Varken Rise (12 page)

Lilly and Brant did not appreciate that idea. Brant’s mouth was set in a firm line and Lilly was staring at her hands where they rested on the table. Kemp was looking thoughtful.

“Because we can’t make any logical deductions if Bedivere is mad,” Catherine continued, “we should simply agree that it is a possibility, then remove it from the table of discussion.”

“You mean, try to figure out what he’s doing by assuming he’s as sane as the rest of us…” Kemp said slowly.

“Why bother?” Brant asked sharply. “I mean, I’m not saying we shouldn’t. I’m asking why we
should
. If we presume that he isn’t rogue, then eventually, he’s going to turn up again and then we’ll have all the answers.”

“Will he come back?” Catherine asked gravely. “We don’t know why he ran in the first place, or why he irradiated a whole island and a few harvesters on an outer world.”

“If we work on the base assumption that he’s not rogue,” Lilly said, “then everything he’s doing has a reason.”

“We just don’t know what those reasons are yet,” Catherine finished. She looked at Brant. “Because we don’t know what they are, we don’t know if they will keep him running forever. Maybe there
is
no end to this.”

“Unless you intervene in some way. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Kemp asked.

“I have to figure out what he’s doing,” Catherine replied, “so I can help, if he needs it. Lilly said that, back on Nicia and she’s right.”

Kemp pushed his coffee away, with a grimace. “Then you’re not going to like this.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“We were in the room for an hour before he did the deed. If you knew what happened in that hour, then you’d have most of your answers and could help Bedivere, yes?”

She nodded.

“Maybe that’s why he did it,” he said softly.

“To
stop
her from knowing what happened?” Brant breathed.

“Why not? That hour is the black box, isn’t it? It’s stopping all of us from doing anything constructive. We’re trailing around in Bedivere’s wake, all of us bewildered.”

Lilly shook her head. “No,” she said forcefully, her voice as low as everyone else’s. “You’re forgetting the simplicity principle.”

“If every element is operating normally, then the simplest explanation is usually the correct one,” Catherine murmured.

“What’s complex about not wanting Catherine to know?” Kemp demanded.

“What’s complex is the reasoning Bedivere would have had to use to determine that Catherine shouldn’t know,” Lilly said. “Whatever happened in the room was dramatic, to justify killing you. He was under pressure. He would have been thinking in broader, more simple terms than that.”

“What’s broader, then?” Kemp asked her.

“He didn’t want
anyone
to know what happened,” Brant replied. “Including you.”

Kemp pushed his lips out into a thoughtful pout.

“There’s something else that supports that, too,” Catherine added. “Brant said it was as if Bedivere
wanted
everyone to know he did it. He didn’t cover up anything.”

Kemp stared at her. “So?”

“If Bedivere had wanted to hide any trace of himself, don’t you think he would have? He could have altered the passive trackers. Wiped all the biologicals. Do you have any doubt that if he had wanted to cover it up, he could have done so?”

Brant grinned. “If he had, we’d still be back Nicia, wondering where you disappeared to, Kemp.”

“The body would have been found sooner or later,” Catherine added. “Bodies always do, or the facts of their death do. Bedivere knows that as well as I do. So he killed Kemp for whatever reasons, then left everything in place so that no one had any doubts about who had done it.”

“Why?” Kemp asked, a deep furrow wrinkling his unlined forehead.

“There were three other people in the complex that night. If he
had
covered up, then all three of us would have been suspects.”

“He was protecting you from suspicion,” Lilly breathed, her eyes glowing.

“He was protecting all of us,” Catherine amended.

Gate Station, Shanta System. FY 10.092

Somewhere during the run to Shanta, Catherine felt the muzzy cloud that had been inhibiting her thoughts lift and fall away. Possibly, it was after that first conversation in the dining hall. Maybe it was all the speculation they did together whenever they met.

