Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  Caswell followed her, leaping down from the boulder and jogging behind her, slowed by his still-healing wound. Sandflies erupted from a clump of seaweed and clouded around. Melni swatted the black insects aside and sprinted ahead. She shouted, “Ahey! May we approach?”

  The woman stood in the sailboat, legs wide for balance, untying the sailcloth. Her companion stood knee-deep in gentle waves, struggling to push the craft out of the sand and into the glittering black water. Both froze at the sight of two strangers approaching. They glanced nervously at each other and abandoned their work. The woman cast a quick, sidelong glance at the place on the beach where they’d just buried their haul.

  “Close enough!” the man called out. He had a thick Cirdian accent, not uncommon this close to that old country. Survivors had streamed both north and south two centuries before, and lived today in clusters of their own kind.

  Melni stopped and held out her hands. Caswell came to stand just behind her.

  “State your business,” the woman by the boat said.

  Melni took a tentative step forward. “We had hoped to use the boat to cross when you finished. But since you appear to be going back, perhaps—”

  “Your business,” the woman repeated, her raspy voice sharp as the knife at her hip.

  “Careful,” Caswell whispered.

  “It is all right,” she whispered back. She raised her hands higher. “A simple message swap in Rolltown Calis.”

  “Swap? Who with?” the man asked.

  “That is not your concern,” Melni said. She tried to make it sound matter-of-fact. It came out defensive. “What I mean is, our task is not of importance. Wealthy families, separated by the craters, who wish—”

  “Calis is gone, young lady.”

  “Gone?”

  The man nodded, his face grave. The woman spoke. “Along with all the other rolltowns. Destroyed. Not heard this? Maybe we are ahead of the news.”

  Dread began to seep through Melni’s bones. “What news? How did this happen?”

  “Those floating monstrosities from Combra started bombing them lasterday. Plus two caravans.”

  “That we know of,” the man added.

  “That we know of,” the woman agreed.

  Melni bit her worry back, swallowed. “So far south,” she said. “That is a breach of treaty.”

  The scavenger pair both laughed bitterly. Again the woman spoke. “Treaty, a-yah. Also says no travel in the Desolation save for the Vongar.”

  “According to treaty, enforceable only on their own frontier,” Melni pointed out.

  “You tell them that,” the woman replied. “And those who died in the rolltowns.”

  Caswell cleared his throat. “Despite all this you appear to be going back across.”

  They tensed at his strange accent. Both squinted in his direction, as if noticing him for the first time. At least he is well disguised, Melni thought.

  “A-yah, so we are. Ferrying our stores here until the whalebirds are gone.”

  Caswell stepped in closer to Melni and spoke under his breath. “Whalebirds. Like the one we saw in the North?”

  “What do we do?”

  He shifted his feet in the sand. “You can turn back if you want. I have no choice.”

  She nodded and raised her own voice to the couple at the waterline. “Can you take us across? We can pay.”

  The woman stepped closer and studied them both, up and down. “No gear with you?”

  “We have thumpers. Two. Back in the ravine.”

  She considered this for a moment. The man whispered something to her. She raised her chin and looked at Melni with renewed skepticism. “You take a big risk for a simple message ’tween families.”

  “And I think I comprehend now,” Melni said, “why they offered us such an impressive payment.”

  “Which we won’t receive,” Caswell added, quick to follow her lead, “if it’s not delivered.”

  The couple debated in hushed voices for some time. In the end they turned and faced Melni and Caswell in a united front. The woman spoke. “Five hundred. One way.”

  “Done,” Caswell said. “Wait. Do we have that much?”

  Melni pressed her flat hand across her lips, hoping he’d remember the meaning of the gesture. “We can only spare two hundred and fifty.”

  “Exactly half of the proposed fee,” the man said, more to his partner than to Melni. “How convenient.”

  “Three hundred,” the woman countered. “And I will have that camera, too.”

