Cat and Company (35 page)

Connell, standing next to Yennifer, gripped Devlin’s shirt, holding him still. “No, you don’t. There’s no running away this time.”

“His greatest achievement,” Akira said. “He got you to push her at him, to let her go and think it was all your own idea. And so did she.”

Catherine had a hand over her mouth, staring at the screens.

“Who do you think dangled all those no-ask contracts in front of you, leading you on a tether down into places like this one?” Akira demanded. “Who do you think got you hooked on Darzi and made sure each contract you were offered was just a little bit more dangerous and high risk than the last one? You can’t kill the Varkan. Not anymore. You can’t kill humans either, not unless you destroy their memories and psyche and find every single mule farm and destroy those, too. Only, he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to go nearly that far. All he had to do was discredit you, make you look so pathetic and paranoid and delusional that
nothing
you said would be believed, even if you pointed directly at him and called him by his real name. With you crawling around the ass end of the known worlds begging for your next dose, he would be free to get what he wanted.”

The feed shut off.

Bedivere lifted his hand and pointed at Devlin. “You are Kare Sarkisian, and the universe has seen enough of your scheming and conspiracies.” He moved toward him. “And I do not crawl around and beg for anyone.”

Devlin didn’t move out of Connell’s hold. He didn’t even try to get out of the way. Bedivere gripped his neck and got a hand under his hip as Devlin over-balanced. Devlin came up on his arms like a featherweight, when he had expected him to weigh much more. Perhaps he was only that heavy in his mind.

People were screaming.

Bedivere walked over to the stone balustrade at the side of the big, oval-shaped landing, carrying Devlin over his head. It was fifteen meters down to the floor below and everyone was scattering, leaving the hard floor clear below him.

He looked up at Devlin.

“Do it,” Devlin whispered. “You’ll be doing me a favor.” He wasn’t trying to struggle, either.

Bedivere hesitated.

Then he turned and put Devlin back on his feet once more. “I don’t have to kill you. I’ve done that already.” He nodded out toward the screens, which were all showing him and Devlin. The people on the landing, all the city’s powerholders, were gathered on the far side, watching silently. Lilly and Brant had Catherine between them. No one was rushing to intervene.

“And that’s what has let me defeat you every single time,” Devlin said, brushing at his shirt, straightening it. “You never could see anything through. You could have killed me on Harrivalé. You had me in your sights. Only, you couldn’t bring yourself to pull the trigger, could you? No wonder you want to appease the aliens and play nice.” The derision in his voice was strong.

Bedivere looked away, fighting the surge of anger, his hand curling into a fist. “Ah…fuck it,” he said and swung.

His knuckles connected with Devlin’s jaw solidly, knocking him completely off his feet. Devlin landed on his back on the carpet and lay still.

Bedivere rubbed his knuckles and looked up. No one was running away anymore. No one was screaming.

Everyone was watching him, instead.

The entire galaxy is watching
, he reminded himself.

Deliberately, he crossed the landing to where the others huddled as far away from the pair of them as they could get. No one flinched, or ran away.

He kept his gaze on Catherine, but he didn’t have to go to her. She met him, halfway across. Her arms went around his neck and she pressed herself against him. He bent his head toward hers slowly, his heart thundering, giving her time to move away if she wanted to.

She didn’t. Her lips met his and she clung to him. Her heart was beating as hard as his.

Bedivere buried his face in her hair and closed his eyes, his relief so strong he was shaking with it.

Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187

The Varkan picked up Sarkisian’s body and carted him off. Bedivere and Catherine were being led down the stairs by the city mayors, everyone trying to talk at once. Lilly and Brant moved with them, so Connell picked up Yennifer’s hand and climbed the stairs to the top level, where there was barely anyone around and drew her to him.

Her eyes were no longer wide and innocent. She just looked at him, her guard up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“Wrong to want only a human for a lover?” she asked, shocking him. “Of course I knew,” she added when he struggled to find his voice once more. “Brant is your best friend and you practically worship Bedivere and he has a human lover. So does Brant.”

