“You’re taking taxes now?” He was almost breathless with surprise.
“I’m thinking about it,” she shot back. “I have to generate revenue somehow and taxes are the simplest way to do it—”
“The tethers were bringing in more than we could spend,” Bedivere said.
“Sales of the tethers have almost halted,” she shot back, dropping the boards back onto the table. “Varkan want to buy a tether from you but you weren’t here, were you?”
Her hand on her hip was white with the pressure she was exerting.
Bedivere sat breathing heavily, adjusting to her sudden anger.
“If you do let Nichol buy a premium position in the city, Lilly,” Brant said quietly, “you’ll be setting a precedent. Every village will be vying for favored positions, competing with each other. There’s only one sun side.”
She rounded on him, her jaw tight. “You’re in no position to offer advice, Fareed Brant.” She looked at the three of them sitting at the table, a sweeping glance. “None of you. You left me here to run this place. You didn’t even bother to check if I wanted to. You just left me holding the bag while you ran off on your adventures. You gave up any right to tell me how you think I should do my job.”
Brant pressed his lips together, watching her. He looked at Bedivere then sat back in his chair, distancing himself. Bedivere understood what he was doing and why.
That left it up to him. He tried again. “I’m not telling you what to do, Lilly. I’m just wondering if you haven’t lost sight of what I—what we were trying to do when we set up Charlton. An open economy, complete freedom for everyone including the right to get themselves killed in whatever way their stupidity dictates. Taxes are the old way of doing things.”
“And the old ways worked for thousands of years,” she shot back. “I did the best I could and that’s what I’ll continue to do. I didn’t have the great Bedivere X to call on for his wisdom and guidance. You pushed Catherine at Devlin and fucked off yourself. I don’t know how you have the gall to even make a suggestion.”
Bedivere froze. All except his heart, which skittered along unevenly. He watched, unable to speak, as Lilly swept up the boards again, stalked down to her desk and dumped them there. “We’ll work in your office,” she told Yennifer and both of them left.
The door shut quietly behind them.
“I’m sorry, Bedivere,” Brant said. “I know she doesn’t mean it.”
Bedivere shook his head. “It’s Lilly. She meant everything she said.”
Connell was watching him, his face unhappy.
“And she was right to say it,” Bedivere added.
Connell sighed.
Neither of them tried to argue.
Bedivere got stiffly to his feet. Tiredness was gnawing at him. It was the sort of total exhaustion that made him feel like he was made of lead. “Is anyone using that room?” He pointed to the narrow door behind the piano.
“That? That’s a closet,” Brant said.
“It’ll do just fine,” Bedivere assured him. “I’m going to print a bed then sleep for a week. Maybe more.”
Chapter Six
The Hana Stareach. FY 10.187
Catherine permanently erased Yennifer’s message, put the board face down on the table, and sat up with a bright, interested look on her face while her body and brain churned. Nothing anyone was saying around the board table registered in the slightest.
Bedivere was back.
She tried to sort out her feelings. It was a hot soup of unclassifiable emotions. She could barely sit still as they prodded her.
The meeting broke up ten minutes later, for which she was eternally grateful. Dignitaries filed out of the big boardroom. The room was one of the grandest on the Hana, designed to impress and intimidate visitors, with its ranks of pillars and walls and ceiling of glass that revealed the stars beyond.
Devlin leaned toward her and spoke in an undertone. “Did you get bad news a few minutes ago?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing. My AI screwed up my lunch order.”
Devlin smiled. “You need to scrub that AI and get another one. It’s woefully inefficient. We’re heading for Gry next.” His smile slipped just a little. “Another round in the ongoing war over the interpretation of Glave’s meaning of the word ‘human’.”
“The Ammonites know they’re losing,” Catherine told him. “That loss will bring an end to the very meaning of their lives. They have to fight it.”
“You may have to remind me of that every five minutes. No one can make me as angry as they can with their unquestioning platitudes.”
Catherine got to her feet. “I’ll be back for the Ammonites,” she told him. “I’m just going to my room for a moment.”
Devlin turned to speak to the senior Varkan still sitting at the table, laying the groundwork for the Gry meeting, as she left. She hurried through the passages down to the next level where her stateroom was located. Her heart outpaced her.
Bedivere was back.
What did it mean?
* * * * *
The tap on the door came a microsecond before the door opened, which meant Brant wasn’t looking for permission to enter.
Bedivere put down the board he was reading, resting it on his chest. He tucked his hand under his head.
Brant nearly bumped his shoulder against the shelves that started just inside the door and stepped out of the way of them with a startled glance upward. The shelves had been there when Bedivere moved in and he hadn’t bothered trying to get rid of them. There were boxes and items on the shelves that no one seemed to be interested in, so he was never disturbed.
Brant’s side step brought him to the foot of the bed Bedivere was lying on. Brant looked around the room. “I’m surprised a bed could fit in here.”
“I gave the printer the dimensions.” Bedivere shrugged. The bed was narrow and shorter than he was used to, although it held him up and allowed him to sleep.
