Zero World (18 page)

Besides, I’ll forget all about it,
he thought. And despised himself for it. An easy excuse and a pathetic absolution of evil.

Across the room Melni spoke, more loudly now. “Could the NRD intercept this?” she asked the old woman.

“Oh, it is unlikely, dear. Very narrow beam, you know. They would have to be parked right out there near the sub, between Spire Rock and the northern tip of the bay.”

“How long until they reply?”

Anim looked at the much younger agent. “Usually they make no reply. I report, I sign off. It is not for me to know if they do anything with the information.”

“Oh,” Melni said, disappointed.

“You require a response?”

“I was hoping for one.”

Anim shrugged. “Well, I’ll sit here and listen, I suppose. Make yourself useful and check the streets, will you? Spy holes are on the second-floor corners.”

One of the radios let out a little squawk. Anim leaned over and immediately began to tap away at the keyboard, which instead of rows of offset keys had circular keypads, one for each hand, plus a foot pedal.

Caswell waited for Melni to exit. He counted to ten, then rose and, being absolutely quiet, removed his shoes. Walking with slow, languid movements, he came to stand behind Anim Corda. The old woman was transcribing what Melni had written, he assumed.

Melni’s words were there twice. One incomprehensible, coded in some cipher. But on the left side of the page he read:

Peter Caswell backed away to his bedroll and lay down. He stared at the ceiling again, hands clasped over his chest, and let the word ring in his skull.
Suicide.
He’d not thought so far ahead. He never did, really. Would he—no, could he do that? Assassinate Alice Vale and then himself, all for the cause?

He’d decide when the time came, not now. Too many variables. Plans were for people like Melni. Obsess over imagined details and then inevitably have it all go to shit when reality is even slightly off. He’d gotten this far by improvising, by relying on his instincts because he had no real benefit of memory. He saw no reason to change. Not now, not here.

Caswell reached into his duffel and grabbed another food packet at random. He twisted off the orange cap and sucked at it, trying to figure out by flavor alone what the hell it was supposed to be. Applesauce? No, pears.

Steps at the door. Pounding feet. Melni burst into the listening room. “Rassies outside! Caswell, get up! They tracked us!”

He tossed the packet aside and vaulted to his feet, hands already at his temples. Focus, sensory boost, increased rate of neuron firing. Time seemed to slow. Not much, just enough to have an edge.

“Get your things. We have to leave,” Melni said to him.

Anim, still seated at the radio table, tapped fiercely at her contraption.

Downstairs something banged. A sharp crack against wood.

Melni grabbed the old woman’s shoulder. “Anim! We have to get out.”

“Go,” the old woman said with nearly perfect calm. “I have got strict orders for just such an event, young lady, and I plan to carry them out.”

“No, I—”

“Do not argue, dear. There is a way out through the private canal underneath. You saw the shop floor?”

Melni nodded. Caswell tried to picture it. He’d been in something of a daze when they came in. Machines for making paper, or something.
Some sort of winch to haul up lumber from, he presumed, this private subterranean canal. It made sense.

“Take the lift down. There is a boat. The motor is noisy as a wounded bhar, so push it out.” She never stopped tapping at her little transmitter. “Go now, before they block the way.”

Caswell rifled through his bag, desperate to find the vossen gun, but it eluded him, buried no doubt under all the food and medicine. So instead he hefted the missile launcher he’d used against the airship. He had opened his mouth and started to speak when something crashed through one of the boarded windows. A little black cylinder trailing smoke bounced and rolled across the floor.

The cylinder started to hiss. Another gas round burst through one of the far windows, pinging against the floor and thudding into a pillar.

Melni grabbed Caswell by the arm and together they ran through an inner hallway door. Caswell let go of her the instant they were through and fell in naturally behind her as Melni beat a path toward the wide, decaying stairwell.

Something exploded below them. The sharp bang set his augmented ears ringing. He shouted to Melni, urging her forward. She seemed to move at a jog, and he had to remind himself that was only a trick of his accelerated perception.

Clouds of white gas rolled out from open doorways on the third floor. The air stung his eyes. His throat burned. Caswell threw an arm across his mouth and nose and continued down, the tears in his eyes making it hard to find the steps, slowing him.

