Zero's Return (65 page)

Joe could only swallow. 
The reason was obvious, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak it.

Because it gives me
something to think about other than how much I hate Humanity!
  Twelve-A
cried, his powerful thought booming from all sides, hitting Joe’s core like an
asteroid.

Joe found himself
speechless, terrified and awed by the power flowing off the young man in front
of him.  Joe’s eyes flickered up to the black scribble across Twelve-A’s face. 
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.  It was all he could manage, so wracked by the
telepath’s misery.

Tears were streaking the
telepath’s bruised and puffy cheeks, now. 
You know why I wanted so
desperately to see the good in people, Joe?
Twelve-A whispered, agony
etching his face. 
You know why I tried so hard?
  The minder’s anguish
was now permeating the entire clearing like a Huouyt nerve-gas, wrenching tears
from Joe’s own eyes, seizing his chest in powerful sobs that were not his own.

Overwhelmed, trapped in
Twelve-A’s emotions like that beetle in the vastness of an ocean wave, Joe
could only shake his head.

Because,
Twelve-A
said, his mental voice sinking to a cold whisper,
you won’t like it if I see
the bad.  Nobody will.

Joe had the sudden,
gut-sinking feeling that, this time, he wasn’t the only ant poised under the
cosmic sledgehammer, and that, with Twelve-A trapped in that miasma of cruelty
and horrors, it was about to descend.  Permanently.

“You miserable Takki!”
Shael snapped, startling both of them.  “Is that
you
, furg?”  She
stomped up to Twelve-A and glared down at him.  “You’re scaring our charges. 
Look at them!”  She gestured at the huddled groups of People.  “They are
terrified enough…they don’t need your help!”

Twelve-A blinked up at
Shael, then at the People huddled around them, bruised and beaten, obviously
sharing in the telepath’s barrage of emotion.  Their eyes were wide with
terror, their breaths coming in hyperventilating pants.  For a long moment,
Twelve-A said nothing.  Then, gradually, he seemed to relax.  The minder’s
ocean of misery retreated and Twelve-A wiped his hands across his face to
remove blood and tears.

Shael grunted and stomped
off, seemingly unaware of how close they had both just come to becoming a
mental paste.  Joe, however, having been only a dig away,
watching
that
despair and indecision, swallowed hard.  He suspected that Twelve-A had just
threatened to kill a wide swath of Humanity, maybe as much as a dozen lengths
in any direction, but was not completely sure, and was too afraid to find out.

Minutes passed in silence
as he and Twelve-A watched Shael make herself another club from a half-burned
branch. 

They broke my nose,
Twelve-A eventually said, giving Joe a sideways look. 
And it hurts to
move.  I think they broke something inside, Joe.
  As he said as much, he
coughed, and a rush of blood stained the saliva on his lips, bringing Joe to
the startled realization that the blood on the ground had not all leaked from
his broken nose. 
One of them kept kicking me in the stomach, once I was
tied down.
  Twelve-A wiped his face with his skinny arm and it came back
crimson. 
It hurts.

“Yeah,” Joe said, buoyed
into nervous action by the threat of organ damage, “Don’t worry, we can take
care of that.”  He jumped up, and, still feeling like he and every other Human
in a few lengths’ radius had just narrowly evaded something horrible, quickly
went to find the medkit he had stashed under a fallen log.

When he got there,
however, neither the medkit nor the log were where he had left them.  Joe froze
when he remembered the log Nine-G had carried to the fire the evening before,
and the axe that had been in Alice’s hand.  An axe that he had carefully
stashed under that same log, snug against the side of his kit.

It was then that Joe came
to the horrible realization that not only Jane, Eleven-C, his ovi, and his
boots had run off with their visitors, but all of his medical and survival
supplies had, as well, and the telepath was very likely going to die of
internal bleeding if Joe didn’t find said supplies and get them back.  Maybe
even if he
did
get them back.

With a sinking heart, Joe
went back over to Twelve-A, who hadn’t moved from where he’d left him, the
crude scribble in charcoal still in perfect condition across his forehead. 
Twelve-A glanced up at him, once, then looked back at the ground in silence,
already knowing the bad news, seeming to accept it.  To welcome it.  He made a
weak cough and wiped more blood from his lips, then got up and weakly stumbled
over to his friends, sat down amidst them, and closed his eyes.

