Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  Melni had not considered before what kind of force must be required to push such a vehicle all the way to space. The numbing vibration all around her implied something beyond imagination.

  A light caught her eye. One screen, cleared of tarp, looked almost straight down the roller track. In the center the bright headlight of the oncoming engine blazed. The huge vehicle barreled into the terminal with astonishing speed, angling up the sloped scaffolded track. Just two hundred feet away now and practically flying. The scaffold buckled. People were diving for cover.

  Melni gripped her seat. She heard screaming and realized it came from her. Through eyes screwed nearly shut she watched another portion of Caswell’s display, a view straight down. Plumes of white-hot fire suddenly lanced downward, sweeping the floor clean of equipment, debris, and people. Everything began to move away as the craft rose from the floor, and then a shudder that nearly stopped Melni’s pounding heart shook the world. The roller engine had reached the end of the track, torn through the barricades, and kept right on going. It streaked through the air that Caswell’s craft had occupied just a heartbeat ago, pulling a dozen cars or more behind it. The whole mess crashed into the interior wall of the terminal with a deafening cacophony of rending metal, screams, and shattered stone. Explosions rippled through the carnage. Even in here, with the roar of the spaceship’s engines, she heard it all. Caswell shouted something she didn’t understand, a curse or something like it, as the building began to collapse around them. The nuclear option. Alia must have ordered the lander destroyed if hostilities broke out.

  Their craft slammed into something above. Dropped, then rose again, faster this time. Caswell, she realized, was putting everything into the upward thrust now. A vicious bump jarred her to the bone. The roof. They’d crashed right through it.

  Then everything, miraculously, became calm. On the screen she saw the building fall away. Somewhere inside, Rasa Clune would be looking up at the craft streaking off toward the night sky, as the building fell in on her. She would curse the name of Meiki Sonbo, and perhaps, with her last living breath, she could speculate as to just what in Garta’s light that aircraft had been.

  Melni watched the building shrink, explosions and smoke rippling along its length until the whole place went up in a bright fireball. Then the palace came into view, and the square that still swarmed with diplomats and soldiers now tiny as palt bugs. Too small to tell Northerner from Southerner.

  A distinction, she realized, that meant less with every foot of altitude the craft gained.

  Then the dark outskirts of Fineva, and the crater-strewn mountains. Caswell tipped the craft to an angle as they gained more and more speed. In surprisingly little time, half a world loomed on that screen.

  Minutes passed in a blur of vibration, roaring sound, and incredible forces that kept her pinned back in her seat.

  Then, as suddenly as it had all started, the craft became whisper silent and Melni felt her limbs begin to float as if she was sitting on the bottom of a pool.

  She had left her planet, never to return.

  MELNI WAVED A TINY machine over the pool of blood on the floor and watched in mild fascination as the liquid slurped into the device. No trace remained on the floor.

  The surface, Caswell had explained, was at once hydrophobic—it would repel liquid indefinitely—and also near-field charged with “micro-controlled variance.” This caused any particulate or, indeed, fluid, to cling to the surfaces until it could be devoured by the device she now held.

  “Fascinating,” she said, as the last drop of blood vanished into the little machine. Then she laughed at herself. “Listen to me, impressed by a cleaning tool as we fly through blixxing space.”

  Task complete and tools stowed, she found herself suddenly without anything to do but absorb the experience. The craft circled Gartien, her continents sliding horizontally across one of the stunning monitors. Utterly quiet. Soft clouds over blue-green oceans. No indication at all of the millions of people. Yet everyone she knew was down there, somewhere, perhaps looking up right now at that new speck of light moving against the night sky. Her sister among them. In Dimont. Never to know more than the years-old explanation that Melni was setting off for a newsprint job across the sea. They’d parted on bad terms, and that would not change. Melni sighed, offering silent regret and farewells.

  Even the pockmarked band of the Desolation had a tranquility when viewed from this silent capsule, swimming as she was in the very air. On some level, buried deep in her psyche, Melni knew she should be terrified. She was beyond Gartien’s air, hurtling along at an impossible speed inside a craft that was, when she really thought about it, just a large version of a returning ceremony sphere. Or, more aptly, just another submersible in the dark, only instead of a crushing ocean full of fanged serpents all around, there was nothing. Nothing at all.

  That should have terrified her. She knew that. And yet the serenity of it all won her over the instant the engines went quiet.

  Whenever her fear began to bubble to the surface, all she had to do was look at Caswell, and draw from his calm, his absolute confidence in the vessel. Where he came from this was no different than tilling a cruiser along a quiet mountain road.

  Caswell lay prone on a bunk he’d pulled from one wall, his body strapped in to prevent him floating off. A few minutes earlier a pair of articulated arms had appeared from a panel and set to work cleaning and bandaging his wound. The bullet had gone right through the muscle of his upper arm, a good thing since the surgical “robot,” as he called it, was not sophisticated enough to remove foreign objects.

  Stitched and dressed, his body coursing with medicines she could never have dreamed possible, his brain kept carefully aware of any pain without feeling the true impact of it, he was soon up and as spry as the first time she’d seen him. He floated across the cabin and checked the bank of displays. “Two hours until we initiate burn for the Conduit.”

