Zero World (15 page)

“Is there a luggage car?” Caswell asked.

“No.”

“Anywhere to hide?”

She glanced around. The tiny room had nothing but two benches that doubled as beds, and a closet too small for even a single person to conceal themselves in.

“That porter brought food,” he said. “From where? A restaurant car?”

“I do not know ‘restaurant,’ but there is a porter car, two ahead. They store food there. Cleaning supplies, spare parts. It is behind the engine. But,” she added, holding a hand up to stay his instant move toward the door, “it will be staffed. And they will search it soon enough.”

“We have to run then. No other choice. Come on.” He turned for the door.

“No, wait,” she said. Her eyes met his. “I have a plan, I think.”

She explained and he took in the details without comment or question.

“That,” he said, “just might work.”

Melni scattered the remnants of the cham and pastries on the benches and floor. Then she flung the narrow window wide open. The roller’s track was a curved ditch, so the snowbank was only centimeters below the window. Next she scooped handfuls of the white powder into the cabin and made sure it splayed violently across the thin carpet of the floor.

“Good enough,” he said, impressed. On a whim he grabbed a small carving knife from the tray. “Let’s move.”

She went out first, moving one cabin over. It proved unlocked and
she went in, closing the door behind him when he followed a second later.

Silence, then. Just his breaths, and hers.

Less than a minute later a door clacked open at the far end of the car. Footsteps in the hall, and low voices. They sounded bored. Good.

Melni glanced back at Peter and he nodded his readiness.

The NRD officers reached the adjacent cabin. One let out a startled gasp. The other rushed inside, heavy footsteps across the six feet of carpet and then at the window.

Melni burst into motion. The plan relied entirely on timing.

Caswell followed on her heels: left turn into the hall, left turn into the neighboring compartment. A male guard stood a step inside, his long black coat like a curtain drawn across the interior. Melni lowered a shoulder and drove into the center of his back, leaving her feet. The man yelped in surprise as he flew forward. He went face-first into the legs of his companion, a female. She’d half-turned from the window at the sound of Melni’s entrance, her rifle too long to ready in the cramped quarters.

A cry of alarm died on her lips, the hilt of the carving knife protruding from her breast. Caswell had not expected much more than distraction from the small blade, much less a solid wound. He’d never been much of a knife man, as far as he remembered, at least. It had slid right through the uniform, though. All the way. The NRD officer glanced down at the hilt, a look of wonder and surprise on her face. Then the life drained from her features, and she collapsed.

On the floor, Melni fought to keep her prey pinned. The man writhed wildly, spurned to terror at the sight of his dead comrade. Caswell stepped in to help, then held back when Melni raised one arm high, her pistol gripped like a baton. She smacked the back of the man’s head with it. Three, five, eight blows. Bone crunched, and then came the spongy wet sound of brain being pulverized. The back

of his head became a clump of long blond hair mixed with sticky, dark red blood before he finally, mercifully, went still.

Breathing in huge gulps of air, Melni staggered to her feet and studied the carnage before her. “Why would he not stop struggling?” she asked, her voice not for him. Just a whispered grasp at her own humanity. “Garta’s light, what have I become?”

“At least he can’t talk.” He gripped her shoulder and urged her to be calm. “Focus now. The coats, right?”

“At least he can not talk? How can you say—”

“The coats, Melni. You made a plan, let’s stick to it, eh?”

“Coats. Yes, coats” Melni agreed. The vacancy in her eyes faded. She blinked. “Coats.”

Caswell hunched over the man on the floor and began to pull his heavy black coat off. Seeing him disrobing the officer, Melni returned completely to the moment. She knelt and grabbed the female agent by the lapels. The knife had to come out before she could remove the garment. Melni’s face scrunched up as the blade pulled free. Caswell watched, ready for her to lapse into remorse again at the sight of the blood. He reminded himself—and not for the first time—that Melni would remember all this. She’d carry what she’d done here, what she’d been capable of, on her conscience for the rest of her life.

But by sheer force of will Melni maintained control. His mention of the plan seemed to work like a talisman on her. She set the weapon aside and started pulling arms from sleeves.

Caswell was a good six inches shorter than the NRD man and swam inside the huge overcoat. Worse, his hair and skin color were completely wrong. With any luck, distance and speed would obscure these inconsistencies.

