Zero Recall

by Sara King

  For a long moment, the corridor was utterly silent around him. Then, softly, “You and Jemria have more in common than you know.” A moment later, the hall disappeared, and Joe felt a strange tingle-numb sensation throughout his body before he was suddenly standing in the cargo bay of a ship.

  In the center of the bay, a single metal incineration box sat alone and unguarded. On one side, it had a row of beeping lights and what looked like a speaker system.

  “Thank you,” Joe whispered.

  The Watcher did not reply. Joe walked up to the crate and touched the side. It was a cube about as high and wide as he was tall.

  “You the Geuji?” Joe asked softly, looking at the beeping lights. The RECEIVE light was on.

  The box didn’t reply.

  Joe ran his fingers along the box’s controls, stopping on the SPEAKER light. It was lit up, waiting.

  “I know you can hear me,” Joe said. “And I know damn well you know who I am.” He pulled his hand away from the controls and fisted it. “Which means you know I’m going to eject your ass into space if you don’t answer me. You the Geuji?”

  For a long moment, he thought the alien would not reply. Then, softly, “Yes.” The voice almost sounded…scared.

  Joe stared at the box. It wasn’t what he had envisioned, in his fantasies of this moment. He had expected to see some grand mastermind, splayed across a thousand different instruments and machines, conducting the dance that had sent him to Koliinaat, tugging the strings to send people like him to their deaths in the millions. Instead, the Geuji almost looked…entombed. Trapped in its own coffin. Joe ached to see the creature on the other side, to know what kind of being had sent him into those tunnels.

  “You know why I’m here,” Joe said.

  “Bagkhal.” It had taken the creature on the other end no more than a second.

  “Yeah,” Joe said, choking up this time. “Bagkhal.” He eyed the IMMOLATE button. “Why’d you make me do it?”

  For a long moment, the Geuji said nothing.

  “Why?!” Joe screamed, slamming his fist hard against the side, just missing the button.

  “He asked that it would be you,” Forgotten said quietly.

  “Why?” It came out as a hoarse whisper.

  “He wanted to die with a friend.”

  Joe almost pushed the button. Almost. His thumb touched it, caressed it, felt its smoothness under his finger. Then he closed his eyes and wept. He ducked his forehead to the side of the cold, metal crate and struggled to get his breathing under control. “Why?”

  “Bagkhal had one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two male heirs,” Forgotten said. “By Dhasha law, a Dhasha male is unable to take mates until his father is dead.”

  Joe blinked at the box through tears, staring at the steel that was ninths from his nose. Bagkhal had mentioned his heirs, and that Jemria would take care of them. “So?” he asked.

  “Your friend schooled all of his heirs in his personal ethical and moral code, but even though some had seen over six hundred turns, they were impotent in society, by the Dhasha’s own rules. Now they can disperse to the four corners of the known universe and have families of their own. They can take important positions in society, start drafting laws, enforcing codes, leading by example. Some might even become princes and draw whole planets into their rule, spreading their philosophy. Many, if I can help it.”

  Joe stared at the box. “You killed him so his sons could breed?”

  “What better way to spread his ideals to an entire universe?”

  “You son of a bitch!” Joe snarled. He pounded the side of the crate. “You hear me? You goddamn son of a bitch!”

  “I hear you,” Forgotten said softly.

  “Bagkhal said it was a test,” Joe managed. He wiped his eyes again. “What was the test? And don’t ashing lie to me. There’s a button out here that says Immolate, you nasty vaghi ashsoul.”

  “I know there is,” Forgotten whispered. “My world collapses every time I feel you hit the crate. By my calculations, you’re about a thumb’s-width from pushing it.”

  “What was the test?” Joe demanded, punching the crate again. “I swear to God I’m hitting it if you don’t answer me.”

  “Loyalty,” Forgotten said. “It was to prove your loyalty.”

  “Excuse me?” Joe asked hoarsely.

  “Your former groundmate has had a vendetta against you from the beginning. Wrongfully. Because a Trith attempted to take you out of the picture. Bagkhal and I could think of no better way for you to prove your loyalty to Congress.”

