The Forever Hero

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  While Gerswin didn’t understand the language, he had a fair idea why he had been escorted to the arena near what he thought was the capitol. He hoped he was right.

  Although he had misgivings about leaving the Fleurdilis in Lieutenant Harsna’s hands, with Major Strackna unstable and under restraint, there hadn’t been any real alternative. Strackna was not only Imperialistic, but xenophobic to boot. While she was a competent Service officer in peacetime or in all-out war, she was precisely the wrong person for any sort of alien contact. Strackna would have no compunctions about unleashing all of the Fleurdilis’ tacheads at the Ursan capitol, without even understanding the implications.

  Gerswin repressed a sigh as the strange musical wheezings continued. While the Empire might benefit from another repeat of the Dismorph Conflict, that was the last thing he needed, the last thing needed by the majority of the people of the Empire, and certainly the last thing needed by the Ursans, whether they understood or not.

  Gerswin brought his mind and thoughts back to the present and the red stone arena. To forestall Strackna and the rest of the hawks, he would need every bit of skill he had developed over the last half century. He wondered if it had really been that long.

  The captain of the obsolete cruiser that orbited directly overhead, albeit nearly thirty-five thousand kays above his head, hoped he had guessed correctly about the aliens, and about their culture.

  He shrugged to himself. If not, it was already too late, but the signs were there that he had not.

  He took a deep breath and almost choked. The Ursans smelled like a cross between wet coydog and rancid fish.

  They resembled the pictures of bears he had seen in the archives, but their pelts were red—eye-searing red. Their heads rose directly from broad shoulders, with no necks as such. Their respective heights varied only slightly, but most stood ten to fifteen centimeters shorter than Gerswin. Their squarish bodies massed more; how much would have been a guess.

  Like bears, they had claws, but thinner claws and fully retractable. Their fingers were more like claw sheaths, and the lack of flexibility was offset by two opposing thumbs on each hand, which did not contain claws.

  He studied the Ursan closest to him, watching the slight chest movements in an effort to analyze the breathing patterns. From what he could tell, both chest and back expanded. He speculated on whether the lungs were based more on a bellows concept and jointed cartilage separating two stiff rib plates.

  The anthem, if that was what it had been, screeched to a close, and the honor guard shambled forward, their motion designed either to force Gerswin to come along, or to start a fight under the arched gate to the arena.

  From the opposite gate he could see another guard group, although the individual being escorted was an Ursan of some rank.

  That, again, was a guess, but the guards around Gerswin wore only plain purple leather harnesses, on which hung servicable long knives and short swords. The dignitary around whom the other guards clustered wore a silvered harness with clearly more refined weapons.

  Gerswin carried no weapons, none except for the throwing knives concealed in his waistband.

  Despite the lack of technology in their personal weaponry, the Ursans were not primitives. The four spacecrafts that had met the Fleurdilis had been nuclear powered and carried defensive energy screens against meteors. They had to have chosen the boarding party technique for cultural reasons, not for lack of more sophisticated weapons.

  Gerswin almost shook his head in retrospect. With a handful of devilkids, he could have disarmed the Ursan boarding parties on the spot.

  With Lerwin and Lostwin and Kiedra, or Glynnis…but the devilkids were on Old Earth, busy trying to reclaim their poor poisoned planet, busy buying time for Gerswin, busy and secure in their belief that their efforts mattered.

  They did, but not in the way the left-behind devilkids thought.

  Still, a handful of trained devilkids could have prevented the situation in which he found himself. When the Ursans had launched four shuttles filled with warriors, Gerswin had faced the choice of incinerating the shuttles and possibly starting another system war, which meant the destruction or immediate subjection of the Ursans, or ignoring the shuttles, leaving the Fleurdilis safe behind unbreachable screens. The passive use of screens could only have encouraged the Ursans in the belief that the Imperials were personal cowards, and such a belief would lead to contempt…and to eventual rebellion and war.

