The Forever Hero (14 page)

Gerswin hefted the double-ended knife, cradled it, and flipped it from hand to hand. Not at all like the jagged blade he had carried as a devilkid, or the sterile, straight survival knife in his flight boot sheath.

He looked up from the knife to the target—a plastic square set at man height on a hummock of clay five meters away. The plastic presented roughly the same resistance as an unarmored man.

“Here goes,” he muttered to himself.

The first cast missed the square entirely.

The second knife wobbled, but hit the plastic and dropped onto the clay beneath the target.

The third hit the plastic square at an angle and skittered off.

Gerswin sighed and marched forward to reclaim the three knives, casting a sideways look at the clouds gathering over the plains. The afternoon's pale sunlight had been the first in days, and, as usual, had not lasted more than a few hours.

He leaned down to get the first knife.

From what he had studied of the meteorological data, the only places where there was more sunlight than cloud cover was over open ocean. No one could explain to him the reason for the phenomenon, at least not in terms simple enough to be sure it wasn't scientific doubletalk.

He put the first two knives in the hidden belt sheath and picked up the third.

The wind began to whine. Soon, if the darkness roaring in from the east were any sign, it would begin to whistle as the temperature again dropped toward freezing.

With the one knife in hand, he retreated to the one spot he had measured out and scratched in the bare clay.

Feel the knife; sense the balance; and…release!

And miss.

“Hades!”

Gerswin took the second knife and let it fly with full force.

The twinge in his left hand brought him up short. He realized he had gripped the double-edged blade far too tightly. A slash ran across the base of his thumb, scarcely more than skin deep, but blood welled out.

He squeezed the edge closed with the fingers of the same hand, then let the cut bleed as he threw the third knife with his right hand.

All three had struck the target, but none had stuck.

Gerswin studied the target before starting after the knives.

The gathering clouds choked off the last scattered beams from the sun, and the first gust of wind ruffled his tight-curled blond hair. Absently, he started to push the hair off his forehead before he realized that it was too short to get in the way, as it had been for nearly ten years.

He reclaimed the three knives once more and straightened the target with his right hand. He walked back to his mark, juggling the unsheathed knife in his right hand. He intended to be equally proficient with either hand.

“Right now, it's equally inaccurate,” he mumbled.

His next cast bounced off the plastic, but the second did not. Gerswin tried to reclaim the feeling of the second with the third. He did, and two heavy knives remained solidly within the plastic as he walked up to reclaim all three.

Four steps to the target in the whine of the wind. Reclaim the blades and straighten the target. Four steps back to the mark.

Three more throws.

Reclaim the knives.

Throw again.

Reclaim.

Throw.

Reclaim.

Throw.

He kept up the pattern until it was automatic.

When he finally quit, not because of darkness, though most would have had to, two out of three casts were sticking within the target, either right- or left-handed. He quit because the increasing wind gusts
kept knocking over the target, not because the ice rain bothered him, light tunic or not, nor because of the nagging twinge in his thumb.

The bleeding had stopped, but streaks of rain-diluted blood decorated his trousers as he headed first to stow the knives in his quarters and then to the medical section. He did not intend to wear the knives until he was one hundred percent accurate with them within their range.

With practice every day, within weeks he would have that skill. After that…another weapon. But first, the knives, for they could be used anywhere.

Anywhere in the Empire and on Old Earth.

The flitter dropped from the clouded sky toward the plateau and its grasses and grubushes. Gerswin watched the readouts in the heads-up display as he eased the flitter down into the clearing nearest the site he hoped was there.

From the topography maps, he had narrowed the search to six plateaus corresponding to his memories. This was the fifth he had actually investigated. His searches of the first four had failed to disclose any indication of the brick stairwell, the garden plots, and the hidden trail he remembered.

The computer and the maps had been better in some ways than his memories. The pilot smiled wryly at the thought. In two of the first four sites he had discovered evidence of recent habitation. In the future he would look into recruiting possibilities, assuming those whom his descent had frightened away were indeed devilkid types.

As the flitter settled, Gerswin let more and more weight drop onto the skids, leaving power on the rotors until he was certain that the flitter was solidly grounded on the mesa top. Next came the blade retraction and storage. Before shutting down the fans, he checked both the EDI and heat scanners. Both showed negative.

He shook his head. A devilkid could be waiting in a below-grade gully, or a buried and fully charged laser pack could have been sitting right in front of the flitter, and neither detector would have shown a thing. They weren't designed for terrain work.

Much of the Service's equipment wasn't designed for Old Earth usage.

