Zero's Return (47 page)

Twelve-A gave him a long,
irritated look. 
Can I look now?

“No,” Joe replied.  “Now
we’re getting somewhere.”  He patted Twelve-A on the shoulder and gave him a
sweet smile.  “Try asking nicely.  Like, I dunno, use ‘please.’”

Twelve-A fisted his
slender fingers and visibly gritted his jaw.  His pale face started to redden
as he fought some impressive inner struggle.  Then,
Please?

Wow.  Joe was actually a
bit stunned that the telepath could find him interesting enough to beg. 
Nevertheless, Joe almost told the blue-eyed prick to go fuck himself.  Almost. 
Then, warily, he said, “What do you want to look at, exactly?”

Twelve-A relaxed a little. 
Zero,
he said. 
What is Zero?

Immediately, Joe tensed. 
Leaving the telepath standing over the piss-soaked grass, Joe turned to find
his kit, threw his gun over his shoulder, and scowled out at the mountainous
terrain to the east, considering how badly he really wanted to spend his life
babysitting mutant nitwits.  When he looked back, he said, “You leave that one
alone or I won’t be here when you wake up the next morning.  You have my word
on that.”

The telepath narrowed his
eyes, but Joe didn’t feel the mental fingers dive into his mind anyway. 
Instead, it almost seemed as if Twelve-A…refrained.

Maybe there was hope for
the naked furgling after all.  Joe adjusted his pack, picked up his gun, and
gestured at the sleeping experiments.  Using the tone he had used on his
grounders for so many years in the Force, he barked, “All right, you ignorant
furgling sootbags.  Get your friends together and let’s get this Takkiscrew on
the road.  We’re heading north.”

Twelve-A jerked.

“What?” Joe asked
nervously, wondering if he were about to be obliterated for the slight.

Twelve-A stared at him so
long Joe started to fidget.

So you’re our Keeper,
now?
Twelve-A finally asked softly.  He almost sounded…like a scared little
kid.

Their…keeper?  Realizing
that he must have sounded a lot like the bastards that had raised them in their
lab, Joe blushed.  “I’m not your Keeper,” he said gruffly.  “I’m some old
Congie that got stuck herding a bunch of naked furgs through the woods.”

The awe faded from
Twelve-A’s face and he narrowed his eyes at Joe. 
A furg is hairy and stupid
and likes to eat its own shit.

Joe gave him a pleasant
look.  “Yes, and?”

The telepath’s pretty
blue eyes darkened further.

“Oh, believe me,” Joe
laughed, “I’m going to do more than hurt your feelings if you want me to hang
around.  You asked me to help keep your friends alive, and that’s what I’m
gonna do.  I was a PlanOps Prime for most of my life.  You think I give a
furgling’s fart if I make somebody cry?”

You should,
Twelve-A said, scowling at him.

Joe took a step closer,
until they were chest-to-chest and he was looking the telepath directly in his
eerily intense gaze.  Lowering his voice, Joe said, “If you think I’m going to
treat you like a Dhasha prince because you can read my mind and bully all those
other furgs into doing what you want, you’re dumber than you look.  I’ll help
you, but I’m not your burning puppet, nor your personal entertainment system. 
My stuff stays with me unless I feel like giving it to you, and even then, you
ask
. 
Get me?”

Twelve-A peered up at him
for some time, and it seemed like Time itself stood still as he studied Joe,
scanning his face in silence.  Then, after what seemed like an eternity,
Twelve-A gave a slow, reluctant nod.  At that, Joe relaxed.  He’d had the
feeling that the telepath had been deciding whether or not to say to hell with
it and scramble his brain on the spot, the same way a zookeeper used a lethal
shock collar on a particularly violent—and uppity—furg.  The fact that Joe was
still alive boded well for their relationship.

“Okay, now that’s
settled,” Joe said, motioning again at the sleeping dog-pile.  “Let’s get your
friends moving.  We’ll steal some clothes off of whoever comes to take our
women.”

CHAPTER
18 – Dreams of Women

“What do you
think it’s going to be like, getting culled?” Six Two One asked softly as they
played with Pizza and Charlie.  Pizza liked to grab his treat and run to sit on
Charlie’s back to eat it between both his tiny paws.  Charlie, who was sitting
on the floor between them nibbling on frilly green leaves from a bag that
Doctor Molotov had given Six Six Five earlier that day, barely seemed to
notice.  “They said
half
,” Six Two One said, watching Pizza with a tiny
frown.  “That’s like, one out of
three
.”

