The Forever Hero (74 page)

He waited, then tried to access Enver data. The screen remained blank. He tried the most urgent priority codes, but the result was the same. No data.

Finally, he entered the last code.

The data in the files was gone—entirely gone. Within twenty-four hours, the buildings of Enver, Limited, on Mara would cease to exist. That might even buy his competitors, and their stolen techniques,
some time before the Empire realized their enemy was not Gerswin, but the changes in society bound to occur as his biologics became more widely accepted.

Gerswin took a final glance around the office he used perhaps fifty times and left through the storage closet.

The corridor was still deserted, but he used the emergency steps to the roof—three more flights.

Once in the open air, he could hear the distant sirens converging. After sprinting to the flitter, he dumped the guard from the cargo bay onto the roof, then scrambled into the flitter, beginning the take-off sequences even as he strapped in.

The fading scream of thrusters on full power, four dead and one unconscious guard, and dust swirling over them were all that the Maran backup force found on the roof.

The Maran Planetary Guard's atmospheric strike force—thirty assorted flitters and skitters—arrived at a dusty field in a distant corner of the remote hunting preserve of the Count de Mermont just in time to feel the concussions created by the hasty departure of a high-powered and unseen spacecraft.

Orbit control tracked, but failed to intercept, the streaking ship that ignored all departure procedures and conventions.

The screen chimed, and she acknowledged.

At the blond hair and yellow eyes, she smiled, but her smile was wiped away by his first words.

“Are you all right? Is there anyone with you?”

Normally, he launched into whatever he had in mind.

“Yes, I'm fine. And there's no one here except the normal staff. Why?”

“You have reservations on the luxury transport
Empress of Isabel
from the Imperial shuttle port tomorrow morning. Take only what you would take on a short vacation. Everything else has been arranged. The necessary documents and itinerary are in your name at the normal Halsie-Vyr drop.”

“In my name?”

He ignored her question and continued onward.

“The
Empress
is an Analexian ship operated for profit, and the human quarters are quite opulent, I assure you. I thought the change would be beneficial.”

“Why? I just can't drop everything and run off on a vacation.” She brushed a gray hair off her forehead.

“You'll understand once you're aboard. I can't explain further. Take too much time, and time is short.”

“Can't it wait?”

“No. Get your itinerary from Halsie-Vyr and get on the
Empress
.” Although he did not raise his voice, his eyes seemed to leap through the screen at her, and in all the years she did not recall such intensity directed at her.

Perhaps she was tired, for she found herself saying, “Of course. Will I see you there?”

Instead of answering directly, the image softened.

“Take care, Lyr. Take care.”

And the screen, with the background of the scout, blanked as suddenly as he had called.

As she stared at the vacant console, she began to worry. After the first conflicts, the commander had almost never ordered her to do anything. While going on an expensive vacation was not an onerous order, there had to be more to it than met the eye. With him, there always was.

Then, too, he had seemed rushed, almost as if he were trying to complete a long list of tasks without enough time.

Finally, unlike him, about whom she knew more than he realized, or at least more than he let on she knew, Lyr was not the adventurous type once the subject got beyond financial management.

And he was promising an adventure.

“Can you explain it?”

“No, ser. I can measure the changes, but that's about all.”

The Commandant of Recorps, Old Earth, cleared his throat. “Environmental improvements suddenly occurring, and we haven't any explanation?”

He glared around the conference room, ignoring the blotches on the walls that indicated all too clearly the age of the building. “So
what are we doing? Why are we holding together antique dozers with Imperial castoffs? Why are we risking lives day after day on the offshore purification pumps? Why are we working nights to educate shamblers?”

“Commander.” The voice came from the woman, but it was cold and deep enough to chill the conversation.

“Commander,” she began again, “whatever biological processes are involved are localized cases, at least so far. We cannot track the cause, only the results, and so far they have shown up in the Rhyn River effluent. There may be others, of course. While there are changes in the forest patterns near the river, with increased undergrowth, these are so far inconclusive.

“In the meantime, Recorps has reclaimed nearly thirty percent of the most arable land left in Noram, plus nearly all the High Plains area. We have similar successes, albeit on a later time line, in Norcan and the Brits. No one else has even tried so much.”

“Except the captain…” That unspoken thought loomed. Or had someone voiced it?

“You're right, Mercelle,” observed the commander with a tired shrug. “Hard to keep things in perspective. We'll keep at it, keep track, and see if nature will at last give us a hand. Istvenn knows we deserve it.”

“We forget,” added Mercelle, “that biological cleaning is a gradual process. Sometimes, you can't tell it's even taking place. Besides, until an entire region is clean, it really isn't complete. In the meantime, we finally have an increasing population that needs the new ground we reclaim every year.

“For the first time, we're actually making an export surplus from the luxury items. Not much, but it's positive.”

“And,” added the executive officer, “we need to keep that progress up to justify the budget from the Privy Council.”