The question about whether Bedivere was rogue was never raised again. Catherine, though, could not forget the possibility, even while she pretended to herself and everyone else that Bedivere’s actions would make sense once they correctly determined the reasons for them.

Kemp spent a lot of time in the ship’s gymnasium, working his body and bringing it back up to normal strength and flexibility. In between, he ate and slept. Catherine had seen many men rebuilding themselves after a regeneration and left him alone to follow his personal process. Kemp knew what worked for him and at least he didn’t snore.

Sometimes his feedings coincided with the meals that Catherine took with Brant and Lilly in the dining hall.

When she was not with Brant and Lilly, Catherine spent a lot of time on the terminal in her room, tapping into the ship’s datacore. It was a big, generalist core, because the ship was a commercial passenger vessel and bored passengers caused public relations issues and impacted morale. Most of the public areas of the core were filled with entertainment and distractions, although there was a decent-sized non-fiction library, too.

At the beginning of the twelve day run, she spent a lot of time studying medical and philosophical texts, delving into the nature of madness. None of what she found was new, or revealing, although she was reminded yet again that the Ancients sometimes considered people who were truly mad to be blessed with divinity—geniuses who were too smart to operate within normal society.

The idea did not make her feel any happier.

She drifted toward the entertainment tanks and spent the last five days with mindless diversions, deliberately not thinking.

They slipped through the gates at Shanta exactly on schedule and all four of them crowded around Catherine’s terminal to see the first images of the destroyed station from the external monitors as they flickered into life.

The Shanta gates were five hours from the gate station, turning it into a tiny speck of light against the red world of Shanterry behind. Then they noticed the other pinpricks of light around the station.

“The lights are twinkling,” Catherine said. “They’re in the atmosphere, so they must be at the same level as the station.”

“Other ships,” Lilly guessed.

“One of them will be acting as a default way station if the station itself was destroyed.” Catherine tried to increase the magnification. “Commercial terminals….”she muttered as the view remained stubbornly as it was.

As the ship drew closer, details became clearer. Catherine found she couldn’t look away, even as she was packing her bag.

“I thought the station itself had been destroyed,” Lilly said, from her seat in front of the screen. She had packed hours before. Hers and Brant’s bags were sitting on the floor by the door. Kemp was squeezing in one last session in the gym. Catherine had sent Brant to talk to the ship’s concierge AI, to arrange for a shuttle to the station, with a pre-set budget for bribes and grease to get the job done. “I was expecting to see floating debris and not much else, but look—it’s right there and it looks just like it does in the archives,” Lilly finished.

Catherine looked up at the screen once more, as she sealed her bag.

“I can’t see any damage.” Lilly pointed at the station now clearly visible on the screen.

“The station is in crescent view. The damage must be on the other side.” Like most of the still-developing worlds, Shanta’s station was a spoked wheel, flat and stationary, now they had artificial gravity, instead of spinning as it once would have. The liner’s angle of approach made the circular station appear to be a flattened crescent, with the other side hidden from view.

The door opened, letting Brant in. He was looking bemused.

“What happened?” Catherine asked. “Did you find a shuttle?”

“I didn’t have to. The liner is docking at the station.”

Catherine straightened up. “Physically docking at the station? Like normal?”

“That’s what I was told and I checked the big screens in the dining hall on the way back. We’re on the right angle of approach for docking, too.”

“There are ships all around the station,” Lilly pointed out. “Why didn’t they dock?”

Brant shrugged. “Emergency services?” he asked.

“We won’t get any answers until we arrive,” Catherine said. “Let’s leave it alone until then. I am sick of trying to guess based on too little information.”

* * * * *

When they docked at the station, Catherine split them up and gave each of them a quadrant to work within.

“You listen to anyone who will talk and you strip out the facts. That’s what we’re looking for. If you can verify the fact with two other witnesses, I’ll be even happier. We meet back here in front of the bay doors in four standards.”

