by Diann Read
Tristan questioned the governor’s enigmatic expression with his stare until Renier smiled and sauntered away.
He paid no attention to any them after that, giving his full attention to his studies until the ERROR line appeared three times in a row on one problem. Then, teeth locked, he brought his fist down hard on the tabletop.
Sudden silence replaced the conversation in the circle before the fireplace, and b’Anar Id Pa’an said, “The pup is learning new tricks at the academy. What other new tricks have they taught you, pup?”
He met the masuk’s leer. “I’m not a pup, you waste of skin!”
“Tristan!” said Renier. His hand tightened on his walking stick as if it were a weapon.
Tristan met his gaze, still glowering, but he felt Pulou’s claws close on his forearm in wordless correction.
After the others left, taking the bearhounds with them, Pulou slipped out of the chair to sit near the fireplace. He still squatted there on the hearthstones, facing the artificial coals. The light showed serenity in his silhouetted posture.
Tristan pushed himself from his chair, crossed to the fireplace, and dropped to his heels beside Pulou. The gan turned his head ever so slightly, his slitted eyes widening just enough to reflect the light, like golden embers themselves. He said, “You’re finished, little brother?”
“No,” Tristan said.
“But you stop.”
“I’m tired. Can’t think.”
Pulou studied him, unblinking. “You’re always tired, little brother. You don’t eat enough, you don’t sleep enough. You do that—rub your head like it hurts.”
“It does hurt,” Tristan said.
“You’re sick?”
“No. Just tired and . . .” He shrugged.
Pulou continued to study him doubtfully, and he took his hands away from his head to fold his arms over his knees. “I don’t like—academy,” he said. “It’s stupid.” He stared numbly at the projected fire. “Stupid to walk everywhere in straight lines and call all the teachers ‘sir,’ and if we do it wrong they shout at us. I never even see any starships!” He made an urgent gesture with both hands. “How does that help my mother?”
“Who tells you it does?” Pulou asked.
“Larielle,” Tristan said.
“Why?”
He wondered how he could explain it to Pulou. Realized he didn’t understand all she had told him. “I don’t know,” he said. He couldn’t look at Pulou; it sounded foolish even to himself. He said, “She says it’s important.”
Silence lingered for a long space.
“You think she’s right?” Pulou asked at last.
“I don’t know.” Tristan shook his head. “We’re here long time; I don’t like it.”
On an impulse he began to count on his fingers. Fifteen nights from the gan camp to the flat-tooth camp, five nights in the stone room, fifteen more on the ship from Ganwold to Issel—more than one month right there! Almost another month traveling to Issel’s moon and back, and then to Adriat. And they’d been on Adriat for . . . about three months now!
The tally chilled him. “It’s five flat-tooth moons from when we go away from camp,” he said. “A hand of months, Pulou!”
He felt suddenly sick. Too shaken to sit still, he shot to his feet and strode about the room, back and forth, aimless. “We’re here too long!” he said. “If we stay here, she dies!”
A shadow slipped up at his periphery as he paced; a familiar hand caught his wrist and held it fast, gently, without claws. “Stop, little brother,” Pulou said. “You’re tired. No good to think and work when you’re tired. Time to sleep.”
Wrapped in a couple of blankets, Tristan curled on his side on the floor and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t relax. Memories of his mother, pale in the light of the cooking fire, filled his mind. Memories of his mother, and visions of the funeral pyre at the top of the hill. Tension tightened his huddled limbs and chest until they ached. Fear made his breath come too fast and his heart race.
He turned onto his back, eyes still closed. His stomach knotted up, like a stone in his middle.
When he finally dozed, he dreamed that he crouched in the center of their lodge on Ganwold. His mother’s things remained there—her tools, her storage pouches, her sleeping robe—but he couldn’t find her. And instead of peimu blood on his hands, as he sometimes had after a hunt, his palms bore a coating of black, powdered ash.
He woke abruptly in the dark, breathless. His heart hammered rapidly again, as if he’d been running.
