Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance (3 page)

She rolled her head to the side and
looked at him. She was too tired to smile. “Despite the rhetoric
that surrounds my much-maligned past, I happen to
like
the
quiet life.”

Bedivere sat back as she was. “Liar. If
you liked it that much, you would live quietly. I don’t remember
the last time you stopped to smell the roses.”

“Too much to do,” she muttered,
glancing at the case.

The silence stretched and she looked at
him. Bedivere was studying the case, too. He caught her gaze and
looked back at the case again. “Next stop is Federation space,” he
pointed out. “If you really do want a quiet life, Cat, this is the
time to shut down the engines and go mute. There won’t be any going
back after this.”

“Of course we’re going,” she said
sharply. “I haven’t spent seventeen years scraping together every
last centavo the fringes could cough up just to go live on some
ball somewhere and get even older.”

“We don’t
have
to do this. All
we’ve lost right now is time and that’s an infinite resource. If we
head into Federation space, then much more than time is at
stake.”

Catherine sat up. “Getting cold feet,
Bedivere?”

He shook his head. “I’m worried.” His
voice was very quiet. “Everything you’re doing, everything you’ve
done. It’s too much.”

“Just shut up right there,” she said
sharply and spun the chair to face him properly. “Look,” she added,
reaching for a reasonable voice and tone. Reason would always win
out with Bedivere. Logic was the supreme argument. “I have to go
back to the Federation, anyway.” She touched her hair, which was
liberally streaked with grey. The red that had been a rich, deep
color was now faded. “You understand the therapy even better than I
do. You’ve read even more widely and you never forget anything. You
know that rejuvenation revives more than the cellular structure.
I’ll
feel
young again. I won’t be this cranky old woman who
has seen too much, has wrinkles on her neck and aches in the
morning when she gets out of bed. After, I’ll be sweet and
reasonable and even more determined to see this through.”

He looked doubtful.

Catherine grimaced. “Besides, it’s
already too late.”

“It is?”

“If we stay in the fringes, the
Shantans will come after us with everything they’ve got. But they
won’t pursue us into Federation space and risk their membership on
the Board. So we have to go there. It’s the Federation or
bust.”

Bedivere considered that, then nodded.
“As long as you’re not doing this for me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said and turned
the chair back to face the console, to prep for the gate jump. “Of
course I’m doing this for you. What else are partners for?”

He didn’t argue anymore, because the
ship was technically a four-man crew ship, so jump prep took all
their combined attention and effort. But the little smile at the
corner of his mouth didn’t go away.

The Ivory City, Cathain City, Cathain
III. FY 10.068

The walls of the Ivory City were high
and wide, but the sounds of celebration on the streets of Cathain
reached Kare Sarkisian anyway. As he stood in the dark, leaning
against the cold stone railing, he heard the distant pop of
fireworks, indistinct voices raised loudly and laughter—a lot of
laughter.

One of the guards who had been forced
to step out into the cold with him when Kare had escaped the
ballroom shifted on his feet, dirt scraping beneath his boots. The
dirt was unusual, even for a balcony on the outer wall of the
alcazar. But staff had been overwhelmed, preparing for the
party.

“The people out there seem to be having
more fun than we in here, do they not?” Kare’s voice, honed from
years of public speaking, came out deep and demanding. He couldn’t
tell who it was behind the face cloth, but the eyes made him think
it was one of the new ones whose names he hadn’t learned yet.

There were always new guards.

“Sir,” the man said stiffly. He didn’t
say anything else, which was proper.

Kare sighed. Silently. It wouldn’t do
for anyone to catch him being glum on a MapMaker day.

The door spun and his aide stepped
through, just far enough to hold the door open. “Sir, Governor
Vinicius would like a word with you.” From behind him, through the
wide, elegant corridor and doorway, floated the sound of a far more
elegant and restrained enjoyment than the raw fun the citizens of
Cathain were enjoying.

