The Forever Hero

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The baron swung his head from side to side slowly.

  “Do you know who Merhlin is?”

  “No. Does it matter?”

  “Yes. While I do not know exactly who he is, I know what he is. Besides being supported by Fernand H’Llory, who by the way fears him rather thoroughly, and besides being, shall we say, an agent of Gerswin, he’s a professional assassin of assassins, who, if he’s who I think he is, was the one who broke the Guild, the one whom the Eye Corps refused, it’s rumored, to attack.”

  Duran looked absently puzzled, knitted his forehead in a quizzical gesture, and looked up to see the continued disapproval in his father’s face.

  “It’s obvious that your life has been too sheltered, Duran.” The baron wiped his forehead with the back of his left hand. “I’ll put it in simple sentences. That sequence showed clearly that Merhlin could have assassinated every one of us in less than a three-hour period, and done so without triggering a single security precaution within the villa.

  “That sequence with Helene showed that Gerswin would rather not do so, and was directed at me, not at you.”

  “At you?”

  “At me. Gerswin simply delivered a clear, two-pronged message. First, that Helene isn’t worth a conflict over, and second, that if I disagree he understands he would have to destroy the entire family, not just you, and that he is fully capable of doing so.”

  Duran could feel the color draining out of his face.

  “Now…I see you are beginning to understand. Do you also understand that Merhlin saw you did not understand and left so that you could not act before we could discuss the matter?”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. Gerswin is not adverse to violence, necessarily, though he tries to avoid it.” Jorge Fugazey looked at the blank screens arrayed to his right. “The second sequence had a preface, but it blanked after the first scan. He said he hoped I would understand. I remember his words clearly. He and Merhlin speak in the same tones. He said, ‘Once I had a son…’”

  The elder Fugazey shook his head. “Too sentimental, but it makes no difference. He’s offered us a way out, one that doesn’t ruin us, and a way to save face.”

  “He’s insulted you!”

  “If showing me that your intended is both a bitch and a tramp, as well as not up to keeping her word, if refraining from destroying me and everything I’ve built because of your stubbornness and inadequate research, and if doing it with enough tact to keep it quiet—if all this is an insult, then by all means think so. But I will, with great regret, inform Gerswin that your quarrel with him is strictly personal and does not involve Fugar House. While I love you, Duran, hard as that is for you to comprehend, I also love Margritte and Aermee and Donal and Frynn. And if you want Helene after all this and after all she has already put you through, what you really want is suicide.”

  “What will people think?”

  “Nothing. They won’t know, unless you tell them.”

  “But…Helene?”

  “You confirm to her that you have totally withdrawn your offer for contract, with great regret, and you leave her free to follow her heart, as you cannot meet her conditions. What can she say? If she tells anyone the reason is because you refused to murder someone you do not know, then you come out looking like you have better judgment than you so far have shown. The only question in people’s minds is why it took you so long to see through her.”

  “You leave me no other choice.”

  The Baron Fugazey sighed. “No. I do not. Someday, perhaps, you will understand with your heart as well as with your head.”

  Duran matched his father’s sigh.

  “I understand now. But don’t expect me to like it…not now.”

  The two regarded each other across the open space between them.

  “May I go now?”

  “You may go, Duran.”

  “I will send confirmation of my withdrawal as you suggested. Then, I think, I will leave for New Avalon.”

  Jorge Fugazey nodded, but said nothing as his son left. An even deeper sigh escaped him as the portal closed behind the young man.

  He had not told Duran that he had sent a copy of the sequence showing Helene to the Baron Daeris, with his own notation that any further action against one Commodore Gerswin would be most unwise, particularly from the viewpoint of the commodore, Fugar House, and Baron H’Llory.

  Daeris would understand, even if Duran did not.

  LXII

  “Now…is there any other business?”

  Eye sat in his customary position at the end of the Intelligence conference table, sat in his shadowed splendor, flanked by his two shadowed regents, and surveyed the room.

  Silence prevailed as the uniformed Service officers looked back and forth at each other, finally fixing their gazes on a single and white-haired Rear Admiral.

  “It would seem that your contemporaries feel you have something to say, Admiral Thurson.”

  The round-cheeked Admiral smiled ruefully. “Under the circumstances, I guess I have little choice.” He cleared his throat with an apologetic gesture before continuing. “We received a rather disturbing report from New Avalon, which we managed to track back to a confirmation from a source in Fugar House. Of course, we reported the information to Eye Corps. I was wondering what the current status or classification of the follow-up might be.”

  Eye nodded so imperceptibly within his hood that the movement was unremarked by anyone else, particularly since all eyes were on Admiral Thurson.

  “I presume that you are referring to the apparent reappearance of a man calling himself Merhlin of Avalon?”

  “That is the report we received.”

