by Eric Brown
“I should have a better understanding of your daughter’s condition a little later today. I’ll have my PA call you with the results around five. In any case, I’d like you to bring Li in tomorrow for a day or two. Then we can begin the treatment.”
She felt something rise in her chest, constricting her throat. “You mean... Li will be in hospital overnight?”
Dr Grant spread his hands. “I’m afraid it’s unavoidable. Then we can run a few tests, initiate treatment and assess her reactions, and then if necessary adjust the treatment accordingly.”
She nodded, trying to get her thoughts together. “I... will I be able to stay with her?”
“By all means.” Dr Grant smiled. “We have rooms set aside for parents and guardians.”
She smiled, knowing that she appeared pathetically thankful. She wondered why members of the medical profession, who after all were only doing their jobs, reduced her to such inarticulate gratitude.
“If you could bring Li in at midday tomorrow, we’ll take it from there, yes?” he said, with an upward inflection in his tone, which diplomatically signalled the end of the consultation.
Sukara smiled and thanked him again, then dragged Li complaining from the toys. She took the elevator down to the foyer, considering what she’d learned from the appointment. A lot of big words and hot air, she thought, wondering how she’d spend the next few hours until the doctor’s PA called with the test results at five.
They would be the longest few hours of her life, and she wished Jeff were around to share them with her.
“Nursery now?” Li asked, pulling her in the direction of the nursery school building on the far side of the park.
Sukara remembered her promise, despite a reluctance to leave Li now. She wanted to spend time with her daughter, spoil her with ices and Vitamilk... Three afternoons a week she taught basic English to the working-girls on Silom Road, but yesterday she’d arranged with the head of the language school for two weeks’ vacation so that she could look after Li while Jeff was away.
Li normally attended nursery while Sukara taught, and Sukara was obscurely put out that her daughter would rather go to nursery than spend time with her now. She told herself that she was being clingy, walked Li across the park and dropped her off in the noisy playground.
She decided to try to forget about the call at five by doing some shopping in the food market on Level Three; she’d take the upchute to the top level and have a coffee in Himachal Park before picking up the girls.
Around five, she thought, she would be back at the hotel preparing dinner in the suite’s well-equipped kitchen...
She’d bought a bag full of vegetables and was moving through the bustling crowds towards the spice stall when her handset chimed. Her heart lurched and she thought: Li’s blood test...
She stopped and stood with the bag between her ankles, buffeted by the crowd. She accepted the call. An aged, wrinkled face - like a grandfather turtle, she thought - stared out at her. “Oh, Dr Rao...” She wondered what the old rascal wanted now.
“Sukara, my dear, I trust that I have not called at an inopportune moment.”
“Ah, no... No, of course not. How can I help?”
His lipless mouth widened in what on any other face might have been described as a smile; on Dr Rao it merely looked like just another, deeper wrinkle. “My dear, I wonder if I might have the pleasure of your company for a little while this afternoon? I... I am embarking upon a venture which I am sure you might find of some little interest.”
“Well...” she said, guardedly. “What kind of venture, Dr Rao?”
“It is in the nature of education, my dear, the realm of learning whose benefits cannot be overstated. If perhaps I might have an hour of your time...?”
She smiled to herself, intrigued at the thought of what new scheme the old doctor might be cooking up now. “Okay, Dr Rao. Look, I’ll be at the café in Himachal Park in about half an hour. I could meet you then.”
“The pleasure will be mine entirely,” Dr Rao said with impeccable grace, and signed off.
She finished her shopping, then took the upchute to the top level. She walked through Himachal Park, Jeff’s absence all the more painful here; once a week they took time out to have a coffee with the kids, chat, and stare out across the ocean as the voidships came in.
After the artificial daylight of the lower levels, the sunlight dazzled. She found herself wondering when Jeff would land on Delta Cephei VII, and what the sun there would be like.
Later tonight, if he hadn’t called by nine, she’d take the initiative and call him.
She dropped her bags with relief, sat down and ordered an iced tea. The weather on the top level was hot and humid; the monsoon had yet to bring its seasonal relief. She dug her sunglasses from her bag, slipped them on, and sat back in the sunlight.
Five minutes later the small, insect-like figure of Dr Rao, his cane tapping ahead like a lone antenna, probed across the concourse in her direction. He saw her, hoisted his stick and hobbled across to her.
“Sukara, how pleasant it is to see you again. I take it your husband is among the stars as we speak, and Li receiving the finest treatment money can buy?” He seated himself, his wide lips set in a curve suggesting self-satisfaction at his role in effectuating the aforementioned scenarios.
Sukara smiled to herself. There was something about the doctor’s self-righteous demeanour that always struck her as comical.
“Jeff should be landing on Delta Cephei VII pretty soon,” she said, “and Li starts her treatment tomorrow.”
“A splendid state of affairs,” Dr Rao said. He ordered a salted lassi and sat back with his arthritic fingers knotted around the knob of his cane. “And now, the small matter of my latest venture...”
