Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  The infection Roker had spoken of so often was rooted now. Two untrained fugitives, Dice and Cessine, had somehow succeeded in establishing a hive, which everyone had said was impossible.

  So the great hero Admiral Vaun had not succeeded at all. It had all been lies. For half a century he had lied to everybody—even, it would seem, to himself. He had not destroyed the Q ship Unity, and the Brotherhood.

  Abbot had won in the end.

  THE STUNNING REALITY of Unity is bright and exciting, with every wall and doorway swirling in color and pattern, and no bare rock in sight. This is a far, far cry from the make-believe of the Doggoth simulator, which was only a web of drab tunnels like abandoned sewers. Despite his anger and danger, Vaun feels the thrill of being in a real Q ship at last. The artists who executed these intricate mosaics may be members of the present crew, or they may have been dead for centuries. Some Q ships are thousands of years old.

  The air is fusty and unbearably hot. His flight suit is soon sodden, and even his shirtless companions shine with sweat, but for years the ship has been flexed by the gravity waves of two singularities, and soaked in radiation. Living quarters are refrigerated; the main mass of the rock will be considerably hotter.

  A hidden PA is spouting a stirring march tune, which seems to be an assembly call, for everyone he sees is heading the same way. As he is led farther into the rock, the hum of machinery grows louder, the air mercifully cooler.

  He feels choked with nostalgia. The colors and the bare-chested brethren and the voices—all are rousing Prior’s memories of Monad Hive. Monad, the home where Vaun was conceived, the home he never knew until the mind bleed.

  He is being hurried along in a group of a dozen or so, led by Abbot in his black shorts and his cap. Others are appearing and joining the procession. Invisible hills in the pseudo-gravity make his gut heave, and he is still oppressed by the beetling threat of Roker’s missiles. Voices chatter all around him, all the same voice, so that he can not separate out the words.

  They may seem friendly, but they are killers.

  “The spacers,” he demands. “You gassed them?”

  “’Fraid so,” Abbot replies offhandedly. “Wouldn’t have known what to do with them otherwise.”

  “What sort of gas?”

  “No idea. Ask Bio. I do know we have a little modification to the hemoglobin alpha chain that comes in useful in technical environments. It’s more selective for oxygen.”

  Four boys and two girls callously murdered! Vaun chokes with anger. He was in charge of that boat, responsible for them. So far he has managed to kill one brother and wound another—he hasn’t leveled the score yet. He cannot believe this miraculous forgiveness and friendship. They are trying to trick him somehow…and yet, what does it matter? He is as good as dead.

  Maeve and Valhal seem a long way off now.

  He is ushered into a large, circular hall. A couple of dozen boys are there already, with others streaming in through other doors. The only furniture is a single bench, an unbroken ring big enough to seat sixty or more. Abbot steps over and sits down, facing the center. He gestures for Vaun to join him. Others are doing the same. In minutes the circle is completely filled, boys sitting side by side, squeezed shoulder to shoulder, all facing inward. Then they somehow wriggle enough room for another ten or so more to squash in also, and make a real crush out of it. There is much squirming and joking and friendly complaint.

  The Brotherhood! A hive assembled. He sees again the high-raftered hall in Monad, open to the wind and the birds, its floor carpeted in brown cave grass. Often in summer, birds would soar through even when the brethren were meeting. He recalls the earthquake of mirth the day when droppings hit the brother speaking.

  Vaun discovers he is gawking up witlessly at the dome overhead, whose mosaics depict strange winged monsters and mythical beings. The art may be ancient human, but the bright colors make him suspect the Brotherhood’s handiwork. On a twenty-year voyage, there would be plenty of time for art.

  He does not know what is about to happen, and he will not ask. This gathering feels suspiciously like a court called to try him for shooting Abbot—the first two Abbots.

