Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  Thinking of the menace of those armed spectators, Vaun released her. In silence, she walked away along the edge of the terrace, not approaching the line of security goons. They were watching Vaun like crouched rapcats.

  No bets that every one of them was a crack shot.

  Vaun had mastered his fury now, reminding himself that the brethren were much less ruled by passion than randoms were. Anger was permissible, but to lose his temper would be a design fault. He could see that Bullyboy Roker was blustering, as he so often did—eight marksman against one unarmed boy? Absurd. And totally unnecessary. With his control of the Valhal Security, Roker could strike Vaun dead with a word.

  The other shadowy figures huddled within the doorway must be the high admiral’s usual gilt-embroidered entourage. If he had left them out of this discussion, then he was either up to no good or he was not sure of himself at all. And he would not have brought them to Valhal had anyone ever told him about the Jeevs sim.

  Right. With studied insolence, Vaun stuffed both hands in his pockets and leaned back against the parapet. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit…sir?”

  Roker’s eyes flashed. “You resent my intrusion? But you established the precedent yourself, this morning.”

  “I had exhausted every other method of communication…sir.” He had refused Roker’s call as he arrived, but Roker had already been here, waiting. That had been a trick, and he had fallen for it. He reminded himself that his contempt for Roker always led him to underestimate the boy.

  “And then you shot him dead!”

  “At his own request…sir.”

  “There will be a Board of Inquiry, of course…Do you recall,” Roker said, biting off each word, “a certain lecture you once delivered at Doggoth?”

  “No…sir.”

  “Yes you do! You outlined the possible strategies the Brotherhood might use to infiltrate the planet. Four of them.”

  “Oh, yes. I do recall.”

  Roker came a pace closer. “You do recall! Excellent. Assume, for the purpose of this present discussion, that the ship now approaching from Scyth is crewed by the Brotherhood. Or a different brotherhood? Another family. After all, Scyth and Avalon are several elwies apart—”

  “Eight, roughly…sir.”

  “Eight elwies apart. So they can’t be the same brotherhood, can they?”

  How much of his anger came from fear? Vaun had not thought to investigate the current state of Patrol politics. If Roker was being blamed for the pending disaster, then his crown might be working loose.

  “They would be the same brotherhood if they used the same recipe…sir. They probably don’t vary their formula very much, for just that reason.”

  “Explain!” Roker barked.

  Vaun shrugged, wondering why he was required to repeat the obvious. “Sexually reproducing species favor their kin. A boy will normally defend his children against his nephews, his nephews against strangers, members of his own tribe or race against outsiders. His genes drive him to the aid of their own replicas, if you believe in molecular determinism. Genetic similarity generates loyalty. Two brothers have fifty percent of their genes in common. Cousins share a quarter—”

  “But you, as a clone, share one hundred percent of the brethren’s, don’t you?”

  Ninety-five percent, and the brethren were artifacts, not clones, but Vaun did not quibble. “A hive on Scyth and a hive on Avalon can work to the same recipe and produce the identical product. Thus they will be loyal to each other. If Prior were alive now, he would be just as eager to assist this new ship as he was to aid Unity. Assuming that this ship…” Then Vaun saw where the conversation had led. He heard the trap click.

  Roker sneered in joy. “Prior is dead. Raj and Tong and Prosy…all dead. But Vaun is alive!”

  Vaun took his hands out of his pockets. Suddenly the line of guards looked very much like a firing squad and he wondered if he was about to be offered a blindfold. But Roker merely pushed his advantage.

  “So let us go back to that strategy lecture that I once heard from a crewboy at Doggoth. Plan One failed—now they know that a handful of cuckoos can’t found a functioning hive. Plan Two failed—they no longer have a mole like Prior planted within the Patrol to help…or do they?”

  “Sir?” Vaun said, perplexed. Plastic surgery? No, the germ plasm was on file…No possible disguise would let one of the brethren slip into the Patrol now.

  Roker ignored the query. “Which was plan number three? Of, yes. We’re alert now, so they can’t expect to launch a flight of their own shuttles and overwhelm unprepared defenses. And—fourthly—they certainly can’t expect to hijack the pilot ship. So what is their fifth plan, Crewboy Vaun?”