A chill filled the little anteroom. He drew the blankets closer around his shoulders, turned onto his belly, concentrated on drawing slow, deep breaths to calm his pulse.
He started from another doze at a creak somewhere in the mansion. He shifted onto his side again, drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms over his head.
I shouldn’t have left her, he thought. It would’ve been better to be there with her when she died than to get back to Ganwold and find her gone.
He hadn’t slept again before he heard a step near his head and Rajak’s boot toe nudged his back. “Get up, Tristan.”
He stayed quiet, pulling on his uniform shirt and shorts for physical training. He went through the motions mechanically. His hands seemed detached from himself, his body numb, except for the pain in his heart. In the skimmer he stared at his knees all the way to the academy.
Mist lay over the parade ground, pale in the dark, idle in the wake of an early spring rain. Tristan’s gaze settled on it without seeing as he waited in the skimcraft. He barely heard Rajak yawn beside him.
Reveille startled him from his numbness. He actually jumped, his head jerking up. He groped for the skimmer’s hatch handle and popped it and forced himself to climb out.
Cold, clammy mist settled on his light clothing, his face and hair. He began to shiver, but he didn’t care. Not waiting for Rajak and Pulou, he swept up his gym bag and moved across the puddled tarmac to fall in with the dim shapes spilling out of the barracks.
“How’re your bodyguard and your pet whatever-it-is, Sergey?” someone asked, jerking a thumb at Rajak and Pulou on the sidelines.
“If you were really smart,” put in somebody else, “you’d make your bodyguard do your calisthenics for you.”
Tristan didn’t even glance at them.
The cadet class leader, hair tucked into her cap and damp shirt clinging across her breasts, called them to attention and marched them double time to the drill ground.
Muscle stiffness had passed weeks ago, but calisthenics still produced sweat despite the morning’s chill. Tristan scarcely felt the tiny bits of gravel that pierced the heels of his hands with each push-up, scarcely felt the cold when his shirt back and shorts got soaked doing sit-ups, and checked his stride to the others’ to run five miles in formation. His lungs ached from the cold by the time he finished, but the ache in his soul burned far worse.
The sky turned pre-dawn pink while they worked out. The cadets fell out in front of the barracks and raced for the hygiene booths. Tristan deliberately hung back to avoid the jostling.
He was still waiting in line when someone shoved his shoulder. “Hey, Sergey, have you seen your last test score?”
He turned. Saw Siggar, looking smug.
Tristan favored him with a glower. “No.”
“If I were you,” said Siggar, “I’d start reaching for the yellow handles.” He twisted one hand in an arcing nose-dive toward the floor and said, “Bail out! Bail out! Bail out!”
* *
Rain fell again the night after final exams, a downpour that held on into the morning as a cold drizzle, weather like the winters Tristan had known on Ganwold.
He ached to be there right now.
He scowled at the overcast. “Stay here,” he told Pulou, and slammed the skimmer’s hatch closed without acknowledging Rajak. Hunching his shoulders under his jacket, he strode toward the cadet squadron office.
>
A couple of noncoms in the coveralls of flightline mechanics stood in the entry, peering out at the grayness and grumbling to each other. They shifted away from the doors just enough to let Tristan come in and he brushed past them, half expecting one or the other to put a foot into his path as b’Anar Id Pa’an would have done.
Cadets filled the hallway, most gathered around the monitors outside the orderly room. Gray light etched distress on some faces, relief and even excitement on others. Tristan saw Siggar in the crowd at the same moment the other spotted him. Siggar’s expression turned colder than the drizzle outside as he pushed clear of the group and approached.
“So, how much did your old man pay for your slot in Alpha Flight?” Siggar asked.
“Alpha Flight?” Tristan tore his attention from Siggar to scan the nearest screen and found his name fourth on the roster traditionally filled by only the top cadets in the class. He shook his head. “That’s wrong! I didn’t earn that!”
“Maybe you should remind your old man of that,” Siggar said. “Not all of us have fathers with reputations big enough to ride through on. It’s not fair to the rest of us who have to work for our grades.”
