Cosmopath (3 page)

She
withdrew her probe and moved on. Another colonist lay near the
Mussoree,
at the very limit of her
range. She scanned, but this one was even further gone than the
first. She read dwindling memories of vast underground caverns, of a
rebel contingent fighting other colonists in brief skirmishes.

The
man died, and she moved around the plain, searching in vain.

She
probed a couple of security personnel within her range, getting
through their partial mind-shields but reading nothing of
significance: they had had orders from Singh to take out the
colonists if they approached the
Mussoree
, which is exactly what they
had done.

Then
she read Vaughan, directly below her, and his mind was filled with
grief and regret at the deaths of Namura and McIntosh.

Parveen
quickly withdrew her probe and braced her arms against the padded
rail, head hanging.

Namura
and McIntosh...

She
went back to the security guards and read them: they had had no
orders to kill the FNSA pair, as far as she could detect. But what
about the spider drones? Had they been ordered to take out the pair?

The
question she wanted answering, the question she knew she must ask,
was whether Rab had known that they had been spies. As she pushed
herself from the rail and hurried from the lounge, she knew the
answer: it could not be a coincidence that the FNSA plants had died
in the fire-fight; therefore Rab must have sanctioned their killings.

Sickened,
she took the elevator and dropped to the exit ramp. Rab was striding
into the ship, a grey pallor suffusing his mocha complexion.

“Rab,
we have to-â€

DEVELOPMENTS

Vaughan
found Das slouched on a foam-form, nursing a drink. He fetched a beer
from the bar and crossed to her. She looked up. Her eyes were red, as
if she’d been crying.

Outside,
the mopping-up operations were still going on - conducted,
ironically, by the spider drones with just the same level of clinical
efficiency as they’d employed during the slaughter.

“Mind
if I join you?â€

DESCENT

He
sat in the rear of the flier and stared down at the land passing far
below.

It
was late in the day and the fungal landscape had taken on a burnt
orange hue; as he watched, vast sections of land moved slowly,
hunched itself, or sprouted new shoots and tendrils. It was, he
thought, like looking down on a cooking pot full of some bizarre
algae simmering in slow motion.

The
colony ship, according to Chandrasakar, was a thousand kilometres
north of where the
Kali
had come down, and Vaughan judged that they had flown most of that
distance by now. They had passed actual mountain ranges on their
flight, great ragged razors of grey rock cutting up through the
ubiquitous fungus, and at one point they overflew a lake nestling in
what looked like a high volcanic caldera, its neat circlet of crimson
water a stark contrast to the surrounding grey rock formations.

He
sat next to Das, while two security personnel occupied the front
seats. In the leading flier, Chandrasakar was accompanied by Singh
and Pavelescu. Three further fliers were following, carrying the
scientists, more security men, and spider drones.

Das
touched his arm. “There.â€

LOYALTIES

Parveen
joined the procession around the cavern walls, examining the
bas-relief carvings, but she found it hard to summon the requisite
measure of wonder which everyone else seemed to be exhibiting.
Intellectually she knew what the panels meant - the sequence of
frames showing stick-shaped humanoids with domed heads was the first
indication that an alien race was, or had been, native to the planet
- but she was more preoccupied with the course of recent events, and
how they might impinge on her.

She
still couldn’t decide how she felt about Rab; her heart wanted
nothing more than to abandon herself to him, to trust his
reassurances, but she knew there was always the possibility that he
might very well be using her to his own ends. Was this why she had so
impulsively divulged what she knew to Vaughan? She knew she could
trust him, and sooner or later she might very well be in need of an
ally.

Now
another thought assailed her. Something that Vaughan had asked on the
way down: might Singh be a telepath?

According
to the information on the data-pin compiled by her controller, Anil
Singh was nothing more than what he appeared: a steroid-abusing thug
with an over-developed pride in his ability to maim... But what if
party intelligence had got it wrong, and he was a telepath? It would
make sense for Rab to have an in-house telepath loyal to him.