On the second-floor landing Melni turned out into hazy, stinging air. A hallway open on one side, a wooden railing along its interior length. The walkway went all the way around the rectangular room, looking down on the huge machines below. From somewhere down there Caswell heard splintering wood and a great many pairs of boots on gritty floor.

Around the next corner, halfway along the walkway, there was a gap in the railing. A pair of beams extended out over the floor below.
Chains extended from there down to a square lift, a winch to raise and lower it beside it just as he’d remembered.

Melni raced on, headed for that gap. It would take too long. Too long to operate the winch. Hell, they wouldn’t even reach the damned floor in time. Caswell could see that already. Melni evidently could not.

Automatic gunfire erupted from below, with brilliant yellow flashes from the shadowed corners of the cavernous room. Bullets thudded into the wall to his right. Little eruptions of paint and plaster and wood in a wavering line came straight toward Melni’s head.

Instinct took over. In a single motion Caswell aimed the rocket launcher with one hand while he grabbed her by the waist. He leapt diagonally to the right, heaving her off her feet. They crashed through the feeble wooden railing and were out, falling through open air. Bullets zinged past. Caswell aimed at the lift platform in the middle of the shop floor, hoping it concealed a hole that led to the canal beneath. He fired. A deafening hiss as the rocket took flight. Gunfire from all around.

Then the floor exploded. A fireball. Flaming bits of wooden shrapnel lancing out in a thousand directions. Soldiers screaming. More death.

Caswell, still in motion, rolled in midair so that Melni was protected by his body. He felt the searing heat on his back, the impact of the pressure wave.

And then they were through the hole the rocket had made.

A second of darkness preceded the shocking embrace of ice-cold water.

THE FRIGID WATER
hit her like a mallet.

Melni saw the shimmer of waves only an instant before they crashed through the surface. She had time to think
Inhale, get air
. Her mouth gaped open too late and the cold, filthy water rushed right in.

She gagged as she fought for the surface, vaguely aware of Caswell doing the same nearby. Her arm hit his. Maybe it was his leg. In seconds the NRD soldiers would be at the hole now above them, shooting blindly into the water. She saw flames through that hole and tried to kick away from it even as she groped for the surface. Her lungs burned. Her arm screamed at her.

Melni’s fingers brushed air. She kicked hard and burst through
the surface, coughing out the stagnant water and gulping in a lungful of air. The space around her was absolutely black save for the square of smoky, wavering firelight above. She looked there and saw bodies begin to swarm around the edges.

Caswell crashed through the surface a few feet away, inhaling ravenously.

“Down!” she screamed at him. Then she dove, hoping he’d heard. Above her came a chorus of soft
thwick
sounds as bullets chased her into the depths. Melni kicked and kicked, one hand held out before her, the other pulling against the water for added speed.

Her outstretched fingers brushed a slimy bottom to the artificial canal. She turned over to look up, saw the bullets gliding into the water, little trails of bubbles in their wake. It reminded her of the painter’s impressions of the first moments of the Desolation, when the rocks began to fall through the sky. Water had a remarkable ability to absorb the fired bullet, however. She could see them rip through the surface, glide a foot or two, then abruptly slow and stop. They floated down like flakes of snow.

Of Caswell she saw nothing. Melni followed the bottom until her fingers brushed the sidewall. Her lungs started to demand air so she let herself float up along the vertical stone surface until her head reached the waterline. She forced herself to come through noiselessly, clenching her teeth together to keep them from rattling. Her body shivered uncontrollably.

The water under the square of light churned as the assault force above poured round after round into it. Someone was shouting just beneath the deafening rattle of the guns. “Cease fire! Cease fire!”

Something tugged at her leg. Caswell. His short black hair poked through the surface so carefully it barely rippled. His face, next to hers. “Down. Follow me,” he whispered.

Then he vanished, down into the darkness.

Melni filled her lungs with air and pushed back underwater. In the gloom she saw the ghostly form of Caswell, legs kicking, as he
swam off into the darkness. She followed, confident she could ignore the rain of bullets above her head. If someone got the wiser idea to jump in after them, she’d worry. Until then, she kicked after the increasingly diminishing form of Caswell.

