Nightfall

by Moshe Ben-Or

  Pebbles rattled down the slope as Patty stepped through the tarp that covered the cave entrance behind him, chastising him with her very presence. At least he had a home to go back to.

  All things considered, the girl was holding up pretty well. The first few days after Yosi left she’d spent frozen. She walked when she was told to walk, ate when she was told to eat, slept when she was told to sleep. Then, one night, she crawled up next to him in the huge, echoing hollowness of the cave and cried herself out. He had held her and told her that it was going to be all right, that nothing was going to hurt her, he wouldn’t let it. A few nights after that, they’d made love for the first time.

  She smiled at him. It was good to see her smile. The Spartan was her element of stability in a world gone insane, just like he had once been Yosi’s anchor to reality.

  It is a strange thing, thought Leo, how the Allmother arranges things. Wheels within wheels. Not even the protagonists foreseeing the full purpose and impact of their actions.

  In retrospect, there’d been an inexorable logic to their meeting. His parents had spent so much time consumed day and night by the case of the boy in room 73, that, when his attempt to play Alexander and Bucephalus with a real stallion had ended in an overnight admission to Crown University Hospital, how could the ten-year-old Leo Freeman possibly not try and get to that room? Once he’d gotten used to the regen shells and the world stopped spinning and splitting into doubles and triples, what was an incorrigible prankster to do? Lie in bed and rest like the stupid grown-ups wanted him to? Fat chance! There were mysteries to be solved! Great deeds awaited!

  He’d screwed up his chance to make a passable Alexander, but who knew, maybe he’d turn out to be a decent Gilgamesh. After all, a real-life Enkidu was supposedly lying on some bed almost right next door, fading slowly away into the netherworld for some weird crazy reason that he couldn’t understand. And the stupid grown-ups were letting it happen! How could he possibly permit such a thing to stand?

  Until that day, he’d thought of heroes as larger-than-life supermen, somehow impervious to all the things that other people felt. Fear, pain, loneliness, all those things didn’t really affect heroes. Not in the Sagas, not in his favorite novels, not in VR, and certainly not in his history books. Heroes fought bravely, struggling to the very end against all odds, unaffected in the least by all the things that hurt lesser beings, shrugging off wounds and foes, and odds, until they won the battle and came home in triumph, and lived happily ever after.

  And if the foes proved too many, and the odds too stacked against him, and cruel fate caused the hero to fall, then he fell quickly, cleanly… At least in his stories.

  But in room 73, there was a real-life hero who’d struggled to the end against all odds, who had fought, literally, to the last flechette. Yet now, for some incomprehensible reason, the hero didn’t want his triumph. Mother said that he wanted only to be left alone, so he could finally die.

  Instinctively, young Leonidas Freeman knew that this was wrong. That such a thing ought not be. And so, with the simpleminded determination of a ten-year-old boy who simply wasn’t old enough to know better, he’d set out to fix it.

  By rights, of course, his self-assumed mission should have been interrupted before it had even begun. But for all the medbots and nurses, and security guards, it was not. Years of relentless practice at evading Annoying Grown-ups Who Just Got in the Way, and the tools said grown-ups kept deploying in their futile efforts to thwart him, or at least keep up with him, had paid off handsomely. An evening of being “good” for the purpose of observing the enemy and lulling him into a false sense of security; a few minutes of careful sneaking about the deserted nighttime corridors of Crown University Hospital; and Leo Freeman had stood suddenly at the piece of armored smart glass that served as the outermost segment of the isolation barrier that partitioned room 73.

  Leo remembered that moment as clearly as if it were yesterday. His surprise at the strangely elongated, shrunken body on the bed. The odd, purplish-brown skin and unkempt, curly black hair. The enormous, lonely emptiness in the sunken, weirdly-colored dark brown eyes that regarded him in passing but for a brief moment, not even fully registering his presence before their owner turned disinterestedly back toward the wall.

  He’d never seen a lightworlder before in real life, much less a sick one. This was not what heroes were supposed to look like.

