The Forever Hero (80 page)

The commander ran his eyes over the screen, trying to focus on the words, finally letting them settle midway down the text.

“…mysterious traveler on the Euron continent has been blamed for the overthrow of two local rulers, at least, for the death of a score of bandits, and for the establishment of a ‘devilspawn' settlement on the Inland Sea…

“…settlement verified, location on grid three, named Stander, allegedly founded in memory of the traveler who departed in a wagon of fire…

“…not all events reported can be verified, but all verified references fall within a three-century period…some evidence to indicate traveler was real Imperial, perhaps a wandering scholar of some sort…but…would not explain ability with weapons…particularly with native arms…”

The commander bit his lip. No sooner had he managed to purge the superstitious gobbledygook from the main base records than it was turning up elsewhere on Old Earth.

Reclamation was a serious business, dependent far too much on worn-out equipment—equipment modified so much the original specs were useless—too few supplies, and too few trained personnel. As the Empire continued to shrink, with each subsequent cutback, there were fewer replacement parts, fewer visiting ships of any sort with which to trade for the needed technical equipment the Empire failed to supply.

With all the drawbacks, there was less and less incentive to push back the landpoisons.

His hand touched the screen and sent the report to the system files.

Bad enough that the early captain, whoever he had been, had been turned into a godlike legend. Now he had to contend with other magical forces and legends.

How could he explain the improved environmental monitoring reports from places where Recorps had never been? It had been hard enough to justify the limited Imperial support with the bad reports from the out-continents.

Despite his efforts, and the efforts of the commandants before him, Recorps was shrinking, and the rate of progress slowly but surely declining.

The records showed that four centuries earlier, Recorps had been operating the now-closed Scotia station, and that two centuries before that the Noram effort had crossed the Momiss River. Yet they still had not completed the eastern sections of Noram, despite the efforts in the Brits and on the fringes of Euron.

There never were enough techs, let alone enough officer-grade types, to fill the positions necessary. The Admin complex was filled with empty offices, empty quarters, empty labs.

Still, the spouts were less severe, and far less frequent, and there hadn't been a stone rain in Noram in over a century, and summer ice rains were a rarity, rather than the norm they had once been.

“Hard work…,” he muttered. Hard work, that was what had caused the improvement, not the magic of some traveler in mysterious Euron, or some long-dead captain.

Even that captain, he rationalized, had worked hard.
He
hadn't used magic, no matter what the old locals insisted, no matter what the Corwin tapes had said, no matter what the old songs said.

It would be so easy to give up, to assume things would still get better without Recorps. But until the Imperial and Recorps effort had begun, what had there been? Savages and shambletowns, a declining local population, and despair. Who wanted to go back to that?

He ran his fingers through his thinning hair, then touched the centuries-old console, the once-gray plastic sheathing now nearly black, not with dirt, but from the continued exposure to the radiation of the interior lights, designed so long ago to supplement the sunlight that had been virtually nonexistent.

Would there be a time when Recorps would not be needed?

He hoped so, but was glad it would not be soon, would not be in his time.

He flicked off the console, and stood, stretching, before he straightened his uniform and headed for his empty quarters. Unlike his predecessor, he lived in quarters, not in New Denv.

He frowned and shook his head as he went out through the open portal.

The slender blond man halted his work on the painstakingly squared golden log and stood up as he watched the agent vault from the flitter with the grace of the trained hunter.

The uniformed man moved with an easy stride from the flats where he had landed the flitter, a narrow space requiring more than mere skill, more even than recklessness or nerve.

The blond man nodded. He recognized the step of the other. He did not bother to touch the knives hidden in his wide belt, knowing that the other could not have immediate violence on his mind or hands.

He continued to wait until the agent, wearing a sky-blue uniform he did not recognize, with the Imperial crest that he did, halted several meters from him.

The woodworker smiled and set down the tool with which he had been smoothing the log.

“Commodore Gerswin?”

“Answered to that once.” He nodded at the uniform. “Corpus Corps?”

“Yes. But not on official business—not the kind you mean.”

“No uniform on those missions.”

The agent smiled faintly and half nodded in acknowledgment.

“Nice location here.”

“For me…under the circumstances.”

The agent looked around the partly built structure, noting the perfect joint where each golden log had been fitted into place, the dark stones that seemed to fit precisely without mortar, and the way the home-to-be nestled against the cliff behind it.

“You do good work, Commodore, not that you always haven't.”

The blond man smiled wryly, dismissing the compliment.

“One way of looking at it.”

The agent looked down at the stone underfoot, then back at the man who looked no older than he did.

“Why did you put in the change of address for your retirement pay with the Recorps base here? And why did you use coded entries?”

“Why not? No sense in the Empire having to keep searching. Waste of resources. You either get me, or decide it's not worth it. Too tired to play god much longer.”

“You? Too tired? Why didn't you use those tacheads? There were nine left…somewhere…wherever they are. Not to mention the hellburners.”

“Assuming I had any,” sighed the thinner man. “Just wanted to get home, not that it is, you understand.”

“It isn't? Thought you were from here.”

“Was. But you know better. You can't really go home. So long no one really remembers. Why I used codes. Be worse if they knew for sure I was the captain. Won't matter someday. Doesn't matter to the Empire already, I suspect.”

The agent frowned, started to shake his head, then stopped, fingering the wide blue leather belt, centimeters from the stunner in the throw-holster.

“You win, Commodore, just like you always did.” The words carried a tinge of bitterness.

“Didn't win. Lost. You lost. We both lost. Lerwin, Kiedra, Corwin, Corson—they won. So did the children, those lucky enough to have them…and keep them.”

“That may be,” answered the agent, “but you won. The Empire is coming apart, and the Ydrisians, the Ateys, the Aghomers—you name it, you're their patron saint.”

