Hero! (20 page)

If he expects a gracious speech, he is going to be disappointed. “Sir!”

The admiral curls up his lip to show his big herbivore teeth again. “This is all still top secret. I’ve set up a situation center at Valhal, so we’ll move you there, at least at first. But just because you’re proof against Bludraktor Trot doesn’t mean the rest of us are. Report to Doctor Thoandy in Medical.”

Vaun stamps, salutes, and whirls around. He goes out on the double, and the boy who throws the door open for him is Tham, in a commodore’s uniform. He flashes a brief smile of greeting as Vaun goes by.

He
is
holding a gun.

“W
HATS WRONG?” FEIRN released Vaun and stepped back, looking worried. He was trembling with fury.

“It won’t work!” he muttered, his tongue thick in his mouth. He turned around to lean on the balustrade and peer out at the bay unseeing. He felt raped. Roker had invaded his home and perverted his Security—and with unmitigated insolence had then ordered the legitimate guests not to mention his presence. Perhaps if Vaun had entered through a main door, he might have met the intruders…But Roker must have known he was here and had stayed in hiding. Swine!

“What won’t work. Vaun?” She leaned beside him, her elbow touching his.

“Security heard what you said.” Even a whisper could be detected, anywhere on the island, and be separated out from the animal noises, from the waves and leaves.

“Oh.”

“But thank you. Nice try.”

She was silent for a moment, men she said, “He hates you?”

“Mutual. You didn’t know he was coming, did you?”

“Who? Roker? No, of course not! Blade had a major coronary.” She sniggered, very softly. “He doesn’t come here often, does he?”

“No he does not!”

“I think he was upset by your sims.”

“I hope so!”

Swine! Now what? Then Vaun guessed the answer. He straightened up and turned around, and Roker was marching across the terrace toward him—in full dress uniform, complete with sword, his big face suffused with anger. Behind him, the door from Vaun’s bedroom stood open and a half dozen security boys were emerging, as mean a crew as Vaun had ever seen. They were spreading out laterally and they were all armed.

This was not a social visit.

Roker came to a halt two paces away, working his lips as if chewing. Silence.

“Good afternoon, Admiral!” he said at last. Even at that distance, he was big enough to look down on Vaun, a behemoth of a solid muscle. Medals and braid twinkled bright in the sunlight. If he was waiting for a welcome, he would grow old waiting. After a moment he seemed to realize that, for his big jaw tightened. The Galactic Empire might be a convenient fiction, but the high admiral was de facto emperor of the planet.

“You have made some changes around here, I see.”

“Improvements, sir.”

The high admiral showed his teeth. His pale eyes moved to look at Feirn. Suspecting he was about to order her away, Vaun reached out and pulled her close. He was much too enraged now to enjoy the contact that had so excited him a few minutes before, but he did notice that her arm slid around him also.

“You have met Citizen Feirn, I understand?” His voice sounded satisfactorily steady, but it took effort.

“You were going to be interviewed for that scandal session on pubcom—is that correct?”

“Sir.”

Now came the predictable sneer. “To reveal classified information! Secrets you blabbed at a party last night also.”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Your topic was to be the Scythan Q ship?”

Vaun nodded. “It is no secret.”

Roker’s face seemed to grow even redder. “It certainly is, since High Command declared a state of emergency.”

Vaun had not been informed, but there was no point in mentioning the obvious, and the records might not agree with his recollections anyway—the Patrol had always regarded history as more of an art than a science.

The big boy rarely came so close to losing control. How much of that anger was due to the parody of himself he had discovered in the Valhal household sim? In spite of his physical size, Roker was very small-minded, not one to tolerate mockery. He must be wondering how long it had been going on.

Let him wonder.

Roker snarled at Feirn. “Leave us!”

Thinking of the menace of those armed spectators, Vaun released her. In silence, she walked away along the edge of the terrace, not approaching the line of security goons. They were watching Vaun like crouched rapcats.

No bets that every one of them was a crack shot.

Vaun had mastered his fury now, reminding himself that the brethren were much less ruled by passion than randoms were. Anger was permissible, but to lose his temper would be a design fault. He could see that Bullyboy Roker was blustering, as he so often did—eight marksman against one unarmed boy? Absurd. And totally unnecessary. With his control of the Valhal Security, Roker could strike Vaun dead with a word.

