For Love and Glory

XXX

Hebo sat on the verandah of a lodge in what was once Nepal. A mild breeze bore a fragrance of jasmine and flaunted the brilliant hues of rhododendrons against cloudless blue. Birdsong blew on it. Before him woodland climbed upward, and beyond it shone the mighty snowpeaks. The scene and this small house belonged in the days of his first youth; he’d backpacked hereabouts. He suspected the place had been sited and shaped as it was just for him. Easily done, after those memories had been read. His stay here, these past two or three weeks, must be as much a part of the healing process as the mental exercises programmed for him. He didn’t mind.

His head had felt so strange at first, a whole new landscape, blindingly clear, but with sudden emptinesses to come upon as he felt his way around. Yet there’d been a coolness too, a sense of detachment, as if somehow he stood aside watching himself. He’d wondered if somebody waking from a fever delirium had felt like that, long ago, before even his own time. Then bit by bit he settled in, coming to realize not only with his awareness but with his whole identity that he was still the same old person, simply with a lot of fog and underbrush cleared away. Yes, there were gaps in his memories, but nothing that mattered too much; he could look up the records of those experiences whenever he cared to, and meanwhile everything he had kept stood sharp and vivid, his life story ready to hand.

Including enough memories of blunders to give a healthy ruefulness. He dared hope he’d be thinking and behaving better for the next few centuries.

Though when could he start? He surged from his chair and paced to and fro, growling. Yep, he thought, the same old fiddle-footed Hebo. He wanted a drink. Bad idea, pouring this early in the day, but what the hell else was there to do? Oh, yes, a hike through the woods, something like that. Sensible. He was getting mighty tired of being sensible.

A light footfall brought him around on his heel. Avi had come out onto the verandah. His impatience didn’t altogether fall from him, but cheer blossomed. “Well, howdy!” he exclaimed. “Welcome back!”

“How’re you doing?” she asked. She spoke with him not only in Anglay, but in the dialect he’d grown up with.

“Lonesome,” he admitted. “Bored. Restless. Christ, but it’s good to see you!”

He strode over to embrace her. She was worth embracing, for sure, slim, chocolate dark, with luminous eyes in delicate features. A sari-like dress was exactly right for her. Her garb always was, whatever it might be.

She responded willingly, but less ardently than before. “I wish you didn’t have to flit away so much,” he said when they came up for air.

She stepped back and murmured, “That’s been more on your account than mine, dear. You’ve needed solitude.”

“Yeah, to do the drills and straighten myself out and so on and so forth. I couldn’t have managed without you, however.”

After the clinic and the machines, human companionship, consoling, heartening. Great sex, also lively talk and shared music and rambles around the countryside and—

Avi smiled. “I’ve enjoyed it.”

How much does she mean that? he wondered, not for the first time. Oh, somewhat, I suppose, otherwise why’d she bother? But with how much of her attention on it?

In his regained clarity he saw how skillfully she’d always evaded his questions about where she went and what, she did when she wasn’t here. Her flitter seemed to drift away and back as lightly and meaninglessly as thistledown. Nevertheless, she was absolutely not a creature of impulse. Now and then he’d touched, barely touched, on enormous underlying self-control, before she fended him off with a word or a caress.

And seeing her stance, her gaze upon him, he understood: “You’ve got something new for me today.”

She nodded. Light shimmered slightly on the coiled midnight hair. “Yes. Haven’t you seen it coming? The verdict. Everything shows you’re whole, ready to go back and take up your own life.”

In spite of the warmth in her tone, he had a sense of impersonal kindness. Briefly he imagined stopping a minute to put a fallen fledgling back in its nest. Oh, yes, they’d charged for their services, a draft on one of his bank accounts, but very reasonable. When he’d asked what was worth their buying on yonder world, Avi had said that humans were too apt to misuse whatever they perceived as free goods.

The train-of-thought recollection gave him a moment’s chill. “Humans?” Isn’t she as human as I am? Biologically, yes—I suppose—maybe. In her head and heart—well, maybe, too; but what else is in there?

He pushed that aside. The tidings were not unexpected. “Hey, wonderful!” With even more sincerity: “I’ll miss you, though, Avi.”

Her eyelashes fluttered. “Thank you, Torben.” Then she looked straight at him and said, “You’ll do best to take up your life again as soon as possible.”

“No argument there,” he must agree. “One thing I won’t miss is all this sitting around on my ass.”

She raised her brows. “Why, what would you rather use?”

He grinned and shrugged. She did have a sense of humor, or, at least, she knew how to put one on, like a dress. Like anything purely human?

She turned earnest. “Have you considered what you’ll do?”

“N-no. Been turning some notions over, but I never was one to think really far ahead. Except—” he blurted, “I’d like to come back here once in a while and see you again.”

She shook her head. “No,” she told him gravely. “That would be very inadvisable, Torben.”

“Why?”

“For you.”

Heartbreak? he wondered. Or confusion, or what? Would she even exist anymore as this woman I’ve sort of known? She’s maybe been only one—well, incarnation of her whole self. I don’t know. I doubt if I ever will.

Once, when they’d grazed seriousness, she’d said, “The future is intellect.” Thereupon she’d glided off the matter. Harking back, he suspected the remark had not been accidental. They, or it, or whatever reigned on Earth, had probably judged—one of their carefully reasoned, millisecond judgments—it was best not to let the patient get above himself, not to give him hopes that were bound to be broken. Old-fashioned, purely organic life had reached its limits.

Or so they believed.

Maybe they did.

As if directly sensing his flicker of resentment and rebellion, Avi smiled anew, took his hand—how slender hers was!—and said, “You won’t care about that when you’ve heard what I’ve got to tell you.”

He let go of all larger questions—did they matter to him, anyway?—and stared. Yeah, he thought through a quickened pulsebeat, there’s no sort of regular interstellar news channel, but word does get around, and I imagine Earth keeps alert, the way I’d keep alert for outside things while I’m mainly piloting a ship. “Say on. Please.”

Her steady voice overwhelmed him: the black hole collision, observed at close range by Susaians and by humans from Asborg, preliminary data speeding forth over the scientific grapevine. “Hey, Judas priest, sensational!” burst from him. “Have you folks sent a mission out for a good look?”

Her voice cooled. “No, that’s not necessary.”

Why not? tumbled through him. Did the Earth-mind have the whole thing figured out beforehand? Or doesn’t it give a damn anymore about anything but its quantum navel?

No, that’s unfair, downright stupid. I’m like a rat in a maze wondering why the experimenter doesn’t want to run it too and find the cheese.

The sheer archaism of his symbol was a shocking reminder.

He heard Avi: “But I daresay that in the next several years there’ll be quite a bit of activity in the neighborhood. Somebody like you could find a way to make a profit off that.” Her laugh trilled. “And have fun.”

Again his misgivings died down. And see Lissa Windholm, he thought. Though what I could actually do—

It struck him like a fist. He stood amazed.

Avi cocked her head. “Seems like you’ve suddenly had an idea.”

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled. “I, I’d rather not say anything. It’s too vague yet. Probably too far-fetched.”

“I understand,” answered the warmth he had come to know so well.

Do you completely? he couldn’t help wondering. If I can get this notion, others can. If the Earth-mind is interested at all, it will have already. Has her link with it told her?

He pulled himself away from that, back to the allurement before him. “Yes,” she said low. “An adventurer, a loner. You’ll want to take off straightaway, I’m sure. But—Torben, could you wait to make ready till tomorrow? We ought to have a little farewell party first, the two of us.”

“You betcha!” he answered half gladly.