Zero World
Page 22
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 h
er 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.”
“Oh,” was all Melni could say.
Director Clune squinted at her, turned, and went to the doctor. They began to converse quietly.
Melni cleared her throat. “What about the items he requested?”
Clune glanced back at her. “We cannot allow him access, not to any of it. You were right to be suspicious. They will remain in the deconstruction lab, just like any other Valix-produced artifact we wish to unravel and comprehend.”
“No, I meant…they go against the insanity explanation. He’s insane and also just happens to have brought a bag of supplies unlike anything we’ve ever seen?”
“You blur your words, Sonbo. You are starting to talk like him.” Clune studied her, waiting for a reply that did not come. She shrugged. “Prototypes. He made them, according to Valix. You of all people should appreciate the depths of their invention process.”
“Using materials we’re—we are—completely unfamiliar with?”
“We are completely unfamiliar with many things Valix’s labs produce. Especially now.” She looked down her nose at Melni to drive the point in deep. “But you are right. It is more plausible that he is a spaceman from planet…what did he call it? Earth?” Clune laughed and returned to her discussion with the doctor.
“What are my orders, Director?” Melni asked, interrupting them once again.
Clune thought over the question and made a casual gesture toward the exit. “That is for the Council to decide. Remain close. If he wakes, you will keep him talking. Even if he is insane he may still be able to provide useful information about the Valix apparatus, yes?”
“Are you going to give him back to them, in Fineva?”
Clune’s lips curled back in a wicked grin. “That will be discussed at the summit in four days’ time.” She glanced at Caswell. “Scientist or space traveler, Valix wants him back very badly, and I plan to exploit that leverage to the fullest. It will be a very interesting summit, I think.”
Despite the unease in her gut, Melni offered her director an obedient nod.
“Until it is time to leave, remain close. When he is lucid you are to keep talking to him. Insane or not, we might still get something useful out of him before the summit.”
“Yes, Director.”
“Dismissed. Where will you be?”
Melni thought about it. “Analytics.”
Rasa Clune nodded. “You will be summoned when he wakes.” With that she waved Melni away.
As Melni walked through the decaying halls of Riverswidth and out into the sunlight along the bridge’s edge, she searched in herself and found nothing but dread at the prospect of what was to come. Caswell was no insane scientist, of that she felt sure. The place he’d taken her, the things she’d seen within, were not just prototypes from some advanced Valix lab. He’d been truthful with her. And more to the point, she found very deep within herself that she agreed with the logic behind his mission. Victory would not come in changing which side Valix’s inventions benefited. Gartien would still be no better than a child led by the hand. How could she get Clune and the Presidium to see that? Here, on the eve of their chance to finally turn the tide, how could she hope to convince them to let Caswell do what he’d come to do?
Only one answer made sense.
She needed proof. No matter the risk to her, no matter how treacherous her actions might seem, she had to find proof before it was too late.
IN ANALYTICS THEY QUESTIONED her for almost two hours. A pair of “researchers,” both native Southerners, came at her in rapid succession with questions that bordered on the ridiculous. How did he smell? Did he snore when he slept? What hand did he use? “The right, are you sure, Agent?” Hardly anyone used their right hand exclusively, but Caswell had. Yes, she was sure.
She felt pure relief when a nurse came to tell her that the patient had awoken again.
In the observation room Melni had seen only a lone analyst monitoring the reel recorder with little enthusiasm. Clune had gone, summoned to a working dinner with the Presidium. The doctor was off duty as well, though he gave strict instructions that he could be found sleeping in his office two floors below if anything changed.
Melni made only cursory salutations and then pushed through into the hospital room beyond.
“My medicines? My food?” Caswell asked in a gravelly voice the instant she entered.
She shook her head.
He slumped back into his pillow. “Do me a favor at least and rub my temples?”
Nothing in his tone implied this was some kind of ruse. Besides, he was still strapped securely to the bed. So Melni leaned over him and pressed two fingers against each temple. She made slow circles with increasing pressure until, after ten seconds or so, he waved her off.
“What will happen to me?” he asked, the words clear and sharp now, as if a new man lay on the bed before her.
Melni glanced over her shoulder at the mirror on the wall, then leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I want to believe your story. But Valix has offered a compelling alternative. What you told us sounds crazy in comparison.”
“What did she say?”
“That you’re some kind of genetics expert. That you experimented on yourself, then escaped from a secret lab in the mountains. A lab you set up after Valix declined to pursue your inventions further.”
To her surprise Caswell snorted a sharp laugh. “That is pretty good. Clever lady, no doubt about that.”
“Caswell, I cannot help you unless I can prove your story. Is there any way to do that?”
Caswell shook his head. “Short of taking you to Earth, not that I can think of. Even if my landing craft survived that airship falling on it, Valix will have it destroyed. Or hidden away, at a minimum.” His face scrunched up.
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
“No. No, I just had a thought.” Caswell looked at her. “It’s a long shot, though.”
“That is an unfamiliar phrase, but it resolves. Tell me anyway.”
“Alia landed in a craft identical to mine. And whereas an entire battalion of soldiers are probably surrounding even the charred remains of my boat, I’m guessing nobody’s ever seen hers. It would pull back the curtain on her true origin. Yet I don’t think she would destroy it, either. Perhaps she can’t, come to think of it. I’d bet my life it’s still out there, somewhere. Wherever she landed.”
“She would not destroy it? Why?”
“In case things didn’t work out here. Also…” He trailed off.
“Tell me.”
“It might be where she keeps all the knowledge she brought with her.”
Gooseflesh rose on Melni’s skin. She tried to mask the sudden excitement. She’d been so focused on the Think Tank, it never occurred to her that Alia’s source of invention might be hidden somewhere else.
Caswell’s voice drew her back to the moment. “Where does she claim to be from? Where was she first encountered?”
“Cirdia,” Caswell whispered, as if trying on the word for size. “Show me on a map?”
Melni rushed back to Analytics. A room there held scrolled maps of all sizes, detailing every last corner of Gartien. At the confused expressions of two surprised clerks, she selected one of the Desolation that spanned between Cirdia on the north end and Marados on the south. She tucked it under one arm and returned to Caswell’s room. She had to lie beside him and hold the map above so they could both see.
“This is Cirdia,” she said, pointing, “where Alia Valix was first encountered. They have a record of her requesting citizenship there, and she stayed for a full month before passing the security checks.”
“France,” Caswell said, deep in thought.
“France?”
“What we call that area on Earth.”
“France,” she repeated, trying out his version.
Silence. The wall clock ticked away the seconds.
“Hmm,” Caswell said.
“What is it?”
“I just remembered something. A place Alice mentioned, before she came back here, called Olargues.” He traced his finger along a narrow valley right in the middle of the crater fields of the Desolation, south and west of Fineva. “My geography isn’t great but I believe it’s around here.”
“There are more detailed maps in the archive taken from survey gliders. They might be old.”
“As long as they’re from after she arrived. Can you get them?”
Her recently adjusted access level was too low. To be caught would mean grave punishment. Procedure called for her to request such things formally, so a paper trail existed. Clune would have to approve it. “I’ll try.” Melni stood and went to the door.