Once a Hero

by Elizabeth Moon

  "But you . . . went on." Barin looked at her directly now. "You were strong; you didn't . . ."

  "I cried." She got that out with difficulty. "I cried, night after night. The dreams . . . they put me in a room at the top of the house, at the end of the hall, because I woke them up, thrashing around so. I was afraid of everything, and afraid of being afraid. If they knew how scared I was, they would despise me . . . they were all heroes, you see. My father, my uncles, my cousins, even my Aunt Sanni. Papa Stefan had no use for crybabies—I couldn't cry in front of him. Put it behind you, they said. What's past is past, they said."

  "But surely they knew—even I know, from my foster family—that children don't just forget things like that."

  "On Altiplano you forget. Or you leave." Esmay took a deep breath, trying to steady her voice. "I left. Which relieved them, because I was always trouble for them."

  "I can't believe you were trouble—"

  "Oh yes. A Suiza woman who did not ride? Who would not involve herself with stock breeding? Who did not flirt and attract the right sort of young men? My poor stepmother spent years on me, trying to make me normal. And none of it worked."

  "But . . . you got into the Fleet prep school program. You must have recovered very well. What did the psychnannies say? Did they give you any additional therapy?"

  Esmay dodged the question. "I had read psych texts on Altiplano—there wasn't any therapy available there—and after all I passed the exams."

  "I can't believe—"

  "I just did it," she said sharply. He flinched, and she realized how he might take that. "It's not the same for you."

  "No . . . I'm a grown man, or supposed to be." The bitterness was back in his voice.

  "You are. And you did what you could—it's not your fault."

  "But a Serrano is supposed to—"

  "You were a captive. You had no choices, except to survive or die. Do you think I never tortured myself with `A Suiza is supposed to—'? Of course I did. But it doesn't help. And it doesn't matter what you did—if you spewed your guts—"

  "I did," Barin said in a small voice.

  "So? That's your body . . . if it wants to vomit, it will. If it wants to leak, it will. You can't stop it." She was aware that she was talking to herself as much as Barin, telling the self that had grieved so long what it had needed to be told.

  "If I'd been braver . . ." in a smaller voice still.

  "Would bravery have kept your bones from breaking? Your blood from flowing?"

  "That's different—that's physical—"

  "Vomiting isn't?" She could move again, and now she stepped closer to the bed. "You know you can make anyone vomit with the right chemicals. Your body produces the chemicals, and you spew. A leads to B, that's it."

  He moved restlessly, looking away from her. "Somehow I can't see my grandmother admiral puking all over a musclebound Bloodhorde commando just because someone mentioned the arena combat."

  "You had been hit in the head, hadn't you?"

  He twitched, as if he'd been poked in his sore ribs. "Not that hard."

  Esmay fought down a flash of anger. She had tried; she had told him things she had not told anyone else, and he was apparently determined to wallow in his own pangs of guilt. If someone could wallow in pangs . . .

  "I just don't know if I can face it," Barin said, almost too quietly to hear over the soft buzz of the ventilator.

  "Face what?" Esmay asked, her voice edged.

  "They'll . . . want me to talk about it."

  "Who?"

  "The psychnannies, of course. Just as they did with you. I . . . don't want to talk about it."

  "Of course not," Esmay said. Her mind skidded away from his assumption that she had had therapy.

  "How bad is it, really? What do they say?" A pause, a gulp. "What do they put in your record?"

  "It's . . . not too bad." Esmay fumbled through her memory of those texts, but couldn't come up with anything concrete. She looked away, aware that Barin was now staring at her. "You'll do fine," she said quickly, and moved toward the door. Barin raised a hand still streaked with the pink stain of nuskin glue.

  "Lieutenant—please."

  Esmay forced herself to take a deep breath before she turned back to him. "Yes?"

  His eyes widened at whatever he saw on her face. "You . . . you haven't talked to the psychs, have you? Ever?"

