Zero Recall (67 page)

“Then I ka-par you first,
the Huouyt after,” Mekkval replied calmly, still watching Rri’jan with
intensity.

Rri’jan felt himself
freeze, along with every other creature in the room.  Silence reigned absolute
for several moments, the ramification of the Dhasha’s words settling over them
like a cold blanket.  Then, “You are challenging the Jreet to ka-par?” Aliphei
demanded sharply.

“If he has the tek to
accept,” the Dhasha replied, sounding utterly calm.  He turned to Prazeil.  “
Do
you have the tek to accept, Prazeil?”

Prazeil reared to his
full height in a snarl.  “How
dare
you suggest I do not.”

Mekkval made an amused
sound.  “That doesn’t answer the question, Jreet.”

For a long moment, no one
spoke.

The Jreet continued to
tower over them like a sinuous statue, poised to strike.

“Well?” Mekkval said,
into the dangerous silence.  “I would love to add your…passion…to my retinue. 
Ka-par?”

Long moments passed. 
Then tics.  Then, in a snarl, Prazeil said, “The Jreet do not caper to the
ridiculous customs of Dhasha.”

“Of course,” Mekkval
chuckled.

At that, the Jreet
snarled, “Do as you will with the Huouyt.  It’s obvious you two plan to
overrule me.  Watcher, my quarters.”  At that, the Jreet flashed out of
existence, leaving only Mekkval and Aliphei in attendance.  For a brief moment,
Rri’jan had a flash of hope that he could possibly divide the remaining votes,
giving him a non-verdict and possibly a stay of execution.

Then the Dhasha swiveled
his huge, rainbow-scaled head back to face him and his deep emerald eyes once
again settled on Rri’jan, and Rri’jan felt his breja quiver with his first real
fear since the trial began.

“Ka-par,” Mekkval
offered.

Rri’jan could not best
Mekkval in ka-par.  The Dhasha had made thousands, and he had never lost.

“Refuse,” Mekkval warned
him, “and I will buy your contract anyway.  I own fourteen planets, whereas
Prazeil was the chosen politician of one.  I could outbid him, even before you
destroyed his people.”

Rri’jan shuddered with
rage.  “I would see you spend a fortune to obtain me rather than give you that
satisfaction,” he whispered.

“And, in the end, I will
still obtain you,” Mekkval replied.  “And your life will be rougher for it.”

Rri’jan glanced to the
First Citizen, who was simply watching the proceedings with distracted interest. 
He glanced at the Jreet’s seat, which was now vacant, then at the darkened
walls that hid the rest of the Regency from view.  Swallowing, he turned back
to the Dhasha, whose gaze had never wavered.

“Ka-par,” he whispered.

Immediate satisfaction
tightened the Dhasha’s features.  “Ka-par rak’tal,” he said, in the barking
Dhasha tongue.  “Ka-par accepted.  Mahid ka-par.”

Then the Dhasha’s
intensity sharpened and all Rri’jan’s hopes of escaping the trial with his
freedom intact diminished to nothing.

Chapter 33:  Sam

He was in the midst of examining
strange inconsistencies between the confession the Geuji had given the Tribunal
and the copy the Watcher had logged in Forgotten’s record when he came across a
file that made him look twice.

It read,
Samuel Dobbs,
Human, a.k.a. The Ghost—Illicit Genetics Experiments.

Inside the file, Jer’ait
found even more interesting information.  Somehow, Joe’s brother had hacked
into what was suspected to be an illegal Earth military experiment to duplicate
the Huouyt ability to shift form.  Peacemakers had been catching hints of illegal
experiments on Earth for almost five turns, but capturing Samuel—a
civilian
—was
the first real proof that Jer’ait’s colleagues had that the Human government
was participating in unsanctioned genetic alterations with the intent of
creating mutant foot soldiers.  Which, if it were true, would damn Earth back
to its Dark Ages—there were few laws of Congress that, if broken, would spell
the swift and violent end for a civilization, but genetic alterations with the
intent to create living weaponry was one of them.  It was the Second Law of
Congress, and if Jer’ait was reading the reports correctly, Humanity was well
on its way to breaking it.

With, to all appearances,
the intent of breaking the First Law of Congress and using it to incite war
against fellow member planets.

Humans, as Jer’ait had
discovered through a two-rotation crash-course in Human idiosyncrasies—were
stubborn to the point of being stupid, foolhardy to the point of being
courageous, and optimistic to the point of being insane.

