Xenopath - [Bengal Station 02]

by Eric Brown

  Seconds later, the boy jumped from the exit of the ghost train.

  Vaughan stilled the image and examined the ghost’s gaping rictus. The girl was still in the shadows, peeping out.

  He restarted the image. Kormier paced. Each time he reached the ghost train and turned, Vaughan expected him to face his killer.

  So far, however, there was no sign of the laser slayer.

  Then, at a minute before midnight, Kormier came to a halt before the ghost train. He turned, lifted his cuff again to glance at his watch. He looked up, across the concourse, then lifted an arm as if in greeting.

  It was the last living movement he was to make.

  The dazzling laser vector lasted barely half a second. It lanced from off-screen, hit Kormier, then vanished. That was all it took: Kormier lay on the concrete, head, arms, and torso sliced into four neat sections.

  Vaughan stilled the image, sat back in his seat. He realised that he was sweating and breathing hard. It was as if he had been there, had witnessed the slaying in the flesh.

  For the next hour he accessed other cameras in the vicinity of the amusement park, attempting to get an image of the killer. Half a dozen other cameras gave partial views of the park, but none had captured the murderer. He’d been either very lucky, or had known the surveillance cams’ blind spots and had planned accordingly.

  Vaughan checked all the cams in the vicinity of the park for anyone entering through the boarded-up perimeter fence, but found nothing. The killer had arrived and departed without allowing himself to be caught by a single camera. Luck, it seemed, had had nothing to do with it. He was obviously dealing with someone professional and meticulous.

  He returned to the original scene of the concourse. He viewed the killing again, and again, and then the minutes leading up to it, and after.

  At least he had another valuable lead here: the girl cowering in the mouth of the ghost had seen the killing. It was also possible that she had caught sight of the killer.

  He viewed the scene in the minutes after the killing. He watched the girl jump from the mouth of the ghost, turn, and run down a narrow alley between the ghost train and the neighbouring attraction.

  He rewound the footage and looked for the best view of the girl. For the most part she had her back to the camera. Only when she was emerging from the ghost’s mouth, preparatory to making her escape, did she present a frontal image.

  He magnified the scene, homing in on the girl.

  He computer-enhanced the picture, cleaning up the granular pixels and coming out with a sharp image of a young Thai girl, perhaps seven or eight, in dirty red shorts and a white T-shirt.

  He printed the image and sat back with it in his hand, staring.

  The legend across the front of the kid’s shirt was: Tigers.

  Years ago he had known Sukara’s kid sister, Tiger, before she’d overdosed on a virulent off-world drug. Tiger, a big fan of the skyball team, had worn a T-shirt just like this kid’s.

  It was a day, he thought, haunted by spectres of the past.

  He returned to the screen and re-ran the minutes either side of Kormier’s killing, playing the images in slow motion to ensure he missed nothing.

  The laser hit—in slow motion, he could make out the vector’s minimal waver that created the grisly loop effect—and winked out of existence.

  He played it again, and again, and only on the third time did he notice something.

  He sat forward, wondering if the effect had been the result of tired eyes.

  But there it was again.

  In the split second after the laser’s impact, a light seemed to rebound at right angles to Kormier and lance off towards where the kid crouched in the ghost’s open mouth.

  It hit her in the centre of her forehead, sending her reeling backwards.

  Which, he told himself, was insane. Lasers didn’t ricochet.

  He replayed the image perhaps twenty times. The rebounding light was not blue, like the laser vector, but white. He wondered if it was some reflection of the laser on the screen of the surveillance cam. But that was ridiculous, and anyway the girl had clearly been affected, startled, by the rebound.

  Affected, he thought, but evidently not harmed, as she had jumped from her place of concealment and made her getaway. He ran the tape and watched as she ran down the gap between the ghost train and another concession, entering what looked like a toilet block. Seconds later she was followed by a bright blue laser vector. It burned through the toilet door, but too high to have hit the kid—and when the door swung open it revealed an empty room.

  Then Vaughan made out a dark figure sprint down the alley after the girl, enter the toilet block, and squirm down through a service hatch in the floor.

  He magnified the image of the killer, but got nothing more than a vague, granular outline.

  He sat back and considered his next move.

  He made a dozen printouts of the kid, wallet sized, then killed the screen and left the ziggurat. He rode the elevator to the landing shelf and emerged into bright sunlight.

  He sat on a bench, in the shade of a cedar tree, overlooking the sprawl of the station as noisy air-cars came and went.

  His next move was to locate the street-kid—if she had succeeded in evading the killer. She had seen the killing, maybe even the killer. If she were still alive, then he knew exactly who might be able to help him find her.

  He tapped a code into his handset and hoped it was still in use. It was a long time since he’d contacted the doctor.

  He smiled as the ancient face—looking more than ever like the wrinkled headpiece of a querulous turtle—peered out at him. Talk about ghosts from the past...

  “Dr Rao,” he said.

