Zero's Return (33 page)

Alice nodded. 
So did every other experiment in the group, at the exact same time.

If Joe hadn’t
been standing in front of forty-odd people who could probably squish his brains
out through his ears—and a telepath who seemed to be pulling their strings—he
would have laughed.  Instead, he did his best to keep a straight face.

“What’s the
hatchling saying?” Shael demanded impatiently.  “Why do the furglings all stare
at us like we’re green Takki?  Are they Earthlings?”

“No,” Joe said
quickly, “These are allies.  She’s saying Twelve-A’s alive and right over there
behind the big guy.”  Joe winked at the blond when his head jerked up.  This
time, upon meeting Joe’s gaze, his sky-blue eyes widened and he froze like a
startled Takki.

“
That
is
Twelve-A?”  Shael was clearly disappointed.

“Why, you
thought he was bigger?” Joe offered, still speaking in Voran Jreet.

“I had thought
he was less…” she sniffed disdainfully, “skinny.”

He
was
skinny, too.  But tall.  Almost as tall as Joe.  It made for an odd
combination:  With his white-blond hair, sunburned body, ice-blue eyes, and
pale, hairless Caucasian skin, he looked like a starving abominable snowman
with mange. 

“It’s too bad
he’s dead,” Joe said in Congie, returning his attention to the little girl. 
“I’m good at killing kreenit.  I’ve already killed a bunch.  As it is, I think
a lot of his friends are going to die without some sort of help.”  He shook his
head in mock disappointment.

Twelve-A flushed
and looked at his feet.

“Well, that’s
okay, because he’s dead,” Alice said, getting into it, now.  “The dragon ate
him
days
ago.  He’s just a big bony turd, now.  Like him.”  She pointed
to the half-a-redhead still sliding down the kreenit’s tongue into a pool of
orange saliva under its open jaws.  “So now you better go or I’ll get Nine-G to
mash you up like my mom’s potatoes.”  She crossed her wiry arms over her thin
chest and gave them an imperious look.

“Is the little
weakling
threatening
us?” Shael demanded, giving Alice a frown.  She
had, apparently, picked up on Alice’s tone.

“No,” Joe said. 
“She’s saying they will carry on without us and continue valiantly defending
themselves until the last one of their tribe falls to a kreenit’s jaws.  I
wonder who will be next?  The girl?  That gal over there picking flowers?  The
one on the kreenit?  Hell,” Joe said, turning to give Twelve-A a pointed
glance, “that skinny guy behind Gigantor over there looks pretty bite-sized…”

Suddenly,
something massive grabbed Joe’s mind and squeezed. 
I am not afraid of you.
 
This time, the mental sledgehammer hitting the gong of his head was enough to
drive Joe to his knees.  From behind the huge man, the telepath was giving him
a blue-eyed stare.

I have killed
before.

Joe suddenly
found his mind filled with images of terrified faces, dozens of them, along
with the emotional terror of people meeting their doom.

The blond
stepped from behind the giant, putting himself squarely between Joe and the
other experiments, the fear in his eyes gone. 
I choose not to kill,
Twelve-A’s mountain thundered around him.
  That doesn’t mean I won’t. 

This time, Joe
saw his own death, watched himself crumple to the ground, never to get up
again.  He watched four dozen people leave him there to be eaten by the flies.

I’m not
afraid of you,
Twelve-A insisted again, his mental voice like a titan’s
sledge threatening to obliterate him.

“Okay!” Joe
shouted, fisting his hands in the churned earth, staring at the ground in
desperation.  “I get it.  You’re not afraid of me!  Now get out of my damned
head, you pointy-eared jenfurgling.” 

There was a
moment of reluctance as the mental mountain hesitated, then, slowly, Twelve-A
did.

Joe sat up with
a grunt, ignoring the funny look Shael was giving him.  Then, though just about
any other intelligent man in the universe, when confronted with a genetic
weapon who could apparently render his brains to pudding with a thought, would
have apologized and scraped for forgiveness, Joe got to his feet, dusted
himself off, straightened, walked over to the skinny, blue-eyed turdling,
shoved his finger into the experiment’s chest, and growled down at the minder,
“You pull that flake again, furg, and I’m going to introduce you to Jane.”

Twelve-A gave
him a flat look, obviously unimpressed. 