Bemused, he read on.  The
moment the Peacemakers detained Sam, they knew he was the key to rooting out
the Human experiments.  His DNA had become a multi-species stew, and his very
existence was dangerously close to violating the Second Law of Congress.  With
questioning, they discovered Sam had somehow located the Human government files
that the Peacemakers had been desperate to find.  His information, however, was
grudging and sketchy, usually pulled out of him with pain, and the genetic
alterations had not only immunized him to interrogators’ drugs, but had also
increased his already-extraordinary intellectual capacity to the point he was
consistently able to talk circles around his questioners, even Va’ga-trained
Huouyt.

From what little Sam
had
said of the original experiment files, every test subject had died gruesomely,
their genetics regurgitating all Huouyt influence, resulting in a quivering
puddle of unidentifiable flesh.

Yet somehow, Samuel had
taken the information, modified the experiments, and made them work. 

On himself.

Where the others had
devolved, he’d stabilized.  He was the only test subject to ever do so.  Joe’s
brother, it appeared, was some sort of genius.  Jer’ait read on, intrigued.

What he found deeper
within the file, however, left him stunned.

Samuel was still alive.

Peacemakers, desperate to
locate the illicit Human military experiments, had faked his death.   Jer’ait’s
peers wanted to know how he’d succeeded in his experiments, and since Samuel
had destroyed all of his records before his capture, they were frantically
trying to get the details from him.  He was being held in a supersecret
facility on Earth—the Peacemakers were so serious about keeping his existence a
secret that they hadn’t even taken the chance to ship him to Levren for
questioning.

Jer’ait closed the file. 
Joe’s going to love this.

#

“Oh, Mothers’ ghosts!”
Joe snapped, turning on the light.  Beside him, the Congie Prime he’d invited
over for dinner moaned and rolled in her sleep.  “Daviin, can’t you leave me
alone for two seconds?”

“Sorry,” Daviin said,
looking not at all sorry.  “We have orders.”

Joe rolled his eyes and
lay back down.  “Burn them and their orders.”

“No,” Daviin said. 
“You’ll like these.  Trust me.”  He shoved a reader at Joe, who took it
tentatively.

At about the same time,
the Congie opened her eyes, saw the Jreet, and screamed.

Joe and Daviin, who were
both used to this reaction by now, did not even look up.  “See?” Daviin said,
tapping a claw upon the screen.

“Get your fat finger out
of the way,” Joe snapped.  “Is this a joke?”

“Nope,” Daviin said. 
“Leave on Earth.  All four of us.  Jer’ait pulled some strings.”

“Why?”

“Read
further,
Joe.”

The woman, who now was
over her shock and had realized that she was being ignored, began packing up
her things in a huff.

“Don’t forget your bra,”
Daviin said pointing.

The naked woman glared at
the Jreet.  “I’m surprised you even know what it is.”

“I’m not,” Joe said.  “He
likes to wat—”  Joe’s jaw fell open.  “Daviin.  Is Jer’ait serious?  They’re
finally giving us our
kasjas?
”

“He said there’d be a lot
of money,” Daviin said, bobbing his head excitedly.  At one time, the Jreet had
scorned Congressional currency.  Now, cut off from Vora, living on a grounder’s
pay, and going rotations between
melaa
had put things into perspective. 
He was already twenty thousand credits in debt to Joe, and still the Jreet was
barely eating enough to keep himself from starving.

When Congress issued its
payments, it didn’t take into account the fact the Jreet was seven rods long
and could eat a cow a day and still be hungry.

“And you’re sure it’s
really from Jer’ait?  Not a fake?”

“Well,” Daviin said, “It
was delivered by a Peacemaker.  When I asked, the little Ueshi coward told me
Jer’ait was taking a few weeks off.  Unspecified reasons.”

Joe frowned.  “Don’t tell
me you assaulted another Peacemaker.”

“At least I didn’t eat
him.  I
wanted
to eat him.”

The Jreet’s tone of voice
suggested he’d come very close.

Seeing the Jreet’s hungry
gleam, Joe grimaced.  “If they’re giving us our
kasjas,
” Joe said, “We
can afford to splurge a little.  How about—”

“
Melaa?
” Daviin
asked, the gleam of a happy child lighting his metallic yellow eyes.