Realizing he meant to
die, Joe stalked over and dropped into a squat in front of him.  “I’m going to
go get my stuff back,” Joe said softly.  “Think you can stay alive long enough
for me to get back here with nanos?”

Twelve-A made an
apathetic sound and turned to lay his head on another experiment’s shoulder.

Joe frowned, the Prime in
him coming out.  “What the soot is your problem?”

Twelve-A opened his eyes,
bruised face scowling at him. 
I told you what my problem is.

“No,” Joe snapped,
shoving a toe into the minder’s shin.  “These people
need
you.”

Stop kicking me,
Twelve-A said, crystalline eyes dangerous.

Joe nudged him again. 
“Earth loses you, it loses everything.”

Twelve-A snorted bitterly
and tugged his leg away. 
Earth doesn’t want me
, Twelve-A said, once
again turning away from Joe.

Joe dropped into a squat
in front of the minder.  “Earth doesn’t want me either.”  Joe snorted.  “Hell,
I think half the Earthlings out there blame this whole thing on guys like me. 
Probably on me
personally
, because I was the Congies’ poster child. 
They
spit
on me when they get the chance.  Never mind the fact that it
was
Earth
that started growing soot in test-tubes.”

Growing soot in test
tubes.
  Twelve-A gave him an irritated look.  He was obviously still pissed
with Joe for telling Shael he was of the clan Test Tube.

“Earth doesn’t want me
either,” Joe repeated.  “But you know what I’m gonna do?  I’m gonna grab the
survivors by the belly-scales and lead them through a freakin’ apocalypse
because a group of fat alien bastards on Koliinaat want to see us spend six
hundred and sixty six turns scraping around in the mud like savages before they
graciously come to our rescue, and I’d like to have a big, hairy surprise
waiting for them when they come back.”

I’m not fighting a
war,
Twelve-A growled, his eyes growing dark.

“Furgsoot,” Joe
retorted.  He gestured at the sleeping People.  “You don’t think you’re
fighting a
war
?  I’ve seen the way you look at them.  You’re probably
sitting in your only source of peaceful thoughts for fifty lengths, aren’t you,
you furg?  How long do you think they’ll last with you dead, you insensitive
prick?  You really wanna leave innocent, flower-munching kids like
them
alone with a gun-happy Congie like
me
?”

Too late, Joe realized he
was advocating his own immediate neutralization.  He swallowed in the silence
that followed.  Blue eyes filled with irritation, Twelve-A scowled at Joe for
so long that Joe wondered if he was about to become the infamous Drooling Man.

My insides hurt,
Twelve-A finally muttered, scowling at Joe. 
If you’re going to go find me
nanos, go find me nanos.

“Sure thing.”  Joe got to
his feet, all-too-aware of how close he’d just come to becoming an oozing
mental patty.

Behind him, there was a
monstrous groan, then the sound of a huge pine snapping in half and getting
thrown a good hundred yards as Nine-G roared.

“They’re gone!” Joe
cried, raising his hands.  Why, he wasn’t sure.  He was more or less positive
he couldn’t use them to ward off something small, like, say, a tree.  And
Nine-G, the massive Hebbut that he was, liked to play rough.  “Ashing calm down
before you hurt someone!”

Though Nine-G wasn’t able
to understand his words, Joe had been a Congie Prime, and his tone of voice
carried through the furg’s panic.  The mover groaned as he got up onto his
gigantic knees to survey the area.

“Al-iss?” he boomed, the
only word he could say, despite the malicious sprite’s attempts to teach him
otherwise.

“The podling’s off with
Eleven-C,” Joe said, returning his attention to Twelve-A.  “I’m going to go get
her back right after I convince my pointy-eared friend, here, that I can fix
all this, and that he’d better not die on me or I’ll hunt him through every one
of the ninety hells for taking the coward’s way out because people
need
him.”

Nine-G nodded his big
head dumbly.  “Al-iss.”

Joe scowled down at
Twelve-A.  “You’re
not
going to die. 
Are
you?”

Twelve-A gave him a very
sober look, obviously considering.  Then, almost tiredly, he reached up and
wiped his arm across the
ABOMINASHUN
, smearing charcoal across his
forehead. 
I’ll try to stay alive,
he agreed, though the words carried
an exhaustion that Joe hadn’t heard before.