  A couple of heavy hands come to rest on his shoulders as latecomers line up around the outside of the circle. Small children wriggle through underneath, emerging from the forest of bare legs to climb into the nearest lap. Both of his immediate neighbors—Abbot on the right and Blue on the left—get landed with lads almost large enough to be called adolescents, a White and a Purple, who grin and bounce and wrestle and get tolerantly grumbled at, but the toddler who raises expectant arms in front of Vaun cannot be older than four. Vaun does not recall when a child last came to him. Feeling strangely touched, he scoops the youngster up and makes him as comfortable as possible in the crush.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Huh?” The kid twists his head around and gives Vaun a worried look. “I’m Pink, of course!” So he is—today. He frowns at Vaun’s uniform, and fingers it curiously.

  The center of the circle is apparently sacred, and stays empty, but from the space back from the bench to the wall is now packed solid with Vauns of all sizes and ages. Everywhere he sees his own face, always willing to smile if it catches his eye. Everywhere he sees his own legs, all much more tanned than the pair he walks on. The air is hot and stuffy, as rank as an unwashed locker room, and yet he finds the sweaty odor familiar and inoffensive.

  Conspicuous in his uniform, Vaun peers over Pink and around White to see Abbot. “Why pants at all?” he asks. “Why not just run around bareass?”

  “Pockets!” says White firmly, bouncing.

  Abbot shrugs. “Hygiene, I suppose. Sit still, varmint!”

  “And it saves a lot of Hey you,” adds the Orange who is leaning on Vaun from behind.

  The colors repeat around the circle, of course, but a group this large must be rare.

  “Time to start,” Abbot says. “You do it, lad. I’m nailed in here.”

  With a gleeful grin, young White snatches the cap from Abbot’s head, slides off his lap, and starts to strut around the circle, waving the cap high for all to see. The babble of talk fades away.

  A Brown says, “Eighty-four.” There is a pause, and then a Green sighs and says, “Eighty-one.”

  Eighty-one, eighty-four…The numbers must be years, but they will be Avalonian calendar, and nothing like Ultian dates, so Vaun cannot tell what age they represent. How old is the Brotherhood itself?

  No one else betters Green’s eighty-one, so White throws the cap spinning across to him. He is feeding a very small baby, but a youngster on a neighboring lap snatches the cap from the air and arranges it on Green’s head for him—back to front, of course.

  White comes racing back and leaps bodily on Black, who says, “Ooof!” and then, to Vaun, “You are surprised by something?” His voice comes muffled from under a writhing tangle of younger brother Purple similarly assaults Blue, and Vaun is suddenly busy trying to shield little Pink from the overall scrimmage.

  “Yes, “he admits. “The way you gave up power so easily. You’re not Abbot anymore?”

  Black masters his burden, turning young White upside down and pinning him between his thighs, holding his skinny legs up so that Orange can lean over and tickle the soles of his feet. Wild shrieks come from somewhere near the floor. Similar roughhousing is going on all around the circle. “Why should that surprise you?” Black seems surprised himself.

  “Wild stock murder and conspire in the pursuit of power—I’ve watched them!” Vaun knows that even Frisde’s nefarious court is not the worst on Ult. “They never yield power voluntarily.”

  “Power?” snorts his neighbor. “It’s responsibility, is all. There’s no power involved.”

  Vaun senses achievement of an age-old dream. In the Brotherhood, it is evident that all boys are created equal.

  On a million worlds, where else is that true?
>
  Cuddling his baby, the new Abbot strolls out into the empty center, and the noise fades away. He could be any one of them past puberty. He could be Dice, or Prior.

  The brethren come to order. Young White is released, and allowed to resume his seat, red-faced and grinning.

  “We welcome a new brother,” Abbot tells the silence. Even the small fry are listening intently. He smiles Raj’s smile at Vaun. “This is your hive, Brother. All we have is yours.”

  Vaun jumps as the whole assembly roars, “Agreed!” Hands squeeze his shoulders. White feints a punch at him.

  All I have is my life, and you can take that anytime, Vaun thinks. All his life he had been conscious of being better, and now he is suddenly surrounded by his equals, at least three hundred of them. A hall of mirrors. He thinks of being imprisoned in a faceted crystal.

  When he does not reply, Abbot smiles at him sadly, then goes on to other business. “Medical report. Qualified?”