“Yeah,” Joe said,
grinning.  “As many as you want.  My treat.”

That turned out to be a
mistake.  Daviin ate an entire herd, and was so bloated when it came time to
get on the shuttle they had to wait for them to work their way out the other
end before he would fit.

The shuttle ride was
awful.  Every two tics, Daviin would crane his neck and peer into the cockpit
and ask, “You think we’re close?”

Joe kept him entertained
with stories of beef steers he remembered seeing as a kid when his parents took
him and Sam on a road trip through Texas.  The more he talked about them, the
more interested Daviin became.  It came to the point where Joe was making up
details, just to keep the Jreet occupied.

By the time they got to
Earth, cows grew to be several hundred tons, came in all variety of flavors,
and put up a good fight before they relinquished their succulent meat.  Daviin
was particularly excited by the last detail.  Jreet, unlike other, civilized
creatures, liked to fight for their dinner.

Joe didn’t have the heart
to tell him that pretty much every cow Joe had ever seen could be taken out
with a two-by-four.

Jer’ait and Flea met them
in the offloading area.  Flea was back to his normal beetle-green and bright
red, insectoid eyes, having shed the black when Maggie sent him to Grakkas to
watch Trosska mine ruvmestin.  The first thing out of Flea’s mouth was, “So,
Joe, you ready to go rescue your brother?”

“Huh?”

Smoothly, Jer’ait said,
“Perhaps there’s a better place to discuss these things, Baga.  Besides, they
must be exhausted from such a long trip.  We could find a quiet place to eat
and talk about old times.”

“What did he say about
Sam?” Joe demanded.

“Come,” Daviin said,
grabbing him by the shoulder, “We eat.  I’m tired of ship food.  Someone find
me a cow.”

They found a cow, though
it was not in a restaurant, but in a rancher’s backyard.  Daviin was fairly
upset at the lack of resistance he found when he vanished and screamed a
war-cry, but looked mollified twenty tics later, when he was tearing the
remains of the meat from the hindquarters.

“How much did you pay the
farmer?” Joe asked Jer’ait, wincing at the way the Jreet was happily spreading
shattered bones and entrails over a thirty-foot area.  “Maybe you should double
it.”

 Jer’ait nodded silently.

“So you’re sure it’s
Sam?” Joe asked finally.  “I watched him die on the news.  They made his
execution public.”

“Faked,” Jer’ait said.

Joe’s face twisted.  “So
someone died in his place?”

“Of course not,” Jer’ait
replied.  “You’d be amazed what we can do with robotics and artificial imagery nowadays.”

Joe clenched his robotic
hand and shook his head.  “No.  I believe you.  This thing’s awesome.  Better
than my real one, and it doesn’t hurt when I ram it in someone’s face.”

“He’s been doing a lot of
that,” Daviin commented.

“I’d heard,” Jer’ait
said.  “Congress was not kind to you after Neskfaat.”

Daviin grunted agreement
and tore into another haunch.

“So did they ever figure
out what Forgotten wanted with Neskfaat?” Joe asked.

Jer’ait’s gaze remained
stoic.  “Yes.”

Daviin stopped chewing. 
Even Flea had stopped spitting at flies to stare at the Huouyt.

“So why’d he do it?” Joe
asked.

Much too carefully,
Jer’ait said, “The official story is that he was attempting to get my brother
into the Tribunal by assassinating Mekkval.  He sent Rat’s team after the
Dhasha Representative two rotations after you last saw her on Jeelsiht.  Made
it appear as if it were a military-sanctioned operation.  She never knew who
she was attacking.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Joe said.

“The official story is
yes,” Jer’ait said.  “All six of them died before they even got halfway down
the tunnels.”

Joe frowned at Jer’ait
and said, “
Official
story?” even as Daviin slammed the remnants of the
cow down and straightened.  “This Geuji.  How do we kill it?”

Flea snorted.  “We can’t
kill it.”

“Anything can be killed,”
Daviin said, “And this thing needs it more than most.”

Jer’ait shook his head. 
“Normally, I’d agree with you, Daviin, but he staged Neskfaat and Aez simply to
get the Huouyt banned from the Tribunal.”

Joe frowned.  “
Banned
? 
You know that for a fact?”

“He gave me a written
confession,” Jer’ait said.  “Translated in thirteen thousand different
languages, for the Regency’s convenience.”