“Are you
hungry?” the child interrupted.  “Eleven-C can make food!  Out of dirt!”

Joe ignored the
child and poked the minder again.  “Don’t.” 
Poke.
  “Do it again.”

The minder
sniffed and unconcernedly scratched his face, still meeting Joe’s eyes.

Realizing they
were going to have to have further discussion on the matter later on, Joe
turned to the girl.  “What do you mean, food?”  Even then, his stomach
complained that he’d been on a ten mile hike without breakfast.  He’d thrown
the rancid meat away that morning, the stench, maggots, and slime-rot from
being encased inside his backpack finally becoming too pungent to carry with
him safely.  He hadn’t been looking forward to the idea of breaking into his
surviving Human MREs, because once they were gone, he was looking at songbirds
or rodents for his dinner, if he could catch them at all.

“Food!” she
cried delightedly.  “Out of
dirt
!”

After having
Shael throw him through a wall and Twelve-A dig through his mind, Joe had the
heart-hammering feeling the child’s meaning was literal.  And, in the days
following Judgement, he’d been forced to come to terms with the fact that,
sooner or later, he was going to starve.  Already, he was seeing his muscle
mass from the Congie drugs start to wane, and he was alarmingly weaker with
every week that passed without a reliable source of protein.  Food, when he
could find it, was scarce.

“What’s the
hatchling saying?” Shael demanded.

Joe gave the
telepath a sideways look.  Reluctantly, he said, “She says they have food.”

We do,
Twelve-A agreed, nodding.  The minder crossed his arms over his chest and
raised a brow.

And, in that
moment, Joe realized he was being offered a trade.

Shael perked up
slightly.  She had been just as disappointed as Joe that morning, when they’d
found their breakfast wriggling and smelling of Dhasha flake.  “Food?”

Seeing that she
now had Joe’s attention, the little girl hurriedly turned back to the other
naked experiments.  “Just watch!” Alice said excitedly, grabbing a petite,
well-proportioned young woman by the hand.  Joe watched with growing
trepidation as Alice brought the woman’s palm to the ground and held it there. 
Enthusiastically, she said, “Make cookies, Eleven-C.  Coook-ees.”

A tiny frown
creased the brunette’s brow, then the ground underneath her palm began to
shimmer and change, making Joe’s already-unsettled stomach lurch.  As he
watched, the rotting foliage and dark earth shifted into round, tan discs,
speckled with black.  Joe didn’t realize he was backing away until he fell over
the kreenit’s tail.

When he righted
himself, Alice was chewing on a chocolate-chip cookie, grinning.  Several other
experiments had congregated on the pit the woman had created and were even then
gorging themselves, stuffing cookies into their mouths as quickly as they could
fit them in.  Alice giggled when Joe just stared at her.

“
Told
you,” she said.

“That doesn’t
look like food,” Shael said, distaste on her face.  Obviously, she expected it
to be bleeding.  Or, better yet, fighting back.

But Joe was
staring at the cookies.  For the first time since Command had decided to give
him a Human Corps Directorship, he was dumbstruck. 

Food.  They made
food
.  He felt himself staring at the pit like a teenager getting his
first view of live ass, his mind awash in possibilities.  If they could make
food, they could make combat gear, antibiotics, weapons…

We will not
be making weapons,
Twelve-A interrupted firmly.

Joe brushed off
that warning irritatedly, distracted by the awesome wave of possibilities.  Of
course they would make weapons.  If they were going to survive the kreenit, the
gangs, and the Congies that came to kill them, they would make weapons.  Joe
looked at the dozens of childlike sootlings, wondering how many could pull the
neat dirt-to-cookie trick.  He’d have to start teaching them to make things
like knives, guns, ammo…

A split second
later, the mountain of Twelve-A’s mind was once more squeezing Joe in its
granite grasp, the warning clear. 
No.  Weapons.
 

“Fine!” Joe
snapped, “Let go of me, furg!”

Again, Twelve-A
released him, though this time, there was greater hesitation. 
No weapons,
Twelve-A insisted.

