by Eric Brown
He turned to the alien. “One thing...” He considered Chandrasakar’s discovery of the colonists, the underground caverns, and what this might mean to their way of life.
The alien pre-empted his question. “Do not worry yourself on that score,” it said. “We have the matter in hand. Now go, and return soon.”
Vaughan nodded, turned to face the portal, and stepped through. He felt a second of lightheadedness, a rush of heat. Then he was on the other side, his step unbroken, walking away from the portal towards the cavern’s entrance.
He paused and looked back through the membrane. The alien raised its hand in an oddly human gesture.
He turned and hurried towards the exit.
* * * *
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE CODE
Sukara came to her senses in a bare apartment.
She looked through the window, saw the open sky as grey as pewter with the unshed monsoon rains. So she wasn’t in Dr Rao’s safe house on Level Two...
The only furnishings in the small room were the sofa on which she sat and a kitchen chair by the window. The heat was merciless. She was sweating freely, slick rivulets greasing her torso.
She tried to move, but her ankles were bound together and tied to the feet of the sofa. She tried to stand, but almost fell forwards. She slumped down into the cushions and looked around. Her cheek throbbed where the bastard had hit her, but more than the pain she felt an overwhelming sense of dread. They wanted something from her, obviously - but she had no idea what. She recalled the Chink who’d followed her, and wondered if her captors were aware of his death. If they were, then they might not be so careful with her.
She lifted her left arm and began tapping the police code into her handset.
Shockingly, someone hit her across the back of her head. She fell forward, yelling. She heard someone snicker, behind her, and at the same time someone else moved around the sofa and came into view.
It was not the Chink who’d caught her, but someone else - a grinning fish-faced bastard with a pudding-bowl haircut, the latest fashion among the Chinese on the Station.
The guy hunkered down before her, just out of arm’s reach. He was holding a small enabling pin in his right hand. “You don’t think we’d let you get away with that, do you, Sukara?”
He was sweating, and gave off an overwhelming stench of body-odour almost animal in its intensity. “Now, I hope you’re going to be reasonable.”
She took a few shallow breaths, trying not to inhale his stink. “About what?”
“About,” said Fish-face, “giving us what we want.”
This was more than just an abduction and possible rape by a bunch of psychopaths, she thought. “What do you want?”
“The code,” Fish-face said, “that’ll connect your handset to Jeff Vaughan.”
So they wanted, for some reason, to contact Jeff. She guessed they’d tried using her handset while she was unconscious, but she’d erased the code on Jeff’s instructions before he left, and committed it to memory.
“What do you want with Jeff?” she asked.
She felt another ringing blow on the back of her head. She pitched forward, crying out. The second Chink moved around the sofa and sat on the chair before the window, staring out. It was the bastard who’d abducted her in the street.
Fish-face said, “We’re asking the questions.”
She rubbed the back of her head, staring past Fish-face at the door.
“Now, the code...”
She thought about it, then said, “I don’t have a code. I don’t contact Jeff. He contacts me.”
The blow was all the more painful for being unexpected and lightning fast. Fish-face struck out, his fist connecting with her jaw, sending a blaze of pain through her skull. She rocked back, eyes wide.
“We can play this little game all day, but it’ll get a little tiresome. We ask the question, you lie, and then we hurt you. Eventually we’ll get tired of playing the game, and things will get serious.” Fish-face paused and looked across at his accomplice who, well rehearsed, took up the line.
“Sukara,” he said without taking his gaze from outside, “there is a bed in the next room, and we’ve brought enough cord with us to tie your arms and legs.”
“And we have a knife,” Fish-face went on. “Snick-snick, and off with your clothes...”
“And after that, we hurt you again.”
“But,” said Fish-face, “we hope it won’t come to that. We hope you’re going to be reasonable about this. Now, the code.”
She knew the bastards would carry out the threat, and enjoy doing so, if she didn’t give them the code. But they’d probably rape her anyway, code given or not... Thing was, would giving them the code compromise Jeff in any way?
She said, “I’ll give you the code.”
Fish-face smiled. He was truly ugly, and even more so when he smiled, with his underslung jaw and his small, jutting rows of teeth. “Good girl.”
He reached out, took her arm, and drew it to him. He laid her wrist on his knee, inserted the enabling pin into her handset and held a finger above the keypad.
She repeated the code, preceded by the password. Fish-face entered them and waited.
Sukara stared at the screen, waiting for Jeff’s face to fill it. She just wanted to see his face again...
The screen remained blank, then flashed up the barred circle sign denoting either access denied or unavailable status.
