“Call it an experiment, if you want,” he said softly and now she could feel the heat from his body leaning over her. “Satisfy your curiosity. Kiss me and see.”
She couldn’t move.
His big hand lifted and the long fingers pressed under her chin, turning it, so that she was looking at him.
“Kiss me,” he whispered.
She pressed her lips to his—she barely had to lean forward to do it. The lips were the same. He tasted the same. She tossed away thought and just enjoyed the kiss. Someone sighed and she realized it was her. That made her blink and pull back.
Bedivere was smiling. It was one of his little smiles that just tugged on the corner of his mouth. “You started to think it through again,” he said. “That’s no good.”
“What do you want from me?”
“A kiss. That’s all. A kiss freely given, with no conditions attached.”
“The world doesn’t work that way—” She muffled a little shriek of surprise as he tipped her chair back, so that she was lying in it, looking up at him. He held the chair up easily and shook his head. “The world works whatever way you want it to. You’ve always known that, Cat. You’ve wrenched your life out of it and shaped it the way you want, but for some reason you won’t apply that to me.”
“Let me up.”
“No.” He kissed her again. She had experienced kisses aplenty, but this was different. It was as if Bedivere was throwing his whole heart and soul into it. Into her.
With the chair tipped back, she couldn’t break the kiss. She couldn’t do anything but accept it.
Then he brought the chair up, dropping it back on its feet and stood up. “If you want another one of those, come and find me.”
Catherine watched him walk out the door, her thoughts scattered and her nerves sizzling.
* * * * *
She found him on the flight deck, sitting in his navigator’s chair, studying the readouts and status reports.
“The tether will give you all that data, won’t it?” she asked.
Bedivere smiled. “I like doing it the human way.” He turned the chair to face her. “Still can’t sleep, Cat?”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I’m benefiting from one of the side effects of a new body that you hinted at. Lots of energy. I’m wide awake.” He picked up her hand and drew her closer, until her knees pressed against his. “Back for another kiss, Cat?”
She swallowed. “You’re playing some sort of game, aren’t you?”
“No game.” He shook his head. “I like kissing you. I’d like to do more of it, but first we have to get rid of this ancient prejudice you’re carrying, that even you don’t want anymore.”
“I’m not prejudiced.” She didn’t like that label.
“You are, or you would have kissed me a long time ago. You’re always taken what you wanted, even if it takes twenty years of sweat and worry.”
“You’re talking about the tether? You worked just as hard for that.”
“You taught me how.” His hands settled around her waist and he lifted her onto his lap and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Do you want that kiss or not?”
“Yes….” She breathed it out.
His lips met hers and this time she was glad he’d sat her down first.
* * * * *
The next time they passed in the corridor, Bedivere pushed her against the wall and held her pinned against it while he made her body limp with wanting. His lips trailed over her flesh and his hands followed. Catherine couldn’t put a coherent thought together.
He left her there, clinging to the wall for support, her body throbbing.
* * * * *
Wondering when he would kiss her next kept her fluttering and anxious. Her mind kept wandering. When she realized how thoroughly he had hijacked her thoughts, Catherine stalked to his room and banged on the door with her fist. There was no danger Brant and Lilly would hear her. They were a whole deck away.
Bedivere opened the door and stood leaning against the frame. Casual. Almost indifferent. “It’s about time,” he said, his voice low.
“I came to…” But she couldn’t finish the thought. Instead, she reached up and kissed him. His arms came around her and she was lifted off the floor and carried. When he laid her on the bed, she was more than ready and raised her arms up to him.
Another prejudice died in the next little while. She realized she had assumed that because he was who he was, Bedivere would perhaps be clumsy and hesitant. Instead, he played her body like an instrument, eliciting responses from her she hadn’t experienced in hundreds of years…and some, never before. She became lost in the novelty, the sensations and the raw, earthy joy of sharing.
Afterward, Bedivere chuckled and kissed the nape of her neck. “And now I understand the other benefits of a new body.”
“Being…?”
He pushed against her shoulder, pressing her back against the mattress and leaned over her once more. “Stamina,” he breathed in her ear, the burr in his voice thick and sexy, as his hand swept over her tingling flesh.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The mesh tether meant that Bedivere could slip out of the body when it slept and roam the ship as he had once always done, long ago, when no one had known he was there. But with Cat lying in his arms, he didn’t want to. He preferred to stay right here, even if that meant he couldn’t remain conscious to experience the sensations of her naked, warm and soft body against his, or listen to her quiet breathing, or feel the brush of her hair over his skin.
As sleep took the body and the moment when he could withdraw arrived, he deliberately ignored it and passed into the blank state that was “sleep”.
Except it wasn’t a blank place.
There was light there. Voices. Images seen from the corner of his eye, only to be snatched away when he tried to look at them longer. He heard Cat speaking his name and reached out for her, but the aural illusion faded, leaving him alone in this wild, unpredictable place.