Melni picked up the rifle and, as was the Gartien way, took the lead. “Remember,” she whispered, “we are arrogant rassies on state business.”

The rearmost car was for “standers,” she’d told him. Those who couldn’t afford a seat. It smelled of sour sweat and old newspaper.
Melni shouldered her way through the sullen passengers, a palpable air of superiority in her gait that Caswell mimicked.

A pale-faced porter stood at the back. If he noticed that the two agents coming toward him were different than those who boarded minutes earlier, he gave no sign. Melni jerked her chin toward the rear exit and he obediently opened it.

“What has happened? What is wrong?” the porter stammered as she strode by.

Melni did not so much as acknowledge him. She hopped down from the side of the car. Footprints marked the path the two officers had taken. She did not slow. Caswell, on her heels, kept pace and did not look back.

The NRD cruiser rested in fresh snow a hundred feet away, steam wafting off the motor’s exposed heat sinks. Blue and yellow right-of-way lights flickered in their strangely mesmerizing pattern.

“You saw them get out?” Caswell asked.

“I did.”

“Who was driving?”

She thought back. “The man.”

“Better let me, then.” He’d driven most of the way from his landing site to the city of Midstav, in a stolen cruiser not unlike this one. They seemed to have two types of vehicles here: the older, compressed-air style that looked like something out of a 1930s German vision of the future, and those like the one before them, sleek and new, powered by battery. Alice’s influence? He thought very probably. This world was full of such signs of new and rapid technological advancement, and it all pointed back to the woman playing God. Exactly as Monique had assessed.

They’d crossed half the distance to the car. Melni angled herself toward the rear seat. Caswell aimed for the front. His body teetered on the verge of betraying him. He’d never been so hungry or thirsty in his life. Not that he could remember, at least. His breaths erupted in large puffs, his thighs ached from traversing the knee-deep snow. Ten meters now. Five.

A distant voice reached his ears. “Agent Tolis? What is the matter?”

Melni ran, legs lurching in the deep snowdrift. Caswell did his best to keep up. He felt dizzy. He wanted to force chemicals into his brain, consequences be damned. But that option no longer remained to him. The well had run dry.

“Halt!” the same voice shouted. “Halt!”

A vicious crack rang out and rolled across the landscape, sending birds to flight from the line of trees beyond the cruiser. Two more shots followed. Ahead of him something
thwapped
into the snow in a miniature white explosion. Melni twitched abruptly. She swatted at her left arm as if someone were trying to grab her there. Her hand came away red.

Fuck,
he thought.

“Blix,” Melni said, then fell face-first into the snow.

He threw her limp body into the cruiser. A bullet hissed past his ear. Lots of people were shouting now, from behind. He didn’t look back. He just jumped into the forward seat, found the switch that activated the motors, and roared away in a shower of white powder. Little eruptions of snow popped up all around. The crackle of gunfire. Engines whirring to life, then sirens.

“Melni?”

She said nothing.

Caswell put it all out of his mind and focused on driving. Back home hardly anyone ever drove a car anymore. Everything had been automated decades ago. But in some parts of the world, the third world most often, one occasionally had to manually operate a car. Caswell had visited such places on his post-mission “holidays.” He’d even taken the occasional trip to the Nürburgring in Germany, where wealthy adrenaline junkies like him thrashed around twenty kilometers of twisting road in antique supercars. A keen sense of self-satisfaction
went through him like a warm wave with the knowledge that his risky, expensive, spontaneous training adventures had truly paid off. He tossed the little “cruiser” along a snowy trail, shot through gaps in the trees, bounced over the uneven terrain. For a time he even forgot about the wounded girl in the backseat. A stupid smile had replaced his grim concern, and when he realized this he wanted to slap sense into himself. The lack of food, he decided. It was making him delirious. They both needed help, and soon. But he couldn’t stop as long as there were lights in the mirrors. She might die before he found her medical help, but she’d most certainly be put to death if these fucking “rassies” caught them.

Time passed in a blur of trees and snow. The lights grew more distant but he knew he was leaving perfect tracks for them to follow. This couldn’t go on.

