Once a Hero

by Elizabeth Moon

  Her tongue, hearing the familiar speech, curled into the trills without her having to think of it. She thanked him for his congratulations in the formal phrases that brought a broader grin to his face. "And your family—your bodysons and heartdaughters? And don't I remember that you have grandlings now?"

  Before he could answer, her father had extended his own hand to Coron. "You can come visit later," her father said. "We need to get her upstairs—" Coron nodded, gave Esmay a stiff short bow, and stepped back. As her father led her away, he said "I hope you don't mind—he's so proud of you, you'd think he was your father. He wanted to come—"

  "Of course I don't mind." She glanced up the green-carpeted stairs. She had always loved the stained glass window on the landing, that poured rich gold and blood-colored light onto the carpet. Palace guards in black and gold stood stiff as the banister rails, staring at nothing. As a child, she had wondered whether they would be so stiff if tickled, but she'd never had the chance . . . or the daring . . . to try it. Now she climbed past them, bemused by the mixture of memories and present feelings.

  "And he wants to hear about it direct from you—at least some of it . . ."

  "That's fine," said Esmay. She would rather tell old Coron than any of the fresh-faced young militia officers now surrounding them. Coron had taught her more of the basics than her father probably knew; she had pored over the handbooks on small-unit tactics under his watchful eye all one summer down in Varsimla.

  "He does get a bit carried away," her father went on. "But he saved my skin often enough." He looked ahead to the upper hall, where a cluster of men in formal dress waited in a semicircle. "Ah . . . there we are. The Long Table advisors—did you have time in the car—?"

  She had not, but that's what the earplugs were for. Most of them were men she had met before, in the way that the children of a household meet distinguished guests. She would not have remembered that Cockerall Mordanz was Advisor on Marine Resources, but she did remember that he'd once fallen off during a polo game and her uncle Berthol's pony had neatly jumped over him. The current Long Table Host, Ardry Castendas Garland, had once slipped coming into their dining room, and knocked over the little table with the hot towels on it; her great-grandmother had scolded her for staring.

  "Esmay—Lieutenant Suiza!" the Host said now, catching himself and returning to the formality appropriate to the ceremony. "It is an honor . . ." His voice trailed away, and Esmay allowed herself an interior smile. Altiplano lacked the right honorific for someone like her: female, a military officer, a hero. She felt conflicting impulses to help him out, and to let him stew in his problem: they, after all, had wanted to make her a hero. Let them come up with something. "My dear," he said finally. "I'm sorry, but I keep remembering the sweet child you were. It's hard to grasp what you've become."

  Esmay could cheerfully have slapped him. Sweet child! She had been a sulky, awkward teenager, the successor to an awkward child . . . not sweet, but difficult and strange. And what she was now should be simple enough to grasp: a junior officer of the Regular Space Service.

  "It's clear enough," said another man, one she didn't recognize. Opposition Leader, her earplug said. Orias Leandros. He smiled at her, but the smile was intended for the Host. He would make political profit of her . . . he thought.

  "Host Garland," Esmay said quickly. She didn't like either of them, but she knew where her family duty lay. "You can be no more amazed at my present predicament than I am. My father tells me you plan an award—but, you must realize, you do me too much honor."

  "Not at all," Garland said, back in balance again. He shot the briefest glare at his rival. "It's obvious that your family inheritance of military ability continues down the generations. No doubt your sons—" He stopped, trapped again in the assumptions of Altiplano and the usual phrases. What would have been a fine compliment to a man sounded almost indecent applied to a woman.

  "It has been so long," Esmay said, changing the subject before Orias Leandros could say anything damaging. "Perhaps you would introduce me to the other advisors?"

  "Of course." Garland was sweating a little. How had he ever been elected Host, when he was still as clumsy in word and deed as ever? But he got through the introductions well enough, and Esmay managed to smile with the right intensity at all the right people.