The guy by the window stood and moved across to the sofa. He stared down at the screen. He sounded disappointed when he said, “And I thought you were going to be reasonable...” He moved, purposefully, towards the bedroom door.
“That’s the code! I swear! Please, try it again...”
The second guy stopped outside the bedroom door and watched as Fish-face re-entered the code.
Sukara’s heart pounded, counting down the seconds.
She stared at the screen, willing Jeff to answer.
A second later the barred logo came up again.
Fish-face stood abruptly.
The second guy said, grinning, “A little fun, heh?”
Fish-face contemplated, fingering his out-thrust jaw. He smiled. “I have a better idea.” He moved across to his accomplice and they conferred in whispers.
The result was that the second guy hurried across the room, opened the apartment door, and slipped out. Sukara briefly saw a flash of carpeted landing before the door closed: she thought of yelling for help, decided against it.
“We think,” Fish-face said softly, “that there might be a better way of persuading you to give us the correct code.”
“But it was!” she wailed.
“After all,” he went on, “how persuasive can rape be, to someone who was raped a dozen times a day for baht?”
He moved out of sight, and Sukara heard an interior door snick shut.
She sat back and closed her eyes. Who were these people, she wondered, that they knew so much about her past?
She opened her eyes and sat forward, sickened. They said they had a better way of persuading her...
A thought occurred.
No, she thought. Please, no.
She reached for the jacket pocket in which she kept the security pin for Pham’s school gate.
It wasn’t there.
A pit of despair opened within her, excavating a grieving hollow in her chest.
She closed her eyes and sobbed. At least Fish-face wasn’t here to see her distress.
She had no idea how long she sat there, eyes shut, fearing what would happen very soon now. She existed in a limbo of fear, consumed by the desire for revenge and the knowledge of the futility of her situation.
She heard a toilet flush, a door open. She opened her eyes.
Fish-face moved into sight and paused by the window, looking out.
A few minutes later he said, “Ah... here they are now.”
It was all Sukara could do to stop herself yelling out loud in despair.
Pham moved into the room, wide-eyed. “Mum...” She shook her head. “But he said that Li was...” She stopped, staring at Sukara’s bound ankles.
She spun and yelled at the second guy. “Who are you? Why-”
Fish-face lashed out, backhanding Pham across the face. She yelled and fell to the floor.
Sukara bent double, reaching out and pulling Pham towards her. Fish-face took Pham’s arm and yanked her away. Pham struggled, kicking her legs and lashing out. The second guy grabbed her legs and between them they carried her, kicking and screaming, to the bedroom. The door banged shut.
Sukara sobbed and heard her daughter’s screams, soon cut off. Silence.
A minute later the door opened again and Fish-face walked out. A minute... Surely they couldn’t have had time to...?
She said, “Listen. I was telling you the truth. That was the code. Try again, okay?” She took a breath, then had an idea. “Listen, I kept all the other calls to Jeff, stored in here. Maybe if you access them, there’ll be some way you can see that the code I used was the one I gave you, okay?”
Fish-face listened. Without a word he approached her, knelt, and took her arm. He accessed her handset and she told him how to enable the memory. He tapped at the keypad, then nodded.
“Hey, Sukara, it’s your lucky day...”
He stood and walked around the sofa. The bedroom door opened and he spoke in low tones to his accomplice. Minutes later Pham appeared, moved around the sofa, and dropped into the cushions beside Sukara. She was silently sobbing. “They said... They said they’d...”
Sukara hugged Pham to her while Fish-face bent and shackled her ankles to the feet of the sofa.
“We’ll be okay, Pham,” Sukara said, over and over. “Keep quiet. Do as they say, okay?”
“But what do they want?” Pham whispered.
Fish-face said, “Okay. We’ll try again.”
He took Sukara’s arm, accessed her handset and entered Jeff’s code. Once again the barred sigil appeared. Fish-face nodded. “We’ll give it an hour, okay, and after that...” He removed the enabling pin from the handset.
The two men moved out of sight around the sofa, and Sukara hugged Pham to her and closed her eyes, murmuring reassurances into her daughter’s ear.
* * * *
TWENTY-NINE
A NECESSARY EXECUTION
Vaughan came to the top of the steps leading down to the deserted alien city.
He paused, then moved to where the rocks on his left offered some cover. He crouched, enabled his tele-ability, and probed.
Nothing. Absolute silence. He had expected to pick up the static of Das’s mind-shield, but he read nothing.
He stood and scanned the streets. They appeared empty, eerily silent. He wondered where Das had gone. Had she been picked up by Chandrasakar and taken somewhere...? His tele-ability had a range of a little over 500 metres. They could be anywhere beyond that.
