Heritage of Flight

by Susan Shwartz

  Thorn had sat waiting until, “Come on,” a true-human from CompCentral told him. “Medical's decided that you have to do something constructive with your off-shifts, and they've asked us to see to it."

  She took him by the arm—it felt strange to be touched by someone not med staff or a groupmate, let alone by a true-woman—and led him to the ship's libraries, showing him access codes for a wealth of tapes he had never dreamed existed. Glancing about almost guiltily, he noted Feoh and Hagl in nearby carrels, concentrating on tapes Thorn suspected had nothing to do with weapons or shiphandling. He sighed with satisfaction and punched up the first menu.

  These tapes! As their library time increased, their dependency on the diazepam-analogs and other antistressors declined ... which, Thorn concluded with a shrewdness new to him, was probably what medical had kept in mind. At first, he had duly kept to Republic history. But gradually his fascination with the group's genefather Halgerd, creator of all the fighting groups, overcame his guilt and so obsessed him that he had scanned all the available biographies on the databanks.

  Once he exhausted them, he discovered Freki, Halgerd's home, with joy, got quietly, tearfully drunk on its proud, plangent songs of victory, even in death, and shivered at its history. The deep inlets, the echoing mountains and twilights that Halgerd longed for in his years of exile among the enemies lured him too until, inevitably, the moment came when he started to think of Freki as his homeworld as well. The way Thorn might choose a weapon (but with a strange new tenderness) he chose the steading he pretended was his home, his favorite animals, and the foods he liked best. He cherished this fantasy in secret, guarding it even from his brothers in the link, because he suspected that now he'd crossed the line from acceptable interest into delusion.

  "I thought maybe I should report myself, but ... I couldn't bear to not-be. That never occurred to me before. And what about my brothers? For the first time, I had words to understand what they meant to me. If the medics euthanized me, what would become of them?” he asked.

  Pryor touched his forehead and sent him deeper. Her fingers lingered against his hair.

  Then his next delusion took root. To be Halgerd, who had been a giant among true-humans. Just to know what he did would be the study of a full lifetime, with no rest in the sleep of the tanks. Thorn began to study feverishly, desperately. And those too were words for which he used to have no referents.

  When, in the privacy of pilots’ quarters, Aesc asked him what he had learned, he answered with evasions, then winced as unease, and a surprising, complicit guilt quivered in the linkage. Covertly he studied his brothers. How had he ever thought they looked alike? Ship's day by day, they all were diverging from their original unity, Aesc spending more time on the bridge, the others in medical, engineering, even science. Reading. Talking with true-humans, spending less time with one another.

  And more than talking. He had roused from concentration so intense on a Frekan poem that he might almost have been in a tank, to overhear two true-female crewmembers.

  "What difference does it make? They're not fertile; it's not as if we have to requisition anything."

  "How can you talk about them as things one moment, then plan what you're planning the next?"

  "How? Boredom, that's how. This eternal waiting for orders, or for the captain and first to decide how they're going to carry out whatever orders we get.” The woman was pretty, Thorn decided, slightly bemused at that awareness. And she tugged at Feoh's hand until he left his carrel and followed her out of CompCenter. The link heated with Feoh's emotions, then his act. Half the ship away, Thorn trembled.

  Feoh wasn't in quarters until late that ship's night. When he returned, he was smug, full of hints and of talk about factions among the true-humans, in the Republic itself, talk which sparked a response from Wyn.

  Hagl—sturdy, stolid Hagl (where had Thorn learned those words?)—banged his fist on the nearest table. “We're not supposed to question. We're pilots, weapons in the Republic's hands ... not politicians. What's the matter with you?"

  "Nothing, brother mine,” Kaon murmured at his ear. “They've just gotten a little too close ... let's call it that ... to the true-humans and to some of the women at that. Or didn't you have the brains to know what you were feeling in the link?"

  He and Aesc had to separate Hagl and Feoh. They all winced at the bruises.

  "You know what's the matter?” Aesc asked him later. He looked as anxious as the first officer that time he'd come into Medical Center with the orders that had destroyed their peace and—abruptly Thorn understood another strange word—their innocence.

