Zero's Return (64 page)

They had tied the big man
to a big pine tree in a bear-hug—and then had beaten him unconscious.  Or
dead.  Even then, his massive bruised face lolled on his massive shoulder, a
thin stream of blood leaking down his massive back to a massive puddle on the
ground under a massive butt cheek.

Unconscious, then.  Dead
men didn’t have the internal pressure to force blood through their nose when
sitting upright.  Even dead men the size of a female Hebbut.

It took almost an hour of
frustrated maneuvering before Joe could get across the camp to the rifle, and
all the while, the People continued to sob and whimper around him.   All of
them had been bloodied or beaten somehow, some so badly they were unconscious. 
Eleven-C and Alice were gone. 
Soot,
Joe thought. 
Soot, soot. 
“You
believe me now, furg?!” he shouted at Twelve-A.

The minder continued to
stare at the ground in silence.

Frustrated that he hadn’t
been allowed to prevent the whole affair with a couple well-placed plasma
rounds, Joe strained onto his side, twisting one of his shoulders almost out of
socket to get the right leverage to pry the rifle from its hiding place with
his fingers.  Getting a good look at his weapon of choice, however, Joe had second
thoughts about using it to try to slice away his bonds.

“Any chance you could
wake up the Hebbut over there?” Joe shouted at the minder.  “I need someone to
untie me.”

If Twelve-A heard him or
cared, he said nothing. 

“Shael!” Joe shouted,
riding a surge of panic at the lack of response.  “A little help, here?”

Shael did not respond,
either.  A few rods off, she appeared to be asleep.  Or dead.  Joe’s chest
tightened in worry that she might be dead.  The furg was actually somewhat
loveable, in her own little way.

“Twelve-A, is Shael
okay?” he asked.

The minder continued to
stare blindly off into space, but he made an odd, strangled sound that eased
Joe’s fears that he was dead.  Joe felt his heartbeat quickening, though this
time, it was with a rush of anger.  Not at the Twelve-A and his naïve, naked
furglings, but at the honorless bastards who would hurt the People and take an
ovi that didn’t belong to them.  Even the Dhasha, who hated Jreet, left a
warrior’s ovi where it lay.  That would have been handy.  Then Joe’s eyes
caught on the wood-chips he had left from his carving attempt the night before
and he winced.

A warrior who uses his
ovi to hack at rocks welcomes fortune around every corner.
  Another
annoying Jreet saying.  One that basically meant the unlovable Jreet Sisters
frowned on profaning a sacred object like an ovi with anything but blood, and
they delighted in chronically screwing up the lives of those who did.  Seeing
the utter Takkiscrew around him, Joe made a note.

“All right,” Joe growled,
taking another good look at the laser rifle.  He was pretty sure if he propped
the gun against his side, twisted, and used his tongue, he could trigger the
rifle with his face while cutting off the ropes—or his arm—with the other end. 

Pretty sure…and
definitely not ready to try it.

Looking at the
unconscious Nine-G, however, watching the minder stare at the dirt under his
face, totally unseeing, Joe realized he really didn’t have a choice.

“You better not cut off
anything important,” Joe told the rifle.  Unlike Jane, the rifle did not
reply. 

Long minutes passed. 
Looking at the cold, black, un-intelligent Congie alloys, Joe swallowed.  This
far from Congressional med-halls, he
really
did not want to cut off
something important.  At least Jane would have warned him if he were about to
do something stupid.  Which he was.

And yet, every moment he
wasted, his quarry was getting away with his bride.  After he hunted them down,
Joe decided he was definitely going to have to have a chat with Jane about her
recent elopement.  The fact that she was Ueshi-made, not Huouyt-made, should
have given her a little more self-respect in that department.

“Aw, burn it,” Joe
muttered, once he’d been staring at the gun for several minutes and the Space
Force still hadn’t arrived with reinforcements.  “God hates a coward.”  Using a
combination of leverage, spine-twisting contortions, and pure dumb luck, Joe
managed to get the rifle barrel to slide down the tree and slap against his
hands on its fall to the ground.  With further contortions—while carefully
keeping the rifle barrel trapped between his fingers—Joe managed to maneuver
his face up against the tree trunk where the butt of the rifle was wedged.

He propped the gun into a
position so that the lens was carefully poised over the ropes between his hands
and feet, checked to make sure he wasn’t about to slice off an important body
part, double-checked, then depressed the trigger with his tongue.

