Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  His eyes clouded.

  “The mystery of Caine,” he muttered softly. “How you have held Me, these past days. When I Drew you here, you Drew Me; you reversed My grip and used it to chain My own hands. But now, it is I that have you, again, and I shall have you wholly, as I did your foul Aktiri servitors. I shall extend My power and taste your mind as it fades within your dying brain, as a hound might scent a passing breeze. I shall read your memory as though it is a book; I shall have every bit of you. I shall know the truth, and that truth shall break your hold forever.

  “It shall make Me free.”

  “Lll . . .” Hari said, cords bulging in his neck as he struggled to speak against some unimaginable resistance. Ma’elKoth stepped closer and leaned down politely to hear.

  “Yes?”

  “Lll-Llllamorak . . .”

  “Mm, yes,” he said, straightening. “Yes, indeed. Thank you for reminding Me. Lamorak is himself one of you vile Aktiri; his memories are likely instructive, as well.”

  He scanned the arena, looking almost cheerful. “Now, where has he gotten himself to?”

  The Emperor strode off across the field of corpses and moaning wounded. A lancer officer who’d managed somehow to keep hold of his horse cantered up to him, asking for instructions—Pallas couldn’t hear what orders he gave. The officer in turn relayed orders to his men. Through the broad tunnel gate now marched a column of armored infantry bearing pikes and crossbows. The lancer officer gave them instructions as well. They spread out across the arena, helping the wounded, and up into the grandstands, keeping order, disarming demoralized combatants, and keeping the terrified citizens in their seats.

  Hari’s back arched once. His eyes rolled and he forced out words once more.

  “Lamorak,” he said clearly, “is the one who betrayed you to the Cats.”

  27

  “W HAT ?”

  Arturo Kollberg’s voice cracked like a whip.

  “That bastard!” he raged. “That slacked-jawed piece of Labor trash! How dare he!”

  He stood in front of his chair and shook his quivering fist at the POV screen.

  “You rotten shit! This is going out live!”

  The techs stared at him, at the sweat that poured down his face, at the white foam that flecked the corners of his rubbery lips. A digitized voice said from behind his shoulder, “Why so upset, Administrator?”

  “I, ah, I ah, nothing . . .”

  If only this buzzing in his head would subside, let him think! Was there anything else Michaelson could say, anything that his conditioning wouldn’t prevent—oh god, the Board of Governors were watching this right now—could he say anything that would implicate the Studio?

  His skin crawled with trembling, and large muscle twitches began to distort his face. He stared at the red glowing recall switch as though it were the muzzle of a gun pointed at his forehead.

  28

  PALLAS GAZES DOWN at me out of the gathering darkness. “Yes, Caine. I know.”

  The world blinks—I think I passed out for a little bit. We’re still here, though, still in the arena.

  It didn’t work.

  I came all this way . . . I gave my life to reach this instant . . .

  And it didn’t work.

  I guess I should have known better than to think that sack of maggots would keep his word.

  It’s getting cold, really cold, freezing for this time of year in Ankhana. I try again, searching for the words that’ll bring us home.

  “He had to,” I push out. “Ordered to . . . contract, his contract . . .”

  “Shh,” she says, stroking my hair. “It’s all right. Shh.”

  It’s not all right, it’s—

  Darkness.

  I swim back up into the world of light again.

  We’re still in the arena.

  I should just let this go.

  If anyone had ever asked me how I wanted to die, I’d have told them: exactly like this, with my head on her lap and her hand stroking my hair.

  Something’s going on, here, though.

  It’s gotten quiet, and it seems that we’re in some kind of spotlight. Lamorak’s here, right beside Pallas. Ma’elKoth’s got all three of us together for this. There’s Ma’elKoth; he’s talking to the people in the grandstands . . . That rolling, reassuring thunder of his beautiful voice . . .

  Darkness, and when the light comes back he’s beside me, right here beside me. His voice is warm and gentle, and he’s telling me to just let go, to relax and let it go.

  He stops talking. His face blanks out into that thousand-yard stare of mindview.

  The spell!

