Varken Rise (11 page)

He paid for four berths, then sent a message to Lilly to bring everyone up to the gate station.

Catherine was still a silent ghost. She had barely spoken to anyone since she had emerged from the hotel room after her call to Bedivere.

“Is he crazy?” Kemp had asked flatly.

Catherine had looked at him, her face pale. “He’s not himself.”

That had sent a chill through Brant’s middle.

As Catherine had lost interest in mundane concerns, Brant made the trip to the gate station to track down passage back home. After sending his message to Lilly, he found a bar and tried to drown his unhappiness. The brandy didn’t taste the same when drinking it on his own. He quit after two rounds and watched the tank game until they arrived.

Kemp found him there five hours later and well into the feature game. “Who’s winning?”

“Damned if I know,” Brant confessed. “Brain won’t shut up.”

“I know what you mean. Lilita and Catherine went to a diner farther down the strip. I said I’d come and find you. Honestly, though, I wanted a drink so bad I could taste it.”

Brant raised his finger, then a second. The barman nodded.

“Coming right up,” he told Kemp.

“I can’t stand looking at her face. That look in her eyes…she looks like one of those war victims that you see in historical footage. Big eyes, sad all over. As though they’ve seen the end of the world and just barely survived it.”

“That’s Catherine for you,” Brant said. “She
is
a survivor. She’ll come round. She just has to process it first.”

The barman delivered the drinks and Kemp lifted his gratefully. “I’ll be glad to get on board and put this behind us.” He knocked back the shot, then grimaced and looked at the glass. “What in Glave’s name is this?”

“Brandy.”

Kemp waved over the barman. “Place like this has got to have some distilled Soward labels around. I’m buying.”

Brant sighed.

* * * * *

The distilled wine was disgusting. It was too thick in the mouth and coated his tongue and teeth. Brant was silently grateful when the tank game flickered off and news feeds began to stream across the empty space where the players had been seconds before.

…Shanterry way station destroyed…casualty reports still compiling…all ships ordered to divert…

Kemp put his glass down. “Hellion’s heels….”

Everyone in the bar was watching the streamers, some of them blearily so.

...casualty reports still compiling…all ships ordered to divert…

“They’re just repeating,” Kemp pointed out.

“Wait,” Brant said quietly, watching the text slide by.

…
Shanterry way station destroyed…early reports claim rogue sentient, Bedivere X, responsible…casualty reports still compiling…all ships—

Brant didn’t wait to read more. He bounced to his feet. “Hurry,” he said urgently and quietly, lifting Kemp up.

“To where?”

“First, to find Lilly and Catherine, then to find a ship off this ball, before the panic clogs up the gates even more.”

“But…” Kemp followed him out the door and into the artificial daylight and winced at the light. “…we have a ship, already.”

“That one is going to Sunita.”

“Where are we going, then?”

“Shanterry.”

* * * * *

Mid-Jump, Barros-Shanta Gates. FY 10.092.

“I don’t understand why he did it,” Lilly said. It was the first time anyone had spoken in nearly an hour. They were all sitting around a small table in the dining hall of the
Veil of Time
– a former Federation star liner, which was the class before the super-fast high-liners had been produced. They would be able to make the journey from Barros to the Shanta system in twelve days. As it was the only cruiser making the journey, they had been forced to pay above the odds for their places and they were sharing two rooms between them. As Lilly and Brant took one, that left Kemp to bunk with Catherine. She didn’t mind. Having a second person in the room might help her sleep and above all, she needed to sleep.

Brant had insisted they jump to Shanterry and find out for themselves what had happened. Catherine had fallen in with his suggestion, unable to think of a better course of action.

She had paid for the very expensive cabins and reflected that the price of interstellar travel when you didn’t own your own ship was prohibitive. They wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace of travel for long. Of course, the quicker the cruiser, the more expensive the ticket. If there had been a slower vessel travelling to Shanta, the tickets would have been reasonable, but it would take them over a month to get there.

All of it, though—the change in plans, buying the tickets, worrying over the price, stowing her jump bag—it had all happened in a blur.