At the last second, the
rifle slipped another fraction of an inch down the tree.

The bubbling hiss of a
beam hitting flesh sounded just before Joe became aware of a sudden burning in
his right calf—and the ropes holding his hands and feet together falling away.

“
Soot!
” Joe
cursed, as the wound along his calf continued to boil.  “Ashing thing!  Soot!
 
Soot!
”  He flopped away from the gun and sat up to check the damage.

It had been the
energy-resistant pants that had saved him.  While not able to stop a head-on
shot, it had negated enough of the beam that he’d been left with just a graze,
cauterized and no more than an eighth of an inch deep, but even then, it was
starting to throb and pound with adrenaline-producing intensity.

“Well, that was ashing
brilliant, furg,” Joe muttered.  He roughly twisted his arms in their bonds and
yanked his legs through his wrists, bringing his hands in front of him. 
Immediately, lest their recent visitors decide that no, it
wasn’t
a good
idea to leave a mind-reading furg and his Congie Sentinel alive after pounding
their friends to a pulp, Joe started yanking the ropes loose with his teeth.

It helped that the furgs
tying him up didn’t know what they were doing.  Hands free in practiced
seconds, he went to work on the purple knots around his ankles, again tied
loosely and inexpertly.  Freed, Joe scooped up the rifle as he lunged to his
feet.  Thinking Twelve-A could use a few more minutes to stew, he started
untying the other People first.  Still concerned they might have hit the petite
woman a little too hard, he started with Shael.

Shael, apparently, had been
sleeping, because she jerked with a scream when he touched her.

“It’s me!” Joe told her,
tugging on the ropes binding her wrists to her ankles.  “Hold on.  I’m getting
you out of there.”

Shael, who had started
panting with terror, narrowed her brilliant green eyes when she recognized
him.  “The minder is a furg.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m not
going to argue with you about that.”  Joe finished untying her and threw the
ropes aside.

“A
furg
,” Shael
snarled at Twelve-A, getting to her knees and rubbing her bloodied wrists as
she glared over at the minder.  She was bruised heavily along her sides and
chest, and her face was a mass of purple and swelling.  “You are lucky the
vaghi didn’t
kill
us!” she shouted, hurling the discarded ropes at the
telepath. 

Over in the grass on his
chest, Twelve-A turned his head slightly away in silence, flinching when the
ropes hit him.

Feeling more than a bit
smug, Joe went over and started untying Nine-G from where they’d wrapped him
around the pine tree.

“Will he live?” Shael asked,
coming to stand beside Joe with an anxious look.  She, too, had made no haste
to untie the minder.

“Dunno yet.  Gimme a
minute.”  Joe finished pulling the ropes free—they’d tied him down
good
—and
then eased the huge man backwards to the bloody grass beneath him.

Nine-G was still
unconscious, a head-wound collecting flies, but his eyelids were fluttering
with life.  His head lolled to one side, his chest and torso revealing a
profusion of bruises that hadn’t been apparent a moment before.  Surprisingly,
his breathing was deep and steady.

He must’ve put up a
good fight,
Joe thought, somewhat irritated there weren’t any crushed vaghi
bodies to show for it. 

Only after he’d untied
all
the others did Joe limp over to stand beside the bloody hat.  Twelve-A, hogtied
like a feast-day Takki, continued to stare directly at the ground, not even
acknowledging him.

Lifting the
crimson-stained brim of the crude straw hat with a toe, Joe gave the telepath a
hard look.  “So.  You learn your lesson about feeding strangers, furgling?”  He
flicked the ruined hat aside, and the broken thing flopped wetly in the grass
beside the burnt-out fire.

Twelve-A continued to
ignore him, not even bothering to lift his eyes from the blood beneath his
chin.

Joe grunted.  Like
Nine-G, the minder’s naked body was covered head-to-toe in ugly black bruises,
but even more so than the mover.  A bloody club lay nearby, still carrying a
few blond hairs, obviously having been used to do the deed.  Judging by the
extent of the damage, Joe was probably actually lucky the pointy-eared furg was
breathing.

Still.  If the
pointy-eared furg had
listened
to him, he wouldn’t be bleeding on the
ground right now.  Joe thought it was an excellent wake-up call, one that he
would have expected a
mind-reader
to have had a hell of a lot earlier
than this.

