Forging Zero (17 page)

Kihgl scanned the kids’ faces and
his sticky brown eyes settled on Joe.  The little frills in the base of his
neck started fluttering rapidly. 
“Zero.  Get up here.”

Gut
sinking, Joe reluctantly trotted to stand before Kihgl.  He’d actually managed
to go two days without getting pummeled, and the bruises were starting to heal.

“What is that?”
Kihgl
demanded.

“What is what?”

“Recruit Zero does not understand the question. 
Oora.”

Joe
flushed.  “I don’t understand the question.”

Kihgl could have hit him, but he
didn’t.  He pointed with a tentacle.

Joe stared down at his bicep in
confusion.

Maggie’s crude imitation of
Popeye’s anchor stood out in harsh black tones upon his pale skin and he felt a
sudden settling of dread in his gut.  “Oh.”

“Well, Zero?”
Kihgl
demanded. 
“What is it?”

“A drawing,” Joe said warily.

“Are you trying to say you
defaced Congressional property?”

Knowing he was already in deep
shit, Joe just straightened and got it over with.  “‘Defaced?’  No, sir.  That
doesn’t do it justice, sir.  It took several
hours
to create this
masterpiece.”  And it had, at that.  Joe had fallen asleep while Maggie
worked.  He was lucky he hadn’t woken up with a mustache.

Behind him, he heard several
children giggle, Maggie among them.

Kihgl did not hit him, as Joe had
expected.  Instead, he turned to Nebil. 
“Battlemaster, deal with them while
I jettison this sootwad.”

Joe had just enough time to see
Battlemaster Nebil’s face scrunch in a fearsome alien smile before Kihgl’s
stinging python grip on his arm yanked him from the room.  Joe tried to dig in
his heels to slow him down, but the Ooreiki commander might as well have been a
bulldozer for all the good it did him.

He was beating at the stinging
coils around his forearm in desperation, knowing he was about to become
flash-frozen, bulging-eyed space-debris, when Kihgl shoved him inside a small
room with a desk and a huge round, scoop-shaped bed.  It was more lavish than
any other room Joe had seen, actually boasting two glowing pictures of Ooreiki
on the walls.  Obviously not an airlock.

Kihgl slapped his tentacles to
the side of the door and it dripped shut.  Then they were alone.  Just Joe and
Kihgl.

Commander Kihgl turned from the
door slowly, making Joe back up until his calves hit the hard round bed.

“What is it?”
Kihgl said,
his pale brown eyes fixed on him in deadly seriousness.

“What is what?” Joe asked,
wondering if he could outmaneuver Kihgl in the tiny room.  Probably not.  The
Ooreiki’s tentacles were at least four feet long when fully stretched.  The
room was only twelve-by-twelve, giving Joe a four foot window.  Fat chance of
escape.

“The drawing on your arm,”
Kihgl growled. 
“What is it?”

“You gave us markers,” Joe
retorted.  “You never told us not to.”

Kihgl lunged at him and within
two startling seconds had a stinging grip around Joe’s throat.  The Ooreiki
yanked him down until his unnaturally huge, sticky brown eyes were less than an
inch from Joe’s face.  “
Listen to me very carefully, Human,”
Kihgl said,
his voice low and deadly,
“I do not care about
why
you drew it.  I
want to know what it
means.”

Choking,
Joe managed, “It’s…an…anchor.”

Kihgl released him and stepped
back. 
“An anchor to what?”
he insisted.

Gasping, Joe collapsed to his
knees, heaving in huge breaths of air.  “It’s from a cartoon.  This guy wore it
around, beating people up.”

Kihgl cocked his head, his eyes
staying on Joe’s arm. 
“So you believe you can act like this cartoon?  Beat
us up?”

“No,”
Joe muttered.  The truth of
that
had been made painfully clear the
longer he stayed with his captors.  Despite all the Hollywood movies about
humanity kicking alien ass, Congress was just too
big
.  Earth’s
independence—what so many phony movies celebrated when humans fought off their
aggressors with projectiles and jets—wasn’t going to happen.  Not by force.  “I
don’t.”