Sukara sipped her iced tea and smiled. “I’m all ears, Dr Rao,” she said, using the odd phrase that Jeff had introduced her to years ago.
“You are obviously cognizant of the fact that I am the... ah... shall we say benefactor of a number of indigent street children. It is a sad fact that, without my ministrations, they would find life on the Station well nigh impossible. I do my little bit to ease their burden.”
Sukara nodded. “Jeff’s told me all about your good works, Dr Rao,” she said, straight-faced.
He beamed his reptilian smile. “But it came to me recently, in a blinding flash, that I might do more for the children in my care.” He paused, so that Sukara might prompt him.
She obliged. “But what could that possibly be, Dr Rao?”
“My children,” he declared, “need educating.”
She blinked. “Educating?” She agreed, but she failed to see how educating the street-kids might be of any benefit to Dr Rao, who after all lived from the earnings of their beggary.
The old man nodded vigorously. “The situation is this; my children have gainful employment until approximately the ages of fifteen or sixteen, when they take it upon themselves to flee the nest, as it were, to leave the succour of my starship haven and try their luck in the real world. I lose contact with many of my children, and can only fear for their fates. A few I do manage to trace - and it is the plight of these few unfortunates which prompted the line of thought which culminated in my latest benevolent scheme.”
Sukara nodded encouragingly and sipped her tea.
Dr Rao went on, “Many of my children, when they reach a certain age, fall foul of the lure of lucre, promiscuity, and villainy. In short, Sukara, they fall into the clutches of those less scrupulous than myself, and find themselves ensnared in lives of vice, thieving, prostitution, and such. Now this, I reasoned, was the result of their simply having no other choices, of being precluded from the many opportunities open to them if they were requisitely educated.”
“So you intend to educate them away from lives of crime?” she said.
“You state the truth of my aims with admirable economy, my dear.”
She nodded slowly. “That sounds like a very good idea,” she said.
“But how does that involve me?”
He thumped his cane upon the decking. “Now this is my suggestion, Sukara. I intend to open a small school, teaching my children the basics: English, mathematics, history, information technology, and the like. I have certain teachers in these fields interested in my proposals, and when it came to approaching a teacher of English certain acquaintances of mine suggested that I might do worse than consider your good self. Word of your good work on Silom Road has preceded you, my dear. Now,” he hurried on, “before you remind me that you have teaching employment already, let me say that the post I am offering you would be for two days a week, so would fit in perfectly with your current situation. Besides which, I would offer you the monthly stipend of a thousand baht.”
Sukara looked at Rao with surprise. The offer was twice what she was earning on Silom Road.
“Well, it’s tempting...”
“But before you commit yourself, Sukara, perhaps you might care to come with me and visit your prospective pupils aboard their starship home?”
Jeff had told her all about the crashed starship, fixed between the decks of the Station like a fly in amber; it had crash-landed more than fifty years ago, when Level Thirteen had been the top deck, and rather than go to the considerable expense and engineering effort of removing it the authorities had, with characteristic Indian practicality, simply built up and around the stranded vessel.
“I think,” Dr Rao went on with a twinkle in his eye, “that when you meet the children, your heart and head will open to the idea of giving them a comprehensive education.”
The prospect appealed to something in her; she enjoyed teaching, and the money would be useful, but more than that there was something ultimately pleasing about the possibility of improving the lives of street-kids like her sister, Tiger.
Of course, she was curious as to how a scheming businessman like Dr Rao might profit from educating the children in his care, but for the time being she would take the rogue’s professed altruism at face value.
“When would I come and see the children?” she asked.
His lips stretched in an alarming display of pleasure. “There is, as they say, no time like the present.”
Sukara looked at her handset; she had four hours before picking up the girls, and said as much to Rao.
“Sufficient time and more in which to descend to the ship, make a tour of its environs, and meet my children.”
“In that case, Dr Rao...” She drained her tea.
Rao beat his cane once upon the decking in manifest delight. “Then let us be off, my dear!”
* * * *
NINE
CONFLICTING FORCES
Kali’s Revenge powered silently through the void. They made love well into the early hours, then slept till late the following morning. They had breakfast in Rab’s private suite high on the nose-cone of the ship, the arching dome above them showing the depthless opalescent grey of void-space.
After breakfast Rab excused himself and worked at his softscreen, and Parveen took the opportunity to wander around the ship. She activated her tele-ability and decided that now was the perfect time to probe the individuals she had earmarked for further investigation during the meet-and-greet session in the spaceport lounge. These included Jeff Vaughan, the scientists Kiki Namura and David McIntosh, and the surly Sikh security chief Anil Singh. She didn’t relish the prospect of confronting Singh so soon after their last encounter, but she was determined not to let his threats get to her. She was pretty sure that his suspicion of her was based on prejudice rather than intelligence, but she wanted to make absolutely sure.
