Was Once a Hero (30 page)

Shasti
appeared to draw even more into herself.
 
“That’s none of your concern,” she said, turning away from Duna.

“As
you wish, my dear girl.
 
I wish only to
help.”

There
was a hesitation, almost a lack of firmness, in her for a second, “I do not
think it is something you would understand.”

“Perhaps
not,” Duna replied.
 
“I have studied alien
species for several hundred years.
 
But I
fear I remain dreadfully ignorant.
 
Why,
I was even married to the same lovely lady for four hundred years and never
knew everything about her, either.
 
She
was always a source of delightful surprises.
 
Of course, it might not be important that I understand.
 
Perhaps it is important that Robert
understands.
 
He seems confused, a bit
lost.”

“The
attacks keep escalating in size and intelligence,” she replied, bitterness
ebbing, leaving an undertone of sadness.
 
“We are not going to last much longer.
 
We’ll probably all be dead tomorrow, then it won’t matter.”

To
her surprise, Duna reached up and patted her hand.
 
His small paw felt warm and leathery.
 
“That is why,” he said, “it matters so much
today, dear girl.”
 
The little Enshari
turned and walked away.
 
Shasti watched
him go, then looked heavenward at the early evening stars and sighed.

*****

Fenaday
groaned and rolled upright in his sleeping bag.
 
All the available floor space in the shuttles went for the wounded.
 
He lay under the
Pooka
,
on ground that
appeared to grow rocks.
 
Early morning
light was falling, and people were beginning to stir.
 
One or two got up briskly.
 
Fenaday hated morning people.

He
stumbled to his feet, fighting off the usual headache that he got from sleeping
on anything other than a regular bed.
 
Every muscle and bone ached from the battle.
 
Telisan sat at the nearby campfire, having
had the last watch.
 
Without a word, he
handed the human a cup of coffee.
 
Fenaday managed a grunt.

Telisan
looked at him.
 
“Perhaps it would be
better if I went to get the breakfast crew started.”
 

Fenaday
grunted again.
 
Morning was difficult
enough to deal with without being hungry as well.

The
ships had grounded near some small freshwater pools.
 
After draining the coffee, Fenaday felt the
urge for a bath.
 
He headed down past the
guards and the barrier wire.
 
Cobalt
stood by the outer barrier and dropped the lines for him.

“Morning,”
Fenaday growled, before realizing it was only a robot next to him.

“Situation
normal,” the robot replied.

Fenaday
made his way down to the streamside.
 
Water poured over shallow, rocky basins, almost perfect for
bathing.
 
He walked down the slight
hillock and saw Shasti, wearing only dark-gray underclothes, sitting on a towel
spread over a broad flat rock.
 
Her long
white limbs caught the sunlight as she brushed her black hair.
 
She looked neither sore nor bruised.
 
Any artist would have sold his soul to paint
her sitting there.
 

She
spotted him and he nodded at her.
 
Things
were settling between them, but the strength they provided as a team was
gone.
 
He couldn’t afford any further
problems with her.
 
To leave seemed to
risk their fragile peace.
 
So he said
nothing, just stripped out of boots and uniform, cooling sore, abused feet in
the pool.
 
He stood at its shallowest
edge for a few moments.

He
was relieved to hear other feet coming.
 
Turning, he saw Brian Connery walking down the trail.
 
Connery spotted Shasti, and a black glare
from her caused him to veer away to find a pool at the far end of the glade.

Shasti
brushed her waist-length hair for a few moments longer.
 
Then with a curse, she threw down her
brush.
 
Fenaday looked directly at her
for the first time, surprised.

“My
ex-husband used to do that to me—drag me backward like a doll,” she said
softly.
 
“It meant pain for starters and
much worse to follow.”

For a
second Fenaday was lost, then realized she was referring to his pulling her
away from Johan’s body.
 
He sat down on a
rock, looking back in stunned silence.
 
“I’m
not sure what’s the biggest surprise,” he finally managed, “that I didn’t know
you’d been married, or that someone could manhandle you and live.”
 

She
looked at him obliquely and shrugged.

“We’ve
shipped ten voyages together,” he said after it became obvious that she would
say nothing more.
 
“Fought side by side,
been lovers even.
 
I haven’t forgotten
that you carried me out on Morokat, but I don’t really know you at all.
 
Do I?”

“I’ve
never let you,” she replied, picking up the brush and inspecting it.
 
“You’ve never met anyone else from my world?”

“No,”
he said.
 
“Olympians are a secretive
lot.
 
They rarely go off-world and don’t
encourage visitors or trade.
 
From what I
have heard, it’s not a place I would want to visit anyway. ”

“A
hard world,” she said bitterly.
 
“A place
for supermen to measure themselves.

“His
name is Jalgren Pard, of the House of Denshi,” she continued, with obvious
reluctance.
 
“Denshi specializes in
assassins and bodyguards and controls the government.
 
Pard is much older than I am, big, even for
one of us: strong, cruel and very rich.

“We
Olympians worship a new god.
 
His altars
are laboratories, and we sacrifice original humanity on them.
 
Did you never wonder why I’m so tall, so
strong, so perfect?”

He
nodded carefully.
 
Silence seemed best.

“Olympia was settled by
people who wanted to guide natural selection, to breed better people.
 