The slender man pursed his lips, waiting.

The Corpus Corps agent studied the wiry man in the thin and worn singlesuit, but kept his lips tightly together.

“You drew the duty of having to tell me?”

“No. I asked. I wanted to see a living legend. I wanted to see the man who single-handedly brought down the Empire.”

“I didn't. May have hurried things. But not me.” He smiled wryly once more. “Disappointed?”

“No.” The agent's tone said the opposite.

The slender man's hands blurred.

Thunk! Thunk!

Twin knives vibrated in the temporary brace by the agent's elbow, both buried to half their length.

“Does that help?”

“A little…” The agent took a deep breath. He could not have even touched his stunner in the time the commodore had found, aimed, and thrown the heavy knives. “…but how—it couldn't have just been the weapons skills.”

“No. Helped me stay alive. Any man who cared about Old Earth, about life…any man could have done the rest…if he sacrificed as many as I did…”

The man in the blue uniform nodded.

“Now. A favor.”

“What?” asked the agent cautiously.

“Better that the locals know I'm just a retiree. Don't know more, and they don't need to. Your records will go when the Empire falls.”

“Should I? Why? Let you suffer in notoriety…”

The hawk-yellow eyes of the commodore-who-was caught the agent, and in spite of himself, he stepped back.

“Why?” he repeated, more softly.

“Because, like the Empire…out of time…out of place…”

The agent watched as the commodore's eyes hazed over, looking somewhere, somewhen, for a minute, then another. He waited…and waited.

A jay screamed from a pine downhill from the pair, and a croven landed on the rock above the flitter, but the commodore noticed neither the birds nor the man in blue.

Finally, the Corpus Corps agent stepped forward.

Thunk!

A third knife appeared in the brace, and the former I.S.S. officer shook himself.

“Sorry…reflex. Hard to keep a thought. Too many memories,” apologized the commodore, who still looked to be a man in his middle thirties.

The agent, despite his training, shivered.

“I understand, I think, Commodore.” He paused, then saluted, awkwardly. “Good day, ser. Good luck with your house.”

He turned and slowly descended the even-set and smooth stone steps, then walked along the precisely laid stone walkway, still shaking his head slowly as his strides carried him back to the flitter.

“We all lost. Him, too.”

He was yet shaking his head as the flitter canopy closed and the turbines began to whine.

Behind him, the blond man picked up his tools and returned to smoothing the golden log, smoothing it for a perfect fit, a perfect fit that would last centuries.

Weary. Old. Either adjective could have applied to the still-buried building that served as the landing clearing area for the few travelers to visit Old Earth.

The historian/anthropologist took another step away from the shuttle-port entry before stopping. Her recorder and datacase banged against her left hip as she halted to survey the hall. Compared to Imperial architecture, the ceiling was low, and despite the cleanliness of the structure, a feeling of dinginess permeated the surrounding. That and emptiness. There had been two passengers on the annual Imperial transport—most of the space was for technical support equipment for Recorps.

She debated taking a holo shot of the receiving area, then decided against it. She squared her uniformed shoulders and stepped up to the console.

A bored clerk in a uniform vaguely resembling hers waited for the lieutenant to present her orders.

He took the square green plastord and eased it into the console.

“Your access code, please, sher.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You have special orders, Lieutenant. Service doesn't trust us poor cousins. For me to verify your arrival, you have to punch in your own access code.” He pointed to the small keyboard built into the counter. “Right there.”

The lieutenant shrugged. Her precise features, thick, short, and lustrous black hair, and an air of command gave her more of an “official” presence than the Interstellar Survey Service uniform.

Stepping over to the keyboard, she tapped in the access code and waited.

Several seconds later, another console beside the clerk beeped. He retrieved the plastord square and handed it back.

“Welcome to Old Earth, Lieutenant Kerwin.”

“Thank you. What's the best way to reach the old Recorps Base?”

“Old Recorps Base? Didn't they tell you? You're in it. There's never been more than one main base. Outside of the work ports in Afrique and Hiasi, this is it. Oh…we have a few detached officers in Euron and around the globe, but here's the center.”

Lieutenant Kerwin looked around the open gray hall, again, even more slowly.

“You want base quarters…go to the end of the hall. Take the left fork. That leads to the tunnel to Admin. Plenty of room these days.”

“These days…,” she murmured.

“Days of the captain are gone, Lieutenant. Lot of nostalgia, especially with the big Atey report,” added the suddenly loquacious rating. “Their Institute sent a team last year, but haven't seen a report. May not have one, Captain Lerson says. Lots of nostalgia. Sensicubes all romance it. Don't believe it. Never was a captain, not like that, anyway…if you ask me. You'll have to make your own decision.”

“Who told you that was my job?” asked the officer softly, with a touch of ice in her tone which pinned the man back against his console.

“Told you what?”

She smiled, and the smile was a cross between sudden dawn and the pleased look of the reintroduced hills cougar sizing up a lost beefalo calf.

“Surely you're joking?” she asked with a laugh, and the laugh had a trace of silvered bells in it, with steel behind.

In spite of himself, the rating failed to repress a shiver.

“Just around, Lieutenant. Someone from the Empire coming in to study the myth of the captain. To check our records. Two passengers, and the other was a hydrologist recruited from Mara. Had to be you.”

“Around? That's interesting.” She pursed her lips before continuing. “Don't put down myths, Reitiro,” she concluded, picking his name off the tag on his tunic pocket, “they all started with reality. You might think about the reality of the captain.”

Reitiro frowned as the Survey Service officer turned and left, moving with an easy stride down the hallway toward the tunnel to the Administration building, the tunnel a relic from the days when the environment had been totally out of control.

From before the days of the captain, if the myths were indeed correct.