The Forever Hero

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The hide bag he had taken some days earlier from the shambletowners bumped against his chest under the worn, frayed, and ripped tunic that once had been left unattended by a careless owner. Inside the bag, itself held in place by the pressure of the tunic and the loose thonging around his neck, were a handful of the reddish fruits that grew on one scattering of hills south and east of the shambles. The hills were far enough from the shambletown, nearly onto the rolling plains, to discourage casual foraging and open enough to keep the rats from exposing themselves to the coyotes.

  The boy had been lucky. Although his battered blade was sharp and his reflexes quick, his leg was not fully healed. But he had not had to test them during the night’s trip to the fruit trees.

  He feared the foraging parties of the shambletowners far more than the coyotes. The four-footed beasts often traveled alone, almost never in packs, and preferred to avoid him unless they were close to starving.

  The towners took whatever they could find from wherever they found it, but avoided foraging at night and generally stayed close to the foothills and the higher ground where the landpoison was less intense.

  The boy’s eyes never rested, flicking from one hummock to another, from one patch of grass to the next, from one grubush to the one behind, as his untiring and uneven steps covered the ground between him and his cave and the relative safety it offered.

  His ears strained for the telltale rustle of a coyote returning to its den, or for the hiss/squeal of a rat, and his eyes periodically checked the clay for the even rarer trace of a firesnake.

  WWWHHHeeeeeee!!!

  The intensity of the whistling sound jolted him to a stop, and he covered his ears to block the pain. As the intensity dropped, he uncovered them and tried to localize the source. He sensed that it had started above the clouds and had crossed nearly overhead.

  He dropped behind the nearest grubush and waited, waited until the whistle dropped to a whispering from the direction of the hills.

  A brief glint of sunbright light flashed—again from the west—and was gone.

  The silence was deeper than before as he trotted toward the hills and the light and the whispering sound that had died to nothing. The source of the noise and glare was on his way back, and anything that noisy should have frightened off anything likely to bother him.

  Though not counting his steps, he had gone beyond what numbers he knew, far beyond, when he saw the silvery arc above the grubushes.

  He slowed his trot and began to slip from bush to bush, from bush to hummock, and from hummock to bush as he angled toward the object that had dropped from the sky.

  The smoldering grubushes, the charcoal smell mixing with the faint odor of grubush oil, both told him of the heat the object had created. His feet told him of the rumbling in the clay underfoot, and his ears could sense vibrations he could not hear.

  As he neared the silvery object that towered higher than a shambletown wall, he slid behind a mound of clay that reeked of old brick and corroded metal. Beyond the mound, the bushes and other cover were too sparse for a safe approach, not to mention the steaming ground heat.

  He waited, but the whining and the vibration did not stop.

  Finally, the golden-haired boy peered over the mound again at the source of the sounds. After looking at the shining mass of metal, he blinked. Though the whining sound had not changed, a section of the metal wall had peeled back, and a ramp had been extended.

  Thud.

  He could feel the force with which the ramp settled onto the ground, and flattened himself as well as he could behind the mound, trying to keep himself above the ground fog while not letting the plume of his breath show in the increasing light of dawn.

  He shivered, wondering what the metal machine on the desert plain meant. Was it one of the ships that the shambletowners always talked about?

  Ships. He shrugged and snorted faintly, ignoring the white plume that trailed behind him. Always there were the ships that would come to save them. Even his parents had wondered. But no ship had come to save them from the shambletowners.

  If the metal machine was a ship, or from the ships, would it spend the time to save anyone, devilkids or shambletowners?

  The whining sound stopped, and the boy peered back over the top of the mound.

  Rrrrrrrrrrr.

  The sound echoed across the emptiness as a smaller object positioned itself on the top of the ramp and began to move down toward the ground, tracs clanking on the metal of the ramp.

  No sooner was the armored tractor clear of the ramp than the whining began again as the ramp lifted and began to retract.

  The tractor began to roll directly toward the mound which shielded the boy.

  He scuttled sideways to another mound that barely covered him, but he could tell from the sound that the tractor had shifted direction and still headed toward him.

  He looked left, then right, for another cover, making a quick dash to the left, scampering as low as he could, even breathing the ground fog that caught in his lungs like fire.

  The roaring increased, louder, and he darted a glance from his hiding place.

  Once more, the tractor had switched directions and was headed toward him, now less than a hundred body lengths away from him.

  He ran, ran as fast as he could, with the practice of years and the spur of fear.

  The pitch of the roaring increased, and the armored tractor increased its speed.

  Could he make the gully he had passed earlier, the dry one where the poisons and fog were thinner?

  He turned directly east and increased his stride.

  In turn, the tractor’s roar increased.

  Although he refused to look back, concentrating on avoiding the grasp of the grubushes while staying ahead of the machine, he knew that the gap was narrowing, bit by bit.