Perhaps half the team had elected to be sedated for the duration of the trip, while the rest opted to follow the day—night pattern of Indian standard time they had left back on Earth.
She learned from a steward that Vaughan was sedated for the duration of the voyage. She found an observation nacelle close to the individual team cabins, settled down, closed her eyes, and pushed out a probe towards the sleeping telepath.
She told herself that she was doing this for Rab, but wondered if she were deceiving herself. She had liked what she had read in Vaughan’s mind back on Earth, and while Vaughan had his vices - a blanket prejudice against his fellow North Americans, for one thing, and a mistrust and resentment of intellectuals because of his own lack of education - these were more than counterbalanced by his attributes: he was honest and loyal and... this was what Parveen found most attractive about him... he loved his wife.
She swam through his dreams, a mixture of erotic visions of Sukara interspersed with his fear of reading the dead engineer, and immersed herself in a deeper strata of his unconscious mind. She dipped into his past, reliving the horrors of his time with the Toronto Homicide Department, and then the years spent running from the assassin called Osborne, right up to the point of his confrontation with the killer, and his acceptance of his death at Osborne’s hands... And his salvation, when Sukara had shot Osborne dead, and Vaughan’s subsequent slow turning away from a life of solitude as he came to place his trust in his wife-to-be.
She read his political apathy, which she found appalling. She was reassured that his mistrust of Rab was not so much based on anything he knew about the tycoon, but because it was in his nature to despise those with power and influence. It was the one aspect of his former cynicism that maintained in his current, more mature worldview.
She could tell Rab that Vaughan was to be trusted in the role he had been hired to carry out: he wanted nothing more than to get the reading of the dead engineer out of the way and return home to his wife and daughters.
Parveen withdrew her probe, slipping from his mind not without regret. A part of her, a guilty part, wanted to access his memories of his time with Sukara, and share in their love-making. She would have liked to meet his wife, to probe her and read what it was like to be the object of such affection... She told herself that she did not feel jealous: she had Rab, after all, and she knew what she felt for him. It would have been reassuring, however, to know for certain what Rab really felt for her.
She deactivated her tele-ability, left the observation nacelle and its hypnotic view of the swirling void, and moved to the bar.
This was where the majority of Rab’s team had congregated, sipping beer and coffee and chatting about the forthcoming landfall.
She found Namura and McIntosh poring over a softscreen laid flat on a low coffee-table; they were paging through a set of moving images showing the Expansion’s only other fungal world, Tourmaline, Bellatrix III.
She fetched a beer from the bar and approached the table. “Do you mind if I join you?”
Namura smiled up at her. “Please...” She gestured, and Parveen knelt beside the tiny Japanese woman. McIntosh nodded his greeting.
“I’m showing David what to expect when we land,” Namura said. “If you’ve never experienced a fungal landscape before... well, let’s say that you have a treat in store.”
McIntosh indicated a panorama of ochre bracket fungus growing from a mountainside. “Look at that...”
Namura smiled. “And Bellatrix III is only partially covered, David. According to the telemetry from the exploration vessel, eighty per cent of Delta Cephei VII is covered during its winter. It’s fast-growing too, so the landscape will be ever-changing.”
Parveen tried to envisage the idea of a perpetually mutating terrain, and failed.
Covertly, she touched her handset, enabling the psi-program. She expected the pair to be shielded, and they were - and not just with the standard-issue Chandrasakar Organisation mind-shield. Their minds were cloaked by far more sophisticated software.
A part of her wanted to leave well alone, but that was impossible. She owed it to her government to find out what she could about the embedded foreign agents. At the same time she owed it to Rab.
She was, she realised, trying to please two disparate parties, and at the same time attempting to unite the conflicting forces within her: her heart and
her head.
She tapped her handset, summoning the virus, then laid a finger Namura’s hand and exclaimed, “Look,” pointing at a quick-growing fungus-analogue that sprouted in the foreground of the screen.
She would read Namura first, and if necessary move on to her lover. In the event, she learned all she needed from the Japanese biologist.
Namura was expounding at length on the type of fungus they were watching, oblivious of the viral infection already working to break down her mind-shield.
Parveen feigned interest and scanned Namura’s revealed mind.
She cast aside the layers of trivial short-term memories, fleeting emotions, images of Namura and McIntosh making love in the shower that morning... and found what she’d been looking for.
She read that Namura’s lover, Dr David McIntosh, had run up an increasingly large gambling debt, which threatened his tenure at Sydney University if its extent were revealed. Two years ago a mysterious benefactor had stepped in with an offer of cash - if the Australian were to report back on certain findings of the Chandrasakar Organisation on the colony world of Paradigm, Vega IV. McIntosh was a geologist, due to be posted to that colony, and someone wanted to know the extent of the planet’s oil reserves. McIntosh didn’t ask why, and reassured himself that the knowledge wouldn’t, couldn’t, hurt Chandrasakar... and the half a million dollars his benefactor promised to pay him would get him out of serious trouble.