  “As you know, there is no system or locale known strictly as ‘Avalon’ within the Empire or other known human systems, which indicated that the man using the name was doubtless an imposter. Neither the man nor that identity has surfaced since the incident you uncovered. Consequently, Eye Corps has not been able to trace anything further on the individual in question, since we were unable to obtain any sort of firm biological identification, and since the few holos we were able to obtain revealed gross physical parameters applicable to at least ten percent of the male Imperial population.”

  “Ten percent?” That whisper came from someone behind Thurson.

  Thurson nodded. He cleared his throat again. “A literature search revealed that the only Avalons in history existed on Old Earth. I presume that Eye Corps efforts to identify this Merhlin, also a mythical figure from Old Earth, attempted to tie Merhlin to those with Old Earth ties.”

  “That was attempted, but no degree of certainty was possible, and in view of the Imperial position on Old Earth, without certainty, no action would have been possible.”

  Thurson nodded. “Mythical figures can be rather difficult to lay to rest.”

  “What are they talking about?”

  “Thurson’s on to something.”

  While the whispers should have been inaudible to Eye, they were not. Nothing within the conference room escaped his eyes or ears, enhanced as they were by his personal equipment.

  “Should we be able to determine the identity of any true male-factor, of course, and should the Emperor concur, we would take the necessary steps to resolve the problem.”

  Again Admiral Thurson nodded, not bothering to wipe the dampness off his forehead.

  “Are there any other questions? Any other matters to be brought before the Council?” Eye paused. “If not, the formal meeting is adjourned. I might also add that since Admiral Thurson’s retirement will become effective before the next meeting, we all wish him well.” Eye stood.

  Thurson managed to keep his jaw from falling open in the quiet hissing of whispers that circled the conference room.

  “Just promoted to Vice Admiral…”

  “…never announced it…”

  “…really hot, whatever it was…poor bastard…likely to be found dead of heart failure within weeks…”

>   “…why you never ask questions…”

  Eye strode out, flanked by his regents, and the Service officers clustered around Thurson, who had taken out a large white cloth and was wiping his forehead, despite the chill that remained in the room.

  LXIII

  His face was as always, the same blond, curly hair, hawk-yellow eyes, although the image was frozen on the screen.

  The Senior Port Captain of Ydris glanced at the image, then at the contract on the console, then at her own work sheet on the third screen.

  “Aboveboard and foul in the dirtiest way possible, Corso! You devil!”

  She smiled in both wry admiration and humor.

  The ex-Imperial officer she called Corso had her caught squarely by her own ideals, and those of Ydris.

  If she failed to recommend his offer, then the communications system he had developed would become the tool of the commercial interests and eventually would sell out to the highest bidder, no matter how noble the initial purpose. That such a bidder would use the system against Ydris was also inevitable.

  If she endorsed his proposal, then Ydris would inevitably become an information and commercial hub second only to New Augusta. Even there, Corso had calculated cleverly. The distance was great enough that New Augusta would gain more than it would lose—at least for decades.

  His motivation—that was what bothered her. Why would anyone go to the tremendous effort and expense of acquiring the equipment, developing detailed operating plans, and obtaining the necessary permissions for the key systems…and then turn it over to someone else?

  He’d offered a clear explanation, right on the databloc.

  “Isbel. You’re going to ask why. Answer is simple. I need an interstellar communications system I can trust, one independent of the Empire, and one that will maintain confidentiality.

  “I can afford to build it. What I can’t afford is the time and dedicated people to run it. And I need someone whose ideals will prevent them from corrupting it. That’s you and Ydris.”

  Should she trust him? Could she afford not to?

  She smiled wryly and touched the stud that would forward the proposition to the Council. Her recommendation to accept was attached.

  The Council would accept it. Like her. Ydris could not afford to decline, could not afford to pass up the chance to control her own destiny.

  Still…she wondered why the mysterious man known only as Corso was willing to find such an altruistic enterprise, only for a minute return on his investment and years before any repayment of the principal was due.

  LXIV

  “But I can’t be!” protested the woman. “I can’t be.”

  “It is not a matter of debate, milady,” answered the physician as he looked back at the console. “Contraceptive implant failure is rare, to be sure, but not unheard of.”

  “Have you reported this to my father?”

  “Of course. You are the only Daeris of this generation. How could I not? He said he already knew.”

  “He knew? But how? I’m not one of his brood mares!”

  “That, milady, is between you and your father.” The doctor’s eyes were calm and level, as gray as his dark gray hair.

  She glanced from one side of the office to the other, idly wondering if she could reach the balcony that overlooked the grounds. Then she shook her head.

  Not that way. If worse came to worst, her father could have the heir. At least once it was over he could have no objection to her living her own life, and outside the restricted sphere of a baron’s controlled environment.

  She unthinkingly tossed her glittering copper curls back off the cream of her tunic and over her shoulder. Was it already tighter than she remembered?

  Despite the controls and the guards, she’d managed to get herself in trouble, and he hadn’t said a word. Not a word, almost as if he’d hoped for it. But he’d known, known before she and the doctor had! How?