They met in the dining room for dinner and coffee and all the big viewers around the room were either showing the Barros system dwindling behind them, or news feeds and commentary.

Catherine wanted to go back to her room and get away from the feeds. Without exception, they were all reporting on the new Shanta disaster and as usual, speculation was rife.

She didn’t want to listen to it while she was eating, so she kept her gaze down and concentrated on inconsequential thoughts. Nearly everything brought her back to Bedivere, so she pulled up the meditation techniques she had learned centuries ago. She ate while staring at the spot on the nearly-spotless dining table, her thoughts suppressed.

As Kemp and Lilly were ordering coffee and waiting for the mugs to appear at the mouth of the dispensers, the cruiser jumped through the gates and the feeds and the external view shut off. They were blank for only a few seconds and in those seconds, Catherine could feel her attention snap back to the room. Her guard relaxed.

She looked around, puzzled. It was the first time she had consciously noted that there were dozens of passengers eating in the dining room. Most of them looked like workers and contractors. They were all sitting in cozy groups, talking to each other with the ease of friends and fellow workers.

Catherine’s table was the only isolated one. Everyone was on their way to Shanta to help out in some way and the conversation was flowing over and across all the tables.

The lack of noise from the feeds was a relief. Then the screens flickered and began running a variety of informational and entertainment shows. They would only be able to access what was in the ship’s databases until they were outside the end gates and could tap into the datacore once more.

Kemp and Lilly returned with the coffee and settled back at the table. Everyone was occupied with their own thoughts. While the chatter around the room continued and even increased, their table was silent.

The silence held until Lilly voiced her question.

Catherine blinked and looked at her. “What?”

“I said,” Lilly replied, “that I don’t understand why he’s doing it. Any of it.”

Brant put his hand on Lilly’s wrist, trying to silence her.

“No, let her talk,” Catherine said. “She’s only saying what we’re all thinking.”

“Then Bedivere…when you spoke…he didn’t say what he was doing?” Kemp asked.

Catherine shook her head.

Everyone looked at her, surprised.

“Not even to you?” Lilly said.

“That doesn’t make sense. It was a perfectly secure channel, wasn’t it?” Kemp asked. “No one could breach it without him knowing. He could have cut it instantly, after that. He was free to speak, so why didn’t he?”

Catherine stared at Kemp, listening to the question circle through her mind in tired rounds. Why
hadn’t
he told her? If their security had been tight, then... “Something else was stopping him from telling me,” she finished aloud.

“What could possibly be stopping him from talking?” Brant asked. “Something physical?”

Catherine sat up and cupped the warm coffee mug in her hands. She drew in a deep breath, feeling energy start to pulse through her. “No, nothing physical. He was sitting on the flight deck. He wasn’t under duress. Not
physical
duress.” She bit her lip.

“That just leaves physiological duress,” Kemp said slowly. “So perhaps he
is
going mad?”

Lilly glared at him.

“What?” he demanded of her. “It’s all that is left, isn’t it? Or are you going to argue that his soul is in jeopardy and that’s why he’s doing what he’s doing?”

Brant leaned forward. “I notice that not one of us is proposing that Bedivere isn’t behind this destruction at Shanterry. Shouldn’t we at least give him the benefit of the doubt?”

“Spontaneous explosion?” Kemp asked dryly.

“I think Bedivere did
something
at Shanta,” Catherine said slowly. “I just don’t know what it is, yet. I keep thinking about Barros and how the feeds were talking about half a globe destroyed and inaccessible. Words like that made everyone think that half the population of Barros had been wiped out. Instead, we find out that a few mechanical tractors and threshers are glowing in the dark and that’s about it.”

Even Kemp nodded in agreement at that.

Catherine leaned forward, dropping her voice. “Perhaps Shanta is the same. They say the gate station has been destroyed. Maybe it hasn’t…not all of it. Maybe this isn’t nearly the disaster they’re painting.”

“Why make out its worse than it is?” Lilly asked.

“Fear,” Brant said. “Pure and simple. Everyone thinks Bedivere has gone rogue. It taps into ancient fears that were only just starting to diminish in this new era, as more Varkan announced themselves. Bedivere was the first and he was the shining example of how good and useful the Varkan could be and how much like humans they really were. People were starting to trust him. Then he ups and kills a man and runs away.”

