Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance (4 page)

“And they found this?” Kare pointed at
the screen. “This deconstruction includes DNA?”

“It does. I had a therapist interpret
it for me.”

Kare raised his brows. “And…?”

“The DNA is ninety-six percent
compliant with Glave’s sequence.”

Kare stared at the charts, not really
seeing them. “Then it really is the Shahrazad.” DNA sequencing was
inarguable proof. “Unless the records were falsified,” he added,
pointing out the one weakness.

Vinicius shook his head. “I paid well
for qualified data. This record was supplied by three different
sources. It’s verified.”

Kare let out his breath. “Then she is
real and she is back in Federation space. Why? Did your sources
establish that, too?”

Vinicius shook his head. “They were
ordered not to engage, so speculation is all we have available, but
that supplies some interesting summations.” He held up a finger.
“One. Her ship was first recorded within Federation Space, arriving
at Harrivalé. If the previous information about her is correct,
then the last time Catherine Shahrazad was in Federation space was
eight-nine years ago. At that time, Harrivalé was still a fringe
world and planetary records show that the
Invincible
, with
Shahrazad registered as captain, arrived there shortly after the
Egemon Incident.”

Kare drew in a slow, calming breath.
Egemon had been a border world, a highly religious one, under deep
Staff of Ammon control. Even though her identity had been disputed
from the moment she arrived, Catherine Shahrazad had stirred up the
worst riot in the planet’s short history. Sometime during the
unrest, she and her ship had disappeared. That was the last time
she had been seen inside the Federation. “She went back to
Harrivalé?” he asked.

“There is an excellent therapy center
there and, of course, now that Harrivalé is a Federation member,
the therapy center would have access to the Federation data
pool.”

“The DNA bank is part of the fedcore,”
Kare said. “She wanted full regeneration.”

“The stars alone know what therapy is
available out in the fringes,” Vinicius added. “Enough, I suppose,
for her to last eight-nine years before heading back to
civilization.”

“And that is why she is here?”

“It’s one of the reasons.” Vinicius
held up a second finger. “While she was on Harrivalé, she brought
an updated edition of the Itinerary.” He pursed his lips. “Paid
cash for it, too. Crisp Ivalda yen, freshly minted.”

“Forgeries?”

“Quite legitimate,” Vinicius said. “But
she must have used a fake identity with the bank where she
exchanged her money. We can’t find the transaction, not without a
Compliance order.” He shrugged. “A new Itinerary is a lot of money.
Even an update.”

Kare frowned. “Those are perfectly
normal actions of someone who arrives in the Federation after a
long absence. The Itinerary is essential to navigate the gates. The
regeneration would almost be imperative after ninety years.”

“Out in the fringes, you can buy a
bootleg Itinerary for a quarter the price,” Vinicius pointed out.
“Although I wouldn’t risk jumping to any coordinates supplied by
such a copy.”

“Perhaps Shahrazad shares your
prudence,” Kare suggested. He unsealed the stimtab and swallowed it
with a mouthful of coffee. It tasted bitter.

Vinicius scrolled through the therapy
deconstruction. “She has been out in the fringes for nearly a
century. My investigators tried to establish where she had come
from, but before she arrived on Harrivalé, there is no trace of her
or her ship. She must have used different names for both. After she
left Harrivalé there is no trace of her either. She only used her
real name once. On Harrivalé.”

“Which was necessary for the therapy,”
Kare pointed out. “Clearly, Catherine Shahrazad does not want to
stir up trouble by using her real name. Whatever the reasons she
returned to the Federation, civil disputes about her heritage is
not one of them.” Kare put the coffee down. It had cooled off and
the stimtab had ruined his enjoyment of it. “She is an historical
curiosity, Vinicius. That is all.”

“One that can generate
revolutions.”

“Which she is apparently well aware of
and trying to avoid by not using her real identity.”

“There could be other reasons for the
subterfuge.”

“You’re being paranoid,” Kare told
him.

Vinicius gave a short bow. “Your
Honor.”