He decided to head for the cover of the city and move systematically through the streets. He would search for thirty minutes, then return to the membrane. The thought of being reunited with Sukara filled him with joy.
He stood and hurried down the steps, coming at last to the boulevard that encircled the city. He moved into the shadow of a crumbling, brown-walled building and probed. He reckoned he had travelled 300 metres from the top of the steps - but there was still no static from the mind-shields of Das or Chandrasakar and his men.
He moved from the building and hurried down the wide street towards the centre of the city, keeping in the shadows of the walls. Part of him wanted to return now, leave Das to her fate and get back to the safety of the chamber. Another part wanted to find Das, save her from Chandrasakar. He wondered if his motivations in wanting this were no more than the desire to show her that he had overcome the combined powers of her government and the Chandrasakar Organisation.
He reckoned he had walked a couple of hundred metres from the edge of the city when he detected the first faint signal of the mind-shield. It was a patch of static, very faint, on the edges of his perception.
He concentrated. It was around 500 metres away, to his right. He came to a turning and slipped along it, and as he did so the static of the mind-shield became stronger.
The static was unmoving, and he rapidly covered the distance towards it.
Then he stopped, panting, and pressed himself against the rough wall of a windowless building. He detected another eight mind-shields, a little way beyond the first. He calculated that they were all within 400 metres of his present position. They, like the first, were unmoving.
He moved forward with greater care, keeping to the cover of walls and buildings.
When he judged that the mind-shields were no more than fifty metres away, he stopped and considered his next move.
He was in the recessed doorway of a building that occupied the end of a row. The door was made of some toughened fungal material. He applied pressure, then a little more, and it gave under his weight. The room was small and gloomy. He ran through it to another, larger room, and found what he was looking for. A narrow staircase, with tiny steps, rose to the second floor. He climbed carefully so as not to put his feet through the ancient material.
The room on the upper floor was spacious and overlooked what once might have been a fountain. He moved to the shuttered window, reached out, and carefully eased open the shutter.
Light filled the room, momentarily dazzling him. When his eyes adjusted, he peered out - then pulled back quickly, hardly able to believe what he’d seen.
He took a breath, looked again.
He saw Das first. She was sitting against a low wall, very still, her legs outstretched before her and her hands holding something in her lap. Vaughan saw, with incredulity, that she was embracing the mess of her entrails that had slopped from the wound in her abdomen. Her eyes were still open, staring sightlessly at some point far beyond the confines of the cavern.
Only then did he see Chandrasakar.
His body was lying on its back five metres to Das’s right. His head and shoulders, detached, were a metre away, connected by a long smear of blood.
Vaughan pulled back again, heart throbbing, and considered what might have happened. When he looked again he knew what he was looking for.
He saw no sign of a weapon near Das. He reckoned that she must have been shot where she sat, as there was an absence of blood anywhere around her. Similarly, there was no evidence of a weapon near the tycoon’s body. They couldn’t have killed each other.
He looked beyond their bodies, then, and saw the carnage. He counted the static of six further mind-shields, made out chunks of meat wrapped in blue material. They had been lasered, messily, and their sectioned remains were spread over the wide, sunken area of the empty fountain. He guessed that the security personnel had been running when the lasers struck, their momentum careening limbs, heads and torsos in every direction. He looked among the remains for Singh’s turbaned head. It wasn’t there.
So had Singh killed Chandrasakar, Das, and the security personnel who had been loyal to the tycoon?
Was he now somewhere in the city...?
Vaughan stared down at the carnage and considered what it represented: a messy Rorschach blot denoting the psychology of greed and the lust for power which rendered humankind so treacherous. No wonder the Taoth and the other aliens had fled before humanity’s terrible expansion.
He was brought to his senses by the amplified voice of a drone. “We know you are there, Vaughan. Drop your laser and you might live.”
He scanned, caught the faint signal of a mind-shield on the periphery of his perception, directly ahead of him across the square.
Either the bastard was a telepath with a range greater than his own, or Singh had seen him as he made his way through the city.
He slipped his weapon from inside his jacket, but he had no intention o
f dropping it as requested. He rolled from the window. A split second later a blinding laser vector lanced through the opening and crumbled the far wall. He stood and ran, not for the stairs but towards the gaping hole the laser had obligingly opened in the thin mud wall.
In the next room he continued sprinting, turned and used his shoulder against the wall. It gave and he staggered through into the next building. He hardly paused, but launched himself at the next wall. He crashed through, snagged by fibres and choked by dust. His escape might have been unconventional, but it might confuse Singh and buy him time.
