Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  Another shower, then she dressed in the spare clothing that had been in her bag. The service had washed it for her, thankfully. It was a simple, Southern-style outfit. She slipped Caswell’s “needler” tube back into her sock. Then she took his bracelet, far too loose on her own wrist, and hung it from the silver necklace they’d returned to her. The flat loop of strange metal hung just below her shoulder line, partially hidden by her blouse. It looked rather stylish, she thought. If anyone asked she’d claim it the latest fashion on Combra.

  A knock at the door. The inner, bedroom door.

  “Yes?” Melni prompted.

  An older woman entered. Melni recognized her instantly. Rasa Clune, director of information for the entire Southern Alliance. A tall, stout woman with a pinched, hard Southerner’s face under a thin crop of silver hair.

  “Agent Sonbo,” the woman said, using Melni’s real name. “It is time we talked in person.”

  —

  “Please, sit,” Melni said, gesturing to one of the two high-backed plush chairs in the welcoming room.

  Clune had dismissed the four armed escorts to wait in the hallway outside. She wore a military uniform, flawlessly pressed and covered in decorations. The desert colors were a marked contrast to the deep crimson of the chair. Melni took the other seat, feeling suddenly underdressed in her pedestrian knee-length shorts with a very loose white blouse, decorated by an ornate red and gold sash diagonally across her midsection. A classic Southern style she hadn’t worn since the day she’d handed the outfit over to the property master before starting her mission.

  Melni had seen Rasa Clune twice before: once on the day she graduated into the information service, and once on the day she’d been selected for an underguise assignment across the Endless Sea. On both occasions the powerful woman had not even so much as made eye contact with her. Melni tried to recall what she knew of Clune. Thirty years of service to the alliance, the last ten of which in her present capacity. It was said she’d once worked in the field, but her classic Southern features likely meant assignments on this side of the crater line.

  “I am sorry we could not let you go home,” Clune said. “Once this business is over you will be placed on the standard leave any returning covert agent receives; a full month. You shall be free to travel as you like. I have authorized your withheld salary to be deposited into your account, so if you wish anything while you are here just ask the hotel staff and they shall fetch it for you.”

  Melni swallowed. “Gratitude,” she managed to say, picturing a swarm of agents picking through her house for any signs of treachery. There could be no other reason for keeping her from the place, or implying she’d have to purchase material items she required rather than having them brought from home.

  “Is there anything you wish to request at this time?” Clune asked.

  A breeze off the ocean stirred the drapes. Warm sunlight danced on the carpet between them. Melni found the heat of the South stifling suddenly. Rasa Clune looked perfectly comfortable despite her stiff, heavy outfit.

  “I just want to work, Director. To help resolve this situation,” Melni said. “I feel responsible, though I’m not sure what I could have done differently.”

  Stern ice-blue eyes peered out from between the narrow slits of Clune’s wizened, tired lids. Was that a hint of disgust there? The undercurrent of racism Melni hadn’t dealt with since leaving? An old, deep-seated worry welled up inside her, the idea that Melni was not truly one of them. And worse, now that she’d lived north of the Desolation, she might harbor empathy for the enemy.

  “Well,” Clune said after a moment, “it turns out you can help us.”

  Melni leaned forward, too eager and not caring. “Yes. Tell me, please. Anything.”

  “This man you came south with…”

  A tingle ran up Melni’s spine. She shivered. “Has he died?”

  “He lives,” Clune said. “In and out of consciousness, but he lives.”

  Melni nodded.

  The leader of the South’s entire covert apparatus looked Melni up and down. Her gaze lingered, only slightly, on the bracelet Melni wore around her neck. “Do you believe you were ‘played,’ agent? That bringing him here was a carefully scripted trick? That he is in fact here to spy on us?”

  “No,” Melni replied, with too much uncertainty. She said it again with more conviction. “No.”

  “You surrendered all of his belongings upon arrival, correct?” The woman’s gaze darted to Melni’s neck, then back up.

