Xenopath (4 page)

The boy looked
away, shrugging. "Well, he might ask. But you can always say
you've got a job."

"I don't
know..."

"So come
with me and look at the ship, ah-cha? It really is amazing."

She still didn't
believe him, but she nodded anyway.

"Great!"
He held out his right hand. "I'm Abdul."

"Pham,"
she told him, shaking his hand very formally and laughing. Abdul
might be a big liar, but there was something about him which she
liked.

"Follow me!
We'll cut across the upper deck and I'll show you a few things on the
way!"

He scooted into
the crowd, pushing aside bodies, and Pham gave chase.

They crossed the
crowded street and came to a crossroads, and Pham found herself
holding Abdul's hand, frightened of losing him in the crush.

"Tell you
what," he shouted in her ear as an air-car screamed low
overhead. "We'll go to Kandalay by train. We'll see the
spaceport then. You ever seen the spaceport?"

"No."
She shook her head. "Only on holo-vision. Where's Kandalay?"

"Central
Station. There's a big amusement park there, only it's closed down
now. From Kandalay we'll take a ladder right down to the spaceship."

The spaceship,
again. He really was trying to make her believe that he lived in a
crash-landed spaceship!

He dragged her
across the street towards the Chandi Road railway station and bought
two tickets at the kiosk. A minute later Pham found herself sucked
aboard a carriage with what seemed like a million other citizens.

Abdul pulled her
along the corridor to a window. They pressed their faces against the
glass and stared out as the train pulled from the station.

The sun was
going down, making a big red sky in the west. "Look!" Abdul
cried with excitement.

Pham gasped. A
massive voidliner was coming in over the sea, a dark shape against
the sunset, its lighted viewscreens showing the crew going about
their business inside. Pham wondered what it must be like to be a
spacer, to see all the wonderful alien worlds out there.

The train
rattled past the spaceport, and Pham stared down across the apron at
the dozens of ships lined up in neat rows. They were all shapes and
sizes and colours, and Pham decided that when she earned her first
wage on the upper level she would find a shop that sold model
spaceships and buy one.

The train pulled
away from the spaceport and passed a massive park, with acres and
acres of grass and big trees, and families walking back and forth in
the twilight. Pham saw a girl of about her age, holding hands with
her mother and father, and she felt a moment of sadness and a swift
stab of jealousy.

"Himachal
Park," Abdul was saying. "It's the biggest park on the
Station. Two square kilometres!"

Pham just
nodded.

"Are you
okay?" Abdul looked at her, concerned.

"I'm fine.
Do you really live on a spaceship?"

Abdul slapped
his cheek. "I swear, Pham! You'll see... Okay, we get off at the
next stop."

They squirmed
their way through the packed bodies as the train slowed at Kandalay.
Abdul took her hand again, and Pham felt pleased and safe as he
tugged her off the train, along the platform and out into a noisy
street.

It was dark now,
and the street was alight with a thousand signs advertising shops and
restaurants.

The sidewalk was
crowded with food-stalls. Pham saw one selling idli. She bought two
big sticky lattices and passed one to Abdul, earning a big grin of
thanks.

The only trouble
now was that Abdul didn't have a free hand to hold on to Pham, so she
had to be extra careful as she followed him across the busy street
and down a dark alleyway.

They came to a
high tattered polycarbon wall, covered with peeling posters of
holo-movie stars and skyball players.

Abdul ducked
through a loose flap in the wall, and Pham bent down and pushed her
way through after him, then stood up and stared about her in wonder.

She had never
seen anything like it in her life, not even in the holo-movies.

She was
surrounded by a hundred rides and stalls and things that she couldn't
even describe—massive wheels with seats all around them, slides
with rocket ships ready for take-off, oval shapes like little fliers
hanging by wires from tall frames. Okay, so some of the attractions
were old and faded, and some had been ripped apart—and none
were working—but, even so, Pham could imagine how wonderful it
must have been, and walking through the amusement park even now was a
magical experience.

