Xenopath (3 page)

"Why not?"
He watched her dance from the lounge and into the bedroom, and smiled
as she began singing a Thai folk song.

He lifted his
handset and traced Kapinsky's code from her call to him earlier that
day.

Seconds later
her thin face peered out. "Jeff? Been thinking things over?"

He nodded. "Long
and hard." He considered explaining himself, telling her that he
was doing it for Su, as if to excuse his climb-down. But he couldn't
bring himself to do that. He was big enough to let Kapinsky make her
own guesses about his motivations.

"When do I
start?" he said.

"Good man,"
Kapinsky said, and the weapon of her smile hit him, and twisted.

GOODBYE LEVEL TWENTY

Pham had two
burning ambitions. The first was to have a proper family—to
have a loving mother and father, and maybe even a brother or sister.
The second was to see real daylight for the first time in her life.

Well, her first
ambition was more of a dream. She knew she'd never have a real family
ever again. She was a seven-year-old girl with no money and no
education, so who would want her? Her second ambition, to see the
genuine light of day, was not that difficult to achieve.

In fact, she was
setting out today on a big adventure to see the sun and the upper
levels and all the marvellous things she'd heard about up there.

She sat on her
bunk and sorted through her few possessions. She had a plastic comic
book, a map-book of Bengal Station, a blanket, a carved wooden
Buddha, a comb, a new tablet of soap in a plastic box, a change of
clothes, and a creased pix of her mum and dad.

Her most
treasured possession was a teddy bear backpack, into which she placed
all her belongings one by one. When she got to the pix, she held it
in her hand and looked down at the strangers who stared out at her.
She could recall very little of them, her mother holding her after a
fall, her father drinking beer and shouting at the holo-screen in
their Eighteenth level apartment. Pham had been four when they died
in a dropchute accident. She didn't like to think of that day, when a
cop explained to her what had happened, and she had thought of her
mother and father, falling and falling and knowing that they were
going to die...

She had lived on
the streets for a month before meeting a bunch of kids who said they
had good jobs working in a factory on Level Twenty, and that the
factory owner was always looking for more workers.

Pham didn't like
the sound of a factory on the bottom level, but she was hungry. She'd
eaten only a stale chapatti and a rotten apple in two days.

So she had found
herself being led into a big, steamy room full of clanking machinery
and sweating boys and girls in underpants and nothing else.

A fat man called
R.J. Prakesh sat behind his desk and questioned her, and then with a
smile asked her if she would like to work for him.

Pham had said
yes, if he would feed her.

Laughing, he had
shown her to her very own bunk, and then the machine press she would
be working on with two other kids, taking eight hour shifts around
the clock. After that she'd eaten a big meal of dhal and rice, then
slept in her bunk, and started work on the big machine at midnight.

Pham had been in
the factory on Level Twenty for three years now, and today was her
very last day.

In some ways she
would be sorry to be leaving the factory. Mr Prakesh was a good man
who looked after all his kids and fed them well, and she had made
some good friends here. But she'd seen hoio-movies about the Station,
the upper deck with all the open spaces and big buildings and
air-cars and everything else. She had saved a few baht over the
years—enough to buy food for a week or so, until she found work
on the top level—and she was getting sick of the hard work and
the constant hacking cough which her friends told her was because
they were inhaling tiny bits of plastic which floated in the air of
the factory.

She wanted to
get out, experience the world, and have an adventure.

She looked at
the poster of Petra Shelenkov, her favourite skyball player, and
wondered whether to take it. There would be other posters she could
buy when she reached the top: her friends could have this one, when
they realised that she wasn't coming back.

She looked
around the quiet dormitory, at the bundled, sleeping figures of the
other kids in their bunks, and found it hard to believe that she was
leaving.

From the pocket
of her shorts she pulled a note she'd painstakingly written earlier,
and left it on her pillow for Mr Prakesh.

Then she stood
up, slung her backpack over her shoulder, crept through the dorm and
pulled open the big door.

