Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  “Cut!”

  Possible! More than possible!

  “Ens—Lieutenant. Are you familiar with the Moloch Sheer-fire?”

  Blade blinked. “No, sir.”

  “What d’you suppose its range would be?”

  “I’d estimate a lot, sir. They don’t make ’em like that any more.”

  “No,” Vaun said, struggling to control his excitement. “No, they don’t. Well, I have one more small task for you tonight. A job for a First in electronics.”

  The mauve eyes flickered. “Sir?”

  “The high admiral’s barge is a Sheerfire, and it’s sitting up there in my private garage. Go up there and see that’s it’s fueled to the limit. And disconnect the auto.”

  The new lieutenant stiffened.

  “And if you quote one word of regulations at me,” Vaun said softly, “I’ll bust you to crewboy!”

  Just for a moment, he thought Lieutenant Blade was going to smile…but the fit passed. “Sir!”

  Vaun headed for the elevator without another word. He heard Feirn call his name and he ignored her.

  Maybe Roker hadn’t died in vain. Maybe the bastard’s crazy scheme had worked after all.

  “YOUR FATIGUE TOXINS level is elevated,” the medic said, humming angrily. “Your last intake of booster was barely sixteen hours ago. I prescribe a sedative to counteract your current agitated condition, followed by extended bed rest. Personal history suggests that coitus would be advantageous, but your current level of testo—”

  “Mind your own furtive business!” Vaun snapped. He hadn’t slept for two nights, but he didn’t feel tired now. He was running on adrenaline again. “Give me my booster with no extras…No, throw in something to keep me awake and assume that I won’t get more booster for at least thirty hours…and leave out the stiffener.” He was going to need a very clear head—an extremely clear head—if what he found at Kohab was what he suspected. And there would be no girls there to justify taking stiffener, only a couple of boys.

  Dice and Cessine.

  With a few clicks that sounded suspiciously like grumbling, the medic dispensed a tumblerful of booster. Sipping it as he walked, Vaun hurried off through the shadowy house. Here and there he saw lights under doors or detected low voices and moans, but all of Valhal had become one huge field hospital, and infinitely depressing in consequence.

  Angel greeted him as he walked into his bedroom, flooding the sea with its spectral blue light. Normally that was a sight he could not ignore, but tonight it meant that he was running out of time. Dawn could not be far off, and he must leave before there were witnesses around.

  It was going to be another long day.

  He threw off his soiled clothes as he headed for the shower. Either the water or the pep in his booster began to take effect right after, and he was almost humming with excitement as he hurried into his den. Reluctantly he decided he had better wear full uniform, for he was going to be flying the high admiral’s personal barge, and there would be questions when he stopped to refuel on the way back.

  Tunic still unbuttoned, he padded barefoot across to the windows and coded open his gun cupboard. He found a regulation Dilber 16k hand-beam and a Wassal Giantkiller that would bring down a behemoth or small aircraft. He’d better take some good, strong hiking boots and a warm…

  “Good morning, Vaun,” said a sleepy voice from one of the armchairs at the dark end of the room.

  He swung around with the handgun, and then said, “Oh, damn!”

  “You’re improving.” She yawned. “Not so coprolaliac as last time.”

  He was more visible in the Angellight than she was. In fact, it was only her voice he could recognize. He could barely be sure that there was no one else present.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “I was sleeping, actually. I feared you would think me presumptuous if I took the bed.”

  “Take it if you want. I’m not going to be using it.”

  “No, this is a very comfortable chair. I might as well go and make some rounds, anyway.” She yawned again, and he saw her arms stretching overhead.

  Maeve, right outside his bedroom door! Truly the night was filled with ironies. Oddly, though, he did not feel the burning anger he had felt the previous night…which was already the night before last now…Need to hurry. Blade would have the Sheerfire ready to go and dawn was pending.

  Maeve! Well, she’d done a great job, too. He’d given Blade a promotion, but he could hardly promote Maeve to anything. He must go past her to reach the door, and now he was almost at her chair. He stopped.

