Xenopath (10 page)

Then he read
something that stayed his hand.

He sifted
through images of the women together, recollections of conversation.
They were in a park on Level One, and Dana was agitated, talking
fast, looking around constantly to ensure they were not overheard.

Vaughan picked
the meat of the conversation from Shelenkov's memory, and knew
instantly that whoever had killed Kormier and Travers had also
murdered Dana Mulraney.

"Something's
happening on Mallory," Mulraney had told her lover. "Something
big. Scheering-Lassiter are covering it up, but we're onto it."

The image
fragmented; Shelenkov's memory of the day, the conversation, was
imperfect. He scanned deeper, looking for any other recollections of
Mulraney's mentioning Mallory or Scheering-Lassiter.

Then he had it:
Mulraney had told Shelenkov the name of her contact on the colony
world.

He deactivated
his implant, and the sudden silence was bliss.

Kapinsky was
following up what she'd read so far, attempting to jog Shelenkov's
memory with careful questions. "Tell me about Dana's work? She
was an environmentalist, wasn't she?"

"A
xeno-environmentalist. She worked for Eco-Col, monitoring the effect
of human habitation on the settled worlds."

"And she
was posted to Mallory for a while?" Kapinsky asked.

She nodded,
almost winced. "She went to Mallory. She was there just before
she was killed. She told me that the government was involved in a
cover-up. It had something to do with some animals on Mallory, yes?
She was sure she was onto something. And then she was killed."

"You think
there might have been a link?"

"You know
something, I told the cop all about what Dana had said, and he told
me he'd look into it. But he did nothing. A couple of days later,
they said the case was closed. What was the phrase? Insufficient
evidence?"

Kapinsky said,
"You were questioned by a private investigator?"

Vaughan glanced
at Kapinsky, trying not to be impressed. He hadn't scanned a hint of
any private operative.

"Yes. She
was working for someone—she wouldn't say who. I guessed
Eco-Col." She shrugged. "But she was as useless as the
cops. She worked on the case for a month, told me there wasn't a link
to Mallory. You know what she said?"

Kapinsky nodded.
"She told you that Dana was the victim of a motiveless murder."

Shelenkov
smiled, tears in her eyes. "I don't know which would be the
worse, do you? To have your lover killed for a reason, or for no
reason."

Vaughan said,
"What was the name of the private investigator?"

The skyball star
pulled a face, recollecting, then said, "Something Javinder.
Can't remember her first name." She looked from Vaughan to
Kapinsky, then asked with a note of hope, "You said you were
investigating another murder, that it might be linked with Dana's
death?"

Kapinsky,
showing a compassion which surprised Vaughan, reached out and laid
fingers on Shelenkov's big hand. "This is off the record, and
goes no further than us three, okay? It looks as if the killings are
linked. Dana's case is reopened. We'll do our best to nail the
killer."

Spring came to
the tundra of Shelenkov's Siberian features. She smiled.

A minute later
Kapinsky deactivated her implant. Vaughan noticed that she winced
with relief.

Shelenkov stood
and said goodbye. Her smile included Vaughan, this time.

He watched her
elbow her power pack into ignition and rise into the playing area. As
if invigorated, she attacked the defensive line-up with a war cry and
drove home a goal from short range.

As they were
leaving the stadium, Vaughan asked, "Did you get the name of
Dana Mulraney's contact on Mallory?"

She looked at
him sharply. "No. Nothing... You?"

"Jenna
Larsen," Vaughan said, unable to suppress a satisfied smile as
they left the stadium.

SOMETHING FROM A DREAM

Sukara paced
from one end of the lounge to the other, avoiding the sunken sofa,
her toes sinking into the plush carpet. Forty-five paces. Next she
paced the width of the lounge, from the door to the floor-to-ceiling
viewscreen. Twenty paces.

She stopped with
her nose to the viewscreen and stared out at the ocean, glittering in
the afternoon light. Then she turned and took in her new apartment,
and still it didn't seem real.