  I remember now . . . I remember the spell.

  And strength comes into me from somewhere.

  Fuck letting it go.

  Never surrender.

  Never.

  I roll back my head and search the murk. “Lamorak . . . Lamorak—”

  Pallas leans close, an angel from a fairy tale. “Shh, Caine, I know. It’s all right.”

  “No . . .”

  I gather more strength, I focus it. Concentrate. When I concentrate I can move my hands—don’t need to be strong, but I have to be able to move, do it all with surprise . . .

  “Lamorak . . . Lamorak, please, I have to tell you . . .”

  His broken face resolves out of the gloom; I whisper nonsense to make him lean closer, closer. That’s right, you shit, right there . . .

  “Lamorak . . . no Iron Room . . . no Theater of Truth . . . you have to take care of Pallas . . .”

  “It’s all right, Caine,” he says. “I will. I promise.”

  “Promise, do you?” The surge of adrenaline clears my vision and pours strength into my arms. “How do you figure to keep that promise without your fucking head?”

  His eyes go slack in surprise. In a single unstoppable instant, I place one hand on the hilt of Kosall above me to awaken its sizzling magick while I tangle the fingers of the other in Lamorak’s long blond hair and yank his neck against Kosall’s edge.

  His head comes off, zzzip, like a sheet of paper torn from a notepad.

  Blood fountains; Pallas jerks beneath me and cries out; Lamorak’s mouth works soundlessly; he stares at me in horror, still alive within his brain.

  I flip his head like a soccerball, right into Ma’elKoth’s lap.

  Ma’elKoth grasps the bloody head instinctively. His whole body jerks, his eyes go wide, and a cry of shock and despair bursts from his lips.

  Not Ma’elKoth’s shock, nor his despair, but Lamorak’s.

  “My name,” Ma’elKoth gasps, his eyes still wide and blank. “Karl Shanks, my name is Karl Shanks! I’m Lamorak . . .”

  “Lamorak,” I snarl with all the sharp strength I have left, “who ordered you to betray Pallas Ril?”

  “Kollberg,” he says, dazedly but clearly. “Chairman Administrator Kollberg . . .”

  Before the words can even fully leave his lips, the halos of crystalline rainbow color outline the world.

  And in the half second of recall, I reach out—

  And take Ma’elKoth’s hand.

  29

  KOLLBERG’S FIST SLAMMED down again on the recall switch, and again. His screamed “No! No! No!” kept time with the impacts; he beat the switch until his flesh tore, and his blood sprayed the interior of the techbooth.

  The tech flinched away from him and stared. The two soapies exchanged a blank, mirror-masked glance. “I think we’ve seen enough,” one of them said.

  “But it’s a lie,” Kollberg said with wild desperation, “I swear it’s a lie! He can’t prove it, he can’t even testify!”

  One of the soapies seized his wrist. “You recalled Pallas Ril in front of native witnesses; by exposing her as an Actor, you’ve willfully damaged her career. You’re under arrest.”

  He tore himself free and jumped to the techboard, stabbing at the mike switch. “Michaelson!” he howled. His own voice echoed back through the booth speakers: Caine was still on-l
ine, down in the muddle of bodies that lay on the transfer platform.

  “I’ll see you dead for this! I’ll see you dead!”

  As the soapies finally restrained him and dragged him away, he heard Caine’s Soliloquy whispering in the booth.

  *Yeah. And pretty soon, too, I guess.*

  30

  THE HARSH, UNFORGIVING stage lights that frame the transfer platform break into a prismatic halo through Ma’elKoth’s mane. Silhouette that he is, I cannot see the expression on his face, and I’m glad of it; the choking horror in his voice is bad enough as he looks out at the row upon row of faceless induction helmets, the reclining zombied sweep of first-handers that are stacked to the ceiling of the Cavea.

  “Your world,” he whispers. “Oh, abandoned gods, you’ve brought me to your hideous world . . .”

  And this is not an instinctive xenophobia, not the helpless terror of an unsophisticated native; it’s not the alienness of Earth that is choking him.

  It’s the familiarity.