After twenty feet or so he stopped and went up for air. Melni swam until she thought she was under him and went up, again with one hand outstretched. Her fingers hit something solid below the surface.
Wood,
she thought. She groped along the curved surface, panic welling in her, lungs burning, until she found the edge.

When she came up she was staring at the side of a small boat. Caswell had already hauled himself in, water dripping from soaked clothes as he fiddled with the large cylindrical weapon he’d saved from his “ride home.”

Melni gripped the side of the little boat with one hand and winced as he aimed and fired. The air above her seemed to rip apart. Brilliant light from the tail of the projectile briefly illuminated the underground tunnel. Slick walls of ancient cut stone, black with mold and grime.

The explosion blinded her. Rock fell from the ceiling. The entire floor around the lift’s opening collapsed. Bodies, limbs flailing in surprise, fell to the black water. Then the machinery, on top of them, in a great wall of white spray.

“Garta’s light,” Melni whispered, no doubt in her mind now that their actions would lead to war.

“Start the motor,” Caswell said. “Quickly.”

In the darkness she could barely tell which end of the boat the engine was on. One end seemed to taper less than the other, so she pulled herself along that edge and, once the tiller came into view, she hauled herself up into the tiny craft. It rocked as she went over and in. Soaked to the core, Melni sloshed about on her knees until her shivering hands found the machine. She’d never worked one herself but had seen it done plenty of times. A crank lever protruded straight up from the side. She gripped it and began to yank and push,
back and forth, winding the starter. Then she slapped the big switch on the top and almost fell back when the old motor coughed and growled to life.

To her surprise, Caswell had gotten out. In the darkness she saw him working at a rope tied to an iron loop on a narrow stone walkway that lined one side of the tunnel. The rope came free easily—Anim had only looped it around instead of tying a secure knot. A stroke of luck. Caswell hopped back into the boat, wincing as he did so. She realized then he’d been hunched over, one hand pressed at his gut.

“Are you hurt?” Melni asked.

“Never mind that. Get us out of here.”

She wheeled the boat away from the fire and flailing bodies under the ragged wound that looked into the building above. With a twist of the tiller the craft gained some speed. Caswell, groaning with the effort, turned to face forward. He was fumbling with something attached to the nose of the boat. After a few seconds a weak yellow light winked into existence, illuminating the grimy path ahead.

Able to see, Melni cranked the handle even farther. The air motor banged and rattled under the strain. The boat worked its way up to a satisfying clip, rising in the water with speed. She kept the tiller pointing straight as the tunnel, and less than a minute later she saw a square of dim blue-gray light ahead. A minute after that, a starry open sky came into view above the gentle waters of the cove. The little craft slipped from the tunnel and into the Endless Sea.

Now what?
Melni asked herself.

A landmark on the horizon triggered a memory. A tall and sheer clump of rock, about forty feet high. “Spire Rock,” Anim had called it. And to its right, the northern edge of the bay, dark against the night sky. That’s where the transmitter had to point to communicate with the submersible, so that way meant out to sea. She’d go south along the coast, cross the Combran Divide and beach on the edge of the Desolation. Find a rolltown for supplies. That made sense. That she knew.

Melni set their course for directly between the two landmarks and opened the engine up to maximum pressure. The old thing banged so loud she thought half the city could hear it. Nothing could be done about it, except get away as fast as possible, before they realized what had happened. Perhaps the submersible would still be out there somewhere and could flash her a response to her message.

The slumped, still form of Caswell yanked her mind back to the present. Red-tainted water pooled around his feet in the basin of the little craft.

“How bad is it?” she called out.

He only stared, vacantly. His face was oddly calm. He had one hand against his gut and the other rubbed at his temple.

Melni clicked the throttle and tiller locks into place and crawled forward. “Caswell, turn around and let me have a look.”

He didn’t move. She placed a hand on his shoulder and, with just that small pressure, he collapsed backward into her, limp as a corpse.

