Hero! (35 page)

Back with his brethren. Home. A hive.

How many of them would there be?

Tan was unbelievably like Raj. He sounded like Raj, he grinned like Raj. And he said, “Wow! Really Brother Vaun!” in the sort of awed, excited tone that Raj might have used. “I know all about
you
, Brother!”

Raj had been dead for almost half a century. Vaun had betrayed him, all of them.

Orange or maybe Green said, “Oh, it’s wonderful to meet you at last, Vaun.”

“Know all about you,” said another.

“You can’t know it all!” Vaun protested—Raj and Prior and
Unity?

The voices blended all around him. “Sure!” “’Course!” “Watched what you’ve done for years!” “You’re a hero!” “We’ve got plans for you!”

“What about the wilds, Brother?” asked Violet or Orange.

“Wilds?” Then Vaun remembered, and looked around. The sunshine seemed brighter than it had before, the sea wind sweeter, the hills in the background greener. Blade and Feirn were standing on the tarmac, she clinging very tightly to him, her cheek pressed against his chest; he with one arm around her. She looked horrified; his face was as unreadable as concrete.

Vaun thought,
What on Ult can I do with them?

Then he realized that decisions were no longer his to make. What on Ult can
we
do with them?

He glanced at his brothers and saw a puzzled frown on Violet’s face. Then Green caught it…and Orange…

They didn’t know why he was in any doubt.

“We’ll have to kill them, of course,” he said.

Feirn screamed, “
Vaun!
”

“Could give them to the pepods?” young Tan suggested, as if he had just had a brilliant idea.

“That would still leave a couple of corpses,” Green said, but he was clearly relieved that Vaun had admitted the obvious.

“Vaun!” Feirn shouted. “You don’t mean that!” Her face was ashen-pale. She turned to look up at Blade, and hugged him tighter. “He’s not serious, is he?”

Blade did not even look down. He continued to stare bleakly at Admiral Vaun, his lifelong hero. Blade knew the answer.

Vaun did mean it.

If he supported the Brotherhood, then he must guard the secret of the hive, meaning that those two must not leave Kohab alive. If he was still on the other side—and at the moment he was too shocked to know where his loyalty lay—then he must pretend not to be. Apparently the brethren would accept him as one of them, but he must play the part. The two randoms must pay the price. His own life was in danger, too.

Either way, he had no choice.

“They’ll have to die,” he said. “But when and how, I’m not sure. Let’s lock ’em up somewhere and decide later, okay?”

“There’s a storeroom in the air plant with a lock on it,” Tan remarked, ever helpful.

“Fine. What did you all mean about having plans for me?”

The boys’ voices jumbled all around him. “What you can do to help, of course.” “What you can do for us.” “To help the hive when Armageddon comes.” “Your part in Die Day.”

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.

T
HE 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.