  “Medic,” says a voice from the back. Vaun cranes his neck to see the speaker, and then realizes that it doesn’t matter.” One dead. He died well, and did not suffer.”

  “We mourn our loss,” Abbot says solemnly, and again comes the chorus. “Agreed!”

  Vaun stares at his own knees. He should have known that shooting a unit of the Brotherhood would be pointless, and stupid.

  “Specialty?” Abbot inquired.

  “No identification yet,” says the invisible medic. “We’ll inform his prior as soon as we can. One ventilation technician wounded, but it’s a clean flesh wound. He won’t even have a scar.” That news brings a cheer.

  Abbot turns to Vaun. “We have lost a brother and gained one. Will you be happier using a personal name for a while, Brother?”

  “Commodore Vaun, Ultian Command.” It is hard to sound formal and disciplined when a four-year-old has just discovered that you unzip down the front…This toleration is impossible! How can they not bear a grudge?

  “Brother Vaun.” Abbot’s baby is refusing the nipple. He tucks the bottle in a pocket, and adjusts the youngster on his shoulder. His movements are confident and efficient. “Obviously you are not the one we hoped for.”

  “Prior, you mean?”

  “That was his title, leader of a small group. We have other titles also. You speak Andilian, though.”

  “They…I mean we,” Vaun says grimly, “we mind bled him.”

  He feels the whole congregation shudder, and a few of the youngsters cry out.

  Abbot’s expression turns black. “We honor his memory!”

  “Agreed!” chorus the brethren again.

  “Will you tell us of him, and what he achieved?”

  “Why should I? We’re all about to die!”

  “If you refer to the missiles, then you can set your mind at ease. Qualified?”

  “Gravities,” says a Brown, sitting on the far side from Vaun. “They fired four, and one went wide. We absorbed the others. No sweat. They’ve done some damage to the com equipment with beams, but nothing serious. They won’t try anything more for a while, because we’re over populated country.” He grins across at Vaun, and a lot of the youngsters grin also.

  It may be a bluff, of course, but it would be a very odd one. A rush of relief tells Vaun that he believes; his dread had lessened considerably. “Absorbed?” he demands.

  “Swallowed them in singularities. It happened over the ocean, so the radiation flash did them no great harm, but it has probably knocked out planetary communications for a while.”

  “You can’t turn a Q ship that fast!”

  Q ships can accelerate instantly in a straight line, but to rotate a rock without breaking it up or making it spin is a brute of a job. Yet Vaun’s words create a hundred smiles.

  Abbot says, “You think like a spacer, Brother Vaun. Let us hope we can teach you better habits! We turn the projectors instead. We shall gladly show you, later. But, please, will you tell us now of our late brother?”

  It makes sense. In fact, it is glaringly obvious, and if Ultian Command has never thought of it, that must be because no one has ever bothered to consider a Q ship as a military craft. Again Vaun reflects that he is dealing with an organization of boys as smart and effective as…as Prior was.

  So now he is a prisoner in an impregnable fortress. But if Ultian Command cannot damage the Q ship, then equally the Brotherhood can hardly conquer a planet. Standoff. Vaun’s outlook has suddenly changed dramatically. He scowls around at the sea of expectant Vaun-faces.

  “He came very close,” he admits.

  “Louder, please, Brother.”

  “Prior almost succeeded. It was only some very bad luck that balked him.” Reluctantly Vaun begins to tell the story, and every time he hesitates Abbot shoots a penetrating question and drags out more details. An audience so attentive is hard to resist—soon he is telling it all. The brethren listen in solemn silence, except for some of the very young, who drift off to sleep or play quietly with their guardians’ hair, or ears, or lips.

  All the while some part of him wonders how it would feel to strip off his uniform and just blend into this group. Shed the Patrol, shed his childhood, and just vanish into the Brotherhood, never exactly like a hive-reared unit, perhaps, but close enough, if they will accept him, as Raj and Dice accepted him. Not a black-haired freak, not a mudslug peon…

  Valhal is an impossible prize now. And Maeve…Maeve never said good-bye. Besides, the things he did with the girl! The memory is sickening. Degrading animal behavior!