Kare smiled. “I appreciate your forward
thinking, Vinicius. We can—” He held out his hand, looking at the
screen. “That is her?”

There was an image on the screen of a
very young woman, with red hair and blue eyes that seemed almost
luminous in the scrubbed and pale face. She wore no make-up or
enhancements. Her brows were a softer shade of the color of her
hair, but arched strongly.

“That’s the after picture,” Vinicius
confirmed and reached for the controls. “There’s a before,
somewhere at the back, I believe.”

“Leave it,” Kare said sharply, studying
the picture. “She looks very young.”

“Around twenty years in biological
terms,” Vinicius said.

Most women tended to undergo
rejuvenation and therapy regularly, keeping their biological age
within ten years of their preferred appearance. Kare was used to a
woman appearing essentially ageless, her features changing only
with the application of cosmetic enhancements. “Why so young?”

“If she can only access regeneration
every century or so, it probably pays to start out as young as
possible. Gives her more time until she has to come back to the
core, eh?”

The woman’s chin was lifted, her gaze
staring directly into the lens. “Are there any more images?” Kare
asked.

“A couple. One of the investigators
posed as a stevedore.” Vinicius closed down the deconstruction and
opened another file.

This image was slightly grainy, which
told Kare it had been taken some distance from the subject. But the
image was focused and detailed. It was a landing bay, a rounded and
hollow shell, the walls bristling with equipment and tools for
servicing craft of every description.

The ship sitting on the pad was a
medium-sized long-range cruiser of indeterminate make. It looked
like no model he had ever seen before. It took up most of the space
in the bay and made the people working on it seem very small. “She
owns her own ship.” Kare murmured. “I remember she had one before,
too.”

“Possibly the same ship.”

“After a century?”

Vinicius shrugged. “Private cruisers
aren’t cheap and they’re not easy to find. There’s no market for
them. There’d be even fewer out on the fringes.”

Kare shifted his attention back to the
small group of people standing around the landing struts of the
ship. They weren’t maintenance crew, for they didn’t wear
protective gear or shielding. One of them wore a grey oversuit with
a company logo on the back that was just blurred enough it couldn’t
be read. That would be one of the station representatives.

The other two wore civilian clothing,
nothing remarkable or highly fashionable that would make them stand
out. On the far left, Catherine Shahrazad stood with her hand on
her hip. Her hair was down, swinging around her shoulders freely.
Next to the other two in the conversation, who were both men, she
looked surprisingly small.

“I thought she would be taller,” Kare
said.

Vinicius raised a brow.

Kare pointed to the man on her left,
the other civilian. “Crew member?” he asked.

“Navigator or pilot,” Vinicius said.
“He didn’t leave the landing bay at all. Spent all his time
supervising the locals.”

“Navigator,” Kare decided. “Shahrazad
is the pilot.”

Vinicius shot him a sharp look. “I
suppose, yes, she must be.” He turned the display off and returned
the window to normal.

Kare crossed his arms. “Thank you for
bringing this to me, Vinicius. I will see you tomorrow, yes?”

Vinicius gave a sour smile. “Most
certainly.” He gave another short bow. “Your Honor.”

The aide stepped into the room as
Vinicius left and looked at Kare steadily, waiting for orders.

Kare didn’t give him any. Instead, he
made his way back to the ballroom, two floors above. The sweeping
music grew louder as he got closer and the murmur of hundreds of
people rose beneath it.

He spent the next two hours dancing,
including one dance with Nekka the Supreme Mother while her
headdress swayed in time. He drank a little and spoke to key
people. When he thought his presence had been visible enough for a
while, he tapped the signal out on the back of his hand and waited
for Jarek to arrive.

Jarek pinged him and Kare found him at
the side of the room by the motionless guards lining the walls,
each guard precisely three meters apart. Jarek was as dressed-up
and sparkling as everyone else in the room, except for his face,
which wore the usual scowl.

“Catherine Shahrazad has been spotted
in Federation space,” Kare told him.

