The Forever Hero (7 page)

He sipped at a glass of water, ignoring the metallic tang that was unnoticeable to anyone else.

Tammilan walked in, smiling, between two junior navigators, both lieutenants, saw Gerswin, and grinned. Both eyebrows went up, and she shook her head in mock-disapproval.

In spite of his glumness, Gerswin returned the smile.

“Friend?”

“Roommate. In name only.”

“You seem down.”

“Private thoughts?” asked Gerswin.

“All right. Provided it's nothing illegal, or that I would be forced to enter on your record.”

“Nothing like that.” Gerswin shook his head. “No. I just don't understand. From all the backgrounders, the comm freqs, everything I can pick up, the Newparran Christers control the ships, or most of them, and most of the government. But they're the ones sending patrollers to blast the quarantine squadron. Then we sear off two moons to seal off the Istvennists, who haven't threatened us. There must be a reason, but I can't figure what.”

The major packed in another three mouthfuls before answering. While she was solid, she didn't seem overweight, and he couldn't believe how she kept that way with her food intake.

“Gerswin, what do you know about the Christers? Or the Istvennists? Or Newparra?”

“Not much beyond the background and the comparative religions course at the Academy. Christers are fundamentalist believers in a single god. Istvennists believe in their own god above all others, but within a context of total personal religious freedom.”

“Carry those trends to their logical extreme, and think about it. That would explain the way the Empire has had to act.” She drained half a glass of a purple punch in a single gulp. “Christers believe they are the only true believers of the only true God. They are fanatical achievers in anything and everything, and they usually end up in disproportionate numbers in government and business. Both their government and their businesses are honest, but cruelly so, and without much compassion. Less than twenty percent of Newparra is Christer, but they control the government. They passed a law to require religious prayers in all institutions of learning and another law to forbid voluntary euthanasia—in which the Istvennists deeply believe as a matter of personal choice. Then they blocked genetic improvements as unnatural, despite the fact that the majority of Istvennists come from a weak genetic background.

“I won't go into a more detailed blow by blow, because I don't know all the details, but the upshot was that the Istvennists called for elections to throw the Christers out of government, and the Christers refused to leave and seized the government and control of the major weapons systems of the small military. The Christers saw it coming and managed to smuggle in some high tech equipment before the Empire quarantined the system, and Christers from all over the galaxy are dying to get help to their brethren here.

The Christers can't win over the long run without outside help because the numbers are against them. The Istvennists claim they should have outside aid to shorten the inevitable result and reduce the loss of life, and, besides, the Christers cheated on the quarantine.

“Imperial policy is simple. This is a local system matter and will stay that way. You have a revolt, and the locals have to settle it themselves. Our job is to make sure no one leaves the system, and no one enters, except on an Imperial warship. Period. When a government emerges that has total local control, we leave.”

“That why the captain sealed off the moons?”

“She didn't have much choice, especially once the Christers blew the
Saladin
. Not enough ships to cover the system, and it would take too long to get back and forth between the outer and inner planets.”

“But what happens if they fight forever?”

“Has happened before,” mumbled the major as she finished another huge mouthful. “Will happen again. But local problems have to stay local, and local killings have to stay localized. If the people of a system can't get along together, then why should we let them spread the disagreements?”

“What about refugees? People unjustly oppressed?”

“Two problems. First, half the so-called refugees are people who don't get along in the system and don't have the guts to change it. Either that or they lost out because they couldn't change and they want to run out with their creds and try somewhere else. The other half are various bad apples.”

“What about real victims?”

The major snorted. “Victims? Real victims don't have access to a jumpship or to the money to pay passage out-system. They get hurt no matter what happens. But if you force a system to deal with its problems, over time, in most cases, the average person gets hurt less. Not always true, but you don't make policy on exceptions.”

Gerswin took a bite from the rubbery yellow fruit. It tasted better than ripe yucca, but not much. He chewed slowly.