"My
favourite is the ghost train," Abdul said. "Have you ever
seen one?"

She shook her
head. "A train that's really a ghost?" she asked, confused.

Abdul laughed.
"No! Come on, I'll show you. The cars don't work anymore, but we
can still walk through it."

He'd finished
his idli now, and he grabbed her hand with sticky fingers and dragged
her through the faded glory of the park.

Five minutes
later they came to an open area surrounded by tumbledown food kiosks,
with the ghost train at one end and a starship ride at the other.

They hurried
across the concourse and stared up at the facade of the ghost train.
It was the shape of a castle, covered with paintings of ghosts and
ghouls, vampire bats and zombies. There were two openings, where the
little cars went in and came out, and these openings were the mouths
of screaming banshees.

Abdul ran up a
short flight of steps, pulling Pham after him. She dragged him back
as he made to enter the first screaming mouth. It was dark in there,
and she could see something green and luminous and scary lurking just
inside.

"I'm not
sure..."

He turned and
stared at her. "Are you scared?"

"No. It's
just that... I thought you were taking me to see the starship?"

"You
are
scared! Look, there's nothing to be frightened about. They're just
mechanical monsters. And you'll be with me. I won't let anything hurt
you."

That persuaded
her. She felt comfortable with Abdul. Nothing would go wrong while
she was with him. All this was his world, the upper deck, and if she
stuck close to him she would be fine.

But even so, as
she timorously stepped into the dark maw of the ghoul's slavering
mouth, she felt her tummy flutter with fear. She grabbed Abdul's hand
with both of hers and squeezed.

Something green
was dangling from the ceiling: it was a hanged man, who'd been there
too long. His flesh was rotten and his eyeballs had fallen out.

"Yech!"
Pham said, shivering and pressing close to Abdul.

They hurried
past the hanged man. They were walking between two rails where the
car would have run, years ago. It took them further into the
make-believe castle, leaving behind the little light that spilled
through the mouth-shaped entrance. Pham could feel the hairs on the
back of her neck bristling in fear, and she wanted to scream out loud
and run back the way she had come.

She did scream
when something leapt out of the darkness and yelled in her face. It
was a disembodied head, blood spilling from its open mouth.

She yelled at
the top of her lungs and almost jumped into Abdul's arms.

"It's
okay!" he laughed. "It's only a hologram."

She knew that,
but somehow it didn't make the experience any the less frightening.

Next, a ghostly
laugh crept up on them and Pham felt fingers brush the back of her
head. She turned, but couldn't see anything. When she faced forward
again, a vampire bat was flying straight at them. This time, even
Abdul yelled out and ducked.

For what seemed
like an hour, though it was probably only minutes, Pham gripped
Abdul's hand, squeezed her eyes tight shut and hurried around the
rest of the castle. She heard all kinds of horrible noises, and felt
bony hands plucking at her clothing, but at least she couldn't see
anything now.

"There,"
Abdul said. "What did you think of that?"

She opened her
eyes. They were standing just inside the exit. Outside was the
familiar; reassuring park. Pham wanted nothing more than to leave the
ghost train and continue their journey to the star-ship—if it
existed.

In a small
voice, she said, "I didn't like it."

Abdul smiled at
her, and she liked him for what he said then. "It is scary,
isn't it? Even though you know it's all machinery, it's still
frightening."

He was about to
duck out of the open mouth when he stopped suddenly and pulled back
into the shadows.

"What?"
Pham said, her heart beating fast with new alarm.

"Shhh.
There's someone out there."

Pham peered past
him. At first she didn't see anyone. Then, on the other side of the
concourse, she saw a man in a black suit walk straight towards the
ghost train.

They ducked and
drew back. "Maybe it's the owner of the park," Pham
whispered.

Abdul was
silent. He found Pham's hand and squeezed.

The man paced
across to the ghost train, then stopped and turned. He glanced at his
watch, then looked around the concourse.

Pham felt
relieved. He hadn't seen them. He hadn't come to arrest them for
trespassing.