Kihgl
brushed past him, leaving behind the pungent scent of oregano as he moved to a
smooth spot in the wall and slapped his tentacle against it.  The aliens, Joe
had noted, had taken an extreme interest in a couple of Earth’s spices, and had
begun wearing oils of oregano and rosemary as if it were some great honor.  He
had to snort, wondering if they knew they smelled like Sunday dinner.

A round
cubby opened, revealing several odd-shaped alien artifacts, none of which were
the standard black.  It stunned Joe to see color again for the first time since
they’d lost their clothes.

Kihgl
drew out a little yellow-green sphere, only five or six inches in diameter.  He
brought this over to Joe and shoved it at him.

“Is
it the same?”

Joe was
not about to touch what looked like a globular ball of snot.  “What?”

“
The
picture.  I can’t read Human script.  Perhaps there is a detail I missed.
”

Reluctantly,
Joe took the greenish sphere and immediately lost all interest in dropping it. 
It was wet and spongy, but when he peered into the gelatinous core, he saw a
black-lined image floating in its center on a sheer white background.  It
looked exactly like the rough anchor Maggie had drawn on Joe’s arm.

 “Where did you get this?” Joe
asked.

“
Is it the
same
?
”
Kihgl snapped.

Joe
peered at it, then examined the lines on his arm.  They were exactly the same,
right down to the stray line Maggie had accidentally drawn when he shifted in
his sleep.  “Yeah,” he said, his skin puckering with goosebumps.  “It’s the
same.”

“
Exactly?
” Kihgl insisted.

“Yeah,”
Joe said, getting nervous.

Kihgl let out a sudden breath
through the flaps in the side of his neck, looking like he had been punched. 
For a long moment, the Ooreiki just stared at the snot-ball.  Then, slowly, he
lifted his sticky brown eyes to Joe’s face.

In that moment, Joe got the
distinct
feeling that Kihgl was thinking about killing him.  Nervous, he took a step
backwards, lowering the ball to his side.

His movement seemed to snap Kihgl
out of his reverie, because, seeing Joe step away with his precious snot-glob
in hand, his eyes hardened.  He stepped forward and wrenched the spongy ball
from Joe’s grip and shoved it back into his cubby.  Then, without another word,
he went to the door to the hall and opened it, the incident apparently
forgotten. “
Return to your platoon, recruit.
”

“What
was that thing?” Joe demanded.

“It’s my concern, not yours, Human.”

Joe didn’t move.

The door dripped shut again as
they stood there.  When Joe made no motion to obey, Kihgl scowled. 
“It’s
something that was given to me when I was a battlemaster.”

“Uh, by who?” Joe asked.  From
what he knew of the alien ranking system, battlemaster had been a
long
time ago, for Kihgl.

“By a damn
Trith
,
that’s who.”
  Kihgl cursed.  The way he said it, that was supposed to mean
something.

Joe, however, had no idea what a
Trith was.  It certainly hadn’t been mentioned in any of Linin’s Species
Recognition classes.  “So what’s it mean?” Joe asked.

“It means my destruction.”
 
Kihgl slapped the wall again and the door opened. 
“Now get out.”

Joe’s goosebumps returned, that weird
nightmare-that-you-can’t-stop feeling coming back in force.  “What do you mean,
‘your destruction?’”

Kihgl narrowed his slitted brown eyes.  “
If I had wanted
to tell you the intimate secrets of my life, Human, I would have done so.  Now
return.  To your.  Platoon.
”

Joe stayed well out of reach,
making no attempt to leave.  “It’s not fair for you to just whip that thing
out, ask me about it, tell me it means your destruction, then expect me to go.”

Kihgl slapped the door shut
again, the tiny frills in his neck fluttering rapidly.  “
You have no idea
what ‘fair’ is, Zero.
”

They
stood facing one another in silence a moment before Joe tentatively said, “What
did that picture mean?  Come on, man.  I’m the one with it on my damn arm.”

For a long moment, Joe thought
Kihgl was going to pummel him.  He was actually surprised when Kihgl finally
decided to answer him.  “
It means the termination of my soul.  The knowledge
that I’ll never walk the halls of Poen with my ancestors, adding my wisdom to
that of every Ooreiki that has come before me.  It means I will cease to exist,
and can’t stop it because the choice has been made.
”

 
“The termination of your
soul
?”
Joe said.