  The ten-year-old Leo Freeman hadn’t really thought about what he’d do if he succeeded. All of his efforts had been focused on simply getting to room 73. And now that he had, he didn’t know what to say. So he’d blurted out the first thing that had come into his head.

  And yet, amazingly, it had worked. Not at once, to be sure, but by the time the nurses and medbots summoned by the dedicated medical AI that ran the enormous, purpose-built complexity that was room 73 had rushed in to drag him away by the scruff of his neck, he’d planted the seeds of a new life. And had saved his own, though he knew it not…

  Leo’s hand snaked into his breast pocket, fingering the double-headed Mirandan half-mark.

  Yosi was out there, somewhere. Leo prayed that it was in the Allmother’s Web for his friend to make it back.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  The soprano voice brought him out of his reverie. She sounded so like the stream and the chimes…

  With a jolt, Leo realized that it was no longer just physical, that he was no longer simply taking and giving a bit of casual comfort.

  It had started out like that. Two strange souls met by happenstance in the night, huddling together by the guttering little flame of mutual need. Just a bit of shared warmth, amid the freezing, lonely darkness. But now, for some reason, it was getting serious.

  Real love for a woman. The thought gave Leo pause.

  He’d loved, truly, only once in his life. Not “love” as in “want” but “love” as in “give.” A madness as terrifying in retrospect as it had seemed sweet at the time. Land and title; life, mind and soul; everything a man could possibly give, offered freely to an ethereally beautiful, mysterious creature in the blind hope of reciprocity…

  He had no business permitting that little worm to burrow into his heart ever again. Once had been enough. Women could not be trusted. Ever. They were the essence of treachery. It was in their DNA. Came with the two X chromosomes. He’d learned that the hard way, hadn’t he?

  “All right, perhaps that’s an exaggeration,” thought Leo.

  Not all women were evil snakes. A woman’s beauty, the promise of her body, didn’t have to be merely a means to hypnotize the victim so that the poison might be applied.

  But they were dangerous. They made you vulnerable. And there was no easy way to tell the poisonous fruit from the nourishing. It all looked equally delectable at first glance, and seemed equally as sweet at first taste.

  What did he know about this girl? Nothing. Nothing except for the fact that she was a commoner and an Outsider. What was that word the Jews had? Shiksa. Not a good word. Not to mention the really big problem. The one that he absolutely did not want to think about.

  But, as they said, a heart does not take orders…

  So where did that leave the heir to the Freeman throne? After that business with Isabella van der Rijn almost started a war, came within a hair’s breadth of killing Yosi and, incidentally, damned near cost him his life, did not a certain chastened young man solemnly promise his grandfather that there would never again be anything serious without proper consideration? Best not think about that.

  “Yosi’s out there,” he replied, quietly.

  “Why do you care so much about that…?”

  She stopped in mid-word, as if afraid to go on.

  “Jerk? Maniac? Is that what you were about to say?

  “Well, Yosi is not the most likable person in the world. In fact, he can be a real pain, sometimes. But he is my friend.”

  Leo frowned.

  “No, he is more than that. He is like a brot
her to me.

  “Don’t bandy this about,” he said warily, “even now, it’s not safe or wise to discuss this story in public.

  “About eight years ago, on Miranda, just before Mad Baron Vladimir was overthrown, I did something really stupid. The official version is that Yosi and I just got caught in the crossfire during the coup. But that’s not what really happened. I don’t want to go into details, but the Mad Baron’s daughter and I…”

  Patty’s eyes went as wide as saucers.

  “You slept with the Baroness of Miranda? Seriously?”

  Leo sighed.

  “She wasn’t the Baroness yet. Her Excellency, the Infanta Isabella Maria Constanta Augusta Regina von Zundell und van der Rijn, the most beautiful, deadliest viper I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. I do believe that she may yet become the first ruler of Miranda in three hundred years to die peacefully in her own bed, of old age.

  “I was seventeen, stupid as could be. It was my first gold medal in a big-time competition. She was nineteen.

