Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  “Why? Communication, I get it, but couldn’t you just learn? Use translators?”

  “It comes back to a concept we call the Divergent Moment. The point at which a world begins to employ forensic science. When they stop ascribing the occasional interaction with someone of Prime to the divine, or the spirit world, that sort of nonsense. Once that moment arrives we take on a purely passive role, and observe from afar. The language begins to drift, of course, but not so much that we can’t follow along with some trivial artificial assistance.”

  Melni shook her head. “Yet the language I speak is virtually identical to Caswell’s.”

  “Gartien is…different. Special, as I shall explain. Suffice to say, we had an opportunity after the Desolation to take a more direct approach, so we covertly put forth the idea of a common worldwide language and made sure your leaders saw the wisdom in it.”

  “Sorry,” Caswell said. “I’m still not getting the point of all this. Okay, rule this Conduit, that makes sense. But why bother influencing language? What’s the bloody point? Why go through all that trouble?”

  “Because what we harvest from these worlds is ideas.”

  He let that settle for a few seconds.

  “Inventions,” Laz continued. “Successes and failures in the various sciences and arts.”

  “Until a world becomes so advanced that they reach this Conduit,” Caswell said. His voice cut through the room, sharp as the knife’s edge. He couldn’t quite pinpoint why all this made him so angry.

  “Yes,” Laz admitted. “That is the process. It has been for a very long time.”

  A primal urge to strangle this creature flooded through him. In a flat voice Caswell said, “Earth has found the Conduit.”

  “Twice, in fact,” Laz said.

  “So what happens now? You wipe us out? Bomb us to the Stone Age? Will I have a home to return to?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Not good enough.”

  The Warden winced. “Until you go back, if you do go back, it is hard to say what Prime will do.”

  “Why? You said the policy—”

  With an effort Laz held up his hands, each supported or perhaps held back by the thin translucent tubes that connected him to the amber bed. “The situation is more complicated. I know this is a lot of information for you. For both of you. But, please, have patience.”

  Motion caught Caswell’s eye. Melni, her hand held horizontally across her mouth, willing silence.

  “Okay,” Caswell said. “Okay.”

  “You see,” Laz began, “Prime was not aware of Gartien’s existence, or indeed the very concept of the Zero Terminus. Multiple zero worlds. They thought that Earth was the positive endpoint of the Conduit.”

  “Like the first map you displayed,” Melni said.

  “Precisely.”

  Caswell held up a hand. “You were saying ‘we,’ now you’re saying ‘they.’ ”

  “I am getting to that part,” Laz said. No malice, no annoyance. Just infinite patience.

  Caswell relented once again.

  “Myself and a very few others learned how to travel here. We kept Gartien’s existence a secret from Prime, and we very carefully covered up the first visit by the Venturi.”

  “Why?”

  “In the hope that it would appear to have been a failed attempt by Earth to enter the Conduit and thus not be investigated.”

  “To what end?”

  “To avoid this policy of suppression for Earth, if possible. But more importantly to hide the existence of the other Zero Worlds from Prime.”

  “To what end?” he asked again, emphasizing each word.

  “If we could allow this one world to advance in secret, to reach a technological level sufficient to resist Prime, their monopoly of the Conduit could end.”

  “I,” Caswell started. He’d expected evil plots. Nefarious plans. Not this. “I see.”

  “We maintained the lie that Earth was the endpoint. This status afforded us additional staff, because Earth was considered special.”

  “The first world on the Conduit, therefore Prime thinks something about it matters,” Melni said.

  “Exactly. Over a few thousand years we recruited from this large group of operatives and arranged for new agents to be birthed and stationed on the Gartien side of the Conduit. We hid the knowledge of how to travel here. Things were going very well until the accident. What you call the Desolation, Melni.”

  Melni’s knees buckled. She gripped her chair to keep from falling. A snarl replaced the patience and understanding on her face. “You…” she rasped, “you caused that?”

  “No, no. Please, take a deep breath and allow me to explain.”