  For over a tic, Joe couldn’t think. All he could do was stare blindly at the box through tears. “Are you telling me,” he managed, “you traded my life for his?”

  Forgotten did not reply.

  “Answer me,” he whispered in fury.

  “You are more important than you know,” Forgotten said finally.

  “You traded my life for his. Because of the Trith.”

  “No,” Forgotten said. “I hate the Trith. The Trith are meddling, controlling, backstabbing little Huouyt that should all be shot on sight. I kill as many as I can, but they unfortunately have the capacity to reproduce.”

  “They have an agenda, and they make sure the whole world dances on their strings,” Joe said softly.

  Forgotten went utterly silent.

  “You know,” Joe said, eying IMMOLATE, “while pushing that button would totally make my millennium, it won’t be nearly as satisfying as stomping the soot outta you before I blast you full of plasma and eject your ass into space.” Joe slid his hand along the control panel and hit the OPEN mechanism. He had to back out of the way as the box folded open. A crushed and folded roll of black, quivering flesh slid outward, pooling in a wrinkled pile on the floor in front of him.

  Joe stared down at the glistening heap of ebony tissue, feeling somehow let down. It seemed almost…pathetic.

  Joe turned to walk around the Geuji and the entire pile of flesh flinched in a tiny, helpless spasm.

  It can’t even crawl away, Joe thought. He watched it ripple and quiver for several moments before he looked away, feeling sick. Into the silence that followed, he said, “Can you still hear me?”

  The pause seemed infinite. Then, a small and frightened, “…yes.”

  Joe said nothing. He watched the Geuji, struggling between his fury and his self-disgust. Finally, he lifted his arm and tossed his coat aside. The motion made the Geuji’s entire body give another tiny flinch.

  “The air gonna kill you?” Joe demanded.

  “No.”

  “You gonna get some horrible infection or something if I touch you?”

  The pile of flesh quivered again. “No.”

  “Will it hurt?” Joe demanded.

  There was a long, horrible pause. “I can’t defend myself,” the Geuji finally whispered.

  “I meant you,” Joe muttered gruffly. “Will it hurt you?”

  The flesh went suddenly still. “Aside from terrify the hell out of me?” Forgotten said. “No.”

  “I want you to promise me something,” Joe said. “And I want you to shake on it. As best as you goddamn can. You understand what I’m getting at?”

  “I’m too scared to really think straight at the moment,” Forgotten managed.

  “There’s not much to understand. I’m offering you a bargain, and you’re gonna accept it, and swear your oath on it, or I’m going to send you on your very own spacewalk.”

  “I get that much,” Forgotten whispered. “I don’t know what you want.”

  “Must be a new experience for you, huh?” Joe said dryly.

  “Not new,” the Geuji said quietly. “Just hasn’t happened recently.”

  Joe considered. Then he walked forward and squatted beside the pile of flesh. It flinched again, a whole fraction of a dig, like a slug that was glued to the floor. “All right,” Joe said, “you ready?”

  “Yes,” Forgotten said, his voice barely audible.

 
“I want you to think about this,” Joe said, “the next time you are out there pulling strings.”

  For a long time, Forgotten simply huddled there, waiting. Then, tentatively, “Think about what?”

  “This,” Joe said. He continued to squat beside the Geuji and waited.

  Tics passed. “That’s all?”

  “It’s a lot to think about,” Joe said. “If you’re doing it right.”

  “I…suppose it is.”

  “Okay,” Joe said. “Ready to shake on it?”

  The Geuji’s body gave another tiny flinch, but he said, “Yes.” Then, after a moment of hesitation, “But could you simply lay your hand down? Trying to move me could be…damaging.”

  In response, Joe put his hand down on the Geuji’s body and held it there. “Listen to me, you miserable vaghi,” he said softly, “nobody likes to have their life in someone else’s hands. It sucks. A lot.”

  “Understood,” Forgotten whispered. To his credit, his cool flesh beneath Joe’s hand barely quivered.

  “I read something once that kinda applies to you,” Joe went on. “Was on some art my dad collected, I think. Hard for me to remember. Was a long time ago. But anyway. With great power comes great responsibility. And you’ve got the ability to change the world.”