  The breath she'd taken had vanished somewhere; she could not breathe. "I . . . I . . ." She wanted to lie, but she couldn't. Not to him; not now.

  "You just . . . hid it. Didn't you? By yourself?"

  She gasped in a lungful of air, fought it into her chest, and then forced it out through a throat that felt stiff as iron. "Yes. I had to. It was the only way—" Another breath, another struggle. "And it's better . . . I'm fine now."

  Barin eyed her. "Just like me."

  "No." Another breath. "I'm older. It's been longer. I do know what you're feeling, but it gets better."

  "This is what confused people," Barin said, as if to himself. That non sequitur snagged her attention.

  "What do you mean, confused?"

  "It wasn't just the difference in Altiplano social customs and Fleet's . . . it was this secret you had. That's why your talents were all locked up, hidden . . . why it took combat to unlock them, let you show what you could do."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Esmay said. She felt a tremor in her mind like that of stepping onto the quaking surface of a bog.

  "No . . . but . . . you need help as much as I do."

  Panic; she could feel her face stiffening into a mask of calm. "No, I don't. I'm fine now. It's under control; as you say, I can function."

  "Not at your best. I heard about your best; Grandmother said the combat analysis was unbelievable . . ."

  For a moment it seemed funny. "Your grandmother wasn't on the Board of Inquiry."

  His hand flipped a rude gesture. "Boards of Inquiry exist to scare captains into heart attacks and ulcers. What I heard, through the family, was how the real commanders, who have combat experience, saw it."

  Esmay shrugged. This was only slightly more comfortable than the other topic.

  "And no one, Grandmother included, could understand how you did it . . . there was nothing in your background, she said."

  "My father is not a bad tactician," Esmay said stiffly, aware that the reflexive annoyance was not entirely honest.

  "I imagine not. But not all children inherit the talent—and those that do usually show it earlier. You didn't even choose command track."

  "I took advice," Esmay said. "It was pointed out to me how difficult outsiders found it to succeed in higher command in Fleet."

  "Argue all you want," Barin said, hitching himself up in the bed. This time he didn't wince. "I still say, as Grandmother said, that you were hiding something, something that kept you from showing what you could do."

  "Well, it's not hidden now," Esmay said. "I did command that ship . . . actually now, two of them."

  "Not that," he said.

  "I told you," she said then. "It's not hidden."

  "I'm not a psychnanny. D'you think my telling you about my experience would be sufficient?" Despite his attempt at persuasion, she heard the covert plea: he hoped she'd agree that he need not talk to anyone else about it.

  "No." She took a quick breath and hurried on. "They know already; you have to talk to them. And they'll help you, I'm sure of it."

  "Ummhmm. So sure that you will talk to them too?"

  "Me?"

  "Don't." He lay back against the pillows. "Don't play with me . . . you know you're not healed. You know you still need help."

  "I . . . they'll throw me out . . . a mutineer who hid craziness in her past . . . they'll send me back . . ." She noticed after she'd said it that Altiplano had become "back" and not "home."

  "They won't. Grandmother won't let them."

  The sheer Serrano arrogance of this took her breath away; she laughed before she thou
ght. "Your grandmother doesn't run everything in Fleet!"

  "No . . . I suppose not. But it doesn't hurt to have her on your side, which you do. She's not about to lose an officer she considers brilliant." He sobered. "And . . . if you talked to them about your problem . . . you see, I don't know anyone else who's been . . . who ever . . ."

  "You want a partner, is that what you're saying?"

  He nodded without speaking. Clear in his expression was the effort it cost him to pull himself out of his own pain long enough to reach out to her.

  Her heart pounded; her breath came short. Could she?

  "You already told me," he said then. "It's not like it'll be the first time for you."

  When you hit the ground, Papa Stefan had always said, it was too late to be scared of being bucked off. You had already survived the worst . . . now all you had to do was catch the horse and get back on.

