The Forever Hero (21 page)

He turned right, down toward the main gate and the short landing strip beyond.

A patch of green before the wall and the gate appeared as he approached—another park. The tops of the mountains behind the foothills were barely visible under the whitish gray of the higher than normal clouds. The lower stratus layers that raced westward above the town had not reached the foothills yet, nor had the rain begun to fall, although it would.

Gerswin caught the glint of a flitter, the one coming to pick him up and increased his already quick steps.

While the town represented the future, he felt ill at ease on the wide streets between the low buildings. He understood why the older shambletowners had not taken the offer to move from their crowded lanes, even though the confinement of the shambletown was not for him and never had been.

Would he always feel uncomfortable in the future he was helping to build? Would the reclaimed lands seem strange after the desolate high plains of purple clay, purpled grass, coyotes, and ice rain?

He paced onward, his face set in an expression showing neither joy nor sadness.

Gerswin juggled the heavy, double-ended and double-bladed knife in his left hand, then balanced it on his fingertip, finally flipping it end over end into the air, where he snatched it right-handed at its midpoint.

He glanced at the targets, ignoring the figure who waited behind the wall at his back, the wall that surrounded the makeshift practice range. The last glimpse he had caught indicated that Major Vlerio was still waiting, although it had only been minutes since he arrived.

Vlerio's approach had been diffident, almost hesitant. When Gerswin had stopped to walk over, the other had motioned him back, saying, “Finish up. However long it takes. I'll wait.”

Gerswin raised his eyebrows in puzzlement, but turned from the target and began to walk away.

Abruptly, he dived to the left, twisted in midair, releasing the knife, and tucked. He came out of the roll on the balls of his feet, the second knife in his left hand momentarily—before it too sped toward the target.

Dusting his hands on the legs of the old flight suit, he trotted forward to retrieve the knives. As he covered the nearly ten meters between him and the target he had chosen, he checked his accuracy.

Both knives would have penetrated the heart, had the target been a man, although the first had not gone through the plastic-shielded and stiffened foam as much as he would have liked.

He frowned as he stepped up to the target, listening, but there was no sound of movement from Vlerio. He eased the first knife from the target and replaced it in the waistband sheath. The second followed.

Glancing upward at the clouds, he could see the light gray darkening in the north, a sign that the ice rain would be returning.

He sniffed, but the air remained dry, with little hint of moisture.

Reiner Vlerio still sat quietly on the far side of the back stone wall, waiting patiently, although Gerswin knew he was ready to leave Old Earth for his promotion to commander and his transfer back to New Augusta in whatever obscure screen-shoving assignments detail his orders had brought.

Gerswin took a deep breath and walked to the far left end of the unofficial practice yard. Once, he had been the only one who used it, but most of the other devilkids had taken up his example and practiced with their own versions of unpowered weapons. The sling was one of the few that they all used. As if by unspoken custom, none practiced together, and anyone who might be using the range left whenever Gerswin appeared.

Improvements had appeared from time to time. While Gerswin had built the wall behind the targets and the target stands, Lerwin had added the side walls and the swinging target. Lostwin had added the rear wall and the stone bench, the one on which Vlerio waited. Glynnis had provided the sandy pit and the high target.

Gerswin smiled and broke into a sprint for the right side of the yard.

Crack! Crack!

As he fired the second stone, he dove into a roll, discarding the sling and coming up with the knife, right-handed this time.

Thunk!

He surveyed the three targets. Had they been human, two would have been dead. One he had only struck in the “shoulder.” That had been the second sling stone.

Retrieving the two slingstones, the slingleathers, and the knife, he replaced all three in their hidden sheaths and trotted to the rear stone wall, only meters from Vlerio, whom he ignored by failing to acknowledge the other's presence.

He turned to face the targets, his back nearly touching the stone wall, then began a zig-zag sprint toward the swinging target to the left of the three “standing” targets.

Crack! Crack!

He flung himself into a dive that would land him in the sand pit, bringing out the knife with his left hand and releasing it before he plowed into the heavy sand.

Thud!

After picking himself out of the sand and dusting off the cold and damply clinging grains, he shook his head.

The sling shots had been on target, but the first had merely been to get the target moving. The knife had not been accurate; it had bounced off the middle standing target.

He retrieved the sling stones, the sling, and the knife. This time, when he picked up the second stone and pressed his fingers against the rounded smoothness, the stone split, as stones often did after hard and repeated use.

He tossed the fragments over the wall behind the targets, ignoring the twin
clicks
as they struck the rocky clay of the slope.

Vlerio was still sitting on the stone bench.

Gerswin pursed his lips, exhaled deeply, and replaced the weapons. The major wasn't known for his patience.

Rather than vault the chest-high irregular wall, Gerswin walked around it.