“So they gave you a good
beating,” Joe said, nudging the minder with his foot when Twelve-A still
refused to look at him.  “I’ve had my share.  It’s not so bad.”

The telepath continued to
shiver and stare at the ground, not lifting his head.

Sighing, Joe dropped to
one knee beside Twelve-A.  Reaching for the purple ropes securing the minder’s
legs to his arms, he said, “You and I are going to have to have a chat about
the nature of Man, and how I’m a hell of a lot older than you and I understand
people a hell of a lot better than you do, and how sometimes you should just
burnin’ listen to me.”  When he started untying Twelve-A’s wrists, the telepath
abruptly looked to the side, hiding his face from Joe.  He still hadn’t met
Joe’s eyes.

Then, as Joe untied him,
Twelve-A let his limbs fall lifelessly to the ground.  He didn’t even try to
move them or sit up.  It was when Joe thought he heard the pitiful sounds of
Twelve-A quietly sobbing that he finally snorted on a welling of irritation.

“Oh
come on
,” Joe
snapped.  “This was
your fault
, furg.  I
warned
you.  Don’t you
dare
try and wallow in self-pity.  Sit up and accept responsibility.  You were a
naïve furg.  Just say it.”

Twelve-A twisted to give
him a wretched look, then, and Joe froze when he saw the huge black
ABOMINASHUN
someone had scrawled across the minder’s forehead in charcoal.  Joe saw that
the telepath’s blue eyes, bloodshot in his bruised and swollen face, were
rimmed with tears. 

I was a naïve furg
,
Twelve-A said softly, once more turning to stare at the ground, hopelessness
like a shroud around him.  Joe had the odd feeling he was looking at someone
who no longer wanted to live.

Though that had been his
intent—to get Twelve-A to realize that Humankind was, at its base nature,
cruel, hurtful, and unkind—Joe suddenly felt a horrible sense of regret, a wish
he could take it back.  He gingerly reached out to touch the experiment’s
shoulder.  “Hey, that’s not what I meant.”

Twelve-A twisted back to
face him, his eyes hard.  The
ABOMINASHUN
stood out like a brand across
his head. 
Yes it is.  You wanted me to see the cruelty of people.  You
wanted me to see the hate and the violence and the sickness.  You wanted to
prove to me that people are twisted, evil, and rotten inside, Joe.
 
Twelve-A made a wry sound of despair in his throat, one of the only physical
sounds Joe had ever heard him make.
  Like I could somehow be blind to it. 
Like I’m not already
drowning
in it!

Joe swallowed hard,
taking aback by his friend’s vehemence.  Even then, the minder’s emotions were
sweeping him away from himself, dragging Joe into their inky, despondent depths
like a beetle riding an ocean tide.  “Uh…”

But Twelve-A was sitting
up, now, angry. 
I
know
people are cruel, Joe.  I see
everything
they do, everything they
think
, everything they
say
…  I see every
aspect
of them, Joe.  There’s nothing that
anyone
can hide from
me.  I see it
all
.  Of
course
I see their sickness, Joe.  I’m
trying to
reverse
it.

Joe swallowed, stunned by
the fierceness in the minder’s face.  It was the first time Twelve-A had shown
passion over anything, and it felt ominous.  Dangerous.

You want to know how
much
of that sickness I feel, Joe?
Twelve-A demanded through more tears, his
mental voice breaking. 
You want to know what kinds of horrible things I
see, with every wretched moment of every breath on this despicable rock? 
Here.  I’ll show you.

And with that, suddenly
Joe felt a thousand victims, crying as their survival supplies were stolen,
their loved ones raped or killed, their bodies left to desiccate in the wind. 
He heard the dispassionate snickers of a thousand murderers and thieves.  He
felt the loneliness, the struggles, the pain.  He felt the anger, the rage, the
hatred, the fear, the terror, the misery.  He felt it all, and it assaulted him
from all sides, tainting him, tearing at his soul, trying to rip him to pieces.

Twelve-A wrenched the
agony away as quickly as he’d shown it to him.  That
is what I see, Joe,
the telepath said softly. 
I see it every day.  All the time.  It’s always
there, on all sides, trying to work its way into my mind, crack my core, and
eat me alive.  You know why I weave grass hats and play with butterflies, Joe?