by Eric Brown
He carried her to a chair, sat down, and held her in his lap while she clung to him like the survivor of some shipwreck and sobbed.
“I know,” he said, smoothing her back through the material of her T-shirt. “I know... there’s nothing you can do, you’re right. Yes, that’s why it hurts all the more...”
Sukara felt his arms around her, strong and comforting.
“She wasn’t in pain, Su. Isn’t that what Dr. Rao said? He told you that she passed away peacefully.”
She nodded, trying to control her sobbing.
“She was better off begging than selling her body. Dr. Rao said that he looked after her, that she had a good life.”
Sukara wiped tears from her eyes with her wrist.
“There was nothing you could have done. But you didn’t arrive any sooner, so it’s no good trying to edit the past. You must try to look back at the good times.”
She felt the muscles of his chest through his silk shirt, and was hit by the thought that Pakara had probably never felt this, never felt real love for a man.
“I’m sure she did,” Osborne tried to comfort her. “I’m sure she had friends and lovers.”
At the thought that her sister would never again have the opportunity to experience anything, Sukara choked on her sobs.
“You will get over it,” Osborne said. “It just takes time. Believe me. I know words mean nothing now. There’s nothing I can say to make it any better, but time does heal the wound. I’ve lost someone close to me—I thought I wouldn’t survive; I didn’t want to survive. Life seemed pointless... But, Su, we go on. We do survive. And you have me. Never forget that, Su. You have me.”
I love you, she thought.
He held her to him. “I know you do,” he said.
Time passed, and under the ministration of his soothing words, words which answered her every anguished thought almost before those thoughts were fully formed, Sukara calmed herself. She knew that somehow her mind was open to him, and instead of feeling vulnerable and exposed—as she would have done if anyone else could have read her mind—she felt a joyous relief that he could see into the very core of her being and still want her.
She held Osborne, never wanting to let him go.
He stroked her hair. “I am a telepath,” he said, in answer to her thoughts. “I work for the government of Federated America.”
She took his golden pendant in her palm. It almost pulsed with a strange, lustrous warmth. She realised, then, that she had never seen him without it.
He smiled. “It’s a shield,” he said. “A mind-shield. It prevents other telepaths from reading my mind.”
She thought, You looking for friend on Station?
“Not a friend. A colleague, once. A traitor to my country. I know he’s here, somewhere. I discovered that he worked at the ‘port. Eventually I will track him down, and punish him.”
Will you kill him?
He kissed her head. “That need not concern you, my little one. All that matters is that you have me, okay?”
And she thought, Mmm.
As the sun set and the room slipped into darkness, Osborne held her in arms like reassurance made physical, and Sukara closed her eyes and eventually slept.
* * * *
TWENTY-TWO
A THIRD FUNERAL
Vaughan stood before the viewscreen as the void-ship materialised over the Bay of Bengal. The mind-noise of the Station increased as they approached the ‘port. He should have realised that, after the relative mind-silence of Verkerk’s World, the Station would be intolerable; he should have saved enough chora to get him through his first few hours on Earth. He thought back to the absolute silence he had experienced north of Vanderlaan, and longed to enjoy it again.
The ship landed on the jet black anvil that was Bengal Station, and thirty minutes later Vaughan joined the procession of passengers as they crossed the deck to the terminal building. As a citizen of the Station he was processed rapidly. He passed through the cursory customs check with business-people and tourists returning from vacation. The main foyer, a plush marble chamber, was thronged with visitors recently arrived. Vaughan saw travellers in the distinctive dress of a dozen different colony worlds, and even some aliens among the crowd: the tall, blue beings of Barnard’s Star, a party of adipose ancients from Ophiuchi.
He’d taken the first available flight from Verkerk’s World as soon as he was released from hospital, and he calculated that he had perhaps a day in which to locate and destroy the Vaith on the Station before its feeding cycle ended for another two years.
Of course, if Sinton had acted on his report and instituted a search worldwide, then the danger might have passed.
“Mr. Vaughan!”
He turned, alarmed at the summons.
A young Thai police officer approached him. “Mr. Vaughan? Commander Sinton would like to see you. He will be at Investigator Chandra’s funeral.”
“What a welcome to Earth,” Vaughan said. “Yes, of course. What’s the local time?”
“Five in the evening, sir. Chandra’s remains are being transported to the ghats. His funeral will begin shortly.”
He left his luggage in a locker at the ‘port and followed the pilot across the forecourt to the flier. As the vehicle rose, engines whining with the rapidity of the ascent, Vaughan leaned back and closed his eyes.
Ten minutes later the flier banked over the edge of the Station and came down on the ghats beside the ocean. The pilot indicated a funeral underway, and Vaughan climbed out and crossed the deck towards the assembled mourners and their attendant mind-noise. He remembered Tiger’s funeral, and it came to him that the only similarity between the two services was the funeral pyre itself. Whereas Tiger’s service had been attended by Vaughan and three or four of her friends, there must have been three or four hundred mourners here. Which, he supposed, was to be expected: Jimmy had died valiantly in the line of duty and was accorded a full police service in consequence.
