Mercury (25 page)

Once again, the prosecutor spent several minutes establishing Molina’s credentials and his position on the project. Then he asked:

“You left the skytower project before it was completed, did you not?”

“Yes, I did,” said Molina.

“Why is that?”

Molina hesitated a moment, his eyes flicking toward Bracknell and Lara, sitting behind him.

“Personal reasons,” he answered.

“Could you be more specific?”

Again Molina hesitated. Then, drawing in a breath, he replied, “I wasn’t certain that the structures produced by my gengineered microbes were sufficiently strong to stand the stresses imposed by the tower.”

Bracknell blinked and stirred like a man coming out of a coma. “That’s not true,” he whispered, more to himself than to his lawyers.

But Molina was going on, “I wanted more testing, more checking to make sure that the structure would be safe. But the project director wouldn’t do it.”

“The project director was Mr. Mance Bracknell,” asked the prosecuting attorney needlessly. “The accused?”

“Yes,” said Molina. “He insisted that we push ahead before the necessary tests could be done.”

Bracknell said to his attorney, “That’s not true!” Turning to Lara, he said, “That isn’t what happened!”

The chief judge, sitting flanked by his two robed associates at the high banc of polished mahogany, tapped his stylus on the desktop. “The accused will remain silent,” he said sternly. “I will tolerate no disruptions in this court.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” said the prosecutor. Then he turned back to Molina, in the witness chair.

“So the accused disregarded your warnings about the safety problems of the tower?”

Molina glanced toward Bracknell, then looked away. “Yes, he did.”

“He’s lying!” Bracknell said to his lawyer. Jumping to his feet, he shouted to Molina, “Victor, why are you lying?”

His lawyer pulled him back down onto his chair while the chief judge leveled an accusatory stare at Bracknell. “I warn you, sir: another such outburst and you will be removed from this courtroom.”

“What difference would that make?” Bracknell snapped. “You’ve convicted me already.”

The judge nodded to the pair of burly soldiers standing to one side of the banc. They pushed past the attorney on Bracknell’s left and grabbed him by his arms, hauling him to his feet.

He turned to glance back at Lara as they dragged him out of the courtroom. She was smiling. Smiling! Bracknell felt his guts churn with sudden hatred.

Lara watched them hustle Mance out of the courtroom, smiling as she thought, At least he’s waking up. He’s not just sitting there and accepting all the blame. He’s starting to defend himself. Or trying to.

The trial proceeded swiftly. With Bracknell watching the proceedings on video from a locked and guarded room on the other side of the courthouse, the prosecuting attorney called in a long line of engineers and other technical experts who testified that the skytower was inherently dangerous.

“No matter what safety precautions may or may not have been taken,” declared the somber, gray-haired dean of the technology ethics department of Heidelberg University, “such a structure poses an unacceptable danger to the global environment, as we can all see from this terrible tragedy. Its very existence is a menace to the world.” Bracknell’s attorney called in technical witnesses, also, who testified that all the specifications and engineering details of the skytower showed that the structure had been built well within tolerable limits.

“I personally reviewed the plans before construction ever started,” said the grizzled, square-faced professor of engineering from Caltech. “The plan for that tower was sound.”

“Yet it fell!” snapped the prosecutor, on cross-examination. “It collapsed and killed millions.”

“That shouldn’t have happened,” said the Caltech professor. “It shouldn’t have happened,” the prosecutor repeated, “
if
the actual construction followed the plans.”

“I’m sure it did,” the professor replied.

“Did the plans call for nanotechnology to be employed in manufacturing the structural elements?”

“No, but—”

“Thank you. I have no further questions.”

As Bracknell sat and seethed in his locked room, the prosecution built its case swiftly and surely. There were hardly any of the skytower crew left alive to testify to the soundness of the tower’s construction. And when they did the prosecutor harped back to the use of nanotechnology.

“Call Victor back to the stand,” Bracknell urged his attorney with white-hot fury. “Cross-examine him. Make him tell the truth!”

