Necropath (21 page)

He ignored the question and turned his gaze through the window. The frost was burning off with the ascent of the huge, fiery ball of Vega. A haze of steam hung over the land.

Laerhaven went on, ignoring his snub, “Your accommodation is on the edge of the Falls, with an incredible view across the lowlands. Because of the temperature differential—twenty below zero at night, in the nineties at noon—the plant life of the planet has adapted accordingly. During the night and early morning, the blooms hibernate, then come out in a rush when the day warms up. It’s called the Blooming, and it’ll happen over a few minutes in a couple of hours from now.”

Vaughan wondered when was the last time he’d seen—really bothered to look at—a living flower. Some of the parks on the Station were planted with gardens, but he had to admit that he’d never paid them much attention.

They sped along the elevated road. Vast fields of some grain crop, perhaps corn, stretched away on all sides like a golden ocean. From time to time timber farmhouses, still and silent, appeared on the horizon, like galleons becalmed in an agricultural sargasso.

Chandra was quizzing Laerhaven about the political situation on the planet. “All I know is that there was a popular revolution a week or two ago,” he said.

“I suppose you could have called the deposed government a benign dictatorship, though that makes them sound blacker than they really were. They were a council of a dozen old businessmen who had ruled the planet for the last thirty years. There were no democratic elections, as such. New leaders of the cantons were appointed by the council when incumbents died or became too feeble to make decisions. They were against change and all for the status quo that maintained the world as a backwater out of touch with the rest of the Expansion.”

“And the new people in power?”

“The new order comprises businessmen and social philosophers who want the planet to progress, open up. Of course, curbs have to be kept to ensure industrialisation and immigration don’t get out of hand. But the new government has instituted local elections so that the people will have a say in the future of their planet.”

“I read that the population is barely one million.”

“That’s right. We’re the descendants of Dutch, Danish, and German settlers. The local language is an amalgam of Dutch and German. But English is widely spoken. I think you’ll find it a friendly place.”

“Unfortunately we won’t have much time for sightseeing. We’re due to return on the next ship to Earth, four days from now.”

Laerhaven nodded. “What exactly are you investigating, Mr. Chandra, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“We’re looking into the activities on the Station of a cult that originated here.”

Laerhaven smiled across at him. “That sounds like Verkerk’s World, all right. It has something to do with the size of the place. Communities of settlers are so far-flung and isolated that strange belief systems and religions spring up every few years. For the most part, they’re harmless schisms of the Judeo-Christian traditions.”

Vaughan leaned forward. “For the most part? That sounds like something more sinister rears up now and again?”

Laerhaven shrugged. “Once or twice since I’ve been with the force—that’s almost six years, now— we’ve had trouble with cults. Reported kidnapping and brainwashing of youngsters, that kind of thing. Nothing we couldn’t soon get straightened out.”

Chandra said, “That wouldn’t by any chance have been the Church of the Adoration of the Chosen One?”

“I think I might have remembered a cult with a title like that,” she said. “No, it’s a new one on me.”

“We’d like to question a suspected cult member, a man by the name of Lars Jenson. He has a daughter, Elly—she was taken to Earth against her will. We understand he’s resident in the Falls.”

Laerhaven nodded. “I’ll look up his address when I get back to headquarters and pass it on to you.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Chandra said. “There is one more thing. Two ex-spacers were killed on Bengal Station during the past few days— Rabindranath Bhindra and Miguel Marquez.”

Laerhaven repeated their names. “The same spacers who first explored the planet?”

“The same. There was a third pilot, a man by the name of Patrick Essex. We understand that he’s a resident of Verkerk’s World. Of course, we’d like to question him.”

“I’ll get back to you with that one, too,” Laerhaven promised.

They drove into the city of Sapphire Falls— though the term “city” to describe so spacious and uncrowded an urban centre seemed a misnomer to Vaughan. Wide streets were flanked by sprawling houses—A-frames, ranch-style villas, bungalows— and each was constructed of the same material, a dark brown timber that glowed in the sunlight with the warm lustre of brandy.

The road passed through the city and climbed, and suddenly, to their right, the land fell away in a spectacular series of deep gorges and fissures, silver waterfalls like perfect arcs of mercury tipping themselves from level to level. Laerhaven pulled into the drive of a long timber building perched on the very lip of the escarpment.

“Here we are, gentlemen,” she said. She indicated a grey roadster parked in the drive. “For your convenience while you’re on Verkerk’s.” She presented the ignition card to Chandra. “I’ll show you inside.”

The long, low house comprised a lounge with a big window looking out over the gorge, a kitchen and bathroom in one wing and the bedrooms in another. It seemed far older than it could possibly have been. The planet had been settled for only thirty-odd years, yet the rooms were constructed of a dark timber that appeared ancient.

“How old is this place?” Vaughan asked.

