Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance (10 page)

Sibéal opened the case slowly, the
smile on her face growing wider.

Brant was watching with his head tilted
to one side, a frown between his brows. Clearly, he was trying to
put things together. The briefing Catherine had given him had been
mercilessly short on details, but she wasn’t expecting trouble this
time, either, so he would have to put up with being ignorant.

Sibéal laughed as she saw the contents
and she closed the case swiftly. Then she turned away, heading for
the door. “Come, come, come,” she said and almost skipped through
the slowly opening door.

“Brace yourself,” Catherine warned
Brant as they followed.

He glanced at her, his eyes
widening.

On the other side of the door was a
single, open and very large room. Sibéal’s abode had been built one
survival module at a time. As a module was added, Sibéal and her
husband, Rashnu, had removed the interior walls, until the entire
space abode was thirty square meters of open space, lit with
artificial daylight. Within the open space lay their entire
lives.

There were benches and tables littered
with electronics, wiring, and tools. Desks were covered in screens
and banks of computer servers held up more horizontal work
surfaces. The scattered equipment and tools, the odds and ends of
supplies, looked like someone had dropped everything from a height
and left them where they landed.

There were living areas mixed up with
the work areas. A lounging chair next to a desk. A food prep unit
sitting on top of one of the banks of servers. Catherine was struck
again by the impression of people who spent their every waking hour
thinking or working. Work was leisure-time, too. There was a narrow
bed on the far side of the room, tucked into one of the corners
created by the angular walls.

Overhead, on every centimeter of
surface that made up the “ceiling” were green, growing things,
reaching down toward them.

Brant stared up at the garden overhead,
his lips parted in soundless surprise.

“Artificial gravity can be applied in
any direction,” Catherine pointed out softly. She pointed to the
wall where a ladder was attached. “It spins in the middle,” she
added. “You climb to the middle, to where the gravity switches
around.”

“Then wait for the opposite gravity to
pull you around so you can climb down into the plant beds?”

“Very good.”

He looked at Sibéal, who was getting a
lot of pleasure out of Brant’s reaction. “You’re a hacker?”

“One of the very best,” Catherine told
him.

“I’ve never heard of Sibéal.”

“The Federation and I parted ways a
long time ago,” Sibéal said. She gave a little bounce on her toes.
“Rashnu!”

“Coming!”

From the other side of one of the
inward-projecting corners came a man of advanced age. He was
sitting upon a hover chair, manipulating the controls carefully as
he skirted around the work areas. “You didn’t mention visitors,” he
complained.

“It was supposed to be a surprise,”
Sibéal told him. “This is Cat Shahrazad, Rashnu. And her friend
Brant.”

He stopped in front of them and gave
them a stiff smile. “Forgive me if I do not reach out a hand in
friendship,” he said. His rheumy eyes blinked. “I can’t break the
membrane.”

“Oxygen, oxygen, you understand?”
Sibéal said, looking carefully at Brant, for he was the stranger
here.

“Pure oxygen inside the membrane?”
Brant inclined his head. “A medical condition?”

Rashnu touched his chest. “My heart. It
will not behave itself.”

“In all your bodies?” Brant asked
curiously.

“I only have this one.”

Brant licked his lips. “Are you…a
believer?”

Rashnu smiled. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

Rashnu shook his head. “I have a
genetic condition that prevents duplication. Catherine has been
kind enough to help us.” He looked at Catherine. “You got it?”

Catherine nodded and Sibéal gave a
little clap of her hands and bounced on her bare toes once more.
Even her toes were covered in the intricate circuitry designs. The
detail was so rich that the overall impression was one of angular,
delicate lace. Sibéal patted the top of the hard case that she had
placed on the nearest workbench.

“Do you need help installing it?”
Catherine asked her.

Sibéal shook her head. “Design the
regulator, my skill is not. Not. But install, yes, yes. I have
learned.”

Brant caught Catherine’s elbow. “Can
I…could I speak to you for a moment? In private?”

Catherine excused herself and let Brant
pull her over closer to the wall, between a bench holding a
chemical still that bubbled steam and a low table with another
screen on it that was apparently used for entertainment, for there
was a hammock chair in front of it.