  “How long will the journey take?” she asked, the will to leave dampened by this last, magnificent view of her world.

  Caswell returned to his bunk, across from hers. They sat facing each other. “Six days, give or take. Plenty of time to rest.”

  “And plan.”

  “If only we knew what to plan for. Anyway, doesn’t matter, we’ve got something more pressing to deal with.”

  Melni raised an eyebrow.

  “Food,” he said. “Considering how hungry I was when I first met you on the train, I’m guessing your food disagreed with me.”

  “Disagreed is an understatement.”

  “If you have the same issue with my food…” He let the thought trail off, the conclusion obvious.

  “I ate some of those…cracker things. Remember?”

  “I don’t remember, actually. But if that’s all you can eat it won’t sustain you. They’re just calories.”

  “I do not know the word, but I think I understand. You fear what will happen if I cannot eat anything but the food of my world.”

  “Exactly. Worst case, we can try intravenous nutrition—a direct line into your bloodstream, that is. It’s not as effective, but it might work.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “It is no way to live, though, is it?”

  “No,” he admitted. “Let’s worry about that when we have to. The food I have on board is well sterilized, so as to last in storage a long time. My problems on your world were probably due to microbes, not the nutrients themselves. We’re both human. It makes sense our needs are the same.”

  “All right, give me something to try.”

  He’d already picked something out. Two shiny packets lay on the bunk next to him. She took the one he offered and read the label. “Protein Shake—Vanilla,” the title said, along with a paragraph of impossibly small text that listed what she presumed were the scientific names of the ingredients.

  “Meal in a pouch,” Caswell said. “Everything the body needs. Well, your teeth don’t fare so well, but in the short term?” He rotated a th
ree-inch tube from the side and began to suck at it.

  Melni followed his example. Only a tiny sip at first, but the flavor had a pleasant warmth and sweetness to it. Like the marcan bean, only not as tart. When her stomach didn’t immediately complain she sucked down the rest. Caswell handed her another packet, this one clear and obviously water. She drank it without hesitation.

  He watched her carefully for any reaction. When she smiled, he said, “Let that settle for a few minutes, then we’ll buckle in for the break-orbit maneuver. After that, I plan to sleep for a full day. Then you’re going to tell me everything that happened since we met.”

  “Strangely enough I don’t feel tired. This is”—she gestured at the view of Gartien—“too exciting.”

  He considered that, then drifted over to another storage compartment—every wall panel seemed to be no wall at all, just a cover for storage—and removed a thin rectangular slab the size of a weekly. He flung it across to her and she caught it. One side lit up at her touch. A display bloomed to life, every bit as impressive as the screens that hung in front of the pilot’s chair.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A lot of things, but think of it as a book. A way to learn. I’d recommend you start with the atlas. Maps of Earth and our—my—solar system. Everything is linked to relevant information. Anything you want to know more about, just tap and away you go. It can be a bit of a rabbit hole, but—”

  “Rabbit hole?” she asked. “What is that?”

  A sly grin spread across his face. “Ask it.”

  Melni looked at the device. When she did so, she noticed a soft blue pinpoint light shining back at her, as if it knew it had her attention. “What is a ‘rabbit hole’?” she asked.

  Explanations of the phrase, and there were several, flooded onto the screen.

  For the next two hours she dove deeper into the “rabbit hole” this device represented. She looked at a map of Earth for only a few minutes before tapping on a word she did not know: Internet. This led to even more unfamiliar terms, not to mention entire concepts. By the time the ship signaled them to secure the cabin for acceleration, she felt dizzy and breathless at the prospect of learning of an entirely new culture. In that moment she understood, fractionally, what Caswell must have gone through the moment he set foot on Gartien.

  She bit her lip against the throbbing vibrations the engine generated and the sudden massive force that pinned her into the cushions of her chair. Melni just managed to keep her eyes open enough to watch the displays. The change was imperceptible at first, but with each second it grew. The line that marked their orbit around the world began to bow outward, extending out beyond the orbits of Gisla and Gilan, and then some sort of tipping point was reached and the curved line exploded out beyond the range of the display. Finally the press of the engine—the fusion torch, as Caswell called it—abated to something like Gartien’s normal gravity.

  —

  Melni passed the time by reading, viewing pictures, and watching “movies.” She peppered Caswell with questions, many of which made him laugh or even cringe with a sort of cultural embarrassment. There was solace, even a bit of pride, to be found in the fact that his world had experienced its fair share of self-inflicted tragedy. Nothing like the Desolation, at least not in its recent history, but when pressed she found herself morbidly fascinated to learn that the people of Earth had damaged their world almost as badly thanks purely to willful ignorance and neglect.

  He asked her questions, too. A thousand, it felt like, for the better part of a day, all to fill in the massive gap in his memory. With her journalist’s eye for detail and ability to relate events with clarity, Caswell eventually felt he understood what had happened. He still had no memory of landing, or an explanation for how he’d managed to get into Alia’s—Alice’s—Think Tank within just a few days of that moment. “Let’s just assume I’m an incredibly talented badass and leave it at that,” he’d said, grinning.