The man walked
back and forth, away from the ghost train, then towards it, then away
again.

Abdul leaned
towards Pham and whispered into her ear, "When he turns and
walks away again, follow me, ah-cha? Down the side alley there's a
toilet block. In the floor is a hatch—it leads to the level
below this one."

"Ah-cha,"
Pham replied, her eyes on the man. He was walking towards them. She
felt Abdul tense beside her as the man arrived at the ghost train,
paused and turned.

Quickly, so
quick that Pham was left behind, Abdul ran from the mouth of the
ghost train, jumped down the steps and turned left and out of sight.
Startled, Pham made to follow him—then stopped.

The man hadn't
walked as far away this time. He turned and walked back towards where
Pham was cowering. Okay, so when he turned away again, then she would
jump down and follow her new friend.

Except, this
time when the man arrived at the ghost train, he turned and stood
right at the bottom of the steps, so that there was no way for Pham
to get past him.

Surely he
wouldn't stand there forever?

From time to
time he looked at his watch. Maybe he was meeting someone, and when
they arrived they would leave and let Pham escape.

A minute later
the man looked up, across the concourse, and started walking away
from the ghost train. Perhaps he'd seen the person he was due to
meet?

What happened
next was so sudden and horrific that Pham didn't have time to scream.
It was so much more frightening than anything she had experienced in
the ghost train that it made her blood turn cold and sent her rigid
with shock.

A blinding blue
light shot across the concourse and hit the man in the chest. The
light wavered a little, which was enough for it to carve its way
through the man's torso, cutting off his arms and his head. He seemed
to fall apart in slow motion as Pham watched, and then something
happened which she could not explain at the time, and which changed
her life forever.

A fraction of a
second after the laser sliced the man into pieces, a white light
seemed to bounce from his head and streak towards Pham. Before she
could move, it hit her full in the face, knocking her backwards. She
cried out and scrambled to her feet, feeling her face with her
fingers. She expected to touch burned flesh, but oddly her face
seemed okay.

Had the laser
bounced off the man and hit her, weakened, so that it hadn't sliced
her up?

She realised
then that there was a killer out there, and she knew she had to get
away. She quickly jumped from the open mouth, tapped down the steps,
and raced along the alley between the attractions. Ahead she saw the
toilet block that Abdul had told her about. She hauled open the door
and dived inside. Thankfully Abdul had left the hatch in the floor
propped open. She was about to squirm through it, hopefully into
Abdul's arms, when something exploded behind her and a laser shafted
through the door above her head and drilled a neat hole through the
far wall.

So the killer
had seen her escaping, and was chasing her...

She dived
through the hatch and hauled it shut after her. She found herself in
a narrow shaft and scrambled down the rungs of a ladder.

Seconds later
she emerged onto a lighted catwalk high above a busy tunnel on the
second level. Above her, she heard the hatch scrape open, then the
sound of boots on metal rungs.

She fled.
Further along the catwalk was a ladder that descended to the
corridor. She reached it in seconds, slid down the ladder and slipped
into the crowd. She squirmed through the bodies, pausing only once to
look over her shoulder at the catwalk. She made out the bulky figure
of man in a technician's overalls drop onto the catwalk and look up
and down the length of the tunnel.

Then she was on
her way again, turning down corridor after corridor on a crazy zigzag
course across Level Two. She wished that Abdul was with her, but at
the same time she was proud that she had managed to escape all by
herself.

Perhaps half an
hour later she came to a big park surrounded by tall trees. She
looked at her map-book and found to her delight and surprise that
this was Ketsuwan Park.

She bought a
plate of masala and pakora from a kiosk just inside the western gate
of the park, then found a bench and sat down and ate. She was
famished, and minutes later she had wolfed down the meal and was
considering what had happened in the amusement park.

She hugged her
bare legs and stared across the grass. The lighting was low here, to
simulate the darkness outside. She could see street-kids huddling in
the bushes all around, and sleeping on the park benches.