He eased himself through the crowd until he stood near the front. The pyre had already been lit by Chandra’s widow, Sumita, in the Hindu tradition, and the flames licked through the stack of wood-sub built about Jimmy’s body. As Vaughan stared into the pyre, sweating in the heat from the blaze and the summer sun, he thought back quite involuntarily to Jimmy’s death in the pit on the mountainside, and not for the first time since the incident he realised how pointless was the complex charade of existence.
He looked around the mourners for Commander Sinton, and spotted him in the front row of the gathering.
He watched Sumita step back from the pyre as a holy man began a dolorous chant. She appeared calm, composed: a slim, oval-faced Indian woman in her mid-twenties. Jimmy had never spoken of her, had kept the personal side of his life strictly private, and that had been fine by Vaughan.
He looked around at the mourners, mainly Indian civilians and a few Thais: their expressions were not ones of grief, rather a stolid, expressionless acceptance of the consequences of karma accrued from life to life.
How wonderful it would be to share such a belief, he thought. He wondered how he had gone on for so long with the knowledge of the oblivion that awaited him... though that, indeed, was probably why he had not taken his own life in the darkest days of his existence just after escaping from Canada: life was hell, but the alternative was not much better.
He moved his gaze around the mourners. A fellow police officer was standing at a microphone before the pyre, his eulogy interrupted from time to time by the static of the crackling fire. He spoke in Hindi and Vaughan understood not a word, for which he was thankful: no doubt he would have to endure platitudes in his own language soon enough.
He eased himself back through the crowd, earning looks of censure from mourners more pious than himself. The heat of the day was making him nauseous. There were rows of seats at the back of the ghat, for the elderly and infirm. He sat down gratefully and gave a passable imitation, to whomever should be looking, of someone concentrat
ing on the eulogies.
A dozen officers in khaki uniform lifted their rifles and let off a salvo of laser fire, the crimson vectors cross-hatching the air above the ocean with a lingering tartan pattern. The gathering broke up, some mourners drifting away, others moving to where Sumita was receiving words of consolation. Vaughan thought of leaving before she saw him; he was about to get up and cross the ghat to where the bulky commander was in conversation with one of his officers, when he heard the swish of a sari nearby, caught the scent of rosewater on the hot evening air.
Sumita sat down beside him, hitching a silk sash over her shoulder with a modest, economical gesture. Vaughan was taken by the woman’s poise, her natural beauty, and the calm air of regret and resignation that emanated from her mind.
“Mr. Vaughan, I’ve read the commander’s report of the incident. It must have been a very terrible time for you. If you don’t wish to discuss it with me I will understand completely.”
“No... no, that’s okay. There must be details that Sinton didn’t go into.”
She lowered her gaze to the deck and said: “I just wish to know, in all honesty, Mr. Vaughan, whether my husband suffered before his death. Commander Sinton assured me that his end was painless, but I would like to know a little more.”
Vaughan nodded. “I think I would too, if I were you.”
“You were together in the hours before my husband passed on.”
“We were imprisoned in a natural pit. It was cold, but we... we talked. I told Jimmy more about myself than I’ve ever told anyone else. I think...” he paused, then went on, “I think in those few hours I became close to your husband.”
“And... the end?”
He looked up, into her eyes. “Jimmy just slept,” he told her. “He closed his eyes and slept, and didn’t wake up.”
‘“Death is but a sleep and a forgetting,’“ she said. She smiled at him, and it was as if their roles had been reversed: she was now consoling him. She reached out and placed long, slender fingers on his arm.
“He felt no pain,” Vaughan finished.
“I wish to thank you for being with him at the end. For him to have died alone, with no one to witness... that truly would have been intolerable.”
Vaughan watched her stand and smile in farewell, and move off to the next group of mourners.
He left his seat and walked around the smouldering mound of ashes, to where Commander Sinton was standing on the edge of the deck, looking out to sea. The stench of the cremation stung his nostrils, brought tears to his eyes. He reached Sinton and stood beside him, watching the lazy rise and fall of the waves a couple of metres below.
The Commander nodded. “I read your report, Vaughan.”
He was a big man, tall and broad, with greying hair and a humourless ruddy face. As on their first meeting, at the ‘port before he and Chandra had left for Verkerk’s World, Sinton wore a mind-shield. He turned and watched the priest brush the embers from the deck. Ash rose in a grey cloud and drifted out to sea.
“I don’t like to lose men,” Sinton said, “and I especially don’t like to lose good men.” His gaze, which he turned on Vaughan for long seconds, held more than a hint of accusation.
Vaughan detected something false in the Commander’s statement. “Don’t give me that,” he said evenly. “Chandra was just another foot soldier. There’s thousands like him on the Station, willing to give everything for a good wage and a police apartment.”
