Mercenary

by Piers Anthony

  Rue pulled me back down with her and enfolded my head in a bosomy embrace. “They can’t have his head,” she said. “It’s mine!”

  I liked this new mannerism of hers very well. But I suspected the colder vision of my dream was closer to reality. Powerful external forces were bearing us apart, and we could not resist them.

  Commander Phist brought the fleet safely back to the Jupiter System and duly turned us all over to the military authorities. It was a measure of his integrity that he had never met privately with Spirit since the directive came, though she was his wife and he loved her. In this respect his ordeal was harsher than ours, but it would have been an abuse of his position to socialize with any of those who were under arrest, and this he would not do.

  We were separately interned; there was no more camaraderie in captivity. I had a good month in virtual solitary confinement while they prepared their case against me. Here I was denied access to external news, and that was almost as painful as the separation from my staff and friends.

  I put that time to use: I commenced writing this narrative of my military career. There is nothing like solitary confinement to sharpen one’s appreciation for past experience! I have written this in Spanish, to refresh my skill in my native language and to protect its privacy at least somewhat from my English-speaking jailers. They don’t care what I do, but they do peer over my shoulder, as it were.

  I fear I have focused too much on personal aspects, neglecting the technical ones, but in this time of isolation and loneliness, it is these personal experiences that assume the greatest meaning. The officers of the prosecution will surely be assembling many volumes of technical data; I cannot do better than they in that respect. But when I write of Juana, Emerald, and Rue, they seem to be with me again, and I can almost believe that I loved them each. Yes, surely I did!

  Before I completed my narrative, I was interrupted. Without explanation I was conducted to a mortuary section. For a moment I feared I was to be summarily executed without hearing or trial; but of course, that is not the way the Navy works.

  The reality was almost as bad. I was here for the stark private funeral service for Lieutenant Commander Repro, who had suffered a circulatory failure. Ha! I knew what had killed him: deprivation of the drug to which he was addicted. Naturally they had not provided him with it in prison. Whether there was specific malice in this I cannot be sure, but they must have realized that he, more than any other person, was responsible for the campaign that cut off the major source of supply for most of the illicit drugs, and there were those in the anonymous echelons who were angry and perhaps hurting privately. The fact that Repro had been slowly dying, anyway, did not much alleviate the ugly shock; he had been the guiding genius behind the unit I had formed and commanded. It was his vision, more than my own, that I had implemented. Now Beautiful Dreamer was gone. What was his reward? An anonymous extinction. No mention was made in the spoken service of his addiction, for theoretically no officer of the Jupiter Navy indulged in drugs. At least they had had the grace to see him out with the honor befitting his rank.

  Poor Repro! He had wrought so well, from the depths of his own captivity by the drug, and had so effectively struck back at it. He had had the immense courage to dream and to shape reality to that dream, all the while slowly dying. He was truly a great man, doomed to be unrecognized for his most singular accomplishment.

  The other officers of my staff were there. I stood beside them for the somber service, glad for their company, sad that this had to be the occasion for it. I knew they shared my emotion, and that they were crying, too.

  Afterward, we were permitted a brief grace period of reacquaintance. First to come to me was Captain Phist, at long last promoted for his sterling service to the Navy, who had the privilege of rank, though he seemed almost ashamed of it. Gravely he shook my hand. “Your work will continue, sir,” he said. “And his.” His eyes flicked toward the coffin. “If we can just preserve the liaison with Straight, on whatever basis ...”

  Yes—here was an important element. Straight now controlled the Belt, and if Phist retained command of the unit, as seemed to be the case, he could preserve what remained of our nucleus unit and hold the loyal lower officers and enlisted men. He was not Hispanic, but they knew him and trusted him, knowing that he had done what he had done because he had had to. But only my marriage to Straight’s daughter had secured our uncertain and unwritten treaty of alliance; without that, the cooperation would be lost. I knew, now, that the Navy would never let me resume command, of this unit or any other. The Navy never forgave a transgression of this nature. Only Phist, who had obeyed their directive so perfectly, could retain his power. How could he relate to Straight?

