Zero Recall (45 page)

“
The Huouyt is still
alive,
” Joe said.  “
He’s not moving, but his body rhythms are pretty
steady.
”

“
How long does he
have?
” Galek asked, liquid brown eyes staring at the puncture they had just
made in the den.

“
According to this?
” 
Joe tapped the small black device. “
Ninety-nine tics.
”  Then he thrust
it disgustedly back into his cargo belt.  “
But we all know just how accurate
this soot is.  It could be two tics.  Or hell, he could just be taking a nap. 
Who knows.
”

Galek glanced at Joe’s
PPU, then at the tunnel entrance.  “
I’ll go get him.
”

“
No,
” Joe said.  “
There’s
no way you can get down there fast enough.
”

“
Then I’ll bring him
back anyway,
” Galek said stubbornly.

“
There’s no way you can
find him, even with the PPU,”
Joe said, irritated.  The last thing he
wanted to do was let the kid get himself killed.
  “The place is a maze.
”

“
He’s got the tunnel
instinct, Joe,
” Daviin said.

Joe opened his mouth to
argue, but the pleading look in the Ooreiki’s sticky brown eyes forestalled
him.  He cursed.  “
Galek, can you use a Human PPU?
”

“
I can use mine,
”
Galek, said, a flash of hope in his eyes.  He held up an Ooreiki PPU in his
tentacles, though it failed to show the location of the other members in the
group.  Joe’s PPU was the only one authorized to do that.

Joe glanced down at his
PPU.  It was a Human version, which meant it had smaller buttons than other
species could comfortably handle, and therefore more of them.  Aside from their
linguistic skills, Humans had proven to have a digital dexterity that allowed
for more detailed and complex tools, which—sometimes—meant more effective
tools.

Of anyone on the team,
the Ooreiki was the only other one who carried a PPU with him.  The others
carried no equipment whatsoever.

“
Here
,” Joe said,
handing the Ooreiki his PPU.  “
But you get into a fight and you clear it before
you do anything else.  Get me?
”

“
Yes, Commander,
”
Galek said, offering Joe his PPU in return.  “
I’ll make it fast.
”

“We’ll
make it fast,
”
Daviin corrected.  “
You aren’t going down there without protection, Ooreiki.
”

Galek blinked at the
Jreet.  “
But—
”

“
You both go,
” Joe
interrupted.  “
And take as long as you need, just don’t let that thing get
in the wrong hands with our positions lit up like bulls-eyes.
”

Galek flinched like he’d
hit him.  “
I won’t, sir.
”

“
Good.  Get out of
here.
”

The Ooreiki disappeared
after the Jreet.  Seconds ticked by like hours, and Joe began to fidget,
feeling a sheen of sweat springing up on his forehead before the biosuit ate
it.  That distance was more than the depth of a normal deep den.  It could take
hours, even days, to find their teammate in the maze of tunnels.  He fretted,
wondering if he had given an order that would get them all killed.

“
How’s it going down
there?
” he finally asked.

“
This is twice I’ll
have had to carry the Huouyt to safety.  He will not be happy.
” 

“
You found Jer’ait?
”

“
The Ooreiki found
him.  I merely followed his lead like a lost
melaa.”

“
That was fast,
”
Joe said.

“
You’d be amazed at
what this Ooreiki can do.  He took the first slave tunnel he saw, and it was
going in the
wrong
direction, I would have sworn it.  Then, after a few
dozen intersections, I was staring down at our Huouyt and I thought my jaw was
going to fall off.
”

“
He exaggerates,
”
Galek said, though Joe could tell the youngster was beaming.

“
Get back here,
”
Joe said. 
“You guys can brag over chow.”

“
It’s a little harder
going with the Huouyt in tow.  The slave tunnels are not as large or as smooth
as a Grekkon’s, so Galek and I are having to take turns pushing and pulling him
between us.
”

“
How is Jer’ait?
”

“
Still breathing.
”

Tics later, Galek emerged
from the darkness, dragging Jer’ait behind him.  The Jreet followed, still
invisible, the only trace he gave was a dislodged pebble and a few depressed
gelatinous leaves.

