He couldn’t even smile at her joke.
“Just one step,” she said. “That’s all.”
He took the step quickly, like he was getting it over and done with.
Nothing happened.
“And another one,” she said.
This one came easier.
“And once more.”
This time the step was more like his natural stride.
Catherine studied him. “You must be beyond the reach of the ship network by now. Can you tell if you’ve switched over?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down. Then he moved her out of his way gently. He walked over to the doors and turned to look at her. His hair in the bright sunlight was an old gold color.
He was smiling.
Catherine hurried over to him, happiness bubbling up inside. “It worked,” she breathed.
Bedivere lifted his hand and looked at the sunlight playing on it, then up at the skylight overhead, squinting at the dazzling sun. “It worked,” he said softly. Then he picked her up and lifted her up high. “It works!”
Catherine was almost giddy with relief. When he put her back on her feet, she had to grip the sleeves of his jacket to hold herself upright.
Bedivere looked down at her, his smile small, but genuine. There was something that looked suspiciously like tears glistening in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, his voice very low.
She couldn’t speak. There was a painful knot in her throat, squeezing and making her own eyes sting. When it had passed, she said hoarsely, “I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.”
The look in his eyes. That was what shifted everything. Afterward, she was able to pinpoint it exactly. He looked at her and the look in his eyes changed.
A voice whispered in her head. He wants to kiss you.
And for a breathless moment that seemed like a fine idea, like the icing on the cake. It would be such a kiss!
Her heart hammered and her whole body seemed to wait, pulsing.
Then Bedivere stepped back away from her and the moment passed. The sun blazed through the skylight, but not quite as bright as before. Catherine blinked and cleared her throat.
“I say we hit every bar in this place. A drink at each,” Bedivere said and moved over to the three meter gap between the doors. “You’re buying.”
“Of course I am,” Catherine said with a snort.
They did their best. But the atmosphere between them had gone wrong, somehow. Catherine spent the entire time looking behind her and over both shoulders, as well as in front and up and down, worried that some asshole would spoil this for Bedivere. There were plenty of men who, with enough drink in them, would want to take on someone Bedivere’s size just to prove to themselves they were definitely of the male gender.
Bedivere drank, but spent more time looking around, watching people, and absorbing details. And thinking.
“Is something wrong?” she finally asked.
Bedivere picked up his shot glass and examined the play of the lights behind the bar through the caramel colored liquid. “Not a single thing,” he assured her. It was his sixth, but he was speaking clearly, still.
“We should maybe get you back to the ship, anyway.”
Bedivere laughed. “That’s funny,” he added.
She realized that the alcohol was affecting him, after all. “No arguments,” she said quietly. “The experiment is a success. We’ve celebrated. Let’s go home, Bedivere.”
He looked up at her, blinking slowly. “Do you know the way?”
“Yes. Which is probably just as well. I don’t think you do right now.” She was shorter than him even when he was sitting on a bar stool. She tried to ineffectually pull him up onto his feet.
He cooperated enough to stand and hold on to the edge of the bar. “Oh…wow,” he breathed. Then he looked at her. “I didn’t say thank you.”
“Yes, you did.” She got her shoulder under his arm. “This way.”
* * * * *
She made enough noise, stumbling around the ramp, trying to haul Bedivere up it, that it roused Brant. He was shorter than Bedivere, but still tall enough to take most of his weight across his shoulders. Brant looked at her and raised a brow. “I thought he had a better head for the stuff.”
“I don’t think his head is the problem. It’s his body that won’t cooperate.” She drew in several breaths. “He’s so heavy.” She hesitated, weighing up her options. “Would you mind putting him to bed?”
“I think he would prefer you to do that, don’t you?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Brant studied her. Bedivere’s weight didn’t seem to be bothering him in the slightest, even though he was doing most of the holding-up now. “You look like you need sleep, too,” he said. “How long is it since you got more than a couple of hours?”
“It’s been a while,” she confessed. It had been days, really. She hadn’t slept more than an hour at once the whole time Bedivere had been recovering.
“Go on,” Brant said. “I’ll tuck him in and lock everything down.”
She stepped out from under Bedivere’s heavy arm. “Thanks.”
It was only after she had fallen into bed that she realized the budding hostility in Brant had been completely missing.
Normally, she tried not to give a damn about what people thought of her, especially those with whom she would have little contact. Brant, as a Staffer, would soon be gone from her life, even if he stayed on board for the rest of his. But as she fell asleep, she couldn’t extinguish the tiny seed of hope that his lack of animosity had planted.
Chapter Fifteen
It was Brant’s suggestion that they seal up the entire landing bay and all four of them take a day away from not just the ship, but the terminal, too.
“Go dirtside?” Catherine asked. “It’s a long way to get back if we suddenly need to be gone and only one way to get back.”
“It’s a channel that could be cut off far too easily,” Lilly said.
“Bedivere is hooked into the ship now, yes?” Brant asked, glancing at Bedivere. “You can monitor everything up here and give us early warning.”