Kihgl looked like he wasn’t going
to respond, but then touched the baggy black Congie uniform covering his
torso. 
“Our souls live here, within our oorei.  If the oorei is destroyed
before it can be taken to a temple, the soul that lives inside it is released,
its spiritual essence dissolving into the world around it.  It is why we ban
fire on all of our planets.  It is one of the only things that can destroy our
oorei and the souls inside it.”

“Is that what that little round thing
was you showed me?” Joe asked, feeling a moment of awe.  “An
oorei?
”

Kihgl’s chest erupted in a
froglike croaking sound. 
“No, you furg.  That was a mental image recorder. 
The oorei are tiny spheres we Ooreiki develop as we grow and live.  They fit in
your fist—on rare occasions they are bigger, if the bearer had a particularly
long and emotional life.  They’re different colors according to the spiritual
state of the Ooreiki who developed them.  Mine, for instance, will probably be
a dull brown or gray due to all the horrible things I’ve done in my life.  A
priest’s oorei will glow a golden yellow or white.  The priesthood on Poen
collects them all and puts them in hallowed sites in the temples so that people
may visit their ancestors.”

“Is
this some technological thing?” Joe asked.  “You record your lives?”

“No,”
Kihgl snapped. 
“Ooreiki
had oorei back when we wandered beneath the ferlii canopies, living in the
dark, hunting draak with poisons.  The temples on Poen still have many souls
from that time, though visitors seeking them out have to spend days to find
one, and when they do, they need a priest to translate.  There’s nothing
technological about it.
”

Joe
squinted at him.  “Are you telling me you’ve got dead people wandering around
on your home planet?  Zombies or something?”

“
Ghosts,
” Kihgl said.  “
Billions
and billions of ghosts.
”

Joe stared at the Ooreiki, not
quite sure Kihgl wasn’t utterly pulling his leg.  After becoming Tril’s
scapegoat on everything from dirty floors to kids peeing themselves, Joe
somewhat prided himself on being able to more or less judge an Ooreiki’s mental
state based on its scrunched brown face, and Kihgl looked utterly sober.  “And
you’ve
seen
them?” he asked carefully.  “Ghosts?”

“Kkee.
  I make a pilgrimage to
Poen after every war.
”

Joe
didn’t know what to say.  Kihgl sounded serious.  And afraid.

Tentatively, he moved closer and touched
Kihgl’s arm.  The Ooreiki stiffened.  Joe quickly withdrew his hand, realizing
he had no idea what kind of alien etiquette he had just broken.  He eyed
Kihgl’s python tentacles, knowing the alien could strangle him with ease.
 
Clearing
his throat, Joe motioned at Maggie’s drawing.  “It doesn’t
mean
anything.  It’s just some five-year-old’s scribble.”

Kihgl’s eyes grew sharp.  “
Which
five year old?
”

Hurriedly,
Joe said, “The picture is just a bunch of lines.  It doesn’t mean anything. 
It’s just a doodle.”

“
You saw the picture I showed
you, Zero.  It was given to me by a Trith.  Of all the species in the universe,
the Trith are the only ones that haven’t been swallowed by Congress.  Do you
know why?
”

Joe
shook his head, confused.  Until now, he’d never heard of a species to avoid
Congress.  Everyone had acted like it wasn’t possible.

“
The Trith have avoided
Congress because the Trith see the future.  Every Congressional attack, every
strategy Congress used against them, they thwarted it so thoroughly that
Congress gave up after only three attempts. 
Three!”

“They see the future?” Joe
repeated.  “Seriously?  The whole race?”

“
Every single Trith can see
every single detail of every moment from now until infinity.  And a Trith told
me that picture represents the destruction of my oorei.
”

Joe’s
lips formed an O.

“
So now you see.
”  Kihgl’s
eyes shifted to Joe’s arm. 

Joe
cleared his throat.  “I think psychics are full of crap.  There was one we went
to at the Fair.  She sucked.”

Kihgl’s neck-slits began
fluttering with irritation.  “
I told you about the Trith.
”

“I
know,” Joe said, “but why would he warn you unless he thought you could change
it?”

Kihgl stared at him.  The fleshy
sudah in the side of the Ooreiki’s neck fluttered almost to a stop.