After half-vaulting, half-climbing from the cockpit, he touched the closure plates and tapped in a lock combination. While it wouldn't stop a trooper with a laser, the flitter was secure against anything less, and Gerswin didn't expect to meet the equivalent of an Imperial Marine marching through the grubushes in the chill and steady wind of the gray fall morning.

He sighted against the hills to the west, checking his orientation. If he were right, then the hidden stairs he hoped to find were nearly a kay to the west, just above a sharp drop-off to the more sheltered valley beneath.

Light as his steps were, each one crisped slightly on the heavy sand that surrounded the flitter. His breath, slow and even, formed a trailing plume behind him as he slipped toward the shoulder-high grubushes a hundred meters westward.

He sniffed the air gently, trying to detect a scent that might have been there once, a faint odor part soap, part perfume. All he could smell was the bitter-clean odor of the grubushes, nearly uncontaminated this far above the plains and near the mountains. Only a single line of foothills remained between the mesa and the granite peaks that divided the continent.

The air was cold and, outside of the grubushes and the faintest scent of landpoison carried from the plains by the east wind, clean. No rat scent, nor the lingering odor of coyote or kill—the smell was right.

His right hand brushed his waistband, under which was the double-ended sheath with the twin throwing knives, and touched the butt of the stunner. While he had practiced with the knives to the point where his accuracy was nearly one hundred percent on stationary targets, targets were only targets, and the stunner might be more reliable. For now, anyway.

Glancing at the sky, he gauged from the thinning of the clouds whether there might be some sunlight later in the morning. He shook his head, although he could sense some warmth on his back. The thin jacket he wore over his flight clothes was enough to break the wind, and that was all he really needed. Imperial officers born on New Augusta or other warmer planets avoided the outside whenever possible, wearing the double-layered winter uniforms and parkas whenever they were exposed to the cutting winds of Old Earth.

As Gerswin neared the area he intended to search more closely he stopped to check the grubushes, looking at the waxy berries and
branches for some sign of harvesting. He found none, not even any sign of the mountain mice that lived on little besides the berries, or so he recalled.

He straightened and surveyed the western end of the mesa that lay before him, checking the hills to firm up his bearings. Turning more toward the north, he headed for the unseen drop-off he knew lay ahead.

Suddenly he stopped, cocked his head, and looked at the all-too-even notch between the two hills to the west and at the dark wedge of gloom behind the notch. He compared that gray to the indistinct gray of the clouds and the line of gray leading to the notch.

“The road of the old ones…” he murmured, not sure where he had heard the phrase, but knowing that he had, somewhere, sometime.

His eyes traveled the small open sand and clay space around him, checking the bushes, trying to find a pattern, any pattern at all. Finally, he settled on a slightly wider spacing between two grubushes. He eased through what seemed almost a lane toward the western edge of the mesa, a path that became increasingly rocky as his steps closed the gap between himself and the nothingness that waited as the surrounding bushes became shorter and less closely spaced.

Again, he stopped, not for a conscious reason, but because he felt he should, and studied the area around him.

To his right, his eyes settled on an irregular heap of stones, seemingly random, but too regular and too high to have been an accident of geology.

He took one step and paused, sniffed the air. He found nothing but the eastern plains odor of landpoison and the cleaner and nearer scent of grubush.

He took another step, another pause, another sniff.

Finally, he took a deep breath and a quick dozen steps until he stood before the tumbling wall fragment that failed to reach his waist.

It had been higher, he recalled, but, then, he had been shorter, and it had been years earlier. How many he never knew, for time had no meaning to a devilkid on the run, forced from the only home he knew by shambletowners with torches, running and hiding, burying himself beneath grubushes in the pouring rain that had hidden the killers' approach.

He bit his lower lip and studied the rough wall of hewn red rock. At last, he looked over the edge and down the steps—to find them half-covered with drifting sand.

The wooden cover he remembered was gone, and only the nitches in one line of stones supported that memory.

With a sigh, he stepped over the stones, tapped them to insure they were solid. None moved with the taps, nor even with a push, and he eased himself down into the dimness.

After twenty rock-hewn steps and a half-turn west, he was past the drifted sand and in the tunnel where he could stand, just barely. A faint hint of grubush oil tickled the edge of his senses. Memory, or a residue of what had been?

Another fifteen steps and another turn, this time to the south, took him into the main room.

The embrasure and now-uncovered window slits filled the space with more than enough light. Two piles of leather fragments and dust sat across from each other in the southwest corner, the dust spilling across the corner of the permanent clay brick table whose surface was covered with glazed tiles. Each handmade tile had a slightly different design, but all bore a sun/cloud motif.

