Zero World (29 page)

He kept a modest distance and followed her steps. At the edge she lowered herself over the side and dropped onto the narrow edge of the dock below. The wood planks creaked under her weight. She moved in and watched as Caswell repeated her motion.

An old fishing boat bobbed in the calm black water of the slip, covered by gray canvas. The ropes that held it in place were black with mold. To either side of the moored craft were various stacks of toolboxes, air cylinders, and spare lengths of rope. Mold, dust, or a disgusting mixture of the two coated everything. The whole place reeked of mildew. He glanced at the door, which was chained in the same fashion as out front.

“Search these boxes for something we can use,” he said. Melni took one side while he rummaged through the other.

In the third tool chest he found a pry bar and set to work on the
lone boarded window. The nails holding the wood in place were rusted through and, with only a mild groan, came free easily. In less than a minute he had the sill clear. He paused only to glance at Melni. At her nod he hauled himself up and in.

Darkness swallowed him. Even with the thin light spilling in from the now-empty window frame, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust.

Melni plopped down next to him and started to move farther in. He wrapped a hand around her forearm.

“Let your eyes adjust,” he whispered.

“Why are you whispering?” she asked, her voice as low as his.

“Just in case.” He could feel the vibration through the floor now.

Melni finally noticed it, too. She glanced down at her feet. “What is that? A bilge pump?”

“It’s warm in here,” Caswell noted. “Maybe a power generator.”

A trickle of sweat ran down his spine. He inhaled deeply. Moist air rank with decay.

“There does not seem to be anything toxic,” Melni said.

Caswell grunted his agreement. His eyes began to register details. Furniture covered with sheets once white, now coated in thick dust and those strange orange spiderwebs. Wooden floorboards creaked beneath his feet. He took a path that led around the edges of the room and looked for a closet or chest. Anything that Alice might have left belongings in. Maybe her spacesuit, or empty meal packets. Something.

Melni, able to see now, went to the center, picking her path with great care. The floorboards squeaked at first, then groaned with each step she took.

“Stop,” he said.

Melni stopped, her eyes on him.

Something wasn’t right. Caswell focused on the floor.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The sound of the floorboards changed.”

Melni glanced down. Then she closed her eyes and focused. She took two careful steps back. Groan, groan, squeak.

He came to her. His last two steps also produced groans.

A low table separated them, covered in a dusty sheet. Caswell tore the fabric aside and coughed as a cloud of dust and grit filled the air. Melni waved at it uselessly, gave up, and went to her knees to inspect the floorboards. He joined her, and together they poked and prodded the surface.

One chunk moved when Caswell’s fingers gripped it.

“Here,” he said. He lifted the broken section of wood away. Gray metal gleamed just below, unmarred by dust. A ring the size of a bracelet lay flat on it, attached to a small hinge.

Caswell slipped his fingers through the ring, raised it, and lifted. “Move back,” he said. After she did so he tried again and this time a square section of floor one meter on a side came free.

Beneath was a circular hatch of gray metal with a circular window in the middle. Familiar words were printed at four marks around the edge, in block lettering:

Caswell allowed himself a grin. “
Venturi
Lander One.”

“What does that mean?”

“The proof we need, Melni. A vessel just like mine, the one she came here in.” How Alice had managed to get it under the building he could only imagine. The most likely explanation is that she built the place atop it, after landing here. A lot of work for one woman, he thought, and then remembered the two graves just up the trail. Maybe she’d enlisted help, or forced it, and then did away with them.

A hungry growl from his stomach banished that moment of revulsion. There might still be food in the stores. Alice Vale must have
figured out a way to eat and drink here, otherwise she’d be long dead, but whether or not she’d solved that particular problem before running out of the supplies she’d stowed remained to be seen. He didn’t hold much hope, but even that glimmer filled his mouth with greedy saliva.

He pulled out the recessed handle and twisted it from LATCH toward PREP, grunting with the effort, his mouth pinched in a snarl, teeth clamped together. The handle lurched and clicked into position. Breath held, Caswell waited. Inside the porthole window a single red light began to blink. He hissed breath through clenched teeth as more and more lights began to wink on inside. The damn thing still had power. It was causing the vibration. But why? Why hadn’t Alice shut everything down?