Six Six Five
grimaced.  Tomorrow was when the doctors chose their first batch of ‘culls’,
and it all depended on how well they did fighting each other using the martial
arts lessons that Sensei Harrington had taught them, where he had been training
them for
months
on how to seek their ‘war-mind’.  It was dumb, because
basically all he had them do for hours and hours a day was sit there in seiza
and
think
.  Half of the time, he let them punch at the wall and kick at
padded boards over their heads, but the rest of the time, they were supposed to
‘clear their minds’ and
think
.

How could they
possibly use that to
fight
?

“Maybe,” Six Two
One suggested, “if we
lose
, they’ll let us be something other than
soldiers.  Maybe that’s what culls do—maybe Doctor Molotov was a cull.”

Six Six Five considered
that, but ultimately decided that Doctor Molotov couldn’t have been a cull
because she was almost as important as Colonel Codgson, and whenever the
doctors said the word ‘cull,’ it was in the same way Six Two One had said ‘bug’
when she had plucked a fly from her bowl of oatmeal the day before.  Whatever
it was, it wasn’t a good thing to be culled.

“I hope
whoever’s name I draw is
little
,” Six Two One said.  “I could beat
someone little.”

“I’m little,”
Six Six Five reminded her.

Immediately, Six
Two One scrunched her face.  “You don’t fight like you’re little.”

Six Six Five
grunted.  “I hope they give me that big bully.  Eight Four needs to be kicked
in the face.”  She was pretty sure it would hurt to be matched with him, but
she was also sure it would hurt him more.

Both of Six Two
One’s eyebrows went up.  “He’s twice your size.”

Six Six Five
gave her friend a frown.  “So?”

Six Two One
considered.  “I hope they give me someone little.  But not you.  Whoever fights
you is gonna get culled.”

Six Six Five
sniffed, but it was to hide her own anxiety.  She had no intention of getting
culled, but she
was
small. 
Too
small.  She was acutely aware of
that fact at every morning formation.

“Think that if I
get culled, they’ll let me come back to visit?” Six Two One asked softly.  The
only thing they
had
been able to piece together about the whole affair
was that the next day’s culls would mysteriously go away, with no mention of
where, or what they would be trained in afterwards.  Six Six Five wondered if
they’d let them keep their hamsters.  Or Charlie.  She didn’t think she could
leave Charlie.  She reached out and ran her fingers through his silky white
fur, careful not to dislodge Pizza.

“I really don’t
want to fight,” Six Two One confided.  “I might just let someone else win. 
Maybe they’ll let me be Doctor Molotov’s assistant if I let someone else win.”

Six Six Five
didn’t want to fight either, but she immediately got a twisting of unease in
her gut at the thought of throwing a match.  It had been rumored that Colonel
Codgson was coming to oversee the fights, and every time he showed up for
anything, it always left Six Six Five with a sick feeling in her stomach.  The
way he looked at them didn’t feel right.  There was a distinct difference
between the way he talked to Sensei Harrington and Doctor Molotov and the way
he looked at Six Six Five and her batchmates.  Almost like they were his
hamsters, not his soldiers.

“I think you
should fight,” Six Six Five told her friend.  “Getting culled is bad.”

Six Two One
picked up Pizza and put him on her shoulder.  Together, they looked at Six Six
Five flatly.  “You said you didn’t want to be a soldier,” Six Two One said,
accusation tingeing her voice.  “If you lose, you won’t have to be a soldier. 
They
said
that.”

Which was true
enough, but it still didn’t feel right.  Every time Six Six Five thought of
tossing the match, she saw Six Two One picking that fly out of her oatmeal and
Colonel Codgson’s weird pet-the-hamster smile.  Despite the seemingly routine
way the doctors mentioned it, the way dinner continued to come on time and
Sensei Harrington made them stare at the wall and the technicians kept making
their reports as usual, her gut told her that what was coming tomorrow was
bad.  Very bad.

“Listen, Two
One,” Six Six Five started slowly, pulling Charlie into her lap, “I know you
don’t like to fight—I don’t either—but you know how Colonel Codgson killed that
kid for trying to take a hamster?  I think it’s going to be bad like that if
you lose.  That’s failing.  He doesn’t like people failing.”

Six Two One
narrowed her pretty green eyes at her.  “If you don’t like to fight, why are
you so good at it?”