  Melni’s own eyes betrayed her. She glanced down, flustered. “I…”

  “What is that, Agent Sonbo?”

  Melni pulled the chain over her head. “I forgot about this. My regret. It is only jewelry.”

  Director Clune leaned forward and held out a hand. When the bracelet landed there, she folded her wrinkled fingers around it and slipped it into a pocket at her waist. “We shall let the analysts determine that. Anything else?”

  For a second Melni hesitated. She felt the slim tube against her ankle, the cool metal against her skin. She couldn’t quite say why, but something about Rasa Clune’s accusing manner made her shake her head.

  “Good,” Clune said. “Now, speculate. Who is he?”

  Speculate. So it had been Clune that Melni had been speaking with all this time. Straight to the top, and she hadn’t even known. “An assassin. Perhaps a Hollow Man—”

  “He is no Hollow Man, Agent Sonbo, I assure you. But you know this. I can hear in your voice that you do not believe your own words. Try again. Whatever hypothesis you have dreamed up in your head, no matter how silly, I want to hear it. Now.”

  The last word fell like the crack of a whip.

  Melni steeled herself, folded her hands in her lap. When she spoke next she raised her chin slightly and maintained eye contact. “In truth I do believe he is an assassin. He was in the Think Tank to kill Alia Valix, I have no doubt. He may have succeeded if I had not been there.”

  “You disrupted his attack?”

  “Not on purpose. My presence was unexpected. Alia used that to her advantage.”

  “Hmm,” Clune said. She clucked her tongue a few times. “All right. Go on.”

  “As I mentioned in my report—”

  “I do not care what the report said. I want to hear this from you.”

  “Yes, Director,” Melni said. “Valix knew him. She even implied he had tried to kill her before and failed.”

  “Not a very good assassin, then.”

  “No! I mean, he is. I have seen him kill. More than I care to admit. He is brutal and exceptionally skilled. No, I think it is just that Valix is so clever.”

  “Hmm,” Clune said again. She motioned with a flick of one wrist for Melni to continue.

  “I have two theories, I suppose. The first, more plausible, is that he and Valix grew up together in some kind of highly isolated community of prodigies. Perhaps they were born there, bred to be extremely intelligent. Valix escaped, and he was sent to find her and keep the existence of this place secret.”

  “You believe this?”

  Melni shook her head, reluctantly. “It is plausible, but does not explain…many things. Where such a place could be. How it became so advanced. How it has remained hidden.” She thought of the tube against her leg, the bracelet now in Clune’s pocket, and all the items in Caswell’s bag.

  “Stop wasting my time, then, Sonbo. What is the second theory?”

  “Well,” Melni said, hedging. She broke eye contact then and fixed her gaze on the whitecaps drifting casually across the ocean view. “It is stupid—”

  “Speculate!”

  The word was so sharp Melni jumped. “I asked him if he had come back through time.”

  Clune did not laugh, to Melni’s great surprise. Instead she leaned forward, and her eyes became so narrow the blue disappeared between the wrinkled lids. “And?”

  “He said, ‘That’s not far from the truth.’ ”

  “Meaning what?” />
  Melni spread her hands. “It is idiotic, I know.”

  “I will decide that. Meaning what, Sonbo?”

  “He did not say. He evaded. Later he said to pretend he had just been unfrozen from the ice.”

  Clune’s head tilted slightly to one side. She stared at Melni for a long time, her expression no more readable than stone. “Does he trust you?” she finally asked, her voice just barely audible.

  “I do not know.”

  “Does he love you?”

  Melni met her gaze. “What?”

  “Is he attracted to you? He gave you the bracelet, yes? Did you have any amorous contact during your time together?”

  “No. No.”

  Clune looked skeptical.

  “Why?” Melni asked. “What did he say?”

  The woman rose to her feet. She straightened the front of her outfit. “The prisoner said he will only talk to you. We have four days until the summit. Four days to find out as much from him as possible.”

