Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  “We dope them first, of course,” Orange added. “They don’t feel anything. Or not much.”

  “Well, they might as well die usefully,” Vaun agreed.

  Blade’s mauve eyes flickered. The girl had not heard, or not understood.

  Very soon now Vaun must choose between the two species, random and brother. In a sense, he had never really had a choice before. He could have refused Raj, maybe, and stayed in the village, but then he had not known the game or the stakes. Roker had never offered Vaun a thinkable alternative. Cooperate or die was no choice. He had declared his loyalty to the Brotherhood in the Q ship, but it had brought him no freedom of action, for Abbot had immediately thrown him out, sending him back to Ult and the wild stock.

  Ever since then he had served the Patrol, but that was what Abbot had told him to do, to demonstrate his loyalty so the Patrol would trust him and he could betray it eventually—now.

  Where did the pendulum stop?

  Very soon he must answer that question. From then on there could be no neutrality, no evading the issue. Then he would be a mass murderer also, one way or the other.

  And a traitor, one way or the other.

  The weeds masking the tunnel mouth, he noted, were artificial. Tan was waiting there with a broad grin, his juvenile sulks forgotten. “Welcome to Kohab Hive, Admiral Vaun.”

  “Meaning me?”

  The youth grinned ever wider. “Brother!”

  “Brother!” Vaun agreed.

  Tan proudly put a hand on his shoulder, and led him inside.

  Home at last.

  Love.

  A HEAVY BLACK drape blocked the tunnel, then behind that another. Tan pushed it aside and shouted, “Hey, guys, we got a visitor!” Four brethren had been sitting there reading, and they exploded to their feet with yells. Blinking in unfamiliar gloom, Vaun was once more mobbed by brothers.

  Even here, in remote Kohab, he could not escape the hero worship, but now it brought tears to his eyes. So long they had trusted him! Barely a week went by without Admiral Vaun appearing in public somewhere on Ult—making speeches, leading appeals, dedicating monuments. He was the most celebrated celebrity Ult had ever known, the lion of the randoms, vanquisher of the Brotherhood. His unsuspected brethren had watched all his worldwide antics on pubcom and never once doubted that he was secretly on their side.

  Prior had known. When the chips are down, you’ll side with your kin. And Abbot. No brother will ever act against his hive. Even Raj, who had promised to die for him. You belong with us.

  And Maeve, the previous night. They love one another, don’t they?

  He had come home at last, to kin and hive.

  As the hugs and backslapping died away, he saw the girl’s accusing glare, and Blade’s mauve eyes staring impassively, and for a moment shadows cooled his joy. But he had not invited either of them along. She was a stowaway. Every spacer officer swore to risk his life…So one had risked it and lost! Vaun had not known what was going to happen. He was not responsible for either of those two.

  “Brother Vaun?” Green was shouting from a corner, clutching a telephone. He might be the Green who had met Vaun at the hangar, or he might be the Green who had been on guard duty. It didn’t matter. A telephone?

  Vaun limped over to him. The long hike had made his knee ache.

  “Bishop wants to know if it’s urgent.”

  Vaun shook his head wearily.

  “He’s decanting a baby,” Green explained, grinning. “Says we’ll have a meeting after dinner, if that’s soon enough.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  Green spoke to the phone, listened. “He wants to know when you’re going back?”

  Going back? The shock was a wrench of physical pain. Going back? But of course he would have to go back! They had plans for him. The Q ship was coming. Armageddon. Die Day, they had said. He was the king cuckoo, the Trojan horse. His work was not finished. He forced out the right answer. “Whenever he wants me to go back.”

  Green passed the word.

  Primitive, primitive! Telephones? Curtains? Artificial weeds cloaking the entrance? The guardroom was merely a wide place in the tunnel, furnished with rough, homemade chairs. Vaun could see no sign of modern security equipment at all. Young Tan was stacking Vaun’s Giantkiller on a rack beside a couple of dozen other assault weapons, and those looked impressive enough, but everything else was shoddy and make-do and antique.

