Hero! Read online

  None of which would matter if Vaun could somehow manipulate the electronics of his torch to make them manipulate the electronics of Tham’s defenses. And so he thought back to his days as a trainee, and racked his brains for everything he could remember from innumerable lectures. He came up with an enormous blank, a total void.

  The Space Patrol was the biggest con job the galaxy had ever seen, on this and probably every other planet of the Bubble. States and churches, democracies, monarchies, empires, religions, faiths, philosophies…those were the visible rulers of the human body and soul, but behind and above them all, feeding on them, crouched the eternal aristocracy of the Patrol.

  But Doggoth was one part of the Patrol legend that was factual. Indeed, Doggoth’s grim reputation was but a shadow of its reality.

  Doggoth was a carefully crafted hell, a bleak, rocky torture house in the remote north. There was absolutely nothing at Doggoth except screaming weather and the Space Patrol Academy. To Doggoth came the adolescent scions of the great Patrol families, sons and daughters of commodores and admirals, and there all the easy decadence of their pampered upbringing was callously ripped out of them. Day after terrible day, in Doggoth they were systematically driven out of their wits—ill-treated, humiliated, destroyed, ground to paste. And when they had been reduced to suitably gibbering zombies, they were skillfully refashioned, rebuilt in the proper mold, as spacers.

  Graduate or die. There was no other exit. By ancient tradition, trainees and instructors alike bore loaded weapons at all times. Even minor infractions were punished by firing squad, and dueling was encouraged. The suicide rate was unbelievable. But the process achieved its objective. The survivors returned to the world as junior officers, a triumphant elite, all staunchly convinced that the galaxy now owed them a living.

  Vaun had been even more of an alien at Doggoth than he had been in the squalid delta hamlet of his childhood. At Puthain—if that had really been its name even then—he had been the wrong build, the wrong color, black-haired, black-eyed. He had been the bastard son of the local madwoman. He had suffered abominably.

  At Doggoth he had been the mudslug, a contemptible, ignorant, incomprehensible peasant thrown in among the sons and daughters of the galactic aristocracy. They had considered that he spoke wrong, ate wrong, walked wrong, thought wrong. His mere existence among them had been inexplicable and inexcusable. They had despised him utterly, and done everything they could think of to drive him to despair and self-destruction.

  But the mudslug had proved to be smarter and stronger and tougher than any of them. He had surmounted every obstacle, triumphed in every contest, come first in every class. The officers had promoted nonentities over him, refused him recognition, treated him like garbage, done their worst on him—one of the many incidental skills he had gained was an ability to go without sleep for days at a time. His classmates had spurned him, cheated on him, mocked him, ignored him, insulted him. After his first dozen duels, he had begun attracting the suicides, and learned to maim instead of kill; after that he had been challenged less often. He had stubbornly refused to turn his gun on himself no matter how often that solution had been recommended, because the most important lesson he had learned at Doggoth was that he was better than anyone else at anything.

  That he had never forgotten.

  Recruits entered as frightened youngsters. The survivors emerged after six months or so as aristocrats in ensigns’ uniforms, ready to rule the world.

  Vaun had remained at Doggoth for five years, and never risen above the glorious rank of crewboy, second class. Had the Q ship Unity not arrived in the Ult system, he might be there still.

  He had certainly learned everything there was to know about automatic defenses and missile systems and electronic recognition signals.

  But he could think of nothing that would help him weasel his way into Forhil against Tham’s wishes.

  The Patrol had been perfecting its security systems for thirty thousand years.

  AS THE YELLOW of dawn began to contest with Angel’s cold blues for possession of the east, as the torch began its long descent from the ionosphere, Vaun’s thoughts drifted to Tham himself. Tham was a solid, dependable boy—reticent and secretive, but emphatically not the sort of nervy quitter who would jump into withdrawal without as much as a farewell com to his friends. His family was Patrol stock from time beyond measure—Vaun had heard him mention in passing that his ancestors had come from Elgith in the Golden Chariot with the holy Joshual Krantz. Of course, if everyone who made that claim was to be credited, then Golden Chariot had carried a crew of several billion, but when Tham said it, a boy believed.

