Zero Recall

by Sara King

  “Patience.”

  So Syuri watched. He watched the Jreet continue hurling chairs and podiums at each other as other Jreet crowded around in a wide ring, chanting war cries. Then he saw the Aezi stumble, saw the smaller Jreet lunge in and wrap his lithe body around the bigger Jreet’s neck, cinching it down until the bigger Jreet’s mouth hung open, tiny blue eyes bulging in a death-grimace. He checked the clock. Sixteen tics. He’d made close to half a billion credits in the space of the time it took to shower.

  “Wow,” Syuri said. “No wonder you’re rich.”

  Forgotten said nothing.

  Syuri shut down the wall unit. “So what was the theory?”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Syuri laughed. “That’s not very nice, picking on an old Jahul. You know I pissed out all my last nutrient infusions when I ran from the Jreet. My brain isn’t working at its prime. I missed something.”

  Forgotten hesitated a moment, then said, “Syuri, how hard was it for you to make that money?”

  “Easiest money I ever made in my life,” Syuri said, warily. “Did you have it flagged somehow?”

  “Do you want to make more money like that, Syuri?” the Geuji prodded.

  “Sure,” Syuri said, not following. Damn the Jreet for making him stupid. He itched to go get his supplements, but refrained, knowing that he could pack himself so full of nutrients a chamber ruptured and he still wouldn’t have the brainpower to follow the Geuji along one of his ‘plans.’ When Forgotten offered nothing else, he said, “Um, forgive me for being dense, but how?”

  “You have access to the humidity controls.”

  Syuri glanced at the panel on the wall. “I’m still not following.”

  His sivvet got hit with a sudden, brief crash of joy before the Geuji stifled it.

  Nervous, now, Syuri said, “What’s going on, Forgotten? What did I do wrong? You want me to change the setting? Too wet?”

  “I can’t move,” Forgotten said.

  Syuri peered at the quivering ball of tissue. “You want me to slide your box closer to the humidifiers?”

  “I’m very smart.”

  Now he knew he was missing something. “Obviously not smart enough. What in the ninety Jreet hells are you trying to say?”

  “I’m also afraid to die.”

  At that point, it dawned on him. Forgotten was offering him the chance to have his own personal Geuji at his service. Forever. All he had to do was just ‘forget’ to take him to the Jakun system and its awaiting robotics. Syuri just blinked at him. “You’re not smart. You’re a Jreet-kissing jenfurgling. I swear on the Ooreiki ghosts, Forgotten, someone needs to buy you a dictionary. Friends don’t do that, you miserable corpse-rot. Friends help each other when they need it.” He glared, irritated the Geuji would have thought he could stoop to something like that. “It’s almost like you never knew your mother or something,” he muttered. “Oozing mold.”

  A sudden, overwhelming rush of joy flooded his sivvet, this one completely uncontrolled. The intense pleasure of another’s happiness overpowered all other senses in an unstoppable hurricane of emotion and Syuri staggered, then fell, holding his head as his body responded automatically to the bliss. He moaned as his chambers began releasing like a teenager witnessing his first orgy. Shuddering, Syuri found himself too wrapped up in the experience to tell the Geuji to stop.

  “You’re not saying much,” Forgotten finally said, once the joy had ebbed. “Reconsidering?”

  “Sweet Hagra,” he muttered, once he’d picked himself back up from the floor. “You just made me ooze sexual lubricants all over myself, you slippery corpse-rot.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Syuri muttered grudgingly. He looked down at himself and winced. “But for the love of the Ooreiki ghosts, don’t tell anyone, either.”

  “I won’t.”

  Grimacing, Syuri tried to slough off some of the slime. It formed a translucent, jiggling puddle on the floor. “And what,” he muttered, flicking long strands of it from his fingers in disgust, “was so great just now that you had to return me to my carefully-buried teenage turns?”

  “You want me to spell it out for you?”

  Syuri pointed a slime-dripping finger at the Geuji. “You are this close to getting stepped on.” As he spoke, a long dribble of lubricant slid from his finger to plop against the floor. He flicked off the remnants in distaste.

  Forgotten took a moment to consider before he said, “The last time I gave someone a winning bet, it was in complete innocence, trying to make her life easier. She kept me in a headcom for the next six turns and forced me to come up with winning bets for her or she would do unpleasant things.”

