The Hero
by Eli Dupree

"I'm afraid," the leader of the group had said, "That you don't understand the severity of the situation. If we lose power, we lose everything. The food plants that we grow under artificial light, our water filters, our air."
Eighty or so people − the full population of this installation, this bunker, this city under a hill − were gathered into one room to hold council. Adults and beloved children sat alongside each other; men, women, and others shared the space equally. The separations from before the cataclysm, from before human stupidity had truly come to a head, seemed like a joke to them. They were forced together here.
Now they looked around at each other, sheepishly, waiting for someone to volunteer, someone to be their hero. Even the youngest children had some idea of the precarious situation they were in. Some were crying, upset by so many serious voices, comforted by adults trying to hide their own worry. Some adults were crying.
After the leader stated that their current generator would not last the winter, someone had called, "Just grab a new generator from the city ruins. It's winter outside, any squatters will be deep under cover. Take a jeep, run a heater in it..."
Even if a heater would let the jeep run in the bitter cold, which was doubtful, it would not be able to travel over the several miles of rocky terrain between them and the city. The only devices they had that could were the two single-person power suits, and what use it would be to risk both if a single one would not succeed? A single one would be sent; their hope would rest on a single hero. 
"But doesn't our main generator supply enough power to cover the filters, the indoor farms?" someone had asked.
"It was the latest technology when this place was built seventy years ago," was the reply of one of the techies. "It was enough to support the facilities that were here at the time. We're overtaxing it."
It was the only way, they had agreed at length. None of the systems they were running could be sacrificed, and all possible efficiency improvements within their knowledge had been made. They knew that one of their own would have to go on a risky trek to take a new one from the city ruins. That person would also have to succeed. But who would it be?
Finally, a young voice said, "I'll go."
They turned as a body to face the speaker − the speaker, who was looking directly at the leader, arms folded across her chest. She was of the last generation where they still made any male and female children, which made her fourteen years old. She was known to everyone − how could she not be? She was the one who spoke what was on her mind, who made things clear when it was least wanted and most needed. In her dull anger she had a strength beyond her age. Need I say that she was hated and loved? Adults told the other children to be more like her, ensuring that she was the only one. And now she was offering up for them the risk that she would also die alone.
The cries of "No!" echoed around the circle like vultures.
"You can't let this happen," a man protested to the leader.
The leader sighed and asked the group, "Will anyone volunteer to go in her place?"
No one did.

"Is it light outside now?" she asked.
"Yes," the techie replied without looking at her. "It is five hours until sunset."
"It's enough time," she said. "I want to go now."
"There are preparations that must be made..."
"Then let's make them now."
Over the techie's objections, the leader said grimly, "The sooner we act, the sooner we know if we will be safe."

At the exit they fitted her with the power suit − this armor, fitted with air tanks and a power generator, designed to keep out the pollution as well as the extreme cold, designed decades ago against the present situation by men who had never lived in it and could scarcely imagine it − the flexible casing of metal and plastic segments that would seal over her body, the backpack that comprised the air supply and the cheap generator, and that generator, hopelessly inefficient by later standards but enough to warm the suit to a steady temperature, enough to power the actuators that would make her steps light despite the weight.
As two of her comrades bound the pieces onto her, one of the younger children approached her and asked timidly, "Why are you going?"
"Is there some reason I shouldn't?"
"They said you might not come back."
"It's true. I might die a long slow death out in the cold."
"But why?"
One of the attendants said briskly, "She's going to bring back a power source so we can have power for the winter."
She said, "Some people enjoy living in an unnatural world. If they get power, they can do that. Otherwise they die."
The child demanded, "But what's the reason?"
She smiled impatiently at it and said, "You're so cute, asking for reasons for things." She glanced at the viewscreen that showed a bird's-eye view of the desolation outside, and continued, "I think there are some things that don't have reasons."

They took her into the airlock and then stepped away and sealed the first door behind her. The group stood, grim, silent, as their leader pressed the small lever that opened the outer door and allowed into the chamber the blasts of dry, icy wind, that wind that carried smoke and grit and toxins that would never decay. They stood, silent and grim, as they sent out their favorite child into a dead and hostile world.
Minutes passed. At length the leader said, "It is a sad day when none of us would go in her place."
"I would have gone," said the man who had protested earlier, "but if I were to die..."
"Yes," replied the leader, "You are the only one who knows the operation of certain of the machines. Yes, every one of us is necessary here. But is there any one of us who would say we are more important than she is?"
No one answered.
A woman with a face like stone said flatly, "You say 'she is'. You are very optimistic."

An hour passed. Some of the group returned to their duties. They worked in silence, their hands moving with mechanical surety while internally they cared about nothing but the wait.

More hours passed, one after another like cycles of an engine. People moved from disbelief to anger. Fights broke out for little to no reason, only to subside again. One of the sexless adults discovered that the food allotted to their hero for the last twelve hours had gone uneaten, and cussed out the leader for failing to make sure she was at her full strength when she set out.

Darkness fell. The blame game began, and it was while the leader was arguing a defense that the sentries called.

She stumbled through the airlock. Someone reached out to help remove the power suit, and that someone's fingers froze to the metal. The suit had been built with the power generator outside the cover of its own warmth. The generator itself had been designed without regard for the temperature. The bitter cold had destroyed its internal components.
Hands found gloves and fought with the joints of the suit. Every joint was packed with grit. Little of the Earth's flora had survived the cataclysm, and without plants to hold it together, the soil had turned to dust and blown with the wind.
They lifted the mask from her head, and she gasped in the warm air. Her air supply had also been left in the cold and unheated.
Then they pried open the gauntlet of her right hand, and there was the generator. Every house had had one once, this little device that could power the entire complex for centuries. 
The suit came apart at last and her legs folded under her. Her helpers caught her. They lifted her limp body and carried her to the infirmary, trying to rub warmth back into her frostbitten fingers, looking with horror at the huge, ugly bruises where the bullets from the squatters' booby-traps had made dents in her armor.

In the infirmary, they set her down on a soft bed. She lay there exhausted as they brought warm food to her and fawned over her and called her a hero.
It was a while before they noticed that she was trying to tell them something. Once they did, they listened closely as she mumbled, "Isn't a hero... someone who overcomes their fear?"
"Yes!" they said. "And you did!"
"It was you who were afraid," she snarled, "Not me."

~(February 2009)