Norton, Andre - Dipple 02
Page 18
Nik made a last effort, rolled his body across the boy's path, and threw up his good arm to prevent Vandy from merging with the chaos that had swallowed Leeds. He was still holding the weakly struggling boy, though he did not know it, when Vandy's call was answered.
* * *
The window was too high for Nik to see through, but outside was real sun. A bar of its light was warm across his hands and face. This was the first time he could remember rising from the bunk in the drab room and moving about. How long had he been here—and where was here?
Nik thought he was awake now, but for a long time he must have dreamed. Or could he call it dreaming just to remember every searing fact of his past, all the hurt from the moment he had been found in the wrecked ship up to that last sight of the burrows of Dis when he had concentrated on saving Vandy from the thing that walked there?
"Hacon!"
Nik continued to stare up at a cloud, which was the only moving thing the window allowed him to view. But he knew he heard that call in the here-and-now, not out of memory.
"There is no Hacon," he said harshly before he turned, his hand flying up in the old gesture to mask a face he had not dared to touch since his waking.
Vandy was there and a tall man in uniform—a man with Vandy's eyes.
"No need—" The tall man caught Nik's wrist and pulled his fingers down with a strength the other could not withstand. "Look!"
He was holding a mirror at the level of Nik's eyes, and the other could not defy that order.
"Not—not true!" Nik was shaken.
"What is not true? That you do not see correctly or that Leeds added another lie to all the rest?" asked the man with Vandy's eyes. "You see the truth—that face remains. Now, does the rest of it?"
"The rest of what?" Nik asked dazedly.
"Of Hacon?"
"But Hacon never existed—really."
"Did he not? My son created a man and then found him—"
Nik was still bewildered. But there was a smile on Vandy's face, and the man was continuing.
"My son dreamed of a hero, but he found the truth under the shell of that dream, masked by it. So, in creating a myth, he also brought forth new truth. We have in the past days learned what lay behind that mask, in the memory of Nik Kolherne—who is dead—"
So compelling was the emphasis in those words that Nik glanced at the bunk, half-expecting to see himself lying inertly there.
"For Hacon, Vandy and I have a certain responsibility. And we are deeply in his debt."
"But—I stole Vandy—took him to Dis—"
"And there you saved him, several times over, I would say. No—you are not Hacon, but neither are you any longer Nik Kolherne. Suppose you try being the man whose face you have earned. The price for a son comes high among our people. We will remember that when we meet with Hacon—"
Nik's hand went to his face again, but now he fingered smooth flesh. Only, more than his face had somehow been mended. He was not altogether sure he understood what the warlord meant, but he was willing to learn—to learn how to be someone who was not Hacon and a hero, or Nik Kolherne, who was nothing at all. There was no mask needed, and he had come out of the night indeed!
THE END