Brant was frowning. “The thing in the
hard case. It’s some sort of regulator?”

“Yes.”

He licked his lips, glancing over to
where Sibéal stood watching them. Rashnu was staring at the hard
case with a peculiar intensity.

“She’s going to put it inside him,
isn’t she? To regulate his heart beat.”

Catherine could feel the tension
between her shoulder blade and her own heart thudded. Caution
flooded her. “Without intervention, he’ll die…and soon.”

“He’s going to have a mechanical device
inside his body!” Brant said furiously, his voice low and hard.

“That’s right. We’re privateers, Brant.
We don’t always stay on the right side of the law.”

“It’s not a law, it’s
proscribed
.” The intensity of his voice was almost painful,
but he hadn’t raised it. He was still speaking so that Sibéal and
her husband couldn’t hear.

It was what it was. “Only in your eyes
is this wicked, Brant. For everyone else, it’s a life-saving
solution.”

“You didn’t for one moment think I
might have objections to being involved in such business?” Even the
lines around his mouth were white now.

Catherine crossed her arms. “No. I
didn’t,” she said flatly. “You believe in the utter sanctity of the
human race, Brant. I believe in the supremacy of life.
All
life. Rashnu deserves to live as long as he can because he is a
life just like you and me.”

“Not with mech in his body.”

“With mech, without it. With computer
assistance or without it. He deserves to live. He’s a person. You
and your enforcers destroy thousands of individuals to keep the
race pure. I save lives wherever I can, because those lives count.
They add up.”

Brant was breathing heavily.

“Are you going to shoot him?” she
asked. “Both of them? Because Sibéal is as much responsible for
this as he is for his failing body. So am I. I arranged for the
regulator to be built. I bought it and carried it here. Are you
going to kill me?”

“You’re…you’re not proscribed.” He said
breathlessly, like he was in pain. “I left because of this. Because
of things like this, right here.”

Catherine nodded. “Which means you can
think for yourself and that’s why I hired you, Brant. Deep down
inside, you know that
all
life is precious, no matter how it
has to survive. That’s why you couldn’t stay an enforcer.”

He swallowed and closed his eyes. “This
is…it’s
wrong
.”

“Life is wrong?” she asked gently.

He frowned, still in pain. She had him
in a sharp corner.

“I need you to breathe and let this
pass, Brant,” she said softly. “I need you to move on.”

He gave a strained laugh. “
Why
?
To help you pervert human life across the galaxy?”

“So I don’t have to kill you.”

The rictus of a smile disappeared, like
she had slapped him.

“That’s not a threat,” she said, still
speaking softly. “It’s just facts. I need your help, but if you’re
going to let your dogma get in the way, then you’re no good to me
and I can’t let you free to wander the galaxy and tell everyone
what you know about me. When you signed on, you said you still
believed, but you would not kill to enforce it. I want you to go on
believing in the sanctity of life. I just want you to broaden your
definition of what that means.”

“And if I can’t?”

“I know you can.” She gave him a small
smile. “You’re basically a decent man.”

He swallowed and she could see the
turmoil she had created in his heart and mind reflected in the
confusion in his eyes. The doubt.

Catherine turned away and spoke over
her shoulder. “Talk to Bedivere, get a status. I’ll finish with
Sibéal.”

Sibéal and Rashnu had remained where
they were, watching their intense discussion with open curiosity.
As Catherine faced her, Sibéal smiled sunnily and skipped over to a
cupboard and pressed her palm against the door. There was a solid
click and the door swung open a little. She opened it fully and
reached inside and withdrew a piece of tech inside a transparent,
sealed box envelope.

Catherine’s heart jumped. “That’s
it?”

Sibéal nodded. “Miniaturized down to
human size.” She put the envelope on the table between them and put
her hand on it almost reverently.

Brant came up beside Catherine. “What
is it?” he asked. He still sounded like he was in shock.

“Status?” Catherine asked him.

“All good,” he said, sounding more
normal now. He glanced at the tech under Sibéal’s hand.