What
sickened her was the thought that if he were a telepath, then her
shield might not be up to the task of baffling his probes. What if
he’d read her every thought, her recent conversations with
Vaughan, and reported back to his boss?

She
glanced across the cavern. Singh had made the rounds of the frescoes
like a bored visitor at a museum, and was now back with his team,
setting up camp and breaking out rations around a heater; they had
encamped together in a small group apart from the rest of the
expedition.

She
looked across the cavern at Rab. He was deep in discussion with a
group of scientists. Later, she decided suddenly, she would do what
she had been too scared of doing before now, and try to invade his
shield, even though she suspected she’d fail.

“What
do you make of them?â€

EXTRATERRESTRIALS

Vaughan
woke suddenly.

He
blinked up at the green, momentarily confused and wondering where he
was. Then it came to him in a rush. He was a kilometre or more
underground on Delta Cephei VII, and the green vaulting above him was
the luminescent fungi. He sat up and accessed the chronometer on his
handset: he had been asleep for just over six hours.

He
struggled from his padded sleeping bag and stood up.

A
group of scientists huddled before the wall-frescoes a few metres
away, chatting; their voices must have woken him.

He
joined them. “Definitely alien?â€

THE TREK

Vaughan
managed a smile, realising how meaningless the expression might be.
The alien stood before him, frog-like but longer in the body, and
stared at him with massive, compound eyes like sieves.

He
said, “What do you want with us?â€

ESCAPE

Sukara
came awake quickly and found herself in the back of a flier, dazzled
by sunlight.

Despite
her fear, she knew better than to move. She was alone on the back
seat, slumped behind the driver with her head against the side
window. There was no one else in the car other than the Chinese
orderly... or rather the impostor orderly. Either he had misjudged
the dose of sedative he’d sprayed in her face, or had taken
longer than planned to get her to the flier... At any rate, the fact
was that she was awake - and could move her arms and legs - and he
was unaware of the fact.

The
question was: who was he and what did he want?

The
bastard wasn’t an orderly and had nothing to do with Dr Grant.
He wouldn’t have sent an orderly running after her, and she
swore at herself for being taken in so easily. But at the same time
she felt a stunning relief: the bastard had used Li as a pretext,
knowing that it would have the desired effect of making her biddable
to his suggestion of taking the outer lift, down to the under-level
car-park...

So
Li was still okay.

She
felt a welling of anger, the quick urge to do the bastard permanent
damage.

She
ruled out the possibility that the Chink was a rapist or related
sadist. He knew about Li; had planned the abduction to the point of
posing as an orderly. Which might not preclude the possibility that
he merely wanted to hurt her, but she thought not. There was another
reason behind the abduction.

She
thought of the assassin who had tried to kill Jeff, and had succeeded
in murdering the other telepaths. Could this have something to do
with those attacks?

She
put the question aside. Her priority was to find some means of
getting away from her captor.

She
turned her head minimally and peered through the window.

They
were on the top level, flying low. She saw Chandi Road flash by, with
the expanse of the spaceport beyond. They were flying north-east. At
some point they would land - and then Sukara would make her move.

The
Chink turned in his seat and she closed her eyes, feigning
unconsciousness. She counted twenty long seconds, then slit her eyes
open fractionally.

Slowly,
she moved her right hand towards her handset. She pressed a release
code on the console. A second later the communications pin Jeff had
given her ejected itself. She gripped it in her right hand - a silver
needle almost five centimetres long, slippery in her sweat-soaked
palm. For the rest of the ride she fantasised about the amount of
damage she could inflict with the needle and a lot of righteous rage.

The
flier slowed. They were at the northern end of Chandi Road, where the
ethnic make-up phased from Indian to Thai. The flier dropped suddenly
and eased itself down a narrow alley, with barely six inches between
its bodywork and the walls of warehouses and industrial storage
depots.