He wandered, trying to make sense of it. Logic was his defining mode—he understood that need in him as clearly as he understood his origins and his essential nature as a computer. As mathematics could be used to describe the world and everything in it, he clung to that certainty as he moved through the alien landscape of sleep.
Until he found the shadow plain. It was ahead, a calm place that beckoned. He moved there slowly, wary of anything he did not understand. But the plain opened up to him and he did understand. This was a non-human place. Only he could understand it....
* * * * *
“Bedivere! Wake up!”
He woke, much as he had woken in the new body, blinking and emerging from a blankness of the mind, which forced him to reassess instantaneously the state of everything around him. He did it in a heartbeat.
Cat. His room. Heated wanting.
Catherine was leaning over him, her hair a dark red in the single light in the room. “You were having a nightmare or something. You were rigid and barely breathing.”
“Nightmare?”
“You know what they are, right?”
“I’ve read about them.”
“Well, I think you were having one.”
He frowned. “I don’t think so.” What he had felt and seen didn’t fit with the psychological torture that nightmares put humans through.
“Anyway,” she said as she moved away from him. “The proximity alarm went off a few minutes ago. We’re closing in on the gates.”
Bedivere sat up. “We can’t be. They’re a week away yet.”
“Check the data yourself, silly.”
He did, reaching through the tether for the most up to date readings. She was right. “Emergence in twenty-three minutes, but I don’t know how this can be.”
“Maybe in all the panic going on when we jumped into this hole, you made a mistake?”
“I don’t make mistakes.” It simply wasn’t possible for him to make mistakes. Not of this sort. Human er
rors were possible. Faulty judgment of the always precarious human emotions…those were the errors he could afford to make, that he must make, in order to hide among them and keep Cat safe. But not a simple navigation error. It was worrying.
Catherine was dressing rapidly and he made himself sit up and reach for his clothing, even though he really wanted to stay where he was.
“Do you get to wake Lilly and Brant, or do I?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Already done,” he told her, for he had sent an alarm to Brant’s room just after checking the navigation status.
Catherine gave him a small smile. “I don’t suppose you can reach out and tell the kitchen dispenser to whip up some coffee, too?”
He got to his feet and drew her back against him and kissed her because he simply couldn’t let her go without one. “It’s already half-done. If you stop there on your way to the flight deck, it should be ready.”
“I don’t know what I did without you,” she said, smiling at him. He understood it was a small joke, a jest that held a kernel of truth. But after the utter loneliness of dark plain he had just visited and the fear in Cat’s dream voice, he couldn’t even smile back.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Ivory City, Cathain City, Cathain III. FY 10.070
Kare took the heavy coat the aide was holding out to him and threw it on as one of the guards led him through the private wing, which was dark and still and silent at this late hour, down to the lower levels of the city.
Down on these levels where Kare rarely visited were the service corridors and workrooms that kept the city running smoothly. The floors and walls were utilitarian and the ways narrow. Like the upper levels, the service areas were also gripped by the stillness of the night, held hostage by the human sleep cycle and the absence of the sun.
It was cold down here and he was glad of the coat. The chill deepened as they moved farther on, until they reached the catacombs themselves. These ancient waterways beneath the city had been carved by ancestors long ago, for reasons that stayed back in the past. Their delving had uncovered weaknesses in the earth and water had eaten through the instabilities and flooded the work of a generation. Now the catacombs were a testament to human foolishness.
The next generation, though, had turned the foolishness to good use. The water that lapped against the stone walls and pillars never became stagnant and when they investigated, it was discovered that the catacombs were joined to the waterways outside the Ivory City’s walls. A discreet and very secret gate was built and now, anyone who wished to arrive within the city unnoticed could use the gate…if they knew of it.
Ahead, Kare could hear the immortal lap of the water against the walls and see the dim light reflecting on the restless black surface.
But the guard swung aside, toward the chambers that led off from the slippery dock that had been built to service the secret visitors. One of the room doors stood open and empty.
The guard tapped on the second door, paused, then opened the door.
Who would command such authority that his own guards would await their command before entering the room?
Curious, Kare moved into the room.
Heat washed over him. Someone had put a flame to the bier at the end and the ancient device had taken all the chill out of the air.
It could only be a woman sitting before the fire and warming herself. The long, warm gown, dark cloak and fur-lined hood that was turned away from him all confirmed that.
“Who are you to demand the Magnate of the Federation Board dance attendance upon you in the middle of the night?” Kare growled.
She stood up and turned to face him, lowering the hood. Silvery hair and a face that owed its smoothness more to rigid control and discipline than to any modern therapies.
Nephele.
“Kare Sarkisian,” she intoned in her musical voice.
Kare looked at the guard. “Leave us. Lock the door behind you and leave it locked until I say to open it.”