The other shadowy figures huddled within the doorway must be the high admiral’s usual gilt-embroidered entourage. If he had left them out of this discussion, then he was either up to no good or he was not sure of himself at all. And he would not have brought them to Valhal had anyone ever told him about the Jeevs sim.

Right. With studied insolence, Vaun stuffed both hands in his pockets and leaned back against the parapet. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit…sir?”

Roker’s eyes flashed. “You resent my intrusion? But you established the precedent yourself, this morning.”

“I had exhausted every other method of communication…sir.” He had refused Roker’s call as he arrived, but Roker had already been here, waiting. That had been a trick, and he had fallen for it. He reminded himself that his contempt for Roker always led him to underestimate the boy.

“And then you shot him dead!”

“At his own request…sir.”

“There will be a Board of Inquiry, of course…Do you recall,” Roker said, biting off each word, “a certain lecture you once delivered at Doggoth?”

“No…sir.”

“Yes you do! You outlined the possible strategies the Brotherhood might use to infiltrate the planet. Four of them.”

“Oh, yes. I do recall.”

Roker came a pace closer. “You do recall! Excellent. Assume, for the purpose of this present discussion, that the ship now approaching from Scyth is crewed by the Brotherhood. Or a different brotherhood? Another family. After all, Scyth and Avalon are several elwies apart—”

“Eight, roughly…sir.”

“Eight elwies apart. So they can’t be the same brotherhood, can they?”

How much of his anger came from fear? Vaun had not thought to investigate the current state of Patrol politics. If Roker was being blamed for the pending disaster, then his crown might be working loose.

“They would be the same brotherhood if they used the same recipe…sir. They probably don’t vary their formula very much, for just that reason.”

“Explain!” Roker barked.

Vaun shrugged, wondering why he was required to repeat the obvious. “Sexually reproducing species favor their kin. A boy will normally defend his children against his nephews, his nephews against strangers, members of his own tribe or race against outsiders. His genes drive him to the aid of their own replicas, if you believe in molecular determinism. Genetic similarity generates loyalty. Two brothers have fifty percent of their genes in common. Cousins share a quarter—”

“But you, as a clone, share one hundred percent of the brethren’s, don’t you?”

Ninety-five percent, and the brethren were artifacts, not clones, but Vaun did not quibble. “A hive on Scyth and a hive on Avalon can work to the same recipe and produce the identical product. Thus they will be loyal to each other. If Prior were alive now, he would be just as eager to assist this new ship as he was to aid
Unity
. Assuming that this ship…” Then Vaun saw where the conversation had led. He heard the trap click.

Roker sneered in joy. “Prior is dead. Raj and Tong and Prosy…all dead.
But Vaun is alive!
”

Vaun took his hands out of his pockets. Suddenly the line of guards looked very much like a firing squad and he wondered if he was about to be offered a blindfold. But Roker merely pushed his advantage.

“So let us go back to that strategy lecture that I once heard from a crewboy at Doggoth. Plan One failed—now they know that a handful of cuckoos can’t found a functioning hive. Plan Two failed—they no longer have a mole like Prior planted within the Patrol to help…or do they?”

“Sir?” Vaun said, perplexed. Plastic surgery? No, the germ plasm was on file…No possible disguise would let one of the brethren slip into the Patrol now.

Roker ignored the query. “Which was plan number three? Of, yes. We’re alert now, so they can’t expect to launch a flight of their own shuttles and overwhelm unprepared defenses. And—fourthly—they certainly can’t expect to hijack the pilot ship. So what is their fifth plan, Crewboy Vaun?”

“I have no idea. Except that the Q ship may be unmanned, a missile to take out the planet.”

“For why? For spite? For revenge? I thought the brethren were above such petty emotions?”

Vaun held the furious blue gaze steadily. “What about a preemptive strike? What if the brethren believe this is war to the death, and prefer it not be their death…sir?”

The irony of that theory was that it implied Roker and his Ultian Command had been lacking in sufficient ruthlessness. The idea of wiping out planets had just not occurred to them.

Roker did not like Vaun’s suggestion. His mouth worked for a moment in silence before he decided to ignore it. “How about blackmail? Is there an ultimatum coming?
Let us in—or else?
”

Vaun had discarded that idea long ago. “Hold a planet to ransom? It’d never work. A few score at most against ten billion? We’d double-cross them somehow, sooner or later.”