Finally the circle of the porthole window glowed with a green ring of light. All clear. Caswell twisted the handle, with a bit less strain this time, to the
UNLATCH
marker. He eased Melni back with one arm and then yanked the whole thing up and away. There came a hiss of cool, stale air. Not pure like the air from his vessel, though. This air reeked of sweat and something foul. Spoiled food, he thought. Maybe even disease. Curious.

Melni suddenly backed away, repulsed by the odor. She looked at him with obvious worry. “It smells like death,” she said.

Caswell tried to give her a reassuring smile. She had it right, but his mind still lingered on the possibility of edible food. Rancid, spoiled, or otherwise. “Let me go first.”

She nodded emphatically, then watched in silence as Caswell lowered his feet inside and then, with only the slightest whisper of fabric against metal, slid his body down.

“Is it safe?” she asked from above.

“I think the air processors are failing, but it seems to be okay,” he called back to her.

“Seems? It reeks like skinrot, Caswell.”

“Let me open the inner door before you come in. Let some fresh air in.”

She covered her mouth and nose with one hand and nodded to him, dubious.

The inner door opened without complaint. Another rush of disgusting air, even stronger here, flowed into the boathouse. After twenty seconds he took a tentative whiff. Still awful, but at least bearable now. “All clear,” he called up.

Swallowing, searching his eyes for reassurance, Melni sat at the edge of the trapdoor and slid her body down into Alice Vale’s spacecraft.

CASWELL WENT STRAIGHT
to a cabinet door on the back wall and flung it aside. Dust fell in great clumps and spread into the rancid air. With desperate madness he began to paw through the contents, examining silvery packets and flinging them aside with growing frustration.

Finally he found one that met his criteria. He twisted off its cap, tilted it above his mouth, and sucked the contents down in four gigantic swallows.

“Slow down,” Melni said. “You will just vomit it up if you eat that fast.”

He nodded without looking at her, ashamed at his lack of self-control.
Then a violent shiver ran through his body. He quickly inhaled the second packet. Then a third.

Melni left him to his desperate feast and took in the cramped cabin of the spacecraft. It resembled the one she had visited in Hillstav down to the last detail, but nothing gleamed. It was like viewing a beautiful work of art and then seeing it again, faded by time, half-hidden under grime and dust. Her treadmellows left imprints on the floor. Melni knelt and trailed a finger along the surface, watching the brownish material return to white. Her fingertip brushed across a groove. She traced it, revealing another porthole like the one above. Aboard Caswell’s craft she had glimpsed the same feature through the gap in her blindfold. “Why,” she asked, “do these vessels have a door on the floor as well as the ceiling?”

Caswell had to swallow a mouthful of food before answering. “The bottom one has no airlock. It’s used only to connect the vehicle to other modules.”

“What kind of modules?”

He shrugged. “You name it: habitats, labs, engines, other landers. Link enough together and you’ve got a city in space.”

“I see.”

Her fingertip squeaked across a round window inset into the porthole. Melni froze. She’d expected to see mud below, as she had in Caswell’s craft, or perhaps swaying plants in the depths of the river. Instead she saw what appeared to be a wall of dark blue material a few feet away, broken only by a glowing green line inlaid perfectly into its surface. “What is this one connected to?”

“Nothing.” He turned, a water container in his fist, squeezing the last few drops into his mouth through a blue straw. “It was connected to a ship called the
Venturi,
until Alice fled in it.”

“Well, there is something down there.”

A vertical worry line creased his forehead. He knelt beside her and wiped grime from the glass with one swift swipe of his forearm.

She pressed her face to the glass next to his.

“What the fuck?” he gasped.

Another room waited. Something separate from the lander. The dark blue of the wall curved gracefully at its edges to meet a floor and ceiling. Dimly glowing green lines ran along the surfaces in elegant patterns of no discernible purpose, though Melni sensed they were not simply decorative.