“It stopped me seeing you,” he said, forcing himself to say it. “
Really
seeing you, I mean. Nichol, what he did, changed that.” He swallowed. “Can you look past my blindness? Maybe start again?”

Her smile was small, but it was there. “Everyone has flaws. Isn’t that what Bedivere just said?”

Connell let out his breath, relief flooding him. “I learned mine from the worst examples in the universe,” he warned her and kissed her.

This time the heat and the sweetness weren’t just potential. They were a full-blown bouquet of sensual delights.

* * * * *

They dropped Devlin into the armchair by the piano, as all fourteen of the mayors filed into the suite. He was anchored by electronic restraints around his wrists and ankles and couldn’t harm anyone. Nor could he run away, for the restraints would drop him to the floor with the force of four gravities applied instantly to each limb, pinning him down.

Devlin didn’t look like he wanted to run anywhere. Any fight had been knocked out of him. There was blood on the corner of his mouth and no one offered to remove it for him.

Instead, Julijana Ouida turned to Bedivere. “Show me the video you played out there. All of it, this time. Unedited. I’ll know if it’s been tampered with.”

“I’d be happy to.” Bedivere looked at Zoey. “Would you mind? I think six displays will give everyone a good view.”

Zoey nodded and the six heads-up displays formed around the room. This time, he let the video start at the beginning and run to the end, when Akira was killed and they were forced to run.

No one said much while it played. Catherine thrust her hand into his as it went on and he could feel her shuddering in reaction to the naked bigotry Akira was displaying and her delight in how Devlin had manipulated Bedivere for decades.

No one spoke for moments after the displays dissolved. They were all absorbing the implications. And most of them were looking at Devlin, huddled in the armchair, avoiding their gazes.

“What are we going to do with him?” someone asked at last.

“Execute him,” Connell said shortly. He was sitting on the edge of the dining table, his arms around Yennifer while she leaned back against him. She was so small, she fitted under his chin, even with him propped on the table.

“You can’t kill him,” Bedivere said quickly. “He’s demonstrated he doesn’t have an ethical bone in his body. He’s manipulated records, expunged them, lied and killed to hide his real identity, so he could claw his way back into power once more. If you kill him this time, he’ll be free to pop up somewhere else and do it all over again.”

“Unethical is an understatement,” Brant added. “He used someone else’s body. He turned himself into a quasi-computer to do it. He’s everything that Glave warned us about. He’s transhuman and an abomination.”

“You think he should be executed, Brant? You?” Bedivere asked him, surprised.

Brant shook his head. “We can’t. Every corpuscle of my Ammonite trained brain thinks we should. Only he’ll just turn up like a weed in some other corner of the galaxy.”

“What do we do with him then?” Julijana asked.

Bedivere looked at the armchair where Devlin sat. “Why don’t we follow Brant’s lead? Ask Devlin what he thinks we should do with him.”

Everyone turned to look at Devlin. He lifted his head, meeting their gazes, until he saw Catherine. “I told you it wasn’t what it looked like.”

“You lied,” she replied. “You made everyone think you were Devlin Woodward, a human…a
good
man.”

“I wanted it to be true,” he said simply. “You have no idea what it is like to live with a history like mine. No one ever forgets. No one ever forgives. I wasn’t allowed to make amends. I wasn’t given the chance.”

“It is a history you made for yourself,” Brant pointed out.

“And when does my past get forgotten? When do I get to erase it all and move on?” Devlin asked. “We all live such long lives. If we make mistakes, are we never to be forgiven for them? They are to weigh us down, drown us in guilt for the rest of our lives?”

Everyone was staring at him now and some of them actually looked uncomfortable.

Catherine shook her head. “So you ditched your old identity as Kare Sarkisian, then came straight back and repeated those same mistakes all over again.”

“I told you, it didn’t start out that way,” he said tiredly. “It was a joy just to be…not me. Then I heard you had started up Charlton as a free city, for Varkan in particular. Peace and freedom sounded heavenly, so I moved here.”

“He’s conning you,” Bedivere said loudly.

Everyone jumped. Even Catherine looked at him, startled.

