Page 73 of Stealing Mercury
She shot Mercury a grin. “Come on. First stop, we find something to cover you up. No way are you walking around out there with all those pretty muscles on display.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Pretty?”
She traced a finger down his sternum. “I call ‘em like I see ‘em.”
Ten minutes later, he walked at her side through the bustling port and into the market that sprawled right up to the gate. They found a hooded jacket for Mercury and arranged to have two more delivered to the ship in an hour. With the hood up, it covered Mercury’s ears and shadowed the distinctive features of his face, but there was nothing she could do to disguise his size.
The chief’s assistant led them into his office. Port Chief Pillar sat behind an ancient but tidy desk. A window looking across the port stretched across the wall behind him, like his own personal backdrop. The older Golley had the blue-tipped, silver hair that put his age well into his senior years, but to her he’d always looked old. The wrinkled gray skin and rounded shoulders were typical Golley, but as a child she’d thought him just another elderly human. That was back before she’d had access to the port. Most of the Golley worked and lived within its walled shelter.
Samantha sat in the faded chair across from him and Mercury stood behind her, one hand reassuringly on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you, Pillar.”
“And you, Sammie.” The chief eased his chair back. “You here to file a claim on theBucket?”
Samantha shook her head. “No. My father left it to Shred. I’ve accepted that.”
His bushy brows shot up. “Shred doesn’t seem so sure.”
Samantha adjusted her boots beneath her seat. She didn’t want to talk about Shred. “I told him as much, last I saw him.”
The chief tapped crooked fingers against the arm of his chair. “Shred and the rest of the crew seem to think you’ll put in a claim to cut them out and throw them off.”
Samantha frowned. “I’d never do that. TheBucketis their home.” Of course, it had been her home, too.
“So, you’re here for something else then?”
A miniature of the Earther scales of justice sat on the corner of the chief’s desk. A strange artifact to find in a Golley port office. On Haverlee he was judge, jury, and jailer should the need arise. He’d been on Halston before Haverlee and Golley Minor before that. He was more than a backwater caretaker or had been. Samantha lifted the figurine in her hand.
“I need your expert knowledge of the Gollerra judiciary.”
He smiled, nodding his head in a way humans couldn’t duplicate. It was more like moving his head up and down rather than tipping it forward and back. “Clever start, acknowledging my ex-par-tese and appealing to my sense of self-importance. Go on.”
“This is a hypothetical.”
The chief waved one hand in sharp little circles, urging her to get to the point.
“How exactly does Gollerra law determine who is a person?”
The chief leaned forward, letting the legs of his chair slam forward. “Nowthatis quite a question. You’re going to have to explain that one.”
“I mean, if someone claimed someone else wasn’t a person, that they were property, more animal than humanoid, how would they go about deciding it one way or another?”
The chief’s attention shifted briefly to Mercury’s shadowed face before he turned serious and met her gaze levelly. “Well, it isn’t something that often comes up. It’d have to be basic sentience testing. Self-aware, able to communicate on some recognizable level, capable of comprehending complex social structures. But, if the person can question the claim of ownership and be understood, that’s evidence enough of sentience.”
“No genetic requirements? Nothing about DNA?”
He frowned, doubling the number of wrinkles across his forehead. “No. We have our share of prejudice, but it is usually more cultural than species related.”
“What about a claim of ownership... or creatorship?”
“Ha!” He let out a puff of amusement. “Parents create their children, doesn’t mean they own them.”
Samantha reached up to lay a hand over Mercury’s on her shoulder. “Good. Perfect.”
Pillar’s gaze tracked the movement. “I take it this hypothetical has some basis in reality?”
Fabric rustled from behind Samantha as Mercury pushed back the hood of his cape. The chief wouldn’t be able to miss his less human features. “This is Mercury.”
“The Roma Company created my people through genetic manipulation.” Mercury gave nothing of his anger away in his tone. “They have deemed us animals and claim ownership.”
