Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

“And it’s not like you’re just any shaggy pony out of the back lots,” Berthol went on. “You’re a Suiza. They’re treating you—”

“Very well, Uncle Berthol,” she said, hoping to stop him, if she couldn’t stop the ceremony.

“No—I don’t think so. Nor does the Long Table. They’ve voted to give you the Starmount—”

“No,” Esmay breathed. She was uneasily aware that something deep inside disagreed, and breathed yes .

“And a title of your own. To be converted if you marry on Altiplano.”

Dear God, she thought again. She didn’t deserve this. It was ridiculous. It would cause . . . immense trouble either way. No matter that Fleet would not realize it had been intended as a rebuke—they would find it awkward, and that made her awkward.

“Not much of a steading with it,” Berthol said. “In fact, your father said he’d provide that; it’s that little valley where you used to hide out . . .”

Despite herself, Esmay felt a stab of pleasure at the memory of that little mountain valley, with its facing slopes of poplar and pine, its grassy meadows and clear stream. She had claimed it years before in her mind, but had never thought it would be hers. If it could be . . . she remembered some R.S.S. regulations she was afraid might interfere.

“Don’t worry,” Berthol said, as if he could read her mind. “It’s under the limit—your father ran a new survey, and chopped it short at the upper end. It’s under the glacier there. Anyway, if you need to refresh yourself on the protocol of the award ceremony . . .”

She did, of course. The data cube the major with the armor insignia handed her contained not only the ceremony, but a precis on recent political developments, and her family’s position on all of them. The Minerals Development Commission was still squabbling with the Marine Biological Commission over control of benthic development. Some things never changed, but in the years she’d been gone the focus of the battle had shifted from the Seline Trench, as the colonies of interest to the biologists died, and were mined for their rich ores, to the Plaanid Trench, where new vents nourished new vent communities. That quarrel would have been unimportant on many worlds, but on Altiplano the Minerals Development Commission represented the Secularists, while Old Believers and the Lifehearts controlled the Marine Biological Commission. Which meant that an argument over exactly when a benthic vent community was dead and could be mined might erupt in religious riots around the entire planet.

“Sanni,” Berthol said, when she had clicked off the cube reader, “is involved with the Lifehearts again.”

Esmay remembered vividly the moment when her romantic feelings about the night sky became utter certainty that she would have to leave her home forever. Her aunt Sanni—Sanibel Aresha Livon Suiza—and her uncle Berthol, screaming at each other across the big dining room at the estancia. Sanni, a Lifeheart as rigid in her piety as any Old Believer. Esmay found the Lifeheart philosophy attractive, but Sanni in a rage terrified her. Yet it was Berthol who had thrown the priceless chocolate pot, shattering its painted water lilies and swans, scarring the wide polished table. Her own father had walked in on the end of that, with Sanni scrabbling on the floor for shards and Berthol still yelling. And Papa Stefan, two paces behind him, had shamed them both into apologies and hand-shakings.

Esmay hadn’t believed it. Whatever was wrong between Sanni and Berthol stayed wrong, and was still wrong, and here she was back in the middle of it.

“It’s not my problem now,” she said. “I’m only here for a short leave—”

“She likes you,” Berthol said. His gaze flicked to his aides, who were studiously ignoring this. “She says you’re the one sane member of your generation, and now you’re a hero.”

Esmay felt herself reddening. “I’m not. All I did—”

“Esmay, this is family . You don’t have to pretend. All you did, you babykin, was survive a mutiny, come out on top, and then defeat a warship twice your size.”

Bigger than that, Esmay thought. She didn’t say it; it would only make things worse. “It didn’t know I was there until too late,” she said.

“So you were smarter than its captain. Hero, Esmay. Get used to it. You’re carrying our flag out there, Esmay, and you’re doing very well.”

She was not carrying their flag, but her own. They would not understand that, even if she dared say it to them. And Berthol sounded too much like Major Chapin, too much like Admiral Serrano. She had been a hero by accident—why wasn’t it as obvious to the others as it was to her?

“And Sanni’s very proud of you,” Berthol went on. “She wants to talk to you—ask you all about Fleet, about your life. If you’re meeting anyone eligible, if I know Sanni.” He laughed, but it sounded forced.

She had left for a good reason. She should have stayed away. Yet at the thought of the whole family for once approving, for once seeing her as an asset rather than a very chancy proposition, her heart beat faster. The Starmount . . . when she’d been a little girl, she remembered the first soldier she’d seen awarded the Starmount, a lean, red-haired fellow who walked lopsided. She had stared and stared at the medal on its blue and silver ribbon that dangled around his neck until a disapproving grownup made her apologize and then quit following him. No one from Altiplano could be indifferent to the Starmount . . . and she didn’t have to tell Fleet how she felt.

At the shuttlefield, the only media wore the green and scarlet uniforms of the Altiplano Central News Agency. No one tried to speak to her; no one tried to crowd close. She knew that her walk from the shuttle through the terminal to the waiting car would be only one clip in the finished story, narrated by a senior “analyst.” No one would try to interview her; here that was considered rude and disrespectful.

Her father, backed by a wedge of other officers, gave her the same formal salute Berthol had; she returned it, and he gave her the semiformal hug and kisses, not fatherly, but from commander to junior about to be honored. She was introduced to his senior aide, to the next senior; she was led through a corridor where a solid block of militia provided complete privacy—in their terms, which meant from civilian eyes—for her few moments in the ladies’ retiring room, where she found two tiring maids ready to apply fresh makeup and attempt to do something about her flyaway hair. That ended in a spritz of scented stuff which would leave her scalp itchy for two days—but this once, she didn’t mind. In moments they had whisked off her R.S.S. uniform jacket, pressed it, and after a look at the shirt beneath, insisted on replacing it with a clean one from her luggage.

Refreshed, and to her surprise cheered by these ministrations, Esmay came back out, into the midst of a low-voiced argument between her father and her uncle.

“It’s only one cloud,” her uncle was saying. “And it might not rain—”

“It’s only one bullet,” her father said. “And it might miss. I’m not taking the chance. When her hair gets wet—Oh, there you are, Esmaya. There’s a line of storms moving into the city; we’re going to go by car—”

“It’s not nearly as impressive,” Berthol grumbled. “And it’s not as if you expected her to do any real riding.”

She had assumed by car; she’d forgotten that on Altiplano all ceremony involved horses. She thanked some unknown deity for the gift of a possible rainstorm and her father’s distaste for the frizzy mess her hair became if it got damp. At least no one from Fleet was here, to make a joke about a backwoods military that still used horses.