Cosmopath - [Bengal Station 03]

by Eric Brown

  “And down here we have some of the private bedrooms, given over to the kitchen and laundry workers.”

  They passed down a long corridor, off which were the narrow cabins which had originally berthed the ship’s crew.

  Dr Rao paused outside a closed door, and cleared his throat. “This room,” he said, “belonged to your sister. Not a day goes by when I do not recall her smiling face. Please, if you would care to...”

  He eased open the door, stood back to allow her entry, and had the tact to stand outside while she stepped inside and gazed around at the cramped, dirty room.

  Her eyes filled up as she recalled the tiny girl she had known in Bangkok - not Tiger then, but Pakara, just fifteen when she had left the city for what she hoped would be a better life. The tragedy was that, compared to the life of prostitution she had led in Thailand, what she had found on Bengal Station probably had been an improvement.

  Another girl had the room now, evidenced by posters of male holo-movie stars, dolls, and a threadbare teddy. These scant and pathetic possessions might as well have belonged to Tiger...

  She thought of Jeff, who had knelt by this very bunk and held her sister’s hand while she died.

  She dried her eyes, turned and stepped from the room. Dr Rao laid a gentle, understanding hand on her shoulder and ushered her back down the corridor to the voluminous cargo hold.

  They stood side by side at the top of the ramp and stared out over the confusion of girder-work and greenery.

  “As you can see, Sukara, I provide as best I can a stable environment for my many charges, but once they reach adulthood and elect to leave my jurisdiction, then my ability to be of assistance is diminished. If they were educated, could find their way into professional positions... But I need not labour the point, my dear.”

  Sukara nodded. “Where would I teach the children?” she asked. “Down here?”

  Dr Rao looked radiant. “I have a small schoolroom set aside on Level Two,” he said, “which overlooks the ocean. It is a most amenable environment in which to learn.”

  She said, “I couldn’t start for a few weeks, until Li is better and Jeff is back.”

  Rao bowed his head in complete understanding. “We will arrange a starting date in the fullness of time, my dear.”

  She glanced at the chronometer on her handset. “It’s time I was getting back,” she said.

  “I will accompany you to the elevator, Sukara.”

  They crossed the catwalk, and Dr Rao entered the code. The door slid open. “I have various tasks awaiting my attention down here,” he said. “If you simply press the upward arrow...”

  Sukara smiled and said, “Thanks for showing me around, Dr Rao.”

  He patted her hand. “My dear, the pleasure has been mine entirely. It is thanks to you, and the other teachers I have employed, that these children and others will lead full and profitable lives when they leave my sanctuary. It is my fervent hope,” he went on, “that when they do find gainful employment and positions of status, that they will remember the start in life I gave, them; they might even, I dearly hope, remember their benefactor in his old age...” And he reached out and pressed a button. The door slid shut.

  As the elevator rose, carrying her to the top deck, Sukara laughed out loud. She had known that there had to be an ulterior motive for Rao’s altruism, and now she had it: not satisfied with taking their earnings while children, Rao would exert pressure to relieve them of their gains when they were wage-earning adults, too.

  She found her disgust at the rascal’s wily methods warring with a contrary and oddly irrational liking of the man.

  She was looking forward to telling Jeff all about her afternoon.

  She hurried from the coffee house, pushed through the crowds on Chandi Road, and took a downchute to Level Two. Ten minutes later she collected Li from the nursery, then crossed the park to Pham’s school.

  If they hurried, they would be back at the hotel in time for five, and the results of Li’s blood test.

  The thought filled her with foreboding.

  Pham ran from the school with a plastic ball she’d extruded during a manufacturing lesson that afternoon, and she and Li raced across the grass playing football.

  Sukara smiled, watching their carefree antics.

  The chime of her handset, when it came seconds later, froze her to the bone.

  It was four-forty-five.

  She accessed the call.

  Dr Grant’s smiling PA - Sukara couldn’t recall her name - looked up at her.

  “Yes?”

  “Sukara? I am ringing about your daughter, Li...”

  All Sukara could say, again, was, “Yes?”

  “Dr Grant would like you to bring Li into his surgery at the soonest available opportunity, Sukara. Please don’t be overly worried, but there are one or two anomalies in your daughter’s blood test results.”

  Sukara sank to the grass. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “If you could bring Li into the surgery, Sukara, Dr Grant will be happy to discuss the matter with you.”

  Sukara just stared. “Shall... should I bring her now?”

  The woman smiled. “That would be excellent, Sukara.” And she cut the connection.

  Sukara slumped down onto the grass, her legs too weak to support her. She was aware of a loud buzzing in her ears and her heart was racing. She looked across the park to where Li and Pham were tiny figures, the ball arcing through the air between them.

  She wanted to call Jeff, to have the reassurance of his voice, but at the same time she couldn’t bring herself to burden him with the worry that clutched her now.