  Rao blinked. “My word, my word indeed. If I’m not mistaken, if my eyes do not deceive, I do believe it is Mr Vaughan.”

  “Your eyes are working perfectly, Rao. How’s things?”

  “Mr Vaughan, what can I say? Life, as ever, is hard for the likes of me—a citizen who wants only to bring light into the dark lives of those more unfortunate than himself.”

  Vaughan tried to hide his smile. This was the Rao of old, as sanctimoniously self-serving as ever. To listen to him, you’d think Rao was a saint, not some Hindu Fagin out to line his own pocket.

  Vaughan said, “I think you might be able to help me, Rao.”

  The old man’s dull eyes took on a predatory gleam.

  “Mr Vaughan, you know that I am ever available to aid those I deem worthy.”

  “I’m looking for a street-kid. I know nothing about her. I have a pix, that’s all.”

  Rao gave a lipless smile, increasing his resemblance to a turtle. “I have been known to work miracles with less, for...” he went on, “shall we say, certain considerations?”

  “We’ll talk money when we meet, Rao. When can I see you?”

  “Time presses, and is valuable. I will be available in two hours, for thirty minutes only, at four o’clock.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you then. How about Nazruddin’s?”

  “You are a creature of habit, Mr Vaughan. Nazruddin’s it is. Until then...” And Rao tipped his head graciously and cut the connection.

  He had two hours to kill before meeting Rao. He hailed an air-taxi and told the pilot to take him to the amusement park, Kandalay.

  * * * *

  NINE

  THE GIRL

  The abandoned park had the aspect of a ransacked city left to the elements.

  Everywhere he looked his eye met with dilapidated fa ç ades and the skeletal remains of once exhilarating concessions. Mock voidships and air-cars sat redundant, their once bright colours excoriated by the sun. An air of sadness, almost tragedy, hung over the place.

  He crossed the concourse to where Kormier had died in front of the ghost train. Nothing remained to indicate his passing, not a trace of blood or laser scorch marks. Vaughan looked up at the garish fa ç ade of the ghost train, the leering ghosts, blood-soaked vampires, and the wailing
ghoul like Munch’sScream where the boy and girl had hidden two nights ago.

  He climbed the steps and peered into the ghost’s mouth, then ducked inside. Shafts of bright sunlight fell through the cracked weatherboard roof, illuminating loose virtual relays, pneumatic stanchions, and the luminous remains of green monsters.

  He examined the area where the kid had crouched, found nothing, as expected, and climbed down again.

  He sighted along the trajectory of the laser vector and sourced it to a blocky powerhouse beside the starship ride. He crossed to it and pulled open the door. The powerhouse had been stripped of generators and controls. Only an oily shell remained, and a trapdoor in the centre of the floor.

  He knelt, opened the heavy cover, and peered into the semi-lit dropshaft. It was a maintenance conduit, lined with wires and junction boxes, accessible by a welded ladder. Was this how the killer had entered the park?

  He squeezed himself into the gap and climbed down, the confined area reeking of burnt electrics and rusting metal, the temperature a punishing hundred plus.

  The Station was riddled with a maze of secret shafts, passageways, and tunnels used by engineers and mechanics in their bid to keep the place functioning. Vaughan had used the service shafts before—in fact two years ago, when being taken to Dr Rao’s hidden lair between Levels Eleven and Twelve—and he was sure that many of them had been abandoned and forgotten decades ago.

  Now, they were the haunt of opportunists like the laser killer, and the homeless street-kids who found refuge in the interstices between the populated levels.

  He descended for two minutes before the drop-shaft terminated. Before him was a small hatch, like the door in a submarine. He eased it open and found himself on a walkway high above a teeming corridor on Level Three.

  Sensing another break, he looked around for a ubiquitous surveillance camera—and found one not three metres from the hatch, and pointing directly at it.

  His joy was short-lived. The lens of the cam had been sprayed over with black paint.

  He should have known that the killer would have covered this angle, too.

  In hope, he moved along the walkway. Every cam covering the hatch to the service shaft had been disabled.

  Not for the first time, Vaughan realised he was chasing a professional.

  He retraced his steps, squeezed back through the hatch, and began the arduous climb up to the powerhouse.

  Ten minutes later he was standing in the sunlight, breathing hard. He crossed the concourse to the ghost train and stepped down the narrow alley where the girl had vanished the other night. He approached the toilet block and made out the fist-sized entry hole punched through the plastic swing door.

  He pushed through and entered the john, lifted the service hatch and peered down, part of him expecting to see the butchered remains of the kid at the foot of the shaft. He saw only a narrow ladder, welded to the wall.

  He inserted himself into the narrow space, grunting with the unaccustomed effort. He climbed down, and minutes later found himself on a walkway above a busy thoroughfare. He looked right and left for surveillance cams... but he was out of luck, again. This stretch of corridor was without the luxury of watching cameras.

