Cosmopath - [Bengal Station 03]

by Eric Brown

  He steered his probes away from the alien miasma and looked for evidence of the bar’s owner, Mr Narayan.

  In the mind of a bar-girl he gleaned the information that Narayan would be returning at four. It was now just after three.

  Vaughan ordered a beer and looked around the low-lit room. The floor-space was divided into booths and areas of sunken sofas, where men and women entertained aliens with drinks and drugs before retiring to private rooms on the lower level. The walls were adorned with moving images of various worlds: he recognised the spaceport at Mars, the blue jungles of Jharu, Acrab II, and the famous floating cities of Gharab, Procyon VI. The entire ceiling was given over to what at first he thought was a work of abstract art. A pulsing orange oval took up much of the space, within which was a spinning blue disc; dotted about the oval were perhaps a hundred bright white lights, like stars.

  Seconds later, Vaughan realised that he’d seen something similar before, and the image resolved itself.

  It was a stylised representation of the human Expansion. The blue disc was Earth, the orange oval the extent of human territory, and the hundred or so white lights the planets to date discovered and colonised. Only then did he make out the dozen duller red points, which denoted the homeworlds of the sentient aliens discovered during humankind’s ever outward push. He knew that the Expansion extended some eight hundred light years from Earth in every direction, and as he sipped his beer he wondered idly what marvels might be contained in the infinite reaches beyond humanity’s current, infinitesimal diaspora.

  Then his attention was snatched away by a new arrival in the entrance lobby to his left. He sensed the scratchy static of the mind-shield, then turned and saw the Tau Cetian slip into the room and move to a distant booth.

  He counselled caution. There was no evidence, yet, to jump to the conclusion that the alien was following him. The bar was a legitimate destination for Ee-tees, after all.

  In the mind of the bar-girl he located the position of the stairs that led down to Level Two. He finished his beer, pushed himself from the bar, and made his way casually towards the exit.

  Steps led down a stairwell. He descended, keeping tabs on the area of static in the bar above his head. He came to a second, smaller bar, around the perimeter of which were doors leading to bedrooms, group chambers, and sex pools. Ahead was the sliding door of the exit, and beyond that the artificial daylight of Level Two.

  Vaughan hurried towards the exit, pulse racing. Seconds later the static high above him shifted as the alien made its move.

  He told himself that it could still be coincidence, but at the same time he knew he was kidding himself. The static moved towards him as the alien took the stairwell.

  He left the bar and crossed the concourse; the esplanades and outdoor bars were busy with citizens drawn to this level’s air-conditioning after the heat of the top level, and the mind-noise was correspondingly loud. Vaughan crossed towards the entrance of a municipal park, which called itself the Australasian Arboretum. Gum trees and eucalyptus extended for a kilometre in every direction, providing adequate cover from the pursuing Korth.

  He entered the park and hurried along a path, rounded a bend, then ensuring he was unobserved stepped from the path and ducked through a stand of gum trees. He doubled back on himself, moving towards the concourse.

  The Korth was on the second level now, pacing through the bar towards the exit. The hiss of static became louder in Vaughan’s head as he came to the perimeter fence. He knelt, concealed himself behind a fan of ferns, and peered back towards the Blue World Bar.

  The alien emerged from the bar. Vaughan expected it to pause, assess its options before moving on. To his alarm, the Korth paced across the concourse towards the park’s entrance. How the hell did it know? Unless, of course, it was guessing.

  It wore a thick winter jacket - its homeworld was a sultry desert that made the Sahara seem like the north pole - and Vaughan knew that the bulky padding might easily conceal a weapon.

  He considered his options, made a decision, and moved. He ran through the vegetation that fringed the arboretum. There was another exit half a kay away; he’d take that and jump aboard a downchute to a crowded lower level, then attempt to lose himself there.

  He probed. The alien was moving along the path. A second later it left the path and entered the shrubbery, heading towards him.

  As Vaughan ran, he accessed his handset. Kapinsky answered immediately.

  “Lin. I’m being followed. A Korth. Can you track me?”

  Kapinsky leaned to her right for a second, tapping a console. “I’ve got you on-screen.”

  “Get some security down here. I don’t know how the bastard’s doing it, but it knows where I am.”

  “You armed?”

  “A laser. But if the Korth’s a professional assassin-”

  “Shit. I said you should have got the hell out right away. Okay...” She spoke into a throat-mic, summoning security, and Vaughan cut the connection.

  He probed. The floating static was perhaps fifty metres to his right, moving straight through the undergrowth as the alien attempted to cut him off.

  He pulled the laser from beneath his shirt and thumbed off the safety control. He knew better than to bed down and enter into a shoot-out with the Korth. It was a pro, and it probably packed more efficient fire-power than his standard-issue laser.

  His only hope was to outrun the bastard until security caught up with him.

