Xenopath - [Bengal Station 02]

by Eric Brown

  The man walked back and forth, away from the ghost train, then towards it, then away again.

  Abdul leaned towards Pham and whispered into her ear, “When he turns and walks away again, follow me, ah-cha? Down the side alley there’s a toilet block. In the floor is a hatch—it leads to the level below this one.”

  “Ah-cha,” Pham replied, her eyes on the man. He was walking towards them. She felt Abdul tense beside her as the man arrived at the ghost train, paused and turned.

  Quickly, so quick that Pham was left behind, Abdul ran from the mouth of the ghost train, jumped down the steps and turned left and out of sight. Startled, Pham made to follow him—then stopped.

  The man hadn’t walked as far away this time. He turned and walked back towards where Pham was cowering. Okay, so when he turned away again, then she would jump down and follow her new friend.

  Except, this time when the man arrived at the ghost train, he turned and stood right at the bottom of the steps, so that there was no way for Pham to get past him.

  Surely he wouldn’t stand there forever?

  From time to time he looked at his watch. Maybe he was meeting someone, and when they arrived they would leave and let Pham escape.

  A minute later the man looked up, across the concourse, and started walking away from the ghost train. Perhaps he’d seen the person he was due to meet?

  What happened next was so sudden and horrific that Pham didn’t have time to scream. It was so much more frightening than anything she had experienced in the ghost train that it made her blood turn cold and sent her rigid with shock.

  A blinding blue light shot across the concourse and hit the man in the chest. The light wavered a little, which was enough for it to carve its way through the man’s torso, cutting off his arms and his head. He seemed to fall apart in slow motion as Pham watched, and then something happened which she could not explain at the time, and which changed her life forever.

  A fraction of a second after the laser sliced the man into pieces, a white light seemed to bounce from his head and streak towards Pham. Before she could move, it hit her full in the face, knocking her backwards. She cried out and scrambled to her feet, feeling her face with her fingers. She expected to touch burned flesh, but oddly her face seemed okay.

  Had the laser bounced off the man and hit her, weakened, so that it hadn’t sliced her up?

  She realised then that there was a killer out there, and she knew she had to get away. She quickly jumped from the open mouth, tapped down the steps, and raced along the alley between the attractions. Ahead she saw the toilet block that Abdul had told her about. She hauled open the door and dived inside. Thankfully Abdul had left the hatch in the floor propped open. She was about to squirm through it, hopefully into Abdul’s arms, when something exploded behind her and a laser shafted through the door above her head and drilled a neat hole through the far wall.

  So the killer had seen her escaping, and was chasing her...

  She dived through the hatch and hauled it shut after her. She found herself in a narrow shaft and scrambled down the rungs of a ladder.

  Seconds later she emerged onto a lighted catwalk high above a busy tunnel on the second level. Above her, she heard the hatch scrape open, then the sound of boots on metal rungs.

  She fled. Further along the catwalk was a ladder that descended to the corridor. She reached it in seconds, slid down the ladder and slipped into the crowd. She squirmed through the bodies, pausing only once to look over her shoulder at the catwalk. She made out the bulky figure of man in a technician’s overalls drop onto the catwalk and look up and down the length of the tunnel.

  Then she was on her way again, turning down corridor after corridor on a crazy zigzag course across Level Two. She wished that Abdul was with her, but at the same time she was proud that she had managed to escape all by herself.

  Perhaps half an hour later she came to a big park surrounded by tall trees. She looked at her map-book and found to her delight and surprise that this was Ketsuwan Park.

  She bought a plate of masala and pakora from a kiosk just inside the western gate of the park, then found a bench and sat down and ate. She was famished, and minutes later she had wolfed down the meal and was considering what had happened in the amusement park.

  She hugged her bare legs and stared across the grass. The lighting was low here, to simulate the darkness outside. She could see street-kids huddling in the bushes all around, and sleeping on the park benches.

  She pulled her blanket from her backpack and arranged it on the bench, then lay down and stared up into the amazingly complex arrangement of a tree’s branches high overhead.

  She had seen someone murdered. One second they had been alive, and the next someone had killed him. Then the killer must have seen her jump down and run, and maybe the killer thought that she’d seen him, and decided that she must die too.

  But the white light that had hit her in the face?

  She fingered her snub nose and high cheekbones and her forehead under her fringe. They felt fine, no burns or cuts or anything.

  She had a headache, but that might have been from all the excitement of the past hour.

  She snuggled down into the blanket and closed her eyes. She thought about Abdul, and wished he was still with her.

  Minutes later she heard a voice in her head.

  Pham, it said, do not be frightened. I can help you.