In places, holes six inches in diameter receded into darkness within the wall. They were spaced at regular intervals, as far as Melni could see, anyway, and displayed the same curved joining where they met the flat wall, as if the surface were clay and the holes had been simply pressed inward.

“What the hell is it?” Caswell asked.

“That you must ask me makes me very worried.”

He grunted, a bitter laugh of agreement. “Well, let’s have a look.”

“Just like that? A strange dark room. Just go on in?”

“Sure, why not?”

She marveled at him. “Driven by instinct, as ever.”

“You’d prefer we sit here and make a detailed plan?”

Melni dropped her head, shook it. “You could at least see if there is air inside. What if we open this and drown ourselves?”

“Hmm. Fair point. All right.” He flipped open a panel beside the airlock door and tapped at a flat, recessed screen. Annotated graphs bloomed to life, varying in color but mostly green, which seemed to be the standard color for a positive indicator.

“There, you see? Breathable air.”

“Are you always so lucky?”

He grinned at her. “As far as I can recall.” Still smiling, Caswell twisted the handle and opened the lower airlock door. Through some unspoken agreement he slid first into the cavity below.

He stood almost perfectly still in the strange dark blue room for several seconds, his mouth agape in naked astonishment. Slowly he raised one hand to cover his open mouth.

“What is it?” Melni asked.

“Come down,” he said, “and see for yourself.” Then he stepped out of her view.

Melni slid in after him, landing neatly on the floor and rising to a half crouch, ready for anything.

Or so she thought. Her own jaw went slack at what lay before her, and without intending to do so, Melni soon stood as Caswell had, one hand over her own gaping, astonished mouth, her gaze utterly locked on the thing her companion now stood beside.

Focus,
a voice in her head urged before the sight overwhelmed her.
Analyze. Study.

With a conscious effort Melni clamped her jaw shut and lowered her hand. She strode forward. Three tentative steps ahead and to the side opposite Caswell.

Between them was a bed, or something like one. The surface was made of translucent bulbous shapes of amber, linked by flat, conjoined edges as if they’d started small and grown until connecting. The bed was not flat, but formed exactly to support the body of a very tall, very thin person who lay upon it. Man or woman she could not tell. It seemed somewhere between the two. A he, she decided, for the sake of a mental handhold.

His skin was bone white and smooth, veins visible under the surface. He looked impossibly thin, and not in a natural way. There seemed to be no muscle under the sagging skin, as if he were being consumed from the inside. Melni shivered.

He had long silvery hair that looked soft as spider silk. It lay in a cloud atop the amber bulbous cushions. His eyes were closed, the lids slightly blue—the only color on his face. His lips were as pale as his skin. His nose, long and finely etched, had an almost inhuman perfection to it.

Gradually Melni took in the rest of the body. Arms and legs as thin as a malnourished child’s. The chest was hairless and lacked nipples. A belly button did mar the otherwise smooth stomach.

A cloth of fine white fabric had been wrapped around his pelvis
and thighs. Long fingers and toes sprouted from the hands and feet, the nails perfectly matched to the tips as if meticulously trimmed.

Caswell reached out. Melni hissed a warning at him, shook her head, but he did not stop. Acting on instinct, yet again.

Two inches from the man’s arm, a sharp crack broke the silence. Electricity rippled away from Caswell’s finger, drawing fine little blue-white dots in a ripple pattern across an invisible surface. Caswell jerked back, his mouth twisted in pain. He shook his hand vigorously and blew on the fingertip.

“Are you insane?” Melni asked.

Caswell glanced at her apologetically. “I just wanted to see—”

“Think before you act, just this once, will you?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Who are you?” a third voice said.

Melni glanced down to the source of those brittle, barely audible words. She felt sure he’d spoken, but the face of the man on the table had not changed. The eyes were still closed, the hairless skin still pallid, the lips…

One lip twitched. Then they parted and the tip of a pale tongue emerged and slid across them. His eyes fluttered beneath closed lids and, as if in reaction, a semitransparent tube emerged from between two of the bulbous amber cushions. The tube glided upward and curved around to touch the man’s parched lips. With a motion of pure economy he moved just enough to draw clear fluid into his mouth. Then his head sank back and he became still once more. The tube retracted without a sound.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Caswell said.