“That wouldn’t be wise,” the old man said. “There’s no sense reminding the judges that you used nanomachines.”

“I didn’t! They were natural organisms!”

“Genetically modified.”

“But that doesn’t make any difference!”

The attorney shook his head sadly. “If I put Molina back in the witness stand and he sticks to his story, it will destroy you.”

“If you don’t, I’m destroyed anyway.”

The hardest part of the trial, for Bracknell, was the fact that the judges would not let him see anyone except his attorneys. Every day he sat in that stuffy little isolation room and watched Lara in the courtroom, with Molina now at her side. She would leave with Victor. On the morning that the verdict was to be announced she arrived with Victor.

On that morning, before the proceedings began, the chief judge stepped into Bracknell’s isolation room, flanked by two soldiers armed with heavy black pistols at their hips. After weeks of viewing him only in his black robe up on his high banc, Bracknell was mildly surprised to see that the man was very short and stocky. His skin was light, but he was built like a typical mestizo. His face bore the heavy, sad features of a man about to do something unpleasant.

Bracknell got to his feet as the judge entered the little room.

Without preamble, the judge said in barely accented English, “I am to pass sentence on you this morning. Can you restrain yourself if I allow you back into the courtroom?”

“Yes,” said Bracknell.

“I have your word of honor on that?”

Almost smiling, Bracknell replied, “If you believe that I have any honor, yes, you have my word.”

The judge did not smile back. He nodded wearily. “Very well, then.” Turning, he told the soldiers in rapid Spanish to escort the prisoner into the courtroom.

The courtroom was jammed, Bracknell saw as he came in, escorted by the soldiers. From the video screen in his isolation room he’d been unable to see how many people attended the trial. Now he realized there were reporters and camerapersons from all over the world wedged along both side walls. The benches were packed with people, most of them dour, dark Ecuadorians who stared at him with loathing. Looking for my blood, Bracknell realized.

Lara jumped to her feet as he entered; Molina rose more slowly. Both of Bracknell’s attorneys stood up, too, looking as if they were attending a funeral. They are, Bracknell thought. Once he got to his chair Lara leaned across the mahogany railing separating them and threw her arms around his neck.

“I’m with you, darling,” she whispered into his ear. “No matter what happens, I’m with you.”

Bracknell drank in the warmth of her body, the scent of her. But his eyes bore into Molina’s, who glared back angrily at him.

Why is Victor sore at me? Bracknell asked himself. What’s he got to be pissed about?
He
betrayed
me;
I haven’t done anything to
him.

“Everyone stand,” called the court announcer.

The judges filed in, their robes looking newer and darker than Bracknell remembered them. Their faces were dark, too.

Once everyone was properly seated, the chief judge picked up a single sheet of paper from the desk before him. Bracknell noted that his hand trembled slightly.

“The prisoner will stand.”

Bracknell got to his feet, feeling as if he were about to face a firing squad.

“It is the judgment of this court that you, Mance Bracknell, are responsible for the deaths of more than four million human souls, and the destruction of many hundreds of billions of dollars in property.”

Bracknell felt nothing. It was as if he were outside his own body, watching this foreordained drama from a far distance.

“Since your crime was not willful murder, the death sentence will not be considered.”

A stir rippled through the packed courtroom. “He killed my whole family!” a woman’s voice screeched in Spanish.

“Silence!” roared the judge, with a power in his voice that stilled the crowd. “This is a court of justice. The law will prevail.”

The courtroom went absolutely silent.

“Mance Bracknell, you have been found guilty of more than four million counts of negligent homicide. It is the decision of this court that you be exiled from this planet Earth forever, so that you can never again threaten the lives of innocent men, women, and children.”

Bracknell’s knees sagged beneath him. He leaned on the tabletop for support.

“This case is closed,” said the judge.

They wasted no time hustling Bracknell off the planet. Within two days of his trial’s inevitable conclusion, a squad of hard-faced soldiers took him from his prison cell to a van and out to the Quito airport, where a Clippership was waiting to carry him into orbit.