  He heard what sounded like the roar of a flamethrower, and a nano-second later a wall of vegetation to his right vaporised in an instant. His heart kicked. Reflex self-protection threw him to the ground as the broad-pulse beam slashed through the air where his torso had been. He rolled, fired instinctively, and saw the alien duck behind the shattered bole of a eucalyptus tree.

  Vaughan dived for cover and crawled through a bed of loam, shouldering aside green bamboo shots. He heard a second roar, heard foliage ignite behind him. He rolled onto his back and fired six times, hoping to buy himself time. He was about ten metres from the gate and the crowds that surged beyond. If he could lose himself in the press, make it to the downchute...

  Then the alien called to him, and the sound sent fear tearing through Vaughan as the pulse beam had failed to do.

  “Vaughan.” It was a high-pitched hiss, totally alien, sounding unlike any rendition of his name he’d heard before.

  How in Christ’s name was the bastard tracking him? He knew that none of the extraterrestrial races discovered so far had such a highly developed sense of smell. But what about some other alien sense?

  Unless, of course, it was itself a telepath and was following the static of his own mind-shield.

  If so, then once he made it to the crowd he could switch off his shield and his thoughts would be relatively indistinguishable among those of the citizens around him, especially as his pursuer was an Ee-tee.

  The idea gave him a kick of hope as he pulled himself through the last of the shrubbery before arriving at the gate.

  He reckoned the Korth was around thirty metres behind him. He crouched, turned, and laid down a burst of fire, then surged from the border and sprinted for the gate. A beam lashed after him, reducing the concrete gate-post to rubble.

  He barged through the crowd, earning insults in three languages. He ducked his head and elbowed his way across the street, disabling his mind-shield and running a mantra he’d learned on a training course for just such a situation. The old Buddhist line, Om mani padme hum... Empty one’s mind. Think of a flame, alone in the universe, then extinguish the flame, and think of nothing...

  Which, with an alien assassin bent on slicing him into slivers, was easier said than done.

  He probed. The Korth, signified by the area of static, had paused by the gate. The pause lasted three seconds, and then the alien was after him.

  Vaughan was bigger than the Indians and Thais around him and, propelled by fear, he made rapid progress through the crush to the gates of the dow
nchute station. He sprinted towards the closing mesh gate of a carriage and barged his way in. The gate clanked shut behind him. He looked back through the diamond lattice as the carriage dropped ponderously. The signature static was ten metres away, though the alien itself was not visible through the press of humanity on the station concourse.

  The carriage dropped, leaving the second level behind, and Vaughan rationed himself to a small dose of relief.

  He called Kapinsky. “Where the hell is security, Lin?”

  “On their way. You’re dropping from the second, right? The Korth is following in the next carriage. I have a team on the fourth-level station. Get out there and lose yourself in the crowds.”

  “You got it.”

  He got through to the agency computer and said, “Korth, from Tau Ceti III. Are any of them telepathic?”

  A fraction of a second later the soft female voice answered, “Not telepathic. Empathetic. They cannot read thoughts, merely emotions.”

  “They can read the emotions of other species?”

  “Affirmative,” came the reply.

  “And human mind-shields? Are they effective against the Korth?”

  “Negative.”

  Which was how the Korth had tracked him so far, not by tracing the static given off by his integral mind-shield, but by identifying his emotional signature and locking onto it. Which was bad news, he thought, as he wouldn’t be safe concealing himself in a crowd... He cut the connection.

  He was pressed up against a fat Sikh and a bony sadhu, both eyeing the tall, sweating Westerner with bovine suspicion. The overcrowded carriage was hot and stank of rank body odour, but at least he was safe until he reached the fourth level.

  He thought of Sukara, wondering why the sudden vision of her should enter his head now. She was smiling at him, giggling over a glass of wine.

  A minute later the carriage slowed and bobbed to a halt. The mesh gate rattled open and Vaughan popped himself from the press.

  He hurried through the station, attempting to work out who among the loitering citizens were members of the security team. He scanned, detected half a dozen mind-shields in the vicinity, and hoped they wouldn’t stand on ceremony when the Korth emerged. He’d never before believed in summary execution, but there was nothing like the threat of death to encourage a shift of opinion.

  He exited, looked left and right, and headed for an alleyway packed with Indians who were leaving a cinema.

  Above him, the Korth was dropping towards Level Four. He kept probing as he was carried along in the flow of humanity. The static ceased its fall, was held in place - obviously as the carriage came to a halt and the gates opened - then it moved again, on a horizontal plane this time.

  Seconds later the other mind-shields in the vicinity converged.

  Even a hundred metres away Vaughan heard the shouts and screams, and the roar of the incendiary pulse beam.

  Sickened, he slid his probe around the area. Five of the six mind-shields belonging to security were still, unmoving. One was mobile, but had slowed significantly, and Vaughan guessed the man was injured and rolling in agony.