  Next came Mondy. “But there is a way,” he murmured as if reading my thoughts. “You know they will never let your sister return, any more than you, sir. So Phist loses his wife, too. He loves her, but he is a realist. If Rue is willing ...”

  I understood him. Trust Mondy to see the vital connection.

  Roulette came next, her eyes brimming with those tears she reserved for me. “They are making you the scapegoat this time, Hope,” she said. “Everyone else gets off, except the Dear, if you—”

  “Yes, of course,” I agreed gently. “My sister and I are finished in the Navy. But you need not be. Rue, for the sake of the unit and the mission, will you let Old King Cole tend your garden?” Naturally the Navy guards did not grasp the significance of what I was saying; our songs became our code.

  She looked startled. “Him? After what he—?”

  “He obeyed orders,” I reminded her. “By so doing, he made it possible to complete our mission, help your father, and preserve the unit. King Cole has loved the Dear; he could love the Ravished. If your father accedes to the connection—”

  Her chin lifted. “Yes, of course. Now I understand. I will facilitate the alliance. But I won’t cry for Cole.”

  “Don’t expect him to lay waste the garden, either,” I said. “He is a gentle man.”

  She smiled wanly. “I know the type. Don’t worry, Hope; you tamed me. I can play the game. I will serve the post.”

  “Thank you. I believe you will find the game worthwhile, for yourself and your father. You are the only way this alliance can be held. I wish I could have been the one ...”

  Her tears began to spill. Slowly I leaned toward her, and we kissed a chaste kiss. That was all we could get away with here.

  Before we separated, she whispered: “Hope, would you—would you—one last time?”

  I glanced around. The guards weren’t watching us at the moment. I brought my right fist up in a short, concealed uppercut and clipped her on the chin. Somehow she bit her lip in the process, and blood welled out. She backed away, her eyes shining with more than tears.

  Emerald came up, blocking the view of the nearest guard who had thought he had seen something. “That was a nice thing you did, Hope,” she murmured.

  “She won’t cry for any other man,” I said. “I won’t strike any other woman.” No one outside this unit would grasp the significance. If I had tamed Rue, she had taught me her way, too.

  “Your tactical position is better than you might think, sir,” Emerald continued. “The news had been full of the Hero of the Belt, the Hispanic Scourge of Piracy. The Navy has been stalling, waiting to bring you to trial until the notoriety dies down; they don’t want to make a martyr of you. But it hasn’t died down; you’re becoming a cult figure. In fact, there are growing rumblings about their failure to give you a medal and promote you to admiral.”

  “Admiral!” I stifled a laugh.

  “Just don’t give in, Hope; you can win the final battle.”

  I hadn’t thought of it as a battle, but perhaps it was. “Thanks, Rising Moon,” I said with feeling.

  “And I bring a message from Used Maiden,” she said. She took my head in both hands, set her mouth against mine, and gave me a kiss that sent me right back to that first session in the Tail. That was
from Juana, all right, who was not privileged to attend this officer’s funeral. Sweet Juana!

  Last came Spirit, who had just completed an impassioned parting with Captain Phist, the severance of their marriage. I held her and she held me, and we did not speak.

  As I started back to my cell, an anonymous officer gave me a box. “The Deceased bequeathed this to you,” he said curtly.

  Back in my cell, I opened the box. It was the structure with the five steel balls. I put my head down and cried.

  In due course I resumed my narrative manuscript, feeling somewhat better. Between bouts of writing I knocked the balls about, grateful to Beautiful Dreamer for this remembrance. He had made of his life a better thing than others knew. He had understood force and counterforce.

  Perhaps a week later I had a visitor: Reba Ward of QYV. “The forces are finely balanced at the moment, Captain,” she said, setting on the table a device I knew was there to guarantee security from electronic surveillance. “A small nudge at the correct nexus can change history. Will you deal now?”

  “You!” I exclaimed with angry revelation. “You had me deposed and recalled, just when victory was at hand!”

