Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition

by L. Neil Smith

  In the future, for all events, main or otherwise, I planned to train right alongside her. I suspected that our relationship would always be a noisy one, but that, together, we could make sure no demons would ever begin haunting her again. I thought my being beside her from now on would make a lot of difference. At least I hoped it would.

  The trouble with being free is that it funnels a lot of decisions your way that you were used to having made by someone else. Mav had made a decision I learned about when he joined his mates in Elsie’s room:

  “I say, old armorer, this is a bit of all right, what?”

  “What?” The alien’s breathing orifices had not moved a centimeter. He was “speaking” to me over the implant interlink. “Mav, you have had an—!”

  As silently as the “priests” who had rescued me on Sca, he said, “Too right, dear fellow. I loathed and detested growing old, although I attempted to make the best of it. Now I find it won’t be necessary. This niggling little operation is only the first step. The Healing staff informs me that, with Mymy’s assistance, there will soon be a cure for aging among lamviin much as there are for the various species of the Confederacy. I shall await it with as much patience as I can muster.”

  I laughed out loud, then: “I take it, then, that one of our starships will be returning you to Sodde Lydfe in the not-too-distant future.”

  “You take it wrong. Actually, you see, we’re going with you.”

  “But Mav,” I said aloud, “You planet is undergoing a revolution. Everything is going to change. Your people will be needing you. There will be all of the things you’ve fought for so long: peace, freedom, prosperity—”

  “And no heroes and no gurus, not if I can help it, Whitey. I am going to be young again and see more of the universe than I had ever imagined possible. My people? They need only themselves. And besides, you see, these,” he gestured with his middle hand at everyone in the room. “These are my people—what you all call ‘mindkind’. And I am content.”

  I had already learned that coordination in this culture comes not from cerebral-corticalimplants—they’re nothing but tiny computers, after all—but out of sheer self-interest. Here was a wonderful example.

  I put both my arms around Lucille. She looked up at me. I winked and kissed her. She went back to watching Elsie playing with the old bear.

  “Yes, Mav, so am I.”