Varken Rise

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “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!”

&nb
sp; 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.”

  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 brea
thed, her eyes glowing.

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

  Chapter Nine

  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.