The corridor was
quiet. She moved to the exit of the factory, tapped in the exit code
and slipped through the door, emerging into a crowded corridor as
wide as a city street and just as busy with rickshaws and crowds of
people and shambling cows.

It was strange,
but because she was leaving all this for ever, it was as if she were
experiencing it for the first time. The press of people, the constant
bustling movement, the noise—music and cries and rickshaw bells
and the growl of electric motors that illegally lighted some of the
makeshift food-stalls along the street.

She pushed into
the crowd, her tiny size giving her the right to push and elbow her
way through the press of bodies, earning not reprimands for her
audacity but smiles.

Pham had never
been higher than Level Eighteen, and that had been as crowded as down
here. She had seen the sky and open spaces on holo-movies, but she
wondered what it would be like in real life. What would it be like to
look up and see nothing but never-ending blue sky? What would it be
like to be able to run across a park without bumping into people? She
couldn't imagine it. It couldn't be real. The thought that soon she
would be experiencing all this filled her with excitement.

She came to the
'chute station and barged her way inside. The cage door clanked shut
and she found herself standing in a forest of bare brown legs, the
silk of baggy kameez, flowing saris, and the occasional business
suit. The cage rose with a jolt, and an indicator beside the door
flashed the levels as they arrived at them. A few people pushed their
way out on Level Nineteen, and their places were taken by even more
people squeezing into the cage. They ascended. Level Eighteen came
and went, and Pham found herself rising into new and alien territory.
Every time the cage door slid open, she peered out, eager to see new
sights, hear new sounds. Each level above Eighteen seemed bigger and
brighter and less impoverished than those she knew.

The 'chute
terminated at Level Fifteen. She was forced to get out, consult her
map-book, and make her way to another 'chute station a kilometre
away. Like this, in a series of steps, she made her way up the
Station and eventually, two hours after setting out, she was riding
in a cage towards the top level. She was surrounded by rich people in
smart new clothes, businesswomen, and handsome men talking into
handsets.

Excitement
fluttered like something living in her chest.

Ten minutes
later she stepped from the upchute cage into the amazingly fresh air
and bright sunlight of the upper deck.

She stood rooted
to the spot. She could only stare about her in awe. She felt tears
stinging her eyes. She was buffeted from behind by the passengers
leaving the upchute cage. She pushed her way through the crowd and
hurried along the sidewalk until she came to...

Well, she knew
what it was because she'd seen it—or one like it—on
holo-vision. It was called a park, and the green stuff was grass, and
it was alive, like some of the plants she'd seen down below.

And amazingly,
the open space was not crowded. People walked across the park, and
rich kids played with toys she'd never seen before, but every metre
of the grass wasn't crowded with noisy citizens.

Her chest felt
as if it were filled with bubbles like a bottle of pop. She stepped
off the sidewalk and trod on the grass. Beneath her thongs, the grass
was soft, spongy. She kicked off her right thong and, warily, placed
her foot on the grass—then withdrew it quickly. The grass
tickled her!

She replaced her
thong and looked around. Not far away, on the edge of the grass, was
a bench. She hurried across to it and sat down, amazed that she had
the seat to herself. On Level Twenty, she would have been crushed by
other people, until she submitted and gave up her seat.

She stared about
her, open-mouthed. Far, far away was a line of buildings, great
towering needles. She turned. They were all around, filling the
horizon with long, piled up houses where people lived and worked.

Then,
remembering, she looked up, and gasped with wonder.

The sky was blue
and it was hard to tell where it began and where it ended. It seemed
to go on forever. The only things in the sky were clouds—and it
was hard to tell how big they were: were they the size of a feather,
close to her, or great white sheets, far away?— and air-cars
zooming along red and blue lanes that criss-crossed the sky like a
child's crazy pattern.

Pham knew,
suddenly, that she had done the right thing.

Confident, full
of hope for her new future, she left the park bench to explore the
upper deck.