  “I thought it was in two days.”

  “They asked for more time. A good sign, it means they do not know where he is and thus resort to stalling.”

  Or they are devising a way to get him back, Melni thought. She decided not to voice that. Rasa Clune was the mastermind behind virtually every covert campaign Riverswidth ran. If anyone would understand the facets of a situation like this, she would.

  Clune continued. “You will get him to talk. Hurt him if you must. Love him if that is what he requires. Anything it takes. Does that resolve?”

  Melni could only nod.

  A LARGE, LUXURIOUS CRUISER waited in front of the hotel, along with armed escorts astride ominous black thumper cycles.

  Clune sat beside Melni on the rear bench seat. The windows were up, making the interior of the vehicle feel like an oven. Combined with the peculiar sour odor Rasa Clune’s body gave off, Melni felt nauseous by the time they turned and entered the security barricades at the start of the bridge.

  “You will be taken directly to the subject,” Clune said. “Talk to him. Alone, but fear not. We will be listening, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “When he sleeps I want you to work with Analytics. Specifically the linguists. Tell them everything you can remember. His mannerisms as much as what he said. Not only the information but the specific words he used. Between your information and their investigation into the items recovered from his supply bag, we may be able to identify where he comes from without his help.”

  “Yes, Director,” Melni said. “Anything you ask.” She should have admitted right then to the “needler” tube hidden in her sock. She should have, but held back. Caswell’s warnings about children being fed answers haunted her.

  A second gate finally rolled aside and the oversize cruiser burped and rattled its way into the bowels of Riverswidth.

  Melni followed the tall, stout form of Clune at a brisk march through a half-dozen buildings and up many steps before finally reaching the prison area, high above the water. She’d never been in here before, and never wanted to return, either. It was dark and damp, a maze of drab gray walls and tiny square windows that seemed to be purposefully sized smaller than a child’s shoulder width. The guards, who were legion, were all pure Southerners and seemed to soak their mood straight from the dreadful confines.

  Cells lined the narrow stone corridors, a number plate riveted into the old walls beside each door. Lamps hung from the ceiling, connected by a thick wire that sagged between the pools of light. Old construction, dating back before the Desolation. She tried to imagine all the people held in these ancient cells over the centuries. All the suffering, the compelled interrogations. To walk through such a place led by the infamously cruel Rasa Clune made her skin crawl.

  A door at the end of the cell block led into a newer area. There were as many guards here, though they were outnumbered by white-coated doctors and their support staff. Clune greeted one of the doctors with a terse nod. The man saluted her and fell naturally into the lead of their little entourage.

  “Any changes?” Clune asked.

  “None. Not to his condition at least,” the doctor replied. He was young and handsome. In fact he looked quite a bit like Caswell, except for the long hair, which he kept tied back, as was common in such professions.

  “Explain.”

  The doctor glanced back at Melni.

  “You can speak freely,” Clune said to him. “She is the one who brought him here.”

  His expression shifted, evidently matching his impression of her as it changed from risk to possible asset. “Well, it is very interesting. He has some peculiarities I cannot explain nor have I ever seen before. Variations in bone structure. A unique arrangement of the internal organs.”

  “Unique how?”

  “It is as if his insides are a mirror reflection of ours. Heart on the left, and so on. Everything reversed. And he has four more teeth than you or I. Not the kinds of things you’d notice on a cursory inspection, but there all the same.”

  “Valix said he was a geneticist. Are you telling me he is not the experimenter but the experiment?”

  “My opinion is that this is not natural.”

  “How interesting,” Clune said. “What about the object in his neck?”

  “Per your orders I have not inspected it firsthand. But I can confirm it is not a tumor. I am certain it is artificial.”

  Melni idly fingered her neck where the bracelet had been, remembering what she’d seen when she’d taken a radiograph of it. What secrets would be revealed by the object inside Caswell’s neck?