Gerswin swallowed and turned to the other outside corner, where a second waist-high clay brick counter topped with the crude fired tiles stood. Beside it was what could only have been a ceramic oven, equipped with a chimney and handmade clay piping. One section of the pipe, where it entered the brick wall, had broken apart, and the fragments were scattered across the golden brown floor tiles.

Outside of the centimeters-thick dust and the two piles of leather fragments, nothing perishable remained in the room.

He looked up at the ceiling—a good half-meter above his head. Faint grease-smoke lines traced themselves across the smooth surface, smoke lines he did not remember.

His feet took him to the room that opened northward off the main room, but with one glance he turned away.

The drifted dust outlines of two skeletons on a thicker pallet of dust were all that inhabited the room.

He did not enter the small room next to his parents' room, but did dart a look at the dusty outline that had been his pallet.

The one remaining space was the south room, the one which had looked out over the canyon. Gerswin found himself standing there.

The single window gaped open, the hide covering long since gone, above the flat tile-topped brick expanse where his father had done so many strange things.

Gerswin nodded, more to reassure himself than anything else.

He turned his palms up, looked at his hands, a young man's hands, then at the dust on the floor, and finally at the alcove in the narrow corner behind the archway, the alcove that contained the air duct that a small boy had crawled up so many years earlier.

How many years earlier? How many?

For a time he studied his hands, then stared out the unglazed window at nothing.

He looked once more at the dust on the floor tiles, sniffed again the total emptiness, and turned back toward the tunnel to the mesa top. He did not need to take the other stairway, the one that had led down to the spring, the one through which the shambletowners had poured one distant night, slings and spears in hand, with their rat grease torches flaring.

As he entered the tunnel leading upward, he looked at his hands still yet again. He shook his head to clear his vision.

Later, at the top step, he paused, but turned away and did not look back, and stared instead at the clouds overhead, which reminded him of night, not morning.

The clouds were thicker than when he had brought the flitter down, as if they had decided against allowing the sunshine to break through. And the wind was stronger, the chill more pronounced, as the click of ice droplets began to pelt his jacket and burn his face.

Gerswin glanced up from the Operations oversight console. Captain Altura, the Imperial auditor, was leaving Major Matsuko's office. She did not appear particularly pleased.

Her lips were set even more tightly than when Gerswin had met her at the hangar-bunker right after the shuttle had dropped her three days earlier. The captain's fists were half-clenched as she marched out toward the tunnel to the number one hangar-bunker.

“Opswatch, this is Outrider three. Interrogative permission to lift.”

Ferinya, the duty controller, looked at Gerswin. His eyebrows raised questioningly. “Permission to lift?”

“Why not? Met status is clear now. Squall line coming in.”

“Outrider three. Cleared to lift. Interrogative destination and fuel status.”

“Artifact survey run. Plan on file. Estimate air time at two plus stans. Fuel status is plus four.”

“Stet. Understand survey run for plus two. Fuel status four.”

“Stet. Outrider three lifting.”

Ferinya turned to Gerswin. “Do you know what that was all about, Lieutenant? She already had clearance.”

Gerswin shrugged. “No. No passengers or cargo on the schedule.”

“What was what all about?”

Lers Kardias stood by the console, his stubby fingers tapping on the hard console top.

“Lieutenant Starkadny requested clearance to lift twice. No explanation,” explained Gerswin.

“Oh…That is funny.” Junior Lieutenant Kardias shook his head. “You ready to be relieved, ser?”

“More than ready.”

“You stand relieved.”

“I stand relieved, and you have it.”

Gerswin picked up the light pen from the console and slipped it into the arm pocket of his flight suit. “Good luck, Lers. There's a squall line coming in.”

“Thanks.”

“Which of you was responsible for sending that flitter off without me?” The chill voice of the Imperial auditor stopped Gerswin in his tracks.

He turned back to face both the console and Captain Altura. Lieutenant Kardias had swiveled in the chair, but had not stood.

“I was, Captain,” answered Gerswin.

“Could you explain why?”

“First, no passengers listed. No cargo either. Second, pilot requested clearance. Third, no one notified Opswatch that you were to be included.”

The sandy-haired captain said nothing, but clamped her lips together until they were nearly white.

Gerswin waited a moment, then asked, “Is there anything I could do, Captain?”

He caught the “now what have you said?” look from Lers Kardias as Captain Altura glared at him.

“Mister Senior Lieutenant, you have done quite enough for the moment. Anything else would only compound that.”

Gerswin laughed—a single harsh bark.