  Melni paid with the last of their stolen money, the camera she’d purchased in Gylina Square, and only as much gratitude as tact required. She left Caswell to wait with the couple while she made two trips back to the rocky cleft to fetch their thumpers. He helped her lift them aboard while the ragged couple looked on, impatient.

  Ten minutes later the small craft set sail. In the darkness, as the boat tacked on a stiff wind against brutal waves, flashes of light began to illuminate the underside of clouds to the north. Thunder rolled across the stretch of water and, as the far shore grew close, began to rattle the brass catches of the decaying sail rig.

  “That’s some storm,” Caswell said.

  “No storm,” the woman at the till replied. “The blixxing Combs have started bombing again.”

  —

  They rode in the weak light of tiny Gisla, her lover Gilan having set.

  Melni took the lead. She shunned the more direct coastal path, turning inland and up into the foothills of southern Cirdia—an area Caswell said was called “Spain” on his world. She relied on overgrown trees and partially collapsed crater walls to shield their passage from the Combran airships high above. She glimpsed the elongated egg-shaped behemoths twice through fleeting breaks in a cloud bank that split the sky in half. Gisla hovered just above the eastern horizon, below the cloud layer as if holding the gray mass at bay.

  Three times they stopped to refill the pressure vessels, eat, and use the smallberry bushes as an improvised lav. Obstacles on the ill-maintained arterial scavenger trails hampered their progress. The dirt path weaved between craters old and, in a few disturbing cases, brand-new. By the time Garta began to chase darkness from the sky they’d only made one hundred and sixty miles.

  Near dawn, however, the Combran airships vanished, apparently unwilling to be seen directly, or perhaps chased away by the invisible hand of diplomacy going on.

  Or maybe they have killed everyone they can find, and now they lurk, waiting. Melni’s skin crawled at the thought.

  Despite a raging ache across her lower back from the thumper’s worn old saddle, and a weariness that now seemed ingrained in every cell of her being, she suggested they should push on without sleep.

  Caswell agreed instantly.

  If anything he seemed to have become more alert since leaving Riverswidth. No grimaces of pain, or tentative movements. He’d been silent since landing on the coast, answering her questions with nods or simple shakes of the head. On one of their stops he’d sat still for almost ten full minutes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand pressed against his temples. At first she’d thought he was shielding his eyes from a sudden ray of sunlight, but even when the clouds blocked Garta once again his hand remained there. She watched him for some time. What was he doing? She thought of the object in his neck, and how advanced the technology on his world was. Was he communicating, right now? With his Earth? Sending his thoughts back there like some kind of antenna? The distance must be incredibly vast, but did that make such a thing impossible? Another idea crept into her head. He had come down from space, landed here. He’d implied so, at least. So maybe he didn’t have to contact another world, but a nearby craft waiting to take him home. “Tell me something,” she said.

  He glanced up, as if woken from a light sleep. His gaze met hers. After a second, he nodded.

  “Are you and Valix the only of your kind here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not mean on the ground. Does som
eone wait for you”—she pointed to the zenith of the sky—“up there?”

  Caswell shook his head. “I wish. But no.”

  “Are you in contact with your world?”

  “No.” He sighed and stepped closer to her, offering his hands. An odd gesture, but she understood he wanted to hold her. She let him, placing her hands in his. They were warm and rough. A scar ran along one palm. A gold band graced one finger of his right hand. “I have no way to contact home. No way to let them know if I’ve succeeded or failed.”

  Melni looked into his dark eyes. She thought of her own time in the North, in Combra. How exhilarating it had been to be entirely on her own, in constant danger, making decisions. Yet at any time she could have left. Fled south to be among allies. She’d had a way out. Caswell had no such options. He would never be able to leave. Utterly alone, except for her. “And then? They will send someone else to find out?”

  He considered that and shrugged. “Probably. But they won’t risk further contact with your world just to fetch me. If I succeed, I’ll be stuck here. If I fail, well, who knows? They may try again but that will take time, and now that Alia knows we have found her, she’ll take measures to hide herself. Or worse…”

  “Worse? How?”

