Vinicius nodded to the screen, where the figures were assembling and rotating, providing detailed health analyses that only well-trained therapists could read completely. “A woman who claimed she was Catherine Shahrazad checked in to the Women’s’ Therapy Centre on Harrivalé. That’s the single planet in the Ivaldi system.”
“Harrivalé qualified for a seat on the Board about forty years ago,” Kare said. “So why isn’t Nekka the Supreme Mother here to speak about this? I saw her in the ballroom, not long ago.”
Vinicius gave a small smile. “You are very good at remembering the names and titles of the planetary governors, Your Honor. It is a natural inclination, given your role as Chair of the Faring Board. But your onerous duties would preclude staying abreast of the affairs of any but the most core and primary Federation worlds, such as Cathain. Harrivalé has been struggling with an economic depression that has lasted for years. They have only just emerged from it.”
“That is why I haven’t seen Nekka at Board meetings lately,” Kare murmured.
Vinicius looked surprised. “You noted her absence?”
“The headdress is…distinctive,” Kare pointed out. The colorful headdress with its milk diamonds and gold, always reminded him of a full moon rising above the horizon.
Vinicius nodded. “In fact, Harrivalé failed to qualify for Board membership for two years. Nekka has been preoccupied and the possibility of more civil unrest on top of Harrivalé’s woes was not of interest to her. With her permission, I had my investigators research within the system. “
“And they found this?” Kare pointed at the screen. “This deconstruction includes DNA?”
“It does. I had a therapist interpret it for me.”
Kare raised his brows. “And…?”
“The DNA is ninety-six percent compliant with Glave’s sequence.”
Kare stared at the charts, not really seeing them. “Then it really is the Shahrazad.” DNA sequencing was inarguable proof. “Unless the records were falsified,” he added, pointing out the one weakness.
Vinicius shook his head. “I paid well for qualified data. This record was supplied by three different sources. It’s verified.”
Kare let out his breath. “Then she is real and she is back in Federation space. Why? Did your sources establish that, too?”
Vinicius shook his head. “They were ordered not to engage, so speculation is all we have available, but that supplies some interesting summations.” He held up a finger. “One. Her ship was first recorded within Federation Space, arriving at Harrivalé. If the previous information about her is correct, then the last time Catherine Shahrazad was in Federation space was eight-nine years ago. At that time, Harrivalé was still a fringe world and planetary records show that the Invincible, with Shahrazad registered as captain, arrived there shortly after the Egemon Incident.”
Kare drew in a slow, calming breath. Egemon had been a border world, a highly religious one, under deep Staff of Ammon control. Even though her identity had been disputed from the moment she arrived, Catherine Shahrazad had stirred up the worst riot in the planet’s short history. Sometime during the unrest, she and her ship had disappeared. That was the last time she had been seen inside the Federation. “She went back to Harrivalé?” he asked.
“There is an excellent therapy center there and, of course, now that Harrivalé is a Federation member, the therapy center would have access to the Federation data pool.”
“The DNA bank is part of the fedcore,” Kare said. “She wanted full regeneration.”
“The stars alone know what therapy is available out in the fringes,” Vinicius added. “Enough, I suppose, for her to last eight-nine years before heading back to civilization.”
“And that is why she is here?”
“It’s one of the reasons.” Vinicius held up a second finger. “While she was on Harrivalé, she brought an updated edition of the Itinerary.” He pursed his lips. “Paid cash for it, too. Crisp Ivalda yen, freshly minted.”
“Forgeries?”
“Quite legitimate,” Vinicius said. “But she must have used a fake identity with the bank where she exchanged her money. We can’t find the transaction, not without a Compliance order.” He shrugged. “A new Itinerary is a lot of money. Even an update.”
Kare frowned. “Those are perfectly normal actions of someone who arrives in the Federation after a long absence. The Itinerary is essential to navigate the gates. The regeneration would almost be imperative after ninety years.”
“Out in the fringes, you can buy a bootleg Itinerary for a quarter the price,” Vinicius pointed out. “Although I wouldn’t risk jumping to any coordinates supplied by such a copy.”
“Perhaps Shahrazad shares your prudence,” Kare suggested. He unsealed the stimtab and swallowed it with a mouthful of coffee. It tasted bitter.
Vinicius scrolled through the therapy deconstruction. “She has been out in the fringes for nearly a century. My investigators tried to establish where she had come from, but before she arrived on Harrivalé, there is no trace of her or her ship. She must have used different names for both. After she left Harrivalé there is no trace of her either. She only used her real name once. On Harrivalé.”
“Which was necessary for the therapy,” Kare pointed out. “Clearly, Catherine Shahrazad does not want to stir up trouble by using her real name. Whatever the reasons she returned to the Federation, civil disputes about her heritage is not one of them.” Kare put the coffee down. It had cooled off and the stimtab had ruined his enjoyment of it. “She is an historical curiosity, Vinicius. That is all.”
“One that can generate revolutions.”
“Which she is apparently well aware of and trying to avoid by not using her real identity.”
