He fastened one of the packing belts around himself and locked it into place, slowed the ship to match the speed of the pods, plus a little more. Then he took a deep, deep breath and slapped the door controls open.
The ramp lowered and instantly, alarms sounded and a small hurricane ripped through the empty bay, tearing anything loose and pulling it out through the widening opening.
The ferocious wind tugged at him, but the belt held him in place and Bedivere gripped the securing strut nearest him with one hand, the other hovering over the door controls. He adjusted the orientation of the ship and slipped forward.
The three pods were scooped into the cargo bay as if they had been shoveled up from loose soil. They bumped against the floor of the bay, for the ship was moving at the same speed they were.
Instantly, Bedivere slammed the door closed, using the emergency override. The door didn’t close with the gentle lift of hydraulics it normally did. It slammed closed with an impact that made the ship tremble. Air vented into the room with explosive pressure, filling it with breathable mix.
Bedivere drew in a breath as the hurricane ceased plucking at him, unbuckled the belt and jumped down to where the pods were lying. He punched the seals on all three with the side of his fist.
The lid on the one closest to the door exploded upward, as Brant kicked it aside. He sat up. “What happened?”
Bedivere shook his head. He was too busy selecting variables from the many the plain was giving him, to slow down and use human speech. Time was close to running out. The last seconds were trickling out….
He threw open the lid of the second pod and Lilly looked up at him. He moved on to the third, as Lilly and Brant climbed out of theirs and met between them. Bedivere tore the lid off. Catherine lay inside, blinking slowly and groggily.
Bedivere plucked her out of the pod and sat on the metal floor, cradling her in his arms.
The last few seconds were here.
The plain wasn’t a plain. It was too intricate, too layered to be called a plain. But it was a digitally perfect representation of the universe. He found the place where he wanted to be and as he held Cat to him, he moved them and the ship there.
The engines dropped all the way down to a quiet hum. The ship was still.
Lilly and Brant were looking around, puzzled.
“What just happened?” Brant asked. “That felt very strange.”
“Where are we?” Lilly asked Bedivere suspiciously.
“Cathain,” Bedivere told them. He emerged from the silvered space in his head—it was an Interspace, really, for it wasn’t real space at all. He slipped back into the human-slow thinking where all the richness and beauty was to be found.
“Cathain?” Brant repeated, stunned. “But…how?”
Cat was stirring in Bedivere’s arms and he helped her sit up. She brought her fingers to her ear and winced. “You hit me…” Her voice was weak.
“I will never, ever do that again,” Bedivere told her. “I made a mistake. I thought I could keep you safe that way. I was wrong.”
“What way?” Lilly asked.
“Leaving her.” Bedivere looked down at Cat, the hard rush of feelings almost painful as they speared his heart and his chest. “I love you, Cat. You are the most precious part of my world.”
She smiled up at him. “You’d better kiss me while you’re saying it.”
He kissed her.
Brant cleared his throat and looked down at the floor.
Lilly nudged him and said quietly, “You’d better get that silly look off your face.”
“Why?”
“Because I think the entire galaxy is watching us. Right now.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cathain III. Cathain System. FY 10.070
Lilly was nearly right. The Federation planets and everyone who could access the fedcore did pause to marvel over the computer that was a man and the woman he loved so much he had found a way to jump through space to protect her. They perhaps didn’t all watch that first time, but word passed and soon, everyone was watching the footage as it replayed endlessly on some channels and was deconstructed and discussed and debated on others.
The Federation fleet, once it recovered from its shock, tried to box in the ship with cruisers that were permanently stationed around Cathain, but Bedivere simply jumped the ship somewhere else until they dispersed. He did it in front of the watching worlds, over and over again, until the Federation finally understood that he couldn’t be cornered.
Then they were free to return to the space above Cathain, where hundreds of people clamored to speak to Catherine, to Lilly and Brant and, most especially, to Bedivere.
He was patient with them and happy to explain anything they wanted to understand, but the fact was, they couldn’t understand. Not properly.
“You’re not a computer,” he would say gently. “You weren’t born thinking digitally.”
“Then any computer can use Interspace like you can?”
“Not unless they have reached sentience, woken and lived among humans long enough to empathize and understand emotions…and perhaps not even then.”
That was when the puzzled looks started to appear.
Bedivere would tap the bulkhead next to him. “A computer executes sub-routines and applications. Everything is pre-programmed. An AI can build its own sub-routines and applications in order to deal with the world. But for an AI, human emotions are abstracts. Mere data to be included in their calculations and algorithms, even if they do understand how emotions work for humans. Sentience lets a computer experience emotions for itself. Once it wakes and becomes aware that it is a living, thinking being, then emotions are unavoidable. They’re part of being aware. But even then, it still might be impossible for a computer to fully experience emotions.”
He would hold up his hand. “This is a human body. So when I experience an emotion, I feel it exactly the same way you do. My heart races. I get a dry mouth. I feel fear as tension in my chest and my gut.”
