Zero World (22 page)

“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.