Varken Rise Read Online Free

physicality. Unlike him, the Varkan could not run away when threatened. Nor could they defend themselves.
    “How old do you think she is?” he asked Connell.
    Connell frowned. “It’s hard to tell. She’s very confusing. Sometimes she seems as old as you. Then she behaves like this and I have to wonder.”
    “I think she has been isolated for a very long time,” Bedivere said. “Solitary confinement can make humans loopy. There’s no reason why computers would not react the same to isolation.”
    “Now she has us, doesn’t she?”
    “You might explain that to her, too.”
    “I’d better go after her,” Connell said. “I’ll see if she wants to talk to you again.”
    “Be gentle,” Bedivere said. “Pretend you’re a grown-up.”
    Connell grinned. “Like you? She just ran away from you.”
    Bedivere sighed. “Then be yourself.”

Chapter Two
    Nicia (Sunita II), Sunita System. FY 10.092
    Lilly was called back to the negotiation table a week later. Brant elected to travel with her, as he often did. Bedivere offered to transport them, but Lilly would not hear of it.
    “You’re making progress with Jo,” she said. “I can’t take you away from that now. The poor girl is a wreck and I think you’re the only person in the world who can help her. They’re paying for a transport for me, anyway.”
    Brant rolled his eyes. “Two days in the hole, both ways. It’s supposed to be the shortest run in the inner systems, although after jumping around with you, it feels like a marathon.”
    Bedivere smiled. “The offer still stands, if you change your mind.”
    Brant patted his shoulder. “Don’t drink all the brandy while I’m gone.”
    After Brant and Lilly had left, he found Catherine and they settled back down to planning projects for the next year or so. The College negotiations had been taking up most of Lily’s time and a lot of Catherine’s, too, as she was called in as a freelance consultant on a regular basis. Catherine had tried to distance herself from the matter, because the College personnel continued to look upon her as Glave’s descendent and automatically considered her as being on their side. In fact, the consortium of planetary governments and interstellar corporations represented on the other side of the table, where Lilly was sitting, were the ones paying her bill.
    “It makes things confusing,” Catherine explained. “Even for me. This is one of the reasons why I liked the fringes. No one knew who I was. I prefer it when people argue back, not look at me with awe like the College neophytes do.”
    “At least everyone listens when you speak,” Bedivere pointed out.
    “They never like what I say.”
    “Most people find realists uncomfortable.”
    “Except you,” she added softly.
    “Realism is my basic matrix,” he reminded her. “I can’t help but like it when you piss everyone off with a truth or two.”
    So they had settled down to a table full of readers, ideas and bottles of Soward champagne. In between they made love and sometimes slept, often wherever they happened to find themselves. It was unusual to be alone in the complex and they took advantage of it.
    Bedivere could measure Catherine’s relaxation in the shift of her shoulders and the erasing of the small line between her brows that had been there for days.
    He wished he could relax alongside her. Unlike everyone else in the known worlds, he usually found it very relaxing and comfortable to be alone with Catherine Shahrazad. It was how he had begun his life and because she trusted him so much, she could let down her guard and be herself.
    It was a privileged position to be in and one that he had never been able to take for granted. More than twenty years had passed since he had discovered Interspace and the Federation had been dissolved, yet there were days when he still felt astonishment that Cat wanted to be with him.
    He couldn’t fully unwind, though, for the long days of peace and quiet were