He shook his head. “Ask him why he destroyed the Last Gate. Why he failed to mention to a single soul that the Periglus would arrive in known space inside a century. Ask him why he worked so hard to become a friend to the Varkan, who would be forced to become the new transport providers when the jump gates had to be destroyed.”

Julijana sucked in a shocked breath and turned to look at Devlin accusingly. “You
knew
about the Periglus! Decades ago!”

Devlin sighed.

She threw her hands up. “If we can’t rid ourselves of such a…a…subhuman, then I don’t know what we can do.”

Brant touched Julijana’s arm, getting her attention. “I have a suggestion. Put him to work for humans and Varkan. Everyone knows who he is now. Everyone knows his history—he’s right, no one will ever forget who he is or what he has done, especially after today. Devlin is very, very good at influencing people, so make him work for
us
instead of for himself. He does our bidding. He promotes our agenda. We control his mule farm and his digital back-ups, so if he tries to do something stupid like getting himself killed, we know exactly where he will regenerate. We make his back-ups live stream, so he will never be able to forget anything, either. After a hundred years or more of service toward humans and Varkan, maybe we will feel more kindly toward him and be ready to forgive him…if that is what he really wants.”

Devlin stared at him.

“Or,” Brant added, “the Varkan can track down all his current mule farms and back-ups and destroy them, then disable any further backups so that he is forced to survive in the body he has, to age and to die, when no one will mourn his passing and his name will move into history as one of the most despicable men ever to be born.”

Bedivere looked at Devlin. “What is it to be?”

Devlin dropped his head. “I would...make amends,” he said, his voice low.

Bedivere looked around, meeting the gazes of each of the mayors and reeves. They nodded agreement.

“Zoey, escort him to the
Hana
. Disable all communications there. You have the code to his restraints. Use it as you need to. Devlin, you are to stay in your room until we call for you,” Bedivere told him. “The restraints will tell us if you try to leave, at the same time they drop you to the ground and hold you there until someone arrives to collect you.”

Devlin got silently to his feet and followed the hologram out of the room.

When the door closed behind the pair, everyone turned to look at Bedivere instead.

Julijana put her hand on her slender hip. “Someone has to tell the planetary governors about this.”

“And someone is going to have to talk to the Periglus if and when we crack their language,” the Gantry reeve added. “Because there’s no way I’m going to let Devlin do it for us.”

Bedivere held up his hands. “All in good time,” he said.

“He would have had us launching nuclear particle beams at them, if he’d got his way,” Gantry growled. “He had us all thinking you were wrong.”

“I might still be wrong,” Bedivere said evenly. “Only it’s better to find out over a negotiation table than to be obliterated by an alien that can outshoot us because we had the nerve to swat at them first. We have that luxury now.”

“What luxury?” Julijana asked.

“Time,” Bedivere said. “Time to learn the Periglus language and time for humans and Varkan to figure out how our lives fit together now.”

Even Brant was frowning.

“You don’t see it?” Bedivere asked them. He spread his hands. “Without humans and their need for computers, the Varkan would never have awakened. Now, without the Varkan, humans will never be able to move beyond their own horizons. We’re symbionts now. Humans need us and we need humans, just to survive.”

More than one person smiled at the idea.

Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187

Cat found him in the cold, sterile room, staring out the window at the park beyond. “Are you avoiding me, Bedivere?”

He turned to face her. “Not anymore. Just taking in a breath of silence. It’s been an intense night.”

She moved closer. Slowly. “A few days ago, I watched Devlin talk himself into becoming the king of the galaxy. He did it deliberately and ruthlessly, while I don’t think you’ve realized that’s exactly what you’ve done, tonight.”

“I’m not a leader,” Bedivere said. The idea was horrifying.

“You’re exactly the sort of leader we’re going to need and you’ll be a
good
leader,” she said. “You know you have weaknesses and that will keep you humble. Devlin never doubted he was right.”

Bedivere drew her closer, until he could feel the heat of her body next to his. “I’m more flawed than even I thought I could be. I’ve got used to that idea. I’ve got used to the fact that I’ll never be good enough for you.” He cupped her cheek, feeling that softness. His heart shifted. Ached. “No one is perfect, are they? Even you were drawn into his web of excellence.”