Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance (21 page)

“So we appear in the Drusiss system,
the signal is tripped and they send their local team to keep us
busy while the fastest and closest Federation ship hurries to
intercept,” Bedivere concluded.

“Lilly must have put it together,”
Catherine murmured. “I had almost figured it out for myself, except
I’ve been a bit busy the last little while. But Lilly figured it
out and decided to test her theory by scanning herself. Then, when
she found it, she cut it out and destroyed it.” She rested her head
back against the chair. Her neck was aching. “I don’t think anyone
could point a finger at her now and say she’s a spy, but this is a
horrible way to confirm it.”

“It just leaves one lingering
question,” Bedivere said.

“If Lilly is Aneesh, why is the
Federation tracking her?”

“Exactly.”

Catherine closed her eyes with a
sigh.

“You should sleep,” Bedivere said
quietly.

“If you were here in person, I’d get
you to carry me to bed. I don’t think I can get out of this chair
by myself.”

“Soon,” he promised warmly.

Lilly woke twenty hours after they
finished seaming her wound, which had taken Catherine far longer
than usual because of the jagged and irregular edges. She had
stayed bent over like an old woman, her face close to her fingers
as she had worked. Brant wasn’t sure Catherine had been aware of
how physically tired she had become. She had persevered long after
exhaustion had begun to show in her face and her body posture.

Not long after that, Brant had begun to
feel the after-effects of the no-tox dose and had to confine
himself to his room while the nausea and trembling and the
overwhelming headache had passed. By the time he was completely
sober and recovered, Catherine was in her stateroom. Asleep, he
presumed.

So he had come here to the sickbay, to
sit beside Lilly’s still, white form and think.

When Lilly stirred a few hours later,
he stood and moved to the side of the bed and waited for her to
focus on him.

Alarm touched her small face. “Did I
kill it?” she asked. “Is it dead?”

He touched her shoulder. “The tracker
is completely dead. You destroyed it.”

Her face crumpled and her eyes filled
with tears. “They put it
inside
me. They didn’t even tell
me!”

Brant picked up her hand. “I know.”

“I trusted them!” She wept in soft sobs
that shook her.

“That’s why they could do it,” he told
her. “If you had been less loyal, you would have suspected
something and it wouldn’t have worked.”

“But why didn’t they just ask me?” Her
tone was bewildered and her voice shook.

“They needed you ignorant.” Brant could
feel his chest tightening with indignation on her behalf. Her
belief in the basic good of her chosen colleagues was in tatters
and that was a hard lesson to learn. He had found it to be a
painful one that had changed his whole life and left him adrift in
a friendless world.

So he held her hand and waited out her
tears. Lilly, at least, had one friend she could count on.

Catherine waited until the second week
in the hole before transferring Bedivere to the mule and installing
the mesh tether. The mesh tether was the more complicated of the
two procedures, but she had already done it once and Bedivere could
talk her through it this time.

She implanted the tether first, then
thankfully moved on to the far more simple procedure of hooking the
mule up to the computer outputs.

“It will go a lot faster than last
time,” Bedivere told her. “I don’t have to pick and choose what to
download as I have kept all those memories and functions together
and discrete from the ship’s processes. It’s a simple download
process, much like the human transfer procedure.”

“I’m glad you’re confident, but there’s
always a margin of error.”

“
Human
error,” he said and
chuckled. The sound distorted through the wall speaker. “I’m not
likely to make mistakes when it’s
me
I’m transferring.”

Once the download was in process it was
simply a matter of waiting for it to finish. Bio-downloads couldn’t
be hurried and Bedivere was double-checking everything as it was
stored in the tissues, too.

Once the download was complete,
Bedivere had her detach all the externals. “This is the last time I
will talk to you with this limited ship’s output,” he said. “I’m
going to withdraw and move myself into the body. When I wake up, I
hope you’ll be there for me to look at. I haven’t seen you in days.
Not the way I see you with human eyes. Scans and monitors will
never adequately portray the color of your hair or your eyes to
me.”