  The doctor led them into a dim observation room. A one-way mirror dominated one wall, looking in on a modern hospital room. Modern by Southerner standards, at least. Nothing like what they had in Combra.

  Caswell lay sleeping on a semi-reclined bed in the center, surrounded by various equipment. There were two other people in the observation chamber. One, a nurse, leaned casually against the back wall, hands clasped behind his back. He came alert at the sight of the doctor, and went rigid at Clune’s presence. The other person sat hunched over some listening gear, manipulating dials. A large dual-reel recorder dominated the equipment, and the analyst sitting before it wore thick earphones.

  “Agent Sonbo,” Clune said. “Get in there and see if he will talk.” She moved to stand behind the analyst.

  The doctor crossed to the inner door and opened it for Melni. On her way through he handed her a tray of food. Simple fare. “See if he will eat, too,” he said.

  Melni nodded and took the tray, knowing that the food would make Caswell vomit. She entered the room and waited for the door to click shut behind her. The instant it did, Caswell stirred.

  THE DOOR HISSED OPEN. Another nurse, more than likely. Another meal he couldn’t eat. Why did they keep trying? He wanted to roar, to shout at them to just let him die. Everything they did only made his suffering worse. But he didn’t have the energy to waste on that. He lay as still as possible, kept his mouth shut, and waited for Melni.

  A hand brushed his arm. Caswell cracked one eye open and there she was, standing next to him, a sympathetic smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She’d dressed differently. Civilian clothes, but not like the drab stiffness of the North. It looked good on her.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  He blinked the sleep away and worked his jaw. His throat felt like sandpaper. “Water,” he croaked.

  “You have a drink line attached.”

  Caswell shook his head and forced out more words. “Yank it. Please. You know how my body reacts.”

  He’d asked the same of every nurse and doctor he’d seen since waking, but they’d all ignored him. Melni, however, complied. She twisted the plastic tube and set it, dripping, beside his thigh.

  “Now,” he said. “Water. Mouth tastes like something died in it.”

  Melni glanced back at the huge mirror on the wall behind her, waiting for some kind of sign. A few seconds late
r the door opened six inches and one of the nurses handed a mug of water through.

  “Gratitude,” Caswell said. He could not hold the mug himself. His wrists were bound to the bed with thick leather straps. His legs, as well. Melni held the cup to his lips and watched as he sipped, her face carefully blank. Caswell swirled the fluid around in his cheeks and spat it back into the cup.

  The room smelled of soap and overprocessed air. A cool breeze wafted in from a grate on the ceiling just above the door. It tickled his skin.

  She set the mug down, stood beside him, and hugged herself. “They said you’d only talk to me.”

  Caswell managed a nod. Sweat beaded on his fevered brow. His lips felt wrong, like they’d been drained and numbed. “Your medicines aren’t working for me, nor is your food. I asked the doctor to stop providing them but he insists.”

  “You may die without them.”

  “I will die because of them. Melni, please. Find my supplies. There are some things in there that can help me.”

  Her face remained blank, but her purple eyes darted toward the mirror on the wall. A one-way mirror, obviously. He wondered who was watching, and what they’d threatened her with. More than that, he wondered where her loyalties lay.

  “What things? What do they do, exactly?”

  “You’re worried I intend to poison myself?”

  Melni shrugged. “No, but there are others who harbor this concern.”

  “Hmm,” Caswell muttered through pursed lips. “Well, I don’t know how to convince them. I have a mission to fulfill. I won’t take my own life while my goal goes unmet. Even then, quite frankly, suicide is not my cup of tea. Er, cham.”

  He slumped, exhausted from the little speech. His hands reflexively lifted, strained for a moment against the leather straps. He needed to rub his temples, to flood his brain with chemicals that could help him focus. And take the pain away.

  Melni studied him for a moment and then something changed in her. A decision reached. Doubt replaced by sympathy, and focus as well. She offered him another sip of water, then seemed to remember he could not drink it.