Catherine kept the far side of the station for herself. That was where the damage was, although it did extend outside the quarter into both Lilly’s and Kemp’s sections. She travelled through the closest spoke, using the light rail most arriving passengers used. The passengers were all heading for the center of the station, though, where the umbilical to the surface was anchored.

At the hub, Catherine swapped to a rail car that was heading to her assigned quadrant.

A station flunky, wearing the tags and IDs with the Shanta logo on them, stopped by her seat. “Registered emergency workers only. You’ll have to get off.”

“I’m a consultant. I’m fine.”

“Registered emergency workers only,” he replied in a monotone. “I can have you removed. Emergency protocols—”

Catherine got to her feet and slung her sack over her shoulder. “I get the idea.” This was an unimaginative employee who would mindlessly apply the rules he had been given. They were usually resistant to bribes.

She went back to the hub and found a rail car that was heading for the next closest section of the station. She could walk from there around the outer concourse to the damaged area.

No one came to kick her off and five minutes later it pulled up beside the rim platform. She stepped off and looked around.

She had been in hundreds of gate stations and this one was no different…and that was the problem. It
should
have been different. If even half the station had been blown away, then she expected there would be a lot more authority figures moving around the station. Commercial traffic would be at a standstill and passengers caught on the station would have been evacuated by shuttles to those ships still operable, that could jump them to the next nearest gates and the station there, to travel onward.

There should be a stillness about the place, a hushed awe, that said something terrible had happened.

However, this station was all business-as-usual. There were passengers, tourists, staff and station personnel everywhere, along with the expected pickpockets and con artists. There was a brothel right across from the rail platform, happily advertising the quality of their talents.

Puzzled, Catherine stepped off the platform, took a firmer grip on the strap of her sack and turned left. The gentle curve of the outer rim put everything out of sight that was farther than eighty meters along the rim, so she started walking. Sooner or later, she would reach the damaged area.

It took longer than she thought it should to finally spot physical barricades and molecular membrane skeletons. In front of them were the first station security she had seen since docking.

She slowed her gait until it was a casual stroll. She began to turn her head, letting her gaze wander over and around. There were not as many people here. Even so, the bars and businesses right up against the barricade were still open and operating.

When the closest guard held out his hand to stop her from moving past, she looked surprised. “I can’t go on?”

“This area of the station has been damaged, sir. You’ll have to head back that way.”

“The cruiser I’m on is closer, if I go that way,” she said. She gave him a disarming grin. “I’ve been walking ever so long, you see. I think I’ve come almost the full circle. I’d love to finish it.”

He almost rolled his eyes. He pointed at the skeleton bars of the molecular membrane barrier. “See that? That’s a molecular membrane. It’s holding in all the air here because just beyond it, there
is
no air.”

“Really?” Catherine peered over his shoulder. The pristine white surfaces of the concourse showed scorch marks and farther on, they had crumpled under heat. “There’s a hole in the side of the station?” She let her tone say that she thought that was exciting.

He really did roll his eyes this time. “It’s not a hole. A whole section of the station is gone.”

“Wow! What happened?”

He gaped at her. “You don’t watch the news feeds?”

She giggled. “I just landed. There was this man, you see. Right up until we docked we…you know. They had to kick us out of the cabin.”

“Then why don’t you turn around and go find a news feed and catch up with what the rest of the known worlds know?” he suggested.

She wasn’t going to get anything else out of him. Her apparent ignorance had offended him. She gave a mental shrug. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. She gave him another innocent smile and turned around. She had seen as much as she was going to see, anyway. A molecular membrane barrier was too expensive to put one up just for show. There was vacuum just beyond, which fit with a whole section of the station being missing.

One of the businesses still operating near the barricade was a bar. It was low profile, with only a small sign declaring the name of the place and no windows to reveal the drinkers inside. Syd’s was one of the types of bar that Catherine liked to use to find passengers and transport contracts. Spacers would know of the place and head there because its reputation had spread by word of mouth. Syd’s didn’t need to advertise.