“There could be other reasons for the subterfuge.”
“You’re being paranoid,” Kare told him.
Vinicius gave a short bow. “Your Honor.”
Kare smiled. “I appreciate your forward thinking, Vinicius. We can—” He held out his hand, looking at the screen. “That is her?”
There was an image on the screen of a very young woman, with red hair and blue eyes that seemed almost luminous in the scrubbed and pale face. She wore no make-up or enhancements. Her brows were a softer shade of the color of her hair, but arched strongly.
“That’s the after picture,” Vinicius confirmed and reached for the controls. “There’s a before, somewhere at the back, I believe.”
“Leave it,” Kare said sharply, studying the picture. “She looks very young.”
“Around twenty years in biological terms,” Vinicius said.
Most women tended to undergo rejuvenation and therapy regularly, keeping their biological age within ten years of their preferred appearance. Kare was used to a woman appearing essentially ageless, her features changing only with the application of cosmetic enhancements. “Why so young?”
“If she can only access regeneration every century or so, it probably pays to start out as young as possible. Gives her more time until she has to come back to the core, eh?”
The woman’s chin was lifted, her gaze staring directly into the lens. “Are there any more images?” Kare asked.
“A couple. One of the investigators posed as a stevedore.” Vinicius closed down the deconstruction and opened another file.
This image was slightly grainy, which told Kare it had been taken some distance from the subject. But the image was focused and detailed. It was a landing bay, a rounded and hollow shell, the walls bristling with equipment and tools for servicing craft of every description.
The ship sitting on the pad was a medium-sized long-range cruiser of indeterminate make. It looked like no model he had ever seen before. It took up most of the space in the bay and made the people working on it seem very small. “She owns her own ship.” Kare murmured. “I remember she had one before, too.”
“Possibly the same ship.”
“After a century?”
Vinicius shrugge
d. “Private cruisers aren’t cheap and they’re not easy to find. There’s no market for them. There’d be even fewer out on the fringes.”
Kare shifted his attention back to the small group of people standing around the landing struts of the ship. They weren’t maintenance crew, for they didn’t wear protective gear or shielding. One of them wore a grey oversuit with a company logo on the back that was just blurred enough it couldn’t be read. That would be one of the station representatives.
The other two wore civilian clothing, nothing remarkable or highly fashionable that would make them stand out. On the far left, Catherine Shahrazad stood with her hand on her hip. Her hair was down, swinging around her shoulders freely. Next to the other two in the conversation, who were both men, she looked surprisingly small.
“I thought she would be taller,” Kare said.
Vinicius raised a brow.
Kare pointed to the man on her left, the other civilian. “Crew member?” he asked.
“Navigator or pilot,” Vinicius said. “He didn’t leave the landing bay at all. Spent all his time supervising the locals.”
“Navigator,” Kare decided. “Shahrazad is the pilot.”
Vinicius shot him a sharp look. “I suppose, yes, she must be.” He turned the display off and returned the window to normal.
Kare crossed his arms. “Thank you for bringing this to me, Vinicius. I will see you tomorrow, yes?”
Vinicius gave a sour smile. “Most certainly.” He gave another short bow. “Your Honor.”
The aide stepped into the room as Vinicius left and looked at Kare steadily, waiting for orders.
Kare didn’t give him any. Instead, he made his way back to the ballroom, two floors above. The sweeping music grew louder as he got closer and the murmur of hundreds of people rose beneath it.
He spent the next two hours dancing, including one dance with Nekka the Supreme Mother while her headdress swayed in time. He drank a little and spoke to key people. When he thought his presence had been visible enough for a while, he tapped the signal out on the back of his hand and waited for Jarek to arrive.
Jarek pinged him and Kare found him at the side of the room by the motionless guards lining the walls, each guard precisely three meters apart. Jarek was as dressed-up and sparkling as everyone else in the room, except for his face, which wore the usual scowl.
“Catherine Shahrazad has been spotted in Federation space,” Kare told him.
Jarek lifted a brow and waited. After so many years as Kare’s Chief of Staff, there was very little that surprised him.
“Vinicius couldn’t track her, not with his resources,” Kare added.
“We could.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Three
Cadfael College, Van Andel, Andelsson’s System. 10.069
From the top of the Eistav tower, one of the highest locations anywhere on the sprawling campus of stone, it was possible to see nearly every step visitors took along the four hundred meter road between the City and the Postulant Gate—the road that had been called the Prentice Path for longer than Nephele could remember.
Today, the snow was deep and walls of ice had been built on either side of the road. The cold ate into her bones just looking at the blinding white glare of the blank snowfield lying almost untouched, broken only by the narrow Prentice Path.
Why had no one ever agreed to an underground street connecting the City and the College? Most of the City was already underground, out of reach of the biting cold, warmed by tapped lava fields and other geothermic sources. The technology for building streets and suburbs beneath the surface was well understood. A single street running to the cellars of the College would present no construction problems at all.