The airport looked relatively undamaged, Bracknell saw from the window of the van, except for the big plywood sheets where the sweeping windows had been. It’s a wonder the crash didn’t trigger earthquakes, he thought.

The soldiers marched him through the terminal building, people turning to stare at him as they strode to the Clippership gate. Bracknell was not shackled, not even handcuffed, but everyone recognized him. He saw the look in their eyes, the expressions on their faces: hatred, anger, even fear—as if he were a monster that terrified their nightmares.

Lara was waiting at the terminal gate, wearing black, as if she were attending a funeral. She is, Bracknell thought. Mine.

She rushed to him and leaned her head against his chest. Bracknell felt awkward, with the grim-faced soldiers flanking him. He slid his arms around her waist hesitantly, tentatively, then suddenly clung to her like a drowning man clutching a life preserver.

“Darling, I’ll go out to the Belt with you,” Lara said, all in a gush. “Wherever they send you, I’ll go there too.”

He pushed her back away from him. “No! You can’t throw away your life. They’re putting me in some sort of a penal colony; you won’t be allowed there.”

“But I—”

“Go back home. Live your life. Forget about me. I’m a dead man. Dead and gone. Don’t throw away your life on a corpse.”

“No, Mance, I won’t let you—”

He shoved her roughly and turned to the soldier on his left. “Let’s go.
Andale!”

Lara looked shocked, her eyes wide, her mouth open in protest.

“Andale!”
he repeated to the soldiers, louder, and started walking toward the gate. They rushed to catch up with him. He did not dare look back at Lara as the soldiers marched him into the access tunnel that led to the Clippership’s hatch. His last sight of her was the stunned look on her face. He didn’t want to see the tears filling her eyes, the hopelessness. He felt wretched enough for both of them.

The access tunnel was smooth windowless plastic. A birth canal, Bracknell thought. I’m being born into another life. Everything I had, everything and everyone I knew, is behind me now. I’m leaving my life behind me and entering hell.

And then he saw the bulky form of Rev. Danvers standing at the end of the tunnel, blocking the Clippership hatch. The minister was also in black, he looked downcast, sorrowful, almost guilty.

Bracknell felt a wave of fury burn through his guts. Damned ignorant viper. Frightened of anything new, anything different. He’s happy that the tower failed, but he’s trying to put on a sympathetic face.

Bracknell walked right up to Danvers. “Don’t tell me you’re going out to the Belt with me.”

Danver’s face reddened. “No, I hadn’t intended to. But if you feel the need for spiritual consolation, perhaps I—”

With a bitter laugh, Bracknell said, “Don’t worry, I was only joking.”

“I can contact the New Morality office at Ceres on your behalf,” Danvers suggested.

Bracknell wanted to spit out, “Go to hell,” but he bit his lip and said nothing.

“You’ll need spiritual comfort out there,” Danvers said, his voice low, almost trembling. “You don’t have to be alone in your time of tribulation.”

“Is that what you came here to tell me? That I can have some pious psalm singer drone in my ear? Some consolation!”

“No,” Danvers said, his heavy head sinking slightly. “I came to … to tell you how sorry I am that things have worked out the way they have.”

“Sure you are.”

“I am. Truly I am. When I reported to my superiors about your using nanotechnology, I was merely doing my duty. I had no personal animosity toward you. Quite the opposite.”

Despite his anger Bracknell could see the distress in Danvers’s flushed face. Some of the fury leached out of him.

“I had no idea it would lead to this,” Danvers was going on, almost blubbering. “You must believe me, I never wanted to cause harm to you or anyone else.”

“Of course not,” Bracknell said tightly.

“I was merely doing my duty.”

“Sure.”

One of the soldiers prodded Bracknell’s back.

“I’ve got to get aboard,” he said to Danvers.

“I’ll pray for you.”

“Yeah. Do that.”

They left Danvers at the hatch and entered the Clippership. Its circular passenger compartment was empty: twenty rows of seats arranged two by two with an aisle down the middle. Instead of flight attendants, two marshals with stun wands strapped to their hips were standing just inside the hatch.