  He turned to the shaft and climbed, wondering as he did so if the killer had managed to catch the kid somewhere in the corridors of Level Three. Or had she, with the cunning of her kind, managed to evade pursuit and lose herself in the crowds?

  If the latter, then the killer would still no doubt be trying to trace her.

  He emerged from the exit in the john, crossed the concourse, and called an air-taxi.

  * * * *

  Five minutes later he ducked from the taxi and pushed his way through the crowds that thronged Chandi Road night and day. He ignored the importuning cries of maimed beggars, the incessant sleeve tugging of pleading street-kids, and eased himself into the air-conditioned calm of Nazruddin’s.

  He found an empty booth at the back of the restaurant, ordered a Blue Mountain beer and waited for Dr Rao.

  He was on his second bottle, at the stroke of four, when the elderly doctor stepped through the entrance, paused to scan the seated diners, then lofted his walking stick in greeting.

  He tottered towards Vaughan, his turtle lips stretched in a rictus approximating a smile.

  “Mr Vaughan, Mr Vaughan! It is a delight to make your acquaintance after so long!” He seated himself and to a hovering waiter snapped an order for salted lassi.

  Vaughan smiled. Rao, sitting bolt upright in his high-collared Nehru suit, arthritic fingers clutching the head of his stick, appeared the very epitome of patriarchal Brahmin probity. Vaughan marvelled at the contrast between the doctor’s outward persona and the schemes he knew festered in the Indian’s fertile mind.

  Rao leaned forward. “And might I enquire as to the health of your young wife?”

  “Sukara’s doing fine, Rao.”

  “And if my information is not erroneous, the patter of tiny feet is imminent?”

  Vaughan shook his head in amazement. “How on earth did you know that, Rao?”

  The old man laughed. “Nothing is a secret from Dr Rao, Mr Vaughan! You should know that.” His rheumy eyes became even more liquid. “Ah, children. They are truly one’s hope for the future.”

  And your meal ticket in the here and now, Vaughan thought.

  “I heard also, on the grapevine, shall we say, that you had your telepathic implant removed... in somewhat adverse circumstances.”

  Vaughan nodded. “Old news, Rao. That happened two years ago.”

  “And you have not had it replaced?”

  He shook his head. “I elected for the quiet life,” he said. Why alert Rao to the fact that the good doctor’s lies could be seen through?

  “I must admit that I never thought you the type of man to settle down,” Rao went on.

  “Life is full of surprises, Rao.”

  The doctor laughed. “You are so right, my friend. For instance, it was a surprise to hear from you, but a pleasant surprise, might I add? You mentioned something about trying to locate a certain child of the street?”

  Vaughan nodded and pulled out his wallet. From it he drew the computer-enhanced pix of the Thai girl and slid it across the table to Rao.

  Rao tapped the pix with a nicotine-stained forefinger. A light appeared in his eye, and Vaughan guessed that Rao knew something about the kid.

  He was tempted to activate his implant and read what Rao knew, but at the same time he was loath to immerse himself in Rao’s self-serving righteousness, and whatever else he might come across in the doctor’s scheming brain.

  Rao sucked his lips, shaking his head. “Ah, Mr Vaughan. So many children have passed my gaze over the past week or so, so many tiny Thai girls with pudding-bowl haircuts and beseeching eyes. One, I must admit, looks very much like another.”

  “She was wearing a Tigers’ T-shirt,” Vaughan prompted.

  “Do you know, I do think that I might have seen a child answering to her description—seen very briefly, I must add—”

  “When?” Vaughan said.

  Rao smiled. “I said I might have seen the girl, Mr Vaughan. Of course, I might have been mistaken. As I said, one child looks very much like another. However, if I were to bend my efforts in order to locate this child, it would be a costly procedure for me, I hope you understand.” He looked up. “Might I ask why you wish to locate the girl?”

  “She was witness to a murder,” Vaughan said.

  Rao nodded, assessing whether this information might conceivably be to his advantage. “Indeed,” he said. “I see. Hmm... Now let me consider the various ins and outs of the situation as I see it, Mr Vaughan.” He took time to sip his lassi, then wipe the foamy moustache from his upper lip. “Mr Vaughan, information, as a commodity—as you well know—is valuable. What I mean to say is that I could put you into contact with someone who might know something about the child, but of course, as is the nature of things, I would have no option
but to expect recompense for effecting such a service.” The doctor beamed across the table with the innocence of a saint.

  Vaughan sighed, trying not to smile. There was something almost entertaining in listening to Rao’s self-justifying circumlocutions. “How much, Rao?”

  “Now let me see. If the child was indeed witness to a murder, then this is very serious indeed, and my guess is that your need to locate her is correspondingly acute—which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that you would be willing to part with perhaps, let’s say, in the region of five hundred baht for any information leading to your locating the girl...” Rao beamed like a guiltless babe, “...and a further five hundred if such information successfully leads to her apprehension?”