  At last he stops and Abbot asks no more questions. Instead, he turns around slowly, holding out his free hand to invite comments, and no one speaks.

  Vaun, too, looks around at all the somber faces. He feels strangely ashamed, and angry at himself for that shame. He feels misery at bringing such obvious misery to a group that…that he does not want to make miserable. A once-traitor may tell himself that he acts from conviction, but a twice-traitor cannot.

  “Prior raped my mother!” he says defiantly. “He tried to conquer the planet.”

  “His actions resulted in your existence, Brother,” Abbot says softly. “How can you condemn them? And he wanted to rescue the planet, not conquer it. I see we must justify our motives. Qualified?”

  A Yellow not far to Vaun’s right says, “History,” as another voice says, “Political science,” and others, “Philosophy…Psychology…Defense…”

  Abbot has Dice’s grin. “Your choice, Brother.”

  “History.”

  Yellow speaks, then. “Have you ever heard of Homo erectus, Brother Vaun?”

  “No.”

  “It was one of our predecessor species, back on Earth. It was more than animal, less than human. But when some members of Homo erectus evolved into modern humanity by natural selection, their type spread across the planet. Unimproved erectus died out everywhere. It is the way of the universe, the secret of life’s progress. The better must replace the inferior. It cannot help but do so.”

  “Are you saying our ancestors killed this inferior species? I demand proof.”

  “I can give you no proof, but I ask what else was capable of destroying erectus, who had prevailed for a million years and settled a world? Nor can I produce, here and now, proof of historical events, although we do have records available, if you will believe them. The Brotherhood did not originate on Avalon, Vaun, but our experience there repeats what has happened on other worlds. The randoms see Homo factus as a danger to them, and they will not tolerate us. Can you believe that?”

  Toleration? Vaun recalls his childhood. He recalls Olmin’s attempts to bleach black hair to fair. He resists the interference. “But if we are superior, should we not be superior in tolerance and compassion? Can we not teach them the value of cooperation?” He senses anger and disagreement all around him, but only Yellow speaks.

  “We have tried, many times. The wild stock never honor their commitments for long. Driven by fear, sooner or later they attack our hives. On Avalon alone, four hi
ves have been wiped out that we know of—Xanacor, Monad, Wilth Hills, Gothin. We do not know what other tragedies may have occurred in the twenty-one years we have been traveling. Randoms lived in peace within at least two of those hives I listed, and they were hunted down and destroyed also, as traitors. Pogroms against minorities are a universal pattern of human history, on every world mankind has ever settled. The only difference with us is that the marauders do not have their usual opportunities to include rape among their customary abominations of mindless slaughter, torture, and child killing.”

  Vaun thinks of Roker and Ultian Command, of their hatred and fear and what they did to Prior. He also remembers the crew of the shuttle—his crew, foully murdered. Neither side in this war will recognize the other as human.

  Yellow has apparently finished; Abbot takes up the argument from the center of the floor. “Do you regard yourself as inferior to a random, Brother Vaun? You are superior to them in strength and wit and every talent. Do you have less right to life than one of them?”

  “No.”

  “They will not agree. Now answer me this: Had Prior arrived in your home village with a baby brother and asked that it be reared…Had he offered to pay for its food and upkeep and education…Would that child have been accepted and cherished as a random baby would be under the circumstances?” He pats the infant resting on his shoulder. As he turns to survey the audience, Vaun sees that the baby has been dribbling milk on Abbot’s shoulder, and for some reason ’that tiny detail hurts.

  “What had my mother…foster mother…done to deserve what he did to her?” he shouts angrily.

  “Nothing. What had Prior done to deserve what happened to him?”

  “He had committed a cowardly, brutal attack on a helpless girl!”

  “Was that his crime? Is mind bleeding the usual punishment for rape?”

  Vaun does not reply. The Patrol’s usual reaction to a charge of rape would be a fast cover-up.

  Abbot answers his own question. “No, his crime was that he sought the continuation of his race, which was not the random’s race, and that they will never permit. They deny your right to exist and perpetuate your genes, Brother.”