“There is a perfectly good suite across the room and it’s empty,” Brant pointed out.
Running water. Trees. Dappled light. Peace. Warmth. Softness. Her scent….
Bedivere took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, thank you.”
Brant crossed his arms. His eyes narrowed down thoughtfully as he considered Bedivere.
Bedivere waited him out. He had time.
“What are you doing, anyway?” Brant asked.
He was going to come to his point from the side. Bedivere rested his hand on the board lying on his chest. “Reading about the destruction of the Last Gate.”
“That was nearly a hundred years ago,” Brant pointed out. “They never learned what happened and who did it back then. You figure you can out-smart everyone now?”
“I was curious. We always thought that Kare Sarkisian escaped into the Silent Sector and he’s never turned up again.”
“If he was in the Sector when the Gate was destroyed, then he’s still in the Sector and probably stone cold dead by now,” Brant replied. “So you don’t have him to blame for your woes this time.”
Gloves off, Bedivere thought. He put the board on the floor and sat up, resting his back against the wall behind him. “That’s why you’re here? Time for your pound of flesh now?”
Brant blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Lilly took her bite. Connell won’t talk to me directly unless I ask a direct question. You’ve been holding it in for weeks now. I figure you’re overdue.”
“Lilly apologized right after,” Brant said hotly.
“And I thanked her for it.” Bedivere made himself shut up and wait.
Brant stirred uneasily. “You think I really want to slap you around for leaving?”
“Don’t you?”
“Hell, yes. I want to beat you up for scaring the hell out of everyone. Lilly mourned you, you know. She thought you were dead.”
Bedivere sighed.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to give myself the pleas
ure of taking a swing at you. Because that’s the only reason I’d be doing it. To make myself feel better.” Brant shrugged.
“So why are you here?”
“Because no one can find you out there, beyond this door. You’ve been hiding in here for weeks. You creep out when you think there’s no chance of running into anyone and having to look them in the eye.”
“Lilly said she could run this place just fine without me. It’s not like my absence is bothering anyone.”
“Did the savage pits deprive you of all intelligence, Bedivere? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re bothering everyone. When you weren’t here, we coped. We had to. Now you’re here and you’re…this…it’s not living.”
Bedivere met his gaze. “I tried doing it my way. You came and stopped me.”
Brant stared at him, his eyes wide. “So you’re going to lie here until entropy drops you?”
Bedivere sighed again. It would be very easy to just say yes and shove Brant out the door and close it. It was what he wanted to do. He didn’t like the swirling anxious feeling in his stomach or the ache in his chest that happened every time he was forced to speak to anyone.
He didn’t like the yearning that came with it and the whispering temptation that followed.
This was Brant, who had followed him to hell and pulled him out. He deserved an honest answer, not the easy one. “I don’t know,” Bedivere said quietly. “Something might come along.”
“If it does, you’re going to miss it, hiding in here,” Brant said dryly.
“Yennifer and her assistant, um, Zoey. They keep me updated.”
“I bet you turned the audio off, though.”
Bedivere considered Brant, startled. Was he that predictable now?
“Did Yennifer tell you that Connell is holding dozens of Varkan at bay with a whip and chair? They’re all demanding time with you. They all want to see you. Touch you. Make sure you’re really back.”
“I’m not their totem,” Bedivere said shortly. “I never was.”
“Tell them that.”
“You tell them. They’re better off with Devlin, anyway. He’s good for them.”
“So were you!” Brant’s voice was low and fierce. His eyes gleamed with anger. “There isn’t a single Varkan out there who doesn’t owe his or her very existence to you!”
“I gave them a means, not life itself,” Bedivere replied. “Besides, Yennifer tells me that Gu-Xia Gammon have picked up the slack. They’re printing out tethers faster than we ever could.”
Brant drew in a breath and let it out with a gusty sigh.
“I’m fine,” Bedivere told him quietly.
Brant shook his head. “No, I don’t think you are.”
He left, anyway. When the door closed, Bedivere picked up the board and started reading again.
Reading was one of the few distractions he had left.
* * * * *
Connell was the next one to arrive.
He turned up two days after Brant left him alone, sliding into the room without even knocking. The shelves rattled as he ran into them.
“Damn it…lights!” Connell demanded stridently.
Bedivere sat up as the lights came up.
Connell crossed his arms. It was the same posture Brant favored when he was angry and hiding it. “I have a question.”
Bedivere raised a brow and waited.
“What year did you reach the Silent Sector?”
Bedivere blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You left here in one seventy-eight. Did you head straight for the Silent Sector, or did it take you while to get there? Where did you go first?”
Bedivere frowned. “I don’t remember,” he said flatly. “There’s things I can’t recall, still.”
“You don’t remember where you went, first?”
Bedivere stared at him, wondering why he was asking. He didn’t voice the question, though. That would lead to explanations and more questions. “Darwin, I think.”
“Thanks.” Connell stepped out of the room and shut the door.
The lights stayed on.