Luck favored him in the form of a road, recently cleared. He bounded onto it, pointed the lithe vehicle toward what he hoped was north, and set the acceleration handle to maximum. The rear tire fought for purchase on the gravelly surface and then bit. The cruiser rocketed forward.

He drove for a long time. Twice he jerked awake, the car grinding against packed snow beside the narrow road. The mirror remained devoid of pursuers. Finally he eased back and let the car roll to a stop beside a frozen pond some twenty meters off the road. Snow fell in lazy, oversize flakes.

He hauled Melni from the backseat and laid her on his jacket. The cold bit, numbed his skin. His stomach felt like a stone. Caswell ignored all this and inspected the girl’s wound. It looked bad. A lot of blood. He melted some snow in his hands and washed it with the bit of water that didn’t slip through his shaking fingers. She let out a weak groan at this. Her eyes flittered, then closed again. Her lips were as blue as a summer sky.

Desperate, Caswell searched the car and found something akin to a first-aid kit. He had no idea what most of the contents were for, but
the long strips of bandage were all he needed for now. He packed one against her wound and tied the other over it. Finally he stuffed some snow in her mouth, and put her back into the vehicle.

He drove on. A sudden overwhelming craving for chewing gum fell upon him. Something to keep his saliva flowing, and sleep from overtaking him.

Hours later Melni stirred. “What happened?” she asked, her voice like dry paper being crumpled.

“You were shot,” he stated. “I think I’ve lost them but I have no idea where I’m going. We need a map or something.”

Melni groaned. “How…long?”

“Maybe,” he said, then paused. “Three hours by your, you know.”

She coughed.

“The bullet only grazed you, gouged a line across the muscle and back out again. I packed the wound as best I could.”

“Gratitude,” she whispered. “Need…a doctor. It is worse than it looks.”

“Can’t do it.”

She protested, tried to sit up, and groaned in agony.

“Hold tight, okay? I have a better idea. No surgeon required.”

She said nothing.

“Melni?”

Caswell glanced back. She’d fallen unconscious again.

BRILLIANT LIGHT BLAZED
from above, at once painful and pleasant, like Garta at the zenith of a Renewal-month sky. Yet no heat came from this light. Just the brilliant fingers of glare that stretched to the corners of her vision.

Melni blinked, and the light became more focused. She blinked again. Not Garta at all, but a lamp of some sort. It was circular, embedded into a recessed channel within a white ceiling made of square tiles.

Something tugged at her shoulder. She tried to turn and found her head had been strapped down. Her arms and legs as well. She tugged at the bonds with no effect. This must be an NRD interrogation room. She tried to test the strength of her bonds but her body
would not yet cooperate. She heard a grunt of concentration, someone standing nearby.

“Where—” she croaked.

“Don’t move.” The voice was Caswell’s. He was rummaging around beside her, probing her arm with something.

Her skin there felt warm and seemed to almost buzz. He’d numbed her. While he worked she tried to look around. Above her was a tiny round window, set inside an oval—a door? It had a wheel attached in the center, with four metallic bars sticking out to each edge.

“Sorry about this,” Caswell said suddenly, and laid a soft strip of white fabric over her eyes.

Instinctively she shook her head. The fabric began to slide and fall.

He pulled it tight across her face. “Remain still, Melni. I’m almost done and we’ll be on our way. I cannot let you see this place.”

If she glanced straight down past her nose she could see only a small strip of uninteresting wall now. “Where are we?”

“My landing craft.”

“Some kind of submersible?”

He pressed something hard against her shoulder, then began to expertly wind bandage around the double wound. “Yes, very much like that. Drink.”

Something tickled at her lips. She opened her mouth and felt a firm yet spongy tube slide between. She sucked timidly. The water tasted like nothing at all, blissfully cold. She drank eagerly until he pulled the tube away.

“That’s enough for now. Can you eat?”

“I’ll try,” she said.

She heard the sound of paper, or something like it, tearing. Then another brush against her lips. She opened her mouth and felt the squared end of some sort of hard bread or biscuit slip in an inch. Melni bit down into a dry, crumbling bit of flavorless nothing. She did her best to chew while Caswell held the remainder against her closed
mouth. The biscuit thing turned into mush in her mouth and left a slightly sour mineral aftertaste. “What is that? Besides awful, I mean.”