  Yet…a miracle, really. Dice and Cessine had achieved a miracle. Whatever posthumous assistance they had had from Abbot, they had worked a miracle to build a functioning hive and keep it secret. How on Ult had they ever financed it all? How in hell did they feed their brood? Biotech equipment to make babies would never have come cheap, not to mention the torches he had seen in the hangar. Food and clothing and the bare necessities of life…The wonder was not that the brethren of Kohab lived simply, the wonder was that they lived at all. Randoms could never have done it. Vaun felt pride, and overwhelming admiration.

  And shame. Why had they never asked him for help?

  Green spoke again. “He wants to know who the two wilds are, and if they’re important.”

  Blade and Feirn were certainly listening, but Vaun did not look at them. “No. They’re stowaways. They’re dispensable.”

  He heard a girlish whimper behind him.

  “Kid here suggested the storeroom in the air plant,” Green told the phone. “Yeh, okay.” He hung the antique back on its rest. “Yellow, Blue, Bishop says take the randoms down to the air plant, okay?” He turned to gaze admiringly at Vaun. “Great to have you with us at last, Brother.”

  “It’s great to be here at last.”

  “Exciting to realize that Die Day is getting so close!”

  “Um,” Vaun said.

  Tan materialized in front of him, eager to please his new friend. “Show you around, Brother?”

  Vaun forced a smile. He was incredibly weary, for he had barely slept in three nights, but he knew he was too excited to sleep. “How about a shower and some clean clothes to start with? I feel like I’ve just come from a masquerade ball in this rig.”

  “Vaun!” Feirn screamed. Yellow was trying to make her move, jabbing a gun at her. “Vaun, stop playing games!”

  Blade tried to hush her; she lurched past him to get at Vaun, but Blue blocked her. “Vaun! Vaun! Do something!”

  “I am going to do something. I am going to have a shower. Come along if you want, but don’t expect separate facilities here.”

  She recoiled against Blade, staring unbelievably at her former hero. Blade put an arm around her. He was as pale as she was. Ever since he had been seven years old, he had said, he had wanted to be like Admiral Vaun.

  Tough.

  Heroes have their off-days too.

  Vaun turned back to Tan. “Lead the way, Brother.”

  THE TUNNELS WERE mostly narrow and chilly and dim. They branched and intersected with the complexity of a spider’s web, many still cluttered with rusted rails, overhead pipes and ducts. Vaun struggled to recall all the varied uses Kohab had known, but he could remember only germ warfare laboratory. The antique telephone was easier to understand now. Whenever possible, the brethren had adapted the relics they had found already in place. Beside, high tech would be much more likely to reveal itself to the Patrol’s constant monitoring of the planet, and the hive’s only real defense was secrecy. He understood, but he felt as if he had stumbled into a historical drama, or back through a major time warp. Here and there he saw patches of brilliantly colored mosaic floor and wall paintings, but obviously the brethren of Kohab Hive had rarely had time or money for art.

  Again and again he was dazzled by flashes of Prior’s childhood memories and his own remembered glimpses of Unity. This dingy catacomb was not the rustic comfort of Monad, but the steady stream of brethren was stunningly familiar. They came in all sizes, from chattering toddlers up to exact replicas of himself. Slacks and garish shirt, dark hair and astonished smile…
The pattern repeated over and over. Proudly Tan introduced him, over and over. Hugs and backslaps and crushing grips by the score, over and over. Eager questions about the pepod attack, and how long he was staying, and what happened to his face—his brothers were surprisingly concerned about his bruises.

  Others were heading where he was going; he soon moved within a chattering, joking crowd of brothers. Monad and Prior’s childhood…I am Blue. I am Yellow. I am Red. I am all colors. As he neared the showers he heard familiar sounds of merriment and smelled the soapy steam; the tunnel there was more finished than elsewhere, all tiled in brilliance.

  Suddenly he was tearing off his clothes in the middle of a dozen boys tearing off their clothes. He had more to shed; they waited for him and then waved him forward in the place of honor. Joyfully naked and anonymous, leading a laughing band of replicas, he ran through a doorway and straight into a bucketful of icy water. He leapt for the culprit, but lost him in the fog and crowd.