  The award ceremony itself felt odd, because Esmay could not feel anything at all. She was too aware of the faint murmur of the earplug, coaching her through the required lines, of the expressions on the faces around her . . . the embarrassment she'd felt when first told of the award could not penetrate the concentration needed to do it right. The Starmount itself, a disk with the blue and black enamel representing a mountain against the sky, the little diamond glittering at the peak, aroused neither pride nor guilt. She bent her head to let the Host put the wide blue-and-gray ribbon around her neck; the medal felt lighter than she'd expected.

  Then it was only a matter of standing in the line, saying the ritual greetings and thanks to those who filed past her: pleased, how kind, thank you, how lovely, how kind, thank you so much, very kind, how pleased . . . until the last of the line, a white-haired old lady related to Esmay's grandmother in some complicated way, had passed from her father to her, and from her to the Host. She had a few minutes to sip the tangy fruit juice and taste the pastries, then her father hurried her into the car again for the trip home.

  She would like to have stayed longer; she was still hungry, and some of the faces that had blurred past had been friends once. She would have liked a chance to shop in town, to get herself some new clothes. But she had no more to say about it than when she'd been a schoolgirl. The general said it was time to leave, and they left. She tried not to resent it.

  "Papa Stefan," her father said to her. "He didn't feel well enough to come in, but he had planned a family reception."

  She could not imagine Papa Stefan anything but well; he had been white-haired even in her childhood, but vigorous, riding and working alongside his sons and grandchildren. Things had changed, then. She had known they would, eventually, but—it was hard to feel the same gravity, breathe the same air, recognize the same smells, and think of change. The buildings they drove past, the substantial stone blocks that housed stores and banks and offices, were the same she had always known.

  Outside the city, the grasslands surged up to the mountains, as always. Esmay looked out the window, relaxing into that familiar view. The Black Teeth, between which dark spires lay the legendary lair of the Great Wyrm. As a child, she'd believed the dragon stories were about her own world; she had believed the lair was stuffed with dragon's treasure. She'd been bitterly disappointed to find out that the Great Wyrm was the code name of the rebel alliance that had (so legend went) massacred the original owner of Altiplano and all his family. A school field trip to the "lair" showed it to be a perfectly ordinary bunker built into the cliff on one side of a canyon.

  South of the Black Teeth were other peaks of the Romilo Escarpment, lesser only by contrast to the Teeth. Esmay squinted across the kilometers of shimmering light, looking for the gap in the line, the grassy embayment of her family's estancia. There—the trees marked it out, the long lines of formal plantings along the road and the drives.

  The car slowed, pulling off the road. Her father leaned closer. "I don't know if you still observe," he said. "But it's customary, when someone returns from a long journey . . . and anyway, I'm going to light a candle."

  Esmay felt the heat rise to her face. Bad enough to forget, but to have her father suspect she'd forgotten was worse. "I, too," she said. She clambered out of the car, stiff and feeling even more awkward than stiffness would explain. She hadn't thought of the ceremonies since she left home; she wasn't sure she remembered the words.

  The shrine, built into the estancia gate wall, had a row of fresh flower wreaths laid out below the niche. She could smell the faint sweet scent of the wreaths, and the stronger aroma of the great trees that loomed above. Even as an imagina
tive child, Esmay had never been able to see any meaning in the blurred shape of the statue in the niche. She had once been unwise enough to say it looked like a melted blob. She had never said it again, but she'd thought it often enough. Now, she saw with fresh eyes, and it still looked like a grayish, shiny melted blob, taller than it was wide. Around its base, the candle cups were clean as always, the little white candles in a box to one side.

  Her father took one, set it in the green glass cup, and lit it. Esmay took another, lit it from her father's flame, and got it into a cup without burning her fingers. Her father said nothing, and neither did she; they stood side by side, watching the flames writhe in the breeze. Then he plucked a needle from one of the trees, and laid it in the flame. Blue smoke swirled up. Esmay remembered to stoop and find a pebble to lay in the wax of her candle.