  She realised that she was crying. She stood, dried her eyes, and hurried smiling towards the girls.

  * * * *

  ELEVEN

  ABDUCTION

  Vaughan was woken by the soft chimes of a bedside communicator. A soft female voice said, “Landing in thirty minutes. If you would care to gather in the observation lounge... I repeat-” He reached out and silenced the device.

  The viewscreen in his room was opaqued, and he decided to treat himself to the first sight of the planet from the observation lounge.

  He showered quickly, dressed, and made his way through the ship.

  The sliding doors to the lounge parted, and the first thing that hit him was the sunlight. Delta Cephei was a yellow supergiant fulminating above the horizon, not so much yellow as burnt orange, and bristling with molten ejecta and fiery loops.

  The ship was coming in low, down a valley between what Vaughan took to be mountains. The scientists were gathered excitedly before the curving glass, staring out and exclaiming from time to time. Parveen Das stood beside Kiki Namura and David McIntosh. Namura saw him and waved. “Mr Vaughan! Mr Vaughan! You must see this!”

  He crossed to the group and stared out. The ship was moving slowly, silently, down a long corridor between rearing land masses; they were not mountains, he saw now, but what looked like outcroppings of some vegetable growth.

  A waiter was circulating with a tray of coffee. Vaughan grabbed a cup.

  Namura gestured through the screen, smiling at Das and Vaughan. “The predominant vegetation on Delta Cephei VII,” the biologist said, “is a funguslike growth. It covers the planet during the temperate periods - that is, what we would call spring and autumn. During summer and winter, conditions are too severe for the fungus-analogue to survive, so it dies back and flourishes at the next clement period.”

  “Is it spring or autumn here now?” McIntosh asked.

  “Spring,” Namura said, “and as you can see, the fungus-growth is coming to life.”

  Coming to life, Vaughan thought, was a prosaic way of describing what was happening outside. He had expected a static landscape, even on learning that the supposed mountains were actually fungal growths; but as he stared through the curving glass he was startled to see movement amid the masses and rafts of cream-coloured vegetation. Stalks grew, snaking and twisting towards the sun as if
seen via the medium of time-lapse photography; forests of tall trees, for want of a better expression, rose visibly, sending out side-shoots and fan-shaped shelves, and exploding in great bursts of waving cilia.

  Das said, “Delta Cephei VII describes a highly elliptical orbit around its primary. It takes approximately twenty-five years to make an entire circuit. It has long harsh winters, and short, intense summers. Winter lasts in the region of ten years, and summer something like two.”

  “The fungus-analogue has adapted itself admirably to the severe conditions,” Namura said.

  McIntosh frowned. “I wonder if the conditions out there militate against finding sentient life?”

  Namura shrugged. “Life, even sentient life, is amazing in its versatility. I’ve read about sentience coming about in even more adverse conditions than these.”

  “It would make things easier for Rab if there weren’t a sentient native life form,” Das said.

  Vaughan wondered if he detected a note of criticism in her tone. He decided to be blunt. “And where would you stand on that, Parveen?”

  She looked at him appraisingly. “What do you think? As a good socialist I would be opposed to the exploitation of a sentient race, and its planet, for mere financial gain.”

  “And as a... friend of Chandrasakar’s?”

  She looked away, staring through the screen at the panorama of twisted fungal growths. “I pity any sentient creature who finds itself standing between the organisation and its aims,” she said. “It would be better in every respect if Delta Cephei VII harboured no intelligent life.”

  “Its elliptical orbit,” McIntosh said, “with harsh summer and winters, wouldn’t make it a prime candidate for colonisation.”

  Namura laid her head on one side and considered. “There are similar colony worlds. What about Janus, Epsilon Indi II? And Coney’s World, Vega VI? They’re extreme, and are successful.”

  “But as extreme as here?” the Australian persisted.

  Namura shook her head. “You’re right. No, not as extreme as Delta Cephei VII.”

  McIntosh said, “Delta Cephei VII. A bit of a mouthful. Doesn’t it have a name?”

  “Not as yet,” Das said. “That will come later.”

  Vaughan sipped his coffee. “No doubt someone will want to call it Chandrasakar’s World.” He glanced at Das.

  She nodded. “There have been precedents. Verkerk’s World, for instance, named after the tycoon who funded the exploration.”

  “Chandrasakar’s World,” McIntosh mused. “It has a certain ring.”

  “Speaking of the man,” Vaughan said, directing this at Das. “I don’t see him around.”

  She chose not to respond.

  Namura hid her mouth behind a small hand and laughed, “We come to a new world, and Mr Chandrasakar remains in his bed?”

  “That’s the rich and jaded for you,” Das said, and Vaughan gained the impression that Das’s criticism of her lover was for the benefit of those around her.

  Not for the first time, he wondered where her true loyalties lay.