The Baga dropped from his
roost in the sticky alien treetops and gave the entrance to the den a wistful
look.  “
All that treasure down there and we’re just gonna let the Space
Corps bury it.
”

“
Three mil and
kasja
makes it easy to forget about it,
” Joe reminded Flea.  “
Now let’s get
out of here.
”

#

“I’ll ask you again, Jahul. 
What is the name of your employer?”

“I have no employer,”
Syuri whispered, horrified of the truth in his own words.

The Huouyt gave him an
amused look and moved away from the table to take up a position along the back
wall.  The Jahul interrogator took his place.

“Listen, child,” the
elder said with a touch of Rhas Byuin accent, “We know who you’re working for. 
We just want you to say it.”  He sounded almost kindly, his darker green-yellow
skin dry, lacking any of the wastes Syuri had shamefully expelled all over
himself during the last four days of interrogation.  They had refused to allow
him a shower, instead leaving him stinking of his own excrement.  It was for
this reason that Syuri knew that beyond the other Jahul’s kindly manner, he was
in truth just as dangerous as the Huouyt.

“We know you didn’t come
up with those codes on your own,” the Rhas Byuin Overseer said, his voice still
kind.  “You and I both know our kind aren’t capable of those calculations.”

Syuri lowered his head. 
He could feel nothing from them—they had removed his
sivvet
the first
day they had found him.  The resulting blindness to the creatures around him
had left Syuri in a state of shock and terror for days afterwards.  His meager
whisper to the Huouyt only moments before had been the first thing he had said
since they had maimed him.

“The longer you sit
there, Jahul, the longer your
sivvet
shrivel on ice.  You know they
can’t be replaced.  Why do you continue to provoke us?”

Syuri looked up at the
Huouyt, feeling nothing behind the mask of his glacial eyes.  “You destroyed them
as soon as you removed them,” he said, miserable.  “You never planned on giving
them back.”

“Oh?”  The Huouyt left
the room and came back with three bloody lumps of twisted gray flesh pressed
between two transparent plates.  “Then what are these, friend?”

Syuri felt his internal
pressure skyrocket, in part because his hope of regaining his sixth sense had
returned, but also because the sheer brutality of the scene was the stuff of
every Jahul’s nightmares.  They had taken his most important sensory organs and
put them on display, taunting him, promising to return them to him if he
cooperated.

The Rhas Byuin Jahul
smiled at him as he watched his reaction.  Syuri banished his thoughts of
longing, but not quickly enough.  His fellow Jahul could read him like an open
book.  “We know you want them back.  We know how blind you feel without your
sivvet.
”

“So why’d you take them?”
Syuri whispered, peering up into the Rhas Byuin’s kind eyes.  Even without his
sivvet,
he could feel the lie.  Staring up into his tormentor’s false kindness, Syuri
suddenly felt an overpowering rage.  The Rhas Byuin expected him to crumble. 
He expected him to grovel, spilling his every sin before them before he
executed him with the same, kindly smile on his face.  He cared nothing about
Syuri, only about destroying him.

He may have been a Jahul,
but he was just like the Huouyt.

“I’ll just set these down
here while we talk,” the Huouyt said, lowering the transparent plates to the
table across from him.  Syuri felt his pressure spike, realizing that the
Huouyt was going to allow his
sivvet
to warm, hastening their
deterioration.  The Huouyt sat down and patiently pressed his flat, paddle-like
tentacles together as he looked at Syuri.  His eerie white-blue eyes were
emotionless.  The normally writhing, hair-like cilia upon his skin was
unnaturally still.  Staring at the Huouyt, not being able to sense whether he
wanted to help him or tear off his legs one by one, hopelessness overwhelmed Syuri.

“Nobody is coming to help
you,” the Rhas Byuin Jahul said, echoing his own feelings back at him.  Syuri
shot him a tired, angry look, then lowered his gaze back to the tabletop.

“You said having the
doctors remove his
sivvet
would make him cooperate,” the Huouyt said,
never taking his eyes off of Syuri.  “I’m beginning to think you were wrong.”

For the first time, Syuri
saw a sheen of liquid on the other Jahul’s skin.  The Rhas Byuin Jahul stood,
his face clouding with anger as he glared at Syuri.  “Look.  We know it was
Jemria who sent you.  No one else would give a furgling fart about the
prisoners.  We know you’re one of his agents.  Now tell us how you contact
him.”