“Ms. Captain, I followed the order book. I would have gladly delayed the flitter if anyone had asked me.”

“I told the pilot.”

“On every Imperial base, schedules and clearances are controlled by Operations. Bases are not ships, Captain.” He paused. “Would you like a tour of the maintenance facilities?”

“I've seen them. The conditions and status are better on Charon.”

“Charon's an easier planet.”

“Than Old Earth?”

Gerswin nodded. “I'll show you. Come on with me.”

“Show me what?”

“Not what. Why.”

“Why what?”

Gerswin had already turned away, as if to lead the captain, his quick steps heading toward the southwest base exit.

The captain looked at Lieutenant Kardias, then at Gerswin's back, before, with a shrug, she followed the senior lieutenant.

At the inner portal of the exit he turned to wait for her.

“Your home system?”

She clamped her lips shut tightly, then released them.

“New Augusta.”

He nodded and stabbed the portal release. Once in the small room between the inner and outer portals, he walked over to the line of lockers. He checked one, then another, rummaging through several until he located a double-lined jacket with thermal gloves.

“You'll need this.”

“It's summer.”

“You'll need it. Ice rain.”

“Hail, you mean?”

Gerswin shook his head in disagreement and offered the jacket to the captain, who donned it but stuffed the gloves into the side pockets and did not seal them.

As the outer portal opened and the two stepped through, a gust of wind from the east, sweeping along the edge of the berm, caught the captain unaware, knocking her into the lieutenant.

Gerswin steadied the woman with his left hand, submerged a grin, and continued toward the point where the ridgeline began to slope away toward the south.

“Watch the clouds.”

Captain Altura said nothing, looked at the bare clay interspersed with grassy humps. Finally, she took his advice and raised her eyes to the roiling and speeding mass of varied gray that hurtled toward the mountains in the distance to her right.

Gerswin watched her, not the clouds, as the winds quickly turned
her pale cheeks reddish with the cold, and fluttered her short and sandy hair with each gust above the steady chill breeze that whipped around them.

The darker cloud that presaged ice rain was nearly overhead before the droplets began to sound against their clothing and the hard clay.

Click! Click! Click, click, click!

The captain held one in her bare right hand. So cold was the droplet that it did not begin to melt for several moments.

“Why don't you put on the gloves?”

“I might, thank you.”

As she struggled with the two gloves too large for her long-fingered but narrow hands, Gerswin glanced at the clouds. Not quite dark enough for a landspout, but the wind velocity would continue to rise and the temperature to drop.

As she finished donning the gloves and looked back at the darkening clouds, Gerswin whistled the first three notes of a tune, the one he thought of as a lament for Old Earth.

The melody had come to him after he'd seen the black Gates to Hades. With the auditor's impatience, the chill, and his own wondering what he was even doing trying to explain Old Earth to a number-cruncher, the first three notes had slipped out before he cut off the melody.

“What sort of instrument was that?”

“What?”

“That you were playing.” Captain Altura was still adjusting the too-large gloves, trying to make them fit and to keep them from falling off her hands.

“No instrument. Sometimes I whistle.” Gerswin gestured, as if to change the subject. “Warm day. Wind is still lighter than normal, only about twenty kays here.”

“What's normal?”

“Here? Around thirty. Hundred's not uncommon. Had two hundred a couple of times. Once or twice we lost the measuring tubes. Spout threw a two-ton chunk of rock through the number four hangar-bunker door one time.”

“I don't believe that.”

Gerswin shrugged. Why bother? “Check the logs. About two years ago.”

He gazed out to the southeast, still lighter than due east, then back to his left, toward the main body of the ice storm.

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Why is everyone so prickly here? I ask Matsuko to justify some costs, and he throws a databloc listing of logs and damage reports at me and tells me to search out anything that would contradict the official reports. He practically dared me to question him.”

Gerswin frowned, glanced down at the damp clay, and said nothing.

“Lieutenant?”

Gerswin shrugged again. “What can I say? Doesn't sound like him. He's punctual, proper. Polite.”

It was the captain's turn to look down at the clay underfoot, to scuff at a tuft of purpled grass.

“I overstated the case. He was proper, very proper. I questioned, and he politely referred me to the databloc containing every single listing that supported every single item.”

Gerswin looked at her oval face and strong nose, at the scattered freckles that seemed blanched in the gloom, and raised his eyebrows.

“Don't you understand? He didn't explain. He didn't even take the time to show me an ice storm. In effect, he said, ‘Waste your own time. Don't waste mine.'”

“He's like that.”

“But everyone is like that here. At least, that's how it seems. Even when you want to explain, you don't. You just say ‘Follow me' and head off into a storm. A few sentences about how cold it is, and you think that explains something.”