Bedivere scrubbed at his hair and face and felt the scrape of whiskers. He’d missed a depilatory dose. He’d have to deal with regrowth manually until the next dose kicked in.
He reached down and picked up the board he’d left on the floor before falling asleep and flipped through some pages. None of them grabbed his attention.
Why did Connell want to know where he had gone?
He knew that asking would stir up stuff he had tamped down into a silent mass so he stayed sitting on the edge of the bed.
Yet the need to know grew.
After an hour of pretending to read, he put the board on one of the shelves and got to his feet. He rested his hand on the door, hesitating. Then he sighed. “Open,” he told the AI.
The door let him out.
It was quiet in the big room, but not empty. Lilly was at her desk and Yennifer was sitting in the armchair closest to it, a board in her hands.
Connell and Brant had a sofa apiece, with a heads-up display between them with a chess board on it.
“Isn’t playing chess with a Varkan just a fancy form of self-flagellation?” Bedivere asked.
Brant sat back on the sofa, spreading his arms along the back of it. “I like the challenge.”
Bedivere stopped in the middle of the floor, halfway between his room and the sofas and a long way from Lilly. There was nothing around him. No man’s land. “So, did I go to Darwin?”
Connell moved his knight and glanced at Bedivere. “You were there. I don’t know if that was the first place you went. It’s not like you had to check in with anyone when you arrived somewhere. Besides, you ditched your identity between here and there.” He frowned, studying the board. “Mate in three,” he added.
“Damn,” Brant muttered.
Neither of them were paying Bedivere much attention and that suited him fine. He took another few steps toward the sofas as Brant moved his pawn. “Mate in two,” he said.
Brant glared at him.
“He’s right,” Connell said with a smile.
Brant swore and dissolved the board. “Shouldn’t play with a goddamn sentient anyway,” he muttered.
“Why do you want to know where I went?” Bedivere asked. The effort it took to ask it aloud made his skin prickle. He was sweating.
Brant and Connell both looked at Lilly, sitting at her desk. Brant actually turned himself on the cushion so he was leaning on the back of the sofa.
Lilly looked up from her desk. “We already have a pretty good idea of some of the places you went to and what you did there. Once we hooked you up to a live stream back-up, the data built a picture we can interpret fairly well.”
“Why? Why dig it up?”
Lilly looked at him steadily. “Nineteen short-term, high-risk, high-bonus no-ask contracts in the Silent Sector and places that no one goes to voluntarily. New Gaia, Fu-Sang. You were irradiated, dosed and hooked on Darzi to keep you compliant. Then, when you couldn’t keep it together anymore and reneged on your contract they sold you to the savage pits.”
Bedivere swallowed. “That…sounds familiar.”
Lilly got to her feet. Everyone else was silent.
“You could have ditched your ID and gone rogue, found work or business on some Terra world without the risk. Or if that had been what you really wanted, you could have suicided very neatly just by jumping to somewhere the datacore doesn’t reach. Yet you didn’t. You dived into a hole so deep that it took years to find you and pull you out.”
Bedivere’s breath was short and fast. It sounded loud in his ears. “So?”
“Bedivere, you had the worst luck someone could have,” Brant said. “Once you took that first no-ask contract, the events arrayed themselves to keep you locked on a path of self-destruction.”
Bedivere realized his hands were clenched in fists so hard it was hurting. He tried to loosen them and couldn’t. “So I had bad luck
. Or maybe I wanted it that way.”
“No one dives that deep without help,” Lilly said. “We’re trying to find out who helped you.” She stopped in front of him. Not directly in front, but close enough for him to see the determination in her eyes. “Which reminds me. Yennifer?”
Yennifer didn’t move. There was a distinct sound of a door locking, behind him.
“That room will be emptied and sterilized. The lock will no longer open to your command,” Lilly told him. “You can have any other room in this place. I’ll even build you a room if you want it, but you’re not going back into that closet.”
Anger touched him. Along with the anger came a craving so intense it hurt as much as his fists did. “Why don’t you sterilize that room, while you’re spring cleaning?” he demanded, nodding toward the closed double doors by the main entrance. “I bet it looks exactly like it does when I left.”
Silence.
His longing for escape, for peace, intensified. He ached for it. He made himself say the words. “She’s not coming back, Lilly.”
“You don’t know that,” Lilly replied. Her voice was strained.
“She’s with Devlin Woodward. She’s doing work she loves. He’s doing more good in this galaxy than has been seen for an age and he’s brought peace along with it.” Bedivere met her gaze. “He’s a better man than I’ll ever be. I told her to go with him.”
“You thought you didn’t have a choice,” Lilly countered.
Bedivere shook his head. “I dived into a hole that deep because that’s the man I am. That’s why she won’t be back.” He headed for the front door. “Sterilize the room. Strip it. Then I’ll use it. Not before.”
And he got the hell out of there before he completely lost it.
Chapter Seven
Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187
It became a lot easier to look them in the face after that…mostly because everyone went back to not talking to him. Lilly looked troubled every time he saw her.
Cat and Company Page 5