The major stood and headed for the serving table and seconds. Gerswin studied the food before him, mostly still uneaten. She made it sound so simple, as if the hellburners were just another tool, as if the ten thousand people trapped under the molten rock and airless surface of Gyros and Janus had personally created the rebellion.

Had they?

He shook his head. So much he needed to learn. So much.

He tried a bite of the bland meat as the major plowed back to the table with another full tray.

The black and silver of the I.S.S. officer's uniform merged with the long shadows and the lingering twilight of New Colora, even on the lower terrace of the Officers' Club.

A single officer sat at a small table in the walled corner farthest from the circular stone staircase that led to the upper level, a table that seemed to draw the shadows around it like a blanket.

Gerswin leaned back in the padded plasteel chair and let his shoulders rest against the stone wall behind him, let his eyes range out over the sloping lawn beyond the waist-high sitting wall on the far side of the circular table for two.

Now that his flitter and shuttle training was over, all he had to do was wait for the
Churchill
, due in less than two standard weeks.

He began to whistle, creating another tune as the double notes
whispered out onto the vacant terrace and drifted downhill toward the training fields out beyond the manicured greenery of the club grounds.

The club was nearly empty, as it had been for the last half month, when the previous training cycle had been completed. Since half of the flitter pilots were techs, and weren't commissioned, and the latest officer class had yet to arrive, and the assault squadron normally based on New Colora, the Fifteenth, had just left for deployment with the Third Fleet, only a handful of officers were left to rattle around the club.

Within days, the Twelfth would be arriving for refresher training and regrouping. The next Academy class's pilot trainees would soon follow.

For now the club was empty, except for the cadre, the high-ranking staff officers, and a few transients, and special assignees, like Gerswin.

Gerswin broke off his soft whistling as the waiter approached.

“Another, ser?” The orderly's neutral tone nonetheless expressed concern about Gerswin's less than formal position, but he did not lean forward.

“No. Thank you. Not now.”

He stared across the nonreflecting polished surface of the table, out over the stone sitting wall, and toward the low purple of the distant hills. In full daylight they were red-purple, not surprisingly, since most of the native growth had at least a trace of red in it. Only the mutated home grass had green or blue in it.

Gerswin laughed, a short bark, soft for all its harshness.

His home had been the original source of the blue green grass, but Old Earth looked more like New Colora than it did like the his-tapes showed or than New Augusta, supposedly the most Old Earthlike of the colonized planets that had become, first, the Federated Worlds, and then, the Empire.

“That will change. Right? You're going to make it change. Right, Gerswin? Right, devilkid going home?”

He stared at the empty beaker and set it precisely in the center of the table.

Once more, he leaned back in the chair, aware how his posture irritated the always proper orderlies of the club. He began another song, with the off-multitoned whistle that no one else had ever seemed able to imitate.

This one—he'd composed the basic melody years ago, not long after he'd been picked up by the
Torquina
. While he'd elaborated it
over the years, the sense of loss, the lack of identity, were more refined, a shade understated, but still the same basic theme. His theme, and it always would be.

Waiting to go home, he wondered if he ever could, as the notes spilled from his lips and whispered their clear wistfulness into the darkening twilight:

As he finished, he leaned forward and let the front legs of his chair touch the smoothed stone of the terrace. By now, the drier cool of the true evening was arriving on the hill breeze, with the scent of raisha. The long shadows had merged with the forerunner of night.

“Beautiful,” a soft voice said.

He started, and looked to his left.

Sitting on the stone wall, her skirted legs hanging over the outside edge and over the grass a meter beneath her feet, the woman was half-turned and looking at him.

With an athletic motion she lifted her legs and turned so that she was still sitting on the wall, but facing him directly.

“You must be Lieutenant Gerswin.”

With the terrace lights not on, and the last glimmer of twilight fading behind her, it took a moment for Gerswin to focus on the dimness of her face.

He stood.

“Would you care to join me?” He gestured to the empty chair, but did not move.