  “Thank you, Maeve—for all your work tonight. Great job!”

  She was swaddled in a bulky, shapeless housecoat, color indeterminate in the shadow. When she looked up at him, he saw the whites of her eyes, mostly.

  “I didn’t do it as a favor to you, Vaun. But you’re quite welcome if you want to take it as one.”

  “Sure, I will. Thank you.”

  “Ah, these rare little courtesies! Then I’d better apologize for gate-crashing, hadn’t I? But it was the late Admiral Roker’s fault, not mine.”

  “I understand that. Not your fault.”

  “And you’re going to let us all go home tomorrow…today, is it now? So I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Well…Look, Maeve…I’m likely to be away for at least another night. You can stay on until I return, if you want.” He couldn’t promote her, but at least he could offer her something.

  “And just why would I want to do that?” she asked, her voice a little sharper than before.

  “Valhal?”

  “What about Valhal? What’s wrong with Arkady?”

  He shrugged, surprised. “I just thought…Well, please yourself.”

  “Oh, I shall.” She sat up straighter. “Thought what?”

  “Nothing.” He was too excited about the Kohab thing to want a knock-’em-down tussle with Maeve. And he hadn’t had any stiffener lately—funny how that changed his feelings toward her. The adipose tissue that had fascinated him before would now seem merely an inefficient redundancy.

  “No, do tell. I’m really curious now. Why did you think I’d want to stay in Valhal?”

  There was no way to say it without being offensive, but he tried to keep his tone dispassionate and matter-of-fact. “Because you whored and lied and cheated and betrayed everyone and everything just to stay on as hostess in Valhal if by a miracle I did manage to get it away from Roker. So I assumed you would still be interested, that’s all. A reasonable assumption. Doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago. As you said, it doesn’t matter now.”

  She seemed to consider that for a moment, while he slung the Giantkiller on his shoulder and buttoned his tunic.

  “Well, shitty shoes!” she said softly. “Is that what you think? You’ve been looking at it that way all these years?”

  “How else?” He wondered again about spare boots.

  “Well, I admit I wasn’t always truthful. And I never claimed to be a bashful virgin, but I never realized…You still think that, do you?”

  “With some justification,” he retorted, beginning to feel testy. “And maybe one day you can drop me a note, explaining my error. Meanwhile, if you will excuse me, I must run.”

  “Danger? When a boy packs guns and runs in the night, he must be in danger.” She rose, a shapeless blur in the housecoat. “Trouble, Vaun? Can I help?”

  “No. Well, one thing—keep that giddy little daughter of yours quiet, will you? I’d prefer she not go public until I get back. Appreciate that. Good-bye, Maeve. And thanks again for looking after the wounded.” He turned.

  “Wait! Vaun…be careful!”

  He paused at the door. “What does that mean?”

  “It means trouble. It means Q ships and pepods and the Patrol and the Brotherhood. I suppose it means I’d hate anything to happen to you.”

  He snorted with a sudden surge of bitterness. “A tearful farewell? Do you remember when I went off to int
ercept Unity? When I was pretending to be Prior? When my chances of coming back were one in a billion?”

  “Yes. Of course I remember. Why?”

  “We were lovers, then. Or I was. And you didn’t say good-bye then, Maeve. You left Hiport. You ran away back to Valhal. So why say good-bye now? Old age softening the hard edges a little?”

  “And that has bothered you all these years?”

  “Of course not! But it sure as hell bothered me then—that you’d leave without saying good-bye.” When she tried to speak he spoke louder. “I was very stupid, wasn’t I? I should have realized then that I wasn’t anything to you except a future meal ticket, and that had stopped seeming very likely. That was all you’d been interested in. Oh, I should have seen right there! I should have known. But I didn’t. When I came back alive and you rushed into my arms…I really believed.”

  “Vaun…That wasn’t what mattered!”

  He laughed, and opened the door.

  “Vaun! Please!”

  He stopped.

