Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  “Hey,” Caswell said.

  She turned.

  “I can tell from the look on your face that this is a big risk,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “We say ‘gratitude’ here.”

  Caswell grinned. “Yeah, well, I’m not from here.”

  Melni returned his grin and left.

  In the observation chamber the analyst sat facing the gently whirring reel of tape. He wore headphones and sat slouched in his chair, only half his head visible over the back. Melni came to stand behind him and considered the recorder. If Caswell had indeed just told her where Alia Valix first landed on Gartien, this man in the chair knew it now, too. He may have already sent off a cipher to Clune.

  “The ramblings of a madman, hmm?” Melni asked.

  The man said nothing.

  “Valix really did a job on him.”

  Still nothing.

  Melni leaned around to look at him. His eyes were closed, his breathing even.

  The access badge clipped to his shirt caught her eye. With each beat of his heart the laminated square bounced slightly, catching light from the indicators on the recorder. To her surprise he had archive access, all three levels. Exactly what she’d had taken away. Exactly what she now needed. A short path to the information required. No requests, no Clune signature. Her stomach tightened, as if her body knew what she was going to do before her mind had reached the conclusion. This was the point of no return and Melni swayed on the precipice, battling her instincts until a plan could form.

  She breathed, brought her pulse under control. She weighed options against consequences, benefits against risks. She thought of what she’d say if they caught her. It could work. It just might.

  Delicately she plucked the access card from his shirt pocket and replaced it with her own. They looked nothing alike, but if she moved with confidence she doubted anyone would notice. Not between here and the archives, at least.

  The analyst stirred. He sniffled and rubbed absently at his nose. Then he went still again, breathing evenly. Melni leaned over him and changed the direction of the reel. She let it roll back for two full minutes, long enough to cover the important part of her conversation with Caswell, then clicked it back to wind forward once again. The man did not move. His eyes remained closed.

  Melni fixed the stolen card to her blouse, on the right just above her heart, which pounded beneath it. To do what she’d just done over some minor intrigue might mean prison for years. To do so now, with everything that had happened, with armies and warships poised to clash the instant orders were issued, would surely mean torture and death.

  But she had to know. If Caswell had told her the truth, she could prove his story and unravel Valix’s empire. Moreover, she might prove the existence of another world. All right, she thought as she descended the stepwell, realizing how silly the idea sounded. Maybe nothing so grand as that, but at least Clune and the Presidium can call the enemy out on their lies.

  —

  A warm rain fell outside. Tiny droplets swirled and danced on the evening breeze, catching the setting Sun like little gems.

  Analytics, and the archive they maintained, occupied the entirety of Building Nine. The square plaster monolith stood third tallest on the bridge, soaring two hundred feet from the middle of the span and another thirty below toward the water. Only the top floor had windows. The rest was a solid, unbroken surface freshly painted in the Dimont style of blinding white.

  A clerk at the desk just within the entrance glanced at Melni. “Blue and yellow levels only,” the fresh-faced young woman said.

  Two men stood off to one side of the lobby, sipping cham from paper cups and talking in low voices.

  “Red has been restricted to black until further notice,” the clerk added, nodding toward Melni’s access card.

  Melni glanced down. Her borrowed card had the blue, yellow, and red squares that denoted access to the entire archive. In certain extreme situations the red level, where sensitive information was stored, required an extra black square. She knew of this, they all did, but she’d never heard of it actually happening. They probably had Caswell’s gear down there, and Garta knew how many agents studying it. “Thanks,” she said absently.

  “What?”

  “Gratitude.” Melni attempted a smile. She shuffled past the clerk and the two chatting men.

  The archives took up all three of the sub-bridge floors. They were gigantic, dimly lit rooms consisting of row after row of filing cabinets and bookshelves, along with a small army of clerks who sorted, filed, checked, and rechecked the contents. In the center of the middle floor was a space devoted to research. Nothing could be removed from the archive without written clearance from Rasa Clune or a senior member of the Presidium. Nothing on the very bottom floor, the Red Archive, could even be examined without the proper access. A red square. Except on a day like today, when the addition of the ultra-rare black was required.

  She’d hoped to find herself alone, or nearly so, within the frigid basements. Garta had other plans, however. Dozens of people were working within. Plain-clothed analysts and perhaps even agents like herself. Officers from the military intelligence branches.

  Even, and much to Melni’s surprise, a Hollow Woman. She sat at a reading desk in the far corner, dressed in an all-black outfit with the hood pulled up. A massive book was spread out before her, and the woman jotted notes on blue paper with hasty motions of her wrist.

  The section for maps spanned all three levels, connected via an old spiral stepwell set in the southwest corner. Melni descended from blue to yellow, the floor that contained “sensitive” information, including unannotated detail maps of the Desolation and both the Southern and Northern frontier zones. Red, Melni guessed, would contain chiefly the annotated versions: which routes were known good, which routes were watched, and which were currently or recently in use for travelers going either direction. Also, most likely, the latest and most detailed maps would be stored there. She hoped she wouldn’t need them.