  He spoke in English.

  These are Lamorak’s—Karl’s—memories he’s correlating within his massive brain; he sees that his world, Overworld—that place of brutality and pain and sudden death—is the dreamed-of, soughtafter paradise of this one, where now he’s trapped.

  I’ve brought him with me into hell.

  I cannot imagine the horror he must be feeling, and I can’t bring myself to care very much.

  Kosall, quiescent now and probably forever, still sticks up out of my belly. Berne’s corpse lies on the transfer platform beneath my legs.

  I won.

  He bends his mighty neck to look down on me, on us.

  “You have destroyed me. Why, Caine?”

  His heartbreak cracks in his voice. “Why have you done this to me?”

  I shrug. It hurts. “Because you had the bad luck to be on the wrong side of Pallas Ril.”

  There’s a slam in the back, high up. It’s the doors to the Cavea. The medics’ crash cart is coming for me; some on-the-ball tech had the presence of mind to call them.

  Warm salt rain splashes lightly upon my cheeks; it’s Shanna’s tears.

  “Hold on,” she says. “Please hold on.”

  I try to squeeze her hand, but the darkness is closing in again. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  Ma’elKoth sounds lost and helpless and very, very young. “What comes next? What will become of me?”

  I don’t answer; that’s not my problem.

  I guess I’m still on-line; nobody’s thought to cut the feed. You’re all coming down with me, into the night.

  Shanna bends close and puts the warmth of her cheek against the chill of mine. She whispers in my ear, “Hold on, Caine.”

  “Fuck Caine,” I tell her painfully. I fight off the darkness for one closing line: “Forget that asshole. Call me Hari.”

  And the shuttering night turns slowly to dawn, and I inch toward daylight.

  EPILOGUE

  THERE CAME A day when Hari woke up and found Shanna sitting at his bedside.

  He lay on his gelpack pillow and gazed at her through half-opened eyes while awareness leaked into his brain with the morning light.

  She sat staring idly out the window, toward the clouds, toward the ocean, high over the shantytown of media vans that invested the hospital like the siege engines of an Overworld army. She was thin, her cheeks still hollowed and her eyes dark, and she still carried her left arm stiffly at her side—and Hari thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

  He didn’t speak, for fear that the sound of his voice might dispel the dream.

  She coughed a little, with wet discomfort, when she felt his gaze on her. She smiled and touched her ribs where the quarrel had smashed through them into her lung. “Pneumonia,” she said apologetically.

  He ventured a tentative answering smile. “Yeah, me too—think I caught it in here, though.”

  “I, ah . . .” she began, then said, “How, how are you? I mean . . .”

  She nodded vaguely toward the gunmetal bulk of the MRNS unit that covered him from thighs to ribcage; she didn’t really want to look at it directly.

  Hari shrugged and patted its side. “I don’t know. Not so bad, I guess. They’re telling me I should get some feeling back in my legs within the next couple of weeks. They’re gonna hook up one of those computer-bypass things so that I’ll be able to walk in a year or so, by pretending to wiggle my toes or something, even if the regen doesn’t take . . .”

  He sighed in a deep breath for courage, sighed it out again. “Mmm, they say I’ll probably walk with a cane for the rest of my 529 life; I told them I knew that already,” he offered with a crooked smile.

  She turned away, toward the window again, and lowered her head.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, “bad joke, I know.”

  “Oh, Hari, I’m so sorry—”

  “Stop it,” he told her. “Don’t even start.”

  “Your career—”

  “Fuck my career. All I—all Caine ever wanted to do was to die in your arms. That’s his happy ending, and it’s good enough for me.”

  He rolled his shoulders forward and back again and wished the thousands of hairlike probes that ran through his skin from the MRNS unit to his severed spinal cord would let him shift his hips—he was getting a hell of an ache.

  “And I got out of it alive. How many living retired Actors do you know?”

  Her voice was barely a whisper. “You’ve given up so much for me . . .”

  “Nah.”

  “Hari—”

  “I didn’t do it for you—you should know me better than that by now. I did it because a world without you in it is one I’m not all that interested in living in, y’know?”