  Caswell felt the anger, too, like a physical thing. A vision came to him, unbidden. A group of thin, improbably tall individuals like Laz, sitting in a room reviewing the schematics of Caswell’s engineered gland. A tech unknown or undreamt of by their kind but covertly stolen by their agents from some poor scientist on Earth. These people, this Prime, were worse than Alice. Far worse. Exactly the opposite of her. Instead of running around giving away technology in exchange for power, they used power to steal all the choicest bits from who knows how many worlds. Information parasites. The ultimate theft of intellectual property.

  All those goddamned worlds. Entire civilizations, unknowingly speaking an alien language, ignorantly handing their best ideas and advancements to a watchful overlord who would destroy it all should that civilization manage to reach high enough.

  The anger coursed through him like a stiff drink. He knew he had to fight it, to hear this creature out. The vision reminded him of his implant, now flush with the chemicals he needed thanks to the food he’d devoured above. He thrust his hands to his temples and willed focus, calm, and accelerated the signals in his brain to give him more time to think. He’d pay for it with a nasty headache later, but this was all too important for rash emotion and clouded thoughts to derail. His scalp tingled as the chemicals worked through the cells of his brain.

  Melni looked ready to strike the alien. She fumed. Her eyes were wild.

  “I think you’d better explain,” Caswell said, artificially calm. He glanced at Melni for Laz’s benefit. “Quickly, please.”

  Laz lowered his head until his chin rested against his chest. He turned to the left and his lips met the feeding tube that appeared as if reading his thoughts. The alien man swallowed hard and took in each of his audience. “The Desolation of Gartien was in truth a random cosmic event, one we would have stopped had we known about it early enough. There was one among us who did know, but she, being secretly loyal and yet disconnected from Prime, decided to say nothing. An extinction event on Gartien, she thought, would set back our efforts here and give Prime a chance to find the world before we could challenge them.

  “We tried to stop it, too late for full success. At least your world was not annihilated.”

  “That is small consolation,” Melni said through clenched teeth.

  “I am truly sorry for what occurred,” Laz offered.

  Caswell cleared his throat. “What happened then?”

  “Something of a war followed within our ranks. Other hidden loyalists to Prime rose up. Our blockade of the Conduit was destroyed, most of us along with it. I alone remain here, but my ship was badly damaged and my health now deteriorates rapidly. I knew I would die soon and that I needed help. The blockade was down. Gartien was in no position to help. I needed someone to carry on our mission, but I could not trust anyone from Prime. So I lured Alice Vale here, along with her crew. I studied them and decided she was the best candidate to replace me. I made contact. I begged her to stay but she refused. She went back with them, and I feared she would betray not just my existence here but Gartien, too. And the Conduit. To those of Earth and, through Monique Pendleton, Prime as well. She would doom both worlds.”

  “But Alice came back,” Caswell said.

  “Yes. She began to see that even if Prime did not exist,
Earth would try to take advantage of Gartien in the same way. She and her crew argued about how to handle the discovery, and she lost that argument. A ship arrived to debrief them. Or so they claimed. Instead a soldier came through and murdered everyone. She hid, survived, and came back here armed only with knowledge. Well, and a desire to help me.”

  Bodies floating in a medical bay. The strange sense of déjà vu. Alice’s recognition of him in the Think Tank, her naked fear. Now it all made sense. Monique had sent him the first time, too. To tidy up. To conceal her precious Conduit. Six more bottles of Sapporo. No, fuck that, he thought. He’d lost count, and he wasn’t even done yet.

  “Help you do what?” Caswell asked, despite knowing the answer.

  “To prepare. We feared at any instant this soldier from Earth, or thousands like him, would come. Or worse, agents of Prime would arrive with a full fleet for a ‘clean slate’ operation.

  “We had no idea how much time there was. And remember, I was already dying. So Alice and I came down here. She would join Gartien’s society, use the benefit of her knowledge to try to accelerate Gartien to spacefaring status, and ultimately blockade the Conduit once again.”

