Zero World (23 page)

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 later 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.

Caswell met her gaze, held it. “How long until the summit?”

“Four days,” Melni said. “What do you need from the bag?”

Still four days. He let himself relax. When he’d woke he asked everyone who entered how long he’d been unconscious. It had felt like days. But no one would talk to him, and the bastards had taken his watch. The doctor spoke only to say he would be the one asking questions. Caswell had spat in the man’s face. That effort had left him delirious, but felt good all the same. Then Caswell demanded to see Melni. Said he’d only talk to her. The rash words, born of anger and frustration, had worked. An unexpected gift.

“Food. Any of those meal packets.”

Melni looked down at her hands. “I doubt they will agree to that when you refuse all nourishment we provide.”

“Then you tell them, Melni. You saw me try to eat, you saw how my body reacts. Tell them.”

“I…” She trailed off, her mouth suddenly a thin line.

He studied her closely, watched her eyes. She knew he couldn’t eat the local food, but she hadn’t told them. What did it mean? “Then my medicines,” he said, without hope. “The vial marked Vespilin-4. It will
clear up any infection in my blood, hopefully, and along with a few of the water bulbs my body will start to replace what I lost already.”

“I will ask. Is that all?”

“No. Ibuproxin. Nothing fancy about that one, it just helps manage pain. The dose is normally two. I’ll need four, every twenty-four hours, at least until the food starts to do its thing.”

Melni let out an involuntary laugh, then composed herself.

He glanced at her. “What?”

“Twenty-four hours is oddly specific.”

“Once per day—” Caswell winced at his mistake. “Ten hours, I meant. Once per day. Why are you staring at me like that?”

She put a hand on his arm. “That was no innocent slip of words just then, was it? You make so many such mistakes.”

“I told you: thawed out of the ice.”

She slid her chair closer. “Tell me where you come from, Caswell. The truth. What culture marks the days in twenty-four hours instead of ten? I have never heard of such a thing in all our history.”

He just stared at her. A second ago she’d seemed happy to withhold information about him, but now she’d cut right to the meat. What was going on? Why act as if she didn’t know about his food and medicine?
Perhaps she’s hidden it from them. And if so, she’s risking an awful lot.
He battled for focus. He couldn’t misstep here. She was the only ally he had. The only chance.

“I like you, Caswell,” she added while he thought. “We have been through much together. But the people who run this place believe you and Alia Valix are carved from the same stone. That your mind may be equal to hers. That you are the key to matching the North invention for invention, and therefore our only hope. Our actions in Combra have brought the Quiet War to the brink of being something much louder. My superiors need help. They need you.
We
need you. And they will use pain to get the answers they want.”

He closed his eyes.
She needs this for herself,
he realized. Whoever listened from the other side of that mirror would write off his answers
as lunacy, but Melni wouldn’t. He could see it in her face. If he gave her the truth, she would accept it.

A timepiece on the wall whirred away, clicked as another minute passed. Melni’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. A gentle squeeze, giving permission.

“I’m not of this world,” he said, after a time.

“Meaning what?”

“Exactly that. I come from another world. Called Earth. Alia does, too, only she’s not called Alia there. She’s Alice Vale. She came here as part of the expedition that accidentally discovered your world. When she realized how similar your planet, your species, was to ours, she decided to stay.”

He paused, opening his eyes and gauging Melni’s reaction. She gave an almost imperceptible nod to continue.

“Our world is roughly one hundred and twenty years ahead of yours, technologically. More in some areas, less in others. Think about what you know of this woman, and I think you’ll understand the opportunity she saw here.”

“So she came here with this knowledge, found an ally in the North, and decided to benefit only them?”

“Not the North,” he said. A stab of pain from his implant warned him away from thought-lock protected knowledge. He winced. “My training makes talking about this very difficult. You’ll have to guess again.”

Melni thought it over. “She does this to benefit herself.”

Caswell said nothing.

She knew by now what that meant. “Why come after her now? What changed, after all these years?”

“It was only recently that we realized where she’d gone. That she’d survived at all. Her ship was found adrift, a wreck, after a dozen years missing. The rest of her crew were all there, dead.”

Melni’s brow furrowed. “In the Think Tank she claimed you killed them.”

“I know,” he said, suddenly tired. “You’d think I’d remember something like that….”

“But how is this travel possible? Through time? Across the emptiness between stars?”

“A damn good question,” Caswell said. “I don’t understand it myself. Perhaps no one does. Your planet looks almost exactly like mine. We even speak the same language. Crazy, I know, but there it is. None of this is important right now, though. Listen, Melni, the point is we—I mean our leaders—would not have handled such a discovery this way. The way Alia has, I mean. She acts selfishly. Does more harm than good.”

“Depends which side you are on.”

He grunted a laugh, then winced at the pain it caused. “Do you recall what I said about a child being given all the answers instead of learning them on its own?”

Melni nodded.

“I know it will be hard to hear this, but whatever wondrous technology we could give you, at the very least you should be able to see that a much more nuanced approach is desirable. For both our worlds. You have a sovereign right to advance on your own. To learn and understand rather than just be told. And then meet us when you’re ready. And if I may be blunt, many people on my world would argue that much of our knowledge should be deliberately withheld from you so as to maintain an advantage. Some knowledge, given to a child, is dangerous. Lethal.”

“I…‘understand,’ ” she said, using his word.

“If I hadn’t come along—hell, even now that I have—how long will it be before Valix is the most powerful person on Gartien?”

“She already is,” Melni said carefully. Again the eyes drifted toward the mirror.

He went on, despite warnings from his implant. He craned his neck toward her, ignoring the restraints. He had to convince her of the reason for his goals because the chances of him completing the mission were becoming perilously small. “How long before her mark
on this world is irrevocable? I know it’s hard to look at an offered gift and decide, no, you’d rather earn it on your own, but that’s what your world must do. You have to let me go. You have to let me fulfill my task.”

Melni’s face grew tight. She waited a moment before speaking, choosing her words with great care. When she did speak her voice had changed. Tuned for those listening, not for him. “Perhaps, knowing Alia’s true background and motives, we can manage her better? Consider each of her so-called inventions through this lens.”

“No,” Caswell said. “No. You’re missing the point. Damn it. I knew this would happen.”

“Is there something more to this that you are not telling me?”

“Listen, Melni. You have to make your people understand. Alia…some of the knowledge she has would lead to terrible things. Weap—” A stab of pain slammed into his brain from the neck. Caswell grunted, fought it back. He flirted dangerously now with a total wipe of his mind. “She could end all life here if she wished. No one…
no one
…should have that power. Not their side, not yours. Do you understand me?” He searched her eyes. “Make your people understand, before your entire world is held hostage.”

Weakness and agony overcame him. Caswell slumped back into his pillow, warring with the pain of Monique’s thought-lock measures, his wounds, his empty stomach and parched throat. He didn’t want to sleep, but sleep came like a bullet.

“Fascinating,” Rasa Clune said in her flat, emotionless voice.

Melni waited until the door clicked closed behind her. “So you believe him?”

Clune emitted a dry chuckle. “This man is insane. And it does not matter. While you were in there the Presidium received a much more plausible explanation for our guest, straight from Valix herself.”

“What explanation?”

“The one I assumed. That he experimented on himself. He illicitly set up some advanced isolation lab and hid it in the mountains, then began injecting himself with gene-altering chemicals, something he had been working on for Valix that they decided was too dangerous to pursue. Now he has confused some fantastical childhood fiction with reality.”