  Back in the car, with the windows now open to the steady breeze, her father still said nothing. Esmay leaned back, enjoying the many shades of green and gold. The drive, bordered with rows of narrow conifers, ran straight for a kilometer. On the right were the orchards, past blooming now. She could just see knots of green fruit on some limbs . . . on the far side, the first plums should be ripening. On the left, the family polo fields, mown in crisscross patterns . . . someone was out there, stooping, stamping divots back in. Nearer the house, flower gardens burst into riotous color. The car swept around the front, into the wide gravelled space large enough to review a mounted troop. It had been used for that, years back. A broad portico, shaded by tangled vines thick as trees at the root . . . two steps up to the wide double-door . . . home.

  Not home now.

  Nothing had changed . . . at least on the surface. Her room, with its narrow white bed, its shelves full of old books, its cube racks full of familiar cubes. Her old clothes had been removed, but by the time she came upstairs, someone had unpacked her luggage. She knew, without asking, what would be in each drawer. She undressed, hanging her uniform on the left end of the pole: it would be taken away and cleaned, returned to the right end of the pole. Presently the right end of the pole had two outfits she did not own—someone's suggestion of what to wear to the family dinner. She had to admit they looked more comfortable than anything she had bought off-planet. Down the familiar hall to the big square bathroom, with its two shower stalls and its vast tub . . . after shipboard accommodations, it seemed impossibly large. But just this once . . . she slid the door marker to "long bath" and grinned to herself. She did like long hot baths.

  When she came downstairs, in the long cream-colored tunic over soft loose brown slacks, her father and step-mother were waiting. Her stepmother, born elegant, gave an approving nod, which for some reason made Esmay furious. No doubt she had chosen that tunic, had it put in Esmay's closet . . . for a moment Esmay thought of ripping it off and throwing it . . . but R.S.S. officers did not behave like that. And her half-brothers were watching, and others coming into the hall. She smiled at her step-mother, and shook the offered hand.

  "Welcome home, Esmaya," her stepmother said. "I hope you will like dinner . . ."

  "Of course she will," her father said.

  Dinner was in the informal dining hall, its wide windows opening on a tiled courtyard with a pool . . . Esmay could hear the gentle splash of the fountain even over the murmur of voices, the scraping of feet on the tiled floor.

  She started toward her old place out of habit, but someone sat there already—a cousin no doubt—and her father was leading her up the table, to sit at Papa Stefan's left hand. Great-grandmother was not at the table; she would be waiting to receive Esmay afterwards, in her own parlor.

  "Here she is, at last," her father said.

  Papa Stefan had aged; he was thinner, the skin looser over his bones. But his eyes were still sharp; his mouth, even as he smiled at her, still firm.

  "Your father tells me you remembered the proper offering for return," he said. "Do you also remember the proper blessing of food?"

  Esmay blinked. Once away from Altiplano, she had shed all concern about clean and unclean foods, blessings and cursings, as happily as she'd shed the traditional undergarments considered appropriate for a virtuous daughter. She had not expected this honor . . . as much test as honor, as everyone knew. Ordinarily only sons and sons of sons asked blessings on the food at dinner; daughters and daughters of daughters asked the morning grace at the breaking of the night's fast, and at the noon meal everyone held silence.

  She looked down the table to see what was on the great platters . . . it made a difference . . . and was even more surprised to see the five platters that meant a whole calf had been butchered in her honor.

  She had never heard of a woman speaking at such a time, but she knew the words.

  "Back from the waste . . ." she began, and continued through the whole, stumbling only momentarily over the nested clauses where the prayer expected a male speaker and she had either to speak of herself in the masculine or change the words. "From father to son it came to me, and so I send it on . . ." She had not thought about her own culture in any detailed way after the first year or so in the Fleet prep schools; she had not noticed how confining the language really was. Fleet had shocked her at first, with its assumption of easy relationships between the sexes, with "sir" used for both men and women. In Fleet, the important terms for parents distinguished between gene-parents and life-parents, not between mothers and fathers. On Altiplano, they had no word for "parents," and while they knew of modern methods of reproduction, very few would ever use them.