  “But,” Melni said, “surely you have even greater technology than Alia? Why did you not do this yourself?”

  Laz glanced at her. “What I lacked was the history behind it all. I could tell you how the tendrils of this bed work, yes, but not the long and complex chain of inventions and entire industries needed to allow your world to build one. Alice realized this, and could acquire that information. She even concocted the plan on precisely how to dole it out so that, in the end, your people would feel like they were on a perfectly natural course. The product of genius rather than the ravings of an alien lunatic.”

  “God,” Caswell whispered. “It makes perfect sense.”

  “The fact that Monique sent you through means we have very little time. She now knows Gartien exists, and she knows how to travel here. She will share this with Prime, and they’ll be making plans even now on what to do.”

  There came a sound like meat being torn from bone. Startled, Caswell glanced down to see the Warden’s left hand rise slowly, forcefully away from the translucent tendrils. The thin dewy strands ripped out of his skin with a thousand little pops. His hand, shaking, grasped Caswell by the wrist. “You…must…help…her!” The words came out like the dying grunts from a wounded animal. His skin paled even as Caswell watched. He must have been hypermedicating himself in order to have this conversation.

  Laz sighed a raspy breath through clenched teeth. His whole body suddenly lurched upward, held back only by the thousands of little wormlike tendrils that clung to his skin. He groaned and slumped back, his head tilting to one side.

  “He is dying!” Melni shouted.

  Caswell leapt to his feet and leaned over the man. He tried to reach, to feel for a pulse, but his hand met the invisible shield with a shower of luminous energy. He ignored the pain, he leaned in closer and shouted, “What about Earth? What about Monique? What can I do?”

  The Warden remained still. Melni extended her hand to pull Caswell back when the alien’s eyes suddenly opened wide. “Alice is the key,” he whispered. “Help her. But go, now. It is not safe to remain here.”

  “But Earth—” Caswell started.

  His words were drowned in a sudden, shrill noise that came from everywhere. The coloration of the walls rippled from white to a blazing orange.

  “Someone else is here,” Laz the Warden said, his voice thin as a breeze through grass.

  “Monique? Prime?”

  “No. Outside.”

  A frigid chill slammed through Caswell’s body. “Who?”

  “Unknown.” With a shaking hand the Warden managed to point toward the hallway through which Melni and Caswell had entered. “Weapons. Supplies. State your names to enter.”

  Then his hand fell, as if sucked back to the bed by the slimy tendrils that still clung to the underside of his arm like hungry serpents.

  Light shifted in the room. Motion. Caswell whirled, expecting to find a squad of alien soldiers swarming in. What he saw instead was worse.

  The wall display had come back to life. It showed a vibrant image of the door to the boathouse, and some of the sloped trail beyond. A shadow moved down that slope. The shape of a woman in black from hair to feet. Each hand gripped a pistol, held at the side.

  “A Hollow Woman,” Melni whispered. “We are doomed.”

  Two more black-clad figures moved into view. One, a male, stopped halfway down the sloped hill and began to assemble something. The third, a woman, moved sideways at a crouch, keeping to the tall grass beside the trail, a long rifle of some sort sweeping rhythmically from left to right and back.

  “Three of them,” Melni gasped. “Three!”

  Caswell ran. He sprinted down the now-pulsing amber corridor, under the hatch they’d entered through, along the gently curving length to the far end where a barrier waited. He stopped in front of it, looking for a handle of some kind. A button. Anything. Then Laz’s instructions came to him. “Peter Caswell,” he said.

  A click from inside the wall. Nothing more.

  Melni came running up and stopped next to him.

  “Say your name,” he told her. “Quickly.”

  “Melni Tavan,” she blurted.

  Nothing.

  “Meiki Sonbo,” she tried.

  There was an odd, pleasant chime and then the barricade simply melted back into the walls around it. Beyond was something like a workshop. Sloppy and, other than the floor and ceiling, nothing like the rest of the vessel. Wooden tables that looked as if assembled by a child. Boxes of varying size and manufacture lay strewn about the floor, their dusty contents mostly books and other documents.