  The thrumming of the main drive, an almost subliminal hum more felt than heard, fell an octave as the ship banked ponderously. Vaughan held on to the padded rail before the viewscreen and watched as it descended in a routine spiraldown. New vistas came into view, a forest of relatively small, silvery stalks ending in polyps which waved in the down-draft of the ship, and a range of what looked like upright fans, perhaps each the size of a house, silvery-green on one plane and striated with gills on the other.

  “That stuff looks thick,” McIntosh said. “Wonder how far down it is to the bedrock?” He laughed. “You have it easy, Kiki. All you have to do is step out and grab a handful of mushrooms...”

  Vaughan’s concern was more practical. “I wonder how tough that stuff is? I mean, will it take the weight of the ship?”

  Das said, “The rescue vessel didn’t report any difficulties.”

  “Fungus, despite what we might think, can be exceptionally tough and fibrous, Mr Vaughan,” Namura said.

  Kali’s Revenge was hovering in situ and coming down with painful exactitude in a flat valley between two rearing fungal hills. Suddenly the descent ceased; Vaughan thought he sensed a slight give as the vegetation took the weight of the ship, a resistance which made the Kali slowly rise and then settle again.

  “Look,” Namura said.

  “The Pride of Mussoree,” Das said.

  The exploration vessel was sitting on a plain of fungus level with the Kali, perhaps 500 metres away. It was probably half the size of their ship, a 100-metre long teardrop with shaped vanes and fins like some ugly deep-sea fish. It bore the green livery of the Chandrasakar Line, the little of it that could be seen through the growths that had moulded themselves around the alien invader. The far side of the ship was entirely cupped by an enfolding wall of fungus, and smaller, shelf-like growths protruded from the ship’s curving flank.

  The effect, Vaughan thought, was of a child’s model starship lost in some weird alien garden.

  “The exit hatch is open,” McIntosh pointed out.

  Vaughan saw the triangular opening in the flank, already invaded by snaking tendrils and spaghetti vines.

  “Well, what do you think?” boomed a voice behind them.

  They turned to see Chandrasakar beaming at them. Dressed in green multi-purpose EVA garb, and not his usual formal suit, his democratised appearance struck Vaughan as an attempt to come over as one of the team.

  They turned and stared through the viewscreen at the Mussoree, the ochre fungal landscape and, above it all, the vast globe of the sun.

  “It’s...” McIntosh began. “It’s weird... alien” he finished inadequately.

  “I’m sending out the security team first of all,” Chandrasakar informed them. “They’ll cordon off the entire region for a couple of kilometres, taking in the Kali, the Mussoree, and much of the surrounding high ground. We don’t know what happened to the original crew, so we’re taking no chances. They’ll make the area secure, and only then will we venture out.”

  Namura said, almost to herself, “I wonder if we’re in danger, even here?”

  Chandrasakar shook his head. “I assure you that we’re quite safe, my dear.”

  “You mentioned that there was only one survivor of...of whatever happened,” McIntosh said.

  Chandrasakar nodded. “She managed to make it back to the ship. She’s in cold sleep.”

  Namura indicated the open hatch. “But if whatever attacked them... then surely they might have entered the ship?”

  “We don’t know whether they were attacked,” Chandrasakar said. “The rescue mission I sent out round no such evidence. The fact that the engineer made it to cryo suggests that even if they were the subject of an assault, then it wasn’t followed up.”

  McIntosh said, “So when we unfreeze the engineer, we’ll find out what happened.”

  “But,” Namura put in, logically, “why didn’t the rescue mission do that?”

  Chandrasakar hesitated, and Vaughan hoped he wouldn’t come out with the fact that the engineer was dead. As a telepath he risked suffering enough mistrust without the team knowing that he had the grisly ability to read the minds of the dead.

  He glanced at Das, but she gave no indication that she was aware of his status as a necropath.

  Chandrasakar said, “Let’s just say that there were certain... complications. The ensuing investigation should provide all the answers.”

  McIntosh peered through the screen right and left. “Where’s the rescue vessel that found the Mussoree?”

  “Long gone,” Chandrasakar informed him. “I can’t have a starship sitting redundant for months now, can I?”

  Vaughan was about to ask the tycoon about the Mussoree’s security during that time, when there was a stirring of interest among those gathered before the viewscreen.

  Something moved outside, below the viewscreen. They watched as a ramp extended from the flank of the Kal
i, digging into the fungal matter of the planet’s surface and shaving up a curling bow-wave of the stuff.

  Seconds elapsed, and then a figure came into view. It wore blue body armour and carried a bulky assault rifle. Vaughan recognised Singh. The head of security moved cautiously down the ramp, followed by his team of a dozen individuals. All were armed, and half of them carried backpacks; they split into pairs as they stepped onto the surface of the planet. Vaughan half expected them to bounce, as if on some fibrous trampoline, but the surface seemed solid underfoot.