The Forever Hero (81 page)

The face in the screen was gray. Whether grayed by the age of the tape or whether the gray reflected the actual physiological age of the man could not be answered.

The tape itself came from a databloc out of the sealed section of the Recorps archives, from a tape that should have been blank, and was not. The exterior had contained neither date nor other identifiable information. Why it had been left remained as much of a mystery as what it contained.

“Commander Lerwin said I ought to scan this and leave it in the back of the archives. Someone should have it.”

The silver-haired man had an unlined skin, and neither beard nor mustache. His voice was so soft, even with maximum gain, that the I.S.S. officer and the base archivist/librarian had to strain to catch his words.

“Already, people are doubting what the captain did, or what we all did. As the land improves and there are fewer spouts, they forget the days of the stone rains and the ice that could strip a flitter bare in minutes. The old crews are scattering, dying, having children, and the captain's not here to hold it together. Soon, no one will remember that there was a captain. They'll doubt the records, or change them.”

The narrator looked down, blinked, and lifted his head to face the viewers.

“But there was a captain. And he brought the earth back to life when it was dying.

“Am I mad? I suppose I am. But a madman has nothing to tell but the truth. Who designed the river plants? The captain. Who commandeered the dozers when the Empire wrote Old Earth out of the Emperor's budget? The captain. Who forced the creation of Recorps?

“I could go on, but already none of this shows in the histories. How could it? Only a devilkid could have carried it off, and none of them knew he was a devilkid, or what a devilkid was.
We
knew—”

The man's face was replaced with a swirl of color, and then by an even gray.

“Is the rest of the tape like that?” asked the lieutenant.

“I've run it through twice. That's the only fragment left intact. It was deliberately scrambled, and probably in a hurry.”

“Why did they leave the beginning?”

“They didn't know they had. The man who made the recording didn't understand the recording limits. On these older blocs, you were supposed to run twenty to thirty centimeters before beginning the recording. This starts with the first millimeter. Everything beyond thirty is blank.”

“But wouldn't a scrambler catch it all anyway?”

“No. The outer layer of the tape expands against the casing. The reason for the procedure is that you can't blank the first lead of a bloc without actually running it.”

“Why would anyone want to erase something like that?” Why indeed, wondered the historian.

“It's a pity,” observed the librarian. “Now that the days of the captain have become a myth, it would be helpful to have firsthand reference material. Amazing how quickly the process took place. Less than four centuries, and no one knows what really happened back then. Would be nice to know.”

“Someone didn't think so.”

The rating shrugged. “What can I say, Lieutenant? I finished training less than a year ago, and it's pretty dull. Most of the reclamation here on Noram is done, and they say the natural processes are taking care of the rest.

“No minerals, and with the Empire almost gone—excuse me—with the Empire taking a less aggressive position, we don't get much interest in the archives these days.

“Everyone else just wants to know if we've gotten any of the Imperial sensitapes. Probably have to close Recorps before too long. Not much Imperial funding, and the export trade is down. Two-thirds of the old quarters are already empty.”

“Can you tell when the erasure was done?” asked the lieutenant, bringing the issue back.

“Could have been done a hundred stans ago, or two. That swirl pattern doesn't happen when you use what we have now, and our stuff's at least fifty years old. Besides, you saw the dust on that rack.”

The officer rose. “You mind if I just browse through the rest of the old blocs?”

“Regs—but who cares. Just don't blow it around.”

She smiled at the young rating.

“Thank you. I won't.”

The librarian scratched his head as he watched the lieutenant head for the master indices for the archives.

He rewound the old cube and closed down the viewing console before he picked it up to carry it back into the storage area. After that, he'd have to go back to the main console, not that there would be much business.

The word was already out that the Imperial ship hadn't brought any sensitapes.

Stark—that would have been the politest word she could have used to describe the interior of the dwelling.

Neat it was, and light enough, though age had darkened the golden wood that comprised the walls and matching roof beams. But there were no hangings on the walls and no coverings on the floors. The air was cool and clean, but the starkness made it seem almost chill.

The hawk-eyed man turned in the antique swivel, but did not stand as his eyes ran over her. The directness, the blaze, of his gaze sent a chill down her spine.

He added to that chill with an odd two-toned whistle so low that she could barely hear it even as she felt its impact.

“First time someone like you has come looking for me.”

His eyes flickered as he took in the uniform.

“Service. Don't recognize the specialty insignia.”

“Research. I understand you might be able to answer some of my questions.”

“Doubt it.”

“Would you try?”

“So what does the wonderful and crumbling Empire want with me?” He looked away from her and out through the circular bubbled window that she recognized as having come from an alpha-class flitter, despite the painstaking custom framing that made it seem an integral part of the structure.

She frowned, letting the fingers of her left hand wrap around the styloboard more tightly than she intended. Shaking her right hand loosely to relax it, she hoped she would be ready to use the stunner if
she had to, but that it would not be necessary. The whole idea was not to upset someone as unbalanced as he was reputed to be.

His head snapped back toward her.

“Forget about the stunner. You couldn't reach it in time. Too close.”