“You’ll be fine,” she assured him, for
she could hear the fear in his voice. “I’ll be right here until you
wake.”

Then it was simply a matter of waiting
for him to wake up, which could take anywhere from hours to
days.

Brant found her there. “I got a message
from the computer telling me you needed coffee,” he said softly,
holding out the mug. “The voice was strange.”

She took the mug. “It’s Bedivere
watching out for me.”

“It didn’t sound like him.”

“That’s because he’s in there, now.”
She nodded toward his sleeping form. He had rolled over onto his
side and was breathing softly and evenly.

“All of him? Then who is running the
ship?”

“That’s Bedivere, too. But the
self-aware part is in his body. He has to stay connected to the
ship because that’s a part of him, too. The size and complicated
circuitry and systems that allow an AI to become sentient are too
large to be held in a single human mind. So the ship systems are
back to being AI circuits that he monitors and controls, while he
is Bedivere, the navigator and pilot.” She sipped the coffee
gratefully.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Brant said
slowly.

“I don’t think anyone understands.
Bedivere is one of a kind.”

Brant cleared his throat.

“How is Lilly doing?”

“She got out of bed today for a while.”
Brant grimaced. “Said she’d tear the tubes out if I didn’t help her
take them out.”

“Definitely recovering,” Catherine said
with a smile.

Brant hooked his thumb over his
shoulder. “I’m going to head back. Make sure she hasn’t knifed any
new holes in herself.”

It only took eight hours for Bedivere to
wake, this time, unlike the first time when Catherine had stalked
circles around the ship for three days waiting to see if the
transfer had worked.

He stirred, breathed in, then turned
his head to find her.

“I’m here,” she assured him.

Bedivere smiled. His eyes grew warmer.
“You are. And you’re beautiful.” He sat up and stretched and the
movement, which seemed so simple and natural, made Catherine blink
rapidly, to combat her stinging eyes.

“I’m so hungry I could eat bulkheads,”
he declared. He looked around. “I guess my clothes got left behind
on Drusiss, didn’t they?”

Catherine picked up the pile of newly
printed clothes and accessories and put them on the bed beside him.
“I’ll get a meal going for you. Waffles and bully bacon?”

“You read my mind.”

“You left it queued on the kitchen
menu.”

He drew in another breath, looking down
at his hands. “It’s so
good
to be back.”

She patted his shoulder. “Shave and
trim before you come to eat. You look like a Neanderthal.”

He rubbed his chin and it rasped under
his fingers. “I thought I’d keep it,” he said. “It would offset the
twenty years I just lost.”

“You
like
looking old?”

“I like looking like me. I’m going to
have to get used to looking like this.”

“There’s compensations,” she assured
him.

“Like what?”

She shook her head. “You’ll find
out.”

As she headed for the common room,
Catherine realized that she was smiling. Happiness was bubbling up
inside like a perpetual fountain. It felt so good, she was
annoyed.

Brant presented himself at the captain’s
quarters at the beginning of the hour, wondering what Catherine
wanted that required a formal appointment. He’d never been inside
her quarters before, but if they were like other captain’s quarters
then the front room would be a formal receiving room, complete with
desk and chairs and a full communications array for staying on top
of flight deck activities.

The door acknowledged him and slid
aside.

Bedivere was standing in front of the
expected desk.

Brant flexed his jaw. “Where’s
Catherine?”

“Down in the gym.” He reached behind
him and picked up a bottle sitting on the desk.

Brant recognized the color. Brandy.
“I’ll come back later.” He turned to go.

“The captain gave you an order to
report to her quarters,” Bedivere said. “You don’t get to leave
until a senior officer dismisses you.”

True. Brant stepped into the room and
let the door shut behind him. “Don’t pour one of those for me,” he
said. “I won’t drink it.”

“You won’t drink with me. You won’t
speak to me. You’ve been at the farthest point away from me that
one can reach on this ship all week, no matter where I’ve been.
It’s time to talk.” Bedivere pushed the brandy glass toward
Brant.