  "I caught the horse," Esmay said; she almost laughed at Barin's confusion. "All right," she said, knowing the panic would come again, but able at this moment to face the pawing, snorting shadow, to walk toward it. "I will talk to them—but you have to cooperate too. I want a Serrano ally closer to my own age than your estimable grandmother or your ferocious cousin. Is that a deal?"

  "Deal. Although I'm not sure you've got the right adjective with the right relative."

  Major Pitak looked up when Esmay came back from sick bay. "How's the boy?"

  "Shaken up, but healing. He's got to see the psychs, he says."

  "Standard," Pitak said. "Is it bothering him?"

  "As much as it would bother anyone," Esmay said, and gathered her courage again. The shadow condensed from a cloud of smoke to a dire shape, snorting fire. "Major . . . back before all this happened, you said perhaps I should see the psychs . . . about what happened on Despite."

  "Is that still bothering you?"

  "Not . . . just that. I know we're shorthanded, but—I'd like to do that."

  Pitak gave her a long, steady look. "Good. Go find out how long it will take, and let me know. You're in enough good graces right now that nobody's going to grudge you some help. Would you like me to call over there and find out when they can take you?"

  "I . . . thank you, Major, but I think I should do it myself."

  "You don't have to do everything the hard way, Suiza," Pitak said, but it had no sting.

  Setting up an appointment was absurdly easy. The appointments clerk didn't ask for details when she said she wanted a psych appointment, just asked if it was urgent. Was it urgent? She could put it off by saying it wasn't . . . but putting it off hadn't solved it before.

  "Not an emergency," she finally said. "But . . . it's . . . interfering with things."

  "Just a moment." Of course they were busy, Esmay told herself. Barin wasn't the only one with urgent needs relating to the recent action. All those who'd been captives, she expected, and some who'd simply seen too much death, too much pain.

  Another voice came over her headset. "Lieutenant Suiza . . . this is Annie Merinha. I need just a few bits of information, in order to place you with the individual most likely to help you."

  Esmay's throat closed; she could say nothing, and waited for the questions as if they were blows.

  "Is this related only to the recent events, or is it something else?"

  "Something else," Esmay said. She could barely speak.

  "I see that you were in a difficult situation aboard Despite, and received no psych support services subsequently—is this related to that?"

  She could say yes, and be telling the truth . . . but not the whole truth. She could tell them the rest later, surely . . . but lies had started this, and she wanted it over. "Partly," she said. "There's . . . it's all mixed up with . . . with other things."

  "Predating your entrance to the Regular Space Service?"

  "Yes."

  "There's nothing on your record . . ."

  "No, I . . . please, I can't explain it . . . like this."

  "Certainly." A pause, during which Esmay imagined damning check marks on a laundry list of mental illness that would bar her forever from anything she wanted to do. "I can see you at fourteen hundred today. T-5, Deck Seven, follow the signs to Psych, and ask the front-desk clerk. You're on the schedule. All right?"

  It was not all right; she needed more time to get herself ready for this . . . but she could hardly complain that they were helping her too quickly.

  "That's fine," she said. "Thank you."

  "You'll need about two hours. We'll arrange the rest of your sessions once we've met."

  "Thank you," Esmay said again.

  She glanced at the time. 1030. She had that long to live as she had lived, however that was. It felt like doom coming down on her. She went to tell Major Pitak she would be gone for several hours.

  "That's fine. In the meantime, I want you to have lunch with me."

  Her stomach roiled. "Major . . . I'm really not hungry."

  "True, but you're also tied up in knots. I'm not asking what it's about, now that you're getting help, but I'm also not letting you mope around by yourself. Soup and salad—you need something before you go over there and spill your guts. It's going to be exhausting."

  Through the meal, Pitak kept up a series of anecdotes that didn't really require a response from her. Esmay ate little, but appreciated the thoughtfulness.