Careful programs mated the best people,
producing superior children—each generation slowly building toward the
ideal.
 
They’re called the Selected.
 
But that was too slow, too chancy for some
people.
 
About a hundred years ago, a
faster road beckoned: bioengineering.
 
Who needs parents when you have artificial wombs?

“I
came out of one of those, Robert.
 
I was
made.”

“What?”
he said.
 

“We
build people on Olympia,”
she continued, “taller, stronger, with perfect features and no diseases.
 
We’re called the Engineered.
 
Pard used to say that our existence rendered
the Selected obsolete.
 
I know that
gradually the Engineered are displacing them from government and the military
on my homeworld.

“My
body builds muscle at a rate no standard woman’s body can.
 
My bones are twenty-percent denser than a
human male’s and more elastic.
 
That’s
why I weigh more than a human my size.
 
I
should live to be at least a hundred and seventy years old.”

She
took the brush to her hair, stopped and held some of its glossy length in her
hand.
 
“Even my hair doesn’t require the
care of a regular woman’s.
 
Tailored
genes keep it soft, not oily and ten times stronger than human hair.
 
Makes a good garrote.”

She
looked away and resumed brushing.
 
“Pard
ordered me created,” she continued softly.
 
“I’m designed to his taste: color of hair, eyes, skin tone, breast size,
height, even length of leg.

“He
had others before me but never another Engineered.
 
I was an experiment for him.
 
I even trained in the house of Denshi as a
bodyguard and assassin, so I could be useful for more than bed warming.
 
He wanted me to be self-reliant.
 
No clinging females for Pard.

“I’m
an expensive toy, Robert, built to spec and just for him to play with.
 
When I reached my early teens, he claimed me
for his bed.
 
It began well.
 
Ignorant child that I was, I was even
honored.
 
But it became… very twisted and
sick.
 
One day, I decided I did not want
to be a toy anymore.
 
I escaped.
 
Sometimes, when he finds out where I am, he
tries to have me killed.
 
Wounded pride,
I suppose.

“My
world’s dirty little secret,” she ended.

“My
God, Shasti,” he said, shaken.
 
“I didn’t
know.
 
In all the time we’ve known each other,
you’ve never found a time to tell me this?
 
I don’t think you’ve ever told me anything about your past, never
anything personal.”

“No,
I haven’t,” she said, “but neither have you.
 
You’ve never even shown me a picture of your wife or told me much about
her.”

“It
seemed, somehow wrong,” he said slowly, confused.

“Why?”
she asked simply, turning back to look at him.

He
looked into her face, there was no mockery there, just a child-like lack of
comprehension.
 
It suddenly struck
him.
 
Shasti had never been close to
another human being before.
 
She had no
mother, father, brother or sister.
 
Her
sexual experiences began badly, with a cruel, older man.
 
The greatest trust Shasti could show was to
allow herself to be vulnerable.
 
She
handed him that trust now.

“Because
of what happened between us,” he said, groping for words.

“You
have been good to me Robert.
 
Few
have.
 
But I don’t love you.
 
I’ve never loved anyone.
 
They left it out of my design.

“I
like being with you.
 
Enough to say these
things.
 
Enough to want to buy back last
night.
 
But, I could never give you what
you are searching for in your lost Lisa.
 
I wish I could hope to learn to give it.
 
I wish I understood what makes a man do everything you’ve done for
her.
 
Even after years of watching you, I
still don’t.”
 
Her eyes shone bright with
tears she would not shed.

“How
old are you, Shasti?” he asked, wondering why he did not know.

She
blinked and thought for a second.
 
“Around twenty-four in standard years.”

“With
a life span of one hundred and seventy, or more?
 
A long time to live without love,” he said.

She
looked down, pensive.
 
“Can you miss what
you do not know?
 
So much of love is
pheromones, hormones—intense feelings I simply don’t have.
 
My systems are designed to suppress most
strong emotions.
 
Everything, except,”
she hesitated, “rage.
 
Rage is useful for
survival, useful for a warrior.
 
They
left me that.
 
I’ve tried to learn to
control it on my own.”
 
She looked at him
sidewise.
 
“I’m still working on it.
 
Perhaps that is the worst of it, Death’s
Angel they call me.
 
It may be true,
because it’s the only time I’m truly myself.”

“And
when we were together?” he asked.

Again
came the bitter smile.
 
“Oh, I enjoy that
too, as you should be able to tell.
 
Remember, I was made to enjoy physical sex.
 
The rage is all my own.”

Fenaday
felt a deep sadness unlike anything he had felt before.
 
When he lost Lisa, a soul-tearing grief and
anger had overwhelmed him.
 
He’d declared
war on the universe and the God he believed had turned his back on him.
 
His feelings for Shasti were less fierce, yet
deep and tinged with pity.

“There
is more to what happened out there in the woods than this,” he said, moving
over to share the rock with her.
 
She did
not look at him.
 
“You and Johan?” he
asked.
 
“It always seemed as if he was
special to you.”

“Yes.
 
Once, between missions,” she replied.
 
“It meant more to him than to me.
 
I didn’t understand what he wanted of
me.
 
I don’t even now.
 
I didn’t want it to go further.
 
It was a bad idea, in a moment of weakness.”

“We
all have them,” he said.