  She finished the blessing, still thinking of the differences, and Papa Stefan sighed. Esmay glanced at him; his eyes twinkled.

  "You didn't forget . . . you always had a good memory, Esmaya." He nodded. The servants stepped forward; the great platters were shifted to the sideboards for carving, while bowls of soup were offered.

  Fleet food had been good enough, but this was the food of her childhood. The thick blue bowl with the creamy corn soup, garnished with green and red . . . Esmay's stomach rumbled at the familiar aroma. The spoon she lifted had her family's crest on it; it fit her fingers as if it had grown there.

  The first salad followed the corn soup, and by then the meat had been sliced and layered on blue platters swirled with white. Esmay accepted three slices, a mound of the little yellow potatoes that were a family specialty, a scoopful of carrots. It was worth the long wait to have food like this.

  Around her, the family carried on soft-voiced conversations; she didn't listen. Right now all she wanted was the food, the food she had not let herself realize she missed. Puffy rolls that could have floated up into the sky as clouds . . . butter molded into the shapes of heraldic beasts. She remembered those molds, hanging in a row in the kitchen. She remembered the rolls, too—no use letting them get cold, when they were dry and tasteless. They deserved to be soaked in new butter or drenched in honey.

  When she came up for air, no one seemed to be paying attention to her anyway. They had finished eating; servants were taking the plates away.

  "It's a matter of pride," Papa Stefan was saying to her cousin Luci. "Esmaya would not fail in anything that touched the family honor." Esmay blinked; Papa Stefan's notion of family honor had wildernesses no one had ever explored fully. She hoped he wasn't hatching up one of his plots with her assigned the role of heroine.

  Luci, the age Esmay had been when she left, looked much as Esmay remembered herself. Tall, gangling, soft brown hair pulled back severely, with escaping wisps that ruined the intended effect, clothes that were obviously intended for a special occasion, but looked rumpled and dowdy instead. Luci looked up, met Esmay's eyes, and flushed. That made her look sulky as well as unkempt.

  "Hi, Luci," Esmay said. She had already greeted Papa Stefan and the elders; the cousins were far down the list of obligatory greetings. She wanted to say something helpful, but after ten years she had no idea what Luci's enthusiasms were—and a very clear memory of how embarrassing it was when elders assumed you still liked the dolls you'd
played with at five or seven.

  Papa Stefan grinned at her and patted Luci's arm. "Esmaya, you will not know that Luci is the best polo player in her class."

  "I'm not that good," Luci muttered. Her ears looked even redder.

  "You probably are," Esmay said. "I'm sure you're better than I am." She had never seen the point of milling about chasing a ball on horseback. A horse was mobility, a way to get off by herself, into places vehicles couldn't go, faster than anyone could follow on foot. "Are you playing on the school team, or the family team?"

  "Both," Papa Stefan said. "We're looking for championships this year."

  "If we're lucky," Luci said. "And speaking of that, I wanted to ask about that mare Olin showed me."

  "Ask Esmay. Her father bought a string for her to put out on the grant, and that mare was one of them."

  A flash of anger from Luci's eyes; Esmay was startled both by the gift of horses, and her cousin's unexpected reaction.

  "I didn't know about that," Esmay said. "He hadn't mentioned anything." She looked at Luci. "If there's one you wanted in particular, I'm sure—"

  "Never mind," Luci said, standing up. "I wouldn't want to deprive the returning hero of her loot." She tried to say it lightly, but the underlying bitterness cut through.

  "Luci!" Papa Stefan glared, but Luci was already out the door. She didn't reappear that evening. No one commented, but they were already drifting from the table . . . she remembered from her own adolescence that such a thing would not be spoken of in company. She did not envy Luci the rough side of Sanni's tongue that would no doubt work her over in private very shortly.