  That had left Gerswin with the need to outface the Ursans personally, meeting them alone outside the Fleurdilis, in the hope of instilling respect for the Empire without the cost of destroying the Ursan culture and society. Not that some Imperials wouldn’t have relished that destruction.

  Strackna had tried to blast them out of existence—until Gerswin had her locked up. And Harsna thought he was crazy. Maybe he was.

  So…here he was, standing in the middle of an arena, basing his future on the possibility that he was facing a warlord-personal-honor-type mentality.

  The guards backed away abruptly and left Gerswin in the center of a hollow square of Ursans. The silver-harnessed Ursan stood on the other side.

  Gerswin saw the scars, the slight discoloration of the bright red pelt hairs, and spit on the hard-packed clay in the direction of the other.

  A hiss ran around the arena. Gerswin couldn’t tell what it meant for certain, but it was the first reaction of any sort, and he couldn’t tell what the following grunts and clicks signified.

  Two of the guards lifted their knives. Gerswin stepped toward the guards and motioned them back. They looked at each other and halted.

  “Look. I didn’t say I wouldn’t fight. I said I wouldn’t fight him or her, or whatever. No status.”

  He elaborately raised his hands and frowned, dropped his arms to his sides; half-turning from the Ursan champion.

  A series of sounds, more screeches and gurgles, issued from the four Ursan instrumentalists, and the square of guards opened. From the far side of the arena a series of steps was extended, and another Ursan appeared sedately strolling down to the hard-packed clay.

  Gerswin turned back to study his potential adversary. The second Ursan was not scarred, not obviously, though the reddish pelt could conceal most anything, and it moved with greater assurance than the first.

  Gerswin repeated his charade.

  This time the entire squad of guards reached for their knives.

  “Only once?”

  Gerswin motioned them back and turned to face full on the recent arrival, noting that the first “dignitary” had retired to the side of the arena.

  His current opponent motioned to a guard, who stepped forward carrying a short sword or long knife, and a longer sword, apparently a match to what the Ursan wore strapped to his or her harness.

  The commander took the knife first, testing its balance and construction. It was designed as a thrusting instrument.

  The sword was more of a heavy cutting blade. Both fit with what Gerswin suspected about the Ursan physiology. He hoped he could give the aliens a lesson in psychology as well.

  Smiling wryly, he took the heavy blade, after thrusting the knife into his waistband.

  Talk about ethnocentrism! The Ursans obviously believed that any culture would follow patterns similar to their own. Most I.S.S. Commanders would have blasted all four boarding parties and proceeded from there.

  Gerswin was gambling, gambling that his reflexes and abilities would enable him to come out on top, gambling that his observations were accurate enough for him to do what he wanted.

  Each of the score of Ursan guards stepped back several more paces and the square expanded again.

  The Ursan champion faced the I.S.S. Commander and touched his sword to the clay before him.

  Gerswin raised his sword, then touched it to the arena clay, whipping it up and dancing aside just in time to avoid the pounding rush of the Ursan.

  No polite fencing here! Gerswin avoided three back to back c
uts from the other’s heavy blade with footwork, using his own more as a shield than as a weapon.

  The alien’s slashes, seemingly awkward, whistled by Gerswin’s legs or arms.

  Gerswin leaned in, back, forward, occasionally deflecting the other’s slashes, but carefully avoided taking the full brunt of the other’s attack.

  Almost as suddenly as the rushes had begun, the Ursan circled backward and began a circling stalk, as if to get behind Gerswin.

  The Ursan’s breathing deepened into an odd wheezing sound.

  Gerswin moved toward the Ursan, bringing the heavy blade around.

  The Ursan countered, trying to catch Gerswin’s blade edge on. Gerswin twisted the borrowed blade, letting it slide off, and ducking inside the other’s sweep, tapped the alien on the chest with the dullish point. There was no penetration of the solid bone plate under the reddish fur and muscles.

  “Wheeze!”

  Rolling hard left, Gerswin could feel the other’s sword crossing where he had just been.

