Xenopath - [Bengal Station 02]

by Eric Brown

  Vaughan opened the whisky he’d bought in Mackintyre and offered Breitenbach a shot. The oldster’s eyes lighted. “Perhaps just one,” he said. “It would be sacrilege to greet such a momentous day with a hangover.”

  Vaughan poured a generous measure into Breitenbach’s scratched plastic mug, and a smaller quantity into his own.

  He took a mouthful. It was rough, but warming. He wondered if he had brought out the alcohol with the express purpose of loosening the old man’s tongue.

  He said, “I’m not who you think I am,” and watched Breitenbach’s reaction.

  To his credit, the oldster kept his calm.

  “And who,” he said, “did you think I thought you were?”

  Vaughan smiled. “One of the radical cell, working against Scheering-Lassiter, working on behalf of Grayson’s pachyderms.”

  Breitenbach inclined his head. “I assumed so, yes. But, then again, you don’t have the air about you of a government agent.”

  “I’m on your side, Breitenbach. Rest assured on that score. I’m as opposed to the ruling regime here as you are. But... well, it’s a long story.”

  The old man smiled and raised his mug. “Well, I like long stories, sir, and we do have all night, after all.”

  Vaughan smiled. He refilled his glass, offered Breitenbach another. He accepted a shot.

  As the firelight flickered around the valley, illuminating Breitenbach’s long face, his eyes which seemed to have experienced so much, Vaughan told the radical that he was a telepathic detective investigating three killings on Bengal Station.

  Breitenbach leaned forward. “And these killings?”

  “Kormier, Travers, and a few months ago a woman called Mulraney.”

  The radical nodded. “I knew they’d got Mulraney,” he said. “I was hoping Travers would finish his report, before...” His expression bleak, he looked at Vaughan. “You know who is responsible, of course?”

  “Well, there’s no doubt in my mind that Scheering hired the assassin. I’d like to implicate the bastard, but...” He smiled and shook his head. “But that’d be impossible. The best I can hope for is to get the assassin.” He looked up. “It would help if I knew exactly why Scheering wanted these people dead. Weiss—my contact on Mallory—told me about the pachyderms. He claimed they were sentient, or at least some of them were.”

  Breitenbach stared into the flames. “Travers was an independent xeno-biologist. Eco-Col brought him in to monitor the cull. We got to him, told him what we knew, proved to him that certain of the Grayson’s pachyderms could be classed on the Baumann scale as sentient. That of course had massive implications for the colonisation, the exploitation, of the planet. He presented his findings to Scheering when he returned to Earth—we advised him against this course of action, by the way.” The radical shrugged. “Travers was an academic, and like so many academics he lived in his ivory tower, blind to the machinations of the outside world. I think he was oblivious to the lengths someone like Scheering would go to in order to safeguard his interests.”

  “He learned the hard way,” Vaughan said. “And Kormier? He was a friend of Travers—he knew the truth about the pachyderms, right?”

  Breitenbach smiled. “Oh, he knew the truth, very well.”

  Vaughan stared at the radical, puzzled by something in his tone. “What do you mean by that?”

  Breitenbach said, “I mean, Mr Vaughan, that Kormier found out in the very same way that I did, all those years ago.” He fell silent, staring at the fire but seeing something else, long ago.

  “What happened?” Vaughan murmured.

  Still staring at the flames, Breitenbach said, “I came to Mallory as an independent naturalist almost fifteen years ago. Not much was known about Grayson’s pachyderms back then. I’d made a study of the African elephant, shortly before its extinction, and the elephant analogue of Charybdis. When I read up about Grayson’s, I knew I had to come here and study them. Of course, at that point there was no cull. Scheering had no idea how dangerous the pachyderms would be to his plans for the planet.”

  Vaughan finished his whisky. He refilled his mug while Breitenbach contemplated the past, then offered the radical another shot. The old man nodded, lost in reverie.

  “And?” Vaughan prompted.

  “Oh, I bought a cheap flier—they weren’t proscribed then—and toured the southern continent. I observed the animals. I grew very close to them. I came to understand them, respect them. And then I came to suspect that they were more intelligent than I or anyone else had assumed. At least, some of them were. Even then, though, I was reluctant to fully believe that I had stumbled upon a sentient race. At first I ascribed my suspicion of sentience to my becoming too close to the animals, identifying too personally with individuals.”

  “What made you suspect intelligence?”

  Breitenbach smiled. “It was a cumulative effect— not just one incident. I’d been living among a herd of three families for six months—they are peaceable creatures, Vaughan. They accepted me. I became...” He shook his head, as if in retrospective wonder. “I became very close to a particular cow. She seemed... well, I thought I was taking leave of my senses at the time, but she seemed able to empathise with my emotions.”

  Nursing his whisky, Vaughan smiled and shook his head.

  “While I was living with the herd, I had news from Earth that my father had died. That evening, as I sat alone outside my tent, the cow—I called her Lucy, for some reason—came up to me and quite simply laid her trunk on my shoulder. I know it sounds ridiculous—anthropomorphising random actions of alien creatures—but it was as if Lucy were communicating to me, commiserating with my loss.”