  One area of mind-static had exited the station and was heading down the alley towards him.

  The Korth, presumably.

  If he could outrun the bastard, put about a half kilometre between him and his pursuer and get himself out of range of the alien’s mind-probes, then he was home free... The problem was, how to do that among the press of humanity on this level? The rub was, he needed the crowd to give him some measure of cover, but he needed relatively open space if he were to make a run for it...

  Then he remembered the Aquaworld habitat on this level, and allowed himself a second small ration of hope.

  He squeezed from the crowd, sprinted along a relatively depopulated boulevard, then cut across a plaza towards the beckoning logo of a leaping dolphin, above which arced the legend: Aquaworld.

  A week back, after bringing Li and Pham here to sample the water-wonders of Aquaworld, he’d vowed never again to be suckered into the crass black hole of corporate merchandising. Now he approached the gates as if they were the pearly portals of heaven itself.

  He probed. The alien was in the alley, turning into the boulevard. About a hundred metres away, Vaughan estimated.

  He ran through the entrance, throwing a wad of baht at a startled clerk, and headed towards the Antares IV waterworld concession.

  Families lined up before the airlocks that gave access to the variously sized submersibles, but the lock for the one-man subs was vacant. He overpaid another clerk and slipped into the airlock. Seconds later he inserted himself feet-first into the sub, dogged the hatch, and familiarised himself with the controls. He steered through the irising portal, easing the sub from the airlock and into the facsimile of the aqueous habitat of Antares IV.

  Last week he’d taken the girls on a leisurely tour of everything the vast tank had to offer, taking in the coral habitats of the squid-analogues and the great shoals of the planet’s sentient natives, the diaphanous cetaceans who communicated via a complex sequencing of their polychromatic internal organs. Now he made straight for the diametrically opposite airlock down on the fifth level. The tank was, he guessed, about a kilometre square; with luck he’d be able to outrun the limit of the Korth’s mind-probe and lose himself on Level Five when he exited.

  He sent out a probe. The patch of static was dimming as he drew away from the airlock. He gripped the controls and shot between a shoal of tiny silver fish, like a million coins moving as one: these were the unique Sarth, he recalled, a sub-sentient hive-mind in control of a myriad separate bodies.

  His handset buzzed. He accessed the call.

  “Jeff,” Kapinsky said. “Good thinking. We have teams on Levels Four and Five and tracking the Korth.”

  “Tell ‘em to take care. You saw what the bastard did to the first team?”

  “They’re taking appropriate measures, Jeff. See you soon.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Vaughan replied, but Kapinsky had cut the link.

  He probed again, and to his relief failed to locate the signature static. All he picked up was the mind-noise of the families flitting through the water in their subs. He looked ahead; he could see the vast wall of the tank, camouflaged with a multicoloured coral effect, before which flitted shoals of alien fish. He sighted the circular hatch of an airlock and headed for it.

  A minute later he slipped his sub into the hatch. The vehicle rang as mechanical grabs made it fast and water sluiced from the lock. Seconds later a green light indicated that it was safe for Vaughan to alight. He pushed himself from the sub and hurried to the outer hatch, shallow breathing to mitigate the stench of Antares brine and seaweed.

  Seconds later he was through the hatch and striding towards the Aquaworld exit. He probed. There was no evidence of the Korth’s mind-shield static in the vicinity.

  This sector of Level Five was a business district, and the three-storey offices crammed between the level’s floor and ceiling were emptying of tired citizens after a day’s shift. Vaughan joined them, inserting himself into a flow of Tata drones as they made for the nearest downchute station.

  He continued past it and a few hundred metres further on slipped into a bar and ordered a Blue Mountain beer.

  He regained his breath, and along with it his composure. Now he allowed himself to feel the fear that his adrenaline had so far kept at bay. With the delayed fear came the intellectual fall-out: for whatever reason, someone had set an alien assassin on his trail, the same someone who had already brought about the deaths of three other telepaths.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the summons of his handset. That would be Kapinsky, to tell him that security had got the Korth and he was free to show his face.

  He accessed the call.

  “Sukara?”

  She stared out at him. She looked, he thought, shocked. It came to him that she somehow knew what had happened to him. Then she spoke, and began weeping.

&
nbsp; He listened to what she had to say, and it was as if something inside him had turned to ice.

  He shook his head and asked her to tell him again, and she repeated herself. She said she’d see him back at the apartment in an hour and cut the connection.

  Vaughan stared at the blank screen, his heartbeat thudding.

  When he looked up, he saw the Korth standing in the entrance to the bar and scanning the drinkers in the bar’s dim interior.

  He should never have let Sukara’s call divert his attention from probing for the mind-shield static. Then, he might have done something about the approach of the alien assassin. Now he was cornered, and instead of feeling fear, all he did feel was a sadness for Sukara and the girls if he failed to best the alien in the ensuing shoot-out.