The guard’s eyes under the head wrap widened. “But….”
“Move it!” Kare snapped. “Your insubordination will be reported to your commander.”
The guard snapped to attention, spun and left the room. The door slammed behind him and Kare heard the heavy metal bars drop into place.
Nephele smiled at him. “I see you still rule your empire with benevolence and wisdom.”
Kare scowled. “It’s not an empire.” He had always suppressed any comparisons of the Federation to old political regimes like empires. It drew the wrong sort of parallels and bred speculation.
“Of course.” She inclined her head.
“Why are you here?” he demanded. “In person? What could you not say in a private link?”
“We received the last recordings before Shahrazad’s ship jumped through the gates at Drusiss. That was, by the way, the feeblest effort I’ve seen your ground troops execute in many decades.”
Kare scowled. “You came to gloat?”
“I come with information so stunning, I could not risk speaking of it even over a secure link.”
Kare rolled his eyes. “This whole Shahrazad business is wearing my patience.” This had been the attitude he had adopted for the last few weeks. A façade of indifference and boredom, while in private he scoured the data the College shared.
“We know more about the navigator now. The one they call Bedivere X.”
Kare laughed shortly. “How romantic.”
Nephele stepped closer, her jaw tight with anger. “He’s a computer, Kare. A sentient computer, transferred into a human mule just like you would transfer to your next body.”
Cold gripped him and a sharp spike of fear. “You’re sure?”
Nephele just looked at him.
It had to be true. She would not have left the comfort of her cold eyrie to come to him with this if there had been any doubt. “You have the recordings?” he asked, his mouth suddenly dry. His head was throbbing.
Nephele held out her hand. Three data crystals sat on her palm. “I presumed you would need to hear this for yourself.”
Kare took them. “If this is true, it can’t be allowed to live.”
Nephele inclined her head in that regal way that always reminded Kare that he was simply a businessman, while she had risen through the ranks of her craft and won the highest position in the College by the acclaim of her peers. Her sense of privilege was earned.
“Where is she?” Kare demanded.
“In transit.”
“Where will they be?” he shot back impatiently.
“That, too, is in the recordings. Barros, in five days.”
* * * * *
He made it to the safety of his private study before the fit of trembling grew so intense he could only lean against his desk and let it run its course, until he was left a hollowed-out shell, bereft of feeling.
He closed down security around the room, until it was an armored shell, with nothing that could come in, not even fresh air.
Then he laboriously worked the manual controls on his desk, setting up a one-time untraceable channel to the fedcore. He didn’t even consider using the private, secure channels that were provided for his personal use. They were too well known. Any spy worth his money would have hacked into them long ago and would be monitoring them.
Once he had the conduit open, he sat back and drew upon old memories, sorting the data, recalling the codes. None of them were written down. They had never been recorded anywhere. He had been told to only remember them. He had. Once he was certain he had them, he reached out to punch in the first.
His heart was skipping beats and his mouth was filled with copper-tasting panic at what he was doing. But he didn’t stop.
* * * * *
Barros IV, Barros System, Aibosian Cluster. FY 10.070
They made Barros space and found themselves five hours away from the stationary station there and the skies empty around them.
“Barros is on the edge of Federation space, isn
’t it?” Brant asked, over Catherine’s shoulder.
“It used to be. But the edges keep spreading out as new worlds join up.”
“Why are we here?” Lilly asked.
“Because it’s the first place I found in the Itinerary that was a good long jump away,” Bedivere said. “And it’s unexpected. None of us has ever been here before and Barros offers nothing the Federation might guess we would come here for. Their Federation specialty is textiles.”
“Who would buy fabric when you can print what you want?” Lilly asked.
“Not everyone uses printers,” Catherine pointed out. “I suspect Barros does a lot of business under the table, with fringe worlds.”
“Most likely,” Bedivere said. “That would be why they struggle to requalify each year. Their real income can’t be reported.”
“So what happens next?” Brant asked.
“That’s what we need to decide,” Catherine said. She turned her chair so she was facing all of them. “I don’t think it’s up to just me anymore. You all deserve to have a say. We all have decisions to make, including whether you stay with the ship at all. I can’t guarantee any sort of future now. Bedivere must stay in Federation space and I will stay with him, which means we have to find a permanent way to avoid the authorities. But you two don’t have that restriction.”
“You mean you’re not going to dump me on a ball somewhere?” Brant asked.
Bedivere laughed. “You heard that?”
“Didn’t have to. You’re both fugitives. I’m Ammonite. You hired me for two specific jobs, both now completed. Catherine said she had to twist your arm to hire me, which means she probably promised to dump me on the nearest rock as soon as my usefulness came to an end, to keep you happy.”
Catherine scowled. “Past tense, Fareed. You’re welcome to stay if you want to.”
Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance Page 17