“Listen to you,” Bedivere replied. “You decry biotech, but you don’t mind taking advantage of the immoral convenience it offers.”
Brant swirled the remains of his coffee, watching it spin. “None of us is pure, nothing is black and white.” His gaze flickered toward Catherine. “I would much rather be living a clean life on some low-tech world, surrounded by my family, but we don’t get to live the life we want. We get to live the life we’re handed.” He put the cup down and sat up, looking at Bedivere directly. “So if I must share a ship with a mechanized idiot, I’ll use that idiot’s skills to make the most of my life.”
Bedivere grinned. “I think he’s calling me stupid.”
“Just nod and agree with him,” Catherine told him. “If a dirtside visit isn’t to take two days, we need to start now.”
“I have a better idea,” Bedivere said.
* * * * *
Sunittara (Sunita VIII). F.Y. 10.070
The mountain chain extended through the spine of the secondary continent, with jagged peaks wreathed in cloud. The val.ley Bedivere landed the ship in was just below the tree line and the air was cool, fresh and invigorating.
The waterfall tumbling through the gap between two peaks helped enormously with the sense of escape. The moisture it added to the air nearby relaxed their skin.
The yellow sun overhead was bright and warming.
“This place is better than a joy-joy shot,” Lilly said, looking around, as she stretched her legs out on the blanket she was sitting on. She plucked another strawberry from the dish and bit into it.
“It’s an odd sensation, sitting outside and eating at the same time,” Catherine observed. “Even just sitting outside. I’m usually busy doing something.” She pushed her almost empty plate away from her. “What’s this called, again?”
“A picnic,” Bedivere said from where he rested full length in the soft green stuff that passed as Sunittara’s grass. “It’s an ancient Earth word.”
“History buff?” Brant asked.
“I like to read.” He kept his eyes closed, as the sun played on his face.
Lilly drank from an insulated cup and gave a soft burp. “It’s hard to not like this, even if it is an ancient thing. The view makes up for it.”
“It does,” Catherine agreed, glancing at the towering peaks once more. “The lack of hostile life is very relaxing.”
“I don’t think they’ve even opened up this continent to settlement yet, have they?” Lilly asked.
“Certainly not this high up. You can hear the wind in the trees.” Brant tilted his head to listen.
Lilly crossed her legs and sat up straighter. “While we’re all so relaxed and contented, can I ask a question, Catherine?”
Catherine shrugged. “You can always ask questions, as long as you understand that sometimes, I’m just not going to answer.”
“I’ll just keep asking then. One day, you’ll answer.”
“You’re going to wear her down?” Bedivere asked. “You won’t live that long.”
Brant snuffled back laughter.
“What’s your question?” Catherine said.
“What are we doing here? I don’t mean on this mountain. I mean, what are we doing here, now, this year, in the middle of the Federation core planets? You’ve got the tech you wanted. Now what?”
“You’re asking what my plans are?”
“Our plans,” Brant said softly. “We get to go where you do. I wouldn’t mind knowing what’s in store. Even the need-to-know business.”
Lilly nodded vigorously. “If the Federation is after all of us just because we work for you, we should know why, at least.”
“That’s two different questions,” Bedivere pointed out.
Catherine considered the questions as fairly as she could. “I had five things to do when I reached Federation space. It took nearly twenty years to raise the cash for the mesh tether and then at the last minute Sibéal asked for a regulator for her husband, too, so we had to arrange that and wait for it to be made. It meant we were sitting out in the fringes for longer than I wanted to. So the list got a little longer.” She held up her hand and counted off the tips of her fingers. “By the time we jumped back here, I needed full rejuvenation and Bedivere did a stint in the clinic, too. Touch up stuff.” Another fingertip. “A new Itinerary.” A third. “Exchange the regulator for the mesh tether.” She touched the fourth. “There’s one more job.”
Brant leaned forward. “What?”
“I won’t tell you. Not right now. Not until we’re about to do it. But that’s why you were hired, Brant.”
“Why won’t you tell us?” Lilly asked.
“Because I’m a naturally suspicious person, who has lived longer than anyone I know and got that way because I don’t trust anyone. Living out on the fringes taught me to be even more careful about who I share my secrets with. Brant, be careful what you ask for. If I tell you everything, you won’t like it. I’m saving you from a moral dilemma.”
“I survived the last one,” he said gruffly.
“Very well. I won’t tell you because I don’t know you well enough.”
Lilly let out a hiss of frustration. “You want us to just do whatever you say?”
“I want you to do the jobs I pay you to do,” Catherine said sharply.
Bedivere sat up. “That was only four,” he said.
“What?” Lilly looked confused.
“You said you had five things you wanted to accomplish while you were here. But you only gave us four. What’s the fifth?”
He was deflecting the other two. Shifting the subject.
Catherine drew in a breath, only now aware of the tension between her shoulder blades. She let it out and shrugged. “Number five is…I need to figure out what number five is.”
Lilly looked at her oddly. Brant stared blankly. Bedivere smiled, but kept his chin down so the other two wouldn’t see it.