  “I have no idea. Except that the Q ship may be unmanned, a missile to take out the planet.”

  “For why? For spite? For revenge? I thought the brethren were above such petty emotions?”

  Vaun held the furious blue gaze steadily. “What about a preemptive strike? What if the brethren believe this is war to the death, and prefer it not be their death…sir?”

  The irony of that theory was that it implied Roker and his Ultian Command had been lacking in sufficient ruthlessness. The idea of wiping out planets had just not occurred to them.

  Roker did not like Vaun’s suggestion. His mouth worked for a moment in silence before he decided to ignore it. “How about blackmail? Is there an ultimatum coming? Let us in—or else?”

  Vaun had discarded that idea long ago. “Hold a planet to ransom? It’d never work. A few score at most against ten billion? We’d double-cross them somehow, sooner or later.”

  That won a nod. “Yes, we would. So go back to Plan Three, the fleet of shuttle craft overwhelming the defenses. How about panic? Do you think they might be trying to rouse a planetful of people to such terror that social order breaks down, and the defenses can’t function?”

  “Seems farfetched,” Vaun muttered, mind racing. But it was a possibility, and maybe better than nothing. Chaos in the streets…

  “Very farfetched. Seven-elwies-fetched. Seven light-years! But you do admit the logic?”

  “I admit the possibility.”

  “And you were going to go on pubcom and spread the word, weren’t you?”

  Oh, shit. Oh, unmitigated shit!

  “Start raising the dust, maybe?” Roker leered. “Once I asked Citizen Vaun. Later I asked Crewboy Vaun. And now I ask Admiral Vaun. Where is your loyalty?”

  And that, Vaun thought, was a very good question in the circumstances.

  “I didn’t think of it,” he muttered, and as an explanation it sounded weak as froth. Why wouldn’t he have thought of it?

  “Didn’t you?” Roker’s voice had suddenly gone very soft. “The smartest boy ever to pass through Doggoth—except maybe Prior, whose records were wiped. And you didn’t think of it?”

  “No, I didn’t. I just thought that the people had a right—”

  Roker lurched forward until he was almost leaning on Vaun, glaring down at him. “The people! May the Mother of Stars bless Her little folk! I’ll tell you what it looks like to me, Brother Vaun! It looks like a backup plan. I don’t think you ever were the great hero we made you out to be. We never had more than your own word for what happened on Unity. I think Abbot and his brethren saw that the game was up. Prior had been exposed and the game was up. Their mission had failed. So they blew up the ship deliberately! They killed themselves and left you alive. You were sent back to survive until the next time, to help the next attempt. And now you’re starting!”

  Roker had been a snake even before he became high admiral, and the ensuing forty-plus years had not made him any more lovable. Now he had Vaun on the dissection table. He might be going to send him after Tham in minutes. He needn’t convince anyone else of the story, only himself. He could give the signal, walk away from the body, and explain later—if anyone bothered to ask.

  So Vaun had better convince Roker.

  “That’s utter crap!
That’s raving psychosis! The brethren were fried and their Q ship turned into a billion tons of rubble and you’re saying that they won? You had that same swill going round in your head when I first came back, you even accused me of not being the original Vaun, you…”

  Roker opened his mouth and Vaun shouted him down.

  “You tried to prove I was an imposter, one of the Brotherhood units, or Abbot himself—and it didn’t work! And I was more use as a hero, anyway, wasn’t I? You used me to pry more money out of ten billion hungry people so the spacers could fly a little faster and higher. And you used me to tighten your own grip on the Patrol. I was your step up to the throne, Roker. You built your career on me, and you’re going to look pretty damn witless now if you come out and say it was all a mistake, the guy’s a traitor after—”

  “Mudslug! Upstart peon! I made you, I can break you!”

  They were both yelling now.

  “Crown a little loose now, Roker? Getting some heat, are you? All the minions wondering why you didn’t stop the Q ship sooner? Looking for a scapegoat, Rok—”

  “Mother of Stars, if I needed you as a scapegoat I’d have your ass mounted on my—”

  “You big dumb prick! You’ve spied on me for years—”

  “You haven’t answered the—”

  “—and you never caught me out in anything more than ringing your personal doorbell, Roker. Anytime I ogle a girl, you leap out of the shrubbery at her with a fat wallet and ask her if I talk in my sleep and with whom and how often and which way up…”

  “Maeve, for instance?” Roker sneered.

