Leloup, on the other hand, tended to view the law as a scalpel, which he used to carve away the parts of people that didn’t fit the law’s ideal shape.
Personally, I took offense at that. Because my specialty was memory crimes, which was a fancy way of saying it was my job to make sure people kept all the most essential parts of themselves. Once upon a time, in my former life, I’d done crossword puzzles to keep my mind limber; now, I decoded people the same way, letter by letter, until the whole array became clear.
And the more I understood people, the less I liked it when someone wanted them to all be precisely the same. Leloup found comfort in predictability, in routine, and more than anything else he believed the world existed for him to be comfortable in.
I had decided centuries ago: My calling was to bedevil him at every possible opportunity.
It certainly looked like I was doing a bang-up job ofit today: He had removed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves—I’d have sworn he’d even managed to press them in place somehow, so precisely identical were both folded-over cuffs—and was beetling his brows at Meherbai. “The precedents for punishing stowaways are many and date back to the Architects themselves, Miss Petit—”
“That’s because we found the last stowaway three centuries ago, after a whole month on board,” Meherbai retorted. “And those were deliberate crimes—I don’t think you can argue this childintendedto stow away.” She twirled her enamel fountain pen with a flourish. “Unless you want to make the claim that every gamete on board theFairweatheris a stowawayin potentia.”
Leloup sniffed. “I’m sure I don’t wish to discuss gametes at all unless compelled to. There should be no need, when all our bodies are built. There are consequently only three possible ways to identify a new person on board: one, as a stowaway; two, as a fraud—which I think would also require intention, wouldn’t you agree?—or three, as an automaton, a created thing.” His eyes kindled. “Now there’s a thought—there are quite a few regulations on the books for automata—”
“Am I allowed an opinion?” I interrupted. “Or is this a legal matter above my fumbling understanding?”
“You cannot understand,” Leloup went on, mopping his brow, “because there is no procedure to be understood—”
“But there is,” I said. “There is a very carefully crafted procedure for creating a new identity for a new person. We just didn’t expect to need it for a few hundred years yet.”
Meherbai lit up and began flipping to the back of the compendium.
Leloup gaped at me as if I’d suggested something utterly degenerate. Like cannibalism. Or fun. “We cannot just pull planetary law forward at our own convenience! It was intended for a very particular political situation and moment in time. It is not a chess piece to be moved about for a player’s advantage.”
“But it’s already on the books, and I think people will find that reassuring,” I countered. “The baby is going to be shocking enough to most passengers; anything we can do to make it less disruptive will surely be of use.”
Leloup’s mustache was trembling like a butterfly about to cause the storm of the century. “You think we should tell them about the baby.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You think we can keep a whole human hidden from them until he turns twenty? And then just pretend he’s always been here?”
Leloup fussed at his perfectly rolled cuffs and smoothed the sharp points of his shirt collar. “I think telling the passengers that someone has given birth will be a disaster for civil order and general calm.”
Even though I’d had much the same thought, hearing itcome out of my nemesis’s mouth turned my opinion around a full 180 degrees. “Well, we know we have to tell the Board of Directors,” I began. “And possibly the Crime Committee.”
“Offense: one baby,” Meherbai murmured, and only grinned when I glared at her.
“So that’s at least twenty people who are inevitably going to find out,” I went on. “When was the last time you knew twenty people who could all keep the same secret?”
Leloup drew himself up. “Frequently, Miss Gentleman!” He raised a hand and began listing them off. “The Board’s backup memory-books, the Hotchkiss Incident, the comet we had to turn toavoid—Whatis so blasted amusing, may I ask?”
For I was laughing at him helplessly, a sputtering chortle he clearly found offensive. “You just listed off a series of supposedly secret things every passenger on this ship definitely knows about—to prove that the Board isdiscreet?”
“Ugh, very well.” Leloup rose to his feet with all the wounded majesty of a monarch who had just been dethroned by his own barons. “You want the passengers to be told? You may tell them. And I will direct to you all the inquiries that result—all questions about reproductive regulations, risks of the baby, riskstothe baby, and other forbidden things people now want to try and other fail-safes they worry might also not work. Oh.” He paused, and a hintof a smile slithered over his lips. “And also yours? All the paperwork.”
Well. That knocked the amusement right out of me.
“And, of course…” Leloup’s smile grew, oozing self-satisfaction. “If you’re going to give this baby all the rights of planetary identity, then he must be given their restrictions as well. No Library access. No memory-book. No new embodiments.” His eyes gleamed, glacial and smug. “When he dies, he dies.”
With that finishing blow, Leloup retreated to the right-angled safety and solitude of his office.
Meherbai pushed the law book my way. “Another cup of chai?” she asked sympathetically.
“Please,” I said, shivering. “I could use the warmth.”
She moved toward the kitchenette, and I went looking for the first batch of forms.
HOURS LATER, WRISTcramping, I had a stack of paper solidly two inches high: an initial report to the Board about the baby, with a full write-up of his parentage; petition to the Board to use the planetside identity procedures to establish young Peregrine’s legal existence; request for an exception to those procedures to allow the child to have a memory-book and right to reembodiment in Medical; written acknowledgment that I planned to ask Flora Tilburn and Hugh Renois to report to Medical for examination to find out how the pregnancy had happened and if something like it was likely to happen again; first draft of a ship-wide announcement of the baby’s existence, including a reiteration of the restrictions upon childbearing and reproduction; and a custody petition form for Rutherford Talmadge IV and John Pengelly.
That last piece of paperwork alone had taken me an hourto concoct from the few times something like it had been required in those first chaotic decades on board ship. Now that we’d all been adults for several centuries, things like custody and adoption had simply ceased to come up in the course of ordinary events. I did the best I could with the legal phrasing, shook out my aching hand, and walked through theFairweather’s version of twilight down to my nephew’s apartment.