  * * * *

  THREE

  THE CUT

  Vaughan awoke to dazzling sunlight and sat up, hospital linen cool to his touch. The last time he’d come awake to the warmth of the rising sun... It’d been two years ago, again in hospital, just after Osborne had tried to kill him and Sukara had saved his life.

  Only then did he open his eyes fully and make out Sukara, sitting beside the bed, her outline dark against the sun’s glare. She was gripping his hand.

  “Su,” he whispered.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Great. Tired.” He’d had the operation, then? To say he’d undergone intrusive brain surgery, he felt well. Not even a headache. He reached up, felt around the base of his skull. He could feel the bulge of the implant beneath his skin.

  He was implanted. He was telepathic again. But the world was mind-silent.

  Sukara leaned forward and kissed him.

  He lost consciousness and slept.

  The next time he woke, a doctor or technician was tinkering with his handset, presumably reprogramming it in order to control the function of his occipital implant.

  He closed his eyes and dozed.

  Then Kapinsky was in the room with him. This time, the tiredness had gone; he felt bright, alert. He sat up.

  “How long—?”

  “You had the cut yesterday,” Kapinsky said. “Everything went well. I had techs check the implant—it’s doing fine. Your handset’s been boosted.” She laid a pin in a case on his bedside table. “This’ll fill you in on your handset’s new functions.”

  He raised a hand to his head and felt stubble, then recalled that he’d been shaved before the cut.

  Kapinsky was standing beside the window, looking out over a sloping greensward. She turned and said, “You’re going home today. I’ll be in contact in the morning, fill you in on the cases we’ll be working on.”

  He nodded. “Great.”

  She smiled. “It’s good to have you on board, Jeff.”

  “Thanks.” He tried to work out how he felt about the new life that awaited him. He concentrated on how Su’s life would be changed for the better, and tried to disregard the thought of mind-reading again.

  Later that afternoon, Su waddled in, holding her bump and smiling. He was up and dressed and ready to leave.

  “Guess what, Jeff?” Her eyes were dancing with the delight of good news.

  “Surprise me.”

  “I’ve been doing some apartment hunting while you’ve been recovering. I’ve been given tours of some real palaces. You wouldn’t believe it.” />
  “Found anything?” He packed his bag, watching her. She was dressed in baggy maternity trousers and one of his old shirts.

  She beamed. “Two places lined up. Both west side, with sea views. One on Level Three, in Song Mah. Four rooms, five kay a month.”

  “Expensive.” He whistled. “But exclusive.”

  “The other’s on Level Two, Chittapuram.”

  “Which do you like better?”

  She rocked her head, lips pursed. “Maybe the Level Two. It’s cheaper, just four kay a month. Three big rooms like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, the kitchen alone is bigger than our old place.”

  “Lead the way,” he said.

  They left the hospital and dropped to Level Two, then took a short walk through wide, airy corridors towards Chittapuram. Sukara’s delightful excitement at their relocation dispelled his apprehension. She gripped his hand and chattered like a child.

  Five minutes later they reached the apartment.

  She proudly swiped the lock and swung open the door, almost dragging him inside. “Well, what do you think, Jeff?”

  The first thing that struck him was the cascade of sunlight that slanted in through the west-facing wall-to-ceiling viewscreen. He gazed around the lounge, open-mouthed. It was vast, perhaps ten metres long by five, plush cream carpet, sunken sofas, a holo-unit in the corner. The sheer view over the sea increased the apparent area of the room to agoraphobic-inducing proportions.

  She took his hand and tugged him into a bedroom perhaps half the size, and then a small bedroom. Both had en suite bathrooms. “This one is for Li,” Sukara pronounced.

  Finally she showed him the kitchen. “I’ll be able to create feasts here, Jeff. Just look at all the space!”

  They returned to the lounge. “What do you think?”

  “This is the one. I don’t even want to see the other.” He held her. “Well done.”

  She lodged her hands on the jut of her belly. “We’ll be happy here, won’t we?” she said, tears in her eyes.

  He kissed her forehead, where the scar began. “We’ll be ecstatic,” he said.

  For the next hour Su was on her handset, arranging the lease of the apartment and hiring a company to move their possessions from Level Ten. She had packed their few belongings yesterday, and they would be delivered first thing in the morning.

  Vaughan sat in a sunken sofa, staring out through the viewscreen. They were not far from the ‘port here—and close to Kapinsky’s office, too—and he found the sight of the voidships, coming and going like so many bees at a hive, reassuring. Below, a variety of boats from lowly fishing dhows to oceangoing hydrofoils cut feathered wakes across the blue expanse of the sea.

  While Sukara was still busy on her handset, he slipped a penknife from the pocket of his jacket, laid the jacket over his knees, and sliced at the lapel.

  He withdrew the silver oval of the mind-shield, turning it in his palm.

  Sukara finished and joined him.