  Once more, the Ursan began a furious attack of crisscrossing sword sweeps that would have been awkward were it not for the speed of the blade.

  “All right, friend. Play for keeps.”

  Again, after the mad and sustained fury of the attack, the Ursan backed off and wheezed; almost as if pumping up his system with oxygen.

  The Ursan tactics were becoming painfully obvious. Whichever fighter could last longer in the high effort attacks, whichever fighter needed less of a recharge would inexorably force the other into an ever-increasing oxygen debt—unless the less conditioned fighter was far better with the pair of blades.

  Already Gerswin’s arms were feeling the strain, and he’d been careful not to take any blows directly. So much for conditioning.

  Thud! Thud! Hiss! Hiss!

  The Ursan was back at it, throwing quick stroke after quick stroke at the I.S.S. Commander.

  Gerswin continued to duck or deflect the other’s blows, watching the pattern of cuts.

  This time the Ursan kept at it nearly twice as long, as if he sensed the human’s tiredness, before retreating to the circling and defensive stalk.

  As soon as the Ursan dropped beyond quick thrust range, Gerswin switched the long blade into his right hand and the short thrusting blade into his left hand.

  With a flowing motion, he threw the thrusting blade, rifling it straight at the right-side junction between the Ursan’s shoulder and head.

  The sharp-edged blade went half its length into the heavy muscles and stopped with a clunk. Maroon fountained darkly down the Ursan’s chest for an instant before the alien dropped both knife and long sword and collapsed in a heap, still clawing at the embedded weapon.

  “Hsssssssss!”

  The disapproval of the crowd was deafening, but Gerswin marched forward and extracted the short knife, picked up the deceased dignitary’s weapons, and marched through the square of Ursans toward the black-rimmed box from where he hoped the powers-that-be had watched.

  He located an Ursan wearing a black-rimmed silver harness, bowed, and placed all four weapons on the clay between him and the senior Ursan.

  “All right, fellows or ladies, I’d like to go home.”

  The Ursan looked undecided. At least, he did nothing.

  Gerswin took a deep breath and pulled one of the throwing knives from his belt, displayed it, then let it rest on his palm. He studied the crowd, looking for a suitable target. The arena was plain, with a straight metal railing and no statues. Gerswin shrugged.

  Finally, he took his foot and scratched an X in the clay, then turned and walked five, six, seven, eight paces, then whirled, throwing the knife as he turned.

  The heavy blade buried itself to the hilt at the crossed lines of the X.

  Another “Hssssss” roared from the crowd.

  Gerswin continued his steps and stooped, pulled the knife from the clay, wiped it clean on his tunic, and replaced it in his belt.

  Then he walked the last steps to the laid-out weapons, picked up the Ursan knife he had used, raised it as a salute, and plunged it into the clay so it stood like a cross between him and the Ursan leader.

  The Ursan stood, and in turn raised his arms, claws extended, then lowered them, retracting the claws and turning his hands upward, so that they remained empty and weaponless.

  Gerswin repeated the gesture, minus claws, since he had none.

  “Ummmmmmhhhhh.”

  Gerswin could sympathize with the disappointment of having to acknowledge the loss of the local hero, but when they learned the real score, he suspected the Ursans would be much happier that the local hero had lost to the outlander who had cheated by, stars forbid, throwing a short sword.

  Already the guards who had escorted him were reforming, but this time he noticed with a scarcely concealed grin, the leader was offering, by gesture, the place of honor.

  He followed the guards back to one of the Ursan shuttles for the ride up to the Fleurdilis and a sure-to-be-disappointed Major Strackna.

  VIII

  For the fourth time the Commodore frowned at the senior commander across the wardroom table that had been covered temporarily with the red felt that signified a Board of Inquiry.

  “Let me get this clear. You felt that accepting a single combat challenge would make life easier for the Empire? By setting a precedent where every time the Ursans feel like it, they could challenge an Imperial ship on a man-to-man basis?”

