Zero's Return (85 page)

Before she did anything,
though, she was going to get him to tell her everything he knew about the
experiments he had discovered.  He supposedly had a photographic memory, so he
should be able to provide her with some maps, or at least some physical
coordinates.  It was the best lead she could have hoped for.  Now she just had
to figure out a way to win a burning staring contest against a Dobbs.

#

When the Congie strode
into his camp at noon on the third day, Slade had to do a double-take because
she wasn’t dressed.  In anything.  At all.

As in, not a stitch in
sight.  She wasn’t even wearing boots.

Slade quickly discovered
that the weird sphere-of-influence aphrodisiac wasn’t clinging to her clothes. 
Reddening at the sudden heat in his groin, all he could think to say was,
“You’re naked.”

She grinned at him.  “You
noticed.”  She walked over and leaned against a tree.  “You ready to do this
thing?”

Slade sputtered.  “You’re
naked
.”

“Yeah.  And?”

That just wasn’t…fair. 
Because he thought of it first.  And dismissed the idea because it would give
her the advantage.

Slade found himself with
the sinking feeling he was right smack in the middle of another stragedy
unfolding before his very eyes.  He swallowed hard.  “Uh.  Maybe you should put
some clothes on.  There’s mosquitoes.”

“Bugs don’t bother me,”
she said, eying him flatly.  “You ready for this, slave?”

Slade blinked at the
sudden rush of excitement he got from the challenge.  “You’re seriously going
to ka-par me naked.”

“Yep.”  She smiled at
him.  “Why?  Does it make you uncomfortable?”

Yes.  Very.
  Slade
was pretty sure the seam of his crotch was about to explode.  “No, not at all. 
There’s nothing wrong with the human body.”  He allowed himself a slow, languid
look, then winced as the heat in his groin tried to set his pants on fire. 
What the hell was
wrong
with him?  He alternately felt his face flush
when he thought about how disconcerting it was going to be to stare down
breasts
,
then pale when he realized what she was going to do with him if he lost, then
flush again when he realized he might like it.  She watched the whole thing
with her arms crossed over her perfect boobs, a smirk on her face.

“Having second thoughts?”
she asked.

“Oh screw you, lady,”
Slade said.  He started tugging off his own shirt, then his pants, then threw
his underwear and boots aside.  She raised both eyebrows as he did so,
obviously impressed.

Yeah, take
that
,
Slade thought, giving her a good look.

“You know,” she said,
“they’re smaller than they looked in your pants.  Do you stuff?”

Slade flushed furiously. 
“No.”

“Really.”  She gave him a
flat look and raised a brow.

“Ka-par,” Slade blurted. 
“You’re not supposed to talk in ka-par.”

“Have we started, then?”
she asked, honey-smooth.  She pushed herself off the tree and strode over to
him.  Looking up into his eyes, she said, “Or do you need a few more minutes of
freedom?”

Slade’s mouth just fell
open and he didn’t know what to say.  It was like all the blood in his brain,
after going unused for so long, suddenly took up residence in his cock, and all
he could think about was grabbing her by the hair at the nape of her neck,
tilting her head back, and kissing her until she kneed him in the crotch to
relieve him of the problem.

“You’re…”  He swallowed
hard.  “Annoying.”

“‘Mistress’ has a good
ring to it, don’t you think?” she asked, peering up at him pleasantly.

It did, at that.

Then Slade realized what
he’d just thought and he froze, his eyes widening.

The Congie had totally
just psyched him completely out, shaken him so badly he had already tipped his
mental hat.  Before the game even started. 
I’m going to lose,
he
realized. 

The thought was so
utterly startling—and foreign—to him that, upon having it, Slade bolted.

He was actually pretty
pleased with himself for outdistancing a Congie—and was most of the way back to
camp—when something grabbed his arm, spun him, knocked his feet out from under
him, and threw him violently to the ground in a sprawl of dirt, twigs, and
painful abrasions.

“No!” Slade shrieked,
kicking at her.  “Goddamn it!  Ka-par didn’t start!  It didn’t start!”

 In an instant, the
Congie had his arm twisted behind his back and had her knee squarely lodged in
his spine.  “You ran,” she panted, “from ka-par.  That makes you
mine
.”