  Too late, Prior’s memories warned him how uninhibited the brethren became when they shed their color coding. All hive showers were a raucous, steamy, roughhousing mayhem, with more high spirits than a distillery. Even the adults indulged in juvenile horseplay, while the adolescents behaved like lunatics, and the small fry screamed and shrieked and mobbed without mercy.

  He had known, too, that small brethren were as resistant to control as cubs of any other species, so that youngsters bore serial numbers stained on their buttocks. Now he discovered that an adult brother with tooth scars in that location was an obvious target for buffoonery. The new brother also had a bruised face, so he could not hide. As soon as he escaped the swarm of small fry, then the grown-ups pointed him out again. In a sense it was like being chased by the ripper pack of the village, but this was fun and very touching. About fifty brethren of all sizes tried to romp with the new brother in the shower room, and twice that many when he took refuge in the pool, which was a flooded mine tunnel and cold as a drill sergeant’s heart.

  The process was strangely therapeutic. Vaun rollicked in the shrieking tidal wave madhouse until he was turning blue all over, and by the time he staggered ashore he had forgotten wars, interspecies rivalries, deadly Q ships, the lot. Food and sleep, he decided, and the planet could pull down its blinds until he returned. He hung his towel on a rail with all the others, and snatched shoes and clothes from the baskets—perfect fit, of course. From habit he chose a white shirt, but it was a thin rag of a thing. Better than he’d had in his childhood, but not like admirals wore.

  The foolery was over; he had come home at last.

  He headed for the door, and was accosted by an adolescent waiting there, still wet-haired from the showers. His shirt was gray, his grin familiar. “Show you around now, Brother?” he asked hopefully.

  Now Vaun knew why bruises bothered brethren, but he said, “Sure.”

  So Gray, who had been Tan, led him off to explore Kohab Hive. Apart from a few odd glances at his face, though, Vaun no longer attracted attention from passersby. For the first time in his life, he was one of them.

  Library. Kitchens. Dormitories. Generating room. Housekeeping. Feeling sleepy. Kindergarten. Schoolrooms. Powerplant.

  The most impressive was the nidus. Fifty-five tanks, Gray said proudly, incubation down to two hundred twenty days—more than a baby a week now. Vaun was saved from further exploration by a scratchy public announcement that ptomaine pie was available now if anyone was hungry.

  The main hall was much larger than a mere tunnel. It must have been created for some purpose other than mining, but it looked old, predating the Brotherhood’s occupation. A couple of hundred brethren were eating there at long tables and benches, and the steamy scent made Vaun’s mouth water copiously.

  Ptomaine pie was not the gourmet food of Valhal, but he was going to enjoy it more. Collecting a heaped plateful, he headed for an empty space at the end of a table, and sat next to a Green, remembering to huddle tight against him in brotherly fashion. Then young Gray rammed in beside him like a landslide.

  Green flashed Vaun a smile of welcome, but obviously did not register that he was anyone unusual, because he immediately turned his attention back to the boy across the table, another Green. “Bishop takes knight.”

  His reflection pondered a moment, then said uneasily, “Queen takes bishop.”

  “Bishop takes queen!”

  “Oh balls!” said the other.

  Having missed the start of the game, Vaun could not find it interesting, although he could tell from the way his neighbor promoted pawns that he must be a devious player. And Gray had sniggered knowingly, which was a reminder that there were no dullards among the brethren.

  Vaun tried to concentrate on his meal, but he was too tired to be truly hungry. Even the thrill of being with his brothers was fading before the onslaught of fatigue. He would have to go back, of course, back to Valhal and Hiport and the ghastly routine of a public clown. That was a dread thought, but unavoidable. He was more than a pawn in the Brotherhood’s game this time.

  The Q ship was coming—everybody dead in eleven weeks, who cares? It would be ironic if the Brotherhood destroyed the planet when there was already an established hive on it, and perhaps more than one. But the brethren at the landing strip had talked of “Armageddon.” They were training the pepods to attack on command.