“I'm comfortable right here, and that might be best.”

Her voice was young, but husky, and he judged from her profile, as she turned her head toward the staircase that led to the upper terrace, that she was little more than a girl.

In his loneliness, he had hoped for a woman. But she had heard the melody.

“As you wish,” he answered, inhaling slightly as he reseated himself, not moving toward her. Her scent indicated she was a woman, but, as he had guessed from her profile, young. Obviously, the daughter of an officer, a very senior one. Few officers pulled accompanied tours anywhere.

“Would you please do another?”

Gerswin surveyed the terrace. Even the orderlies were gone. The girl had a pleasant voice, and the request was neither patronizing nor wheedling.

“Anything special?”

“Whatever pleases you.”

He began to whistle softly, so low that no one more than a few me
ters away could have heard him, a greatly amended version of an old ballad he had learned at the prep school.

He recalled some of the words, and they flitted through his mind, though he could not, nor did he wish, to sing them.

When he halted at the end, there was silence. For an instant, he thought she had gone.

“Are your songs always so sad?”

“No. Feeling down tonight. I just whistle what I feel. Not sophisticated enough to lie in my songs.” He frowned. “How did you know who I was?”

“You whistle, and you're from Old Earth. There's only one pilot with that combination, isn't there?”

Gerswin laughed, a bark again, but softer yet, and forgiving. He had his night-sight now that the twilight was gone and the terrace lights remained out. He studied the girl.

Short dark hair, cut just below her ears, large eyes, broad forehead, small ears, and a jaw that stopped just short of being square. Smallish, more handsome than pretty, but she smelled good and had a lovely voice, Gerswin decided, both qualities as important, to him, as mere looks.

Too bad she was the young dependent of some flight commander or marshal. Touch her, and he'd end up on some isolated station, or suicide assignment, if not planted under a shambletown.

“Your name?”

“Oh…I'm…Caroljoy.”

“Carol Joy.”

“No…Caroljoy.” She firmly made the name one word.

“Sorry.”

He looked away from her and into the western darkness.

“Lieutenant? Are you really from Old Home?”

Gerswin did not look away from the silhouette of the distant hills, where no light marred the blackness.

“I suppose so. That's what they tell me.”

She let the silence be, and waited.

At last, he spoke.

“I am from Old Earth. That is what those who picked me up have told me. The place I knew does not resemble the Terra of the old tapes and stories. You cannot see into the sky beyond the clouds. The
grass is purpled, what grass there is, and the trees are few, and only in the sheltered hills. There are some ruins, but most have been leveled. The people…some still remain, mostly in the shambletowns. And the others, the devilkids, hold the high plains, and, in turn, are hunted by the shambletowners. When I was not dodging the landspouts, or the ice rains, or the rivers of death, I was dodging the shambletowners and their slings.

“Sometimes that is a dream, only a dream, and sometimes this is.”

From the stillness, her voice came back, husky soft now. “Do you want to go back?”

“Sometimes…but there I have to go, first, to become what I am…. To do what must be done….”

“To remain a dreamer after all you have seen…” Her voice trailed off.

He laughed, a chuckle that was not.

“You sound older when you laugh.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“I must be going.”

“Good night, Caroljoy.”

“Good night, Lieutenant.”

Gerswin watched her slip off the stone wall and onto the grass. His eyes followed her as she circled the pines and took the sheltered path that would lead her back to the side entrance to the club.

He knew the ladies' lounge was off that entrance, and wondered if her father or mother, whoever the senior officer she belonged to was, had suspected where she was.

Caroljoy—a pretty name. He had enjoyed her presence, and her voice.

He glanced down at the empty beaker once again. Should he wait for the orderly? Should he go back to the main bar for a refill? Was he really that thirsty?

There were sure to be the few regulars there, and all would fall silent once he walked in, except for a few conversations in secluded booths. Not one of the handful of junior officers would ever meet his eyes. Few enough had even through the Academy years.

He shook his head and eased himself out of the chair, leaving the beaker on the table.

