Zero's Return (61 page)

Seeing her
whimper, still doomed to repeat those echoes of the past, Twelve-A softly
repeated,
I promise.

CHAPTER 21 – First Encounters

About two weeks after
Sentineling himself to a bunch of brain-dead jenfurglings, Joe realized their
party was being watched.  He was filling his canteen at another creek when he
saw the quick flash of an untinted lens on the hill overlooking the
river-bottom.  Capping the canteen, Joe nonchalantly got behind cover.

He supposed that he had
known that sooner or later, forty-four naked furgs traipsing through the
bush—most fat enough you couldn’t even see their ribcages—would have attracted
some attention, but he had been hoping Twelve-A would cooperate and steer them
clear.  No banana.  The pointy-eared furg had the attention span of a gnat.

Slipping Jane out of her
holster, he wove his way back through the pines and said, “Hey egghead, we’ve
got someone on the hill behind us.”

I know,
Twelve-A
said. 
And it’s not just one.  It’s…
  The telepath hesitated, a small
crease of concentration on his brow momentarily before it cleared again,
…thirty-three. 
Then he went back to making a grass hat, under Alice’s dubious tutelage. 
Beside him, Shael was peeling bark from a shiny new club.

Joe narrowed his eyes at
the pointy-eared furgling currently attending the Adult Weaving 101 Class. 
“How long have you known?”

A few days.
  The
minder plucked another handful of grass and started poking it into the weave
when he ran out.
 
Alice took a moment to reach over and correct his
technique for him, pushing the grass strands back the other direction.

Suppressing the urge to
stomp on the useless straw hat, Joe walked over and squatted in front of
Twelve-A.  As sweetly as he could when his baser instincts were screaming at
him to rearrange the blue-eyed wonder’s face, he said, “You think maybe that
might’ve been some good info for you to divulge to your Chief of Security, you
furgling flake?”

Security is your job. 
Why should I have to do your job, Joe?
  Twelve-A held up the half-made
hat. 
Neat, huh?

“Because,” Joe said
through his teeth, pointedly ignoring the hat in front of him, “I can’t read
people’s minds at nine hundred rods.  You can.”

Twelve-A sighed and
dropped the hat back to his lap.  Meeting Joe’s gaze, he said,
They’re
really hungry.  They want to know why we have so much food.

Joe felt an instant rush
of dread.  “That’s not good.”

It’ll be fine.
 
More weaving.

Joe narrowed his eyes. 
“Can you just scramble their brains or something?  Make them wander off?”

I could,
Twelve-A
said.  And didn’t elaborate.

Joe narrowed his eyes. 
“But you won’t.”

I don’t like hurting
people,
Twelve-A said, lifting his head again to scan Joe’s face.
 
Hurting people only spreads hurt.

Joe immediately
prickled.  “But you’ll drop me like a Congressional tank the moment I look at
you funny.”

You’re dangerous,
Twelve-A said. 
They’re not dangerous.  They’re hungry.

Joe felt a muscle spasm
in his neck.  “All right, you pointy-eared leafling.  If they’ve caught wind
we’ve got a food supply, they’re not going to give up easily.  You all look
like you’ve been feasting on cookies the last couple weeks, and that’s going to
make the rest of the world ask questions.”  He eyed Alice, who blushed.  Turning
back to Twelve-A, he said, “You need to get rid of them, okay?”

If I were like that, I
would have killed you a long time ago,
Twelve-A said, returning to his
hat. 
I don’t hurt people.

Joe narrowed his eyes. 
“We have a problem.  You need to get rid of it.  If
I
get rid of it,
people will die.”

Twelve-A’s blond head
came up abruptly. 
You’re not killing anyone.
  The command went off like
a gong in Joe’s head, making him stagger. 

As if Twelve-A hadn’t
just hit him with the mental equivalent of a two-by-four, the minder began
weaving some flowers into his project as Alice and Eleven-C cooed
appreciatively.  Shael, by contrast, gave a very manly grunt, which Nine-G
immediately tried to imitate.

“Great,” Joe cried,
waving a hand in disgust.  “Just great…  That’s exactly what we need—a rod-tall
Hebbut thinking he’s a Jreet.”