“Are all telepaths as cynical as you, Mr. Vaughan?”
“Occupational hazard. We get to read a lot of crap.”
Sinton glanced at him. “As I’m shielded, I’d kindly ask you not to guess at my thoughts and sentiments on the matter.”
“Then put your shield aside and let me read the truth,” Vaughan snapped.
“And have you privy to sensitive and classified information, Mr. Vaughan? I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could spit.”
“Is that a prejudice against all telepaths, Sinton, or just me?”
“All telepaths,” Sinton said. “But the prejudice I have against you is more specific.”
Vaughan looked up, surprised by the turn of conversation. He rarely wished to be able to look into a mind, but he would have scanned Sinton with pleasure now.
The police chief fixed his gaze on the horizon, his eyes narrowing. “It was going on information supplied by you that Chandra made his decision to request the Verkerk’s World operation.”
“And I’m as cut up about what happened to Jimmy as the next man.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Sinton smiled. “Or should I be more cynical and doubt the sincerity of your sentiment, just as you doubt mine? But I won’t indulge in character assassination, Mr. Vaughan. The problem I have is with the accuracy of your information.”
Vaughan felt his pulse quicken. “What do you mean?” He disliked the trick Sinton had of never looking him in the eye, of staring out to sea and addressing his barbed comments to no one in particular.
“I mean, Mr. Vaughan, that your reasons for going to Verkerk’s World were invalid.”
“You mean the girl, Elly Jenson? And whatever was in the container? You think I was lying?”
“Lying is perhaps too strong a phrase to use—but I certainly think you were... shall I say, misguided?”
“And what about what we found on Verkerk’s? You don’t think for a minute I was ‘misguided’ in everything I put in the report?”
Sinton shook his head. “I don’t know. I probably think that you genuinely believed what you saw and heard. But no one is infallible—”
“Just a minute, there’s evidence for every statement I made in the report. I gave names and sources for you to contact.”
“But that’s just my problem, Mr. Vaughan. You see, I have absolutely no evidence at all to suggest that what you state in your report has any basis in fact.”
Vaughan felt himself trembling. He knew the reality of what he had experienced on Verkerk’s World, and he wanted to hit out at this smug bastard for having the gall to doubt him.
“We had only your evidence that there was a girl, an Elly Jenson, abducted from Verkerk’s World and brought here—likewise the content of the crate. There were two murders of ex-spacers, both of whom happened to have explored Verkerk’s World, but that was nothing more than a coincidence—”
“And the illegal use of rhapsody?”
“Okay, so a little class-two drug was being smuggled in from a colony—we have more lethal stuff coming in from Thailand every day.”
Vaughan paced away from Sinton, along the edge of the ghat, stopped, and took half a dozen deep, mind-clearing breaths. He turned. “Let me ask you a question. I made a suggestion in the report, about how to deal with the Vaith you have on the Station. I trust you followed that suggestion?”
Sinton glanced at him. “Oh, yes—we followed it. I had a dozen officers, closely supervised, take a safe dosage of rhapsody and scour the Station, but of course we found nothing.”
Vaughan thought about that. “Okay, it’s possible that its period of feeding is over for another two years. If it’s dormant now, and not sending out the call, then even with the rhapsody you’ll pick up nothing. But that doesn’t mean we should stop looking. This thing’ll wake from dormancy in two years and the slaughter will start all over again.”
Sinton snorted in disgust. “What slaughter, Mr. Vaughan?” He almost laughed. “We have absolutely no evidence for any of the claims you make in your statement. Lieutenant Laerhaven sent me a full report of her investigations. Her people found none of this ‘evidence’ you claim Patrick Essex came up with—no vid-recordings, tapes, or written evidence—”
“Then Essex himself, he’ll provide first-hand—” Vaughan stopped when he saw Sinton shaking his head.
“He won’t,” Sinton said. “Essex died of complications from his injuries in police custody the day after you interviewed him. And in any case, in Laerhaven’s opinion Essex was a paranoid schizophrenic whose evidenc
e could not be trusted. Laerhaven sent a team of experienced cavers into the mountain where you said these creatures had their lair, and they found nothing.”
“The Vaith have been moved,” Vaughan said. “Of course they won’t be found in the caves— they’re on Earth and three other planets.”
Sinton was shaking his head. He jabbed a stubby forefinger at Vaughan. “I want proof, Vaughan. I can’t act on uncorroborated evidence and hearsay.”
Vaughan stared out to sea, watching the progress of a hydrofoil bouncing across the choppy waters. He tried to look at the situation from Sinton’s point of view, work out if the commander had a case. Going on the information he had, Sinton was following a logical and rational course of deduction. Of course, Vaughan knew what he had experienced, and knew therefore that Sinton was wrong. There could be only one answer: that someone on Verkerk’s World was covering up the evidence, manipulating Lieutenant Laerhaven and the authorities to their own ends. But what chance did he have of persuading Sinton that this was so?