  Tham had breeding, and more brains than most, and by definition toughness, for he had survived Doggoth. If he had a fault, it was that he was a nice guy—and nice guys never make the top. Early in his career, Tham had settled in as ComCom, chief of the Ultian Patrol’s Network Section, and he’d run it ever since, seeking nothing more.

  The Network Section handled interstellar communication. It should have been an important bureau in the Patrol’s organization, and the fact that it never had been showed just how much of a myth the Galactic Empire really was. Each planetary command ruled its own world in its own way, and for its own benefit, oblivious of what the others did.

  But if anyone knew what was really going on, it would be Tham.

  Tham had many friends, and Vaun felt entitled to include himself in that list. Tham was one of the very few high-ranking spacers who would treat Vaun as an equal—even now, after so long.

  They’d hunted together, drunk together, played together, even worked together, if you could rank Vaun’s public relations nonsense as work. Tham had visited Valhal innumerable times. It was less than six weeks since the last time he and Zozo had dropped in, unexpected but always welcome. They’d gone gill fishing and sky buzzing that time—nobody ever just sat around when Tham was present. Just after that, Vaun and Lann had made a protracted tour of the Stravakian Republic, and they’d managed a side trip to Forhil. Vaun closed his eyes and counted, and made it nine days since he’d seen Tham. Or maybe only eight. There had been nothing wrong with the lad then.

  Even if Tham’s behavior was understandable in a boy so reserved, then Zozo’s silence was not. Vaun could perhaps understand why she would ignore him, but he would have expected her to call for help from Phalo. She would certainly not have abandoned Tham.

  Tham had shared his pillow with the same girl for as long as Vaun had known him. She was his lady—they’d gone through some sort of binding ceremony in one of the minor churches, and they were devoted to each other. Faithful, even! Once in a while any party with spacers present would degenerate into an orgy—spiking the drinks with stiffener was a perennial prank—but Tham would never join in those if he was still capable of any choice at all. He would grab Zozo and run.

  Tham might have refused to call on his friends for support, but why hadn’t Zozo?

  It was all very suspicious. The more Vaun considered it, the more he thought he detected the sinister hand of High Admiral Roker.

  And the less he understood. Why should Tham have to die like that?

  Withdrawal was hell. Vaun knew that better than most. He could remember how once he’d nearly died of it.

  IS THIS WHAT dying feels like? Vaun’s head aches and dark things float in front of his eyes. Glora keeps telling him to sing up, but his mouth’s so dry he can’t make a word. And the pain in his bloated little belly is getting worse and worse.

  Glora has turned to shout at him, but she’s so far ahead that he can’t hear anything she says over the wind sighing in the pozee grass. Probably she’s telling him to keep up. He thinks Glora isn’t very well herself, because she wanders from side to side as she goes along the track, and sometimes she slips in the mud. When he comes along later, he sees the marks where she’s fallen.

  There’s no one else on this road. It’s just a trail through the pozee, winding along toward the sky, with no ups or downs,
and nothing to see. The river may be close, because the smell of it is making the air thick and heavy, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing to see, except Glora’s gaunt shape, sometimes, weaving along the track ahead…arms waving like black sticks against the sky, hair and rags dancing out of time. Other times she disappears around a bend, and then he does hurry as hard as he can.

  They’re going home, Glora says, home to the village. The priests in the big towns are all blinded by the Father of Evil and won’t hear the true word, or see the corporeal mani—manifest…something. Vaun doesn’t know. He really doesn’t care. He thinks he may die before he reaches the village.

  For a moment the wind fades, and he can hear Glora’s voice raised in praise. He ought to be singing praise, too, and maybe then God will make him better or let him die. Whichever God wants will be fine. God is his daddy. But if God wants him to live, then he hopes God doesn’t want him to do it back in the village. Following Glora around and singing outside churches is nicer, and begging for supper much easier than eel skinning. The town kids jeer at him, of course, but mostly they jeer at Glora, and they don’t pick on him the way Olmin and the others do. Fortunately, he doesn’t think Glora really knows the way back to the village. They seem to have been walking for an awful lot of days since she first told him they were going home to the village. They’ve spent the nights in the grass.

