Necropath (32 page)

She repeated the word. “What it mean?”

“Remove, girl. Chop off. From then on, she worked on the streets.”

“She beggar girl, like others?”

“An honourable and noble profession. Tiger had a good life in my sanctuary. She wanted for nothing.”

Sukara frowned, stared at her empty coffee cup. She could not understand much of what the little man said, but something made her wonder why he was not telling her where Pakara was.

“Dr. Rao—you know where my sister is?”

It was not his words that alerted her to the truth of what had happened, but a certain gesture. He reached his hand across the table and placed it protectively on top of hers. In that instant, she knew.

“I am very sorry, girl, but your sister has passed on.”

She heard the words but after that all was silence. Dr. Rao might have uttered more empty consolations, but she was deaf to everything. All she could hear was a great, distant roaring in her ears, and she felt removed from the proceedings. The phrase “passed on” didn’t seem right to describe what had happened to Pakara, at once informing her of what had happened, and yet telling her nothing.

“Pakara...” she whispered, “Pakara dead? My sister dead?”

Rao patted her hand. “I’m very sorry.”

She felt unable to respond physically, cry or shout or jump up and hit out, though she wanted to do all these things. It was as if a giant hand was holding her in paralysis. She thought of Pakara’s message, which had said she was well; she thought of the hope with which she had left the hotel. It was impossible that her hopes had been dashed so rapidly, impossible that her little sister was dead.

“Pakara tried a drug,” Dr. Rao was saying, “a very lethal drug. She overdosed and slipped away peacefully.”

Sukara echoed, “Peacefully...?”

“She was in no pain, of that I can assure you.”

Sukara was shaking her head.

The world was cruel—to offer her so much, and then to take it all away.

“Where are you staying?” Dr. Rao asked her.

“What?” The question did not make sense, had no relevance to what she was experiencing.

“I said, where are you staying? I’ll take you to a flier rank.”

She had to force herself to concentrate on the name of the hotel. At last she said, “Ashoka, the Hotel Ashoka.”

Dr. Rao nodded. He paid the bill, took her hand, and led her from the restaurant. As they made their way down the crowded street, Sukara gripped the old man’s hand even tighter, and it was as if she were a girl again, holding the hand of her father as he took her to the morning market in the village.

They arrived at a flier rank and Dr. Rao assisted her into the back seat, then spoke to the driver and handed over rupees.

Before the flier took off, he looked in through the open window and said, “Pakara had a special friend, a man named Vaughan. He was with her when she passed away. He arranged her funeral. If you wish to speak to him, he spends the evenings at Nazruddin’s Restaurant. I’m sure he will talk to you if you wish.”

Then, before she could thank Dr. Rao, the flier took off. She sank into the seat as the flier accelerated, and closed her eyes.

A flood of memories returned, of Pakara, so small in Bangkok, a tiny waif. She pulled the pix from the pocket of her shorts and stared at it: Pakara, aged ten, poking her tongue in mischievous glee. Sukara felt a surge of painful grief in her chest.

Back at the hotel, she hurried to the lift, endured its agonisingly slow ascent, then sprinted along the corridor. The door was unlocked—which meant that Osborne was back. Her heart swelled in pain and gratitude. She ran into the lounge and stopped. Osborne was at the window, and turned when she entered. He stared at her, and his expression crumpled into the mirror image of the anguish she knew contorted her own features. He reached out. “Su, Su—I’m so sorry.” And without asking how he knew, only grateful that he somehow shared her grief, she ran across the room and into his arms.

He carried her to a chair, sat down, and held her in his lap while she clung to him like the survivor of some shipwreck and sobbed.

“I know,” he said, smoothing her back through the material of her T-shirt. “I know... there’s nothing you can do, you’re right. Yes, that’s why it hurts all the more...”

Sukara felt his arms around her, strong and comforting.

“She wasn’t in pain, Su. Isn’t that what Dr. Rao said? He told you that she passed away peacefully.”

She nodded, trying to control her sobbing.

“She was better off begging than selling her body. Dr. Rao said that he looked after her, that she had a good life.”