  Syuri felt his gut clench at the wave of fear and hopelessness that rolled off Forgotten at ‘unpleasant things’ before the Geuji contained it.

  “Well,” Syuri said, grabbing a mechanic’s rag from the rack beside him, “sorry to tell you this, Forgotten, but you don’t quite fit in a headcom anymore.” He gestured at the Geuji’s mass with his towel.

  “You have a ship,” Forgotten replied. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Syuri cocked his head at the mold as he began wiping himself down. “Are you asking me to keep you here and use you for your lovely brain cells?”

  “My brain doesn’t have cells and no.”

  “Then what the hell is your point?” Syuri demanded, going after his legs, now.

  The rush of joy, this time, knocked him out.

  When he came to with a moan, the first thing Syuri heard was a guilty-sounding, “Sorry.”

  “You know what?” Syuri managed, pulling himself out of the puddle of slime, “From now on, we talk about depressing things.” He shakily got back to his feet, but had to grab the rack beside him to steady his wobbly legs.

  “What if I told you I wasn’t really expecting you to try and save me?” Forgotten asked.

  Syuri laughed. “I’d call you a bad liar.” Trembling, he bent to retrieve the rag. “Really, Geuji, you need to work on that.”

  “You want me to lie to you?”

  Syuri grimaced. “On the other hand, no, ignore that. Just a jabbering Jahul without his nutrients.” He started carefully running the rag over his over-sensitized abdomen. “Most of the universe is filled with lying, backstabbing Huouyt. I like the fact you don’t lie. It’s refreshing.” He grimaced as he peeled more layers of slime from his body, squeegeeing it to the floor in embarrassing plops.

  Forgotten listened to him for a couple tics in silence before he said, “What if I told you I really went to Koliinaat to die?”

  Syuri frowned, hesitating in his cleaning. “Did you?”

  There was a long, horrible pause. Then, “Someone I respect once told me that God hates a coward. He lived a good life, and was very brave. As I’ve never been particularly brave, and my life has been more miserable than I could possibly explain, I took it to heart.”

  “You went there to die.”

  “Yes.”

  Syuri blinked. “The Baga said you sent him a note about thirty-two planets that had been stolen from Bagans, and to come help me today and you’d let him crash some Huouyt spaceships, once they were forced to abandon them on the planet. Gave him a date and location and everything.”

  Forgotten was silent for whole tics.

  “Forgotten?”

  “I never sent a note,” Forgotten replied softly.

  “Oh come on,” Syuri snorted.

  “I told him to distract the Jreet so Daviin would have the money to challenge Prazeil.”

  Syuri recoiled. “It was a Trith?”

  Forgotten said nothing for some time. Then, reluctantly, “I know who it was.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s not important,” Forgotten said. “What’s important is that I never meant for you to save me, but you did it anyway. Why?”

  “Huouyt tear out my eyelids, not this again.” Syuri made a disgusted sigh and tossed the sopping rag
aside. It hit the far wall with a wet, sucking sound, then slid slowly down to the floor. “Why do you think, you oozing Geuji?”

  “You take…special…pleasure in my presence?”

  Syuri’s eyes narrowed. “I need a shower.” At that, he turned his back to the Geuji and headed back into the living area of the ship. He felt another surge of happiness behind him before he ducked into the main hall and sought out his bathing chamber.

  Chapter 37: Maggie’s Secret

  Jer’ait had gone to look for the Human when Joe suddenly appeared in the hallway, his small brown eyes looking haggard. Blinking, Jer’ait cocked his head at the wall, then at Joe. “The Watcher took you to see Forgotten?” he asked, stunned.

  The Human nodded grimly and walked past him, back into the bar. This time, he ordered a full bottle of the piss-tinted poison. He had just sat back down at the booth and had begun to raise the bottle to his lips when Jer’ait snagged it out of his hands.

  “A friend would not allow you to return to poisoning yourself because you just did something incredibly stupid,” Jer’ait said, when the Human glowered at him. He set the bottle out of reach and sat down across from the Prime Commander. For a long time, they just looked at each other. Then Jer’ait said, “So. Did you kill him?”