As he did, as if the slight scraping of his movements had been a signal, the terrace lights went on, destroying the welcome shadow of the night.

Gerswin had to blink hard, squinting his eyes tightly against what seemed glaring floodlights, although he knew that the lighting would
have been regarded as dim by most. His eyes were still unaccustomed to abrupt shifts in light intensity.

He held himself erect, refusing to stagger and admit any weakness, as his eyes adjusted and as he continued across the terrace toward the walk away from the club and toward his temporary quarters. He had already tabbed the drinks, the simple juices he had drunk.

For the time, and until he embarked on the
Churchill
, he was billeted in the farthest of the transient officers' quarters from the club, and he was the only one in his entire wing. While he enjoyed the isolation, he doubted that his room assignment was for his personal convenience.

The stone walks were dimly and indirectly lit, for which his eyes were grateful, and he saw no one as he walked the two hundred meters plus toward his billet. On his left were empty rooms, windows blanked and reflecting the glow of the walk lights, and on his right, sloping downhill, was the Terran grass that was no longer native to Old Earth.

From his own quarters a small glow lamp beckoned, and the old style door creaked as he opened it.

The room was empty, as always.

After slipping out of the still-unfamiliar officer's uniform, he stood in the small fresher unit to wash up. Then he pulled a robe around himself and turned to the standard planetside officer's bed. Back came the uniform coverlet, and he piled up two pillows before turning off the lights and stretching out in the darkness.

He had rearranged the furniture in order to be able to view the greens of the valley below from the bed, since the two straight-backed chairs were less than comfortable for any extended period.

Downslope, as his eyes adjusted, he could pick out the faintly luminescent shapes of the glowbirds as they began to dive for the emerging nightworms.

Every so often he could hear the hum of an electrobike making its way up or down the gentle slope that led up to the officers' quarters from the skitter fields and the training areas. The trainee barracks were shielded by an artificial berm, but he could pick out the glow above the darkness of the man-made hills that concealed them.

New Colora was a quiet planet, not that Gerswin minded that, but the stillness grated on some. There was always background music in the club, sometimes loud enough to be heard from his room.

Gerswin's eyes narrowed. Something, someone, had slipped across the corner of his vision. He sat up and put his feet on the floor,
more puzzled than alarmed, as he checked the time. Almost local midnight.

He hadn't realized so much time had passed since he'd gotten back to his small billet.

Tap. Tap
.

Gerswin sniffed the air automatically and stood, his bare feet welcoming the chill of the floor tiles.

Tap. Tap
.

He had seen someone, and that someone was at his door. The tap was gentle, almost delicate, but he did not know any woman, not since Marcella had left with the rest of the Fifteenth. And she'd been a friend, not a lover.

He stood beside the door, ready for anything, he hoped, and opened it.

His mouth dropped.

“Not a word, Lieutenant.”

She slipped past him and into the darkened room. When he did not move, she turned, took the edge of the door from his hand and closed it quietly.

A rustling sound followed, and he found her hands unloosening his robe, circling him, and drawing him to her.

“Why…?”

“Don't ask…my choice….” And her mouth left no room for words.

He stood, locked against her, returning the warmth of the kiss she had given, his ears pricked for the sound of footsteps, for an outraged parent, a marshal's duty officer. But only silence filled the air outside, silence and the distant murmuring of the birds hunting nightworms.

As that lingering kiss ended, as the outward silence stretched out and outward, he bent and gently, oh, so gently laid her upon the narrow bed, and folded himself into her scent, her warmth, and the huskiness of her murmurings.

He could not have spoken, had he wished to do so, nor would the woman have let him, for while her hands were gentle they were insistent, in the timelessness that is forever between two souls.

Later, much later, when she had gone as silently as she had come, Gerswin stared into the darkness, listening, unable to sleep, unable to dream.

Caroljoy Kerwin. The marshal's daughter. An innocent, he was sure, innocent no longer.