Because I
hate it and I want to get it over with,
Six Six Five thought. 
Self-preservation, however, had always kept her from saying as much, knowing
that a mere whisper of that to the proper ears would have had her cleaning
showers or serving breakfast for a month.  Soldiers
loved
to fight.

…Didn’t they?

“Because I’m
smarter than everybody else,” Six Six Five said, shrugging.  “If you’re
smarter, you learn to fight better.”

Six Two One gave
her a considering look for so long that Pizza began to sniff at her ear. 
Finally, she said, “Colonel Codgson doesn’t want you to win.  I heard him
talking to Doctor Molotov.  He says you’re sub-par genetics from nine-series
and wants to use you to train Twelve-A.” 

Six Six Five’s
heart began to pound at the thought that Colonel Codgson had specifically been
trying to make her fail.  She had
suspected
it, but all this time, she
had been writing off the extra progress reports, the harder tests, the sideways
smiles as coincidences.  “What is sub-par genetics?” she asked, a lump in her
throat.  “And who is Twelve-A?”

Six Two One
shrugged.  “I dunno.  Someone important.  Remember those three months I was
cleaning the doctors’ offices for falling asleep on the toilet and missing
formation?  I heard them talking about him all the time.  I think they want to
make you hold his punching bag or something.  They’re really excited about what
he can do to stop the aliens.”  Then, shrugging, Six Two One grabbed Pizza from
her shoulder and stood.  “Anyway, I’m gonna go to bed.  If they’re gonna make
us fight, I want to sleep good beforehand.  They said you fight better when you
sleep good.”

“Okay,” Six Six
Five said softly, lost in thought.  She had no idea what nine-series meant, but
she’d heard doctors raving about the twelve and thirteen series enough times
when they thought she wasn’t paying attention that she was having trouble
keeping her heart rate steady.

“Oh,” Six Two
One said, stopping at the ladder to the bunk bed.  She turned back to face Six
Six Five, who still sat with Charlie on the floor.  “Will you take care of
Pizza for me if I get culled?”

“Sure,” Six Six
Five whispered. 

“Thanks,” Six
Two One said cheerfully.  She climbed into bed.

“Two One?” Six
Six Five asked softly, after she had been quiet for some time.

“Yeah?”

“You ever hear
them say what series you were?”

Six Two One sat
up halfway.  “Oh sure,” she said, resting on one elbow.  “I’m like the rest of
them.  Eleven series.  Your batch got mixed up with mine.  Mislabled or
something.  Doctor Molotov didn’t catch it until you’d already been incubated. 
I dunno.  Something like that.” 

Six Six Five’s
heartbeat began to slam in her ears.  “They ever say anything about my batch?”

“We should be
sleeping
,”
Six Two One insisted.

“Come on,” Six
Six Five begged.  “Please.”

Six Two One
sighed deeply, and for a long time, she gave Six Six Five a patronizing look
and it appeared as if she wouldn’t respond.  Then, reluctantly, she said, “They
said nine-series has weird size issues.  Like some are normal, but half the
time, they end up with freaks.  Too big, too small.  Stuff like that.  Oh, and
it took a long time to reach their war-mind, but once they did, it was hard to
control them.  They had to cull most of them because they kept getting out and
breaking things.”

Six Six Five
frowned.  “Getting out?”

Six Two One
shrugged.  “Maybe a lot of them kept getting out of formation before they were
told.  Or breaking their gear.  I don’t know.  Codgson said they were too
smart, but it sounds like they were all just dumb, to me.  They decided they
couldn’t use them for soldiers and put the best ones on ice.”  And then, as if
that settled the matter, Six Two One rolled back over, pointedly putting her
back to Six Six Five.

For a long time,
Six Six Five sat there, staring down at Charlie, trying to figure out what ‘on
ice’ meant.  The only time she’d ever seen ice, it had been on the inside of
Doctor Molotov’s office refrigerator, in the little tray on top.  Doctor
Molotov liked to keep little bottles and beakers inside it, one shelf above her
daily sandwich.

The idea that
Six Six Five was somehow going to be joining the little bottles and beakers on
the top shelf of Doctor Molotov’s refrigerator was suddenly so horrifying that
she began to have trouble hearing anything except her own heartbeat.  Six Six
Five began to pant, and not even Charlie climbing expectantly up her chest for
more treats could calm her down.  She put him back in his cage, stared at it
for long moments, then stared at the door to her and Six Two One’s room.