Melni felt around for his right breast and held her palm there. Nothing. No pulse. She probed along his torso until her fingers felt the warm, slightly sticky blood welling out from under his waterlogged clothing. Despite the lack of a pulse, he made a small sound when she touched the wound.

She glanced at the bag he carried. Somehow, through everything that happened in their escape from the building, he’d managed to hang on to it. With some effort she coaxed it out from under his arm.

A brilliant yellow flash made her duck out of pure instinct. Her mind screamed “searchlight!” but then a deep boom slammed into her ears and rolled away on the waves. She glanced back toward the city in time to see rolling fireballs curling up into the night sky.

Anim. It had to be. She’d destroyed the listening post. Her “strict orders,” no doubt. Would that plan include a way out other than the boat? Melni hoped so, for the woman had been kind, but it seemed unlikely. The place had been surrounded. Fresh tears welled up in her still-stinging eyes.

Melni shifted focus back to her wounded companion. He had medical supplies in that bag, but they were completely foreign to her. She rifled through them anyway. If he could have just let her in, told her what all this was and how it worked. “Be strong,” she said, her voice nothing more than a whisper. “We will find a village past the headlands, compel a doctor to help you.”

Caswell did not move, did not even groan.

Something blotted out the moons above her. She glanced up and saw the peak of Spire Rock drift by. The waves grew choppier. Melni grasped the tiller and turned them south toward—

“What is that?” she whispered.

Something protruded from the water a hundred feet farther out to sea. A straight, narrow pipe with a bulbous end. She swallowed, picturing for some inexplicable reason the monstrous sea serpents she’d so feared as a young child. But they did not roam so far north, and rarely ventured to the surface anyway except to die.

There came a great crashing of water and the whole ocean before her seemed to lift, then explode. A massive dark shape broke through the waves and then crashed back down, settling halfway out of the whitewash it had created.

The submersible. Southerners.

Melni felt the tears streaking down her cheeks as she waved frantically. A searchlight winked on and swung toward her. She saw silhouetted figures now, on the slick deck, chestlamps glinting off the black hull and the black waves between them and her.

“Ahey! Ahey!” she called.

The lights trained on her.

“Hang on, Caswell. Hang on.”

“Captain Liso,” the woman said, extending her hand.

Melni took it and stepped off the ladder into a small, crowded waterlock. “Melni Tavan, one four seven seven two of Riverswidth—”

“We know,” the captain said. She waited for her crew to carry
Caswell down the steep stepwell. One had his feet, another his shoulders. His arms had been folded across his stomach, where fresh blood still pumped out. His face had gone paper white, and there were blue rings around his eyes.

“Once we clear the water get him straight to Medical, bed two,” Liso said. She turned to Melni. “Any Navy in the harbor?”

Melni fought to gain control of all the thoughts in her head. “I…No, I did not see any. I do not know.”

Liso nodded. A chime sounded and the captain cranked a handle on the inner door until it hissed. She pushed it open and warm, tangy air rushed in. It stank of sweat and cham and waste. Melni grimaced, then steeled herself and followed the others inside.

A sailor waited within, wearing a less decorative version of Liso’s dark green outfit. He saluted, fist to the base of the chin.

“Take us down, tillmaster. Hug the bottom at one hundred feet. Return-to-port route.”

“Yes, Captain,” the man said. “Are we running silent?”

“Only if they chase.”

“Understood.” He saluted again and rushed off toward the control room.

Liso led them aft, through four inner waterlocks to a series of rooms with white doors. A doctor waited in the second to last, hovering next to a bed ready to receive the wounded man. Melni considered offering up Caswell’s bag and the potentially useful medicines within, but changed her mind. He might be dead already, for all she knew, and the advanced gear surely came with the highest of security clearances. No, she would hold on to his things until she reached Riverswidth: the bag, and the tube she still had concealed in her now soaking-wet sock. The analysts there would best know how to deal with these things.

“With me, Tavan,” Liso said, as if reading her mind. The gruff captain marched back the way they’d come, not waiting to see if Melni followed. A thin bellow squawked out of ceiling-mounted speakers, then a man’s voice said, “Prepare for descent!”