Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  The dog’s howl sounded louder, and nearer.

  “Good-bye, Admiral!” The dying boy glared up from his chair with a beady scowl only marginally less menacing than the sim’s. “And thank you.”

  Vaun’s mouth felt unusually dry. “Now wait a minute, Tham…”

  As if it were a painful effort, Tham raised an arm to embrace Zozo, and she slid down in the chair beside him; there was plenty room for two such withered relics. But his eyes stayed fixed on Vaun. Obviously speaking was becoming an effort for him. “I was thinking of something Prior once said. Did you know that Roker threatened to have you tortured to death?”

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” Vaun said sourly. “When was that?”

  “Early in Prior’s interrogation. You were still scrubbing floors in Doggoth. You know all the experimenting we did on Raj…Or perhaps you don’t? We discovered that truth drugs didn’t work at all. Truncheons and electric shocks weren’t much better. We had three of the cuckoos by then, and Roker threatened to string you all up by your thumbs and skin you in front of Prior’s eyes.”

  Vaun wondered if that had been entirely a bluff. “What did Prior say?”

  “He said, ‘The brethren cannot be distracted from their duty by foolish sentimentality, as you randoms can.’”

  “The brethren are also very slow to anger,” Vaun said, but he was thinking, Truncheons and electric shock?

  “Then do it in cold blood. You owe me one. Maybe more than one?” Tham’s eyes shone with bitterness, or challenge.

  Startled, Vaun looked to Zozo—surely she would never have repeated her suspicions to Tham? But Zozo was spaced up on neverminds, cuddling Tham vaguely with her head on his shoulder, and not listening.

  “Good-bye, Admiral,” Tham repeated firmly.

  Well, Vaun had come seeking trouble, and the request was reasonable under the circumstances. He eyed the distance to the window, and concluded that Security could block that before he could reach it; if Security was operational. He held Tham’s steady glare for a moment, and could think of absolutely no reason why the commodore should have faked those instructions to the sim. Tham had never been petty.

  “All right,” he said. “Good-bye, Zozo. Good-bye, Tham.”

  Zozo grinned childishly, not comprehending.

  Tham pursed his lips, and she turned her head to kiss him. Vaun blew out their brains while they were distracted, two shots so close that a single roar echoed through the empty house. No shutters crashed down over doors and windows, so Security truly had been powered down. It wouldn’t really have mattered, he thought as he laid the gun on the nearest table. He would just have had to spend an unpleasant hour locked in with two smelly corpses. No court of law would ever convict the famous Admiral Vaun of wrongdoing when he had merely been helping out an old comrade; but he probably should report the matter right away.

  The dog had fallen silent. Perhaps there was no dog.

  At the door, Vaun turned to glance briefly back at the bodies, a single bloody tangle in the big chair. He would miss Tham. On the other hand, he had never understood Zozo, and her miserly reluctance to share that superb body with her friends.

  But he would miss Tham.

  Yet…truncheons and electric shocks?

  “I did it for Raj!” Vaun proclaimed wryly, and went off in search of a com unit.

  IN DISABLING SECURITY, Tham had also disabled every useful device in the house, down to and including the antique brass barometer in the vestibule. Eventually, in a tiny office he had never seen before, Vaun found an emergency com with its own power supply. As he put through a call to Valhal, he realized that he was sitting at a magnificent antique goldwood desk, almost certainly a genuine Fairinjian. For years he had wanted one of those to add to his collection, and here Tham had had one all the time, tucked away and probably forgotten in this neglected nook.

  The sim that appeared in the tank represented an ugly runt of a boy with sandy hair and elongated, herbivore features. Its shirt was permanently misbuttoned and hanging half-in, half-out of its shorts; its arms and legs were thin as sticks, and it spoke with the sort of exaggerated Kilabran accent that sounded as if it came from under water. Vaun sometimes referred to it as Jeevs, and it was the standard projection used at Valhal; spacers meeting the horrible sight for the first time tended to look extremely puzzled for a moment, and then turn either very pale or very red.