Joe ignored
him.  Half of him—the rational half—was screaming at him that joining a merry
band of naked ashers with skull-popping mental powers was a
bad
idea,
but the other half was transfixed by the cookies in Alice’s hand.  He had, he
realized with a bit of concern, already subconsciously decided to stay,
mind-games be damned.  If Eleven-C could turn dirt into cookies, she could turn
stone into ruvmestin, trees into alloys, or grass into complicated
electronics.  They could rebuild
everything
, and the key to it all was
squatting right there beside the pit she’d made, picking the chocolate chips
from her cookies before she ate them.  And, seeing the innocent, childlike
faces of the others, Joe knew the only thing stopping him from changing
everything
was the telepath.

Joe glanced
surreptitiously at Twelve-A, wondering if he could be convinced to aid his
cause, then froze.  The telepath was watching him with narrowed eyes.

Joe cleared his
throat.  To the girl, he offered, “So, uh, what else can she make?”

“Nothing,” Alice
said.  “Twelve-A tells me to tell you she can make nothing but cookies.”

Joe scoffed. 
“Right.”  To Twelve-A, he said, “We could
rebuild
.”

There was
nothing good about the Keepers,
Twelve-A replied. 
We don’t want to be
like them.

Joe snorted at
the ridiculousness of the idea.  “So you’re gonna, what…run around
naked
chasing
bugs
the rest of your lives?”

There is
nothing wrong with chasing bugs,
Twelve-A told him.  Which meant, yes, that
was exactly what they planned to do.

“But we could
have so much
more
,” Joe growled.  “When Congress comes back, we could
fight
…”

Twelve-A
frowned. 
I told you.  We’re not going to fight.

Joe was going to
continue arguing his case, but Nine-G cut him off short when the big man walked
over to Joe, took Joe by the shoulders with two ham-sized fists, and leaned
down to frown into his face.  Then, to Joe’s surprise, Nine-G started tugging
on the front of Joe’s jacket, prying it open so he could see inside.

“He’s trying to
make sure you’re Human,” Alice informed him.  She grimaced.  “They don’t
believe you’re Human unless you take your clothes off for them.  They’re really
weird.”

Joe, who had
gone stiff as the giant manhandled him, sagged with relief.  He unzipped his
jacket and pulled his sweater over his head, exposing his chest to the cool
mountain breezes.

The huge man’s
face immediately beamed with pleasure upon seeing Joe’s skin.  Looking fascinated,
Nine-G picked up the discarded jacket and started peeking into the arm-holes. 
Another of his naked buddies came up and fiddled with the zipper.  They looked
and acted very much like curious children.  Only Twelve-A continued to frown at
him.

Joe swallowed
and managed a smile at the telepath.  Thinking to distract the distrustful
bastard with a shiny new toy while he figured out how to take control of the
group, Joe dug into his backpack and brought out the binoculars.  “Here,” he
said, taking three tentative steps around the people who were now ignoring him
to examine the jacket.  “Check these out.  You’ll like them.”  He held the
binoculars up to Twelve-A, but the platinum-blond man continued to scowl at
him.

We’re not
going to fight,
Twelve-A told him again. 
That is not our war.

Joe knew that
the minder’s perspective would change once he realized that, as experimental
Humans with a kill-on-sight order attached to their DNA, it
was
their
war.  Still, he had plenty of time to convince him of such.  Besides, if he
could get the furgs to
trust
him, maybe get them to start using those
convenient little technologies they were snubbing…  “Go on.  Try them out,” Joe
insisted, pressing his binoculars against Twelve-A’s chest.  The slender man
jerked at the contact and grabbed the binoculars reflexively, taking two steps
back and making no move to even look at the thing he now held in his hand.

Alice, who had
been watching the exchange, took the binoculars from Twelve-A and pulled on his
arm.  “Here, you look through them like this.”  She held them up and looked
down the mountain.

Twelve-A took
the binoculars and held them up to his face without taking his eyes off of Joe.

“No, no, silly!”
Alice cried, tugging on Twelve-A’s arm again.  “They’re to see stuff that’s far
away.  Look over there.”  She twisted Twelve-A around and pointed him down the
mountainside.

Joe had the
quick thought that maybe he should get rid of the suspicious son of a bitch
while his back was turned.

Instantly, he
knew it was the wrong thing to think.  Twelve-A jerked back to face him, his
brow furrowed until he looked downright Neanderthalic.  He threw the binoculars
aside, and Joe winced as he heard glass break.