  Oh, the cramps in his tummy…

  Smelly mud in his face. He must have fallen, like Glora.

  “Hey there, fella? Sleeping at this time of day?”

  Vaun forces his eyes open. He forces his head to turn. He recognizes Nivel’s withered foot.

  He smiles a little.

  Now Nivel is carrying him, which is very funny, because Nivel rocks when he walks, dragging his bad leg, and now Vaun had the same sway as Nivel does. Hup—swoosh! Hup—swoosh! He hears Glora singing praise somewhere behind.

  “You hungry, Little Black Eyes?” Nivel is panting hard. “Got some eel soup for hungry lads.”

  “Not hungry, Nivel.”

  “What’sat? Young lad not hungry? Never grow up to be a big boy if you don’t eat, Vaun.”

  “Not hungry,” Vaun insists, forcing the words from his dry mouth. Sore tummy…

  Nivel gasps, and lowers Vaun to the ground, and kneels down beside him. Glora is a long way back, her arms waving, doing a dance.

  “Need a rest,” Nivel pants, peering very hard at Vaun. He lays a raspy thumb on one of Vaun’s eyelids and pushes it up, as though wanting to see what is underneath. “You been getting your booster every day, lad?”

  Vaun nods uncertainly.

  Nivel mutters something he doesn’t catch. “You listen to me, Little Black Eyes! Listen good! And never mind what that muddy-wit…what Mommy tells you contrariwise, all right? You make sure you get your booster every day, understand? Every single day! And if you haven’t got any in the house, you come and see me. Or ask anyone. Even in a big town. If you haven’t got booster, you can ask any boy or girl at all, and they have to share with you if they have some. That’s the law. Booster’s free for everyone. Understand?”

  Vaun has never seen Nivel look so fierce, so he nods.

  “Eating isn’t enough,” Nivel says, seeming a little less sure of himself. “Food hasn’t got some things in it that it should have, and it has things it shouldn’t, and people who don’t take their booster every day get sick awful fast and don’t grow up to be big strong boys and beat the shit out of Olmin.”

  Vaun sniggers at that. It’s a secret, private joke between him and Nivel. Nivel isn’t very big, and he can’t work very hard with his bad leg, and he lives by himself, when all the other boys live with girls and little kids. Sometimes Nivel comes and lives at his house for a while, and those are good times, even if Vaun does have to sleep on the floor, because then Glora doesn’t talk to God so much and wake Vaun up in the night to sing praise, but those times never seem to last very long.

  Vaun likes Nivel better’n anyone. Even Glora. Specially Glora, because the things she says about him make the other kids laugh at him. Sometimes Glora is nice.

  Nivel stands up again, and pulls Vaun up, too, and hoists him on his shoulder again, muttering and heaving. “So you remember, Black Eyes! People who don’t get their booster can’t live on Ult, remember?”

  After a few steps…Hup—swoosh! Hup—swoosh!…

  Vaun says hoarsely, “Where do they live, Nivel? People who don’t get their booster?”

  “They don’t,” Nivel says, between pants. “They sort of shrivel up and die.”

  THE DREAMER IS Pink and Scarlet is It. There are dozens of units—no, hundreds—no, thousands, all dodging and laughing as Scarlet pursues them. They scamper and eddy all over the grass, ebbing and flowing in millions of colors, always defining a clearing around Scarlet, shrieking and yelling, mocking and gleeful. High overhead the twin suns are shining—two crimson pillows in an indigo sky. But Scarlet is tiring. Scarlet is weary and laughing no more. The Dreamer takes pity and fakes a brief stumble, so Scarlet can tag him; now Pink is It and must tag another. Come to me, brothers, so I can touch you…