Kare was pleased the aide didn’t try to
make him feel guilty for deserting his own party. There was always
a tussle with new aides, while they tried to assert their personal
power, but this one didn’t seem to have an agenda. That was
impossible, of course, but for now, Kare didn’t mind reaping the
benefits of the man’s undivided efforts. “Governor Vinicius wants
to dispute his planetary dividends,” Kare assured the aide. “He can
line up with the others tomorrow.”

The customary day of comradeship that
took place the day after any MapMaker day rarely lived up to its
name. Kare usually spent the day negotiating with every Board
member over issues as petty as docking privileges on Stationary
Station, all the way up to the most contentious issues of the day,
all under the guise of good sport, good food and fellowship.

Vinicius had taken control of Barros
about two hundred years after the Barros system had its own
MapMaker day. He had steered the planet to Board membership barely
a hundred years later, a record that was yet to be beaten. But such
drive and ambition require parsimony and single-mindedness.
Vinicius squeezed credits any way he could and the annual dividends
never failed to evoke his protests.

Kare glanced at the aide, who was just
opening his mouth to respond. “Give the governor my regrets. He can
attend me tomorrow.”

The aide didn’t quite frown. “Sir, the
Governor explicitly stated that the matter he wishes speak to you
about has nothing to do with the Board and everything to do with
Barros’ location in the Aibosian Cluster.”

Kare’s attention was caught. Barros was
a relatively young member of the Federation and therefore closer to
the unregulated fringes of known space. That was the governor’s
meaning—that Barros was in a position to hear first about news from
that quarter of the fringes.

Kare nodded. “My office,” he said
shortly. “Have someone bring me a pot of coffee and a
stim-tab.”

“Sir,” the aide said, ducking his head.
He withdrew and Kare heard his quick steps on the speck-free,
shining and cold floor inside.

Kare gave another silent sigh and moved
back into the warmth inside. If Vinicius was wasting his time, Kare
would ensure he’d have even more to complain about next year.

His public office was two floors down
and at the far end of the administrative section, behind several
layers of security, some of them visible and most of them not. The
invisible systems were the deadly ones, but they were all keyed to
Kare’s DNA. If he had not known they were there, he would have
presumed the corridors were deserted and dimmed and his passage was
unnoticed. But someone, somewhere, would be monitoring.

The lights came up as he entered the
office. The air felt fresh and had been recently ionized to his
preferred level, giving it an outdoor feel.

Kare didn’t sit behind the big desk. He
found himself moving over to the window, instead. It was showing
scenes from the streets of Cathain, where ordinary citizens were
still celebrating.

As the aide almost silently parked a
tray of coffee and the requested stim-tabs on the desk behind him,
Kare noticed a line of people waiting along the edge of the street.
He thanked the aide then manipulated the window controls, bringing
the line-up closer for his inspection.

There was bunting hanging on the
building they were queued to enter.
Cathain Pioneer Station
#12
, it said. Underneath, in smaller script was written,
Be
the first on Tordis, our new sister planet! Bonus Federation pay
scale!

“Governor Vinicius, sir,” the aide
announced.

Kare gave a grunt of acknowledgement,
studying the people in the line.

Movement at the corner of his vision
made him glance to his left. The governor was looking out the
window, too.

“It’s only been a week since the
announcement, but already the colonization begins,” Vinicius
observed. “Once, long ago, I might even have envied them the
freedom to homestead on a new world.”

“Anyone has that right,” Kare reminded
him.

“The right, most certainly, Your Honor.
In practice, most of us are so entrenched in our current lives,
leaving them is impossible.”

Kare shrugged. “Not impossible. There’s
always a choice.” That was what he reminded himself every time
stray notions of escape momentarily eclipsed his thought processes.
But Vinicius was correct, too—leaving his current role and
commitments might be his right, but it came with overwhelming
complications that grew more complex with each passing year.

“You wanted to speak to me,” Kare
reminded Vinicius.

Vinicius pulled at the hem of his
jacket, straightening it. He was dressed in the formal uniform of
Cathain’s military, of which he was the nominal head. There was
braid, buttons and ribbons across his shoulder. His boots were
gleaming with high polish.