Automatically her eyes gauged the distance from her feet to his relaxed posture in the antique recliner/swivel. More than three meters.

She lifted her eyebrows.

“Could prove it. Will. Maybe. Later.”

He glanced back out the bubble window, the only outside view from the dwelling.

The Imperial officer took the time to study the structure, noting the fit of the native logs, squared so evenly that there seemed to be no space at all between them. The wide plank flooring showed the same care, despite the hollows worn by years of use. There was more than enough light, thanks to the four skylights. The more she studied the structure, the more she began to realize the effort and design that had gone into it, an effort and design that seemed strangely out of place on Old Earth.

She shook her head. There were so many strange examples, as she was learning all too quickly.

This hideaway south of the Recorps Base was yet another, a seemingly rustic cabin whose design, orientation, and construction demonstrated more expertise and knowledge than she had expected, far more.

Her attention drifted back to the man, now regarding her with an amused smile, as if he had read her thoughts. He was clean-shaven, and the faded gray tunic and trousers, once probably of Imperial issue, were spotless, though worn.

“It's said you're native to Old Earth,” she began.

The amused smile remained, and she did not realize she had stepped backward until her shoulders brushed the wood behind her.

“It's also said that you were an Imperial officer for a long time. One rumor is that you once commanded the Recorps Base.”

“Who would say anything that fantastic? Never commanded the Recorps Base.”

“The Maze people…some of the older New Denv families…” She tried to match his light tone.

He sat upright, leaning forward. “Every place has its stories. When it doesn't, it's dead. Nearly that way here once. Now they tell stories.”

In a silent flash, he stood upright, next to the swivel, which slowly returned itself to a position not quite upright. His feet, wearing Imperial-issue boots, had not made a sound as they hit the wooden floor.

“What do you really want?”

What did she want? To track down a rumor? To chronicle the debunking of a myth to put the Service at ease? She shook her head again. Her mission seemed less and less clear.

“Your thoughts, your recollections about how things really were,” she said, trying to recapture the sense of purpose that had driven her to Old Earth, back to a forgotten corner of a world the Empire would just as soon forget.

She took a step sideways, as much to remind herself that she would not be backed into a corner as to get closer to the former officer, and waited for his response.

His eyes raked over her again, as if he could see beneath the undress tunic and trousers. She could see his nostrils widen, as if he were drawing in some scent.

Hawk or wolf…or both?

“You smell familiar.”

“Familiar?” Istvenn! He's got you off-balance and keeping you there. “I don't see how. I've never been here or on Old Earth before.”

His lips tightened, and his eyes narrowed.

“Could be. But somewhere…”

“Is it true you were an Imperial officer?”

“True as anything else you'd hear.” The intensity with which he had regarded her subsided, and he turned so that he faced neither her nor the bubble window, but a narrow tier of inset wooden shelves that reached from ankle height to the base of the roof beams.

Her eyes followed his. She could see that a number of the antiques on the shelves were actual printed publications, which indicated their age. Printed pubs were used only on frontier worlds or in remote locations where the use of energy for a tapefax or console was not feasible, and there had been sufficient energy on Old Earth since the rediscovery.

Without being able to read the faded letters on the spines of the volumes, she knew that most were Imperial manuals.

“Why did you leave the Service and settle here?”

He gestured toward the wall behind her, then laughed a short laugh.

“Nowhere to sit.”

“It's not really necessary—”

He brushed past her and did something to the wooden panel behind her.

The lieutenant stepped aside as the blond man lowered a double width bed from the wall and pulled a quilted coverlet, red and gray, from a recess over the bed, and spread it over the Imperial-issue colonist's pallet.

She could see his nostrils quiver as he straightened and motioned toward the couch/bed.

“Still familiar.” His low statement was made more to himself than to her.

He frowned, but with three quick strides returned to the swivel and dropped into it, turning toward her as he did.

“Two questions. One asked. One unasked. Last first. The Imperial supplies? Maintain some credit balance at the base. Lets me buy what I need. First last. Why here? Nowhere else to go.”

His words answered one question, but not the other. Only a retired or disabled member from Recorps or one of the Imperial Services had base-purchasing privileges. But he had not answered why he had settled on Old Earth.

“Why did you settle here?”

“Why not? Didn't settle. Born here. Not that anyone would remember. No place for me in the Empire. No place for me in Recorps, either. Not when all the barriers are crumbling.”

“Barriers?” The single-word question tumbled from her lips. Why did she sound like such a simpleton? Why? Why? Why?

“You can take the stress so long. Had to be civilized. That meant barriers…if I wanted to survive. I built them, but not strong enough. Time wears down all walls. Remember. Grew up when the shambletowners hunted the devilkids.”

“Shambletowners?”

“Old Mazers…what they called them then.”

She could see that the hardness was gone from his eyes, the terrible intensity muted, misted over.

The lieutenant waited for him to go on, wondering why he was so obsessed with age. He had to be a mental case, or disabled. He didn't look much older than she was, and she certainly wasn't ready for retirement, not just five years out of the Academy. But the dwelling was undeniably his, and the locals called him old. Why?