  She shook her head in negation. “A natural suspicion, Hubris, but unfounded. We oppose the drug trade as strongly as you do.”

  “You tried to addict me!”

  “I do not condone my predecessor’s acts. The end does not justify the means. Otherwise I would have had your item long ago.”

  I saw that she was speaking truly. “Kife did not—?”

  “We hoped you would succeed. The Navy acceded to our nudge and gave you the command because it thought you would fail. We protected you as long as we could, but in the end your success was too great and we could not act without exposing our interest. But we did do this: We had one of your officers assume the command, instead of the martinet they planned to appoint. That enabled you to do what you did to the Samoans, and to avoid a mutiny by your loyalists.”

  Still she spoke truth. QYV was on my side now. “Go on.”

  “We can’t restore your command, but we can engineer a compromise. If you will agree to resign from the Navy, with your sister, with no adverse publicity, you will be granted a medal, full Jupiter citizenship, and a perfect military record. You will retire a documented hero.”

  I did not quite trust this. “And my unit?”

  “Captain Phist will retain command. But there will be no more pirate fighting; he will have a mission elsewhere.”

  I realized that it would indeed be expecting too much to have my unit returned to the Belt. “And the Solomons?”

  “They have delegated the chief ’s daughter, Roulette Phist, to be liaison to Jupiter. The Navy is interested in peace in the Belt. As long as no outbreaks of violence against Jupiter interests occur, the existing order will not be challenged.”

  It seemed a fair offer. Slowly I reached down to my left shin, where flesh tape bound the key invisibly. As a ranking officer I had never been subjected to a physical shakedown. I separated the key and handed it to her. The terms of this deal had been set before I went to the Belt; now I had to accept them.

  Reba smiled as if this were a routine formality. “When you arrive at Jupiter, our representative will provide you with the background on Megan. She is, at this point, exactly what you need.”

  “Need for what?”

  “To become a politician.”

  “Why would I want to go into politics?”

  “That is the only way to pursue your life mission. We want you to succeed.”

  So it seemed I had gained an ally in QYV. But I had lost my last physical memento of Helse, my love. That cut me deeply. Yet I knew that loss had been replaced by the prospect of finding new love, in the form of the one woman in the Solar System who could replace the old one. My emotions were mixed.

  EDITORIAL EPILOGUE

  This manuscript, unlike the prior one, titled Refugee, survived complete. Perhaps Hope Hubris intended to write a few more paragraphs, since he never quite caught up to the present tense, but he did not.

  As is, of course, well known to history, he did resign from the Navy, together with his sister Spirit, and came to the planet Jupiter as a hero. That is just about the only particular in which the official Navy record of the event coincides with the presentation by this manuscript. Readers are now free to choose which version to credit. Certainly this manuscript helps clarify the passion and determination with which the Tyrant pursued piracy and drug dealing throughout his later career, and the unfailing support he received from the rising echelons of the Jupiter Navy. Probably never in history have these evils been as thoroughly suppressed as during the Tyrancy. But as the following manuscript shows, Hope Hubris had an extraordinary account to settle with these forces.

  Note the continuing influence of the Tyrant’s sister Spirit. Hope himself was courageous in his dealings with others, whether they were his erring superior officers or fleets of pirates, and he had more personal magnetism than he credits himself with. His men respected him, and his women loved him. But when Spirit was not with him, he had very little initiative; he simply survived, taking things as they came, responding to the passions of the moment. When he discovered that Spirit was alive, his whole ambition was to recover her. That, rather than any initial interest in ascending the military ladder, was what caused him to cooperate with Commander Repro’s grand design. Once Hope had Spirit, who sometimes seems more like a lover than a sister, he pursued other interests, but she was always there to implement them. She was in many respects the true leader of his outfit, having subtle but enormous power. He gives credit freely to the other officers of his staff, and certainly they deserve it, but it is literally true that he could not have run the unit without Spirit. He needed her, in both the business and emotional senses; she was his better half, the competent reality behind his figurehead. The failure of others properly to appreciate this reality turned out to be critical to the Tyrant’s career, as will be seen. It was to Spirit’s wordless embrace that Hope went last, at the funeral; no words were needed.