  His household equipment used a different image when it communicated with him alone, but on an outside call like this it could not inspect his environs for listeners. It could not even guarantee the channels, for while nosy persons or civilian authorities would never tap into the Patrol circuits that Vaun used, the Patrol itself certainly could. Thus the gawking, moronic lummox was a useful reminder that anything he said might be overheard.

  “What messages?” he demanded. “Start with the Patrol.”

  “Two, Admiral. The first concerns protocol for your address to the Freedom Union. The second lists your schedule for the next twenty weeks.” The sim leered toothily.

  Vaun groaned. “Tell me.”

  “Eighteen functions in all. Four major speeches, two factory openings, three—”

  “Cut. Nothing personal?”

  The sim twisted its upper lip in an ugly mannerism and rolled its eyes. “From the Patrol? Noono, sir.”

  So Roker was still not returning Vaun’s calls.

  “We have also received a ciphered communication, sir.”

  “Decipher it,” Vaun said cautiously.

  “Can’t, sir.” The sim scratched its tangled hair with enthusiasm. “It’s in Idioplex, and can’t be read without the key.”

  That confirmed what Vaun had expected. He hesitated, then decided to assume that he was under surveillance. Perhaps that was paranoia; probably he wasn’t sufficiently important to merit observation, yet Tham had gone to some trouble to conceal the information in that file.

  He frowned, as if at a loss. “From whom?”

  “No source given, sir, but that is a Patrol cipher.”

  “Call on DataCen, then.”

  The sim shook its head, slobbering slightly. “Even Data Central cannot crack Idioplex without the key, sir. The seed key is expanded by cognitive association to a complex textual matrix of considerable size—do you wish an outline of the theory?”

  “No. It’s probably a practical joke, but keep trying.” As soon as Tham’s death was recorded, all his files and codes would revert to Ultian Command, so Roker would be able to read the file then, if he knew it existed and was important. “What else?”

  The Jeevs image curled its long upper lip. “I withdrew your invitation to the President of the Kinarkian People’s Paradise, as a sudden upsurge in the current unrest—”

  “I did not authorize you to do that!” Charky was a bloodthirsty despot, but he was politically important and very good company in private.

  “Sir, the late incumbent is presently dangling from a gargoyle of the palace. His most likely successor—”

  “Ah, well, that’s different. What else?”

  With Vaun only just returned from his Stravakian tour, Vaihal was empty of houseguests at the moment, but the sim rattled off a long list of visitors due to arrive within the next few days, and then began listing others who had called to request invitations—politicians, aristocrats, celebrities of one kind or another…A few captains, a couple of commodores, but no admirals. No spacers of any importance, in other words. As usual.

  Lavish entertainment was part of Vaun’s duty to the Patrol; he liked to keep the company as large as possible, so his absence would not be noticed if he decided to ignore them all and disappear. But now he had a problem, and the sneer on the sim’s face showed that the computer was aware of it: Lann had left. Valhal had no hostess at the moment, and the invasion would begin in a couple of days. Valhal needed a mistress again, and so did he.

  The personal need was more urgent, and more easily satisfied. He ran through some possibilities in his mind
.

  “I want to call…Anything else?”

  “The Air Traffic Control Board of the Western Common-wea—”

  “Oh! Right. I wiped my torch. No damage on the ground, I hope?”

  No, sir.”

  “Good. Requisition the best replacement K47 you can find, and refer the Board to DataCen.” The Patrol system could be relied upon to entangle the civilians in a bottomless morass of red tape.

  “And some other callers, sir.”

  “Show me.”

  The reply was a lightning-fast flicker of images, as the computer utilized the human brain’s ability to identify faces more efficiently than it could do anything else. In a couple of seconds, Vaun was informed of about two dozen people who had called in his absence. One face jumped right out at him—the diminutive redhead he had been stalking the previous night. Red hair and pale arms in firelight…A ripple of excitement raised his heartbeat and took up residence as a steady thrill in his groin. That little cutie had been weak-kneed with hero worship before he’d even smiled at her.