  His breath came raggedly, and the cold air he inhaled tore through his throat, burning like fire. His breath plumes trailed him like banners as he felt the ground begin the gradual rise before the drop-off that was the gully ahead.

  Thrumm!

  He felt a tingling sensation as something sleeted past his left shoulder, but refused to stop, forcing his legs to keep moving. He could see the drop-off just ahead.

  Thrummm!

  The strange energy barely cleared his head as he ducked just before the sound. Only a handful of steps remained to the gully.

  Thrummm!

  He tried to duck and twist, but the blackness rolled up around him, and he could feel himself falling even as it did.

  VII

  Corson paused outside the portal. As the chief engineering officer, he had the absolute right to enter any duty space on the ship, but he still hesitated. Marso had the kind of tongue that could strip flesh from bone.

  He frowned, then squared his shoulders and keyed the portal with his own code, the one that overrode all but the captain’s locks.

  “Nooo!”

  Corson saw the streak of blond, bent, and spread his arms.

  Thud.

  Even at nearly two hundred centimeters and one hundred ten kilos, he was staggered by the impact and set back on his heels. But he refused to let go of the snarling figure that pounded at his mid-section and sent kneecaps toward his stomach.

  Corson shifted his grip into the patterns he had learned too many years before at the Academy and finally fumbled until he had immobilized the smaller figure.

  It had to be the boy that Marso’s tractor had stunned down on the surface.

  He carried the still-squirming youngster back into the combination sick bay/laboratory.

  Marso stood there, leaning on the console with her right hand. The scratches on her left cheek still glistened with the dampness of just-applied quick heal.

  Corson did not miss the dark smudge beneath her left eye that would likely become a black eye.

  His own eyes widened as he took in the snapped straps on the stretcher that had brought the youngster up from the surface with the shuttle.

&nb
sp; “How did…?”

  “Damned if I know!” snapped the ecologist. “I came in to check him again, and he jumped me. Then you came blundering along and almost let him get away.”

  “I…” Corson closed his mouth and tightened his grip on the boy, who seemed stronger than most men he had ever dealt with.

  “What do you want me to do with him? Your young man here?”

  “He’s not that far along yet. No sign of puberty, not overtly, and the initial readouts support that.”

  Marso replaced the quick heal back in the cabinet and reached for a pressure syringe.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Put him under for linguistics. I’d like to be able to talk to him. Then maybe so much force wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “Talk you now,” muttered the boy. His accent was odd, but clear and understandable.

  “How did he learn Panglais?”

  “He didn’t. Panglais is a derivative from simplified Anglish. The maps indicate his ancestors spoke Anglish.”

  “Why ship take me?” asked the boy, still twisting to see if he could escape.

  “To see if we could help you.”

  “Help devulkid? Snort fog!”

  Corson raised his eyebrows.

  “What does he mean?”

  Marso pushed a stray strand of hair back off her forehead. “I suspect it’s a rather direct way of saying he doesn’t believe us.”

  “Devulkid believe none.”

  “He thinks he’s a devilkid. What does that mean?”

  Marso frowned, but did not look directly at the chief engineer.

  “There may be some veracity in that assumption, particularly if the metabolic analyses taken while he was unconscious are fully accurate.”

  Corson shook his head. Marso had never engaged in scientific doubletalk. Then he nearly smiled. She was trying to clue him without alerting the young savage.

  “That much capability for physiological prowess?”

  Marso nodded.

  “What want devulkid?” interrupted the youth with another squirm that nearly broke Corson’s grasp.

  “Devilkid needs better talk,” offered the engineer.

  “Devulkid talk good.”

  Marso edged nearer the squirming figure, pressure syringe ready.

  Corson turned slightly to his right to make Marso’s effort easier, carrying the boy with him.

  “Ouggh,” he muttered with a wince as the devilkid’s heels crashed into his leg.

  Marso slapped the syringe against bare flesh.

  The boy convulsed as if a current had passed through him, and it took all of Corson’s strength to hold him.

  “Hold him!”

  Corson said nothing, but glared at the red-haired officer.

  By the time the young savage had collapsed, Corson’s arms ached, and his back felt stiff and sore.

  “Where do you want him?”

  “Back on the stretcher. I’ll plug him in there, but that won’t hold him for more than a standard hour or two.”

  “What?”

  He’d seen the dosage she’d injected, and it would have laid him out for days.

  “Corson. He may be a devilkid indeed. He’s not too far from full growth, but the muscular and skeletal development indicates he’ll be capable of taking you apart with one hand. If we’re wrong, and he’s less mature than I think, he could be a physical superman, but I don’t think the readouts are that far off.”

  “What about brains?” the engineer asked dryly.

  “Hard to tell. Probably no genius, but bright enough. Be difficult to tell what cultural retardation has done to his innate capabilities, if anything.”

  Corson stretched the slight frame out on the pallet. Marso used three sets of straps before adjusting the headband and contacts.

  “Whew! Could use a little freshening.”

  “No survival value,” snapped the ecologist.