Vlerio looked up as he approached.

“Rather impressive, Gerswin.”

“Like to keep in shape.”

“It must help your coordination, although I doubt you need much help there. Such primitive weapons might not be much good in combat, not against lasers or stunners, but you'd probably be safe in any back alley in the Empire.”

“Possibly,” Gerswin answered noncommittally. He smiled as he
seated himself on a section of the wall where he generally faced Vlerio, who, in turn, twisted toward Gerswin.

“Not primitive,” added the junior major. “Unpowered. Difference there. Knife and sling are much better in-close weapons than lasers.”

“I didn't come to debate weapons, but I would be interested in a less cryptic explanation of why you think so.”

Gerswin shrugged.

“Close in, lasers aren't that selective. Hit innocents as well as targets. If you intend to destroy whole companies of troops, why bother with hand weapons at all? Use tacheads or particle beams and boil off the whole area. Hand weapons are designed for individuals. Otherwise, just dangerous toys to make people feel good. You can run out of charges for a laser or a stunner. Damned difficult to run out of stones, and you can use a knife over and over.”

“What if you want to occupy territory or seize a specific objective?”

“You can't take it with unpowered weapons, have to question why you want to take it at all. A laser or beam firefight won't leave much behind. So why bother with losing troops? Vaporize it with a beam or tachead. Costs less in money and personnel.”

This time Vlerio was the one to shake his head.

“You're still a barbarian, Gerswin. Dangerously direct.”

“Never said I wasn't. Just don't believe in wars unless it's for survival. Or freedom. Anything else is an excuse,” Gerswin paused. “But you didn't come to talk about philosophies of conflict.”

“No. I'm leaving tomorrow, and I wanted to talk to you before I left. Alone.”

Gerswin automatically scanned the slope before nodding. Not certain what he could say, he waited for Vlerio to go on.

“I don't like you. Not that I dislike you, because I don't. Not that I don't admire you, because I do. But I don't like you. You can be as direct as a knife, and as sharp. One way or another, if you want it done, it gets done.”

Vlerio gestured toward the practice yard. “Like your training. I've watched the Corpus Corps practice. You want more perfection than they do. You don't know all the techniques, but if I had to bet on the outcome of a contest between you and any one of them, I'd bet on you. When you and Lerwin practice on the mats, people watch, and they swallow. Like watching carnacats.

“You're a modern barbarian warlord, Gerswin. One who knows all the technology, but who's kept touch with the need for personal example and the inspiration of personal combat.

“I don't like you, but my success as Operations officer is because
of you. Because of you, I'm going to get a promotion I thought I'd lost when I was assigned here. You know that, and I know that, and Commander Manders knows that. Now, my last tour will still be a nothing, but it's a nothing with the diamonds on the collars, and that's important to me.”

Vlerio stood, and Gerswin slipped off the wall.

“I didn't like you when I came, Major, and that hasn't changed. But whether you're a barbarian or not, whether I like you or not, you do a damned good job, too good to be wasted. So you're my successor, and I'm told that your promotion to major has been made permanent.”

The older officer smiled a tight smile. “I wish I could be more positive personally, Gerswin, but that's the way it is.”

Gerswin met the other's eyes, trying not to be too direct in his glance. “Appreciate your honesty, ser.”

“Don't worry about that. Just prove I was right.” Vlerio nodded curtly, and turned, his heavy steps carrying him eastward toward the portals back into the base complex.

Gerswin swallowed, knowing that what Vlerio had said had cost the man. Maybe he'd been too harsh in his private judgments of the major.

He looked down at the hard-packed clay, then at the empty bench.

Click! Click! Click!

The ice rain splattered against the stones of the walls and against the slabs of the bench as the wind picked up, and as the whispers of the air built into a thin wail that announced the oncoming storm.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch
.

Each step echoed, ringing off the dingy white walls between which the man walked. His deliberate steps left a track in the centimeters of ice crystals that formed a layer of pavement above the stone and clay that served as the foundation of both streets and alleys.

He crossed the main street, scarcely wider than the back way he tracked. Both were empty in the late winter afternoon.

A quick glance to his left, up toward the old square, revealed no
one, nor any tracks down toward the older section of the shambletown where his steps had taken him, as they always did on his infrequent visits to the past.

So cold were the ice flakes that his feet scarcely slipped as he completed crossing the larger lane. Once past the crossing and back between two walls of the narrowing lane, he stopped, listening.

…crunch…

The single step stopped.

He nodded, waiting, but his distant shadow moved not at all.

Click! Click! Click, click, click!

The ice crystals continued their faint clatter as they struck both the walls and the smoothness of the Imperial all-weather jacket.

