Hero! Read Online Free PDF

before. They might try again.
    Now the torch was so high that the sky had turned black. Angel was a blinding pinpoint that polarized a jagged purple blot in the canopy field, but now and again it flashed brilliantly off rambling watercourses on the dark world below.
    Down there was the Putra Delta.
    That was another reason Vaun never came this way.
    In all the years since he first left his birthplace, he had only gone back once. He had left in silence, an outcast. He had returned in triumph, a hero. He could still taste that sour memory…
     
    A S THE TORCH canopy dephases, the heat hits him like a fist. Hot air steams in his lungs, a white brilliance of sunlight stabs knives in his eyes. He smells mud. His hands tremble as he grasps the edge of the hull to dismount.
    He jumps down the last step, and grass squelches slimily below his boots. A tiny, sly voice in his right ear is prompting him, “Head higher. Look left…now right. Smile. Take a deep breath. You’re happy, dammit! That’s better. Now start to walk…”
    The hero returns . Smiling. Dazzled. Walking—a little faster, now—walking over to where the welcoming committee huddles in terror and bewilderment. The hidden cameras watch, so the world can watch.
    Admiral’s epaulets weigh heavy on his shoulders. Already his chest glitters with medals and jeweled stars, and there are dozens more scheduled to come yet as the governments and rulers of the planet outdo one another in honoring the hero.
    This is important for the Patrol, remember. Vaun’s a hero. Good old Vaun. He saved the world. Everyone wants to watch him coming home to tiny Puthain. Good for the Patrol.
    Taxes—a chance to raise taxes…
    “Looking happy,” the prompt says in his ear. “Looking happy. Hold out your arms now. Higher! Walking faster.’
    The grass is muddy, spurting under his shoes. The smell of the river…How could he have forgotten the ever-present stink on the river, the oozy, black mud of the delta? Or forgotten the unending drone of brownflies, the sigh of the empty wind in the long green pozee grass; not a tree or a hill in sight, nor any building fit for human habitation. The watchers burst into cheering, all together.
    Puthain? It’s been cleaned up specially for today’s show. Rustic simplicity is okay, but voters and taxpayers wouldn’t like squalor…Still only an ugly heap of driftwood, that’s all it is. They never called it Puthain when he was a child. Just the village. Probably the name has been invented to put it on the map: Puthain, birthplace of Admiral Vaun.
    The hero.
    But it’s only a litter of hovels half-drowned in the mud of the Putra Delta. He can smell eels under the mud smell. The scent makes his mouth water, although he has learned that eating eels is shameful. Now the crowd has been released and comes running forward, arms out. So few? But it’s a very small village…the boys and girls of the village, and the children of his age grown up now, and a new crop of stick-limbed, shock-haired youngsters replacing them, staring at his uniform. He recognizes Olmin…and Astos…Wanabis. Underfed, bony, been cleaned up for the occasion. At least half the girls are heavy with child. The boys beards have all been removed and the lower halves of their faces painted dark to match the sunburned bits. Beards are for savages. Bony, brown faces…more puzzled than resentful, more resentful than happy. What do they care? They forgot him years ago. Six years—is that all? He doesn’t belong here now.
    He never did belong.
    He wants to turn and run back to the torch; he wants that so badly his knees shake. This is worse than hunting Abbots through the bowels of a Q ship.
    Faces…Faces missing. There’s only one face he really wants to see, and he won’t ever see that one again. He knows that, and yet he hasn’t been able to remember the village without remembering Nivel. Nivel isn’t here. Nivel would be smiling too, but Nivel’s smile would be real and