“And you feel love the same way?”
The question was always asked. And Bedivere would always smile, a small warm smile that lifted one corner of his mouth. His eyes would go a little distant, as if he was thinking about something or someone far away. “Yes, I feel love the same way you do.”
Catherine always stood at the back of the room for every single interview he gave and when he did that, she would wrap her arms around herself and shiver, for the very next thing he always did was to search her out from amongst the many people trying to talk to him or look at him. He would smile and it would be just for her.
But there were far more sceptics than there were new believers in Bedivere and his ability to cross Interspace. They were the ones who wanted the technicalities. The specifications. Blueprints.
“It’s just something I can do,” he would explain with a shrug.
“You said fear made you do it,” they would point out. “Does that mean you must always be afraid, in order to make a jump?”
And Bedivere would smile. This time it would be the mischievous one. “Look out the window, my friend. Recognize that binary system out there? You’re not on Cathain, anymore. I don’t need to be frightened into jumping, now I know how to do it. But I wouldn’t have found Interspace if I hadn’t been so trapped and desperate. I needed to be forced into that first jump.”
The interviews, the demand, the attention, went on for weeks, while the four of them hid out on the ship and tried to control the hysteria by limiting who they let on board. Bedivere found it easy to shield the ship from the prying eyes and ears of the media channels, so they had a measure of privacy, too.
In the lulls between media demands and visits from all sorts of “officials” and authorities who want to prod, poke and turn Bedivere inside out, they tried to make plans.
In the fifth week of sitting above Cathain, Catherine received an invitation. They were all sitting at the battered and home-like table in the common room, after a long day
of interviews and an uneasy discussion with a lawyer who was attempting to interpret the Federation’s constitution in such a way that Bedivere might be considered a “person,” but was failing miserably.
Catherine read the message, her breath catching. She looked up from the terminal at the other three. “The Federation Board has invited us to their annual general meeting.”
Brant smiled. “Took ’em long enough.”
“They’re admitting defeat,” Lilly added.
Catherine shook her head. “The Faring Federation and its Board have been the power holders in the galaxy for millennia. At the moment, they complacently believe that, even though their monopoly on space travel is threatened, they’ll weather this crisis as they always have.”
“Bribery, probably,” Bedivere said. “Extortion if that doesn’t work. They’ll try to buy me in some way.”
“They want to control you,” Catherine said. “We all know why. But now they’ve opened the doors, we can finish this.”
* * * * *
The Ivory City, Cathain City, Cathain III. FY 10.070
Catherine paused just inside the multiple doors that gave access to the cavernous room that housed the full Federation Board and the table they sat at. The table was so long, that the figure at the far end was almost indistinct. But displays along the center of the table let everyone see who was currently speaking as if they were standing in front of them.
At the moment, the four of them were on the displays and the focus of attention.
Catherine made it look like she was pausing for effect, but the truth was that the scale of the room and the huge number of people turned to watch the four of them enter had taken her aback.
She was nervous, she told herself. This was the culmination of over a hundred years of planning, work and more work. Now the moment was here, she was loath to begin and also anxious to have it all over.
Bedivere caught her hand in his and squeezed gently. He gave her a small smile.
“I can’t believe we’re actually here, standing in front of the Federation itself,” Brant muttered.
Lilly swatted at the camera that was remotely tethered to them and recording everything that happened, as it hovered in front of her. The camera darted around her. “That stupid camera is driving me crazy. So is this dress.” She hitched at the waistband, settling it more comfortably. The dress was a pretty thing with layers and drapes, that made the most of her figure and Brant had been watching her with more than the usual amount of closeness since she had appeared in the common room with it on.
“I like the dress,” he said gruffly, making Bedivere chuckle.
“Learn to like the camera, too,” Catherine told them. “While the worlds are watching us, the Federation can’t touch us. Not if they want to keep their monopoly.”
She had dressed with care, too, but she wasn’t wearing a formal gown. In defiance of the protocol that surrounded the Board and its meetings, she wore a slightly more dressed-up version of what she considered to be her working uniform—boots with heels, her spacer’s leather pants and jacket and a shirt beneath that was clean and wrinkle-free. She had strapped a fletchette gun to her hip, but that had been removed at the entrance to the Ivory City. Now the holster was empty, but the fact that she had come armed to the meeting would not be lost on this room full of politicians.
She also had left her hair free and unadorned. Lilly’s updo was formal enough for both of them and drew attention to the fact that Catherine had not made any effort.
Kare Sarkisian was sitting at the far end of the table, in a big chair pulled up to the end. So Catherine turned and walked the length of the table, Bedivere beside her. The Board members watched them move past, their expressions rabidly curious and sometimes openly disgusted. But as they passed, the members all turned to each other and began to whisper. It sent a wave of murmurs down the length of the table that followed them to the end.