"You're new
here."

Pham turned
quickly. She had been staring into the window of Patel's Sweet
Centre, at the trays piled with pyramids of gulab jamons, idli, and a
hundred other sweets, wondering whether to treat herself, when the
voice sounded loud in her ear.

The boy was
taller than her, perhaps ten years old. He was a Muslim with a white
lace skullcap and only one arm. The stump of his left arm poked from
his T-shirt like a nub of dough.

She was
immediately defensive. "So?"

"So... it
isn't often we see new kids up here." He spoke Hindi with bits
of Thai here and there. He squinted at her. "Where you from?"

She stared back.
"Where are you from?"

"I asked
first."

"If I tell
you where I'm from, you tell me where you're from, okay?"

He nodded.
"Ah-cha."

"I'm from
Level Twenty," Pham told him with something like pride in her
voice. "It's my first time on the upper deck."

The boy stared
at her. "Level Twenty?" he gasped. "And you've never
been up here before?" He seemed to find that hard to believe.

Pham nodded. "I
came all the way up on my own. I'd had enough of life down there."

The boy was
shaking his head. "All the way by yourself. What did you do on
Level Twenty? You were a beggar, right?"

She pulled a
disgusted face. "A beggar? Do I look like beggar? I worked in a
factory, operating a Siemman's Nylon Extrusion Press."

"You had a
job, and you left it to come up here?" He obviously thought her
mad.

"I wanted
to see the world," she told him. "Anyway, I've told you
where I came from. Where are you from?"

He puffed his
skinny chest. "I live on a spaceship between Levels Eleven and
Twelve."

Pham wished that
she hadn't told the boy the truth about herself, because he was
obviously lying to her.

"A
spaceship?" she scoffed. "I might be from Level Twenty, but
I wasn't born yesterday."

The boy laughed.
"No, really. Many years ago, when Level Eleven was the upper
deck, this spaceship crash-landed, ah-cha? Rather than move it, they
built around it. And it's still there, owned by Dr Rao."

The way he said
the doctor's name made Pham think that she should have heard of him.
"Who's Dr Rao?" she asked.

"Don't you
know anything? Dr Rao is a very famous man on Bengal Station. He is a
doctor with a Big Heart. I work for him."

Pham cocked her
head and regarded the boy dubiously. His lies were getting bigger and
bigger. "So what are you," she asked, "a junior
doctor?"

He didn't
understand her humour. "Why do you think I'm a doctor?"

"Forget it.
So, what do you do?"

He grinned. "I
beg. This is my patch, all the way from Nazruddin's to Patel's. I
give half the money I make to Dr Rao."

She said,
"Haven't you ever had a proper job?"

He shook his
head, matter-of-factly. "Who needs a proper job when I can beg?"

She wanted to
ask him what he would do when he grew up. Would he still beg on the
streets then?

He was watching
her closely. "How long are you staying up here?"

She shrugged,
casual. "Oh, forever, I think. I like it better than down there.
More space, more to see. I'll get a job, rent an apartment, go up in
the world."

He was trying
not to laugh. "But you're only... what? Six?"'

"I'm
seven," she said.

"So you're
seven. And you think you'll get work, just like that? And an
apartment?"

"Why not? I
can work hard and save money."

He was shaking
his head. "Things are hard up here," he said. "It
isn't like in the movies. Kids can't get good jobs, only begging."
He paused, thinking, then said, "Where will you sleep tonight?"

She'd already
decided that rather than spend money on a hotel room, she would sleep
in a park on Level Two. "Ketsuwan Park," she told him.

He was shaking
his head like a wise old man. "Dangerous. Bad men go to the
parks, looking for kids."

She peered at
him through her fringe. "They do?"

"Murder
them for baht, sometimes do other things. Look," he went on,
"why don't you come with me? I'll show you the ship, introduce
you to Dr Rao. He'll let you stay for a couple of nights."

"He won't
try to make me beg for him?" she asked.