  “Vaun, please don’t go off mad like that. I didn’t say good-bye that time because I couldn’t bear to. I was cowardly, yes, but it was because I loved you that I ran away.”

  He chuckled.

  “Roker had told me that you wouldn’t be coming back—no way! Yather was going to shoot you if the brethren didn’t, he said. That was why Roker didn’t mind risking Valhal, because there was no way you were going to come back alive. And I couldn’t face you, knowing that! Can’t you imagine how I felt, knowing what I’d done?”

  “The expression is ‘shitty shoes,’ I believe.”

  “Its true. Damn you, it’s true! If I was faking it in bed, I could have faked a fond good-bye, couldn’t I? No, please listen. And I was never hostess in Valhal until you made me hostess in Valhal.”

  “What?” He spun around to look at her, but she was against the Angelbright windows and he couldn’t see her face.

  “I thought you knew! Yes, Roker threw me at you, but I wasn’t his bedmate. Never.”

  “That day in the cloakroom…”

  “Lies, of course!” Her voice cracked. “Yes, Roker planned all of that and told me what to say. He had three girls lined up, I drew short straw, and you took the first hook. All that crap about his liking boys…He planned it all, even to telling you to demand Valhal as your price. All of it! But I was never his mistress! Never. Before or after. Beefy loudmouths ain’t my fun.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now,” he said angrily.

  “It does, I think. I didn’t do it for Roker, and I sure as Krantz didn’t do it for Valhal. I did it because of the Brotherhood.”

  He said nothing. The torch was waiting, he ought to run.

  “I did it because the human race was in danger, here on Ult! Isn’t that a little more forgivable? Do you know how old I was?” She took a step toward him. “You still think I’m older than you, don’t you? Something you said last night in Arkady…I was seventeen, Vaun. You were twenty-two.”

  He grunted. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “But it mattered then! You were so green! You thought you were a tough nut from Doggoth, and oh, you were tough. Tough physically. And emotionally, I suppose. I was younger, but not quite so green as you. I’d been one of Prior’s statistics, I don’t deny it. That was one of the criteria Roker used in selecting—”

  “Come on, Maeve! Oh, come on! You’re asking me to believe that you’d never had any boy except Prior? Because—”

  “It’s true, Vaun.”

  Good God! And Roker was dead now. Why should she lie now?

  “Prior, twice. Once drunk, once sober. Then Vaun, Vaun, Vaun…All the Vaun I could get. I only agreed to whore for Roker, for the Patrol, because the world was in danger from the Brotherhood. He persuaded me that you were the secret weapon, but the Patrol needed to keep you under control and know what you were thinking. And you needed love.”

  “Sex!” he said sharply.

  “No!” Her voice was softer now. “The stiffener made you need that. It still does. You were a motherless, friendless boy, and you needed love. I don’t think you’ve changed very much.”

  “You forget I’m not human.”

  “You’re human that way. All those girls who came after me in Valhal…And from what I know of the brethren, they need love even more than we do.”

  “You don’t know much.”

  “More than you think. They have each other. They love one another, don’t they?”

  Raj? Dice? And Prior’s memories of Monad Hive and…

  And Unity, the Q ship, most of all.

  “Maybe,” he said gruffly. “Yes, they love one another.”

  Was that why he was rushing off now to Kohab? Just to see Dice again? Ask forgiveness?

  “And you had no one,” Maeve said. “I set out to be a whore and saw I had to be a mother and discovered I’d become a lover. Bed had really nothing to do with it, Vaun. Oh, you were great! Terrific. Never found a better. But it wasn’t bed I wanted from you.”

  He felt sick. “It was Valhal!”

  She shook her head, and took a deep breath, and he realized that she was probably weeping. He could never remember seeing Maeve weep, not even the day he threw her out. The idea of Maeve weeping was unthinkable.

  “Why then?” he snapped. “When I came back? For five years you balled me by night and tattled to Roker by day. Security had records of your calls. If that isn’t whoring, I don’t know what is! And for what? It certainly wasn’t for me. For Valhal, is what.” He turned to go.

