attorneys had simply downloaded their opposition’s arguments before a big case, then used those arguments to crush the opposition in court.

That restriction made law very writing and reading intensive, and somewhat backwards, since the rest of the universe could operate at the speed of a thought, but the lawyers and judges and anyone else dealing with confidentiality had to operate with the speed of their fingers.

Uzvuyiten tapped the edge of his long arm on the table, jarring the image that Salehi had been staring at. He hadn’t even been sure of what he saw, not because the image was unclear, but because he’d been thinking rather than looking.

“Your arguments are too linear,” Uzvuyiten said. “You missed one of the most important arguments of all.”

Salehi frowned. He had forgotten this side of working with Uzvuyiten. Uzvuyiten assumed that a conversation they had started three days ago could be continued at any point without providing any context. Uzvuyiten had an eidetic memory, and assumed everyone else did as well. Of course, Salehi didn’t. He was smart, but outside-the-box smart. He wasn’t traditionally testing-brilliant, which meant that he didn’t seem as smart as most of his colleagues from law school.

Although, even factoring out his family money, he was twenty times more successful than anyone he went to school with.

“I’m sure I missed a lot,” Salehi said, and was pleased that he didn’t sound defensive, just informative. “I slapped nearly a hundred injunctions together in the space of a few hours. I had good help, but the ideas were mine.”

“The injunctions are fine,” Uzvuyiten said, dismissively. Apparently that wasn’t what he had been discussing. “It’s that matter of standing.”

So they were both thinking about the same thing. Weird.

Salehi didn’t comment on that. Instead, he said, “I ignored it mostly, since I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

He still didn’t.

Uzvuyiten kept his gaze on Salehi. Salehi felt like he needed to explain more, which made him uncomfortable.

So now, he did sound defensive. “I figured the courts would listen to us up front, and decide all the pesky minutia later.”

Uzvuyiten grunted in acknowledgement. It sounded like he had expected an explanation like that, which made Salehi feel even more defensive.

“If only it were minutia,” Uzvuyiten said. “The moment the courts find out that the Peyti government is the client of record, they could throw everything out. And then your grand universe-changing case becomes nothing.”

Salehi had thought all this through. It was giving him sleepless nights, making him feel as if he were running a race that he could be disqualified from at any moment.

He had already told Uzvuyiten all the ideas Salehi could find for arguing standing. But it wouldn’t hurt to mention the new ones.

“I was thinking that maybe we could argue that since Uzvekmt was caught and imprisoned on Peyla, the Peyti government owned his DNA,” Salehi said. “That would make them the owners of record of the clones until we discover the actual owners.”

“And if the actual owners are clone brokers or someone from the Black Fleet? Everything gets tossed out,” Uzvuyiten said.

Salehi had thought of that too. “Or, everything gets placed on hold while we argue the case we file to reestablish standing.”

Uzvuyiten shook his head. That movement always looked unnatural on a Peyti. Salehi felt Peyti shouldn’t even try it. But Uzvuyiten had adopted a lot of human mannerisms—and had abandoned just as many.

“You are too trusting,” Uzvuyiten said. “You assume the court will put the case on hold. You must always look to the worst case.”

Salehi sighed. He thought he had been looking at the worst case. “If you can imagine something we can’t fight with another lawsuit, tell me.”

“If our cases continually get thrown out for standing,” Uzvuyiten said, “then at some point, we will not even be able to file. We will be fighting the wrong battle, maybe for years.”

He leaned back and tugged on his mask. Salehi had seen Uzvuyiten do that many times before. It was Uzvuyiten’s way of tugging on his chin—a human gesture.

Only now, that gesture made one of the legal assistants cringe. Everyone had seen the images coming from the Moon—the Peyti clones tugging the explosives in their masks. The Crisis was fresh in everyone’s minds. Apparently, even in the minds of the lawyers representing the clones.

Uzvuyiten didn’t seem to notice the reaction. He also didn’t seem to notice that Salehi couldn’t quite hide his irritation. He hated having Uzvuyiten explain basic law to him. In fact, Salehi knew better than anyone how easy it was to lose a big case on the smallest of details.

He’d done so more than once in his early career, before he became the kind of lawyer he used to hate—the lawyer who prepared for everything, down to the smallest detail.

“So what did I miss?” Salehi asked, this time with a little heat.

“Unclaimed property,” Uzvuyiten said.

Salehi suppressed a smile of irritation. “I didn’t miss it. I decided it wasn’t relevant. The law says the owners have a month after the property’s discovered to claim it. We can’t file yet.”

“Sure we can,” Uzvuyiten said. “All ports examine DNA when someone goes through a decontamination unit.”

It was an interesting argument, but it didn’t seem viable to Salehi. He said, “The ports are legally bound to keep the DNA private, unless a valid warrant is presented.”

Uzvuyiten held up one of his crooked fingers, as a sort of warning. “Ports are also bound by Alliance law to make sure that property remains with its owners. Lost property goes to a specific area of the port. Because lost property can be dangerous in the wrong hands.”

Salehi frowned at him. “You’re certain?”

He hadn’t heard of this.