  Maeve, Maeve! Vaun choked into furious silence.

  Roker continued, spraying a mist of spit as he shouted. “Loyal little spacer, are you? ‘Loyal to the Empire and the Patrol, according to my oath!’ That’s what you told me at Doggoth. And I think it was true, then. I think you meant it then. But we ran the mind bleed on Prior after that, didn’t we? Worked too well, I think. You picked up too many Brotherhood memories there, I think. You began to think like Prior. You got so you didn’t know whether you were Vaun or Prior or both. That was when we lost you. You’ve been working for the Brotherhood ever since!”

  “Gwathshit,” Vaun snarled. “If that’s the case, then it’s your duty to have me shot and it’s my duty to see if I’m fast enough to toss you over this railing first.”

  Triumph gloated in Roker’s blue eyes. Vaun was blundering perilously close to threatening a superior officer, and of course Security now had his words on record. Roker’s courts-martial had a tendency to be predictable and fatal. Fornicating scorpions!

  The big boy waited to see if there was more to come. When there wasn’t he continued, looking ominously pleased with himself. “So you want me to believe that you’re loyal to the Patrol, do you? Then you won’t mind proving it?”

  Anything might surface now. “I am honored to serve…sir.”

  Roker curled his lip. “Where are the other two?”

  “What other…The missing brethren?”

  “The missing cuckoos, Dice and Cessine. We never did catch them, did we? Where have you been keeping them all these years? What have they been up to?”

  Vaun felt much better. If Roker wanted to link him to those two, then he was welcome to try. “I don’t know anything about them. I have no idea where they are, and never have had.” Sincerity was wonderfully refreshing at times.

  The high admiral bared his teeth right in front of Vaun’s eyes. “Well, you are going to find them for me.”

  “I am?” Danger instincts flashed lights. He studied Roker’s sneer and decided that it was unpleasantly confident. “How?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I have an expert coming to help you.”

  “That’s a threat.”

  “Threat? No, no. Oh, not at all. You will merely demonstrate your loyalty to the Patrol by carrying out a…mildly risky?…Yes, a mildly risky mission. Of course, your courage is legendary. Quild will assist you. Together, you’re going to find the missing brethren for us. Right here, in Valhal.”

  Roker knew something Vaun did not, obviously. There had to be something behind such insanity, something to explain the gleam of triumph in the blue Kailbran eyes.

  “AND LEAVE OUT the stiffened” Vaun said.

  The medic hummed and buzzed. It had already clicked disapprovingly over his bruises, but had issued no dire warnings about advancing age and extra medication and taking it easy. He still felt sour and shaky, but that was probably due to his suppressed fury at Roker, rather than to a few hours’ delay in his daily booster.

  He had greeted the odious collection of “guests” the high admiral had brought with him; then had watched as they quaffed his best liquor in the Rainbow Room while awaiting the banquet they had ordered. Not one of them had ever come visiting in the past. Socially Vaun did not exist, but pillaging expeditions were apparently permissible behavior for spacer aristocrats.

  After enduring the fusillade of wit for a while, he had excused himself to attend to personal matters. Ironically, Tham’s death had probably eased their mockery a little. Even that worthless crowd had liked Tham and now mourned him. Most of them seemed to approve of what Vaun had done.

  A sinister purple position gurgled from the medic. Vaun tossed it off in one swallow. It tasted much the same as always.

  It was years since he’d omitted his daily overdose of stiffener and he resented the need to do so now, but with Roker playing his deadly games in Valhal, a boy had better keep his head clear. Citizen Feirn would not be able to assume her new duties for a while yet.