  “The VR doesn’t do her justice. A man could drown in those big, bottomless black eyes…”

  Leo paused for a moment. Even now, a bit over eight years later, it took an effort of will to stop thinking of Isabella.

  The body of a goddess wrought in gold and marble, to be worshiped on bended knee by the pagans of old. The cold, calculating mind, the merciless clockwork heart and the icy void where normal people kept a soul. She was, in a way, the very essence of Miranda made flesh. He didn’t know to this day whether he wanted her more than he hated her, or hated her more than he wanted her.

  “I really thought that she loved me. The word ‘idiotic’ doesn’t begin to describe it.

  “Anyway, we got caught, in flagrante delicto. The Baron went ballistic. I ended up in a cell. They were going to execute me in the morning, diplomatic relations be damned.

  “I don’t know how Yosi found out. I’ve never dared ask. He broke into the Purple Palace to save me. Killed twelve men doing it. At least twelve, anyway, that I saw the bodies of. On the way out, he was badly wounded. I didn’t know that a man could lose so much blood and still keep moving, keep fighting. I would not have believed it if someone had told me. It was inhuman. Awe-inspiring. Like something out of the Sagas.

  “Later, once we’d gotten to the League embassy, I asked him why he had gone out with one chance in a thousand, risked his own life… And he pulled out this Mirandan half-mark with two heads and said: ‘We’re like the two sides of this coin. What’s one without the other?’”

  “Fine,” said Patty, “You owe him your life. But he’s still a lunatic.

  “I didn’t recognize either of your names at first. Now that I think about it, your pal has to be the same Yoseph Weismann who nearly killed my friend Jacobo.

  “Remember your ambassador’s birthday party? The formal that almost turned into a firefight?”

  “Oh my dear Goddess!” guffawed Leo, “That drunken moron Yosi flattened told you all about it, didn’t he? All about how this evil, demented Leaguer attacked him without provocation…”

  “What’s so funny?” Patty demanded indignantly.

  “I’ve got news for you, dear,” grinned Leo, “Your friend Jacobo didn’t exactly tell you the whole truth…”

  * 23 *

  Yosi hated formals. Of course, since Leo was attending this one, he’d had no choice. The heir to one of the most important ducal thrones of Sparta could not travel to this official reception without a liveried guard. Yosi wouldn’t have let him go alone even if the rules had allowed it. Leo would be much too likely to simply make a “wrong” turn somewhere and shirk his obligations. He was no longer of an age where that sort of behavior could be excused on grounds of immaturity.

  Prince Leonidas Freeman could not snub an invitation from Duke Mark Levsson, period. The man was ambassador to Paradise for a reason. He was also one of Duke Reginald’s lifelong cronies. Politics, good sense and Society rules all demanded that Duke Freeman’s treasured grandson deck himself out in the black-and-crimson House uniform, ceremonial rapier and traditional plumed hat, hop into an embassy car and present himself at the customary five minutes before the appointed hour.

  After Miranda, where Leo had ditched his guardsmen with consummate skill on half a dozen occasions, the exasperated Duke Reginald had sworn his resident lightworlder in as a household knight. With the traditional oath had come a very private promise to the old man to keep his “idiot grandson” out of serious trouble.

  It was a brilliant coup on the Duke’s part. On the one hand, it formalized Yoseph Weismann’s status within House Freeman. On the other, it gave Leo’s best friend the authority necessary to restrain the Spartan whenever he got too far out of hand. From Leo’s point of view, he finally had a bodyguard who could be trusted to keep certain things out of the ears of his grandfather.

  And there were the politics of it, too.

  The Duke was within his rights. There was a vacant slot. He certainly had ample cause. Anyone qualified could, in theory, receive the honor. Back in the day when Sparta still had serfdom, even a serf could have been simultaneously freed and raised to rytsar. Heck, serfs had been so raised, and by mere verbal proclamation, at that. Not even the King could countermand such a thing. On this matter, Reginald Freeman’s word was law. And a Given Word could never be revoked, not even by the Duke who had signed the proclamation.

