Necropath (14 page)

“As long as it will enhance my present ability.”

Rao nodded. “Yes, I understand. Of course, I cannot obtain this device immediately. I must make contacts, delicate communications involving characters with whom I would rather not deal. Do you understand my meaning, Mr. Vaughan?”

“How much?”

“A very tricky question. A conundrum, sir.” He unhooked his spectacles and proceeded to knead his tired eyes. “One year ago, if my memory serves me, I recall a pin changing hands for something in the region of... five thousand.”

“Rupees, of course?”

Rao made a sad face. “Baht, Mr. Vaughan.”

Vaughan whistled.

“That was one year ago, and of course taking into account inflation...”

“Of course.”

“I am confident that I can furnish you with an augmentation-pin for six thousand baht.”

“If you can get me a pin before tomorrow midnight, I’ll give you four thousand baht.”

“Mr. Vaughan... I have my children to cherish. Would you be so churlish as to deprive my starvelings?”

“Four thousand or nothing, Dr. Rao.”

“Four and a half thousand if I supply you with the pin before six tomorrow, Mr. Vaughan. You can ask no fairer.”

Vaughan extended his hand across the table. “Deal, Dr. Rao. Four and a half before six. After six, and I’ll give you four.”

He gave Rao his handset code, and the doctor inscribed the number in a tiny notebook with an ancient ink pen. “Until tomorrow, Mr. Vaughan.
Namaste.”

“Ah-cha, Rao. See you tomorrow.”

Vaughan finished his beer and watched the charlatan hobble from the restaurant. He ordered another bottle, accessed his handset, and called up the map of the Station’s rail and dropchute routes. For the next thirty minutes he worked out how to get across to Tavoy on Level Five, eastside.

* * * *

He set off at ten-thirty, to give himself plenty of time.

The upper-deck rail network was busy at all hours, so Vaughan walked to the closest dropchute station and descended to the rail station on Level Seven. A rattling carriage ferried him through the industrial heart of Bengal Station, the journey passing for the most part through darkened tunnels. Occasionally they emerged into the bright photon illumination of a platform populated, at this time during factory work-shifts, by lone travellers, beggars, and bored station cleaners. Now and again the bulkheads on either side of the train, the walls of the factories themselves, were emblazoned with photon tubes or ancient neons spelling out the names of companies and corporations: Tata, Boeing, Hindustan Inc... There was something almost despairing about such advertising, like cries in the dark.

He alighted at the eastside terminal and walked through the busy street corridors of a food market, following ceiling arrows in red to the nearest upchute station. He shared a cage with half a dozen mendicant Thai monks, fists clenched inside bronze meal bowls like boxing gloves. At Level Five, they stepped out and he followed them from the station. Across the street—more a wide, enclosed corridor illuminated by artificial daylight—a sign displayed the district’s name, Tavoy, in English, Hindi, and Thai.

Vaughan consulted his handset’s street map and set off west. The area was predominantly Thai and gave the appearance of affluence: the two-storey polycarbon fa
ç
ades were bright with photon advertisements, and hi-tech gimmickry worked its magic in the air—advertisements exploded like harmless fireworks before the eye, and holograms of naked men and women beckoned passers-by into emporiums selling everything from sex to the latest pharmaceutical concoctions.

He moved away from the commercial heart of the district, passing down street-corridors flanked with restaurants and food-carts. The carts, wreathed in steam, tendered delicacies as varied as roast hog, dog, and kebabs strung with rats and toads. The aroma of cooking meat filled the air, along with the piping cacophony of Thai pop music.

The eating establishments gave way to an avenue devoted to visual entertainments: old-time cinemas, dramavilles, and hologram palaces. The fa
ç
ades on either side of the street were an honour guard of exotic, larger than life images—walls of copulating couples, fighting soldiers, speeding fliers...

Vaughan came to the address Villefranche had given him. He found himself outside not a church but yet another dramadrome—this one advertising itself as the Holosseum. He consulted his handset to ensure he wasn’t mistaken, and checked the stencilled numerals above the arched, neon entrance: it was the same address. He backed off across the street, allowing the crowds to flow past him, and looked right and left for an establishment more in keeping with a place of worship. He was beginning to wonder whether Villefranche had tricked him when he heard a shrill summons from across the street-corridor. “Hey, Tarzan—here!”

She stood in the entrance to the Holosseum, reaching up on tiptoe and waving. He pushed through the crowds. “What’s a tarzan?”

Carmine made her eyes massive. “You’re
so
uncultured, Vaughan!” she cried. “Tarzan—popular cultural icon of the twentieth century, a primitive heroic ape-man.”

“You’re so complimentary.” He looked around at the fa
ç
ade of the Holosseum. “Is this the place?”

“This is it. It’s almost midnight. Let’s get inside.”

He followed the woman into the plush foyer of the Holosseum. As they passed down a darkened corridor, Carmine took his hand and led him through swing doors into an even darker area. They came to a halt.

“Where are we?” he asked, apprehensive.

Before she could reply, the darkness was banished: a fanfare announced the sudden, celestial arrival of light. Around him, he heard gasps of delight. He blinked. He was standing in a crowd of perhaps a hundred citizens, Europeans, Indians, and Thais, and he was no longer in a building. As he watched, the crowd moved away around the tiers of a vast amphitheatre of stone and sat down beneath a cloudless blue sky. The illusion was remarkable. A warm wind blew, birds sang, and the scent of blossoms hung in the air.

