Cosmopath (5 page)

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.â€

THE JOY OF REUNION

He
accessed the call and stared at the screen.

His
surge of delight at seeing Sukara was instantly quenched when he
looked closely at her face. She was tearful, and his first thought
was Li.

“Su...?â€

DR RAO

Vaughan
woke to dazzling sunlight.

He
was disoriented for a second, his head still full of dreams. He was
deep underground, in a weirdly lighted cavern, and spider drones were
chasing him... He sat up quickly, then smiled when he saw Sukara
sleeping beside him.

The
events of the dream had happened more than a month back, though it
seemed paradoxically both an age ago and incredibly immediate. He
slipped quietly out of bed and showered; he was dressing when his
handset chimed.

Lin
Kapinsky looked up at him. “Hey, Jeff. I’ve just had the
report back from security, about the bastards who kidnapped Su and
Pham.â€