  The senior commander shook his head. “No, Commodore. The point was much simpler. They lost on their own terms, on their own territory, with their own weapons, to an outlander who had no experience in their rituals. The next step is to demonstrate that they are so outmatched in weapons and technology that they have to join the Empire on our terms.”

  “What about the risk? How did you know you could win?”

  “I didn’t. Good guess. Based on several factors. Had to be a unified planetary culture. Also had to be based on individual combat.”

  The commodore waved vaguely at the sheet before him. “I know it’s in the staff report, and the ethnologists have supplied sheet after sheet of ethnology equations that support your guesses. But how could you subject the Empire to that kind of risk through mere guesses?”

  “Commodore, ser. Considerable risk for me. None for the Empire. Also considerable risk for the Ursans.”

  The commodore motioned for the senior commander to continue.

  Gerswin cleared his throat. “If I had been defeated, then the Empire still could have blasted chunks out of Ursa IV, and with even greater justification. Done what most commanders would have done in the first place. Ursans have no heavy screens, only for debris, and have avoided developing long range weapons. That’s why they have to have developed a workable planetary culture.”

  “How does that follow?” The commodore’s puzzled expression indicated his lack of understanding.

  “Nationalism always puts the culture above the individual. Culture based on individual prowess almost always loses to one based on nationalism. In the crunch, nationalist cultures use whatever they have to, no matter what the consequences. What nearly destroyed Old Earth the first time.

  “In an individualist culture, some things you will not do. If you do, the culture will destroy you. So…Ursans couldn’t have space travel, advanced technology, and individual prowess tests unless they had unified planetary culture.”

  The commander was still shaking his head. He could not understand, and Gerswin understood why.

  Finally the commodore asked another question. “Why did you say there was considerable risk to the Ursans?”

  “Simple. If I lost, the Empire would have blasted the planet, or at least the space-going ships. Would have claimed that the Ursans were barbarians who demanded that their leaders solve disputes through personal combat. Incompatible with civilization and decency.”

  “Barbarians indeed,” confirmed the commodore. “One last question, Commander. Why didn’t you just ignore th
eir boarding parties?”

  “Thought about that. Problem was that it would take years to undo the image. If we didn’t at least meet them face to face, then the Empire would be regarded as bullies and cowards rolled into one. Ursans might knuckle under to brute force, but would begin relation with the Empire from a basis of contempt. Leads to unrest, maybe revolution. So we’d be back on a conflict basis within a decade. This way, we bought some time.”

  “How much?”

  “A good century, my guess, if you get a couple of good Corpus Corps types to act as champions every once in a while.”

  The commodore nodded, then tapped the stud on the control box by his right hand.

  “Now, Commander,” growled the commodore, “the question is what to do with you.”

  “Nothing,” suggested Gerswin.

  “Commander—”

  “I’m not being flippant, Commodore, ser. Your experts have begun the real work with the Ursans. I made the entry easier. Take credit for the peaceful contact. If I had failed, you would have taken the blame.”

  The commodore reflected, pursing his lips. “And what about Major Strackna? Your Executive Officer? She recommends your court-martial.”

  “That’s because she wanted to blast the Ursans out of existence. Wouldn’t let her. Her specialty was alien relations. She had an attack of acute xenophobia and tried to blow the Ursan boarding parties into dust, after I ordered her not to. Not for her distrust of my decision that I recommended her court-martial and dismissal. Because she disobeyed a direct order when the ship was not in danger.”

  “Wasn’t your report rather harsh?”

  “Don’t think so, Commodore,” answered Gerswin, ignoring the implied suggestion that he change his recommendation that Strackna be cashiered from the Service. “Major Strackna did not act to override me from a well reasoned difference of opinion or knowledge, nor to save the ship. Just because she hated aliens she hadn’t seen. Aliens couldn’t hurt the Fleurdilis.

  “Preliminary evidence showed they had no projective weapons, no screens to stop our weapons. She kept trying to destroy them against evidence, against orders.” Gerswin shook his head. “No captain should ever have to tolerate that, and no subordinate should have his or her life risked by such an attitude.”