Zero World (35 page)

Melni checked the two inner doors. The first opened upon a small lav. She paused there, if only for a second, perhaps tantalized by the prospect of a hot shower.

The handle of the second door twisted when she tried it. Melni
opened it an inch and peered into the room beyond. Yellow light spilled through the gap. Melni stepped through.

“What are you doing?” Caswell asked, trying to keep his voice low.

“I am not sure yet,” she said from the other room.

Curious, he stood and joined her.

The adjacent cabin, a mirror of their own, was lit by a reading lamp embedded in one wall. Upon a shelf above the far couch were two long, flat bags, stacked one on top of the other. Melni pulled one down and undid the latches. A little gasp escaped her lips at the contents.

“What is it?” he asked, craning his neck to see.

“An opportunity,” she replied, and showed him.

An hour later he emerged from the lav, feeling very much like a new man.

The train had started moving fifty Gartien minutes earlier and now raced downhill through a dark forest made uneven by the ravaged landscape. Melni sat on her bench, dressed in the purple evening gown she discovered in the second of the two garment bags. She looked up at Caswell as he stepped through the narrow door and presented himself.

The suit fit him well, if a bit loose in the chest and shoulders. The dark gray cloth was tailored in a modern Southern style, Melni had explained, with an asymmetrical opening buttoned three times just above the heart, the gap falling diagonally away to end at a smart, hard corner before disappearing around the back. The material had a slight sheen to it, contrasted by a light gray shirt beneath that he’d clasped tight at the neck. The sleeve cuffs above each hand were hidden below the arms of the jacket. She stood and corrected these apparent gaffes for him, then stepped back.

“It is obvious you have a pistol tucked in the coat, but that should not raise concern where we are going.”

He patted the weapon, as if that might press it down enough to hide it. The compact vossen would have been ideal, but he’d spent every round fighting the Hollow, and discarded the empty, single-use tube.

“How does it feel?” she asked him, referring to the clothes.

“I’ll admit it looks quite smart, but I liked the Grim Runner garb better.”

She stifled a laugh. “Me, too. However the diplomats will be wearing garments like this tonight for Alia’s speech. Our chances of being noticed are considerably reduced this way.”

He sensed, or thought he sensed, a deeper reaction to his attire. The slight reddening of the cheeks, the uptick of the eyebrows, and the vaguest hint of some kind of animal desire. He couldn’t be sure he read these signs right, but were he on Earth he would have known instantly that his sudden attraction to this woman had been repaid in kind. She looked like a vision in her dress. The cut was severe, the type of thing you’d expect on a runway model in Milan for some provocative new designer, not a diplomat at a summit meeting. It accentuated a dancer’s body he’d barely noticed before, and, combined with the literally otherworldly hairstyle and her unsettling purple eyes, he’d found it difficult to keep his mind on the danger of their situation.

Caswell took his seat again across from her. He’d had to keep his desert boots on beneath the widened bottoms of the pant legs, for there had been no footwear with the clothing. Hopefully no one would look down.

For a time they sat in silence as the train thundered along toward Alice Vale’s summit.

“Next comes the hard part,” he said, looking out the window. “Finding Alia before your people make their move. What time is it?”

“Almost first hour, I think.”

He nodded. “Cutting it close.”
Damn close,
he added to himself. Two days, almost to the minute, and he would revert. Ready or not, all this would be forgotten.

Melni said something.

He barely heard it, and then her words registered like a slap to the face. “Hold on. What did you just say?”

She yawned, stretched. “I said we are lucky the summit was delayed. With this new information—”

Caswell sat bolt upright, head swimming. He grabbed Melni’s hands, so tight her eyes went wide with fear. “Delayed? What the hell are you talking about?”

She looked at him, confused. “The…While you were unconscious, in Riverswidth. From your injuries.”

“Yes? Go on!”

“Combra called for a two-day delay. So lucky for us. It bought you extra time to heal.”

“I was in that bed for
two days
?”

He shouted so loudly the window rattled.

Melni flinched back, held fast by his grip. “Why are you so angry? It gave us more time to—” She stopped.

Stopped because he wasn’t listening to her. Caswell leapt from his seat. Before he knew what he was doing he was at the door, then out in the hall beyond. He stopped there, looking off toward the far end of the car, where a clock hung on the wall.

One minute left to reversion.

“Goddamnit,” he growled to himself. “Goddamnit, goddamnit. Fuck.”

“What is wrong?” Melni asked from the cabin door.

“Look,” he stammered, pushing her back inside, closing the door. He urged her back to her seat, then he paced.
What to do?
He was fucked and he knew it. He sat down, saw the fear in her eyes, and felt a surge of guilt. “Look. Okay. Listen. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you of this sooner. I thought I had more time.”

