Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

Another quick glance. Barin’s face had paled almost to the color of her own. “Esmay . . . Lieutenant . . . I didn’t know . . .”

“No. It’s not something I talk about. My family . . . had insisted it was a dream, a fever dream. I was sick a long time, the same fever my mother had had. They said I’d run away, gotten near the front, been hurt . . . but the rest of it was just a dream, they said.”

“The rest of it?”

It felt like knives in her throat; it felt worse. “The man . . . he was . . . someone I knew. Had known. In my father’s command. That uniform . . .”

“And they lied to you?” Now Serrano anger flashed in his eyes. “They lied to you about that?”

Esmay waved her hand, a gesture her family would have understood. “They thought it was best—they thought they were protecting me.”

“It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t someone in your own family—?”

“No.” She said it firmly, though she still wasn’t sure. Had there been only that one assailant? She had been so young—she had had uncles and older cousins in that army, and some of them had died. In the family book of remembrance, the notations said “died in combat” but she was well aware now that notations and reality were not the same thing.

“But you . . . went on.” Barin looked at her directly now. “You were strong; you didn’t . . .”

“I cried.” She got that out with difficulty. “I cried, night after night. The dreams . . . they put me in a room at the top of the house, at the end of the hall, because I woke them up, thrashing around so. I was afraid of everything, and afraid of being afraid. If they knew how scared I was, they would despise me . . . they were all heroes, you see. My father, my uncles, my cousins, even my Aunt Sanni. Papa Stefan had no use for crybabies—I couldn’t cry in front of him. Put it behind you, they said. What’s past is past, they said.”

“But surely they knew—even I know, from my foster family—that children don’t just forget things like that.”

“On Altiplano you forget. Or you leave.” Esmay took a deep breath, trying to steady her voice. “I left. Which relieved them, because I was always trouble for them.”

“I can’t believe you were trouble—”

“Oh yes. A Suiza woman who did not ride? Who would not involve herself with stock breeding? Who did not flirt and attract the right sort of young men? My poor stepmother spent years on me, trying to make me normal. And none of it worked.”

“But . . . you got into the Fleet prep school program. You must have recovered very well. What did the psychnannies say? Did they give you any additional therapy?”

Esmay dodged the question. “I had read psych texts on Altiplano—there wasn’t any therapy available there—and after all I passed the exams.”

“I can’t believe—”

“I just did it,” she said sharply. He flinched, and she realized how he might take that. “It’s not the same for you.”

“No . . . I’m a grown man, or supposed to be.” The bitterness was back in his voice.

“You are. And you did what you could—it’s not your fault.”

“But a Serrano is supposed to—”

“You were a captive. You had no choices, except to survive or die. Do you think I never tortured myself with ‘A Suiza is supposed to—’? Of course I did. But it doesn’t help. And it doesn’t matter what you did—if you spewed your guts—”

“I did,” Barin said in a small voice.

“So? That’s your body . . . if it wants to vomit, it will. If it wants to leak, it will. You can’t stop it.” She was aware that she was talking to herself as much as Barin, telling the self that had grieved so long what it had needed to be told.

“If I’d been braver . . .” in a smaller voice still.

“Would bravery have kept your bones from breaking? Your blood from flowing?”

“That’s different—that’s physical—”

“Vomiting isn’t?” She could move again, and now she stepped closer to the bed. “You know you can make anyone vomit with the right chemicals. Your body produces the chemicals, and you spew. A leads to B, that’s it.”

He moved restlessly, looking away from her. “Somehow I can’t see my grandmother admiral puking all over a musclebound Bloodhorde commando just because someone mentioned the arena combat.”

“You had been hit in the head, hadn’t you?”

He twitched, as if he’d been poked in his sore ribs. “Not that hard.”

Esmay fought down a flash of anger. She had tried; she had told him things she had not told anyone else, and he was apparently determined to wallow in his own pangs of guilt. If someone could wallow in pangs . . .

“I just don’t know if I can face it,” Barin said, almost too quietly to hear over the soft buzz of the ventilator.

“Face what?” Esmay asked, her voice edged.

“They’ll . . . want me to talk about it.”

“Who?”

“The psychnannies, of course. Just as they did with you. I . . . don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course not,” Esmay said. Her mind skidded away from his assumption that she had had therapy.

“How bad is it, really? What do they say?” A pause, a gulp. “What do they put in your record?”

“It’s . . . not too bad.” Esmay fumbled through her memory of those texts, but couldn’t come up with anything concrete. She looked away, aware that Barin was now staring at her. “You’ll do fine,” she said quickly, and moved toward the door. Barin raised a hand still streaked with the pink stain of nuskin glue.

“Lieutenant—please.”

Esmay forced herself to take a deep breath before she turned back to him. “Yes?”

His eyes widened at whatever he saw on her face. “You . . . you haven’t talked to the psychs, have you? Ever?”

The breath she’d taken had vanished somewhere; she could not breathe. “I . . . I . . .” She wanted to lie, but she couldn’t. Not to him; not now.

“You just . . . hid it. Didn’t you? By yourself?”

She gasped in a lungful of air, fought it into her chest, and then forced it out through a throat that felt stiff as iron. “Yes. I had to. It was the only way—” Another breath, another struggle. “And it’s better . . . I’m fine now.”

Barin eyed her. “Just like me.”

“No.” Another breath. “I’m older. It’s been longer. I do know what you’re feeling, but it gets better.”

“This is what confused people,” Barin said, as if to himself. That non sequitur snagged her attention.

“What do you mean, confused?”

“It wasn’t just the difference in Altiplano social customs and Fleet’s . . . it was this secret you had. That’s why your talents were all locked up, hidden . . . why it took combat to unlock them, let you show what you could do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Esmay said. She felt a tremor in her mind like that of stepping onto the quaking surface of a bog.

“No . . . but . . . you need help as much as I do.”

Panic; she could feel her face stiffening into a mask of calm. “No, I don’t. I’m fine now. It’s under control; as you say, I can function.”

“Not at your best. I heard about your best; Grandmother said the combat analysis was unbelievable . . .”

For a moment it seemed funny. “Your grandmother wasn’t on the Board of Inquiry.”

His hand flipped a rude gesture. “Boards of Inquiry exist to scare captains into heart attacks and ulcers. What I heard, through the family, was how the real commanders, who have combat experience, saw it.”

Esmay shrugged. This was only slightly more comfortable than the other topic.

“And no one, Grandmother included, could understand how you did it . . . there was nothing in your background, she said.”