“Good,” Joe growled. 
“Now, before we give them much more time to entrench themselves, I’m going to
do what I can to patch you up, then I’m going to go take care of the problem.”

Twelve-A’s eyes flickered
towards him, suddenly suspicious. 
You’re not going to kill them.

Joe paused in tearing one
of the blanket-scraps into shreds and cocked his head at Twelve-A.  “Excuse
me?”  Because that was
exactly
what he was going to do.

They are scared enough
as it is,
Twelve-A said stubbornly.

Joe snorted.  “They
better be, after what they just pulled.”  Squatting beside the minder, he
wrapped a bandage tight around Twelve-A’s bleeding head and tied a knot over
one pointed ear.  “They’re about to get a Congie boot up their asses and they
know it.”

You won’t hurt them
,
Twelve-A insisted. 
They’ve done nothing wrong.

Joe stopped to stare, his
hands falling away in total, stunned disbelief.  “They’ve done nothing
wrong
? 
Did you hear what you just
said
?”

They did what they had
to do,
Twelve-A insisted, though his mental voice faltered slightly. 

Narrowing his eyes, Joe
said, “Yeah, right.  Tell me that again when you believe it.”

Twelve-A swallowed and
looked away.

Joe went back to applying
the bandages.  “People—even starving people—do
not
have to hurt those
who were trying to help them,” Joe went on.  “The Jreet have a special hell
reserved for people who do soot like that.  The call it the ‘Reliving Hell’. 
They get to experience their own actions, except in reverse.  Over and over
again.  If you believe the stories, most never get out.  It’s as bad as
kinkilling, in their book.”

After a moment, Twelve-A
looked up at him with total confusion. 
Why did they hate me when I gave
them food?

Joe grunted and finished
wrapping blanket strips around Twelve-A’s head.  Knotting the last bandage, he
took a deep breath, looked out at the People, who were now huddled together,
picking at each other’s bruises, sighed, and said, “Humans aren’t like most
critters out there.  We’re afraid of what we don’t understand.  Kind of like
knuckle-dragging savages, that way.”

Twelve-A gingerly touched
the cloth around his head, then dropped them into his lap. 
Can you bring
back Eleven-C and Alice?
he asked finally.

“I can bring back
Eleven-C,” Joe agreed.

Twelve-A lifted his head
sharply, his blue eyes piercing despite his bruised and swollen face. 
And
Alice?

Joe sighed and rolled his
eyes.  “And the podling.”

Without hurting
anyone?
Twelve-A insisted.

Joe narrowed his eyes. 
“We’re not doing this again.  Ever. 
I’m
Chief of Security.  That means
I’ll hurt whoever I damn well please.  ‘Specially those who
deserve
a
good hurting.”

They are just scared
,
Twelve-A insisted again. 
You won’t hurt them.  Just bring back our friends.

“Look!” Joe snapped,
hurling a bloody rag aside to smack wetly against a pine tree, startling
several People.  Completely fed up with his friend’s star-gazing, happy-huggy
furgsoot, he jabbed a finger into Twelve-A’s bruised chest and growled, “The
only thing those people are going to understand is
pain
!  Trust me on
this, all right?  You want a Chief of Security?  Then stop knotting my damn
tentacles and let me do my
job
.”

Twelve-A must have sensed
that Joe was on the verge of dropping everything and letting the minder clean
up his own mess, alone, because he capitulated.  Slightly. 
Just don’t kill
them,
he said. 
They don’t deserve to die.

Joe thought of all the
ways he could maim the bastards while keeping them perfectly alive and a frown
crossed Twelve-A’s brow.

“Fine!” Joe muttered,
holding up a hand in truce.  “Fine.  I won’t kill them unless I have to.”  At
Twelve-A’s continued scowl, he muttered, “Or maim them without cause.” 

Twelve-A gave him a
suspicious look, but eventually turned his attention to the People.  He seemed
relieved when he saw Nine-G and the others huddled together, slapping at flies.

Shouldering his rifle,
Joe casually said, “By the way, which one of them kicked you when you were tied
up?”

It was the man with
the hair like mine,
Twelve-A said immediately. 
Him and his two
sisters.  Be careful.  They’re dangerous.  The three of them
were…blackbelts?…in Taekwondo.  They’re the ones who disabled everyone so the
rest could tie them up.