  However ignorant the rest of the world was, the brethren obviously knew about the Q ship.

  His eyelids kept drooping until he thought he would fall asleep at the table. Whenever he opened his mouth to eat, he started yawning. Repeatedly he caught himself nodding and forced his head up. Every time his eyes met anyone else’s, that boy would smile at him. It wasn’t just him. They smiled at one another, they sat tight together, they touched in passing. At least a third of the adults were occupied in caring for children, although they often passed them around. There was something enormously appealing about this easy friendship, this one gigantic family. No complaints, no arguments, no fights or jealousies.

  All boys are created equal.

  He had come home at last.

  A finger touched his ear and he looked up, blinking at a brown shirt and the inevitable smile.

  “I bet you almost bled to death from that.”

  “Dice!” Vaun started to rise and was pushed down. Brown swung around the end of the table and the close-packed occupants of the opposite bench somehow made room for him.

  “This unit was Dice once,” he admitted. His mouth still smiled, but his eyes were wary.

  “You’re still the same! You haven’t changed. You’re exactly the boy I remember on the boat, long ago.”

  Dice shook his head vigorously. “That’s not true! The years leave scars.” He cocked a dark eyebrow. “But I expect that’s better than what happened to Raj?”

  Vaun winced. There was nothing to say to that.

  Odd…Prior, and Abbot, and the rest…Vaun had compared every adult brother he had ever met to his memories of Dice. And now he felt strangely cheated to see that Dice was just like all of them. Vaun would not recognize him the next time they met.

  “And so you’re Bishop?”

  “No. We have some specialists in politics and strategy to handle that.”

  “On Unity Abbot was the senior.”

  Dice shrugged again. “We do it otherwise. We outgrew amateur leadership, I suppose. I’m just a self-taught genetic engineer, remember? I do hold the galactic record for diaper changing, of course.”

  “You’ve done marvelously. A magnificent life’s work! And Cessine?”

  “He’s…probably here somewhere.”

  The hesitation had been slight, but it might imply that there were other places Cessine might be. Other hives, possibly. That problem could wait for yawn!…tomorrow.

  Dice’s arrival had interrupted the mental chess game. The Green sitting next to Vaun was openly listening, grinning. Now he said, “This unit is Bishop sometimes. Hadn’t realized who you were!” He gave Vaun a hug. The r
est of the diners at the table had stopped talking to eavesdrop.

  “Birthmarks!” said his opponent. “I’m playing chess against Bishop?”

  “You were doing fine!” Vaun’s neighbor said.

  The other snorted and gathered up his dishes. “I concede! I should have guessed when you dropped me your queen so easy. Maybe we can meet on my turf sometime?”

  “You gave me a lesson this morning in the gym. I know those karate hands.”

  The other rose and smiled ruefully. “Next time tell me who you are.”

  “Not likely!” Green chuckled as his double stalked away, then turned his grin on Vaun again, and thumped his shoulder. “Welcome, Brother! Welcome!”

  “It’s great to be here.”

  “Great to have you! And we have so much to talk about! When are you going back?”

  “Huh? Whenever you want. I told you that already!”

  Bishop chuckled. “I said I was Bishop sometimes. Others are Bishop other times, okay? What else have you told ‘me’?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “Good. So, how’d you find us?”

  “Pepods.”

  “Ah. “Fraid of that. You don’t mind talking and eating at the same time?” He glanced around, and Vaun realized that a crowd had gathered already, and packed in like sand. A close-knit family like this one would be very sensitive to unusual events, and today he was one of those. Youngsters were standing on the tables to see, some of them holding their plates and still eating. Others were scaling adults like trees to sit on their heads or shoulders. Inquisitive toddlers came burrowing in through the undergrowth of legs.

  Having trouble getting an arm free, Bishop hauled a tiny microphone from his pocket and laid it on the table before him. He raised his voice slightly. “Hey, guys!”

  The words echoed, and the babble of talk stopped instantly, leaving the hall silent.

  “Most of you have probably heard already. Our lost sheep is here at last. Welcome Brother Vaun!”