  “No,” the Human croaked. “Probably should have. But I didn’t.”

  Jer’ait found himself surprised at that. He would have bet anything the Human would have killed the Geuji, given the opportunity. “Did the Watcher not allow you to get close enough?” he hedged.

  “Nope,” Joe snorted. “I had my finger on the button. Could’ve crushed him with my goddamn boot—” The Human hesitated, frowning. “Wait a tic.” Frowning, the Human started patting at his pockets and yanked a docking slip from his jacket. “Got a pen?”

  Jer’ait, who always carried several various tranquilizers with him in the form of common writing instruments, calmly tugged one from his vest and handed it to Joe. “Be careful you don’t squeeze the grip too tightly.”

  Joe, who had immediately taken up the pen and started writing, hesitated. He looked at the pen, then looked suspiciously at Jer’ait.

  “It’s non-lethal,” Jer’ait said. Then he grimaced. “Well, for an Ooreiki. Humans have less mass.”

  The Human stared down at the assassin’s weapon for several moments. “Aw what the hell,” he muttered, and went back to drafting his tiny note, crossing things off as he went.

  Curious, Jer’ait leaned over to watch.

  The Human wrote:

  1) While on Kophat, you will enter Congress into a new Age.

  2) You will make friends with a Huouyt assassin, and at his command, a Jreet heir shall remove your still-beating heart from your chest and deliver it to strangers.

  3) After a battle the likes of which the universe has never seen, you shall have the cosmos’ greatest mind helpless under your boot, and your mercy shall unmake him.

  4) And while you shall die in a cave, shamed and surrounded by dragon-slaying innocents, your deeds will crush the unbreakable, and your name will never be forgotten.

  As Joe wrote, Jer’ait found himself getting chills. He pulled his Ooreiki-patterned hands away from the Human, feeling the first real pangs of fear. Once Joe was done writing, he dropped the tranquilizer to the table and leaned back, staring at the page he had written, looking like he’d been hit by a freighter.

  “Someone gave you a fourfold prophecy,” Jer’ait whispered.

  The Human just stared at the note. Then, without a word, he snatched up his coat, stood, and walked out of the bar.

  Very carefully, Jer’ait pulled the Human’s slip of paper across the table to him. He read the four parts again, cold chills wracking his spine. Then, softly, he said, “Watcher, destroy this.”

  “Of course, Peacemaster,” the Watcher obliged. The slip of paper vanished.

  “And erase all records of the last ten tics within a thirty rod span.”

  “Already done, Peacemaster.”

  Jer’ait swallowed hard. He turned to glance at where the Human had departed. His job—his duty—was to detain his former groundmate and take him to the Sanctuary for questioning and execution. Instead, he softly said, “And look out for him.”

  “I will do all I can while he is in my care,” the Watcher said. “But it is not on Koliinaat where he will meet that end.”

  “Where?” Jer’ait asked softly.

  The Watcher hesitated. “Earth.”

  #

  Daviin ducked another chair and, using his lower body as a whip, slammed a podium into his opponent’s head, to the cheer of other Jreet. For some reason, halfway through the fight, the Sentinels had shown up and had started to cheer for him. Not only that, but they had actually left their charges to gather en masse, surrounding the two of them in ruby, cream, and gray coils. Thousands of them. The Regency had become a gladiatorial pit-ring, with what sounded like every Jreet on Koliinaat in attendance.

  “Give up, Voran,” Prazeil slurred. “Tekless coward.” He ripped a canister of exotic gasses from inside one of the Representative booths and haphazardly hurled it at Daviin hard enough to explode. He missed his target by several rods, igniting the gasses on the floor between them. The resulting blast flipped Daviin head-over-tail into the Sentinel onlookers, who violently threw him back into the ring with shouts of encouragement. The same explosion knocked Prazeil backwards into a glass water-tank, which shattered under his weight, dousing him in whatever native slurry the Watcher kept on hand for their sentient liquid-based life-forms.

  “Miserable…Ayhi,” Prazeil managed. “Cold…” His tek-punctured body flopped uselessly, trying to right himself. Rravut spilled from his open wounds in dribbles of red that would kill lesser creatures on contact. “Come…fight…” His opponent groaned and flipped onto his back, his massive cream-colored scales mottled with long smears of blue. He flailed almost blindly, pinging directly at the floor like a child.