“Are you sick?” Melni asked at the same instant.

“Very,” the man croaked. Again the eyes moved beneath the lids. The tube extruded itself around from the bed, and he sipped once more. The fluid had an orange color to it this time.

“What can we do?” she asked. It was, she realized, the most ludicrous question she had ever asked. “Medicine, or…”

“No.”

Caswell spoke, force in his words that seemed incongruous to the frail figure on the bed. “Who are you? What is this place?”

The pale blue eyelids drew back. The irises below were like liquid gold flecked with rust. They drifted from Caswell to the ceiling and all at once the room changed. Blue walls and ceiling turned white. The floor became a dull, dark maroon. The glowing green lines that snaked along the walls graduated to a bright yellowish white, ramping in brightness until the whole space flooded with a sunlight hue and noticeable warmth.

His bed transformed, too. The bulbs grew and shrank organically and in concert, shifting the patient they bore into a reclined sitting position, his head propped enough to be eye level with Melni. He licked at his lips once again and regarded them both. “Please, sit.”

The frail man raised his left arm. Tendril-like tubes rose with it, dangling from bruised puncture points on the skin that had been in contact with the cushion, to disappear somewhere below him. Medicines, nutrients, Melni guessed. With his gesture two thin, rectangular strips sluiced off the wall and rotated down. In unison and absolute silence they settled into position as benchlike chairs, perfectly positioned behind Caswell’s and Melni’s knees.

Melni sat, wondering how such things were possible. The drink tube, the chairs, it all seemed to happen merely by thought. Though she knew little of Caswell’s world, his reaction, the look of shock and even fear on his face told her that he was as impressed by the display of technology as she. This man was as alien to him as to her. Despite the warmth of the strip lights she felt an unnervingly familiar chill course through her.

“What do I call you?” the man asked.

“I’m Peter Caswell,” Caswell said, “and this is Melni Tavan.”

“I am also known as Meiki Sonbo,” she corrected. Peter raised an eyebrow in response.

The gaunt face had become more alert. Color flowed into the face. The orange eyes, now bright, exuded intelligence. “A Southerner of Gartien, though your features mark you as a
desoa,
” he said
to Melni, then slid his gaze back to Caswell, “and an Earthling. British aristocracy, I think I hear? It’s been a long time and my knowledge of accents has slipped along with everything else.”

Caswell stiffened. “How the hell—”

The man went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Sent by Monivar, then, and not Alice.”

“Who?”

“Monivar Pendo Tonaris?”

Melni glanced at Caswell. His mouth hung agape and then audibly clicked shut. For a moment he sat perched there, grinding his teeth. “Are you…do you mean Monique? Monique Pendleton?”

In answer the man’s gaze shifted to the wall behind Caswell. A screen had simply appeared there as if grown for the specific purpose. It showed the face of an attractive middle-aged woman with ruthless blue eyes and strangely long blond hair. Her features were finely etched, as if sculpted. “This woman?” the man asked.

Caswell twisted to view the image and went still, frozen by what he saw there. The last of his energy seemed to bleed out of him then. He slumped in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“Caswell?” Melni asked.

“Impossible,” he whispered. “Impossible.”

Caswell stood and walked like a man asleep to the image. He reached out and traced a finger along the woman’s image. “All this time,” he whispered, just barely audible. “I can’t fucking believe it.”

“So it is her,” the man in the reclined chair said.

“It’s her all right.” Caswell slumped back onto his chair, deflated. He stared at the image for a moment longer and then rested his chin on his chest and began to rub at the back of his neck with one hand. His fingers paused, touching the spot where his artificial gland was. “My whole career…Christ. Everything I’ve done. All of it came through her. All of it fucking taken
by her.
” His fingers pressed into the skin until the knuckles turned white, as if he intended to tear the device from his spine right then and there.