That won a nod. “Yes, we would. So go back to Plan Three, the fleet of shuttle craft overwhelming the defenses. How about panic? Do you think they might be trying to rouse a planetful of people to such terror that social order breaks down, and the defenses can’t function?”

“Seems farfetched,” Vaun muttered, mind racing. But it was a possibility, and maybe better than nothing. Chaos in the streets…

“Very farfetched. Seven-elwies-fetched. Seven light-years! But you do admit the logic?”

“I admit the possibility.”

“And you were going to go on pubcom and spread the word, weren’t you?”

Oh, shit. Oh, unmitigated shit!

“Start raising the dust, maybe?” Roker leered. “Once I asked Citizen Vaun. Later I asked Crewboy Vaun. And now I ask Admiral Vaun.
Where is your loyalty?
”

And that, Vaun thought, was a very good question in the circumstances.

“I didn’t think of it,” he muttered, and as an explanation it sounded weak as froth. Why wouldn’t he have thought of it?

“Didn’t you?” Roker’s voice had suddenly gone very soft. “The smartest boy ever to pass through Doggoth—except maybe Prior, whose records were wiped. And you didn’t think of it?”

“No, I didn’t. I just thought that the people had a right—”

Roker lurched forward until he was almost leaning on Vaun, glaring down at him. “The people! May the Mother of Stars bless Her little folk! I’ll tell you what it looks like to me, Brother Vaun! It looks like a backup plan. I don’t think you ever were the great hero we made you out to be. We never had more than your own word for what happened on
Unity
. I think Abbot and his brethren saw that the game was up. Prior had been exposed and the game was up. Their mission had failed. So they blew up the ship deliberately! They killed themselves and left you alive. You were sent back to survive until the next time, to help the next attempt.
And now you’re starting!
”

Roker had been a snake even before he became high admiral, and the ensuing forty-plus years had not made him any more lovable. Now he had Vaun on the dissection table. He might be going to send him after Tham in minutes. He needn’t convince anyone else of the story, only himself. He could give the signal, walk away from the body, and explain later—if anyone bothered to ask.

So Vaun had better convince Roker.

“That’s utter crap! That’s raving psychosis! The brethren were fried and their Q ship turned into a billion tons of rubble and you’re saying that they
won
? You had that same swill going round in your head when I first came back, you even accused me of not being the original Vaun, you…”

Roker opened his mouth and Vaun shouted him down.

“You tried to prove I was an imposter, one of the Brotherhood units, or Abbot himself—
and it didn’t work
! And I was more use as a hero, anyway, wasn’t I? You used me to pry more money out of ten billion hungry people so the spacers could fly a little faster and higher. And you used me to tighten your own grip on the Patrol. I was your step up to the throne, Roker. You built your career on me, and you’re going to look pretty damn witless now if you come out and say it was all a mistake, the guy’s a traitor after—”

“Mudslug! Upstart peon! I made you, I can break you!”

They were both yelling now.

“Crown a little loose now, Roker? Getting some heat, are you? All the minions wondering why you didn’t stop the Q ship sooner? Looking for a scapegoat, Rok—”

“Mother of Stars, if I needed you as a scapegoat I’d have your ass mounted on my—”

“You big dumb prick! You’ve spied on me for years—”

“You haven’t answered the—”

“—and you never caught me out in anything more than ringing your personal doorbell, Roker. Anytime I ogle a girl, you leap out of the shrubbery at her with a fat wallet and ask her if I talk in my sleep and with whom and how often and which way up…”

“Maeve, for instance?” Roker sneered.

Maeve, Maeve!
Vaun choked into furious silence.

Roker continued, spraying a mist of spit as he shouted. “Loyal little spacer, are you? ‘Loyal to the Empire and the Patrol, according to my oath!’ That’s what you told me at Doggoth. And I think it was true, then. I think you meant it then. But we ran the mind bleed on Prior after that, didn’t we? Worked too well, I think. You picked up too many Brotherhood memories there, I think. You began to think like Prior. You got so you didn’t know whether you were Vaun or Prior or both. That was when we lost you. You’ve been working for the Brotherhood ever since!”