  “Citizen Feirn! Return her call. Top priority.”

  A call with Patrol priority on it would stop an earthquake. In a few seconds the sim faded from the tank, and the girl appeared in its place. She was using a civilian com, so that only her head and shoulders showed, but there she was, looking as he had guessed she would look in daylight, skin milky pale, her hair shiny curls of pure copper. Her eyes were bluer than the sky, and she had faint freckles like the stars of the galaxy.

  Small but perfect.

  Freckles could be natural or induced. Feirn’s might be both, for she had more than he had ever seen, a faint tan dusting all over her face. They were just as numerous on her bare shoulders, and down to the top of her halter. Now there was a challenge to the imagination! He adored freckles, and Feirn obviously did so also, or she would have had them removed. She wore no trace of makeup, not even to darken lashes so pale that they made her eyes seem curiously unfocused. Oh, scrumptious!

  With an odd, very appealing nervousness she started to smile, and then gasped. “Admiral! You’re hurt!”

  He had forgotten his bruises, but he could guess that he had two beautifully swollen eyes by now. “Nothing serious, just another alien invasion. I do it to keep in practice. Seeing you makes it all better.”

  “Oh!” She hesitated, as if uncertain whether she was supposed to laugh, then settled on a childish snigger. “Defeated single-handed, of course?”

  “Of course!” He thought her hero worship was less evident than it had been—but she had sought him out. “I’m very glad you called. If you hadn’t, then I would have called you.”

  “I called on business.” She smiled hopefully, just as he registered that her surroundings were quite obviously a commercial office.

  His fever dropped a couple of degrees. “What sort of business?”

  “You mentioned that Q ship…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m…Well, I do interviews. ‘Show-It-All,’ on Commonwealth Central, and I was hoping.…but your face…”

  Interview? His duties for the Patrol sent him more than enough of that sort of public relations sewage—he had no desire to take on any more, even for this little flame goddess. He wanted her for fun, not business.

  Yet, wait a minute! Maybe a pubcom interview was not such a bad idea. If the planet was going to be blown to gravel, then the people had a right to know, and Roker should not be allowed to bury his errors and incompetence under a heap of silence. Yes, Vaun must certainly arrange an interview—but he would offer it to one of the big name shows, any of whom would jump at it: “Truthspeak,” or “Revelations.” Not this pretty little unknown.

  His hesitation had her staring at him in frank dismay. “I mean, I was so awe-inspired to meet you last night! I’ve always dreamed of meeting you, and I felt so honored and I just wished I’d got a chance to speak to you alone, and then I thought of the interview, and you can see what a wonderful opportunity this would be for you to make your views known—in such a very important, such a catastrophically important matter—and it would certainly be a boost to my career, because I admit I’m new to this, and if you’ll only just say yes, then I’ll be more than happy, I mean overjoyed to come to Valhal any time you want me to and it won’t take very long.” Last night she had been tongue-tied and shivery when he shook her hand. Apparently her tongue had broken free since then.

  “…and of course those bruises on your face won’t matter, because the gnomes downstairs can edit them out, and I won’t be awkward, and I’ll certainly ask any questions you want to be asked.” She drew a quick breath, her blue eyes anxiously searching his face for signs of agreement. “I’ll be so grateful,” she sighed.

  Now that was more like it. Did he detect a trace of a blush?

  “I’ll have to think about the interview, Feirn. I’d be accusing the Patrol of gross incompetence, and that would be a pretty drastic step…Why don’t you come and visit at Valhal for a day or two, so we can talk about it?”

  “Can I? I mean, will you? Oh…Any time! I’ve heard so much about Valhal, and I’ve always dreamed of seeing it. Can I? Can I really come?”

  Why did she doubt? “And stay? Three days at the very least!”

  “Oh, I’d love to!” Yes, she was certainly blushing. Girls could be very complex and confusing creatures at times, but he had no doubts now that this one knew what was needed.