Jarek lifted a brow and waited. After
so many years as Kare’s Chief of Staff, there was very little that
surprised him.

“Vinicius couldn’t track her, not with
his resources,” Kare added.

“We could.”

“Exactly.”

Cadfael College, Van Andel, Andelsson’s
System. 10.069

From the top of the Eistav tower, one of
the highest locations anywhere on the sprawling campus of stone, it
was possible to see nearly every step visitors took along the four
hundred meter road between the City and the Postulant Gate—the road
that had been called the Prentice Path for longer than Nephele
could remember.

Today, the snow was deep and walls of
ice had been built on either side of the road. The cold ate into
her bones just looking at the blinding white glare of the blank
snowfield lying almost untouched, broken only by the narrow
Prentice Path.

Why had no one ever agreed to an
underground street connecting the City and the College? Most of the
City was already underground, out of reach of the biting cold,
warmed by tapped lava fields and other geothermic sources. The
technology for building streets and suburbs beneath the surface was
well understood. A single street running to the cellars of the
College would present no construction problems at all.

Except that Nephele knew without asking
that neither of her Eistav partners would agree to have the College
so intimately connected to the City. The Aneesh, they would insist,
must maintain their isolation in order to further the aims of the
College.

And so visitors braved the usually
inclement weather in order to learn, consult or contribute to the
college agenda. There was no other reason to come here.

This window-gazing was really
procrastination. Nephele had halted the message she had been
reading mid-stream and almost without thinking had moved over to
the window and studied the few people traversing the Path this
early in the morning, while she mused about estrangement and
branding strategies.

She hugged the fragile fabric of her
jacket more firmly against her, even though it wasn’t possible for
any cold to seep through the sealed windows, even at the
temperatures out there today. This was the oldest section of the
College building and had stood for just over two thousand years
despite the weather.

A soft tap sounded against the heavy
door between Nephele’s office and Vavay’s, before it opened and
Vavay stepped through, a small smile lifting the corners of her
mouth. The smile faded. “You’re troubled.”

It would be foolish to hide the source
of her irritation so Nephele nodded toward the screen in the middle
of her worktable. “The proctor of the Women’s Institute on
Harrivalé reports that Catherine Shahrazad applied for rejuvenation
therapy.”

Vavay’s big brown eyes widened.
“Shahrazad! I hope you told the proctor to find an excuse to keep
the woman within the clinic until we can get there.”

Nephele grimaced. “This is a
post-facto
report. Shahrazad checked out six months
ago.”

Vavay’s jaw tightened. “To go
where?”

Nephele shook her head. “The logs she
filed at the terminal said she was heading for Víkingr. Víkingr’s
terminus has no such person and no ship called
Invincible
in
their records.”

“She never went there,” Vavay
concluded.

“Or she did go there, but changed her
name and her ship’s name.”

“Either way, it seems she has been lost
to us again.” Vavay frowned, which made her smooth brow wrinkle
into fine channels and grooves, one of the few hints about her
supple and slender form that spoke of her true great age. “The
woman leads a charmed life. That’s twice now we’ve fumbled her
detainment.”

“You’re referring to Egemon?” Nephele
smiled. “I did warn the Ammonites about her before they made the
attempt.” In fact, the Staffers had been almost arrogant in their
confidence that detaining Catherine Shahrazad would be of little
matter. Instead they had ended up with a PR disaster and had lost
control of the city, the planet and the system, in one foul
day.

“We should have done it ourselves,”
Vavay pointed out. This was an old argument, but it had been years
since the last time they had churned over the same muddy ground.
Nevertheless, Nephele knew what Vavay was about to say because of
the constant repetition. Vavay pressed her lips together, vexed.
“We
need
viable DNA from Glave’s line to refresh the gene
pool. She is the most direct-line descendant. The study of her
genes would answer so many questions we have about that time. About
Glave himself.”

“Because no one remembers it directly,”
Nephele finished. “We have her DNA profile on record. The clinic on
Harrivalé updated it while she was there, after matching her
records.”