Sukara
knew she had to be fast and decisive when the time came. If she
messed up... she didn’t like to consider the possibility. The
bastard was probably armed, so she had to make the first blow a
telling one.

The
flier came to a halt and settled in the alley, and her heartbeat
raced.

To
the right of the vehicle was a compound, its wire-mesh gate open as
if awaiting her delivery.

The
Chink jumped from the flier and opened the back door. Sukara closed
her eyes and gripped the needle. Her captor opened the door, against
which she was leaning, and she half-fell from the vehicle. This made
his task easier. He gripped her under the arms and tugged her from
the flier. Her heels banged painfully on the concrete as he dragged
her into the compound.

She
hoped that he didn’t have an accomplice at this end of the
operation. One bastard she might be able to deal with. Two would be a
little more difficult.

He
laid her on the ground, easing her head onto the concrete with
incongruous care. She heard footsteps as he walked away from her,
then the sound of a door being unlocked.

She
opened her eyes, but all she could see was sky and a margin of
guttering overhead.

She
had to act now, while his back was turned.

She
leapt to her feet and sprang towards the bastard.

He
turned, obligingly, and she leapt at him screaming and stabbed the
needle into his face. She would remember the bastard’s
expression for a long time after that: the wide-eyed look of shocked
fright, the toothy rictus like some Chinese carnival dragon. She
would remember his scream, too, as she stabbed.

She
was surprised by the rubbery resistance of his eyeball. The bastard
fell to his knees, yelling, a hand to his right eye and blood
spurting between splayed fingers. Sukara turned and took off,
gripping the needle as she careered out of the compound, turned left
and sprinted down the alleyway.

She
felt a surge of elation, a mix of adrenalised flight reflex and the
delight of revenge. She replayed the stabbing and told herself that
he deserved it not so much for the abduction, but for the lie about
her daughter.

She
heard a shout from back down the alley. She turned. The bastard was
staggering from the compound, waving something. She judged she was a
hundred metres away. He pointed at her and a split second later she
saw the foreshortened streak of a laser vector lance her way. She
dived, scraping her knees and palms, and the vector raced over her by
about half a metre. Then she was up and running again, zigzagging
between the alley’s walls. She heard another screech of ripped
air as he fired again, and she dived. This one missed her by
centimetres. She looked up as she took off like a sprinter from the
blocks. She was about ten metres from the bustle of Chandi Road. The
third vector lasered a neat, stinking hole in the flapping material
of her jacket and gouged concrete from the wall to her right.

She
came to the road and turned left, instinctively. Only later did she
wonder if her unconscious mind knew where it was taking her. She
barrelled into pedestrians, earning curses in Hindi and Thai. She
fell, scattering a gaggle of old men, picked herself up and elbowed a
passage through the throng. She slowed, not wanting to give her
pursuer the advantage of tracing her by the commotion she might
cause.

She
eased herself into the press, her breathing returning to normal, and
hurried down the road. She glanced behind her. If the bastard were
still chasing her, there was no sign of him. She told herself not to
be complacent. He’d overcome a skewered eyeball to give chase,
and he’d be out for vengeance. A wounded animal.

Then
her heart jumped as she heard aggrieved cries behind her. She looked
over her shoulder. Perhaps twenty metres further back she made out a
disruption as someone fought their way through the crowd towards her.

She
yelled in fright and sprinted, taking a slalom course between ambling
citizens. She wondered where to go, where she might be safe from the
berserker.

The
she saw Dr Rao’s coffee house twenty metres away on the left of
the road, and thanked her intuition.

Just
as she was approaching the building, the press around her seemed to
congeal, slowing her progress. She abandoned all pedestrian etiquette
now and thumped her way through the mass of bodies, crying out and
tearing aside startled citizens. She heard another cry in her wake, a
plea to stop the bitch who’d attacked him, and a second later
the crowd loosened and she stumbled up the steps of the coffee house
and into its cool interior.