  Thorn shrugged. “Too many stimuli. What can you expect? They take us out of the tanks, and—"

  "We're not meant for this!” Aesc interrupted. “We're all changing. Pretty soon, none of us will be fit to fly ... and what then, Thorn, what then? They terminate pilots who can't fly!"

  He started to tremble, then to cry. Maintaining override on the group's linkages was draining him, Thorn thought. He looked years older than the rest of them. Wondering at his own calm, Thorn dialed for tranquilizers. He ought to have felt Aesc's hysteria. What he felt instead was relief.

  "I want him to rest before we go on,” Pryor said. “You too. You look like you'd be better for—” Her eyes narrowed as Pauli winced at another cramp and her own rotten timing.

  "How long since contractions started?” the physician demanded.

  "Maybe an hour or so. Get on with this, Alicia! There's one of this Thorn's group alive up there, and that distress beacon has sent a message off to him."

  Pryor hesitated, and Pauli searched for arguments to convince her to proceed with the interrogation.

  "I'll cross my legs or something. I promise I won't have the baby while you're interrogating him. Just hurry up, Doctor, before this Aesc-character finds us!"

  "His heart's weakening—"

  "He's a killer, Alicia. But so am I. As you know. Get on with it."

  Pryor touched the hypo, increasing the flow of neoscopalamine.

  "So you lived with the true-humans, and you didn't like what you felt, is that it?"

  Thorn mumbled sleepy agreement. “Finally, though, we got orders. Aesc was so happy."

  The old eagerness for battle fired his blood, yet Thorn felt strange. The part of him he'd made into Halgerd's image had a word for that. Feigr. He kept it to himself: fatalism was encouraged; but superstition would probably get him euthanized. That is, if the true-humans maintained proper discipline anymore. Anything could happen, had already happened. True-people had been arrested ... “They fight among themselves,” Aesc had lamented after one of his forays into bridge territory.

  But they had arrived in a new system where hostile ships awaited, so they headed down for the launching bay. Before he and his brothers climbed into their ships, they bowed to the six brothers of Tojo-group, then exchanged somber, respectful nods with another group of high-cheekboned, dark-haired men he had never seen before.

  Real flying again, thank God, he thought; and knew the relief and the prayer for Halgerd's mindset, not his. At last. The linkage of pilot and pilot awoke strong and clean in Thorn's mind and kindled in the others', bringing a warm, welcome sense of rightness, remembrances of excitement, of victory, and, afterward, desires assuaged.

  Then they sighted the other group. Curious: no warning of another Republic ship in the area had filtered down to them; and the strangers made no courteous suggestion that their groups combine forces against an enemy—where were the familiar patterns of the enemy ships?

  The stranger-group opened fire, blowing Wyn and Feoh out of space before Thorn's blast shields fully polarized. Half-blinded, he fled behind a satellite with his surviving brothers. None of them felt the two deaths yet, and the knowledge of pain deferred only made him stronger for now.

  "Aesc!” he shouted into his comm.

  "We're trying for a visual,” Aesc spoke fast, sounding half-frantic. “They know the ship ... they say ... I've n
o referent for these words ... civil war ... we've broken their codes and got them on screen."

  The tiny screen which held Aesc's face blanked, then NO, he thought aghast, in the instant Aesc shouted, “My God, it's US!"

  Another Halgerd-group? Thorn flamed with anger and his brother's unfamiliar terror. Aesc might have no referent for civil war but Halgerd's old poems did:

  Bræðr munu berjask ok at bonum verðask, munu systryngar sifjum spilla;

  hart er í heimi, hórdómr mikill, skeggöld, skálmod skildir to klofnir,

  vindld, vargald,ðr verold stepisk;

  mun eigi maðr oðrum Þyrma.

  Brother fights brother, and both fall dead,

  Sisters’ sons slay each other;

  Evil lies on earth, an age of whoredom,

  The slash of sharp swords, of shields breaking,

  Wind's age, wolf's age, till the world is wrecked.