Two years ago
she had been a working girl in Bangkok, living in a tiny cubbyhole no
bigger than the sunken sofa.

Now she was
married to the finest man in the world and about to have his
daughter—and then this. She smiled to herself, wiping tears
from her eyes. Life on Level Ten had been good enough— even
though the apartment had been tiny, and the neighbours loud—but
this apartment and the life she would lead on Level Two was like
something from a dream.

But best of all
was the thought of the child growing inside her. She placed her hands
on her swollen belly and felt for movement, something she did
constantly now, reassured when she felt the pressure of her baby's
head against the wall of her womb.

She still found
it hard to imagine what it might be like to be a mother—still
less that she was actually going to be one. It seemed a thing that
happened to other women, not to her. The thought filled her with a
happiness such as she'd never experienced before, and at the same
time a terrible fear of all the many things that might go wrong. To
have Jeff's child was so wonderful that she felt that such fortune
could not be hers: at any moment, fate would take away everything it
had given her.

She banished
these depressing thoughts, found her jacket and left the apartment.

She took the
'chute to Level One and walked through Himachal Park to her favourite
coffee shop overlooking the ocean.

She sat at a
window table, sipped a strong Indian coffee and watched the voidships
phase in over the ocean and bank towards the spaceport.

She fingered the
cool silver oval in her pocket and thought about Jeff. She wondered
if it was because she once had nothing, and now had everything, that
she felt so guilty—or if it was because Jeff had agreed to do a
job he didn't really want to do, so that she could have a big
apartment and a rich lifestyle.

A combination of
the two, she thought.

She hadn't
mentioned it to Jeff last night, but she worried about his new job.
Not only because he would be reading minds, which he'd hated doing in
the past, but because the job might be dangerous. He would be
investigating criminals, murderers, and Sukara didn't like the idea
of that. And if he were doing it all for her...

She took the
mind-shield from her pocket and stared at it.

What had he said
yesterday, when he'd insisted on giving her the shield? That he
didn't want to risk her thoughts being read by competing telepathic
investigators?

Sukara smiled.
She guessed that that wasn't the reason at all. He was afraid,
perhaps, of reading her mind, sharing in her past in Bangkok and the
life she had led there. Perhaps—and the thought occurred to her
suddenly, shockingly—he was afraid of reading that she didn't
love him.

Well, the only
way to reassure him about that would be to get him to turn on his
implant, and for her to toss aside the shield—then he would
find out what she felt for him. But Jeff wouldn't agree to that, so
she would simply continue to show him that she loved him in the only
way she knew how, by being interested in him, in his life, his
thoughts and opinions, by simply...
loving
him.

She slipped the
shield into her pocket, next to her jutting stomach, and finished her
coffee.

She left the
coffee shop and made her way back through the park, strolling in the
sunlight with all the other rich, well-dressed citizens of the upper
levels. It was hard to think of herself as one of these people
now—but she was, she told herself. She might feel they were
looking at her, wondering what a Level Tenner was doing up here, but
there was nothing to distinguish her from any of the other
upper-class Thai and Indian women out for a stroll—some of them
with babies—this afternoon. They might glance at the big scar
that bisected her face, but Sukara had long ago ceased to be
self-conscious about that—"long ago" being around the
time that Jeff first said he loved her.

From a Thai
market stall she bought some freshly ground spices, spring onions,
mushrooms, and an aubergine, then made her way back home. She'd cook
Jeff's favourite tonight—hot green Thai curry—to
celebrate their first dinner in the new apartment.

She caught the
downchute to Level Two and walked along the boulevard to Chittapuram,
pausing at the observation areas to look out over the ocean. She was
almost home when she saw a small Thai girl—nose pressed against
the glass—in shorts and a white T-shirt. From behind, with her
bare brown limbs and jet black pudding bowl hair style, the girl
looked just like Sukara's sister, Tiger—and she felt a sudden
painful kick of longing and grief.

