"I'm sorry, Judge, I got carried away. I've wanted to tell this story for such a long time. I have nothing further to offer in evidence."
"Thank you. Hildy, we have established that John and Kenneth Valentine are genetically identical. That Kenneth is, in fact, not Edward Valentine's nephew, but his brother. Do you have a further point to make?"
"Yes, I do, Judge." She shuffled importantly through the papers on the table in front of her. No pictures this time, but copies of dense print that I couldn't read from my position and wouldn't have understood if I could.
"It concerns an interesting situation in the law that I discovered," she resumed. "If you'll search the old genetic law statutes, you'll find that until sixty years ago, producing a human clone was illegal in Luna and almost everywhere else. It was a legacy I've traced clear back to the early part of the twenty-first century. In time these laws became so rigorous that, once the human reproductive system came under our complete control, it was thought necessary to make it illegal for two humans to possess the same genetic pattern. Even to the point of banning identical twins, triplets, and so forth. For a very long time, going back to just before the Invasion, there were no more identical twins.
"The penalties for violation of this law seem pretty draconian to me, and I suspect to most of us these days. But illegal cloning was something that almost never happened—perhaps because of the severe penalties—and no one seems to have worried about it a lot, since many years would go by without anyone being affected by the law at all. It wasn't until nearly a century ago that a movement began in the scientific and human-rights communities to rescind these genetic laws, culminating in their eventual repeal.
"But the simple fact is this: under these laws, it was forbidden for two human beings to possess the same genetic code, the same DNA. When this situation was found to exist, one of them had to go. One of them had no right to life.
"When such an identical pair was discovered, the younger of the two was put to death.
"It's one of those situations where, looking back, we wonder, 'What could they have been thinking?' Well, there had been abuses, back on Old Earth. I refer the court to the Buenos Aires Clones of 2025, a community of over a thousand identical women. Or the Aryan Conspiracy of 2034. These horror stories and others convinced the public and legislators that controls on this technology had to be tight indeed. Then came the Invasion, and the period historians call the Interregnum, when very little happened not directly related to the dire question of human survival as a species. Those post-Invasion survivors had little time to tinker with laws. And by the time humanity was breathing a little easier and had the leisure... well, it had all become fossilized. Repealing a law is much tougher than passing one, always has been. Unless the law creates an egregious and frequent sense of injustice, it simply stays on the books."
"It's an elegant history lesson, Hildy," the Judge said. "And I applaud your brevity. But where is it going? Are you arguing that Kenneth is an illegal person? Those laws are no longer in effect."
"No, Judge, he's not illegal. He was illegal, under the law, until he took his father's life. You see, the law never said it had to be the younger twin that died. This was how the law was administered, assuming the older had proprietary rights to the DNA. But through an oversight, a loophole, call it what you will, this was never spelled out.
"The fact is, neither John nor Kenneth had a legal right to exist... until one of them was dead. Then the survivor became a legal person.
"In other words, no crime was committed when Kenneth killed his father, because his father was not a person in the eyes of the law."
Well, I thought she was crazy, and so did most of the audience, to judge by the scandalized outbursts. The Judge had to eject three more people before order was restored.
Then there was a short pause, quite unusual in JPT proceedings, and no wonder, considering how rapidly the CC can process data. It was as if a human judge had retired to chambers to think some things over... for a century or two. At last the CC spoke again.
"You raise some interesting points," it said. "I am going to declare a one hour recess for the purpose of allowing both sides in this proceeding to research their positions regarding this unexpected development. This court is now in recess."
The Judge called it recess; I'd call it pandemonium. Everyone in the room began talking at once. Loud arguments began in the audience, to the point that extra bailiffs were called in to prevent violence. The doors opened and vendors and bookies circulated among the crowd, selling food and drink and taking bets at new and uncertain odds.
I tried to get a word with Billy but he waved me away, too busy marshaling his troops to discuss the situation with me, merely the client. This was the sort of thing they lived for. Assistants and researchers were pounding their keyboards feverishly, shouting suggestions to each other. Across the table an urgent summons went out: "Send more lawyers!"
So I dropped into the chair beside Hildy, who sat calmly with her hands folded on her papers.
"What are you trying to do, kill me?"
"Don't worry, Sparky. This is still your best shot."
"Are you crazy? I don't get it. This is exactly the sort of thing the Common Sense Court was set up to eliminate. Legal fictions—no 'right to life,' what the hell does that mean?"
"It means you have to be tried under the rules that prevailed at the time. Which means no Judicial Protocols Trial existed. Which means any court in Luna would have found that no act of murder occurred, whether or not you knew of your status as an illegal clone. Self-defense, both protecting yourself from assault by your father with a sword, and because your father had the legal right to kill you at any time, too. You had no other reasonable choice but to kill him." She smiled at me.
Well, sure. She wasn't the one facing jail time if she was wrong.
The hour stretched to an hour and a half as the tension grew. But finally the Judge called us back into session, and the shouting began again. Billy and his friends had turned up several cases; they claimed precedent that should set me free. Roxy Hart and her gang concentrated on trying to prove that the laws prevailing at the time had no relevance to my case today. But was that a haunted look I saw in her eyes? I still doubted she had much to lose, politically, whichever way the case went... but lawyers hate to lose.
At last the Judge called for order, and eventually got it. "This has been a troubling case, for many reasons," it began. "Almost lost in the parade of issues is the horror of the act itself. A man stands accused of killing his own father, an act terrible to contemplate. So terrible that we have a distinct word for it: patricide. Often in such a case the act is in response to another terrible act, or more likely a series of acts, and that is child abuse. There are indications that abuse, and a specific assault at the time of the act, was indeed a contributing factor, but the defendant has chosen not to place undue emphasis on it. This is not an unknown situation, either, as the bond of love between parent and child is often so strong as to survive the most outrageous atrocities. I will ask you now, Mr. Valentine, and please consider your answer carefully. Do you wish to bring any further evidence before the court concerning your treatment at the hands of your father?"
Billy started to get up, then remembered where he was. He tried to give me advice using only his eyes, which were amazingly expressive.