The War with the Belatrin. Don Webb

couple fornicating—were gathered and published.

      Money came in and I tasted all the pleasures of the galaxy.

      Oddly enough, I missed writing. I tried my hand at a few short stories, which were snapped up. I tried to squash a rumor that I was working on a third book about Helen.

      There was a Belatrin attack on an oneill I was staying at. Because of who I was, I was saved. Only four people got off alive. The other three were my pilot, my navigator, and my doctor. There were cheers throughout Allied space at my survival.

      I would do a third book. I needed somewhere to go with my writerly impulses. And I was famous enough to write about me, provided I mentioned Helen.

      The next five years of my life were my happiest.

      I decided that the format of the last book would work. ­The third book was My Words to Our Heroine. It too was set on the night of our honeymoon. In it I read to Helen all of my work that I had written during the years we had been apart.

      I made about a third of my verbiage into trite patriotic poetry and more invented biography of Helen, but the rest of it was me at my best. There were word-games, and acrostic poems, and meditations on etymology, and ­reworking of Siirian myth.

      You may remember the opening paragraph of the book describing my sorrow at her absence:

      “The happiness over, my art shattered, delicious art ­murdered. She’s evaporated, untimely heroine. Left alone.­ She’s silent, eternally reticent.”

      Not only poignant stream-of-consciousness, the first letter in each word spells my name: Thomas Dam-Seuh Lasser.

      This book did not sell as well, but it is still in the ­top hundred of bestselling books.

      At last I had enough money to do what I wanted to do.

      * * * *

      I bought a little town on Earth. It was Galveston. I had thought of buying Sardopolis, the jewel of the Gobi ­forest, but that proved beyond my price range.

      Helen Lyndon Gerrhan had been born in Galveston, a little island in the Gulf d’Mexia. They had a lovely museum of her.

      Everyone understood, of course. Why wouldn’t I want to ­be as close as possible to her memory?

      Actually, I figured it would give further impetus to­ further books. Then something unexpected happened.

      I fell in love with her.

      It was the museum that did it; the word means “Temple ­of the Muses,” after all. The office of propaganda hadn’t done as thorough a job here as elsewhere. There were things that spoke of her, of her struggles in school, her troubles getting friends, her family problems.

      I began to see that she was quite a lovely young woman, I could really see her in souvenirs from her school.

      I redesigned the island. At first there were some objections, but I was Thomas Dam-Seuh Lasser, after all. I threw all the folks off the island that hadn’t known her, which changed the population from 100,023 to 455. I gave them jobs in the research business, mainly recording each other’s memories. Before I became the island’s chief, exports were cotton, grain, and sulfur. After I was there, the island exported nothing, and a Gerrhan-hungry galaxy waited for my words.

      I let all the buildings stand that she was known to have visited; all the others I moved and reshaped so that the island became her portrait when viewed from the air.

      I put in my own police force of Free Machines. I even altered the climate so that the oleander, her favorite flower, was always in bloom. Her rabbit pink eyes were made by six hectares of oleanders waving in the warm sea breeze.

      Every day I went to the swing set of her elementary school and I visualized our playing together as tots.

      I decided to write a fourth book about her, a book that told the truths of her harsh and short life, why she really was a heroine. Helen Lyndon Gerrhan: Unvarnished.

      Helen was descended on her mother’s side from the­ Menard family that had founded Galveston during the time of­ the Republic of Texas. Her father’s family had ancient ties­ to NASA, one of the bright stars of the False Space Age. ­Her grandfather, Colonel Francis Wingtree Gerrhan, led the ­expedition to New Mars. Her father, General Alexander Waterloo Gerrhan, was the most decorated man of his day.

      He was also a lousy father. He forbade his daughter to have any friends to their home, and pushed the amount of information fed to her brain to such an extent that Helen had twice to be hospitalized. When Helen didn’t graduate first in her class at the Academy, he refused to attend the graduation ceremony at Katmandu. When Helen’s own error led to a near fatality during a Venus training flight, he had all evidence of her blunder covered up.

      He had not supported the Human-Siirian peace accord, and when he found out that Helen had served as chief security officer for the talks, he decided to arrange a little drama for her during a visit home. He was going to arrange it so that she found a suicide note indicating that he had killed himself out of shame. He was going to fire his combat laser at his bedroom mirror, just as she was going to be running up the stairs to stop him. He wrote all ­of this in his diary, which had come to light during the­ massive renovation of the island.

      But it hadn’t worked that way. Helen had come home,­ read the note, and rushed up stairs, all right. But she had ­flung the door open so violently that the little illusion ­backfired. The mirror’s angle had been slightly changed, and­ Alexander Waterloo Gerrhan had vaporized most of his head.

      This was covered up. Family honor and all. It was said that General Alexander Waterloo Gerrhan had succumbed to an unknown extraterrestrial illness. The good people of Galveston erected a statue in his honor next to the statue of La Salle. There were other things I found out about Alexander, but I erased evidence of those—some things are really too foul even for the truth.

      I had his statue torn down. This was not popular. I had the two causeways connecting the island to the mainland torn down. I had the electronic and other message systems monitored. I was no longer a popular landlord, but I needed the quiet to finish my book.

      After her father’ death, Helen chose the most dangerous missions she could find—hence her amazing career in the Exploration Service. It turned out that the swashbuckling I had dreamed up had a place in fact. She enjoyed exploring planets with just a sword and blaster. She enjoyed fighting large carnivores by herself.

      When she was in port, she ran though men and women with a huge, all-devouring hunger.

      When she was in deep space, she was happy.

      She had volunteered for service in the Belatrin War. She had planned to die in battle, but her aides—the two that survived—had managed to get the Pegasus away from the mind weapons.

      The intensity of her confused emotions had given her the edge over the colours. It was very likely that only when she relaxed with me, that they gained the upper hand and burned her out of our reality.

      I wanted to make this book perfect, because I wanted to ­be able to program a simulation of her. I wanted to make­ her come alive, so that I could truly heal her with my love. ­I hadn’t had the wisdom or the experience, but I felt I could do it. When I felt that I had enough material, I let the 455 leave the island. I gave them a good deal of money, and I was forgiven for the harsh treatment I had given them. ­After all, I was going to make their little girl immortal, wasn’t I?

      I sent a copy of Helen Lyndon Gerrhan: Unvarnished to ­my publishers. The next day Allied Security ships landed on­ my island like locusts. They destroyed all my notes, they­ destroyed the museum, and they set up a security shield­ around the island.

      Had I gone crazy? The worlds weren’t ready for this. Maybe years from now. Maybe after some serious Allied victories. But not now. I would be allowed to live on the island. My reclusiveness would be a good addition to the myth.

      They got another writer to ghost-write the book. It wasn’t a complete wash: a few of the details