  Daviin recognized the symptoms of rravut poisoning and slid in to finish it. When Daviin grabbed him by the throat, Prazeil groaned and tried to yank his head away, but was too weak. Daviin jerked him up, so that they were eye-to-eye. The Jreet surrounding them went totally quiet.

  “Know this,” Daviin said into the silence. “You dishonored us.” When Prazeil again tried to pull away, Daviin tugged him brutally back, ripping part of his ear-crest. Forcing him to once again meet his eyes, Daviin said, “You took the oath of a Sentinel and you disgraced it with lies and ambition. You will walk the ninety hells alone, and no one will be there to meet you on the other side.” He heard his words picked up and amplified by the Representative booths around him, broadcast to the entire Regency, but he didn’t waver. Giving Prazeil a long, cold stare, Daviin said, “Today, you get what you wanted all along. Today, you became a politician. You are not Jreet.”

  Prazeil’s blue eyes flickered toward the Jreet surrounding them, fear glinting in his watery blue eyes. “A warrior’s death,” he whispered. “Please. I deserve an ovi,”

  “No,” Daviin said, moving his body under him, “you don’t.” He left his ovi where it was, secured in a specially-made pouch within his tek-sheath, and started wrapping himself around the Representative’s neck.

  “No!” Prazeil cried, beginning to thrash. Glass and alien liquid were flung across the spectators as Prazeil tried to fight what was coming. He twisted, slamming Daviin violently into the floor again and again until Daviin had too many coils wrapped around his throat for him to lift his head.

  Daviin listened grimly as the Aezi started to choke, then held on tight as the larger Jreet’s length started to twist and quiver as his air was cut off. He flailed and struggled for several tics before he finally went still. Daviin continued to hold on, to make sure the deed was done.

  “Representative Prazeil ga Aez is dead,” the Watcher intoned. “Daviin ga Vora, you have earned a seat on the Tribunal and as a Representative of your species. Do you accept?”

  �
��Fuck the Tribunal and the Regency,” Daviin snapped, taking a lesson from Joe. “I’m a warrior, not a fat vaghi cancer. I haven’t had a good keg of lesthar since they froze my accounts on Jeelsiht. I go to get drunk.” Around him, the Jreet screamed their approval and started ripping more chairs from the floor to throw at him in celebration. Ducking his obligatory post-victory assault, he started to uncoil himself from the Aezi.

  The Watcher hesitated a moment as blood-fevered Jreet began wrecking the Regency in their frenzied copulations. Daviin shoved the Aezi body away and pulled himself out of the cold pool of liquid from the destroyed Regency water-chamber.

  Tentatively, the Watcher offered, “Representatives and their guests are given free unlimited kegs of lesthar at happy hour in four hundred and sixteen different Koliinaati locations.”

  Daviin, who had been picking bloody glass from under his scales, hesitated. He cocked his head at the booth that had spoken, then glanced at the thousands of Jreet around him. Absolute silence fell in the Regency as celebrating Jreet froze, mid-sex, watching him with sudden, ovi-sharp intensity.

  #

  Joe bought a yacht.

  He didn’t really have anything else to do with his money, since the Jreet’s oath of Representative trumped his oath as a Sentinel, and food on Koliinaat was free. The Sentinels had offered to replace Daviin with six of their best warriors, but the idea of running around with six Jreet babysitting him had left Joe laughing in the messenger’s face—and having to make another trip to a regen chamber because of it.

  Jer’ait, likewise, was busy with official duties on Koliinaat and certainly wasn’t lacking for cash. Joe never saw the Va’gan spend more than a few credits on food and drink, and he had an odd feeling that Jer’ait would still have his billions five hundred turns after Joe and the rest had blown theirs.

  The only person Joe could have really shared his money with was Flea, but Joe was still pissed with him for trading sides on Koliinaat, and—perhaps justifiably—Flea had made a point of avoiding Joe ever since. Last he’d heard, Flea was busy systematically crashing Huouyt and Ooreiki spaceships that illegal immigrants had been forced to leave behind on Bagan-owned planets, after his honorable Voran friend on the Tribunal had a nice, stimulating talk with the Planetary Claims Board on his behalf.