“Nutrients,” he said. “Sterilized and utterly bland, I’m afraid. Designed not to interfere with the painkillers. Hopefully you won’t react to it as I do to the food here.”

Melni took another few bites and shook her head at a fourth. The pain in her arm had vanished, and the flutters in her stomach were indeed much reduced. “What happened?”

“You were shot, lost a fair amount of blood.”

“That part I recall. Vividly. I mean after that.”

She heard metal clinking against a pan. Then a hiss of air.

“I drove,” Caswell said. “Hard at first, on the glowing roads.”

“They did not chase?”

“For a while, yeah. Until I left the road for a frozen river. I followed it most of the way here. No small feat with the lights off and without that glow. Didn’t see a single light behind us after the first few miles.”

She gradually became aware of a myriad of strange noises: soft chirps, the low constant breath of circulation fans. And a warmth, as well. He’d removed her coat and overshirt, yet the room felt like a hearth-side table in a mealhouse.

He offered her another bite of the inoffensive biscuit. She shook her head. Her stomach felt on the verge of betrayal. “What happens now?”

Caswell leaned into her limited field of view where her nose held up the blinding fabric. He pressed something against her forehead and slid it down to her temple, then studied it. Next he removed a band she hadn’t realized was there from her left forearm. It was white with a blue stripe, and had some words printed on it she couldn’t quite read. To her surprise they changed when he ran his finger across them. He tossed the strange bracelet aside, out of her narrow view. “I’ve been thinking. It’s best I work alone. Sorry, but each minute I spend with you is an enormous risk, however aligned our goals might be.”

“That poses a bit of a problem.”

“I know.”

“If you succeed, I’ll lose my chance to interrogate her.”

“Nothing to be done about it. I’m running out of time, Melni, and my mission is too important.”

“So you’re going after her alone.”

“Yes.”

Melni swam inside her own head. Every coherent thought felt like a physical thing she had to grasp and yank free from the two-fisted clutch of fatigue and drugs. She needed time. Even an hour. “I may be ordered to stop you.” It was an empty threat given her wound but she could think of nothing else.

“Possible. You’ll note, however, that I have you strapped to a chair. I could just leave you this way, sedated, until I’m done. I could kill you, if it comes to that. Your people have no idea where you are.”

“Would you?” she asked. Of course she had made contact with Riverswidth. And they had been very clear: Bring Caswell in. Keeping that from him now oddly felt more like a betrayal than prudent spycraft. Still, she felt sure he wouldn’t heal her wound only to shoot her himself.

He took his time to respond. “You seem a decent person, but I’d be lying if I said your life is more important than my objective. Don’t force me to make that choice.”

“I…” She gritted her teeth. Damn the moons, whatever he had given her had extraordinary power. She felt as if floating in a warm bath. Her left arm felt fine, if numb, despite the bullet that had torn through her muscle and nerves. She had almost bled to death. She damn well should have. Had she stumbled into a Midstav doctor’s office with a wound like that, she’d be in bed for weeks, at a minimum. “Caswell, listen. I do not know who you work for or what their ultimate objective is, but removing Alia Valix should be a last resort. The South could benefit more if we gain intelligence on her invention process. Surely you can see that?”

“You’re wrong. I can’t explain why, but you’re wrong. And anyway I have strict orders.” He sighed. Started to move.

Melni fought to concentrate, aware and embarrassed at how feeble and stammering her voice sounded. “Take me to the coast, at least? One of the logging towns? There’s one called Portstav west of here. I can buy passage south from there.” No need to tell him there was a listening post in that seaside town. She could make contact, report to Riverswidth. She’d suggest a new plan: Let him go but follow him. Let him lead her to Valix, then stop him before he can kill her.

Betray him, that is what you really mean
.

The kinship she’d felt for him in their hasty flight from the Think Tank, from Midstav, felt suddenly like a chain of brittle links. So they’d both been in the Valix house. So what? Her duty to the South outweighed whatever power had sent him here. In that sense they were adversaries. She had to start acting that way. For all she knew he was lying about his intention to kill the woman. To let him go, to not do everything in her power to stop him, might be seen as treason back home.

He had moved out of sight again. She could hear him rummaging through various unknown objects. Filling a travel pack, perhaps. Preparing to leave. “Right, okay. Fine,” he said. “Rest for a bit while I get my kit sorted, and we’ll be off. We’ll part ways at Portstav.”