  The dream changes. The Dreamer is Blue…

  Brown arms wheel in a chaos of shrieks and flying water as the Dreamer’s crop all reach the bank together. With shouts of Cheat! and He tripped me! they scramble out, jostling, shivering, laughing, in a tangle of wet brown youngsters. The Dreamer is Blue today, but as he grabs his shorts from the pile, another hand snags them also. He grins and is grinned at, and both units let go together and reach for another. So the other becomes Orange and the Dreamer is Tan…and Black is poised right on the edge of the bank, so the Dreamer jabs a fast elbow and Black goes over in a howl, and then everyone is into that game and the Dreamer himself is pushed and falling into a splashing surf of brethren…Brothers, I am coming…

  The dream changes…

  There is no moon, and the dorm is dark. Youngsters are meant to be sleeping. But tonight is not a usual night; this night is full of weeping. News has come from Xanacor that the hive is gone. The randoms have attacked it, and the hive is no more. There are pictures, and terrible stories, and the big boys sent the young crops to bed early, saying that there was business to talk tonight, but the Dreamer knows that is just so they can do their own weeping downstairs and not seem sissy and set poor examples.

  Small fry need to weep, too! The Dreamer was allowed to sit on a big boy’s lap for a while and be hugged while he cried, but that is not enough. He has too many more tears to shed. He cannot sleep for thinking of his brethren. Others are sobbing in the warm dark, and just when one gets control of himself, then another unit starts, and the sound brings the lump back to the Dreamer’s throat, and the pictures burn up into the memory again, of units being bayoneted, being strangled, bleeding and burning. His brothers, some no older than himself. Bleeding and screaming. So his sobs start again, gasping, retching, hard-to-breathe sobs.

  He hears movements, and raises his head. Units are moving around, but even as he realizes what is happening, there is a unit already beside him in the dark. Gratefully the Dreamer makes room, and the other unit snuggles in beside him. They hold each other tight and weep together, dribbling tears on each other’s pajamas, weeping for their dead kin in Xanacor.

  “ADMIRAL?”

  Vaun must have been dozing. The harsh voice of the cabin alarm startled him. “Eh? What?”

  “You asked to be advised when you were at closest approach to Forhil.”

  “Oh…right.” He was on his way to Tham’s place.

  He stretched and rubbed his eyes and pulled his wits up like wrinkled socks to straighten them. Dawn burned blood and gold in the east. He had laid in a course for Caslorn International, which would make him seem like an innocent flyby to Tham’s defenses.

  He had not thought up a way to sneak into Forhil; he would have to break in by brute force, and there was no way to do that in a torch.

  Right! Go for it…Although this was his clo
sest approach, he was still far too high, but he snapped over to manual and banked into a dive.

  Two seconds later, red alarms lit up all over the board and the siren screamed in a replay of yesterday. Wishing he had a warm coat with him, he buttoned up his shirt and waited, tensing.

  “Attention 80-775! Attention 80-775! You are entering restricted airspace. Retaliatory action will commence in three minutes. Attention…”

  He let the voice shout, counting seconds, watching airspeed and altitude slide around the vids. Too fast…He eased back, but the scoops could not grip the thin air, merely making the craft shudder and a few more warnings flash on…About two minutes now until the defenses took command and diverted him. That was what had happened every time the previous day. He had tried three times, and three times the defenses had flown him an hour’s flight away before releasing him. Today he wasn’t going to argue.

  One minute…He opened a com channel, voice and video. The warnings dropped to a whisper. The screen stayed blank.

  “Calling Forhil. Tham, this is Vaun. I need to talk to you. I’m alone and unarmed. I’m coming in, Tham!”

  As he disconnected, the shouting resumed. Extreme Hazard lit up on the board. The opposition wasn’t going to blink. Any second now he would feel the controls go limp as command was taken away from him.

  With his right hand, he slid the handgun from its holster beside his seat, and leaned over to press his left thumb on the Eject.

  “Refused,” screamed the speaker, drowning out even the siren. Every light flashed, including Suicide!