Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page B

learn.”
    “Is that why you spent all last night
sitting at the mess table?”
    “Instead of consulting the computer for
ship data?”
    “Computers are faster,” Catherine
pointed out. “Especially for hard data.”
    “And it is all that. Hard, I mean.
Learning from watching and listening is far more organic and you
retain it better.”
    “Not if you’ve learned how to remember
properly.”
    “For someone as old as you, wouldn’t
memory management be the more vital skill? The more you remember,
the more places you have to find to keep it all.”
    “That’s why I like computers. Saves me
from having to remember.”
    Brant wrinkled his nose. “While sitting
at the table last night I observed that Lilita, despite her age,
has an advanced understanding of engineering principles. That sort
of training generally leaves a person disposed toward thinking in
terms of closed systems and circuits. Despite that bias, Lilita
thinks in terms of flow. Tides, pressure, release. Channels.”
    “That probably means she studied
engineering even though she isn’t naturally disposed toward it.”
Catherine shrugged. “It’s a good starter profession. It can take
you all over the galaxy and that’s exactly what she’s doing.”
    “I also learned from my time in the
mess hall last night that you are a strategist. You think in
overall patterns. It’s not a learned skill. You were born with it.
But despite that, you force yourself toward therapy fields.”
    Catherine let out a breath, careful not
to let him see the silent sigh.
    “Are you, perhaps, trying to live up to
your ancestor’s great heritage?”
    “Did you learn anything about
Bedivere?” she asked. “Because I’ve known him for a hundred years
and I’m still trying to figure him out.”
    Brant smiled. “Bedivere…X, shall we
call him? He really has no last name? Not even an assumed one?”
    Catherine shrugged. “He’s from
Griswold. What can I say?”
    “Is that a fringe world?”
    “It’s a village on a lump of rock on
the far rim of known space, a light year beyond the Last Gate.
Griswoldens are a little strange.”
    Brant looked genuinely interested
instead of politely curious. “It’s in the Silent Sector?”
    “About as far inside the sector as
anyone cares to get. I think something like sixty percent of the
mineral makeup of the planet is beryllium. The Griswoldens mine it
and load up the one freighter they possess. When the freighter is
full, it heads for the Last Gate and jumps to the nearest
Federation metal exchange. The proceeds from that let them buy what
they can’t produce themselves and the whole village lives from
payload to payload.”
    “It sounds like a desperate life.”
    “They live in the silent sector and
there’s about three thousand of them, barely enough to keep the
gene pool viable.” Catherine shrugged. “I’m more surprised Bedivere
doesn’t behave far more strangely than he sometimes does.”
    “I imagine his social skills went
through some adjustments after he left.”
    “The adjustment is on-going,” Catherine
said dryly.
    Brant smiled. “I think the most curious
thing I learned last night was that you and he are not intimate.
You like him despite his faults and he regards you most
highly.”
    Catherine laughed. “We have a good
working relationship. Sex would mess it up.”
    “Then you don’t get lonely?”
    “Are you offering a contract,
Brant?”
    He smiled, not offended by her reprisal
for the nosy question. “I don’t know you well enough to know if you
would cut my throat in my sleep, were you to accept a contract. I’m
familiar with the events on Egemon, you see.”
    Catherine ignored the parry. “I’m an
old-fashioned woman, Brant. Endless partners don’t suit my
temperament and shipboard life doesn’t help. Although Bedivere
manages to stay busy.”
    “Then it would not bother you if I
mention that he and Lilita have already established some sort of
arrangement?”
    “I knew,” Catherine