  High-level maps were easy. She jotted coordinates of the valley Caswell had indicated and returned them to their drawers. The photographic maps, taken from high-altitude balloons and, in some rare cases, low-flying gliders, were much more difficult to find.

  —

  It took all evening to sort through the information. By tenth hour, with few others working and most of the overhead lights off, Melni had covered four worktables with pictures taken in and around the valley. It was a lush place, carpeted with trees and smaller shrubs. A river wound its way down the center, pooling in several craters left from when the rocks fell. She saw signs of destroyed towns and abandoned villages, all desolate and fully embraced by the regrowth of vegetation. Typical of the region. She pored over them anyway, looking for any signs of life.

  Her ancestors had lived in places like this. They’d lost everything, and become the beggars of this world. To live in such times, experience that loss and hopelessness, the constant agony and humiliation. It was a wonder anyone had survived, much less fought for a future.

  There were farm houses—dead—and a fishing village where all the boats had decayed and sunk in a sad herd around the lone dock. There were crumbled roads and, every so often, the hideous black scars and craters of a rockfall event. How many bodies lay in those ashen, charred fields, their spirits never returned to the sea? How many had been pulverized when their homes were tossed sideways from the foundations as shock waves blistered out across the sky?

  Millions, easily.

  A long-ago-reclaimed camp or factory of some sort nestled between two steep hills caught her eye. It looked vaguely military, with what appeared to have been neat rows of barracks. Who knew what an army base of two centuries ago looked like, though. It could be a school, perhaps even a prison.

  Near this facility, on the riverbank, a lone cottage caught Melni’s eye. The small home sat nestled in a deep cleft beside a tributary stream. Steep valley walls would have sheltered it from the nearby blas
ts, their curve hiding it from view of the river. There was nothing remarkable about the place save for a thin white curling trail of smoke that spilled from the chimney on its roof. It was the only sign of life she’d seen in hundreds of photoprints, and this place was far from the network of scavenger trails that riddled the Desolation like veins.

  Melni rubbed her aching eyes and glanced at the datemark. The image had been taken almost eleven years ago, roughly a year before the date Alia Valix first walked up to that Combran frontier post and pleaded for refuge.

  She spent another fifty minutes scouring the area for other clues. There was a large boathouse by the river a few hundred feet away. The roof looked new, untainted by the relentless vegetation or weathering, and the trail between it and the little cottage was clear. A tingle spread across Melni’s scalp. New construction, chimney smoke, right where Caswell had said to look and right before Alia Valix wandered into Combran society and began to invent.

  Something else caught her eye. On the trail, beside a lone green-cloud tree, were two patches of discolored dirt amid the tall weeds. The print was too grainy to make out details, but they were clearly not natural. Each was roughly six feet long and three wide. Rocks had been piled at one end of each. The sight tickled a memory: Boran, telling her of the murdered NRD officers in the rural North. Caswell had dragged the bodies away from the scene and buried them in dirt. He’d said this was per custom, though Melni had never heard of such a thing. And yet here, exactly where he said the woman named Alice Vale had landed, were similar landmarks alongside other signs of activity. It was not unheard of for loners, even the occasional small communal village, to exist in the Desolation. But here, exactly where he’d said? And with these burial mounds so alien to Gartien yet identical to what Caswell had done?

  Melni sat back and closed her eyes. A battle raged within her: loyalty to the South on one side, the desire to know the truth about Valix on the other. In the middle of this imagined battlefield, a lone figure. Caswell.

  Her thoughts turned to Clune and the Presidium. She pictured them locked in some ornate mealhouse, negotiating the stranger’s return. Asking for resources or perhaps even technology. Valix, and the Northern Triumvirate she had wrapped around her hand, would likely give a lot. Caswell could expose Alia’s true nature. He could bring it all down.

  “And so what if he does?” Melni whispered, the clear picture of things finally assembling itself in her mind. Neither side would care where Alia came from. She still represented the same thing: a technological advantage to whomever she worked for. Melni could not imagine either government accepting the logic of Caswell’s mission. The temptation for accelerated progress would trump any philosophical concerns over Gartien’s ownership of destiny. Both sides would be blinded by the prize she represented.

  Unless…

  Melni shivered. The summit. Valix had called the summit. She must know her role as the lever in the coming conflict, and so she alone could stop it. She’ll offer her reservoir of genius to both sides or neither. A brilliant gambit, really. Valix would force both sides to recognize her value, regardless of where she came from or why. She would become the most powerful person in the world, instantly. The truth of Caswell’s story wouldn’t matter then. Except to Melni. She still needed to know the truth. Then, and only then, could she decide what to do. Because regardless, there was only one decision to make: help Caswell complete his mission to kill Alia Valix, or prevent him from doing so.

  The image, of that Cirdian valley, she folded up and stuffed inside her shirt.

  “That is against the rules,” a flat voice said.

  Melni froze. She had thought herself utterly alone. Slowly she turned in place. Behind her a black-clothed figure leaned against a tall bookshelf.

  The Hollow Woman.

  She had her arms folded across her chest, her mask still up to hide everything except narrow blue eyes.

  Melni withered under that stare. She looked down at her shirt to hide the guilt she knew radiated from her face. “With everything going on,” she said, then paused. “Well, you know, who has time to wait for procedure? The summit is in four days. War could start at any moment.”