  “What’s that?”

  “A present, from me to you.” He handed her the shield.

  “Great. It’s what I’ve always wanted. But what is it?”

  He told her.

  She stuck out her bottom lip and nodded, staring at the silver oval in her hand.

  After due consideration, she passed it back to him. “I don’t need it, Jeff. I’ve got no secrets from you. When I married you, I told you everything. The good and the bad. Everything. If you read my mind, then that’s fine by me.”

  He smiled at her, wondering if she were offended.

  He had never read Sukara, even when he had tele-ability two years ago. He’d picked up, when not scanning, the background miasma of her thoughts, and he knew from these that she was a good person.

  But the notion of invading her private thoughts now disturbed him. For all she said that she had no secrets, what she could not apprehend was that everyone, often unbeknown to themselves, harboured subconscious desires and longings, prejudices and petty jealousies, that no one should pry upon, not even loving husbands.

  His relationship with Sukara was damned near perfect. He feared reading things deep in her mind that might spoil that.

  He passed the shield back to her. “Su, the chances are that I’ll never read you—I can switch the implant off—but other telepaths might. For security reasons, you’d better keep it. If I told you about a case, and a rival telepath scanned you... See what I mean?”

  She nodded, then slipped the shield into her shirt pocket and looked around the lounge like a child on Christmas day.

  As the sun set over distant India in a blazing panoply of saffron banners, Sukara said she’d treat him to a takeaway. She’d scouted out a couple of interesting Rajastani restaurants in the area. She left the apartment promising to return with a feast.

  Vaughan sat in the silence of the lounge, watching the sun go down, then stood and approached the viewscreen.

  A narrow balcony ran the length of the apartment, which he had failed to notice earlier. It was accessible from the kitchen. He slid aside the glass partition and stepped out.

  The breeze was warm, spice laden. He stood and gripped the rail, listening to the muted roar of the arriving voidliners, the distant drift of sitar music.

  He examined his handset, then looked along the length of the balcony. He was perhaps ten metres from the neighbouring apartments—sufficiently distant not to pick up the thoughts of their inhabitants, if he were to activate his implant.

  He wondered what the background mind-noise might be like, when the implant was in operation.

  Tentatively, fearing the consequences but knowing that he would have to take the plunge sooner or later, he entered the start-up code.

  A familiar warmth surged through his head, followed by the even more familiar medley of a million minds. Familiar, he realised, but different, muted.

  Whereas his old implant would have amplified the emanations of surrounding minds to a clamouring white noise, this rig kept the noise at a manageable level, a background hum that he could tolerate.

  He experimented, probed. Two years ago, he had needed a drug called chora to make this mind-noise manageable at all times; now, even in scan mode, he could live with it.

  He concentrated, and it was as if the miasma of anonymous feelings and emotions that swirled around him was a piece of music, a symphony in which various individual thoughts were the instruments, each one different, unique, some blaring, a surge of anger here, jealousy there; some understated, a strand of contentment from someone strolling in the park overhead, a feeling of love emanating from the corridor.

  Then someone, obviously in the neighbouring apartment, came within scan range, and their thoughts cried out at him.

  They were clearer than he had ever before experienced: crystal sharp. He read, first, a swirling undercurrent of emotion, almost like some expressionist daub of colour on a canvas—a wave of elation, of triumph. Then he read specific thoughts: >>> Done it! Yes... (Non-specific feelings of victory, of having bested a business rival.) >>> That will show the extortionist—!

  Vaughan fumbled with his handset and killed the program, and instantly the balm of mind-silence replaced the noise in his head. He felt obscurely guilty for eavesdropping on his neighbour’s thoughts, but more than that a familiar, painful reminder of other people’s shallow hopes and desires, preferences and prejudices. Life with Sukara had made him even less materialistic than of old, and the reminder that for so many citizens what mattered was the pursuit of wealth and possessions he found dispiriting.

  He smiled as he stepped from the balcony and shut the sliding glass door behind him. He’d just accepted an extravagantly paid job and taken the lease on a luxurious new apartment. He wondered if he was as shallow as those around him.

  He found the answer later that evening, when he and Sukara had eaten a sublime dhal and aloo masala. They were sitting at the table before the viewscreen, moonlight catching the cusps and curlicues of the distant waves. Sukara was tell
ing him about what the midwife had said at her last appointment a couple of days ago, and Vaughan realised that the only thing that mattered in his life, now, was the happiness of this blithe and innocent woman, who loved him.

  * * * *

  The following morning, as they had breakfast at the bar in the kitchen, his handset chimed.

  It was Kapinsky.

  “Change of schedule, Jeff. We’re dropping all the cases on file and concentrating on a laser killing that happened late last night. Meet you outside the gates of Himachal Park at ten, okay?”