Tristan didn’t fully understand the accusation, but Siggar’s tone of voice came through loud and clear. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
“Aw, c’mon, Sergey,” said Siggar. “Everybody knows you’re the Spherzah Commander’s brat. That’s the only reason you haven’t washed out of here yet!”
Two days of numbness abruptly shattered. Tristan let his hands curl. “My father didn’t have anything to do with this!”
“Oh yeah?” Siggar looked him in the face. “Why don’t you live in the barracks, then? Why don’t you have to march off demerits like the rest of us? How’d he even get you into an Issel Sector academy, anyway?”
Tristan felt the sudden silence in the corridor, felt the crossfire of others watching. “My father isn’t the one who sent me to this lomo’s hole academy!”
“Sure, Sergey! Who else’d buy a slot in Alpha Flight for you? Or did he use political pressure?”
“Buy it?” That pulled Tristan up short. He glimpsed mockery in the encircling faces and shook his head. “He didn’t do that!” he said.
“You know he did!” Siggar said. “He couldn’t let you make a laughingstock of him at SAI.”
“Tell him, Siggar!” said someone from the sidelines, and others took it up, jeering.
Tristan ignored the others. “Eat it, Siggar!” he said, and brought his hands up before his chest, hard as claws.
He saw how Siggar darted a glance around the circle of cadets and sneered, hunching himself in a parody of Tristan’s stance. “Am I supposed to be scared?”
“Don’t push me,” Tristan said through his teeth. “I’ve killed bigger animals than you!”
Siggar laughed at that. He sidled a few steps back and forth and took a swipe.
Tristan’s right hand caught the left side of Siggar’s face, snapping his head to the side and leaving four livid gashes across his face from his ear to the corner of his mouth.
Siggar swayed but recovered, his eyes blazing and jaw clenching. “Snotty Spherzah brat!” he said, and shot out a fist.
It met Tristan’s cheekbone just under his left eye, making him stagger. He avoided the punch from the right and retreated a step.
The jeers swelled to shouts: “Get him, Siggar! Get him, Siggar!” Someone behind Tristan shoved his back, pushing him toward his adversary.
Siggar advanced on him, grinning. “What’ll your old man do to me if I bloody your nose, Spherzah brat?”
Tristan ducked the next swing. Siggar’s blow missed, overextending him, and Tristan caught him like a charging peimu, by his head and shoulder, and wrenched.
Siggar’s feet flew over his head; his free arm flailed. Tristan saw it crumple under him at an impossible angle as he hit the floor, so hard that the impact robbed him of breath. Siggar’s face paled.
Tristan straddled his antagonist, holding him with one knee. He seized a handful of hair, jerked his head back—
The cadets sank back at a sudden movement among them, and they opened the circle. Suddenly wary, Tristan rose, letting Siggar sit up. The other gasped and clutched his limp arm to his body.
Tristan held his ground as the first noncom advanced on him. He met the man’s steely gaze and saw a split second’s shock there, like abrupt recognition, before the other demanded, “What’s going on here?”
* *
Tristan kept his head down, his face turned away. “I warn him,” he said. “He hits first.”
Pulou didn’t say anything, just cocked his head and eyed the bruise on Tristan’s face through half-closed eyes.
“He says things that aren’t right.”
“So you hurt him.” Pulou narrowed his eyes still more. “You’re with flat-teeth too long.”
Tristan didn’t reply.
“Is it important enough to die about, little brother?” asked Pulou.
Tristan hung his head. “No,” he said, and then burst out, “Pulou, I’m afraid!”
“Tristan,” said Rajak from outside the anteroom, “the governor wants to see you.”
Tristan glanced at Pulou.
Pulou said, “Turn your back to it.”
Tristan got stiffly to his feet.
The governor rose from behind his desk when Tristan and Rajak drew up in front of him. He came forward, strode a slow circle around Tristan, touched the discoloration beneath his left eye. “I was informed that you got into a fight, Tristan.”
“Yes, sir.” As if on the parade ground, Tristan kept his eyes caged.
“Why, may I ask?”
Tristan addressed the wall: “One of the cadets said—my father—bought me the slot in Alpha Flight, and he called me a Spherzah’s brat.”