“I’m sorry, fuck,
fuck
!”
Slade screamed as his arm started to dislocate from the upwards pressure she
was putting on it.

“You run again,” she
said, twisting it in warning.  “I win.”

“Ow ow ow ow,” Slade
babbled.

“
Okay
?” she
demanded.  “You
get
me, you criminal itch?”

“I get you!” Slade
cried.  “Yes!”

“Then m
ahid
ka-par
,” she growled into his ear.  “Let’s do this thing.”

She let him up, putting
herself between him and the Harmonious Society of God, muscular arms crossed,
callused fingers tapping biceps that put Slade’s thighs to shame.  Warily,
Slade crawled to his feet and backed away, swallowing.

“Backing away,” she said
calmly, “is losing.”

Slade swallowed and
stopped.  Very carefully, he began brushing dirt and pine-needles from his
stomach and knees, trying to stragedize out how he was going to get out of this
particular cluster.  He was pretty sure that if he yelled loud enough, Tyson
would hear him.  Whether he would come to
help
him, however, was another
matter altogether.

“Delaying,” she said,
staring at him like a cat with a mouse, “is losing.”

Slade felt a rush of
adrenaline arc through his veins.  He reluctantly lifted his eyes to meet her
cold gray-green stare and felt another rush of panic.  Somehow, he forced
himself to straighten and return her ka-par, his heart hammering painfully in
his chest.  As he met her eyes, though, he suddenly remembered a
fortune-teller’s tent, over eighty years ago, with enough force it almost
knocked him over.

“Your soul mate’s name is Leila.  You will
ensnare her with a pack of gum, then drag her home by her hair, much to your
chagrin.  You will meet her in your attempt to take over the world, and once
you find her, you will stop at nothing to obtain her.”

“Ka-par?” she asked, her
gaze utterly cold.

Slade’s heart was
pounding painfully against his ribs, the sound blocking out everything else. 
He’d made himself impotent.  The dog had died.  Joe had fought aliens.  “Is
your real name Leila?”

She twitched, but it was
enough.  Slade was caught between a sudden rush of joy and absolute terror. 

“Are you going to ka-par?”
she demanded again.

“I want Tuesdays,” Slade
blurted.

Her brow tightened in a
small frown.  “Excuse me?”

“Tuesdays,” Slade said. 
“I want them.”

“What is that?” the
Congie asked, her frown deepening.  “And I said delaying is losing.”

“I’m not delaying,” Slade
said.  “You win.  I surrender.  You get Wednesdays through Mondays.”

She squinted at him
suspiciously.  “What are those?”

He thought she was being
coy, then realized, as a Congie from the very first Draft, she probably hadn’t
had to use them in over seventy turns.  “Days of the week,” Slade said
quickly.  “There are seven on Earth.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.  You get six.  I want one.  Tuesdays.”

The Congie squinted at
him.  “What day is today?”

Slade grinned back at
her.  “Tuesday.”

He saw the faint ghost of
a smile twitch across her face.  “You’re surrendering…but
I
have to go
first?”

“Damn straight,” Slade
said.

Any normal woman in the
world would have told him to get lost, kicked him in the face, and then proceeded
to fit him with a thong.  Instead, the Congie just eyed him over her crossed
arms, a little quirk of interest on her lips.  “One day out of seven?”

“Sounds good to me,”
Slade said.

“Starting now.”

“Starting right now,”
Slade agreed.

For eons, she just stood
there, watching him.  Then, giving him an unreadable look, she inclined her
head.  “Then, by the rules of ka-par, Samuel Dobbs, I accept your surrender.”

Slade gave her a nervous
look.  “Then I can do anything I want?”

She continued to watch
him over her crossed arms.  “Is it Tuesday?”

Looking at her, Slade
licked his lips.  His heart was pounding like a jackhammer in his chest.  He
was finding it hard to breathe.  “You won’t kick me?” he asked finally.

Her look was totally
unreadable.  “Is it Tuesday?”

Meaning, of course, that
on Wednesday, he was going to get obliterated.

Slade swallowed again,
hard. 
God hates a coward,
he thought.  Then he took two steps forward,
grabbed the Congie by the hair, wrenched her startled head back, and kissed
her.