  After a lengthy silence the Hollow agent made a slow, single inclination of her head. “You must have found something important to the situation, then.”

  Melni shrugged.

  The woman stepped forward. Her clothing seemed to absorb the light from the reading lamp on the table, leaving only the thin view of her eyes hovering in shadow. “Cirdian maps? What is it, a forward base? A smuggling route?”

  “Just…a possible path north. A new one, thanks to a crater wall collapse.”

  “Interesting. May I?” She extended a black-gloved hand.

  Melni rolled her chair back and away. She came to a stand and covered her torso with one hand, pressing the folded print to her stomach. “Forgive me, I’ve never seen a Hollow here before. I don’t know what sort of clearance you have.”

  The woman’s eyes betrayed the broad smile hidden by her mask. “Oh, that is not an issue, Miss…I mean, Mr. Prian Hox?”

  Melni blinked, unable to mask her confusion. A second passed before she remembered the borrowed card pinned to her blouse, displaying a man’s name and image.

  The Hollow Woman took a silent step forward, farther into the light. She slid an access card from a pocket on her leg and held it casually out. The square laminated paper was as black as her clothes, with nothing but a single tiny red and black diamond in the center. Raised lettering across the bottom, unreadable from this distance but there, likely provided a method of verification should anyone unfamiliar be presented it. “I think you will find this allows me the run of the place.”

  Melni inhaled a long, slow lungful of air through her nose. She needed confidence, and soon. But more than anything she needed to get out from under this terrifying woman’s gaze.

  The shadow in front of her stepped forward once again. She stood less than a foot from Melni now, her narrow eyes glittering in the lamplight. “The photoprint?”

  Melni glanced down at the black ident card. “I’ve never seen one of those before,” she said, the words spilling out quickly, like the way Caswell spoke. And Valix.

  “We are not in the habit of showing it. Or ourselves, for that matter.”

  “Well, I will need it verified and approved before I can show you anything. I take my orders directly from Rasa Clune.” Melni wanted a reaction and got it. The slightest tug at the corners of the eyes. “She gave no permission to share my research with anyone at this time.”

  “Did Clune give you permission to wear someone else’s ident? That is strictly against the rules.”

  Melni managed a weak laugh. “Simple mistake. They were all piled on the desk and I grabbed the wrong one in my haste.” As she spoke she turned and piled the images of the Cirdian wastes into a hasty stack. Melni stuffed the whole mess back into the first open drawer she could reach and slid it shut. “Everyone is so busy preparing for the summit, you know?”

  Melni turned back around.

  The Hollow Woman was gone.

  —

  Expecting arrest at every turn, Melni nevertheless took the long way back.

  She headed up to the top floor and across a skybridge to the adjacent building where Internal Security made their offices. The very people who would throw her in a cell for the rest of her life if it were discovered what she’d done in the last few hours. It would take nothing more than for that Hollow to report what she’d so obviously suspected.

  A clerk sat at a tiny desk halfway across the twenty-foot-long suspended hallway. Narrow windows along the span showed a clear night sky, and moonlight reflecting off the river and the ocean beyond.

  Seeing Melni empty-handed, the clerk waved her past without much interest and went back to reading a newsprint folded across the table before her. Through sheer force of will Melni kept a casual pace to the door on the opposite side and walked through.

  Eve
ry instinct told her to rush straight back to Caswell, but her brush with the Hollow Woman had set Melni on edge. She took a meandering, complicated route through the halls and buildings of Riverswidth, stopping frequently to double back, looking in every corner and through every window for a sign the woman had followed. But there was nothing, and before long Melni could wait no more. She gritted her teeth and made her way to Caswell’s room.

  THE ANALYST STILL SAT at his recorder reels, the tape sighing softly as it emptied itself from one spool and accumulated on the other. He was awake now, a book folded across his lap, his chin resting on his chest as he read. At Melni’s entrance he jerked slightly and sat up, alert. His sudden stiffness faded when he saw who had entered.

  “I am going to see if he is willing to talk sense now,” Melni said.

  “Last chance, I guess,” the analyst said.

  Melni had made it to the inner door, her toe under the foot latch. She stopped and glanced back at the man. “What did you say?”

  He favored her with an apologetic smile. “Director Clune is on her way up. Apparently the Presidium gave approval to cut him open and take a look at that thing in his neck.”

  “That could kill him,” Melni said.

  The man shrugged and turned back to his book. “Put him out of his misery, if you ask me. Blixxing loon…”

  Melni slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. She glanced around, her heart racing. In her mind’s eye she could see Clune ascending the stepwell through the prison, a team of surgeons and security personnel on her heels. Perhaps the Hollow Woman, too.

  Caswell woke when the door clicked shut. “I thought you’d abandoned me,” he whispered.

  “We are leaving,” she whispered back. “I do not know how yet, but if we do not go now…” She left the thought unfinished, allowing her face to tell him what was at stake. “Did they bring you your food?” she asked at a conversational volume.

  “No.” He winced as she unbound his wrists, careful to keep her body between him and the mirrored window.