“Nine-G is
not
a
Hebbut,” Alice whined.  Pouting, she said, “Twelve-A, tell Joe he’s not a
Hebbut.”

He’s not a Hebbut. 
Hebbuts have bigger teeth and longer arms and wrinkly faces.  Oh and they smell
like leather and cherries.  Nine-G smells like sweat and dirt.  He refused to
take a bath like the others.  Threatened to squish my face when I tried.  I
think he’s afraid of water.

Joe narrowed his eyes. 
The minder’s description of Hebbut had been accurate.  Indicating, of course,
that, somewhere, Twelve-A had magically picked up yet another tidbit that Joe
didn’t remember giving him.  Scowling, Joe said, “
Just make the furgs on the
hill leave.
”

They’re hungry,
Twelve-A repeated, not even bothering to look up. 
If they want something to
eat, we can share.

Joe froze.  “You are
not
sharing food with strangers.”

Twelve-A shrugged
dismissively, a skill he had picked up from Alice.  This time, Joe had to
tighten his fist to keep from planting it in Twelve-A’s face.  That was how
Congies typically solved disputes like this, and he had to keep reminding
himself he was dealing with something that could kill him—or worse—with a
passing thought.

Wise decision,
primate.
  The bastard telepath started to hum.

Carefully, so as to keep
his temper in check around the pretty-boy who could turn him into a vegetable
with a thought, Joe said, “This is war.  Those guys on that hill would be happy
to kill you and everyone with us if that meant keeping themselves alive.  You
should be thinking in the same terms.”

I think the leader
wants to join us.

Joe’s jaw dropped open. 
Could Twelve-A really be that naïve?  “Of course he wants to join you!  And as
soon as he finds out that Eleven-C is making the food and that you and Shael
and the Hebbut and all the other bastards following you are unnecessary, you’re
going to be dead.” 

I wouldn’t let him
kill us.

“He wouldn’t give you the
choice
,” Joe snapped.  When Twelve-A calmly continued weaving his hat,
Joe muttered a curse.  “Look, if you’re not going to do anything about this,
I
am.”

No you’re not,
Twelve-A said. 
They’re scared and hungry.  We can help.  Just go sit down
and wait.  They’ll be here by nightfall.

“They are going to try
and
kill
us!” Joe snapped.  “They want your
stuff
, not your
company
.”

They’re just scared,
Twelve-A said. 
It’s not their fault the monsters came.

Joe opened his mouth to
argue, saw that it would be as futile as debating a Geuji, then just stood
there, watching the minder weave grass.  He shifted his attention to the other
People who were playing with bugs, lazily eating leftovers, or dozing, then
snorted and walked off to strategically hide his weapons around camp.

#

The weak yellow sun had
passed its zenith and had started to descend into the flimsy alien treetops
when the first of their observers silently stepped out of the undergrowth, into
the People’s small, grassy clearing amidst the pines.  To Joe’s surprise, it
wasn’t a rugged group of Congies or a disbanded Global Police force that had
spent almost four days observing them, but rather, a group of what looked like
starving civilians. 

The leader was a big,
thickly-bearded man wearing ragged work clothes that looked much too loose,
knotted to his waist with a piece of purple nylon rope.  Hanging from the rope
was a hatchet, two different knives, and something Joe recognized as some sort
of non-energy, Earth-made gun.  He carried a heavy-looking backpack stuffed so
full its seams were bursting, bits of purple showing through.  Everything about
him looked worn, dusty, and well-used.

Behind the bearded
leader, several men and women were crawling out of the forest scrub with
haggard, sunburned faces.  Like the bearded man, who was carefully approaching
Joe, they looked much too skinny, their clothes too loose, slipping into sight
in fearful huddles like whipped Takki.  And, like him, each one carried an
almost identical backpack, packed to bursting.

Not, Joe guessed by their
skinny bodies, with food.

As their rag-covered
forms filtered from the trees, Joe pulled an apple from his pocket and took a
big bite out of it, carefully gauging their reaction.  At the first crisp sound
of his teeth puncturing the apple skin, every head in the approaching group
came up and their feet staggered to a halt.  Some of the littlest Humans
automatically began walking towards him, then, when they were caught by their
parents and hastily dragged back, they started crying.  Even some of the adults
were whimpering and hiding their faces.