His face was red from drink and food
and possibly from dancing, too. The trimmed beard was showing a
little grey, which surprised Kare. Had it really been that long
since Vinicius had regenerated? Kare could remember the last time
he spotted grey in Vinicius’ hair and beard, but that had only
been…nearly thirty years ago, Kare realized, with a start.

Vinicius undid two of the genuine
working buttons on his jacket and reached inside.

Kare didn’t brace himself, for part of
the security in this wing included body scans, keyed to find
weapons of any sort, including biologicals. Whatever Vinicius was
about to pull out of his jacket, it would be benign.

“Starting nearly two years ago, I began
to hear rumors that Shahrazad had returned to the core systems.”
Vinicius pulled a data crystal from his jacket, placed it on the
dark wood surface of the desk and tapped it.

Kare almost smiled, but didn’t because
Vinicius’ expression was so serious. “Catherine Shahrazad?” Kare
clarified. “The scion of Glave himself? The last time anyone heard
about her was nearly a hundred years ago—if the woman who claimed
to be her really was her. No one was able to confirm that at the
time because there isn’t so much as a single image pixel of her
anywhere.”

“Oh, she exists,” Vinicius said and
opened the case the data crystal was in and held up the crystal
delicately between thick finger and thumb. “May I?”

Kare shrugged and picked up the coffee.
“If you must.” He stepped out of the way of the desk controls and
watched Vinicius insert the crystal and tried to hide his
amusement. Catherine Shahrazad—
the
Shahrazad—was more legend
than anything else. There had been imposters claiming to be the
descendant of Glave of Summanus—all of them had failed DNA
testing—but that had happened only after the name alone had stirred
up more than one civil riot.

The window turned milky white, then a
standard therapeutic deconstruction arrayed itself.

“What is this?” Kare asked, only mildly
curious.

“We’re a small world, Barros is,”
Vinicius said and Kare’s gut tightened. Most of Vinicius’
complaints about lack of dividends centered on how poor and
struggling Barros was and that consideration should be given to
that fact.

But Vinicius was still speaking. “We
barely qualified for Federation status and it is a struggle every
year to meet the requirements.” Then he smiled. “But you know this
as well as I do. My point, however, is that civil unrest, religious
rioting, questions about the nature of life and human rights…these
are all dangerous events in a world as small as Barros. When I
heard the first of the rumors that the great Catherine Shahrazad
might have returned to Federation space, I decided that preventive
steps might be prudent. I had investigators track down the rumors
and try to verify them.”

Vinicius nodded to the screen, where
the figures were assembling and rotating, providing detailed health
analyses that only well-trained therapists could read completely.
“A woman who claimed she was Catherine Shahrazad checked in to the
Women’s’ Therapy Centre on Harrivalé. That’s the single planet in
the Ivaldi system.”

“Harrivalé qualified for a seat on the
Board about forty years ago,” Kare said. “So why isn’t Nekka the
Supreme Mother here to speak about this? I saw her in the ballroom,
not long ago.”

Vinicius gave a small smile. “You are
very good at remembering the names and titles of the planetary
governors, Your Honor. It is a natural inclination, given your role
as Chair of the Faring Board. But your onerous duties would
preclude staying abreast of the affairs of any but the most core
and primary Federation worlds, such as Cathain. Harrivalé has been
struggling with an economic depression that has lasted for years.
They have only just emerged from it.”

“That is why I haven’t seen Nekka at
Board meetings lately,” Kare murmured.

Vinicius looked surprised. “You noted
her absence?”

“The headdress is…distinctive,” Kare
pointed out. The colorful headdress with its milk diamonds and
gold, always reminded him of a full moon rising above the
horizon.

Vinicius nodded. “In fact, Harrivalé
failed to qualify for Board membership for two years. Nekka has
been preoccupied and the possibility of more civil unrest on top of
Harrivalé’s woes was not of interest to her. With her permission, I
had my investigators research within the system. “