Melni lay still—she had no other choice, really—and resisted the strong urge to sleep by concocting yet another plan: Get to the coast, figure out some way to delay Caswell there, make contact with Riverswidth via the agents at the listening post. They could provide her with supplies, papers.

Perhaps they’d know the scope of the hunt for her and the stranger. Fleeing south may already be impossible. Suddenly she could see herself, holed up in some dank room in Portstav with the local listening team for weeks, even a whole month, until the search abated.

After a time she felt the strip of fabric across her face shift, then tighten.

Caswell nudged her. “Lift your head.” When she did he tied the strip in a quick knot and helped her sit upright.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“The arm is fine. My stomach, however, is not happy with you.”

“Sorry. I’m worried about giving you anything more complex. We’ll get something proper for you to eat at the first opportunity.”

“You sound better.”

“A thousand times better,” he agreed. “Chicken tikka masala.”

“Huh?”

He hauled her by the right elbow off the…it wasn’t a doctor’s table, she decided. Just a reclined chair. Not unlike the formfitting style found in the NRD police cruiser, actually. Strange to have it in a larger space. She reached out her hands to feel for him and a second later his fingers brushed hers. He grasped her firmly but gently by the wrist of her good arm and guided her to a few paces from the chair.

Something above them ticked and then rattled. There was a hiss of air, and something plopped on the floor near her feet. Snow, she realized.

“I’ll go up first,” he said. “Clear any fresh snow, and get the cruiser ready.”

“All right.”

“Do I need to tie your hands behind your back or will you leave the blindfold in place?”

“I will behave.”

He laid her coat gently over her shoulders, expecting a wince of pain and apparently pleased at the lack of one. “Gratitude,” he said quietly. Before she could reply his boots were tapping against the rungs of what must be a scalesteps pulled down from the ceiling.

She heard a heavy mechanical whir and then a sharp rising hiss that ended in a pop. Cold air rushed inside, startling against the almost uncomfortable warmth of the…submersible, or whatever it was.

Next came the sound of boots crunching on snow. He didn’t climb down anything, so this vehicle must be completely buried in a drift or even underground. This gave her a shiver. The noise abated as he moved away.

Melni could not help herself. She reached up and lifted the blindfold from her eyes.

She stood in an oblong room, like the inside of an egg. White walls, floor, and ceiling, all merged together to form one contiguous space. Above her head was a round door with an inlaid window, now open. Another identical door lay opposite it, at her feet. It had a circular window in the middle, damp soil pressing against it from beneath. The other walls consisted of rectangular tiles in varying size. Each had a small metal handle embedded in a circular depression in the center, and a label just above that. Many were studded with tiny circular lights glowing in green, though here and there a few showed red.

Melni turned around and her breath caught in her throat. The other side of the room was dominated by a sleek chair that reminded her vaguely of a teethright’s office, only instead of cleaning instruments dangling before it there were display screens, similar to what she’d seen inside Alia’s Think Tank, but impossibly thin. Each was full of vibrant-colored, fantastically sharp text and images.

“What in Garta’s light—”

“Mel!”

The shout came from directly above her. She glanced up in time to see Caswell’s feet falling toward her and just barely moved out of the way before he crashed into her.

“You really shouldn’t have done that,” he growled.

“Regret, I—”

“Save it. We’ve got to go, now.”

He shoved her toward the scalesteps and forced her to clamber up. She saw him kneel and grab a large white bag that he’d placed on the floor, then turned her focus to the patch of gray sky directly over her head. White flakes of snow drifted lazily across the circular view.

Outside she found herself standing atop the scarred outer part of an egg-shaped vessel. At least she thought it was egg shaped. Most of it was buried in ice.

The vessel lay in a pit about ten feet in diameter; slick shiny walls of ice about six feet high and steeply sloped were all around the portal through which she’d climbed. Water ran in rivulets down to the exposed surface of the ship. Had its internal heat carved this hole? She thought it must be so. A deep thrumming sound became evident, though it sounded far away. Melni whirled about for the source and saw instead a patch that had some regular snow piled like a ramp at the edge of the depression. Her companion’s boot prints were all over it.