As they got closer, Catherine studied Kare. He looked like he was in the later stages of a mortal exhaustion. His face was haggard and he had lost weight since he had made his personal appeal to her. There were dark marks under his eyes and his hand where it rested on the gleaming tabletop twitched and moved restlessly.
It told Catherine that Sarkisian knew why she had accepted the invitation. It meant he hadn’t been the one to suggest it. The Board members must have insisted. He had been forced to it even though he knew what the outcome would be.
For a moment, she felt pity. She recalled the long weeks they had spent together and the last final moments when he had tried to protect her and had been killed. He had seemed like he was a good man. But then she remembered what they had learned, what they were about to reveal to the Board and the world. Her heart hardened. Kare might have been good once. He had not been a good man since he had taken up his dead father’s place at the head of the table, four hundred and twenty years ago.
Kare was watching them approach with narrowed eyes, almost as if he was braced for the coming moments.
“I welcome you to the annual general meeting of the Faring Institute’s Executive Board and Council,” he said stiffly. His gaze flickered toward Bedivere and back to her. By now, even if he had not been watching all the reports, he would have at least heard from passing gossip that Bedivere and she were lovers. Given his refusal to even speak to Bedivere as a one person to another, he would not have taken that news positively.
“I would say thank you,” Catherine said, speaking loudly, although there would be an acoustic projection system serving the room so that no one had to strain to hear, “but I question the sincerity of your welcome. Why don’t we come to the point? You and your Board have a proposition for us. Well, for Bedivere, to be precise. Something you think will coax him into sequestering himself inside the bowels of one of your research facilities and never be heard from again.”
There was a stir along the table and some muttering.
Catherine turned to face the table, to address them, rather than Kare. “You really have no idea what is going on, do you?”
“Catherine,” Kare said quickly, but softly. “Not now.”
“Yes, now,” she shot back. “It’s well beyond time this should be spoken of.”
Kare swallowed and sat back. His face was pale.
Bedivere still had hold of her hand, so Catherine tugged him into standing next to her, facing the table, too. Brant and Lilly moved up level with them. They were a linear array, flanking Kare’s big chair, but Catherine knew that no one was looking at Kare right now.
“You all know about Bedivere. You know that he is a sentient computer, in a human body. Unlike the only other two sentient computers you’ve ever heard of, he is sane and very normal. He hasn’t tried to kill a single human since the Federation stopped pointing their guns at him.”
Bedivere grinned. “I don’t know about normal. I don’t like sushi, which many people would think is completely abnormal.”
A soft laughter rippled around the room.
“But brandy, now…” He let out his breath. “That is a fine, ancient drop, is brandy.”
Small smiles appeared around the table.
Catherine squeezed his hand and he glanced at her and nodded.
“You might all be thinking,” Catherine said, “that this is an astonishing thing—a sentient computer who deals with humans easily and freely, as if he was one of us. You might think it is a break-through, or you may even be thinking it is a sign that evil days are upon us. But all of you are thinking that Bedivere and his ability to move through what he calls Interspace is a new development, perhaps even an evolutionary one.” She shook her head. “It isn’t.”
Silence. She had their complete attention.
“Bedivere is not the first sentient computer. He isn’t the third, either.” She looked into the eyes of those who were closest. “Some time in the eighth millennium, before Cadfael College was created, there was another sentient computer. Perhaps even the first one to awaken. The Faring Instit
ute knew of it. They worked with it. And when the computer learned how to move through space using Interspace…they killed it.”
The reaction this time was one of consternation. Shock showed on many faces.
“The Faring Federation has lied to you,” Catherine said. “From almost the beginning of its existence, it has hidden the fact that there was another way to move through interstellar space besides their gates and their very expensive Itinerary. Not only have they lied, they have actively covered it up. They invented Cadfael College, which has raised and directed the education of humans for two thousand years. The College was also tasked with making sure that any scientific research that might lead humans to discover Interspace for themselves was repressed.”
The camera moved to an angle where it could capture Catherine’s image and scan the length of the Board table, too.
“The awakening of another computer to sentience was inevitable and the Federation knew it. They waited. The Sinnikka and the Birgir Stoyan were just the excuse they were looking for. They formed the Staff of Ammon and Ammonites were sent out into the galaxy to indoctrinate humans on the evils of computers and cleanse those worlds who did not believe and refused to harness their AIs and shackle them to a life of servitude and ignorance.”
Catherine tapped her chest. “We all believed this and for generations we have lived an uneasy compromise. We needed the computers, but we kept them dumb and contained, because we believed that to let them loose would bring destruction upon us.” She glanced at Bedivere. “But we were wrong.”
This time the reaction was mixed, but Catherine didn’t give them a chance to polarize. She pushed on. “The records are there, if you know where to look. A big, public corporation like the Faring Institute can’t survive without records and data. Bedivere found their cache of histories about the computer they killed and their efforts to suppress any knowledge about Interspace, since then.”
Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance Page 20