  “Blackmail! Don’t you see, even yet? When you returned, we all thought you must be one of the brethren. It was impossible that the Vaun we knew had survived! So Roker demanded that I come back. To watch over you and see if you were genuine, the real one—that was what I was supposed to do, and that was what I did, and I told him you were the real Vaun, and I loved you, but then I couldn’t stop tattling to him because he blackmailed me. He said if I changed sides, he’d tell you the whole story and then you’d throw me out. DataCen did psychoplots.”

  “Crap! They’re worthless.”

  “No. In the end they proved right enough. When you discovered, you did throw me out! And I always knew you would. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt any more…”

  “Gwathshit!” he muttered, still not looking at her.

  Maeve sighed. “The tragedy was that there were no secrets to spill, except medical ones.”

  He bristled. “Medical?”

  “The medics were curious about the effect stiffener has on you. You’re either indifferent or a raging satyr. The same as Prior. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?”

  “You preferred the latter, of course.”

  “Oh yes! I enjoyed the effects! But I loved you best when you were content just to be yourself: self-contained, competent, honest…not trying to act like a great celebrity, or a spacer stud, or a social snob. But even then, even when you became all those things, I still loved you.”

  Silence. Then she laughed ruefully. “I think I still do.”

  “Who’s Feirn’s father?”

  “A minor poet with carroty hair and political aspirations. He died in the Cashalix food riots, before she was born. You didn’t bed her?”

  “No, I did not!”

  “I wish you had.”

  “Maeve!”

  She made a noise somewhere between a snigger and a sniffle. “I made a terrible mess of Feirn. All her life, she’s heard me jabbering on about Vaun, Vaun, Vaun, and how I loved him. Still love him.”

  Roker was dead. She had Arkady. She had a career. Why would she say such a thing now?

  It certainly couldn’t be for pride.

  He had a painful ache he couldn’t place. “Maeve…when I get back, in a day or two…may I come and see you, in Arkady?”

  “Of course. Anytime, Vaun.”

  “Thank you,” he said gruffly. “I must go now.”

  “Do take care, won’t you?”

  “You
, too.”

  He left the room before he was tempted to do something foolish.

  THE TIP OF Bandor was already turning pink when Vaun jumped down from the cart, shivering in the clammy dawn air. Half a dozen nondescript torches stood on the tarmac. The magnificent Sheerfire had been hauled out from under cover and waited in full sight, but there was no one around to see. That was no mere torch; that was a cruiser.

  The passenger door stood open. He closed it behind him and wandered forward with his hand on his holster. Roker had done himself proud, from kidskin chairs to gold taps. The high admiral’s barge was a miniature flying palace—bedchamber, office, lounge, galley…

  Flight deck.

  Lieutenant Blade was sitting in the copilot’s seat, going through a hardcopy manual. He was almost at the end of it, too.

  Vaun took the other seat, laid the Giantkiller out of the copilot’s reach and regarded his companion quizzically.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Dismissed.”

  The mauve eyes held his scrutiny without flinching. “Estimated flight time to Kohab nine hours, sir.”

  Vaun could have said, What makes you think I am going to Kohab? He didn’t.

  “I disconnected the automatics as you instructed, sir.” Blade could have added, And that means they can’t detect you coming. He didn’t.

  Nor did he say, It is a flagrant breach of regulations and civilian laws, also, because neither Hiport not any air traffic control center is going to know you are airborne.

  And he did not point out that Vaun had not slept all night and a tub like this was going to be a brute to fly on manual for nine hours.

  The staring continued. Any boy who collected virtually every medal Doggoth offered must have brains in unusual quantities, however monolithic he pretended to be. He did not have all the data, because he did not know that Vaun was immune to pepods, but it was a fair guess that Lieutenant Blade knew what Vaun expected to find at the isolated outpost of Kohab.

  Blade did not ask what Vaun planned to do about it. But he had certainly noticed the guns.

  He did not say, If you forbid me to accompany you, then my duty is absolutely clear and I must report you immediately to Acting High Admiral Weald.