“Right. The budget, always the budget,” concluded the commander sardonically. The logic was clear. With all the increasing pressures on the Imperial Treasury, and the decreasing revenues from the associated systems, unless Recorps could show continued numbers of hectares reclaimed annually, as well as an increased amount of resupply goods for visiting fleets, Recorps would be cut to what it could subsist on from foreign exchange from its minuscule exports, and that was nothing by comparison.

What else could they trade on but tradition—tradition, reclamation, and sentiment?

He pushed aside the thought that someday, someday, sentiment
would not be enough. Nor would the tradition of Old Earth be sufficient.

That was when they would need the mythical captain!

Three marines, clad in full battle armor, wheeled the laser cutter up to the portal.

A combat squad deployed behind the three technicians in the corridor of the building which had been sealed off. All the other offices had already been evacuated, silently, and one by one.

The senior marine technician gestured. The deployed troops dropped their visors, and the two other techs began to bring the laser on line.

The bright and thin purple lance of the cutter was nearly invisible as it knifed through the endurasteel casement of the portal, a reinforced structure designed to resist anything less.

Thud!

The tiles of the corridor carried the vibration as the entire portal assembly fell inward into the office it had served and guarded.

More than a dozen marines sprinted into the office—a space totally empty of people—sweeping the area with stunners to ensure that the smoke caused by the abrupt rise in temperature created by the use of the laser did not hide anyone.

Their duty completed, the assault squad returned to their deployed positions as the I.S.S. technical specialists who had been waiting behind the barricades trooped forward into the office.

The most senior technician, white-haired, thin-faced, sat down at the main console, the one with the finish below the keyboard dulled with age.

He frowned at the unfamiliar layout of the symbols.

“Logart, this is an old Ferrin model, updated with Usart couples.”

“Ferrin? Never heard of it.”

“Ferrin Symbs hasn't turned out anything since the twenties, maybe earlier.”

“What was this place?”

“Some foundation. According to the offreq scans, used as a cover for some of the Atey rebs. OER Foundation, I think the name was.”

The third tech, a dark brunette who was inventorying records, decorations, and other loose items not actually in the data banks, looked up with a puzzled expression.

“Jocham, this is original equipment.”

“So?”

“So,” answered the white-haired tech, “that means this place has been around a lot longer than the Atey movement.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Simple—”

“Techs,” interrupted a fourth voice, one belonging to a figure wearing a privacy cloak over full-space armor, “all speculations are better confined to your official report, and backed by specifics.”

The senior tech saw the woman about to complain, not realizing the organization the armored man represented, and cut her off.

“Geradyn, official reports, as the Eye Service has requested. Official reports, with all relevant data.”

Geradyn blanched. “I didn't…”

She broke off her statement and returned to her inventory under the shadowed eyes of the Intelligence Service officer who paced from one side of the OER Foundation offices to the other.

The white-haired technician almost smiled, but replaced the expression with a more appropriate frown as he began to attempt the indexing job, based on the fragmentary codes provided by the Intelligence Service.

The screen remained blank, but the energy levels indicated it was functioning.

Somehow, he did not know how, though he could have devised an equivalent method, the use of force had resulted in the entire data set being destroyed.

Outside of hard-copy reports, the Eye Service wasn't about to find out much new about whatever the OER Foundation had done, or what it had been.

He did not voice his opinion, but, instead, continued to try all possible methods for discovering or recovering the dumped information, but, suspected, based on the codes already provided, that neither he nor the best from Eye Service would have much luck.

These conclusions, of course, he would reserve for the official reports, submitted after all efforts had failed.

The Intelligence officer continued to pace as the marines waited outside.

“Lord Admiral, we do not have the resources to keep this up much longer.”

The silver-haired admiral silently studied the figures on the inset screen before him, his lips quirking.

“You realize that, ser?”

The silence resumed as the Service chief refused to comment.

Teeth chewing at his lower lip, the commodore glanced back at his own screen, wondering if the admiral was studying the same simple projections his own screen held, wondering why it took so long for the man to respond.

“What is interesting, Ambester, is what is not on the screen.”

“Ser?”

The admiral glared at the commodore, momentarily ignoring the other two more junior flag officers.

“We can provide the more detailed backup information, if you would like.”

“More data never solved any problem, Commodore. Hades few, anyway.” He paused, then inquired, “Has anyone investigated
why
there are more quarantines? With the relaxations on local armed monitors and greater local autonomy, one would expect fewer quarantines, not more. None of your information addresses that.”

“Political problems are followed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”

“Have you contacted them?”

“No, ser.”

“Then I suggest you do. Your data is clear on one point. We cannot continue to enforce quarantines at this rate. It's also clear on another. The conditions creating unrest and local political breakdowns are increasing. Any of you could see that.”

His hard gray eyes raked the three other officers.

“So why didn't anyone ask the reasons? You all know the resource pressures on the Service.”

There was no answer.

“Last question. Does anyone else have this synthesis?”

All three heads nodded in the negative.

“I doubt that either, but maybe not very many people know yet.
Now get me that information. We'll probably need to get together with Internal Affairs.”

The admiral pushed back his swivel and stood. Nodding abruptly, he turned and left the small conference room.

