Necropath (38 page)

Rao cleared his throat, resting his hands on his stick and blinking at Vaughan through his spectacles. “If you don’t mind my enquiry—just why do you need these devices?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Rao. But don’t worry. I’m doing nothing to undermine the security of the Station. The only illegal act I’ll be guilty of is the possession of these things in the first place.”

Rao nodded. “I take it that you managed to raise the requisite funds?”

“I cleaned out my bank account this morning,” Vaughan told him. “You see how good I am to you?”

Dr. Rao lifted the glass of lassi to his lips and sipped. “Your generosity is boundless. As to the fee we agreed on last night...”

“It’s ten thousand baht, Rao. Take it or get the hell out.”

“You fail to understand the lengths to which I went to procure these highly dangerous and illegal items.”

“And I thought you were a man of honour, Rao.” Vaughan pulled the notes from his pocket and slid the bundle across the table.

“My supplier, at the very last minute, deemed that an exorbitant surcharge was necessary.” Rao wore an expression of pained integrity.

Vaughan produced a plastic bank statement. “Take a look at this, Rao. Note the date—today’s. Note the balance—zero. You’ve cleaned me out. I have thirty baht in my pocket to buy a few beers and a meal.”

“Most unfortunate. Nevertheless, my supplier demanded payment of an extra one thousand baht.”

“My heart bleeds. You can take the ten thousand, or return the grenades.” Calling Rao’s bluff, Vaughan lifted the case onto the table and stared at the little doctor.

Rao relented. He shook his head. “As ever, you show no charity to the hard-working, Mr. Vaughan. I hope you receive your just rewards in the next life.”

“I’ll look forward to returning as an insect, Dr. Rao. It’s been a pleasure doing business.”

Rao gathered his money and nodded his farewell. “Mr. Vaughan.” He left a few coins to pay for his lassi and slipped quickly from the booth.

* * * *

Vaughan finished his beer and ordered another bottle. He sat back in his seat, watching the diners at the tables down below and considering the task awaiting him. His nervousness was made worse by the fact that he had forsaken his usual daily dose of chora. The mind-hum of the diners, and the low-pitched background noise of the citizens of the Station beyond, made him jumpy and ill at ease.

Now that he had the grenades, there was nothing to stop him from carrying out his plan. He had to act, destroy the Vaith before the final communion at midnight, but something—fear and cowardice, perhaps—kept him at Nazruddin’s, drinking beer.

He saw the girl before he became aware of the music of her mind. She entered the restaurant nervously and glanced around at the diners, as if she had come seeking someone. She was a Thai—in her early twenties, dressed in shorts and a tight red T-shirt—out of place in the largely male preserve of the Indian restaurant. As Vaughan watched her, he received the distinct impression that something about her was familiar.

She approached the counter and spoke to Nazruddin. The burly restaurateur grimaced, cupping his ear and leaning closer. The girl repeated her question, and a look of sudden enlightenment spread across Nazruddin’s features. To Vaughan’s surprise, he turned and pointed across the room directly at him.

The girl looked at Vaughan, and in that instant he realised that this must be Tiger’s sister, who Rao had mentioned last night. He felt a sudden wave of irritation that he should be bothered with her at this moment, and then she edged between the tables towards his booth and even without his augmentation Vaughan became aware of her mind.

There was a purity there, an innocence and vulnerability that reminded him of Holly, and at the same time a street-wise intelligence and determination that was all her sister, Tiger. To experience that music was at once agony and exquisite pleasure.

She approached him with painful hesitation, knuckles to her mouth in a timid gesture designed to hide the lower half of the horrendous scar that divided her face. She was nowhere near as pretty as her sister, with none of Tiger’s gamin precocity, but Vaughan was aware only of the signature of her mind, the music that gave a more truthful indication of her personality than did her physical appearance.

It seemed to him that he had been taken back years, to the first time he had encountered Tiger outside the restaurant, when he had been struck by the power and purity of
her
mind.

He found himself smiling at the girl in a genuine bid to put her at ease. She paused before the table, and he could see that her eyes were red from crying.

“You must be Tiger’s sister,” he said.

She nodded. “My name Sukara,” she said in a small voice.

“Why don’t you sit down and we can talk.”

With painful timidity, she slipped into the seat that Rao had vacated, placed her hands on the table, and stared at her entwined fingers.

He ordered a lassi for the girl. When it came, she lifted the glass in both hands, leaving a moustache of white froth on her upper lip. She licked it off self-consciously, darting a glance at him.

In a barely audible whisper, she said, “Yesterday Dr. Rao, he tell me Tiger die. He tell me, you Tiger’s special friend.”