  She’d smiled, too, then thrown an empty water bulb at him.

  Earth food suited her. In fact she began to look forward to their meals so much that Caswell had to ration the supply. Vegetable korma, shepherd’s pie, and, best of all, hazelnut gelato. She salivated as each meal hour approached, and only a few times did she balk at a flavor or texture. Caswell seemed to find immense delight in her reactions to the food. “Just wait until you taste these prepared fresh,” he commented once. It was then she learned that these nutrition packets were not the normal method of consumption on Earth. They were specifically designed for space travel. Easy to eat, no mess to clean up, long shelf life. It made sense, of course, and she felt childish for not realizing it sooner.

  At the halfway mark the craft warned of a pending maneuver. They’d been drifting for the last hour, and some loose items now floated about the cabin. She helped Caswell secure everything and then strapped in for the transition to deceleration.

  “We’ll turn around,” Caswell explained, “so it will feel like acceleration, just as on the way out.”

  The maneuver came off without a snag, and she once again felt as if her chair lay on the floor.

  “How far are we from Gartien now?” she asked.

  Caswell studied the display for a moment. “Just over one hundred million kilometers.”

  She had to look up the word, and translate that to the measurement system Gartien used. They were quite different, the two, much like the way time was measured. She wondered how Prime managed to keep track of all the various systems they interacted with. Their motivation to at least have the predominant language based on their own made a lot of sense. Going further—forcing their system of measurement, for example—would have helped even more. She supposed they had their reasons for not taking that step, recalling what the Warden had said about their ultimate goal of harvesting ideas from the worlds they watched over. Perhaps imposing a measurement system on a world somehow hindered their science in some subtle, undesirable way.

  As the craft neared the Conduit, Melni’s gut twisted involuntarily into a knot. Caswell had of course lost all memory of his previous journey through this incomprehensible passageway between solar systems. He had nothing to offer when she asked what it would be like, other than to point out he’d come through unscathed.

  “Do you even know how to navigate it?” she asked him. “What if we end up somewhere else? One of these other ‘Zero Worlds’ the Warden mentioned?”

  He considered that for a moment. “Because I’m not navigating. Monique preprogrammed the return trip.”

  “Is not she the one who wants to wipe out both of our worlds?”

  “Good point.”

  “You do not seem worried.”

  Caswell shrugged. “As far as she knows I’m still her weapon, with no memory of where I’ve been or what transpired there. At the very least she’ll want to talk to me before eliminating me.”

  After the usual warnings the press of deceleration lifted. They’d come to a complete stop in reference to Garta, which now lay directly below them at the same distance as Gartien was out. The engines did not cut out entirely, though, apparently needing a tiny amount of thrust to hold their exact position lest Garta begin to pull them in.

  “Something’s happening,” Caswell said, his voice trailing off even as he spoke.

  Outside, the stars were fading away.

  —

  For a time of unknown length she felt something.

  Something like the fog of inebriation.

  Something like the dizziness after a head injury.

  Something like being yanked from a deep sleep.

  Something like dreaming.

  Something like death and, also, like birth.

  Then the stars returned, but not the stars she knew.

  —

  Caswell let out a sharp breath as if waking from a nightmare. He practically attacked the control display in front of him, fingers dancing across the virtual controls, eyes darting from one readout to the next. Sounds of
alarm came from all over the cabin. A synthetic voice calmly repeated, “Proximity alert. Proximity alert.”

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. “We’ve arrived at the wrong place, haven’t we?”

  “No,” he said. He sounded angry. “We made it.”

  “So what is the problem?”

  “The problem is they’re here, waiting for us.”

  Then he gripped the sides of his head, howling in pain, and slumped forward in his chair.

  THE LIGHTS in the cabin winked from sunlight-white to a pulsing red. A shrill sound began to rise and fall, grating on Melni’s ears. Against her better judgment she released the clasp that held four belts together across the center of her chest. She began to drift, and pushed off toward the slumped form of Caswell.

  “Warning,” the artificial voice cooed. “Proximity alert. Proximity alert. Proximity alert.”

  Entire swaths of the display bank in front of Caswell vanished, replaced by various warnings and red or yellow flashing iconography. She ignored it all and reached out for the back of Caswell’s chair. Unused to the lack of gravity, Melni almost bounced away. She just managed to hook the headrest with one finger as her body tried to rebound across the space.

  “Errmmh,” her companion groaned. Caswell stirred and shook his head. His hands rose to rub at his temples, a gesture she’d come to trust and fear in equal quantity. Only this time, he seemed to simply be trying to ease pain.

  “What is going on?” she asked him. “What has happened?”

  He gave his skull one last violent shake and tried to focus on the monitors. “My implant.”

  “Do you remember me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “This is the trigger moment, the reversion marker. I’ll forget whatever happens next, unless we can neutralize it. Which I doubt.”

  “Blixxing bastards.”

  Caswell turned and met her eyes, deadly serious. “You remember the anchor phrase?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He shifted his focus back to the riot of alerts in front of him. “A ship is here, right on top of us. Earth or Prime, I have no idea. We need a plan, Melni. Right now.”