  “I’ll be home by noon, or a little after. You will come? As soon as possible?”

  “Oh, yes, yes!”

  “I shall count the minutes!” He felt his bruises twinge as he smiled.

  Citizen Feirn sighed soulfully. “I feel terribly honored, Admiral.”

  “No, I’m the honored one. Noon, then?”

  She beamed and faded out, blue eyes full of stars.

  He flexed his shoulders. He had the bed warmer he needed, obviously. The interview…Well, he would think about it. Maybe she could be granted a follow-up, after one of the big names had broken the story. It would still be a big score for a small-timer.

  And yet, something felt wrong. He turned his attention to the sneering sim. “Analysis of motives?”

  “The girl’s motives The lummox scratched its head and twitched. “Insufficient data for reliable analysis. Preliminary evaluation of facial expressions and other physical manifestations suggest—”

  “Never mind the technicalities. Am I going to get laid?”

  “Affirmative, at ninety-nine percentile.”

  Vaun chuckled, wondering why he had ever doubted. “For love or money?”

  “Neither. Analysis at a relatively low confidence level indicates nonrational motivation.”

  He was startled. “You mean she’s nuts?” If so, then he had a responsibility to turn the girl in for curing.

  “Negative. Preliminary assessment…”

  “No technicalities!”

  “A tendency toward romantic delusions, is all, and a dominant self-image in the role of the Hero’s Lady.”

  Ah! Vaun had been right in assessing her reactions as hero worship. Well, he would just have to perform like a hero!

  “And your own motives,” the sim continued, “were much as usual, in that you wished to be refused.”

  “What! Balls, I did! Why in hell would I want to be refused?”

  “Sir,” the sim said, with a complete absence of its usual sneer, “this conversation might best be completed in more confidential surroundings.”

  Vaun glared around the dusty little office and listened to the hush of the great house. It felt private enough, but of course the equipment was correct—the Patrol would almost certainly be monitoring the call. “Answer the question!” he barked.

  “Sir, you followed your customary pattern, in that you also entertain habitual romantic ideals of a Hero’s Lady. If a girl refuses your sexual advances, you classify her as a prude. If she submits, then you assume she is a whore.”

  Vaun bit back an angry retor
t that would have made no sense when addressed to a machine. Punching it on the nose wouldn’t help, either. He reminded himself that the standard psychiatric programs were designed for the standard human mind; he was a long way from being a standard human, so the machine’s confusion was understandable.

  “You are computing from faulty premises,” he snapped. “My duties require me to be assisted by a resident hostess with class and social know-how. My physical needs…” He fell silent. How could he possibly explain to a machine that some girls were more satisfying than others? “I was disconcerted to discover she was a wage earner…”

  He didn’t want to think that Citizen Feirn might be no more than a commoner lucky enough to have been picked up by that gawky spacer ensign and taken to a rich-folks party.

  So she had dreams of being hostess at Valhal? She certainly looked the part. Perhaps she was not a bourgeois gold digger, but a bored little rich girl playing at holding down a job…

  He wiped a strangely damp forehead.

  A boy could hope, surely? A hostess and bed partner both, the ideal mate, able to flatter a duchess or tackle in mudball with the same finesse, pick out a fake in a set of Jing porcelain or spear a strealer with equally unerring eye, organize a fifty-plate banquet, or spend an evening before the fire reading poetry…inflame a boy right out of his skin all night long in bed and next day charm a bishop into blushes. And she would have to come equipped with red hair and freckles and generous breasts…

  Maeve, of course.

  Last night she had asked him, What are you searching for?

  Old times, Maeve.

  He wished he’d thought of that response at the time. Valhal parties had been more fun in the old days. When it had all been so new. When he had believed her lying protestations of love.

  He discovered that he was scowling back at the contemptuous sneer of the Jeevs sim.

  “Anything more, Admiral?”

  “Cancel any visitors due within the next three days.” There was something else, surely? Oh, yes. Tham.