  The next purplish-white salvo took out Hagl and three of their other, enemy, selves. Adrenaline flared in Thorn's blood; no time to feel his brothers’ deaths in this battle from which there could be no return, for it was Ragnarok. The survivors twisted and dived, as deadly lights slashed the blackness and they jockeyed to put their enemies where the satellites would impair their maneuverability and the star would ruin their vision.

  Since this was his last battle, best make the most of it. Even though he heard Aesc whimper, heard him cry out, he roared with laughter until there was only silence in the comms. He and Kaon were paired now, and they took out one, then another of the enemy group before Kaon too vanished into blue-white vapor, leaving him to duel against the last ship.

  He glanced at his fuel gauges. Not enough to make it back to the ship, but he had never expected to return alive. He didn't care. At the exact moment when he tried his last, suicidal, folly, the other ship fired—and exploded an instant later. Thorn's damage readouts burned crimson, showing critical failure in the power core, counting down seconds to the time when the ship would blow apart.

  "Preparing to eject, Aesc,” he spoke into the silent comm. The ship was yawing uncontrollably now on all three axes, and he fell against one bulkhead, then the boards. Ejection was all but a death sentence, but he had to try. He was simply sorry that Aesc would be left alone.

  "Aesc?” Where was his brother?

  "AESC!" he screamed as the ejectors blasted him free of his dying ship and toward the surface of the nearest world. His skull felt as if it would burst. Gravity clutched at his spine until the coolness of deepsleep hissed out and embraced him.

  "He was hyped up during the fight” Pauli concluded “and then drugged for entry into atmosphere. So he didn't have time to ‘feel the deaths,’ as he called it, until you helped him break out of the pod.” She felt a kind of horrified pity for the Secess', who'd literally been hardwired to his squad, to live or die. Her revulsion was ... it was an actual pain. Then she was doubling over, and Pryor and Rafe were helping her to lie down.

  "I told you I wouldn't have the baby until I knew,” she panted. “Now I know. There's two ships out there hunting one another. If we lie low, maybe they won't find us, even if we all have to hide up in the caves this season."

  Rafe bathed Pauli's forehead, reminding her to breathe regularly.

  "Cut power to the outlying fields,” she ordered, then gasped as another contraction stitched itself across her belly.

  "Not now, Pauli. Come on, like we practiced. Count with me,” Rafe coaxed.

  "Do it! Better we lose all the fields than get burned off!"

  "I'll tell Dave,” said Rafe, and Pauli could give herself up to the struggle within her own body. Even in the intervals between contractions she shuddered. Three seasons ago, she had given death. She had resented her assignment here, but when the winged Cynthians had been sighted—intelligent, flying beings—she had been as delighted as the other settlers. Communicating with them had reconciled her with Rafe.

  "Steady, Pauli. Breathe in. There—"

  At first, they had been grateful to find friends here. But then they had discovered the meter-long, segmented horror—the eaters. ‘Cilla would always walk with a limp, the result of the eaters’ digestive acid.

  "Contractions about three minutes apart—no, make that two."

  The first recon had been a failure, but the second had been disastrous. She'd been on it along with Rafe, ben Yehuda, and Borodin. Her captain. She whimpered, and Rafe seemed to materialize from somewhere and smooth back her hair. God, she was so tired.

  "Not much longer,” he soothed her.

  "I'm trying,” she panted.

  She had always tried. She remembered the Cynthians hovering over their heads, diving at Captain Borodin as he tried to fly back to the settlement, she had tried to protect him ... “trying...” she moaned.

  "You're doing fine, love,” Rafe's voice. “Just think about pushing."

  She couldn't think about that. Even as she bore down, she remembered drawing on the Cynthian. “Does it matter what stage they're in when we kill them?” she'd screamed, seconds before a Cynthian brushed the captain with its venom.

  "Falling..."

  "Let it go, Pauli. Concentrate on now. On the baby."

  "Couldn't even recover his ID tags..."

  "Stop it! Now push!"

  She glared at Pryor, then tried to concentrate on pushing. The decision to destroy the eaters had been hard, knowing what they were, willingly disrupting the Cynthian life cycle.