Gerswin sighed, scuffed the clay with his right foot.

“I'll try to put it in perspective. Old Earth is something you experience. You don't explain it. How could you? People think that it's just like the his-tapes, except nothing will grow, and some fertilizer and a little technology sprinkled over the clay will do it.

“How can you explain landspouts that rip the tops off hills, that turn all-weather flitters into crushed metal in microseconds? You try, and someone says that it's just a tornado. But it's not. There were ten million people within three hundred kays of here right before the collapse. Maybe three hundred shambletowners and a couple dozen devilkids left. Not a single building or a ruin more than a meter high left standing. Place flattened by the spouts, except in one or two valleys.

“You try to tell someone, and they say that it was just the collapse. You stand here, and you don't believe me when I say it's summer. Winter here…You think it's cold on the poles of Charon? Winter ice
rain will sand off three mills of metal from a flitter in a single flight on the exposed side, and that's just on ground or stationary time.”

Gerswin looked over at the captain, who did not raise her eyes from the ground.

“Right now, more than twenty percent of the pilots sent here are casualties. Those who make it through become the best in the Service, and you can check their records if you doubt it. That's the young ones. Older pilots avoid flying around here. Better for them and us.

“Get a good dozen cases of toxic shock every year, just from the hot spots no one has found. But it's not glamorous, like scout duty or combat.

“The rain's so acidic that outside uniforms don't last a tour, and you should know what replacement costs mean to a junior officer.

“But that's the story no one tells. How could anyone on New Augusta believe that Man's home planet is dangerous to Man's existence?”

Gerswin laughed once, and the bitterness echoed against the whistle of the rising wind.

“Why are you here?” Her voice was nearly lost in the wind, so softly had she spoken.

“Another question. Most people here believe there's something to save. Something that should be saved.”

“I think that's what you believe. This is nowhere. Oh, yes, it's Old Earth, and the home of Man. But everyone here is either local, a problem child, or on a preretirement tour.

“Can't you see it, Lieutenant? The great crusade to save the home planet was over before it began.”

“Is it? Just got three arcdozers on the ship that brought you. Decon teams have cleaned up most of the toxic hot spots around the headwaters of the two nearest rivers on this side of the continental divide. Starting on the big one now. Years before the results come in, but it's a start.”

“Nobody on New Augusta really cares. The new Emperor…”

“Long as they keep funding, we'll keep plodding.”

“You're just like Major Matsuko.”

Gerswin shook his head, then noticed the whiteness at the tip of her ears.

“Time to go in. Frostbite.”

“We haven't been out that long. And you only wore your uniform.”

“That's me. Not you. Face a bit numb? Ears?”

“Yes, but—”

“Inside.” He took her left arm and firmly guided her back to the portal.

Once inside, he helped her take off the heavy, ice-encrusted jacket and placed the jacket and gloves in the heated equipment locker.

The Imperial auditor half-shivered, half-shook herself. “Is there any place to sit down and relax, get a cup of cafe or liftea?”

“J.O.'s lounge, off the mess.”

“That sounds fine. Is it warm?”

“Same as anywhere else.”

He tapped the inner portal release, and they stepped through, Gerswin leading the way up the tunnel until it intersected the outer perimeter corridor. Gerswin turned right, quick steps clicking on the smooth floor.

Neither said a word until Gerswin stopped at the lounge portal and touched the access plate.

“After you, Captain.”

“Dara, please.”

Instead of replying, he inclined his head momentarily as if posing himself a question. He did not answer the unthought question, but followed her through.

He went straight to the sideboard.

“Cafe?”

“Liftea.”

He poured two and set both mugs on the narrow table where Dara sat. He seated himself across from her.

“You're from where?”

“Here. Local. First, last, and only, so far. Except for some of the kids from the civilian techs on the farm.”

“The farm?”

“That's what they call the research center south of here.”

She put a forefinger to her chin, then dropped it as a furrow appeared momentarily in her forehead.

“Wasn't there a report—”

“—about the training and education of an Old Earth native. Yes. There was. I was.
Education Review
, New Augusta, Volume 87, number three, if you want to look it up. End of subject.”

The auditor closed her mouth and studied his face. Gerswin looked at the sideboard and the two steaming pots—one for cafe, one for liftea.

“Oh…I think I understand. Do you talk about your impressions of the Empire?”

“Sometimes.”

“What about Old Earth? Not what's happened in the Service, but your own feelings.”

“Home. Like to see her restored. Don't know if it can be done. Like to see it.”