  “I…” Forgotten hesitated, “…know.”

  “All right.” Joe lifted his hand from the Geuji’s body. “That’s all I wanted to say.” He stood to go. Wandering over to retrieve his coat, he took one last look at the Geuji, whose vulnerable ebony body was rippling much like the constant moving black waves of texture inside a Congressional nannite spaceship. He turned away. “Watcher, take me to—”

  “Wait,” Forgotten interrupted. “I would like to add to that.”

  Joe hesitated and turned back to the Geuji.

  “But with great responsibility, one finds great loneliness,” Forgotten intoned. “Can I call you a friend?”

  Joe laughed. “I just threatened to incinerate you and jettison your ass into space.”

  “You had just cause. May I?” The desperation in the Geuji’s voice was unmistakable.

  Joe snorted. “I have no misconceptions about what’s going to happen to me once I leave you here. I’m going to go right back to being your puppet. Dancing to your tune, doing whatever it is you had planned for me. And I know you did have something planned for me. I’m the only one of the survivors of Neskfaat who didn’t do something important afterwards.” He cocked his head. “Well, me and the Grekkon. But they’re almost classified as non-sents, so that leaves me.”

  Forgotten was silent a very long time. Then, “You will.”

  “Then we can’t really be friends, can we?” Joe asked.

  It seemed to take an eternity for the Geuji to finally answer. “No.”

  “Goodbye Forgotten. Make sure you think about it.”

  “I will.”

  Joe took one last look at the Geuji’s quivering ebony mass. “Watcher,” he said, “I’d like to go back, now.”

  #

  “Okay, I sent out those To Be Forgotten files and got us launched a few hours ago,” Syuri said as he opened the door and stepped into the shuttle bay. “Your real confession was all over the news. Species preservationists jumped all over—” Upon seeing the Geuji sprawled out on the unfolded box, Syuri froze, his chambers tightening painfully. “Forgotten?”

  A wave of relief hit his sivvet so strong that Syuri staggered.

  “Sweet Hagra!” Syuri cried, rushing up to crouch beside the sentient mold. He hesitated at the edge of the flesh, afraid to touch it. “What happened?”

  “My box opened unexpectedly.” The voice was muffled, as the speaker was now facing the floor.

  “Was the Baga in here?” Syuri demanded, looking around the room for the sneaky, insectoid alien that had disappeared the moment Forgotten had been safely tucked away on Syuri’s ship.

  “No. Did you purchase the robotics?”

  “Well, yes,” Syuri said, reluctant to leave the subject of how the Geuji had come to be sprawled across the floor. “They’ll be waiting for us in the Jakun system. Are you sure we can wait that long? What if you dry out?”

  “There should be a humidity control on the ship. The cargo bay needs to be as close to the absolute saturation point as you can get it. And, apologies, but quicker would actually be better, in that respect. I’ve been trying not to panic for several hours, now.” There was a tension in the Geuji’s words that made Syuri’s chambers tighten further.

  Syuri got up and hurried to the humidity controls, cranked it to the max, and the room began to fill with cold, clammy air. When he returned, the Geuji was exactly where he had left him.

  “So,” Syuri hedged reluctantly, looking at the Geuji’s quivering mass, “uh, was this in the plan?”

  For the first time since Syuri had met the Geuji, Forgotten laughed. “No. It wasn’t in the plan, Syuri.”

  “Is everything still going to be okay?” Syuri asked, somewhat unnerved by the Geuji’s laughter.

  “Did the news agencies play my confession?”

  “Yes,” Syuri said. “The Jreet dropped everything and all went to the Regency to watch the fight. All the Sentinels. They say they’re lining up to challenge, whether Daviin wins or not.”

  “Then it’ll be fine,” Forgotten told him.

  “So what are you going to do?” Syuri asked. “Take down Congress? There’s talk that Aliphei might have to abdicate.”

  “He won’t.” Forgotten quieted. “Syuri, may I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “If I were to say to you, ‘With great power comes great responsibility,’ what would you say to me?”