CHAPTER 28 - Tuesday

Slade walked back to camp
trailing his docile Congie with a rope around her neck, her gun slung over his
shoulder.  It made every single member of his flock stop what they were doing
and stare.  No doubt, they had heard about his intent to subdue the
Congressional soldier, and no doubt, most of them had expected him to die
horribly.

Especially his Second.

“Hey Tyson,” Slade said,
saluting with his survival manual.  He walked over, the Congie’s rope knotted
loosely around his belt, then sat down beside his second at the fire.  Rat
seated herself calmly on a nearby log and started trimming her nails with her
wicked alien combat knife.

Tyson just stared at her,
then at Slade.  The grass popped from his open mouth.  “But…how did you…?”

“Snare,” Slade said.

“You did that with a
snare
?!”
Tyson cried.  Then when Rat raised a brow at him, he belatedly said, “No
offense, lady.”  He lowered his voice.  “You did that with a
snare
?”

“Told ya it would work,”
Slade said.

“Don’t bullshit me,”
Tyson snapped.

“Snare,” Slade said,
grabbing a hunk of bread.  He offered it to Rat, who paused in trimming her
nails to take the bread and stuff it in her mouth.  Then she went back to
running her monomolecular knife across her fingertips.

Tyson peered at him for
several moments, then turned to Rat.  “He caught you with a
snare
?”

“Yep,” she said.  Slade
could have kissed her.  Again.  But the last time he’d kissed her had lasted
several hours, and he was pretty sure his flock would pull up chairs to watch. 
And there was something about this woman he wanted to keep…special.  Secret. 
Between them.

Tyson glanced at her
combat knife.  Then he glanced at the rope running from her neck to Slade’s
back pocket.  Then he looked at her face.  “Why isn’t he dead?”

“It’s Tuesday,” she
said.  She stopped cutting at her nails and blew on them.  Catching Slade’s
gaze, she smiled evilly.  And…blushed?

“So,” Slade said, around
his own hunk of bread.  “What did I miss?”

Tyson slowly tore his
eyes from the Congie and back to Slade, but it was still a long time before he
shook himself and spoke.  “There’s a group that’s following us.  Big. 
Well-armed.  They picked off a couple of guards in the night and ate them.  Jeb
and I went looking for them this morning and found them picking off the bones. 
We’re talking a
big
camp, Slade.  Bigger than ours.”

Slade’s heart gave a
startled thump.  At last count, they were at seven hundred and forty-two
members of the Harmonious Society of God.  He’d come to think of them as having
enough numbers to be invincible.  “Well,” he said, “that’s not good.”

“Want me to kill them?”
Rat asked, calmly examining her nails.

“Yes,” Tyson said, at the
same time Slade said, “No.”

At Tyson’s funny look,
Slade said, “Plasma wastes meat.”

Rat immediately made a sound
of disgust.  “I’m not eating people.”

“We’ll find you something
else, pussycat,” Slade said distractedly. 

He could feel her glaring
at him.  “Wednesday is coming,” she said.

“And I’m looking forward
to it,” Slade said.  He winked at her.

In reply, the Congie
grunted, picked up her rifle where Slade had left it leaning against the log,
and started checking it for dust.

Tyson watched the
exchange with undisguised curiosity, then his eyes flickered over Slade’s
shoulder to glance out over the grassy hills beyond their stand of pines. 
Instantly, his face dropped.  “Oh shit.”

Slade turned to look
behind them just in time to see a man stumbling towards them up the hill.  He
vaguely recognized him as Klyde Masons, a priest of the Back Order, who guarded
their rear, as opposed to a priest of the Front Order, who wandered ahead and
combed the terrain in advance of the group, seeking followers and supplies.

The man was weaving
drunkenly and had a big energy burn across the front of his chest, a glancing
blow that had vaporized most of his shirt.

Behind and beside him,
Slade felt Rat and Tyson get up and ready their guns. 
God
it was good
to have decent bodyguards.  Slade stood with them, and gave the approaching,
burned man his best disapproving scowl.

“Attackers, Great
Leader!” Klyde gasped.  He doubled over, panting, holding his burned chest.

Beside him, he saw Rat
raise a brow.  “‘Great Leader’?”

“It’s just a formality,”
Slade said dismissively.  “How many?” he demanded of the man.