“They feel betrayed,” Kemp said. “Duped.”

Brant pointed at him. “Exactly. So they hit out, venting their disappointment and betrayal, by proving how truly evil Bedivere is. If they can demonstrate that he is mad and was hiding it, then they’ll feel less foolish about having given him their trust in the first place.”

“So everything we hear on the feeds is suspect,” Lilly concluded.

“At the very least, exaggerated,” Catherine said. “If we sift it enough, we might find the odd kernel of truth.”

“Or we can just go there and find out for ourselves,” Brant said. He looked around the ship and gave a comical double-take. “Well, look at that. We
are
going there!”

Everyone smiled, except Kemp. He wasn’t drinking his coffee. He was stirring it with his forefinger, in thoughtful circles. “This thing keeps coming to me,” he said softly and looked up at them. He gave a self-conscious shrug. “It’s maybe stupid, but…”

They waited.

Kemp licked his finger, then straightened up. “I looked at the tracking logs, too, back at the complex. Bedivere was in my room for an hour before he left.” His deep voice seemed to rumble because he was speaking so quietly.

Catherine pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to think about that too closely.

Kemp glanced at her. “I know what you’re probably thinking, Catherine. I believe that’s what happened, though. Bedivere was—
is
—with you and he’s not the sort of guy to move around freely once he’s committed. Even I could tell that from the few short hours I was on the island before I went to bed that night.”

Catherine gave him a small smile. “We’ll never know, will we?”

“Maybe that was the point,” Kemp replied.

Her heart jumped. “The point?”

Brant leaned forward, which meant that all four of them were leaning in, heads together. “Damn it, yes!” he breathed. “He didn’t kill Kemp as soon as he got in the room because why would he linger for another hour? We know he didn’t attempt to clean up or hide anything. His prints, his DNA, all his biologics, were all over the place. It was as if he
wanted
us to know he had done it.”

“The medical examiners said Kemp died around three a.m. That was at the end of the hour that Bedivere was in the room,” Lilly said. “So what did the two of you do for an hour before he abruptly decides killing you was a good idea?”

“Maybe he didn’t decide,” Kemp said softly. “Maybe he
has
gone crazy.” He looked around the table at them. “It’s not a possibility we can discount,” he insisted defensively.

Catherine laid her hand on his arm and looked at the others. “Kemp is right. We can’t discount the possibility just yet. Only, you can’t use irrationality to figure out what happened because it doesn’t fit any normal human patterns of behavior. It just screws things up. If someone is crazy they do things for reasons that make sense to them, that don’t make sense to anyone else. You can’t anticipate them. You can’t guess what they’re going to do, or understand why they did something.”

“I know Bedivere didn’t explain himself,” Lilly said. “Did he seem crazy to you?”

“Kemp already asked that.”

Lilly nodded. “You said he wasn’t himself. I know. Only, he just killed a man and now he’s on the run and everyone in the known worlds wants a piece of him, or they’re plain terrified of him. Even if he is operating under normal human parameters, that has to have impacted on him. Of course he isn’t himself. He’s under huge stress.”

“Did anything he said not make sense to you?” Brant asked.

Catherine shook her head. “He was rational. Crazy people
do
sound rational. They bathe and don’t pick their nose at the dinner table. They don’t drool, or laugh to themselves as they rock in a corner. They remember birthdays and are polite to strangers. They also happen to believe they’re Glave reborn, or that they’re a commander of their own other universe. Everything they do supports that belief, because for them, that
is
reality. They think they’re as sane and rational as the next person.”

“Like Jo,” Lilly said quietly. “She thought humans were trying to kill her.”

“So Bedivere might still be crazy,” Brant concluded and sounded glum.

“He might be,” Catherine said. She hated even saying it aloud. It was bad enough even having to think of it as a possibility. “If he is, we can’t predict what he might do because he’s not operating under the same set of rules that we are. We will never be able to figure out why he did what he did, either, because his reasons won’t make sense to us as we’re not operating in his reality.”