  In one fell stroke, Duke Reginald had simultaneously driven Sparta’s hidebound traditionalists to fits of apoplexy, and split their party straight down the middle. Those who admitted that Yoseph Weismann was qualified and then tried to raise objections put themselves into the position of arguing against the very principles they claimed to uphold, foremost among them being Ducal Privilege. Those who said that Yoseph Weismann was not qualified simply got laughed out of the room, more often than not by their own side.

  So here Yosi stood, sipping white wine in the embassy garden. As all the other liveried men, he was free until the end of the party. Their host’s security was, of course, immaculate. To imply otherwise by word or deed would be a grave insult.

  Sadly, thought Yosi, he couldn’t simply hide out here forever. As a rytsar of House Freeman, Yoseph Weismann’s status differed from that of adopted son only in matters of title and inheritance. He was expected to join the guests.

  Yosi didn’t want to mingle. Among the men who’d worn House uniforms to Duke Levsson’s birthday gala, he was by far the tallest and the thinnest. The only lightworlder. That, in and of itself, would arouse curiosity. And when the curiosity-seekers zoomed in on him with their net glasses, they would inevitably notice the two crossed swords enclosed by an intricately woven wreath of braided silver and gold that Yosi wore at the left breast. Formally, the Delta Triangulae League Medal for Heroic Valor in Combat. Popularly known as the Silver Circle. The highest military decoration given by the League. More often than not, posthumously.

  A little to the left, to show the order of precedence, they would see the blue-and-white ribbon and golden Magen David of the Ot HaGvurah. Those came standard with Silver Circles. A formal nod to the notion that League Members were completely sovereign states, unified military, single currency, confederate government and Common Code of Law notwithstanding. Only Haven didn’t automatically give its highest national award to Silver Circle recipients.

  A bit lower, on the left breast pocket, they would notice the little red droplet of the Wound Badge First Class. The bad luck charm for permanently disabling wounds that, among other things, formally exempted him from further military service.

  And finally, on his right lapel, the thing random strangers almost always noticed last, because now that he was older it never occurred to them to look for it. The tiny, circular bit of gold and enamel that was the Early Citizenship Citation. A Red Pin. Citizenship by blood.

  Green Pins, won through extraordinary peacetime service, were not incredibly uncommon. Haven’s Summer produced Green Pins in droves, as did New H
elena’s Meteor Season, New Israel’s sandstorms, Bretogne’s hurricanes, the flares of Volantis and the ice storms of Hadassah. Add in the occasional manmade disaster and, in a nation of 27 billion people perched upon some of the ugliest real estate in known space, thousands of Green Pins would inevitably get handed out every single year.

  Blue Pins, granted by virtue of great intellectual ability coupled with unusual maturity, were very rare. You had to pass a rigorous exam to qualify for one, and a daunting battery of psych tests.

  But Red Pins…

  The Red Pin was always the last straw. Curiosity went into overdrive.

  Here was an obvious Israeli with a beard and tzitzit, young, no older than thirty, dressed in the livery of a Spartan Ducal House, clearly an armsman of some kind, apparently able-bodied at first glance…

  And their net glasses would answer the query with that infamous Interior Ministry privacy seal. The one that might as well have written upon it: “Ye who seek this information, abandon all hope.”

  There would be questions about a past he did not particularly wish to discuss, many questions, slowly and subtly approached in virtually any conversation he would strike up. If he did not talk to anyone, someone would inevitably talk to him.

  Over the years, Yosi had perfected the art of avoiding the subject of his past without seeming to avoid it, but tonight he didn’t feel up to verbal fencing. It had been a long day. Nonetheless, it was about time to stop hiding. Dinner was supposed to be served within the next two minutes. Duke Levsson, great builder of parliamentary bridges between Reformer and Conservative, was a notorious stickler when it came to precise schedules and hallowed rituals of all kinds. The dashing young scion of House Freeman would sit quite close to his grandfather’s good friend the ambassador, and the Freemans’ shockingly unusual household knight had a reserved seat next to his prince. To leave that seat empty would be a fighting insult.