  So now he must dress up like a trained furpurr to entertain the parasite convention at dinner! Thinking murderous thoughts, Vaun went limping back to his own quarters, and his fury boiled up again like a pain in his throat even as the outer door dephased for him. The evidence was everywhere—people had been sitting on his bed, rummaging through his library, setting drinks down on the antique tables, sniffing croil. Every room stank of the filthy stuff. He threw open the big doors to the terrace to let in the air. This had been where Roker and his herd of flunkies had waited, eavesdropping on his conversation with Feirn and Blade and no doubt laughing their foul guts out. And if Service had not cleaned it up already, it was because Roker had given orders, so that Vaun himself could find the mess. How could anyone so petty have risen so high?

  He ripped off his shirt and wadded it up. And paused. No! He was not going to dress up so he could go back and play gracious host for that gang. He could eat here…except that Roker’s control of Security automatically let him run all of Household, so even that might refuse to obey Vaun now. Krantz! Raped and emasculated both!

  He would go for a swim instead. Yes, he would head down to the bay and see how Ensign Blade was making out with the strealers or if he had already vanished over the horizon on a runaway gaspon. At the moment even Ensign Blade might seem like decent company.

  Vaun also needed to view Tham’s secret file, but if Roker had discovered it in the Valhal records, then that also might have vanished over the horizon. Vaun dearly wanted a peek at it, even if only to confirm that it was as useless as Tham had claimed, but it would have to wait until the marauders departed.

  And this evening there would be the mysterious surprise that Roker refused to explain. Mildly risky sounded like a politic euphemism for lethal. Of course, it was impossible for the long-lost Dice and Cessine to be anywhere on the island…unless Roker had brought them with him. If the missing cuckoos had at last been captured and Roker could link them to Vaun in any way, then Vaun was a dead hero.

  A shadow moved within brightness and he turned to the terrace doors. Crimson fires of backlighting outlined Feirn’s head like a stellar corona. How could he have forgotten Feirn?

  She did not wait for an invitation, and as she glided toward him, the bundled shirt tumbled from his fingers to the rug.

  “Vaun?”

  “I am sorry,” he said, distracted from his anger by the graceful swing of those
trim legs. “I did not plan it like this.”

  She smiled a wistful smile that knotted his heart. “I know. I am sorry, too. What you promised me…just the two of us, and you showing me all of Valhal, corner by corner…that would have been wonderful, Vaun. But maybe when the high admiral leaves?”

  His blood raced insanely; she had come close enough for him to start counting freckles. Yesterday’s stiffener had not worn off yet, obviously. His head would not clear for a day or two.

  Red hair…Was his fascination with red hair common knowledge? Maeve had guessed, he recalled. If Maeve knew, then DataCen did also.

  So perhaps his head was not supposed to be clear, and this cute little wench was another of Roker’s spies.

  “Maybe,” he said, struggling with desire. “But that may not be for days. So as soon as your friend Blade finishes slaughtering strealers, he can fly you right back to wherever you came from.”

  He had been too harsh. She recoiled, then turned away quickly.

  “You don’t want me?”

  “Not right now, thank you.”

  “But you said—”

  “That was before I knew about Roker.”

  “Vaun?” She whispered, staring at the window. When he did not answer she continued, in a fast, nervous chatter. “Vaun, darling, I know this sounds crazy, but…Actually, I’ve never done it before. I mean most of the girls I know have been, well, you know, they started years ago, because their parents encouraged them, some of them, just kids even, and had lots of lovers ever since, but I waited, and I waited so long that now I’m scared to start, isn’t that crazy? Just that first time, like jumping in a cold pool, and then I’m sure I’ll be all right, but I’ve made such a big thing out of the first time now that, well, it is crazy, I know.”

  Yes, it was crazy. He didn’t know what to say next, but for some reason his excitement level was shooting straight up again like a Q ship. Never done it before? Why should that kinky idea arouse him so much?

  Because it was supposed to.

  “Pardon my asking, but what’s wrong with Ensign Blade? You seem to be good friends.”

  She continued to stare at the window, hiding her face from him. “Oh, you won’t repeat this to anyone…and I’m only guessing, of course…but I don’t think he’s ever done it either, and certainly not very often, and that would be silly, wouldn’t it, two people both trying it for the first time and neither knowing what to do? I mean, two clumsy beginners?” She sniggered nervously. “But Blade says he understands, and when I’m ready, just to tell him.”