Except that Nephele knew without asking that neither of her Eistav partners would agree to have the College so intimately connected to the City. The Aneesh, they would insist, must maintain their isolation in order to further the aims of the College.
And so visitors braved the usually inclement weather in order to learn, consult or contribute to the college agenda. There was no other reason to come here.
This window-gazing was really procrastination. Nephele had halted the message she had been reading mid-stream and almost without thinking had moved over to the window and studied the few people traversing the Path this early in the morning, while she mused about estrangement and branding strategies.
She hugged the fragile fabric of her jacket more firmly against her, even though it wasn’t possible for any cold to seep through the sealed windows, even at the temperatures out there today. This was the oldest section of the College building and had stood for just over two thousand years despite the weather.
A soft tap sounded against the heavy door between Nephele’s office and Vavay’s, before it opened and Vavay stepped through, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth. The smile faded. “You’re troubled.”
It would be foolish to hide the source of her irritation so Nephele nodded toward the screen in the middle of her worktable. “The proctor of the Women’s Institute on Harrivalé reports that Catherine Shahrazad applied for rejuvenation therapy.”
Vavay’s big brown eyes widened. “Shahrazad! I hope you told the proctor to find an excuse to keep the woman within the clinic until we can get there.”
Nephele grimaced. “This is a post-facto report. Shahrazad checked out six months ago.”
Vavay’s jaw tightened. “To go where?”
Nephele shook her head. “The logs she filed at the terminal said she was heading for Víkingr. Víkingr’s terminus has no such person and no ship called Invincible in their records.”
“She never went there,” Vavay concluded.
“Or she did go there, but changed her name and her ship’s name.”
“Either way, it seems she has been lost to us again.” Vavay frowned, which made her smooth brow wrinkle into fine channels and grooves, one of the few hints about her supple and slender form that spoke of her true great age. “The woman leads a charmed life. That’s twice now we’ve fumbled her detainment.”
“You’re referring to Egemon?” Nephele smiled. “I did warn the Ammonites about her before they made the attempt.” In fact, the Staffers had been almost arrogant in their confidence that detaining Catherine Shahrazad would be of little matter. Instead they had ended up with a PR disaster and had lost control of the city, the planet and the system, in one foul day.
“We should have done it ourselves,” Vavay pointed out. This was an old argument, but it had been years since the last time they had churned over the same muddy ground. Nevertheless, Nephele knew what Vavay was about to say because of the constant repetition. Vavay pressed her lips together, vexed. “We need viable DNA from Glave’s line to refresh the gene pool. She is the most direct-line descendant. The study of her genes would answer so many questions we have about that time. About Glave himself.”
“Because no one remembers it directly,” Nephele finished. “We have her DNA profile on record. The clinic on Harrivalé updated it while she was there, after matching her records.”
“Profiles are not the same as fresh DNA,” Vavay said. “Profiles don’t speak to gene expression. Profiles don’t generate children. Only the living human host does that and now she’s gone.”
“Again,” Nephele added. She hesitated. “I was wondering why she was back in Federation space.”
“For rejuvenation, clearly.”
“She bought an updated Itinerary while she was on Harrivalé.”
Vavay frowned again. “That doesn’t mean anything. You need the Itinerary to travel anywhere, including the Fringes.”
True. Nephele pointed at the screen. “She was travelling with a navigator. He was judged to be in his forties in appearance and probably older than that with even the rudimentary male extension therapies available in the Fringes.”
“He’s here to regenerate.” The corners of Vavay’s expressive mouth lifted. “If we can find out who he is, we can
find his mule farm.”
“I’ve already sent word to the school on Harrivalé to look into it. Discreetly, of course.”
“Tell them to retrieve the navigator’s DNA. Shed cells will be enough to identify him from our records.”
Vavay crossed her arms and gripped her elbows, controlling her excitement. “To have a descendant of Glave himself at our disposal….” Her tone was distant and filled with longing.
“Caution,” Nephele countered. “This has been the College’s ambition for many centuries. Each time we have come close to achieving it, she has slipped away from us. She has no morals—not of any sort that you or I would understand. She is not in the least bit spiritual despite Glave being her ancestor. There is evidence that suggests she has been alive since at least the eighth millennium. All that experience…”
Vavay smiled. It was an angelic expression that sent a ripple of unease through Nephele. She had seen that serene expression before.
“You and I,” Vavay said softly, “have been alive long enough to know that being alive for a very long time eventually cancels out the very benefits of long life. After so long, she will be casual about her security, complacent about the future and careless. You have used that factor to your advantage before. Many times.”
Nephele nodded. This was true.
“We must strategize,” Vavay said, sitting in the big chair next to the fireplace and arranging the hem of her robe around her ankles. “Nothing must be left to chance. Catherine Shahrazad must return to her appointed place in Cadfael College, where she rightly belongs.”
Chapter Four
Darwin, Sykora III. Federation Core. FY 10.069
“Because Catherine doesn’t share your enthusiasm,” Bedivere told Lilita as the three of them walked down the loading ramp onto the landing bay floor.
Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance Page 3