The big, gun-carrying leader
stopped a few paces off, eying Jane warily.  Joe took several more bites of his
apple, feeling every hungry gaze watching him with wretched desire, carefully
analyzing the depths of their need.  It was bad—every one of them seemed to be
walking a razor’s edge.  Several were shaking.  Even the leader seemed
transfixed by the way he moved the fruit from his side to his lips to take each
new bite.

With obvious difficulty,
the man tore his gaze from the apple to Joe’s face and managed, “You need some
help, there, Boss?”

“Nope,” Joe said, around
a big mouthful of fruit and juice.  It was everything he could do to keep from
adding, “Get lost, sooter.”  Twelve-A, the peace-loving posy-sniffer, had
insisted he be nice.  Joe, on the other hand, had been fighting a gut-deep
feeling of foreboding ever since he’d realized they were being watched.  His
vote had been to seek out the group spying on them, put a few rounds in their
leaders, then give the rest a chance to play the Eeloirian Scramble before he
repeated the process with any stragglers.  The Prince of Hugs and Rainbows and
Ueshi Pleasure-Cruises, however, had taken umbrage to that idea and had
vehemently insisted Joe let them live.  All of them.  Dammit.

Not only that, but now
the starry-eyed furg wanted to
feed
them.  Apparently, Joe had been some
sort of ambassador for his kind by not shooting the minder in the head like he
deserved, and now Twelve-A was curious to see what others had to offer.

Except, seeing the
vacant, haunted eyes of the survivors sliding out of the bushes, Joe was
getting a really bad feeling, one that said he should have hunted them down and
started shooting the moment he realized they were following him.

The bearded man at the
edge of the tiny meadow hesitated, brown eyes flickering again over Jane. 
“Congie, huh?”

“Yup,” Joe said coolly.

His visitor cleared his
throat.  “I, uh, thought all the Congies got wiped.” 

“They didn’t,” Joe said.

Still, the man wasn’t
done.  His eyes flickered desperately to Joe’s half-eaten fruit.  “Keep seeing
brain-dead groups wandering around, ya know?  Like no survival instincts
whatsoever.  Only know they’re Congies ‘cause they’re all dressed in black.”

Joe felt a twisting of
fury, remembering the vast herds of Congressional soldiers the Space Force had
shoved off the drop-ships, drooling in their stupidity, playing with bugs and
flowers like children.  Still, he kept his face impassive.  Instead of
responding, he finished his apple and flung the core aside.  Most eyes in the
group moved to follow its arc, and one little boy broke from the others and ran
to collect it from the grass to immediately stuff it in his face and devour
what was left, seeds and all.

Seeing that, Joe
grimaced.  It was obvious that their visitors had been starving for some time.
They also outnumbered him.  Whereas Joe was the only one who knew how to use a
gun in their own group, there were at least twenty in the stranger’s band
carrying deadly weapons, most of whom looked like they knew how to use them. 
What was most alarming, though, was that every single gun-carrier wore the
hardened look that Joe recognized as a willingness to do so. 

In the awkward silence
following the little boy gobbling up the remains of his apple, the stranger
scratched at the back of his neck nervously and said, “So, uh, we were just
passing through and saw you guys looking like you could use some help.”

Casually picking apple
skin from his teeth, Joe asked, “And what makes you think we need help?”

The bearded man’s eyes
caught his face, then slid to the naked People lounging in the grass behind
him.  Most of them weren’t paying any attention to the newcomers at all, either
catching bugs, dozing, or helping Alice and Nine-G build a teepee of sticks
beside the fire using Joe’s axe.  Those who
were
watching the show were
coming over to gawk like planet-side hicks seeing their first naturals
preserve, all their glories on full display.

“It’s pretty obvious you
guys got roughed up,” the bearded man noted, eyes stopping on one of the more
voluptuous women before quickly returning to Joe’s face.  “I’m Mike Carter. 
The former Congressman.”  When Joe just gave him a blank look, Mike cleared his
throat uncomfortably.  “To a Congie, that’s basically a politician.” 

Joe narrowed his eyes,
even more convinced he should be shooting the guy in the head.