“Of course I’m certain. But you won’t find it in most legal texts. It’s actually treaty law. Food, for example, can be an issue. The Ticip’ns must bring their food with them. They eat gases which include things like Sarin, which is so lethal when it is airborne that it can kill humans in a few minutes. Yet, Ticip’ns are part of the Earth Alliance, which allows them the right to travel to places where their food is lethal poison. They must control the substance at all times, keep it in a proper container, and only release it in designated areas. If the food—or shall we call it poison?—becomes separated from a Ticip’n in a port, the port must shuffle that property to a safe, designated area, until the property gets reclaimed.”

All of the lawyers were watching Uzvuyiten now. Most looked fascinated. A couple glanced at Salehi, as if asking him if this were true.

There was no reason for Uzvuyiten to lie. And if the lawyers wanted to know the truth of what he was doing, they could look it up themselves.

“There is nothing wrong with dangerous property,” Uzvuyiten said, a bit dramatically. Apparently, he realized that he now had an audience. “However, all property must be under control of its owners, particularly when traveling outside of its native environment.”

Salehi let out a small breath.

“It’s clear that the Peyti clones were outside their native environment,” one of the junior lawyers said, sounding pleased.

Salehi wasn’t willing to be pleased yet. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I could easily argue that we have no idea what the native environment is for the clones’ owners.”

Uzvuyiten waved his hand. “Technicalities that we do not need to foresee.”

Salehi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The conversation had been about technicalities that they
needed
to foresee.

“The key,” Uzvuyiten said, “is that lost property shouldn’t be allowed to function in society for
decades
.”

The staff exchanged glances. Pleased glances from what Salehi saw. But he wasn’t pleased. The more he thought about it, the more he realized what a problem this argument was.

Arguing the danger of lost property would harm
all
clones, not help them. They wouldn’t be able to travel freely. They would constantly need permission slips or something like it from their owners.

Uzvuyiten looked at him sideways. Once again, Salehi felt like Uzvuyiten knew what he was thinking.

“We are discussing standing,” Uzvuyiten said softly. “We need standing first.”

He had known what Salehi’s arguments were, and Uzvuyiten didn’t want Salehi to mention them. Probably a good idea in a crowded room.

“After we have standing, we worry about the consequences of our arguments,” Uzvuyiten said softly.

“Seems dangerous to me,” Salehi said.

“What we are doing
is
dangerous,” Uzvuyiten said. “We are arguing for a group of terrible individuals to save an even larger group of trapped individuals. Or at least you are.”

“And you?” Salehi asked.

“I want my freedom back,” Uzvuyiten said. “It galls me that we Peyti are no longer welcome within the heart of the Alliance.”

“You can sue,” one of the junior partners said.

“Our government is. But so far, we cannot prove that the discrimination is anything sanctioned.”

And everyone in the room was a good enough lawyer to know that discrimination cases, even those within the Alliance, needed to be against an organization or a person in power. Otherwise, the lawyers would need a long-established pattern of behavior before ever attempting a suit.

Salehi ignored that. He was still focused on what bothered him about the lost property argument.

He said, “Your lost-property argument is, after all, a property argument.”

“I’m aware,” Uzvuyiten said in a tone that sounded a tad patronizing.

“It bolsters the claim of anyone who wants to interrogate, or torture, or do something worse to those clones.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Uzvuyiten said. “Not at all. Follow me here. It’s up to the port to keep track of unclaimed property from the moment the port knows the property is unclaimed. We are not talking about how the clones should be treated now. We’re arguing that they should never have been allowed onto the Moon in the first place. One does not follow the other.”

Salehi frowned. They would have to argue both cases very carefully. They would need to use different courts first. He could see going against the port, using Alliance Space law. Once they had a ruling from the Space Court, they would be able to go into other courts as the attorneys of record for the clones.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll ignore the other ramifications of this argument for the moment. If we use unclaimed property, we sue for Peyla to become the owners of record?”

“No,” Uzvuyiten said. “Peyla would claim the property, maybe even buy it at discount rates, after we determine that it is unclaimed, of course.”

Salehi let out a small breath. “We’re only going to use the unclaimed property argument to gain standing, is that correct?”

“Right now,” Uzvuyiten said.

Salehi waited, hoping Uzvuyiten would explain the other arguments.

Of course, he did not.

“Let’s just concentrate on standing for the moment,” Uzvuyiten said. “Let’s set everything else aside.”

Salehi suppressed a sigh. He’d had a moment to think now, and he still didn’t see how all of this would work.

“I’m still not sure how we could win the unclaimed property argument,” he said. “We can’t argue that the port knew. These clones are sentient beings. They look like regular Peyti. There is no reason for the port to deny them entrance. If they’re anything like the Frémont clones, they have no clone marks.”

“That is not our concern,” Uzvuyiten said. “You are thinking like an attorney for the port.”

“Still,” Salehi said. “Information on individuals is private. It can’t be accessed. I have no idea how you believe that the port could have known these individuals were clones.”

“You forget,” Uzvuyiten said. “The port itself has to examine the DNA for nanocontaminents, and it has to examine the body for indications of all kinds of things, including but not limited to, illegal transportation.”