  His mouth tightened into a line, and his hands gripped hers more tightly. To speak of this pained him in a very literal sense, she forced herself to remember. “I fear she’ll try to give Gartien everything she has all at once. All our history, our science, inventions. Including our weapons. What if that’s her play at the summit?”

  “You fear we will destroy ourselves?”

  To her surprise, he shook his head. “What I fear, Melni, is that Earth will then see Gartien as a threat.”

  For a while they just stood there in the cold dawn air, her hands in his, as Garta’s light began to spill across the desolate land. She kept opening her mouth to ask what that meant, what Earth would do to such a threat, but there was no point. She already knew. His tone said far more than the words he’d spoken.

  Minutes passed. A breeze stirred the leaves. Caswell finally let her hands go, so that he could rub at his temples again.

  “This device, in your neck,” she said, “works by rubbing your temples?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your scientists could not think of a better interface?”

  He let out a single astonished laugh. “They could, and did. My watch,” he said, and made a circle with one hand around the other wrist, “handled certain functions of the implant automatically. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to manually perform such tasks.”

  The mention of the bracelet stung. Giving it to Rasa Clune had been an act of loyalty. Now it felt like a betrayal, to him. Knowing its function, she wondered what intelligence would be gleaned from the device. “What functions?”

  “I’ve used it sparingly, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Melni tilted her head deliberately, and squinted at him. “Wait. I saw what you did at Riverswidth. They sought to kill you. Yet it seemed as if you were merely dancing with them. Are you telling me you were holding back?”

  “You know I can’t go into details.”

  “Caswell,” she said, grabbing his hands again and squeezing hard. “Can you not trust me? I will keep your secrets. Your goal resolves for me. I agree with the principle of it. Please, do not jeopardize our success out of fear of my tongue.”

  He sighed, then nodded. “It’s more complicated than that. The gland requires a reservoir of certain chemicals to work, and without food I am dangerously low on most. I don’t want to waste what I have left, because I think I’ll need it very soon. So I hold back. The meal packet I found in Riverswidth I ate and used because I saw no other way to get us out of there.”

  A tingling sensation ran up her spine and across her scalp. “That was hardly a meal. What can you do when fully, er, supplied?”

  Caswell stared at her for a long moment. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Sweetheart, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” At her blank, uncomprehending expression he chuckled. “Right now I am trying to keep my pain, hunger, and fatigue from overwhelming me. If and when I’m able to really let loose…well, I suspect you’ll be happy I’m on your side.”

  She returned his grin, warmed by the foreign and wonderful term sweetheart, yet also chilled with imaginative visions of what this man might become when truly unleashed.

  HE’D LIED TO HER. A white lie, but it still gnawed at him.

  The implant kept him awake by shutting down parts of the brain in a carefully controlled sequence, letting one bit rest at a time instead of the lot. He hadn’t yet used this capability since landing because he’d always felt it a last resort. There were dangers, not the least of which was simply operating your brain in a way that went against everything the body knew. He saw no alternative, though. He was battered, starving, and dehydrated. If he fell asleep he feared he might never wake.

  He’d also allowed a trickle of pain suppression. All that had been true, more or less.

  What he’d left out was the heightened state of his senses. Hearing, specifically. He thought it best to keep this to himself, in the spirit of his mission.

  Just after midday that became impossible.

  “We need to get off the road!” Caswell shouted over the snare-drum rattle of the air engine.

  The Sun, Garta, battled scattered clouds. Midafternoon light tinged slightly yellow. They had not stopped since dawn, when he’d told her the basics of what his implant could do.

  “Agreed,” Melni shouted back. “I am so hungry, and this seat is—”

  “I mean now!”

  He accelerated ahead of her and swerved off between two giant trees. The ground, blanketed by dry fallen leaves of vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds, crunched beneath the cycle’s tires. Caswell weaved a tight path between thin gray trunks and skidded to a stop in the shade of a low rock outcrop.