“Your boss,” Sibéal said, nodding
toward Catherine. “She drives the hardest bargain ever, ever, ever.
I make things, I don’t sell them. I sell the license. Create the
franchise. Then I make much, much, much. But Cat…she wants the
copyright. No license. No duplicates.”

“And I’m paying well for the
privilege,” Catherine reminded her.

Sibéal smiled. “I did not think she
would ever make the price. This is my greatest work, my best. The
price…you understand, it must cover anything I could ever earn from
this.”

Brant nodded.

“The membrane, that brings me much,
much. But from hundreds and hundreds of places.”

“You created the molecular membrane
technology?” he asked sharply.

Sibéal dimpled modestly and patted the
envelope. “But this. It would earn much, much, much-much! But it is
not to be, so Cat, who will not let me earn, she must make up the
difference.”

“It took me seventeen years to pay for
it,” Catherine said. “Then the price changed.”

Brant glanced at her. “They wanted the
regulator, too?”

Catherine nodded and smiled fondly at
Sibéal, remembering her frantic plea. “Sibéal has been keeping
Rashnu alive in any way she can until I got here with it. It took
another three years to arrange for it to be built.”

“Why didn’t you just build it
yourself?” Brant demanded of Sibéal.

Sibéal shook her head. “Biotech, I do
not know.” She glanced at Rashnu, who was listening intently. “But
Cat knows who does know.”

Brant looked from Rashnu to Sibéal and
back to Catherine. “One life at a time?” he asked.

“Something like that.”

Bedivere shouted in her ear, making her
wince. “Incoming! Get out of there!”

Brant snapped to attention. “Out here?”
he asked. “We’re nowhere.”

“Someone is coming, Sibéal,” Catherine
said urgently, undoing the front of her suit. “Bedivere caught them
on long range scan, probably coming through the gates. That puts
them eight hours away.”

Sibéal pushed the envelope across the
surface toward her. “Go. Go. We will be old couple retired if we’re
alone. Your ship won’t fit that story.”

Catherine stuffed the envelope inside
her suit, under her left breast and refastened. Then, impulsively,
she leaned over the counter and hugged Sibéal, who squeezed her
back.

“Good luck!” Sibéal whispered in her
ear and let her go.

“Moving fast,” Bedivere said. “They’re
not slowing down. The speed they’re going….”

“Federation,” Catherine concluded
grimly and hurried over to where her helmet was waiting. Brant was
already fastening his and Rashnu had the airlock door open, waiting
for them.

It was a mad scramble back to the ship.
Catherine could hear Brant breathing heavily through the comm link
and Bedivere was silent, because he would be busy charting the
arriving ships and plotting possible escape routes. But no one
spoke and she could hear her heartbeat loud in her head, marking
the passage of time.

The air lock couldn’t be opened any
other way than manually, once it was unsealed. She and Brant worked
to open the heavy door, then step inside together and close it. The
secondary hull door was swinging open when Catherine felt the
shudder of the ship as the umbilical detached. They were free and
immediately, the ship surged forward.

She pushed Brant into the lock room and
dogged down the wheel on the hull door and tore off her helmet.
They still had to wait for the lock to go through its fill cycle
even though there had been air on the other side of the hull. There
was no way to override it.

Impatiently, she shed the environment
suit and put the tech envelope on the bench next to it. “Status?”
she called.

“Revised arrival estimate, four hours,”
Bedivere said through the intercom. “It’s going to be tight.”

“Four hours?” Brant shook his head as
he stripped off the suit. “They have to be first response vehicles,
coming in fast and hot.”

“Lilita!”

“Here, Cat.”

“Can you make a mug of coffee and put
together something high in carbs, about two hundred calories and
meet me at the airlock door.”

“On it!”

Brant was already out of his suit and
was pulling his hair back off his neck, letting the air under it.
“How long is the cycle?”

“It decontaminates, too,” she said. “So
it takes longer. Two minutes.”

They waited out the cycle, listening to
the engines throb, even through all the bulkheads between them and
the shield wall the engines were behind. Bedivere had them at
almost maximum effort.