His eyes flickered up toward the nearest window, vacant, with only a small remnant of thonging wrapped around the lashing post to show where the vanished hide covering had once been secured.

Most of the crowded-together structures on the old lane were vacant, for they had been the ones given to the younger couples, or those without status in the shambletown—those who had been the first to move to the new town.

He took another step, silently until his boot touched the crystals, and the
crunch
reverberated back up the lane behind him. The echoing step-
crunch
from his unseen shadow whispered back down the slanted lane to him.

…crunch…

A tight smile creased the slender man's face, framed loosely by the jacket's unlined hood, as he resumed his journey down the crystalline lane and away from the larger cross street. With his gray trousers and the silver gray of the jacket and his light steps, had there been no sound of ice, his presence would have been silent. Then the one who followed could truly have believed that a graying ghost again stalked the old shambletown.

Whhhrrr
.

The man in silver and gray sprinted the three steps around the curve.

Crack!

Powdered white wall plaster puffed out from the impact of the sling stone and drifted downward to join the white crystals that had already covered the clay and stone of the shambletown pavement.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch
.

This time, the man in silver timed his steps to match those of his hidden pursuer as the two seemed to float through the ice fall toward
the wall of the abandoned tannery where the lane dead-ended into an even narrower cross lane.

Whhhrrrr
.

Crack!

Another stone powdered the flaking white and time-dimmed wall plaster, striking less than a meter from the hooded man and breaking off enough of the plaster to show a brown circle of crumbling brick beneath.

The silvered man dropped his deliberate stride and sprinted the last few meters down the remaining and steepest section of the lane, darting around the corner to the left.

Crack!

Crunch. Crunch, crunch, crunch
.

The shadowy figure of the follower edged down the lane, a bent figure, dark in tattered tunic and leathers, with a gnarled right hand on which there were white hairs above the scars, twirling the sling with a killer stone within the straps. His head turned slowly from side to side, as if he listened for the faintest of sounds.

He neared the dead-end corner and paused.

…crunch…

The sound was light, but not immediately on the far side of the blind corner.

The dark and bent man studied the crystals and the widely-spaced footprints held therein. The distance between prints stated that the man in silver had continued his head-long flight around the corner, possibly into the distance toward the wall and the Maze beyond.

The bent man lifted his head slightly, as if sniffing at the steady wind that brought the ice crystals down in their steady beat against walls, leathers, and faces, and piled those icy fragments on flat roofs, empty clay, and stones.

Finally, he eased around the corner, still bent, then straightened as he whipped the sling up and around toward the slim man in silver who stood ten meters away twirling his own sling.

Crump!

Crack!

The bent and gnarled man swayed, then bent farther over, as, at first, his fingers let slip the leathers of the sling, and as his heavy legs refused to hold him erect any longer.

The man in silver folded his leathers into a flat package, returning them to their hidden pouch, and strode forward into the crystal rain toward the fallen figure.

At last, he stood over the man in leathers and pushed the thin silver hood back off his short and curled blond hair.

His yellow hawk eyes glittered in the gloom of the approaching dusk as he saw that the fallen one still continued to breathe, though he lay face down in the heaped ice droplets.

Gently, as if the older man were a friend, the silver and blond man turned the wounded man over until he rested on his back.

“Devulkid…yaaa…devul…”

His eyes opened wide as he gasped the last word, but no longer did they see.

The man in the all-weather silver shook his head, then stooped and lifted the body in his arms, ignoring the sour odor, the grease, and the blood from the old man's caved-in temple.

Surprisingly, the body was light, and the more-than-once pursued man in gray and silver carried it lightly as he retraced his steps back toward the upper town and the bare stone slab where he would leave the few remaining shambletowners another legacy from their past.

Click. Click. Click
.

The ice rain continued to fall on the all-weather finish of the Imperial jacket.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch
.

Each step, each sound, carried the survivor farther into the past and the future simultaneously, aging and rejuvenating him at the same instants, until he found it increasingly difficult to focus on the narrow lane before him.

A deep breath, then another, and he resumed his journey with a body that weighed heavier with each step upward.

With steps more and more deliberate on the slippery footing, he at last entered the square. A single line of footprints, nearly obscured by the ice rain that had fallen, appeared at right angles to his path. He wondered who else had stalked the old ghosts of the shambletown, before realizing that the other prints were also his.

He placed the already-stiffening figure on the white stone of the single upright bench and turned, plodding out toward the gate that was frozen ajar only slightly wider than a body width.

This time, he did not turn back. In time, had there been anyone out in the ice storm, they would have seen a silver-gray ghost with glittering yellow eyes and hair like yellow flame vanishing into the storm from whence he had come. But no one was abroad, and he vanished as silently as he arrived.

Click. Click. Click
.