Carmine tugged his hand. “Come.” She drew him down a central aisle into the bowl of the amphitheatre. She was about to move to a stone seat five rows from the front, but Vaughan suggested the very front row. They sat before the level performance area, Vaughan still marvelling at the fidelity of the illusion. He turned and looked behind him, up the rising sweep of the amphitheatre; the church was rapidly filling.

“What is this?” he whispered.

She reciprocated with a conspiratorial whisper of her own, “The Holosseum, Batang Road, Tavoy.”

“Very funny. I meant, which planet?”

“Verkerk’s World. Where else?”

Where else, indeed? He should have known. Beyond the semi-circle of the amphitheatre, foothills rose to a distant mountain range, spectacular in its clarity. The occasional bird, long-beaked and silver-winged, darted from trees as twisted and tortured as specimens of overgrown bonsai.

After his initial rush of amazement, Vaughan began to detect the reality behind the illusion. He touched the “stone” seat beside him, and instead of feeling the rough-napped texture of chiselled stone, his fingers encountered what was obviously a wooden bench embroidered with a fine network of holo-capillaries. He watched his fingertips disappear, eerily overlaid with the surface of the stone.

Oddly, knowledge of the deception did nothing to lessen the visual impact of the scene. A part of his mind still believed he was out in the open air of a colony planet light years from Earth.

“It’s about to start!” Carmine whispered, squeezing his arm.

Seconds later, to a spontaneous outburst of applause, a tall figure strode from behind a stand of trees and stood behind a dais in the performance area.

The Master of Ceremonies wore a white cloak that flowed from shoulder to foot, and a black mask that was no more than a featureless oval. There was something nevertheless familiar about the figure, something at once imperious and languid.

“Welcome, communicants,” said a deep, dark voice.

Vaughan turned to Carmine. “Dolores?”

Carmine was staring, rapt. She nodded. “Dolores is the High Priestess of our Church. Now, shhh!”

Dolores was saying, “After the sharing of wisdom, the meditation, we will participate in the Communion of Unification. Today as ever we are blessed by the Godhead incarnate, the vessel through which the ultimate union can be achieved. Let us give thanks!”

As one, the congregation bowed their heads and murmured a prayer led by Dolores. “Let us give thanks for the munificence of the Godhead, the holy ultimate through which we all find enlightenment. For many years we have struggled to bring the true word to the uninitiated, but now that struggle has entered upon a new and wondrous stage. Let us pray for the salvation of all those unfortunates who have not yet found the Truth, but who with the guidance of the Godhead soon will, and let us look forward to the day when enlightenment will be universal. Amen.”

“Amen!”

Vaughan glanced at his watch. It was fifteen minutes after midnight. He wondered when the Chosen One would make her appearance.

“Communicants, the sermon today is the Parable of the Lost.”

The sermon was a repetition of platitudes and high-flown oratory, the moral being that only when the world became, like everyone present, true believers, would humankind be saved. Vaughan found the whole thing simplistic in the extreme.

He glanced around at the congregation. He wondered when Chandra’s men would make their entrance.

“And now, fellow true believers, the act of communion.” Dolores turned, spread a long hand. Onto the performance area from beyond a green hillock strode the tiny, upright figure of Elly Jenson, as pretty as an angel in a long white dress.

“Communicants,” said Dolores. “The Chosen One!”

Vaughan drew a breath. There was no mistaking the perfection of features, the gemstone brilliant eyes. The expression on her face was one of stoic determination to give a flawless performance.

He recalled her terror in the freighter, and tried to detect some indication that the girl was drugged, was doing this against her will. But all he sensed was her contentment.

She carried a small wicker basket before her, and when she reached a second, smaller dais she placed the basket upon it. She knelt, staring at the gathered congregation. Her expression was focused, serious.

Dolores said, “Will the first communicants step forward?” She moved from the performance area, so that all attention now was focused upon the Chosen One.

A man and woman, further along the front row, stood and walked towards the dais behind which Elly Jenson waited. First the woman knelt, bowed her head, then looked into the eyes of the Chosen One. Elly reached into the basket, took a small crimson wafer, and slipped it into the woman’s open mouth. The girl murmured something; the woman stood and left the stage as if in a trance. The man knelt and the procedure was repeated.

Beside Vaughan, Carmine sat tense with excitement.

He gripped her arm. “I’m not sure I want to go through with this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Carmine hissed. “How can you forgo communion?”

“I don’t even believe!”

She turned to him. “Then soon you
will!”

The man returned to his seat. Carmine stood and hurried forward. With reluctance, Vaughan followed her. As he stepped onto the performance area, sand crunching realistically underfoot, he told himself that he could not become addicted from just one dose of rhapsody.

Carmine knelt, closed her eyes, and opened her mouth. Elly Jenson placed a wafer upon her tongue, repeating soft words. Carmine stood, her expression ecstatic, and drifted back to her seat. Her mind fizzed with sudden euphoria. Vaughan looked about him. Other than himself and the girl, the stage was empty. He stepped forward, knelt, and stared into Elly Jenson’s brown eyes.