  Genocide. She groaned. What made it worse was that at the end, the Cynthians had understood. At least some of them had: Uriel and Ariel had tried to stop the nymphae from using the lethal paint, and, at the last, had died in despair.

  How the fire had smelled when the last of the elder Cynthians had plunged into its heart! She gagged and sobbed.

  "You're almost finished. Let it happen,” Pryor whispered at her.

  Her contractions were coming almost simultaneously now. Surely it couldn't be much longer. She had no choice now but to push. She had no choice then, either. Never any choice, she whimpered silently. The very caves where the settlers now hid had belonged to the Cynthians first. It hadn't been hard to create the poison that killed them; but as long as Pauli lived, she wouldn't be able to look at the sky without dreaming of the splendor of wings they had seen their first nights here.

  "The children,” she gasped.

  "All fine."

  The littlests: they'd tried to raise them free of their elders’ taint of genocide. This child coming now—how would she explain?

  Life-giver, Thorn had called her. The phrase had stung. But now it was going to be true. Please God, it was going to be true.

  "I don't deserve this,” she started to say, but Rafe's fingers brushed across her lips before catching her hands in a sustaining clasp.

  The civs in the caves—they should report but—"One thing at a time, Pauli,” Rafe told her.

  The pains were like firing practice, targets coming at decreasing intervals, then all at once. She tried to get a fix on them ... she was bearing down, she was panting, and she shouted triumphantly, tears rolling down her face, mingling with the sweat.

  "Got him!” announced Alicia Pryor, and Pauli heard a thin wail that strengthened until, temporarily, it occupied all the world for her.

  14

  "Ships, not one but two up there, the fields wide open to stobor, and now you tell me you've got a what?"

  Ordering the civilians back to base was practically the first thing she did after the birth of ... her son, hers and Rafe's. Serge was a healthy baby, she thought with sleepy contentment. Out of all this mess, something to rejoice about.

  Their most recent argument about how best to dismantle the hydro tanks for transportation up to the caves had waked her. She sighed, and prepared to stand up, a slower process now that she'd given birth than she'd expected. She listened as the argument made the circular trajectory she had already predicted for it. As she expected, the news about Thorn Halgerd ended all argument a
bout moving the tanks.

  She waited a little longer. As someone mentioned “war crimes” for the first time, she walked outside, carrying Serge with her.

  The sight of him silenced everyone. After a flurry of compliments (which a corner of Pauli's mind rejoiced in, understated though they were; thank God, her child was perfect), she seized her advantage.

  "War crimes?” she asked, seating herself somewhat gingerly on a stool Rafe brought her. “And just which war criminals are we talking about?"

  She patted her son's back, waiting for their murmuring to begin, then subside. She had orchestrated the questions she needed to ask before coming out here. Now she waited.

  "I suppose you're waiting for us to ask what you mean,” someone in back commented sourly. Beneatha, of course.

  Pauli shrugged. “I don't think I have to,” she replied. “You know what we've done here. You know what that makes us. Does it matter that on Lohr's homeworld, the people that the Secess’ killed looked like us, were some of us; and that on Cynthia, the people we killed had wings and scales? None of us is stupid or bigoted enough to say that all we did was exterminate a swarm of big, flying bugs."

  She stroked her child's warm head, with its incredibly silky hair. “We knew what we were doing,” she reminded them. “By rights, we should all be under arrest, if there were anyone here with the power to arrest us.” Disturbed by her voice, the baby started to cry. Pauli comforted him, then passed him carefully to ‘Cilla, who beamed as she held him.

  "Some of us wanted no part of what was done with the Cynthians,” cried a voice from the far side of the circle.

  "You're alive because of it!” shouted Ari ben Yehuda.

  "Ari, you're out of such order as we've got. As usual. I remember that some of you didn't want any part of what we did. But as I recall, you made no effort to stop it. I'm afraid that makes you accomplices."

  Rafe broke in. “Let's say, for the sake of argument, that those people are not accomplices. In that case, what about it? Do you have the authority to set up a commission and conduct a war-crimes trial? Where's your mandate?"