As soon as the flitter touched down at the landing pad above the chalet, she jumped out, feeling twenty years younger, or more, in the cool, light mountain air.

The chalet was just as she had imagined, from the wide balconies that jutted from three sides, from the view overlooking Deep Loch to the crags both behind the chalet and across the loch on the far side of the valley.

Her steps felt lighter than they had in years, not surprisingly, considering the treatments she had received, and she smiled as her feet touched the wide wooden planks of the balcony.

After a long look down at the crystalline green of the loch, she took slow steps down to the rear portal of the chalet, which the land agent had opened for her.

Inside, the spaciousness was more than she had anticipated. The off-white rough finish of the walls, the light wood beams, and the expanse of lightly tinted armaglass all added to the openness while retaining a feeling of warmth.

In the main living area stood a stone hearth and fireplace with real wood to burn, and off from the fireplace was the study she had always coveted.

She stepped inside the study, and her mouth dropped in an amazement she was not sure she could have felt. Above the simple desk, which she admired in passing, was an original oil by Saincleer, one she had never seen, and one which probably cost more than the chalet itself.

Whoever had furnished the chalet, and she could guess but did not want to speculate, yet, had known her tastes.

Some of the pieces she might move slightly, and perhaps one or two she might not have chosen, but the overall effect was spectacular; exactly the sort of home she had wanted, but one which she had
never spent the time to discover or to have built, had she been able to afford such a place, let alone in such a location.

“You approve?” The agent was a young local woman who had met her at the Vers D'Mont shuttle port and who had presented a card that had matched the directions included with her itinerary.

“Approve…approve? It's magnificent!”

“There is a message.”

Lyr saw the envelope, sitting alone on the desk under the Saincleer

Lyr
.

That was all that was on the outside, and she wondered if the script were his. She shook her head. To think after all the years that she had never seen his writing.

She did not open it immediately, but held the envelope in both hands.

There was so much she had not known, had not anticipated—from the impossibly expensive rejuve treatments reserved for her aboard the
Empress
to the star-class accommodations, to the flowers every night, and the personally tailored wardrobe.

She wondered if she dared to open it, or if she dared not to.

After her years of priding herself on being the type not to be overwhelmed, she asked herself whether the commander had set out to overwhelm her. First, the star-class passage on the
Empress
, then the identity as Baroness Meryon Von Lyr, with all the supporting documents, and the sizable credit balance with Vinnifin-Yill, and now a chalet retreat on Vers D'Mont that might be the envy of most commercial magnates of the Empire.

So why did she feel something was missing?

She took one deep breath, then another, and brought the envelope up to her eyes, not that she needed to now. Her eyesight had been restored to what it had been more than fifty years earlier, along with her figure, muscle tone, and hair.

After a time, she opened the envelope.

The single, plain cream-colored sheet was folded in half, and she unfolded it. His message was half-printed, half-scripted, looking more childish than she would have thought.

Again, she looked away, lowering the message without reading it, and stared without seeing at the loch glistening in the white gold of the early afternoon sunlight.

The faint cry of a circling soareagle roused her, and she looked back down at the black words.

She brushed back a stray hair, a lock which, with all the others, had been restored to its original sandy blonde shade, and which, she had been told, would retain the natural color for at least another half century. Still holding the envelope in her right hand, she glanced out through the armaglass at the crags across the loch and then back inside, not wanting to examine the contents of the envelope.

She settled on the vidcube library, filled with cubes, and the antique built-in bookshelves, overflowing with neatly arranged volumes.

She blinked back a single tear, and looked down at the envelope, then at the land agent.

The other woman apparently understood.

“If there is anything you need, let me know. Your own flitter is hangared underneath. There is some food, as well.”

Lyr swallowed hard before speaking.

“Has anyone…lived…”

“No. It has been kept for you. No one, not even the man in gray, has ever spent the night here. About that, he was quite adamant.”

Lyr could feel her eyes beginning to fill, turned away from the other, and sank into the corner of the long white couch that had been placed exactly where she would have placed it.

She still clutched the envelope.

Through the swirl of her feelings, she could hear the rear portal close as the other left, hear the whine as the flitter lifted, and the silence that dropped around her like a cushion.

After a time, she looked back down at the envelope. The top of the
L
was blurred where a tear had fallen on the black ink.

Lyr finally rose from the perfectly placed white couch, though she could not see through the cascade of tears, and walked toward the armaglass door that opened as she neared the balcony. Her shoulder brushed the casement as she stepped onto the wooden planks.

Though she shuddered with the weight of more tears than she could ever shed, her eyes cleared, and she clutched the letter in one hand and the smoothed wood of the rail with the other, and stood on the shaded balcony, with the breeze through her hair.

In the afternoon quiet, in the light and in the cool of the gentle wind, the shudders subsided, and so did Administrator Lyr.

As the breeze died, the Baroness Von Lyr wiped the last tear, the very last tear ever, from her eyes and turned back toward her perfect chalet.

She did not notice that the darkness behind her eyes matched what she had seen behind her commander's eyes.