  Alice must have toiled in here, hidden from the outside. Caswell darted in. He glanced about wildly and then vaulted one of the tables to get to the far wall. The wood creaked under his weight, but held. Beyond it, a brownish bedsheet hung from poles to form an impromptu curtain. He yanked it aside. Behind it, an assortment of pistols and rifles were neatly arranged. Caswell had envisioned an array of exotic alien firepower, sleek and gleaming. But these were all of Gartien origin, and worse, antiques.

  “Familiar with any of this?” Caswell asked her.

  Melni slipped around the table and took inventory. “This is Frontier Police issue. Or was, fifteen years ago.”

  “It’s all ancient. How is this helpful?”

  “It is better than nothing,” Melni said.

  Caswell looked at the old pistol. It had a bizarre shape, most of the weight at the back. “Is it loaded?”

  She slid the housing aside. “Fully.”

  He took it, tested the weight, trying to figure out how to even hold the damned thing. Melni grabbed another, slightly smaller model. This one proved empty, but she quickly found ammunition on a shelf to one side.

  As she loaded the second gun he held his up. “How the hell do you even aim this?”

  Melni showed him how to swing a supporting brace out so that the padded end rested on his forearm. “If you press down here with your free hand, the stability is excellent. Almost as good as a rifle, without all the bulk.”

  “If it still works,” Caswell said. He turned for the exit.

  Melni gripped him by the arm, hard enough to cut through his laser focus on the enemies approaching.

  He turned to her. “What is it?” he asked. “There’s no time for a plan, Melni. They’re right outside.”

  She shook her head. “These people, the Hollow. They are our most elite killers. Extremely dangerous.”

  “So am I,” he said, peeling off her grip, “when I need to be.” He pressed his fingers to his temples once again. This time he turned everything on.

  CASWELL TURNED AND RAN to the hatch, but Melni hesitated. She glanced down at the slender weapon in her hand. Would it be enough? Not nearly, not against the Hollow. Garta’s light, three of them!

&nbs
p; Her pistol would be a toy compared to what these soldiers carried. Melni slipped it into a pocket and gazed at the array of weapons before her. Beneath the shelves of pistols were two wide drawers.

  She slid one out and grinned at what lay within.

  Despite spending only twenty seconds to equip herself, by the time Melni reached the hatch Caswell had vanished through the ceiling hatch and into Alia’s lander.

  Melni slung the riot rifle over her shoulder and jumped for the open hole above. She hauled herself into the capsule, cursing every sound she made. For an instant she marveled at the change in her perception of Alia’s craft. What had seemed so advanced before now looked primitive compared to the Warden’s vehicle. She wondered if he really was dead, and why he seemed more prisoner than patient in that bed. Why had Alia not moved him somewhere more secure? Questions for another time.

  Melni leapt again and clawed her way into the ramshackle boathouse above. The wooden interior was primitive and dark and smelled awful. It was as if she’d just climbed through three epochs of human achievement. She glanced about for Caswell but he was gone.

  Wood creaked outside. Melni slipped the riot gun off her shoulder and hefted it in both hands. The damn thing weighed twenty pounds fully loaded. For an instant she debated setting it down. She’d trained with such a gun just once, way back during her first year at Riverswidth, and hadn’t cared for it much then. But the pistol in her pocket seemed a pathetic choice against a Hollow, much less three of them. Fear tore through her at the prospect there might have been even more, off-display.

  Crouching, Melni lowered the wooden door that concealed the entrance to the space vessel below. She picked up her heavy weapon again, held it at the hip so that the shoulder strap could lend some support, and crept to the back wall. She rounded gun-first and swept the barrel across the space beyond.

  The river drifted by in its lazy journey. The aging boat bobbed gently on the brown water, ropes straining and slackening with each little wave. A cloud of insects weaved and darted in a blur around a conical flower that poked up from the water two dozen feet out. The sky had cleared, pure blue above the distant crater-rim hills.