The governor actually smiled. “I told you that you wouldn’t fail, Tristan. But I think you should be thanking me for buying your slot.”
Tristan jerked his head up to stare at him, and his hands clenched into fists. The fury that had seized him outside the orderly room welled up again, barely controlled. “Why should I thank you?” he demanded. “My mother’s dying and you’re keeping me here! I don’t want that slot! I don’t want your help! I don’t even want to be here!”
The governor’s walking stick struck like a viper, knocking Tristan to the floor and leaving a welt from cheekbone to chin. Scrambling back to his feet, he let his hands curl—but Pulou’s words echoed in his ears. He drew himself up, clenching and loosening his hands at the searing across his face, and looked the governor in the eyes.
“I would appreciate it if you would show a little more gratitude for my efforts in your behalf from now on,” Renier said very quietly.
The stroke throbbed on Tristan’s face, hot as a burning brand. He didn’t answer.
The governor turned the walking stick in his hands. “You would also be wise to remember that I have my own reasons for your attendance at the academy. I will not take your lack of cooperation lightly, Tristan.”
* *
The people from the newsnets occupied the walkway between the Physiological Training and Simulator buildings like a pack of jous waiting to ambush their quarry. Spotting holocorders on their shoulders, Tristan pulled the bill of his cap down on his brow and hunched deeper into his jacket. But he couldn’t lose himself in a knot of cadets with Rajak at his elbow.
One of the media people detached himself from the covey, a voice pickup in his hand. “Tristan Sergey! May we talk with you for a moment?”
“No,” Tristan said, and tried to shoulder past him. “Leave me alone.”
Rajak’s hand on his shoulder stopped him short. “Answer their questions.”
Tristan eyed them all, suspicious. “What do you want?”
“Mostly, to congratulate you on your position in the academy’s top flight of first year cadets. Your father would be
proud of you—if he knew.”
Tristan tightened his jaw, but then lowered his head and turned away. “No, he wouldn’t,” he said. “I didn’t earn it.”
The man didn’t seem to hear him. “We understand that you and your mother have spent the past several years living among the natives on Ganwold,” he persisted. “Was she rescued the same time you were?”
Sudden fury jerked Tristan’s head back up. “I wasn’t rescued!”
The newsman paused for half a heartbeat, but he didn’t change his line of questioning. “Is your mother still on Ganwold?” he asked. “The common belief is that she’s ill and you’re trying to find your father. Is that true?”
“What if it is?” Tristan didn’t try to mask his anger. “What does it matter to you?”
The newsman actually blinked at that, but he kept his tone neutral. “It might matter a great deal to your father,” he said.
Tristan stared at him, his hands flexing and unflexing at his sides.
“Then again, it might not,” said the media man, watching him. “We understand that he’s never responded to the message Governor Renier sent at the time of your rescue from Ganwold. Do you really believe a man you haven’t seen since you were a baby still cares enough about you to help?”
The question struck Tristan like a fresh blow to the face, a blow that cut far deeper than the governor’s walking stick. He actually recoiled. Stared at the man and swallowed convulsively.
That possibility had never crossed his mind before now. What if that’s true? What if my father doesn’t care?
His throat and heart and lungs suddenly seemed to constrict, so much that they hurt. He shook his head, let it droop. “I don’t know,” he managed to whisper. “I don’t know.”
Fifteen
Lujan stepped out of the bathroom with his hair still damp and accepted his shirt from the waiting servo. He gave a short whistle as he shrugged it on, and the dog, lying near the foot of the bed and watching him, rose up on legs like stilts, stretched and yawned, and came up to him, wagging its tail. It lay its head in his hands, and Lujan rubbed its ears and said, “Ready for breakfast, boy?”
He turned when the visiphone on the night table buzzed. The red button blinking at its base indicated the exec office downstairs, on the main floor of the Flag Officers’ Residence. That meant a call from Headquarters. Fastening his shirt with one hand, Lujan punched the button with the other, securing the line, and said, “What is it, Kierem?”