Tiger had left
Sukara and Thailand seven years ago, and Sukara had never again seen
her little sister. Just over two years ago, on arriving at Bengal
Station, Sukara had learned of Tiger's death—and learned also
that Tiger had known a telepath called Jeff Vaughan.

It was through
Tiger that Sukara first met Jeff, and became involved with the killer
he'd been trying to trace at the time.

If not for
Tiger's death, Sukara knew, she might never have met Jeff Vaughan,
would not have everything she had now.

It was yet
another reason to feel guilty.

She smiled and
told herself to grow up, as the kid turned and skipped away from the
viewscreen: seen front-on, the girl didn't look anything at all like
Tiger.

Sukara hurried
home, thrilled again as she opened the front door and stared around
at the dimensions of the apartment. She thought of a child running
around the vast lounge, and the image filled her with joy.

For the next
hour she cooked the curry, with plenty of fresh galangal and juniper
berries, then steamed a pan of sticky rice.

She was still in
the kitchen, cleaning the workbench, when she realised that Jeff had
snuck into the apartment and was watching her.

She turned and
laughed. He was angled in the kitchen doorway, filling it, and
smiling at her.

"How long
have you been there?"

He grinned.
"About an hour."

"Liar!"
she cried, and ran to him.

He looked tired,
in his scruffy leather jacket, with his jaw unshaven and the stubble
on his head growing out after the operation.

He kissed her.
"Mmm. Smells good."

"What? Me
or the curry?"

"Both."

"You smell
like a pig. Busy day?"

"Why do I
expect compliments from my charming wife?"

They had been
married two years, and it still thrilled her when he called her his
wife.

She said,
"You're the best pig on the Station, will that do?"

"I'm
honoured. I'll get a shower and tell you all about it."

She watched him
cross the lounge, sling his jacket over a chair, and begin undressing
before he reached the bathroom. Singing to herself, she returned to
the workbench and prepared the chilli sauce.

They ate in the
kitchen, at the big table by the viewscreen, and Jeff told her all
about the case he and Kapinsky were working on.

Sukara shook her
head, fork stalled before her mouth. "Three murders in nine
months... and you think they're linked?"

"The first
two certainly, and maybe even the third." He was a big man, and
his movements and speech were slow, deliberate.

"Jeff, the
man who murdered these people—"

"Probably a
hired assassin."

"An
assassin? So if he knows you're onto him...?" Panic flared in
her chest. She waved her fork. "What's to stop him going after
you and Kapinsky?"

He chewed,
finished his mouthful, and nodded. "One, he doesn't know we're
investigating him. Two, even if he did, we're just a couple of
smalltime private eyes, not worth bothering about."

She stared at
him. "I'm not that stupid, Jeff! You'd be worth bothering about
if you were close to discovering who he was, yes?"

"Su—we're
professional. We won't let the killer know we're on to him, okay?"

She bit her hp,
nodding grudgingly. "It's just that I worry. Jeff. I love you
and I'm frightened."

He reached
across the table, gripped her fingers. "I don't want you to
worry. I'm not some kid playing games, okay?"

She smiled.
"What do you think of the curry, Jeff?"

He shook his
head. "Words can't do it justice. You should open a restaurant."

That night, in
bed, Sukara held Jeff and whispered, "You do know I love you,
don't you?"

He traced the
line of her cheek with the back of his hand. Moonlight cascaded
through the open viewscreen, silvering his jaw. "Of course."

"Jeff..."
she began, and fell silent.

"Mmm."

"Jeff, I
wish you'd read my mind. I want you to read what I feel about you. 1
want to show you that I love you."

He pulled away
and blinked at her. "I know you love me, Su."

"No, but I
want you to see how much I love you!"

He laughed.
"Su—do you believe me when I tell you I love you?"

"Of
course!"

"But you
can't read me, can you?"

"No."

"Then trust
me when I say I believe you love me."

She lay in his
arms, in the moonlight, thinking about that. She smiled. "Mmm...
Okay, Jeff," she said.

Minutes later
she was asleep.