Syuri remembered the
endless rows of doors, the subterranean prison.  Softly, he said, “Is he the
only Geuji you haven’t trapped down there?”

“Trapped?”  The Huouyt
snorted.  “They chose that fate, when they committed treason against Congress.”

Syuri looked up.  “What?”

“One and a half million turns
ago.  They tried to create their own government,” the Huouyt said.  His
vertical mouth-slit puckered.  “Obviously they failed.”

Syuri was appalled.  “The
Dhasha try every hundred turns.”

“Yes, but the Geuji would
have succeeded.”

The Rhas Byuin slapped
the table with a slim green hand.  “You’re giving him too much.  We’re
interrogating him, Cha’vai, not the other way around.”

“I’m not worried about
getting the information I want out of him,” the Huouyt said, his eerie
white-blue eyes staring fixedly at Syuri.  “Like I said before you maimed him,
I can do it with drugs.”

“We want it to be legal,
you stupid furg.”

“Legalities become quite
insignificant compared to what is at stake.”  The Huouyt had not taken his eyes
off of Syuri.

The Rhas Byuin
straightened angrily.  “Jemria was not present at the meeting of Geuji.  He
hadn’t been
spawned
yet.  If Congress does not apprehend him legally for
the crimes he
has
committed, then we have no way to charge him.  Our
superiors want no chance that he’ll go on trial.  If he does, he will not only
talk hoops around our prosecutors, but he’ll have a chance to get the publicity
he desires and those bleeding-heart conservationists will cry over his story
and demand that
all
the Geuji go free.”

“Then don’t give him a
trial,” the Huouyt said, never taking his eyes off of Syuri.  “I assure you our
superiors have thought of that long before this.  What is important right now
is apprehending him.  Let the politicians bicker over the technicalities.”

“But we were given
specific orders to—”  The Rhas Byuin caught himself, realizing Syuri was in the
room.  “Do not drug him until you get approval, Cha’vai.”

“We’ll see,” the Huouyt
said.  Syuri could feel the press of his gaze on his skin and felt his internal
pressure rising.  He’d heard horrible stories about Huouyt.  They were
assassins that used drugs like a freight captain used his ship.  Even without
his
sivvet
, Syuri knew that the Huouyt could do exactly as he said and
elicit the truth from him through chemicals.

The Huouyt leaned toward
Syuri.

“The prisoner is a
Jahul,” the Rhas Byuin insisted, stepping toward them.  “That puts him under
Jahul authority.  I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Huouyt.”

“Ask all you want,” the
Huouyt said, never moving.  “As far as I’m concerned, you might be working with
him.”

The Rhas Byuin made an
irritated sound and went to the door.  “I’ll be back,” he said, then slammed
the door behind him.

“So,” the Huouyt said
with an ominous flatness to his voice, “Do you want to tell me where I can find
your employer or do you want me to make you tell me?”

Syuri shuddered.

The Huouyt leaned closer,
his electric eyes making the skin on Syuri’s arms itch from their closeness. 
“I want you to think about something.”  As the Huouyt stared at him with his
enormous, terrifying, unblinking eyes, he said, “How many times have you known
Jemria to be wrong?”

Syuri dropped his gaze. 
“Never.”  His whisper felt like a stake through his chest, puncturing his inner
chambers.

“You wanted to know why
we keep them imprisoned down here?  That is why, Jahul.  Geuji are never
wrong.”

Syuri closed his eyes,
knowing what was to come.

“And he knew you would be
captured here.  Tell me I’m wrong.”

Syuri said nothing.

Cha’vai made an amused
sound.  “Forgotten’s agents are notorious for their loyalty to their employer,
as misplaced as it is.  Do you know how many of Forgotten’s agents are alive
today?”

Syuri didn’t want to hear
it, but his hands were cuffed to the table and he could not leave.

“One.”  The Huouyt
flicked his downy tentacle at Syuri.  “You.”  He leaned back.  “Sure, he has
contacts, people we’ll never hear of that aid in his criminal activities, and
help him evade us time and time again, but he only has one agent.  Do you know
why that is, Jahul?”  He leaned forward again, his electric eyes intense. 
“Because they turn on him.  They always turn.”