“Tell me what? You are scaring me.”

He fixed a gaze on her, tried to put every bit of urgency he could into it. “In less than a minute I’ll forget everything.”

“You…what? You will forget? Forget what?”

“My mission. This place. Laz, Alice, all of it. You. I’ll forget
you
.”

“What are you talking about? How?”

“There’s no time, Melni!” he shouted.

She recoiled as if slapped.

He grasped her hands again, gently this time. “Just—Listen to me, carefully. I won’t know you. I may even try to kill you.”

“Kill me? Caswell, what—”

“Don’t say anything, just listen. I will reset. Do you understand? You must explain to me why I’m here. What we’re doing and why it’s important.”

“I…Garta’s light. Yes. Anything.”

“There’s more.”

“What?” she asked, breathless.

“I won’t trust you. But there’s a chance. When I come back, I may whisper something. Part of a song. You have to finish the lyric or I will never believe you. I’ll say: ‘Speak the word.’ ”

“Speak what word?”

“No time, just listen! You must finish it.”

“But what word?”

“
Not a word,
it’s a song. I’ll say, ‘Speak the word.’ You say: ‘The word is all of us.’ ”

“Caswell, this is too much. I don’t—”

His body suddenly spasmed, and then his eyes screwed shut as every neuron in his head flipped back to where it had been, two weeks earlier.

EVERYTHING CHANGED
. He’d been exhaling, now he was inhaling. Weightlessness, and now the familiar tug of gravity. Stale air became heavy, full of exotic scents. He felt the sway of motion. His stomach suddenly clenched so hard he felt as if shot in the gut. Pain from a dozen new injuries registered. The weight of his spacesuit, gone, replaced with something light and flexible. His body spasmed involuntarily at the change. His neck throbbed, too, low on chemicals.

Fuck, I’ve reverted,
he managed to think through it all.

Despite the tears in his eyes he coaxed them open. “The word…speak the word,” he realized he was still saying, and stopped.

He was sitting now, not clinging to the
Venturi
’s wall. A fashion model with pixie hair and fake purple eyes sat across from him,
looking like she’d just been pummeled by street thugs. He hoped he hadn’t been the one to do that. Caswell blinked tears away and fought to get his mind around this shift in realities. “Who…” he said, then waited as a wave of nausea passed. He willed focus from his implant only to realize his smartwatch was gone. He tried the manual method of activating the implant instead, rubbing his temples, hoping for something. Anything. Clarity, concentration. It gave a little. He sat up, more alert now. “Who are you?” he barked.

The exotic party girl opened her mouth to reply, and suddenly it occurred to him that he’d been compromised. Captured. Why else would he not be in his bed in London or, barring that, at least somewhere safe? To revert in the field was unthinkable.

Before she could utter whatever lie waited on her lips, Caswell reached out. He grasped her neck and shoved her bodily back into the red-cushioned seat. He gripped hard. She clawed at fingers that felt stiff as iron, gasped for breath, and croaked something. “The…word…all of us.”

Had she just…? He eased off. His hands did not move, but he loosened his grip just enough to let her speak.

“The word is all of us,” she said, eyes wide with terror.

Caswell let her go. She scrambled away from him to the corner of the small room and got her breathing under control.

“Who are you?” he rasped. “Where am I? Some sort of simkit?”

“I do not know what a simkit is,” the woman replied.

The sway of the room suddenly registered. The vibration in his seat, and distant sounds. “Are we…is this a bloody
steam train,
for fuck’s sake? Who are you?”

“Please, one question at a time,” she said. She willed calm and allowed herself several full breaths, her fingertips still massaging her neck where he’d grabbed her. “My name is Melni Tavan.”

“Melanie?”

She grinned at that, though it vanished in an instant. “Melni. And you are Caswell.”

Her accent he could not place, and her looks…probably all
artificial. The eyes, the hair, the skin tone…none of it worked. She looked like some Eastern European sim-raver in a dress made by a fashion school genius the world just wasn’t fucking ready for. “How do you know me? Why am I here?” He glanced down at himself. “Jesus Christ, what the hell are we wearing?”

“Your implant has caused you to forget,” she said.

“Obviously.” He stared at her. “You knew the lyric, so…that’s something. I’ve never told anyone that. What happened? Tell me why I’m here.” He glanced around again. Where on Earth did people still ride steam trains? “Wherever here is.”

The woman swallowed. “You were sent here to kill a woman named Alice Vale.”

“Right. Right. I know that name,” he said. The missing crew member. Monique must have located her, sent him to finish the job. “She wasn’t with the others.”

“She goes by Alia Valix here.”

“Where is ‘here,’ damnit?”

“We are on our way to a summit where she is due to speak, but when we—”

The door burst open.

Shadows stood in the hall. Shadows with guns.