  Syuri gave the Geuji a wary glance and backed up a couple digs. “Not no, but hell no, Jemria. Leave the Representative seat to the Jreet. Last thing I want is power or responsibility, you damned corpse-rot. It was bad enough all the money you stuffed in my accounts. You know I’m just gonna have to give a lot of it away, right? I’m a pirate, not a perfumed politician.”

  “You’re a smuggler. You haven’t killed anybody.”

  Syuri opened his mouth to argue, then realized that arguing with a Geuji was so innately stupid that it was used as a colloquialism for the epitome of pointlessness. He shut his mouth and glared.

  “You aren’t going to argue?” Forgotten asked, sounding amused.

  Syuri gave him an irritated look. “I wonder what’s on the waves.” He went over to the little communications console set into the shelving units and turned on the wall-screen, then dialed it in to the Koliinaati waves. Immediately, the ongoing battle between the two big Jreet showed up in a heat-spectrum overlay, showing the two contestants currently in the process of demolishing the Regency floor.

  “Please turn it up,” Forgotten said. “I think the microphone is aimed at the ground.”

  Syuri obliged, cranking up the sound on the speaker system until it was reverberating through the very floor of the ship. “That Voran fighting the Aezi Representative on the floor of the Regency right now is the one who escaped Aez with me,” Syuri said. “Daviin ga Vora. I’d recognize that name anywhere.”

  After a moment, “Has this been going on long?”

  “Only like eight hours,” Syuri said, disgusted.

  “And the news services are covering the fight?” Forgotten asked.

  “Like it’s the only thing happening in the universe,” Syuri muttered. “You can’t even get race results right now. Everyone’s betting on the two Jreet.”

  “Daviin is going to win.”

  Syuri gave the screen a dubious look. “I don’t know, Jemria. The white Aezi’s like twice his size.”

  “Listen to their war cries,” Forgotten said. “The Aezi has taken enough of Daviin’s poison that he’s starting to slur.”

  Syuri cocked his head at the screen and tried to distinguish the two engine-like shee-whomph Jreet war cries, but try as he might, he couldn’t tell the difference between them. />
  Forgotten listened for a few more tics, then said, “You can turn it down, now. It will be over in sixteen tics.”

  “You know,” Syuri said, unhappily, “You’d be a killer in the Jahul gambling dens.” He had bet millions on the Aezi, mostly because he really wanted to see the Voran get some sort of comeuppance.

  Forgotten paused a moment. “Syuri, were you placing petty wagers on the Jreet when I was lying here for hours, dehydrating and helpless?”

  Syuri swallowed in a spasm. “No.”

  Forgotten seemed to digest that. Almost gently, he said, “You should go place another one. Fifty million on the Voran. Cause of death will be strangulation.”

  “Strangulation?” Syuri said, frowning. “They don’t strangle each other. Only everybody else.”

  “They strangle a few,” Forgotten said. “In matters of severe dishonor. You should place the bet. Fifteen tics.”

  “I’m good,” Syuri managed. In truth, he had been hoping that Forgotten wouldn’t find out about his nasty gambling habit. Just in coming to Koliinaat, he had lost almost half a billion of Forgotten’s money in frivolous wagers.

  “No, do it,” Forgotten said. “I want to test a theory.”

  Syuri raised an eyebrow, but he reluctantly turned back to the com, brought up his favorite high-roller gambling feed, and entered in Forgotten’s information. “Done,” he said, nervously closing the account. “What kind of theory?”

  “A personal one.”

  “Um,” Syuri said, fidgeting. He had the weird feeling the theory was about him, and he felt very much like a cornered vaghi in a scientist’s cage. “Can you at least give me an idea what kind of theory?”

  “You’re about to win a lot of money,” Forgotten said. “I want to see what happens.”

  Syuri frowned at the screen. The odds were 5 to 1, in favor of the Aezi, plus modifiers for time of death. “I could make two hundred and fifty million. A lot more if the time of death is correct.”

  “In sixteen tics. With absolutely no effort on your part.”

  By the way the Geuji said it, Syuri was sure there was something he should be getting, but wasn’t. Not uncommonly when around the Geuji, Syuri felt stupid. “I’m not understanding.”