Vaughan found himself reaching across the table, covering her fingers with his hand. He wanted to do with the girl what he had never done with Tiger—use his augmentation-pin and dive into her vital mind, scan her identity, access her memories, and
know
the girl wholly. He had stopped himself from scanning Tiger for fear of becoming too close to her—and now, for the same reason, he could not bring himself to read Sukara’s mental purity.

Intimacy
, he told himself,
could only lead to pain.

“I knew Tiger for years, Sukara. I was with her when she died.”

“She happy? She had good life?”

Vaughan smiled at Sukara in reassurance. “I think she had a better life begging here than she did working in Bangkok.”

“She talk about me—Tiger tell you about big sister?”

How could he tell Sukara that Tiger had never spoken about her life in Thailand, reluctant to relive her memories of abuse at the hands of her customers?

“She said that she loved you, Sukara,” he said.

She was silent for a while, staring at Vaughan’s hand on hers. At last she said, “When Tiger die, she feel no pain? She die peaceful?”

To spare the girl, Vaughan said that Tiger had died without pain and told her about the funeral attended by all her friends. Then, perhaps in a bid to assure Sukara, and himself, that she had had a good and full life, he told her how he had first encountered Tiger, how they had met regularly for years after that, sitting and chatting at this very booth. He told Sukara about her sister’s infatuation with the Bengal Tigers, a skyball team, from which she had earned her nickname.

Sukara occasionally asked questions in her halting, broken English, and Vaughan did his best to answer truthfully, only lying where the truth would be too painful for the girl to bear.

She looked up at him. “Dr. Rao, he say, Tiger had bad leg, disease.” She shook her head. “But I know: he cut off leg so she begs for him, so he get money, yes?”

Vaughan nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s what happened, and I know it sounds terrible. But Tiger wanted it that way, rather than having to go back to what she was doing in Bangkok.”

She was quiet for a while. At last, her lips moved, but no sound came, or none that Vaughan could hear. Sukara looked up, something unreadable in her eyes as she stared at him. She tried again. “Did you... you sleep with Pakara?”

He could not tell whether she wanted him to answer in the affirmative, whether she would have been pleased that her sister had found a lover/protector/father figure, or if Sukara would have then despised him.

He shook his head. “I’ve used a drug called chora for five years,” he told her. “I couldn’t have slept with Tiger even if I’d wanted to. We were just friends, Sukara. Good friends.”

She smiled and nodded.

Vaughan changed the subject. “How did you get to the Station?”

She seemed reluctant to tell him. She stared up at him, her eyes as brown and large as Tiger’s, as if assessing whether she might trust him. “Customer, he bring me. Buy me clothes...” She stopped, glanced down at his hand, still enclosing hers. “I think, he love me. He says, trust me, trust me. Then I see him go with other girl, young girl. He lie. He tell me, trust me, so I trust him, but he lie.”

Vaughan watched her, aware of the beautiful tone of her mind, aware that he should offer words of sympathy, but afraid that if he did so she might think that he was offering more.

“Will you stay on the Station?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She glanced up at him, quickly, through her fringe. “I find work, somewhere live. I stay here. Make new life.”

Vaughan nodded. “I hope you succeed.” He hesitated. “Do you have enough money?”

She shrugged. “Some. Money I saved in Bangkok, money
he
gave me.”

Vaughan reached into his pocket, unfolding the notes he had withdrawn from his second bank account that morning, to see him through the next month. He pushed a hundred-baht note across the table, and Sukara stared at it for long seconds before slipping it into the pocket of her shorts.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I go now.”

Vaughan nodded.

Sukara said, “I go, say to customer, ‘You lie, you go with girl, so goodbye.’ I not stay with him, even if he begs.”

Vaughan smiled, unable to bring himself to speak.

She glanced up at him again, that utterly vulnerable, pleading quick look through her fringe. “Mr. Vaughan... maybe I see you again? We meet here, like you and Tiger?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, Sukara,” he said, and withdrew his hands from hers.

Her gaze downcast now, whispering an inaudible farewell, she slipped from the booth and hurried from the restaurant. Vaughan watched her go, something heavy and painful, easily identifiable as the incipient recognition of betrayal, expanding within his chest.

He ordered another beer and looked at his handset. It was four o’clock. He would give it another hour, until the sun was going down, then leave and descend to the lair of the Vaith on Level Twelve-b. He considered it ironic that a week ago he had gone down there to be with the dying Tiger, and now he was going down to do the killing.

He sat alone and drank his beer and considered Sukara, wishing that he could have reached out and offered her hope, but knowing, because of who and what he was, that that would have been impossible.

* * * *