  Vaughan frowned. “That’s hardly evidence of sentience,” he began.

  Breitenbach went on, “That was the first incident, the gesture that made me wonder. A few days later I left my camp and trekked into the nearby mountains. I walked for a few days, making notes on local fauna. On the way back I slipped and fell down a ravine, breaking my leg.” He looked up at Vaughan. “I knew I was dead. I had sufficient food and water for a couple of days, the break was bad, and I’d left my com back at camp, sixty kilometres away.”

  “And?”

  “And the following morning I heard a noise further down the ravine, the clatter of rocks. The mountains are home of some predatory lion-analogues.” He smiled. “The irony wasn’t lost on me: the naturalist, devoured by native fauna.”

  “But it wasn’t a lion.”

  “It wasn’t. A couple of pachyderms plodded into sight down the ravine. Imagine my amazement when I realised that one of them was Lucy. She approached, inspected my leg with her trunk. Between them they managed to get me onto Lucy’s back and carry me back to camp.”

  “Some story,” Vaughan said.

  “Lucy knew,” Breitenbach said. “She knew I was in distress and came to me.”

  “Are you saying the pachyderms are telepathic?” Vaughan tried to keep the scepticism from his voice.

  “Telepathic, empathetic—the terminology doesn’t matter. She knew. She saved my life.”

  Vaughan stared into the fire. He shrugged. “I don’t want to come over as the sceptic, Breitenbach. But her saving your life doesn’t prove sentience. You could claim that some animals on Earth, certain dogs, are empathetic.”

  Breitenbach nodded. “I could. Of course, you’re right. However, by that time, I was certain in my mind that the pachyderms were sentient, and then I found out for certain that they were.”

  He excused himself, climbed slowly to his feet and made his way around the back of an alien dwelling. As the old man relieved himself, Vaughan wondered about his story. Could it be that the old man was deluded, that the pachyderms were no more than merely clever? But, then, why the cull, and why had Scheering ordered the murders of people convinced of the pachyderms’ sentience?

  There had to be something to Breitenbach’s story, bizarre though it was.

  The old man returned, lowering himself w
ith creaking bones into a cross-legged position before the fire. He took up his whisky and contemplated the liquid, then sipped.

  “A few months later I left the herd,” Breitenbach said in a soft voice. “I wanted to study others. I was curious as to why one individual in a herd should evince signs of intelligence, when the members of the same herd showed no such indications. I found another herd, just north of where we are now, and a couple of days later it happened.”

  He finished his whisky and held out the mug for Vaughan to refill. Replenished, he continued, “I was following the herd south—the pachyderms migrate from the central plains to the edge of the southern continent around this time every year. The way through the mountains is treacherous, and a number of the creatures perish with every migration. On this occasion I saw an old bull stumble and fall down a steep drop. He must have fallen fifty metres. I was in the flier—I descended to the foot of the cliff, though I knew there was nothing I could do but be with the bull as it died. I... I approached him, knelt beside the animal. It was horribly injured, its skull stove in, back broken. It was still alive. Its massive eyes regarded me...” Breitenbach paused, reliving the event. Tears filmed his eyes. Vaughan looked into his drink, waiting for the old radical to resume, and at the same time wondering quite what proof the dying bull vouchsafed Breitenbach as to its sentience.

  He continued, “Before it died, Vaughan, the bull communicated with me. It showed me that it was an intelligent, conscious, morally aware creature, worthy of equal status with all other sentient beings the galaxy over.”

  Vaughan leaned forward. “How did it do this?”

  The radical took a long drink of whisky, pursing his lips around the mouthful. He nodded, staring at Vaughan as if wondering how to go about telling him what had happened next.

  At last he said, changing the subject, “What did your contact—Weiss, was it?—tell you about the Hortavans, the alien race which crash-landed here thousands of years ago?”

  Vaughan blinked, put out by the sudden change of tack. “Not much, only what he’d heard from Jenna Larsen, who’d heard it from you.”

  “But what did he say?”

  Vaughan shrugged. “He claimed you knew about the aliens—he didn’t even know what they were called. He said you knew about the star charts, the crystals.”

  “And how do you think I know about the Hortavans?” Breitenbach said.

  “I don’t know. But I guess you’re going to tell me, right?”

  Breitenbach smiled. “Over a hundred thousand years ago,” he said, “the race known as the Hortavans came to Mallory. They were fleeing their home planet, which had been engulfed in a supernova. They’d had plenty of time to prepare their exodus—their ship contained all their population.”

  Vaughan was about to say something—along the lines that the ship had hardly seemed that big—but Breitenbach went on. “It wasn’t their intention to remain on Mallory: it was supposed to be merely an exploratory stop-over. The ship encountered difficulties when coming down, and crash-landed in the valley north of here. The majority of the Hortavans were killed in the accident. Only a few hundred thousand survived.”