Laerhaven stood in the lounge by the window, having shown them through the rooms. “These houses were grown about ten years ago.”

“Grown?” Chandra echoed.

“The wood is still living,” she said. “Feel. It’s called warmwood.”

Vaughan crossed to the window, laid his hand on the wide grain of the frame. The wood glowed with heat beneath his palm.

“It is warm.”

“But cooling. During the night it warms, heating the house. And during the day, as the temperature outside steadily climbs, the wood cools. By midday it will be cold to the touch.”

“Is it naturally like this?” Chandra asked.

Laerhaven nodded. “The original trees were from the cold climes of the north—they warmed up and cooled down as an aid to survival. The Verkerk-Scherring Company, who bought the rights to develop the planet from the agency who discovered it, genetically altered the wood to grow into all sorts of useful shapes. This is one of them.”

“Frost, fast-blooming flowers, and living houses,” Chandra said. “What next?”

“I’ll leave you to explore the area for yourselves, gentlemen. Enjoy your stay, and please contact me if you need anything at all.”

Chandra saw her to the door, then picked up his case and carried it to the first bedroom. “I’m going to lie down for an hour or two. See if I can catch some sleep.”

Alone in the lounge, Vaughan stared through the window. The sun cast its light into the gorge below, and the waterfalls glowed with the lustre of poured gold. In the delicately rising mist, rainbows appeared fleetingly, then winked out, to reappear as if by magic further along the gorge. Far below, the plain of the lowlands stretched away for kilometres.

He saw a precarious path fall steeply away from the house and down the side of the escarpment and decided to take a look around.

He emerged into the dazzling sunlight and followed the path around the house until it dropped down the face of the rock. As he descended, picking his way with care over loose rocks and down roughly chiselled steps, he moved from the intense heat into cool shadow and felt immediate relief.

The path zigzagged, approaching a vast sink constantly supplied with water from a fall pouring over a lip of rock high above. As the house disappeared from sight, he stopped and looked about him. For the first time in years he was in a natural landscape and unable to see the artefacts of man. Even the minds, dulled by the mass of the escarpment between him and the city, were barely audible. He continued his descent and arrived at the brimming lip of the sink; on the far side, over a depressed lip worn down throughout the aeons, the water discharged itself slickly beneath an unbroken quicksilver meniscus.

The sun rose further, finding him, and the gorge suddenly transformed itself. What he had taken before to be no more than a unique patterning in the rock, a million fossilised stems and leaves, suddenly began to writhe. All around, from buds that seconds before had seemed as frozen as stone, flowers snapped open. Vaughan stared about him, his head moving constantly to catch the next bloom in the instantaneous process of expanding its magnificent petals to the light of the sun. Up and down the gorge, a complex tapestry sprang into life. Beside his head, nodding with the momentum of its sudden explosion of petals, a great trumpet bloom blared a blood-red cacophony of pigment. He was amazed that something so cold and seemingly dead as the iron-grey buds could have, with the right stimulus, transformed into something so vital. A heady, honeyed scent enveloped him.

Within seconds of the Blooming the air was filled with a million silver insects. With a deafening hum of wings they descended en masse to gather pollen, then rose and swept on, a swarming pointillism of activity that often blotted out entire swathes of scenery. The swarm passed Vaughan by and moved further along the gorge, trailing a patch of darkness across the land like the shadow of a cloud.

He sat beside the sink for perhaps an hour, then started the slow climb back to the house. He was exhausted by the time he crossed the veranda of living wood, cool now to his touch. He checked his new watch. It was almost eight—midday on Verkerk’s World—and Vega was at its zenith. The thermometer on the veranda read a hundred and five Fahrenheit. He entered the house, washed, then retired to his room and lay down.

He had no idea how long he slept. He was awoken suddenly, surprised that he had slept at all, and it was seconds before he realised what had brought him from sleep. He heard the chiming from the lounge, rose, and hurried from his room. The summons stopped suddenly: Chandra had reached the communications set before him. He knelt before the screen, pressing the control panel. A face expanded from a white horizontal band, as sudden as one of the flowers outside.

“Gentlemen,” Lena Laerhaven said. “I have the address of Lars Jenson here.” Chandra thanked her and typed it into his handset.

When Laerhaven cut the connection, Chandra turned to Vaughan. “We might as well not waste any time, Jeff. Let’s go see what Jenson has to say for himself.”

* * * *

THE FATHER OF THE CHOSEN ONE

Beside him, Chandra inserted the ignition card and rolled the roadster down the incline, heading for the centre of town. Vaughan stared through the windscreen at the lengthening shadows of the silver-leaved trees. It was three-thirty and the sun was setting rapidly, and it seemed that the day was drawing to a close before it had hardly begun. Five minutes after leaving the house, daylight was replaced by a gorgeous, orange-skied twilight.