  Melni roared in after him, too fast. She jerked the bike to the left, skidding in a wild slide that threw autumn leaves and clods of damp earth into the air. “Blixxing cur—” she started, fighting to keep the cycle upright. The curse died on her lips because she saw him. Caswell held one hand flat across his mouth in the Gartien sign of silence, his eyes scanning the clouds above.

  Ten seconds passed in near-total silence. Just the sound of rustling leaves. The emerald-green canopy swayed in the breeze. Nothing else moved.

  “What is it?” Melni whispered.

  “Airships,” he said.

  She glanced around. “I hear nothing but the wind.”

  Caswell reached up and lightly tapped the back of his neck. “I can.”

  If the revelation of this ability surprised her, she hid it well. “I thought you were holding that in reserve?”

  “I am, for the most part. But I also don’t want a bomb to drop on us.”

  “Gratitude.”

  Minutes passed before Melni finally craned her neck toward the sound. Caswell let his augmentation ebb, hearing the world again as she did. The growing noise resembled the nearby buzzing of a persistent fly, coming from everywhere and nowhere. For minutes it went on, joined by others in a droning chorus. Any second now Caswell expected to see an entire fleet of those bulbous monstrosities fill the sky, but then the sound faded until only the wind remained. Caswell rubbed his temple, listening for another few minutes before he glanced at Melni and nodded. “I suggest we move as fast as possible when they’re not around.”

  “I need a bite to eat.”

  “You know,” he said, “the first thing I’m going to do when we find Alice is ask what the hell she’s been eating and drinking all this time.”

  The look of guilt on Melni’s face was priceless. “Regret! If you would prefer I—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “You eat. I’ll top us off.”

  His wording earned a quizzical look that evaporated from her face when he began to compress more air into the thumper’s pressure canister
s. While she ate he repeated the process for the other bike.

  Caswell stowed the pump gear and swung his leg over the bike’s saddle. “Want me to lead for a while?”

  A shower of leaves cut off his words. Melni, astride her bike, had gunned the accelerator to full and tore away from him in a flurry of sprayed debris that peppered his goggles. She looked back at him and flashed a childish grin.

  “Going to be like that, is it?” he said to himself, and raced off after her.

  The bumpy dirt “road” was studded with rocks and fallen branches, riddled with long trenches carved by rain, and rife with blind curves. Still, he managed to close the gap, grinning like a fool when the trail opened up into a long, straight passage through a flat patch of forest.

  Hidden from the sky by a cathedral ceiling of tangled branches, Melni pushed her cycle to its limit. Caswell followed her example. Five miles into the straightaway he managed to overtake her, his grin echoed by a mischievous smile on her face. He weaved in front of her and laughed aloud as dark soil and churned leaves sprayed across her body.

  The air, thick with the rampant vegetation all around, had an almost intoxicating effect. He lost himself in the race. All the fear and worry at what lay ahead was suddenly forgotten in a rush of wind and the simple competition. Every ten seconds they traded positions. She could ride, no doubt about that. And, to his delight, she displayed a competitive streak that seemed to equal his own. At one point she pulled up next to him and they playfully traded halfhearted attempts to kick the other off balance. Then Melni leaned forward, streamlining herself, and shot ahead on a burst of speed he hadn’t expected. She took a bump, left the ground, landed in a puddle that splayed mud across his borrowed army coat and splattered across his goggles. Caswell roared with laughter and leaned so far forward his face almost touched the handlebar.

  Melni glanced back at him, a sly grin plastered across her face. She never saw the sharp bend in the trail. He tried to shout a warning, but it was too late.

  Trampled ground gave way to raw soil, thick and muddy, strewn with obstacles. He watched helplessly as she fought for control. Her focus shifted to the immediate obstacles, not on the change looming just beyond. He felt his heart lurch. Ahead, the forest fell away. Open sky replaced the dark crowd of tree trunks. At the last instant Melni swerved right, leaned into the turn, and let the cycle kick out in a vicious skid that sent a wave of dirt and leaves over the precipice she’d almost crossed.