  “The experts claimed they were extinct,” Vaughan said, “that Mallory wasn’t habitable.” Breitenbach inclined his head. “That is so. The corporeal Hortavans, those charged with guardianship of the crystals, succumbed to the malign viruses of Mallory—but not before partially discharging their duties.”

  “Which were?”

  “The corporeal Hortavans took from the ship the crystals and distributed them around the southern continent. They almost accomplished this task, but succumbed to disease before they could unload the last chamber.”

  “The last chamber?” Vaughan said. “The crystals I brought here?”

  The radical nodded. “The last of the stored Hortavans,” he said.

  Vaughan laughed, a nervous reaction to his inability to comprehend what Breitenbach was telling him, to piece together the disparate clues. “I don’t understand. What are the crystals?”

  The radical raised his mug. “Each faceted crystal, Vaughan, contains the identities of Hortavan individuals.”

  Vaughan sat back and raised his head to the stars. “The identities? I don’t—”

  “Perhaps ‘identities’ is the wrong term. They contain the very essences of Hortavan individuals. They are an extremely ancient and advanced race. They had long since discovered how to record themselves, their very essences. When the supernova came, they were ready. Millions of individuals were stored in the matrix of the crystals for the long voyage to a new, safer world. Some remained corporeal, to crew the ship and facilitate the recorded Hortavans’ eventual rebirth.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Vaughan whispered.

  “Millions perished in the crash-landing, when the crystals were destroyed. A few thousand survived in the crystals. The corporeal Hortavans did their best to disseminate their fellows, before death overcame them.”

  Vaughan interrupted, “The pachyderms? The Hortavans are the pachyderms, right? Or rather, some of the pachyderms are?”

  Breitenbach smiled. “The Hortavans are not an evil race, Vaughan. They would not take over a species and obliterate their identities. They live in the minds of the pachyderms as separate entities, content to experience existence but, more importantly, to contemplate the eternal verities of life.”

  Vaughan thought back to what the radical had said. “The dying bull—you said it communicated with you?”

  Breitenbach fixed Vaughan with a suddenly intense gaze. “It communicated with me—it also did more than that. The Hortavan that existed within the pachyderm’s dying sensorium... transferred itself into mine. I knew instantly that something had happened. I felt euphoric, though I was ignorant as to the reason why. That knowledge came only days later, when the Hortavan had mastered my thoughts, ideas, and language, and was able to communicate... I thought at first I was going mad—but the Hortavan was compassionate. He communicated only briefly, and reassured me that I was not mad, that its intent was not evil, that it was alive in me, but would not reveal itself if that was what I wished. I overcame my fear, and over the years came to understand the alien, or rather the xenopath, as I called it, and its race.”

  Vaughan sat back, staring at Breitenbach. “And when Sheering found out about the pachyderms?”

  “He had scientists studying the animals, of course. They came upon the truth of the Hortavan mind-transference and mind-reading abilities. They discovered that the transfer could not be effected if the potential subject was mind-shielded, which was why the Scheering’s governing council legislated that every citizen of the planet should be shielded, ostensibly to safeguard against telepaths from Earth intent on stealing vital Mallorian trade secrets. By that time I’d acquired a mind-shield, in case a Scheering telepath read of my secret.”

  Vaughan said, “And then Scheering instituted the cull, to get rid of the evidence before Eco-Col learned the truth and the colonial authorities closed the planet down?”

  Breitenbach nodded. “I tried to warn Eco-Col. A Mallorian informer told Scheering, and from that date I have been a wanted man. I co-ordinate resistance from various locations in the mountains, relying on cells of so-called radicals to spread the word.”

  Vaughan considered Breitenbach’s story, then said, “You said Kormier found out the same way as you did?”

  Breitenbach nodded. “He was monitoring a cull two hundred kilometres north of here, when he came upon a dying pachyderm. It communicated with him, and he cut out his mind-shield and allowed the Hortavan to transfer itself into his mind.” Breitenbach paused, then went on, “Then he made a big mistake. He informed his superior here on Mallory that the cull should cease, little realising that the authorities already knew about the Hortavans and the pachyderms. He became a liability to Scheering, and when he returned to Earth...”

  Vaughan closed his eyes. “And the slaughter continues.”

  “The Hortavans are becoming adept at e
vading the militia,” Breitenbach said, “thanks to their mind-guests.” He paused and smiled, finishing his whisky. “It is late. We have an early start in the morning.”

  Vaughan said, “The crystals?”

  “Did you notice the pachyderms heading this way? They were being led by their mind-guests. In the morning we will witness the transference.”

  Vaughan drained the alcohol, his senses numbed by its effect, and by what Breitenbach had told him.

  The radical showed him to a beehive mound, equipped with a sleeping mat and a thermal cover.

  Breitenbach bade him goodnight, and Vaughan lay in the confined space, staring up at a patch of stars which showed through the overhead flue. He was awake for a long time, his head awash with dizzying images, before the alcohol eased him into sleep.