Now she was feeling really foolish. “I’ve been working my ass off for nearly a hundred years. I’ve saved more money than I think I’ve seen in a dozen centuries before that. And now, suddenly, we’re here. It’s done. One last thing and then…I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t even understand that,” Brant muttered.
“Of course you don’t. You’ve only been alive for fifty years or so and you’re still figuring out how life works. I’ve lived every conceivable version of life I could ever dream up, plus everything new that has ever been invented. I’m trying to figure out what to do next.”
“What do you want?” Bedivere asked.
“That’s just it. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Something will come along. It always does and if it doesn’t, then I’ll pick something at random and try that, then try the next thing.” She shrugged self-consciously.
Brant put his fingers together carefully. “How old are you, Catherine?”
Her laughter escaped before she could censor it. “I’m surprised you don’t know to the year,” she told him. “Isn’t Glave and his descendants one of the subjects taught in your graduate schools?”
“Then you are his descendant?”
“So they tell me.” She couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “My ninety-six percent genetic familiarity meant I could get away with far more than the other kids in the crèche. I think they were afraid I’d be damaged if they applied to much pressure.”
“Physical pressure?” Bedivere asked curiously, although he knew more of her background than anyone still alive.
“Both. Although they weren’t above manipulating the truth to keep me compliant.”
“They?” Lilly asked. “You were College raised?”
“The College wasn’t around when I was a child,” Catherine said frankly. “It was created about a hundred years later. But children were already being raised by the Faithful, even then.” She gave a shrug. This was all such very old history. “Glave was reacting to the world he lived in. He could see the social demographics, the pattern that said humans were killing themselves. So he preached a course that would save them and he believed in it so strongly, that he fought twelve wars to make his point. Brant, you know this better than I. Glave is the cornerstone of your religion.”
Brant nodded. “Twelve wars, then he was betrayed by his wife and the Federation—or what would become the Federation—assassinated him. But still the galaxy we knew refused to listen. Glave was the defeated, after all.”
“And no one knows if he really existed, anyway,” Bedivere added.
Brant looked offended.
“There is no definitive proof at all,” Bedivere maintained. “No official records, nothing.”
“That’s because during the Decline, data was lost. Colonies were lost. Hell, whole sections of the Galaxy were cut off from each other, as the population shrank down to next to nothing.”
Bedivere nodded. “So proof that Glave exists is all second-hand reporting and interpretation of second-hand and third-hand verbal reports the writer maintains was told to him by a reliable source. But the scholars have debunked nearly every report.”
Brant looked ready to clout him.
“Wait, wait,” Lilly said. She looked at Catherine. “How do they know you’re compliant with Glave’s genes, if they can’t even prove he existed?”
“They’re relying on the same second-hand records the scholars are,” Catherine said evenly. “Someone told someone who cared, a long time ago, that a particular DNA pattern was Glave’s.” She shrugged.
“So…you could be the descendant of anyone?” Lilly asked.
“Except that a lot of people in a lot of positions of power think otherwise,” Bedivere said. “They have too much to lose by admitting they could have it wrong.”
“I didn’t learn any of this in school,” Lilly muttered.
&nb
sp; “And that is why the Federation want you so much?” Brant asked. “Because you have a DNA pattern that closely matches someone they can’t even prove exists?”
“You’re part of those people,” Catherine reminded him.
“And they taught me to question everything, including my own faith,” Brant shot back.
“Very liberal of them, considering The Staff of Ammon enforcers are Crusaders in disguise,” Bedivere said. Then he considered. “Actually, they’re not even disguised all that much.”
“Crusaders…?” Lilly echoed, as Brant laughed hard and long.
Brant coughed and came up for air. “Ancient Terran history,” he told Lilly. “Crusaders were an army that enforced one of the dominant religions of the time. They killed everything that didn’t agree with them and convert to their religion.”
“And you’re laughing about it?” Lilly asked, bewildered.
Brant nodded, still smiling. “Because he’s right.” His smile faded. “That’s exactly what Staffers do. That’s why I left.”
Lilly was frowning, absorbing it all. “No, really,” she insisted. “That’s why the Federation wants you so much? Because you might be related to someone who might have existed?”
“It doesn’t matter if he existed or not,” Catherine said patiently. “He represents an idea…and an ideal, too. It’s the idea that has power, Lilly. It’s the idea that Cadfael College was built upon. The Staff of Ammon, too. It was the idea that formed the Church of the Faithful of Mortal Divination and has shaped the way we live even now, almost three thousand years later. And no one is disputing that the idea saved humanity from the Decline and the Interregnum. We wouldn’t be here without it. So the idea that humanity is worth saving, that children are the most important thing we can do to help humans survive…that is why people get so fussed about my possible ancestor.”
“They don’t fuss about you. They try to capture you. Why?” Lilly demanded.
Catherine sighed. She caught Bedivere’s sympathetic gaze. He knew why she didn’t want to answer the question, even though she had agreed to let them ask whatever they wanted.
Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance Page 10