  He slapped the cold side of the unit. “My legs? My career? Cheap at twice the price. You’re worth ten of me.”

  She said softly, still looking away, “I used to think that, too . . .”

  And the hand that squeezed his heart wouldn’t let him think of anything to say.

  LATER, SHE ASKED, “Have you been following the trial?”

  “Are you kidding? Watching that rotten fuck go down in flames is several of the high points of my life. Hand me the remote—let’s see what they’re up to now.”

  He keyed the pad, and the screen above his head lit up with a scene outside the San Francisco Corporate Court. One of a long line of limousines disgorged a knot of Attorneys who circled their client like bodyguards, even though not one of them was as tall as their client’s shoulder.

  “Hey, that’s Ma’elKoth,” Hari said. “I guess they’re gonna let him testify after all.”

  His Attorneys held off the mob of reporters so that he could mount the steps, then he turned and favored them with a smile that seemed to brighten the sunlight. He wore an immaculately tailored suit of an appropriately classic Eurocut double-breasted style that emphasized the enormous breadth of his shoulders. The taupe-colored weave set off his richly burnished hair, which was now drawn back into a conservative ponytail.

  Clean-shaven now, with the noble jut of his jaw, with the wide brow above his clear and serious eyes, he could only be believed when he turned to the tapers and rumbled, “My interest here is to see justice done. Arturo Kollberg robbed me of my throne and conspired against my life, as well as the lives of Pallas Ril and Caine. Only the truth, ugly as it may be, can serve to guard society against such crimes.”

  The cameras followed him on his stately march into the courthouse.

  “Amazing how well he’s adapted,” Shanna murmured. “He sounds like he’s running for tribune.”

  “I’d vote for him.”

  “I suppose I would, too. You think the Studio will ever let him go back to Overworld?”

  “Doubt it. I can’t imagine he’d want to—the way I took him out branded him as an Aktir. He wouldn’t have much of a life.”

  “He doesn’t have much of a life now. He can only
leave the ON vault for a couple of hours at a time. To have come so far, he must spend all his time watching the net.”

  “He had a head start,” Hari said.

  She dropped her eyes.

  “You notice?” he went on. “He’s got Karl’s accent.”

  “Hari—”

  “I’m not gonna apologize for that. I’ve done some shitty things in my life, but that wasn’t one of them. It was better than he deserved, and you know it.”

  “Yes, I do know it,” she said faintly. “You . . . you just have to understand that it’s a little hard for me. There was a time when I thought I loved him; no matter what I know about him now, nothing changes that . . .”

  That fist within his chest came back and squeezed his heart; he couldn’t look at her. “We’re not gonna live happily ever after, are we?”

  “I don’t know, Hari. I really just don’t know.”

  * * *

  DAYS PASSED. VISITORS came and went, interviewers, most of whom wanted to know how Caine had managed to execute his bewilderingly complex plan to such a nicety; none of them believed him when he said that he didn’t know either, that he just kept inching toward daylight till he finally made it.

  Marc Vilo called every day to check his progress; he remained blindly certain that Caine’s career was not over, as though with his billions he could buy new legs for his pet star.

  Some news of Ankhana leaked through from various Actors around the Empire; the story was that the King of Cant and his Subjects had saved Duke Toa-Sytell’s life at the stadium that day when Ma’elKoth had been revealed as an Aktir. With Kierendal’s Faces, they held the city and were gradually gaining the loyalty of the military. In light of this, much of the nobility was pledging fealty, and it looked like the Empire would stand with Toa-Sytell in control.

  It was impossible to get more details than this because the Empire had become, for Actors, very dangerous indeed. Toa-Sytell carried on Ma’elKoth’s Aktir-tokar with a vengeance. A number of Actors had been caught and executed.

  Hari appreciated the cold irony: the Studio conditioning that was intended to prevent them from betraying themselves or others was the very means by which they were caught.

  From there in his hospital bed, Hari watched in quiet exultation as the Interim Chairman announced over the nets that the Studio was suspending Ankhanan operations until a solution could be found.