  Corson looked over the boy’s face. Even unconscious, he did not appear relaxed. A residual tension centered around the closed eyes, and there was a sharpness to the nose uncommon to a mere boy.

  “Is that all he is? Just another specimen?”

  “Given time, given some education, he might be human. Right now, he’s more like the proverbial wolf child, though I’d bet on him rather than on the wolves. I wonder if he really is a child.”

  Corson frowned and rubbed the middle of his forehead with the thumb side of his clinched fist.

  “You just said he was.”

  Marso continued to work, sitting at the console and adjusting the feed to the headset.

  “I said there was no sign of puberty and the associated developments. Those could be delayed because of environmental conditions, diet, who knows what. The other indications are that he may be older than twenty standard years. Brain scan patterns show more than a child’s development.”

  Corson switched his attention from the lieutenant to the child/man/??? and realized that the unconscious figure’s lips were moving.

  Marso followed his gaze.

  “That’s a good sign. Shows verbalization ability is present. The sooner we’re on the same wave length the better. Once he gets proper medical care and diet, I don’t think brute force, other than sheer imprisonment, will keep him anywhere.”

  The chief engineering officer turned to leave.

  “Let me know if you need help, brute force variety. I question whether your specimen believes in sweet reason, particularly on the wave lengths you have in mind.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He could feel her eyes boring into his back as he thumbed open the portal and continued his inspection of H.I.M.S. Torquina, the newest of the Service’s survey vessels, and dispatched for that reason alone to begin the preliminary survey of Old Earth, otherwise known as Terra, that would precede the clean-up pledged by the newly crowned Twelfth Emperor.

  VIII

  The first tests of the jumpshift were the drones. They returned unharmed.

  The first full-scale test followed with a fusactor-powered in-system inertial driver. It did not return. Nor did the five ships that followed. The small drones continued to function superbly. Their jumpshift was powered with stored energy.

  Finally, the UNSRF team theorized that the shift itself might have disoriented the fusactors. In response, they built a ship that was little more than an immense assembly of energy storage cells within a cargo shell. It jumped and returned, with scarcely an erg left.

  The next step was another jumpshift, this time including a shut-down fusactor. The ship returned, but the magnetic storage bottle for the hydrogen starter had shrapneled the power room into shredded metal.

  Interstellar travel had arrived, but no equipment that relied on the use of electrical or magnetic fields to generate power was able to survive the trip, and the jumpshift did not operate except in the corridors outside the main system gravitational fields.

  No independent power generation equipment light enough to carry between the stars has ever been developed, nor was research pushed in that direction after the development of the Cardine molecular energy storage system…

  Notes on the Jumpshift

  Fragmentary text

  Old Earth [Date unknown]

  IX

  He turned in the straps, testing his strength against them. While the straps were more than adequate to hold him, he could tell from their give that he could squirm free in time.

  The headset bothered him, but not so much as the headache it had created. So many words…and so many possibilities.

  His eyes swam, and he waited, thinking.

  “…so you’re awake…”

  The woman stood on the other side of the room looking at him.

  “Yeh.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Marso. I don’t know your name. Would you like to tell me?”

  “Tell what?”

  “I see. Let’s start more slowly, and less directly.” She frowned and was silent for a moment.

  He k
new what she wanted, but the words had no reality, no more reality than a shambletowner running the high plains.

  The woman began to point at objects, naming each in turn. With each name he found a link in his own mind, and some of the confusion began to sort itself out.

  After she had pointed to everything within the compartment, she went to the dispenser and poured herself a drink of water.

  He could scent the moisture.

  “Would you like some?”

  “No. Yuggg!”

  “This is not like the water on…where you live.” She drank it. “Try some.”

  She let him smell the water and dribbled some on his lips. He licked them. The water was nearly tasteless, except for a faint bitter odor and the hint of metal, both far fainter than the landpoisoned water of the plains.

  He liked the smell of her better. Clean. Warm, like the flowers of the yucca. Not like the grease of the shambletowners.

  “Would you like some?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Yes,” she corrected.

  “Yes,” he mimicked, because she wanted him to, and because there was no reason not to.

  She set the cup on the high table beside the bed where he was strapped. After that, she pulled a metal object from a sheath attached to her wide belt.

  Thrummm!

  He winced at the sound, but watched as the fire from the object struck the floor.

  “I am going to let you sit up. If you move toward me, I will use this. Understand?”

  “Stand.”

  He thought he knew what she meant. She was afraid of him, but the blackness thrower would keep him away. He shivered. Still…she was a woman. Perhaps…later.

  Holding the thrower in one hand, she did something underneath the bed with her other, stepping back quickly afterward.

  He could feel the straps loosening and began to sit up slowly. Taking the cup in both hands, he sniffed the water again. His nose confirmed that it was safe to drink.

  He sipped and waited. After a time he sipped again. The water was clean. Finally, he drained the cup and set it down.

  “Are you hungry?”