It was an actual balloon like they used
to use in days gone by. Brant had always wondered what they would
be like to drink from. But he gritted his jaw once more, steeling
himself. “That’s why I’m here? Your feelings are hurt?”

“You don’t believe I have feelings that
can
be hurt, so what do you care?”

“I don’t care.”

Bedivere smiled. “You’re a lousy liar,
Fareed.”

“Don’t call me that. You don’t have a
right to call me that.”

“If you honestly didn’t care, you
wouldn’t have been avoiding me.” Bedivere sipped from the other
balloon. “I thought you liked having someone to drink with.”

“You
listened
.”

Bedivere shook his head. “The ships
systems monitored. I very carefully
didn’t
listen. I’ve
learned that you can hear far more than you want to if you
eavesdrop. But Cat told me why she thought you were avoiding me, so
I pulled up the audio and replayed it. Just the part she mentioned.
I didn’t want to make any assumptions, you see. I didn’t want to
get it wrong.”

“Get what wrong?” Brant asked
curiously, then mentally cursed himself. He had sworn to himself
that he wouldn’t get involved. He would see out this contract, then
get the hell off the ship as a good Ammonite would.

“I have a problem, Brant.”

Brant laughed. “Just one?”

“I’m in love with Catherine.”

Brant stared at him. Then he remembered
to breathe. Silently, he crossed to the desk, picked up the brandy
glass and drank deeply.

“You’re not laughing,” Bedivere
said.

“I should be?”

“At the idea that a sentient computer
who can’t feel anything could possibly be in love with a human
woman. I thought the idea would spin you into hysterics.”

Brant sat heavily against the desk. “I
knew you loved her before I even knew what you are. I just…didn’t
think you were aware enough to know it yourself.” He looked down
into the glass. “Damn,” he muttered.

“Sorry to shatter your delusions,”
Bedivere said dryly.

“Shut up and pour me another one,”
Brant growled. “And explain to me why this is a problem.”

“You don’t think it is?”

Brant snuffled laughter into the glass.
“You’re both well beyond the age of consent.”

Bedivere was frowning.

“What am I missing?” Brant asked.
“Beyond the obvious that you’re a proscribed machine and she’s the
oldest human in the galaxy?”

“Exactly,” Bedivere said. He hesitated.
“She and Arthur were lovers. For a very long time.”

Brant put the glass down.
“
That’s
what’s worrying you? That she might be still in love
with the flesh you’re moving around in?”

“Something like that. I don’t want to
confuse her.”

“You won’t,” Brant said firmly,
remembering the way she had looked up at him the day Bedivere had
moved out of the docking bay. “I saw her reaction when you died.
Besides, you’ve had that body a lot longer than Arthur did. She’s
known you for much longer, too.”

Bedivere nodded, a frown marring the
flesh between his brows.

“There’s something else that’s eating
you, isn’t there?”

He nodded. “If I were…if we were
together…I could ruin her life. I’m proscribed, as you just
reminded me. The Federation wants her enough to chase her all over
the galaxy and if they were to find out…” He drew in a breath. “I
don’t want her hurt. Especially not because of me.”

Brant stood up, drained the brandy
glass and put it back on the desk. “I was wrong,” he said flatly.
“You’re not a machine. No machine would be able to tie itself into
such knots over a moral dilemma the way you are.”

“That doesn’t help resolve it.”

“You can’t resolve it,” Brant told him.
“All you can do is make the best choice you can and live with the
consequences. And you asked for my help, so here it is. If you
really do love her, then you have to risk everything to share that
with her. Because love is worth it. If she really loves you, then
she’ll accept the risk. She’ll accept
you
. But you can’t
make that choice for her. She must.”

Bedivere remained silent, his gaze
steady.

“Now, tell me I’m dismissed, so I can
get out of here,” Brant growled.

“Go.”

Brant hurried through the corridors,
down into the dim bowls where the engines thrummed and no one ever
came. Except for one.

He found Lilly sitting on the floor
cross-legged, some anonymous piece of steel and circuits in her
hands. There was a dark streak across one cheek. She looked up at
him, startled.