“Watch out for the old devil,” at least three of the reclam farmers had told her. “He knows everything, but he moves like the lash of the storm, like the
old
storms.”

She studied his face, the so-short and tight-curled blond hair, the
tanned and smooth skin of his face, trying not to stare, waiting for him to go on.

The afternoon wind whined, but the cabin did not shake, unlike some of the town buildings. While their native wood bent, it never broke, not with the local design.

“When the Empire rediscovered, they were lucky. Between storms of summer and howlers of winter. No landspouts that day.

“Could be we were lucky. Time should tell. Couldn't see the sky then, just the gray and gray of the clouds, and purple funnels of the landspouts. Screaming and ripping through the hills and plains. Rock rains all the time. Sheerwinds could cut rivers in half.

“Silver lander. Went hunting and found a devilkid.”

He laughed, a short hard bark of a laugh that contrasted with the soft penetrating intensity of his light voice.

“That was six centuries ago. You act like you were there.”

He ignored her interruption. “Great Empire decided they had some obligation to poor home planet. Guilty conscience. Decided to fix us up. Till the local budget got tight, and they decided to recruit locals. Couldn't find anyone, except a devilkid. Other couldn't hack it. Devilkid ended up in charge. Called him captain. Still a devilkid in soul. Scared the Impies until the day he walked out. End of story.”

“You haven't told me anything.”

“Who are you?”

“Me?”

“No matter. Told you everything. Now listen. My turn.”

She frowned, then leaned back as he began to whistle in the strange double-toned sound she had heard him let out momentarily when she had arrived.

The song had a melody, a haunting one, that spoke of loss and loss, and yet somehow each loss was an accomplishment, or each accomplishment was a loss. The melody was beautiful, and it was nothing.

Nothing compared to the off-toned counterpoint, which twisted and turned her.

The tears billowed from her eyes until she thought they would never stop, and his song went on, and on, and on.

When the last note died, she sat there. Sat and waited until he sat beside her and stroked her cheek.

As he unfastened her tunic, she shivered once before relaxing in the spice of his scent, before letting her arms go around him, drawing him down onto her.

The song was with her, and with him. Nor did it leave until he
did, and she laid back on the coverlet, shuddering in the rhythms of music and of him, her movements drawing her into a sleep that was awake, and a clarity that was sleep.

She woke suddenly.

Her clothes were where they had dropped, next to the bottom edge of the bed, and her stunner and equipment belt had been moved to the highest shelf, the one without the old books on it.

She rolled away from his silent, and, she hoped, sleeping form gently, until their bodies were separated. She waited, half holding her breath, to see if he moved.

Next, she eased into a sitting position, a position she hoped would not wake him. Again, she waited.

An eternity passed before she edged to her feet, and silently padded across the smooth and cold wooden floor.

First, to get the stunner.

By climbing onto the bottom shelf, she reached the belt and eased it down. Her fingers curled around the butt of the weapon, and she drew it from the holster.

“Wouldn't.”

She brought the firing tube up and toward him, but before her fingers could reach the firing stud, his naked form of tanned skin, hair-line scars, and blond hair had struck across the room like the flash of coiled lightning he resembled. His open hand slashed the weapon from her fingers.

Ramming her knee toward his groin, she drove to bring her right elbow toward his throat.

Before she could finish either maneuver, she found herself being lifted toward the bed, her right arm numb from the grip of his left hand.

“NOOOO!”

“Yes.”

She could feel her legs being forced apart, his strength so much greater that her total conditioning and military training were brushed aside as if she were a child, and she could feel the hot tears scalding down her face, even as the heat drove through her like hot iron.

You were warned, a corner of her mind reminded her. You were warned.

But they didn't know. They didn't know!

When he was done, this time, again, he kissed her cheek, ran his hands over her breasts. But he did not relax.

Standing quickly, he went to the hidden closet and pulled out a
loose, woven gray robe and pulled it on before sitting at the end of the bed, his hawk-yellow eyes exploring her.

She wanted to curl into a ball, to pull into herself and never come up. Instead, she took a deep breath and slowly sat up, cross-legged, and faced him.

“Was it necessary to hurt me?”

“After a while, need the thrills. Beauty isn't enough. Neither is scent. With you, it's almost enough.” He frowned. “Shouldn't have tried for the stunner. High-minded lady. Sexy bitch. Changed her mind and tried to zap old Greg. Hard to resist the instincts. Don't have many barriers left, and fewer all the time. Happens over the ages.”

He straightened, leaning back with his eyes level with hers, for an instant before he stood. She could see the blackness behind the yellow-flecked eyes, a blackness that seemed to stretch back through time.

She shook her head to break away from the image.

After crossing the room with a slight limp she had not noticed before, he turned and walked back, picking up her clothes, and sorted and folded them, putting them on the foot of the bed. Next he put the equipment belt down, without the stunner.

He shook his head, hard.

“You had better leave. Not exactly sane, not all the time, anymore. Never sure which memories are real, which are dreams.”

She dressed deliberately, afraid that undue haste would be construed as fear, which seemed to be a turn-on, or that slowness would be a tease.