  She bit her lip.

  Her father had known.

  What else did he know?

  She looked again at the balcony railing, then back at the thin older doctor.

  “What about decanting?”

  “Your father—”

  “Damn his fundamentalist beliefs! Damn him…yes, I know…Of course, I know…how else could it possibly be?”

  She glanced again at the balcony.

  “Milady…?”

  “Yes, Hierot?”

  “Is there anything else? Before you go?”

  Helene shook her head with a quick motion, a violent, short snap. There was nothing else. Not now. Not ever.

  She looked toward the balcony.

  LXV

  When the commander’s—strange how she could never keep from calling him a commander, although he never used the title and had retired from the Service as a commodore—face filled the screen, as soon as the image cleared and went real time, the question was out of her mouth.

  “You bought another biologics complex? For what? Do we need another full-scale research facility?”

  He closed his mouth, as if he had been about to say something else and had decided against it. He waited.

  “Why did you buy it?” she repeated her question.

  “I did not buy it. Made the first payment, and obligated you to complete the contract.”

  Lyr’s mouth dropped open. “You…obligated the foundation. How much?”

  “Fifty million?”

  “Fifty million? From the Forward Fund?”

  “That’s what it’s for.” He frowned. “An acquisition grant, not for research. Production.”

  “What does production have to do with promoting biologic research?”

  “Read section three, clause five of the foundation goals.”

  Lyr worried at her lip, brushed a graying hair off her forehead. When he cited sections of the bylaws, he was invariably right.

  “I don’t suppose you would like to tell me why you have involved OERF with production now?”

  “Lyr. Someone has to translate research into reality. Done what I can personally. But took the commercial fields, and plowed money back into research, back into the foundation.”

  “I know.”

  “Hope that some more spin-offs from what the foundation had stimulated would be appearing. They’re not. Not one. Yet I’m making creds. It’s almost as if—” He laughed once. “Never mind.”

  He looked below the screen, then back at her before continuing. “Need certain technologies developed now. No other way to do it. But don’t worry. It’s profitable.”

  He grinned. “That’s another problem, I know, but that’s one you can solve.”

  “You have such illusions about my abilities.”

  “No bitterness, please.” His tone was gentle.

  “All right.” Lyr bit back the intemperate comment she had almost launched and frowned at the screen, waiting to see what else he said.

  “Is your dream beyond a dream still the same?”

  “My what?”

  “Once we talked about dreams beyond dreams. Yours was a chalet on Vers D’Mont. Do you remember?”

  “That was in another life, Commander.”

  “Another life? Perhaps, but is the dream still your dream?”

  “There are days, Commander, when it is even more attractive than it ever was. Why do you ask? Do you really care? Or is it just to humor me?”

  His expression tightened, as if her words had been even more barbed than she had meant.

  “I thought you could tell when I was humoring you. Did you ask that…” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “You know I have never tried to undermine you—no matter how outrageously you behaved.” This time there was anger in her words. “You never let anyone know how you feel. You make me guess what you really want, and once in awhile I even get a pat on the head.” She paused, but not enough to let him speak. “More likely, you tell me to give myself a pat on the head.”

  Surprisingly, he only nodded. “You’re
right, Lyr. Not too much I can say that will rebut that.”

  “Don’t you ever get angry? Don’t you ever get hurt?”

  “Yes. I do get angry, and I have been hurt, and I will be again, no doubt.” The gentleness in his voice disarmed her own lingering anger.

  “When?” There was more curiosity than steel in her tone.

  He sighed. “Rather not go into details. Let’s just say that I’ve buried two sons, three lovers. Not technically correct, but all five are dead. Some were killed to strike at me, and some were killed when my back was turned.”

  “And you can take it that calmly?”

  She could see his face harden.

  “Quietly. Not calmly. I have thrown my share of thunderbolts, and the guilty and I have both paid. Paid in full. Still paying.”

  Lyr shivered as the coldness seemed to rush from the screen and enfold her. She wondered, again, whether his anger was the cold of deep space, the devastating destruction of absolute zero.

  “You still make them pay?”

  “No. They paid. I still pay. Will with every mile left in life.”

  He smiled his grim smile and laughed softly. “But enough of me…I asked about you.”

  “I’m not sure we’re finished….”

  He sighed once more, and the grim smile was replaced with a still sadness, the guarded look of a man willing to take an assault without attacking in return or raising a defense. Lyr did not recall ever having seen that expression, the weariness in his eyes, or the sudden vulnerability.

  “What else would you like to know?”

  “I don’t know. Except that after all these years, I still feel like I don’t know you. Like you feel all things more intensely than any man should, and yet you show so little. As if what you do is consuming what you are.”

  His shoulders gave a small shrug. “You’re probably right about the last. But I warned you about that in the beginning. Told you that I was a fanatic.”

  “That doesn’t excuse it.”

  “Not trying to excuse it, Lyr. I know what I am.”