Hero! by Dave Duncan Page A

into withdrawal.”
    So how would Vaun’s behavior rank? “What has he been holding back, Zozo? What secrets has he kept from Planetary Command?”
    She blinked vaguely. “None.” They were both whispering. “Or so he says. He swears that every signal ever received has been fed to Archives as required. But Roker’s a crafty devil. He trusts no one.”
    Roker was having delusions if he thought he could run a mind bleed on Tham now. Even the preliminary trephination would kill him. But the talk of mind bleeding might be Tham’s own delusion, if his brain was rotting as fast as his body.
    Oh Tham, Tham! Few indeed were the admirals or commodores who would accept invitations to Valhal, or invite the upstart Vaun to visit their own abodes. Many would turn off their party beacons if they detected the signature beam from his torch. Stuck-up aristocratic prigs, all of them, while Tham, whose family was older than any…
    Suddenly the folds of skin twitched like blinds, and Tham’s eyes were open, staring up at Vaun. They were bleary and yellow, but they were most horribly and certainly Tham’s eyes, peering out of that decaying monstrosity of a body in which he was imprisoned.
    Nothing else moved and the strenuous breathing rattled on at the same pace. The dog howled.
    Vaun stepped close and knelt painfully to clutch the thin, cold bones of the comcom’s fingers. “Tham, I’m sorry!” The invalid had a sour smell.
    Sunken flesh around Tham’s mouth began to move, and what happened was apparently intended to be a smile—not a very happy one, though. “Who did your face?”
    “I bailed out a little early.”
    “You always did think that fences were for climbing, didn’t you, Vaun?” Even if Tham was as angry as Zozo, his gibes would be more subtle than her shrewish reproaches. Tham was never discourteous, even when his meaning was deadly.
    “I should not have come if I…Damn!” Vaun wasn’t about to start telling lies to an old friend, and there was no use apologizing now. “Listen, Tham, I came because of a misunderstanding. I just need to ask you a couple of questions, then I’ll go and leave you in peace. This wasn’t Roker’s idea. Just me. A favor for an old friend?”
    “How may I be of assistance, Admiral?” The voice was a scratch of fingernail on old, dry bone.
    “You know there’s a Q ship coming…”
    “Three, the last I heard.”
    “The one from Scyth, I mean. It was due in about this time next year. Out of sheer curiosity, I checked on it—and I discovered that it isn’t braking. I thought we’d lots of time to…time before it arrived. But it should have started braking by now.” No need to tell Tham that Scyth was seven elwies away, or that such a journey needed a rock, which could not decelerate like a metal-skin boat. “It’s on impact course, and in about a hundred days we’ll need an Eject button on the planet. Suddenly it feels urgent…Tham.”
    What wasn’t urgent to someone who looked like Tham looked? Or what was? Did anything matter at all? Tham’s Eject button had already been pushed.
    “And what can I do?” His mind seemed to be unaffected. The boy Vaun had known so long was still in there, in that suddenly ancient body. It was going to take him with it.
    Vaun had never considered himself as being afraid of death, no more than any other living being, but he knew that some deaths were better than others. “I want to know if it’s the Brotherhood, Tham. That’s all that concerns me. If it’s beasties or a runaway derelict or anything else at all, then Roker and his boys can do the worrying. But if it’s the Brotherhood again, then…”
    Vaun let the sentence fade out, wondering what the ending really was… Then I feel responsible?
    Tham grimaced and squirmed, as if at a sudden cramp. “How the hell should I know? You think I can pick up signals from a Q ship?”
    “Of course not. But when Scyth went silent, you told me you thought it was the Brotherhood’s