  Hope Hubris, at the age of thirty, professed to have only two loves: Helse in the past and Megan in the future—but, in fact, he had one: Spirit in the present.

  Hopie Megan Hubris, daughter of the Tyrant January 4, 2671

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Mercenary is the second of a five novel series that is expanding to six, BIO OF A SPACE TYRANT, and is the longest, at over 140,000 words. The first novel, Refugee, is brutally downbeat, showing how Hope Hubris’s family was driven out of its home and destroyed by the corruption and piracy of Jupiter space. It’s an analogy of the Vietnamese and Haitian Boat Peoples, their dreadful situation translated to space. At the end, only Hope Hubris remained to record the story. This time we see the recovery, as Spirit rejoins him and he achieves military success and Jupiter citizenship. The analogy would be to a refugee from Haiti serving in the armed forces of the United States and thereby winning acceptance.

  It’s not that farfetched. I was an immigrant from England, a resident alien, until I served in the US Army and gained my American citizenship therein. There were fifty of us in the batch: forty nine army wives and me. Thereafter I went on to eventual success as a writer. Hope’s success as a politician will be shown in the third novel, Politician. I drew from my military experience for this novel, obviously, though in two years I never rose beyond private first class. Individualistic college educated folk are not much appreciated in the army, and taken as a whole, my tenure there was a waste of time. There’s an Army saying “There ain’t no justice,” and it’s a fair practical guideline; I stood on my rights and thereby made some waves and reaped the bitter harvest thereof. But the experience did facilitate this novel.

  My daily work record shows that I wrote 200 words of Mercenary on Jewel-lye 20, 1982, though at that time my primary project was the 7th Xanth novel, Dragon on a Pedestal. I work that way: if I think of something relevant to one novel while working on
another, I note it so it won’t be lost. It continued that way for three months until Dragon was done, then Mercenary became the primary project for three months, written in pencil, until I completed the first draft Jamboree 21, 1983. Then I went on to the first draft of the second Incarnations of Immortality novel, Bearing an Hourglass, which I did straight through, first, second, and submission drafts, finishing it Mayhem 24. I caught up on mail, and then from Mayhem 28 through Jewel-lye 22 did the second and third drafts of Mercenary. This was interrupted in JeJune by our family trip to Dallas, Texas to appear at the American Booksellers’ Association convention to promote my Xanth novels. I don’t like to travel, and I don’t like Dallas; that’s where President Kennedy, the first president I got to vote for after being naturalized, was assassinated. But canny Judy-Lynn del Rey of DEL REY BOOKS got me there by inviting my whole family. I thought of what it would be like for my daughters, then ages 15 and 13, to have that experience, and couldn’t say no. Indeed it was great, because they got to tour the huge convention with all its sights and freebies, and to have a series of rich meals. Penny was a great reader, and liked Lester del Rey’s science fiction; she got to sit next to him, and he (that is, the publisher) paid for the meal. Both girls were taken with Judy-Lynn, who was a marvel of determination and success. You see, she was a dwarf, standing maybe three and a half feet tall, but I always called her a giant, because of what she accomplished. The woman would not be stopped. She made DEL REY BOOKS the most successful genre publisher ever seen up to that time. She put Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, David Eddings, Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony and others on the New York Times bestsellers list, and was the first publisher for the STAR WARS series. She was truly a figure to be reckoned with, and I believe everyone who knew her respected her. She came to identify with the Gorgon in Xanth, whose mere look could turn folk to stone, and she made suggestions for things like Gorgonzola cheese. I ran the credit, saying that readers would think she was a young fan. “I am a young fan,” she replied. She was great with the daughters, and they remember her with fondness. Her untimely passing at age 43 or 44 was a personal loss to us and I think a disaster for DEL REY, which thereafter lost its place as the leading genre publisher. It wouldn’t have happened had Judy-Lynn lived. So that was a worthwhile interruption to the work on Mercenary, which I was writing for AVON. A writer does not generally live by one publisher alone.