  "Lieutenant Suiza." The clerk smiled at her. "I know you don't know me, but—we all want to thank you for what you did. I spent most of the time flat out, having dreams I can't even remember, no good to anyone. If it hadn't been for you—"

  "And a lot of others," Esmay said, accepting the file the clerk handed her.

  "Oh, sure, but everyone knows you took that Bloodhorde ship and fought them off. They ought to make you a cruiser captain, that's what I think." The clerk looked at a screen at his desk and said, "There—the room'll be ready in just a couple of minutes. We like to freshen it up between . . . d'you want something to drink?"

  Her mouth was dry again, but she didn't think she could drink; her stomach had knotted shut.

  "No, thank you."

  "Your first time with psych support?" Esmay nodded; she hated to be that transparent.

  "Everyone's scared beforehand," the clerk said. "But we haven't killed anyone yet." Esmay tried to smile, but she didn't really think it was funny.

  * * *

  Nubbly toast-brown carpet ran halfway up the bulkheads, here painted cream; a fat-cushioned couch with an afghan draped over one end and a couple of soft chairs made the little compartment look more like a particularly cozy sitting room. It was quiet, and smelled faintly of mint. Esmay, aware that she had stopped in the doorway like a wary colt halfway through a gate, forced herself to go on.

  "I'm Annie Merinha," the woman inside said. She was tall, with a thick braid of light hair going silver at the temples. She wore soft brown pants and a blue shirt with her ID tag clipped to the left sleeve. "We don't use ranks here . . . so I'll call you Esmay, unless you have a favorite nickname."

  "Esmay's fine," said Esmay through a dry throat.

  "Good. You may not know that a request for psych support authorizes whoever works with you to have complete access to your records, including all personal evaluations. If this is a problem, you'll need to tell me now."

  "It's not," Esmay said.

  "Good. I called up your medical record earlier, of course, but that was all. There are some other things you need to know about the process before we get started, if you feel you can understand them at this time."

  Esmay dragged her wits back from their hiding places. She had expected to have to tell everything at once . . . this was much duller, if less painful.

  "The slang for most of us is psychnannies, as I'm sure you know. That's reasonably accurate, because most of us are nannies, not medtechs or psychiatric physicians. You're from Altiplano, where I believe they still call nannies nurses, is that right?"

  "Yes," Esmay said.

  "Do you ha
ve any cultural problems with being in the care of a psychnanny rather than a physician?"

  "No."

  Annie checked off something. "Now: you need to know that although our sessions are confidential, there are limits to this confidentiality. If I have reason to believe that you are a danger to yourself or others, I will report that. This includes participation in certain forms of religious or political activity which could be a danger to your shipmates, and the use of proscribed substances. Although you may choose to attempt concealment of any such activity, I must in conscience warn you that I'm very good at spotting lies, and in any event dishonesty will markedly affect the value of your treatment. Do you want to go on?"

  "Yes," Esmay said. "I don't do anything like that . . ."

  "All right. Now we get to the heart of it. You said you had problems connected both with your experiences on Despite, and with other experiences from before you joined the Service. I would have expected problems existing when you joined to have been dealt with at that time." She stopped there. It took Esmay a long moment to realize that this was an implied question.

  "I . . . didn't tell anyone."

  "You concealed something you knew was—?"

  "I didn't know . . . at that time . . . what it was." Only dreams, only dreams, only dreams pounded her pulse.

  "Mmm. Can you tell me more about it?"

  "I thought—it was only nightmares," Esmay said.

  "There is a question on the intake physical about excessive nightmares," Annie said, with no particular emphasis.

  "Yes . . . and I should have said something, but—I didn't know for sure they were excessive, and I wanted to get away—to get into the prep school . . ."

  "How old were you then?"

  "Fourteen. The first year I could apply. They said the application was good, but to wait a year or so, because they'd already filled up, and besides they wanted me to take extra courses. So I did. And then—"

  "You did get into the prep school. The dreams?"

  "Weren't as bad, then. I thought I was outgrowing whatever it was."

  "You didn't know."