Sukara wiped tears from her eyes with her wrist.

“There was nothing you could have done. But you
didn’t
arrive any sooner, so it’s no good trying to edit the past. You must try to look back at the good times.”

She felt the muscles of his chest through his silk shirt, and was hit by the thought that Pakara had probably never felt this, never felt real love for a man.

“I’m sure she did,” Osborne tried to comfort her. “I’m sure she had friends and lovers.”

At the thought that her sister would never again have the opportunity to experience
anything,
Sukara choked on her sobs.

“You
will
get over it,” Osborne said. “It just takes time. Believe me. I know words mean nothing now. There’s nothing I can say to make it any better, but time does heal the wound. I’ve lost someone close to me—I thought I wouldn’t survive; I didn’t want to survive. Life seemed pointless... But, Su, we go on. We do survive. And you have me. Never forget that, Su. You have me.”

I love you,
she thought.

He held her to him. “I know you do,” he said.

Time passed, and under the ministration of his soothing words, words which answered her every anguished thought almost before those thoughts were fully formed, Sukara calmed herself. She knew that somehow her mind was open to him, and instead of feeling vulnerable and exposed—as she would have done if anyone else could have read her mind—she felt a joyous relief that he could see into the very core of her being and still want her.

She held Osborne, never wanting to let him go.

He stroked her hair. “I am a telepath,” he said, in answer to her thoughts. “I work for the government of Federated America.”

She took his golden pendant in her palm. It almost pulsed with a strange, lustrous warmth. She realised, then, that she had never seen him without it.

He smiled. “It’s a shield,” he said. “A mind-shield. It prevents other telepaths from reading my mind.”

She thought,
You looking for friend on Station?

“Not a friend. A colleague, once. A traitor to my country. I know he’s here, somewhere. I discovered that he worked at the ‘port. Eventually I will track him down, and punish him.”

Will you kill him?

He kissed her head. “That need not concern you, my little one. All that matters is that you have me, okay?”

And she thought,
Mmm.

As the sun set and the room slipped into darkness, Osborne held her in arms like reassurance made physical, and Sukara closed her eyes and eventually slept.

* * * *

A THIRD FUNERAL

Vaughan stood before the viewscreen as the void-ship materialised over the Bay of Bengal. The mind-noise of the Station increased as they approached the ‘port. He should have realised that, after the relative mind-silence of Verkerk’s World, the Station would be intolerable; he should have saved enough chora to get him through his first few hours on Earth. He thought back to the absolute silence he had experienced north of Vanderlaan, and longed to enjoy it again.

The ship landed on the jet black anvil that was Bengal Station, and thirty minutes later Vaughan joined the procession of passengers as they crossed the deck to the terminal building. As a citizen of the Station he was processed rapidly. He passed through the cursory customs check with business-people and tourists returning from vacation. The main foyer, a plush marble chamber, was thronged with visitors recently arrived. Vaughan saw travellers in the distinctive dress of a dozen different colony worlds, and even some aliens among the crowd: the tall, blue beings of Barnard’s Star, a party of adipose ancients from Ophiuchi.

He’d taken the first available flight from Verkerk’s World as soon as he was released from hospital, and he calculated that he had perhaps a day in which to locate and destroy the Vaith on the Station before its feeding cycle ended for another two years.

Of course, if Sinton had acted on his report and instituted a search worldwide, then the danger might have passed.

“Mr. Vaughan!”

He turned, alarmed at the summons.

A young Thai police officer approached him. “Mr. Vaughan? Commander Sinton would like to see you. He will be at Investigator Chandra’s funeral.”

“What a welcome to Earth,” Vaughan said. “Yes, of course. What’s the local time?”

“Five in the evening, sir. Chandra’s remains are being transported to the ghats. His funeral will begin shortly.”

He left his luggage in a locker at the ‘port and followed the pilot across the forecourt to the flier. As the vehicle rose, engines whining with the rapidity of the ascent, Vaughan leaned back and closed his eyes.

Ten minutes later the flier banked over the edge of the Station and came down on the ghats beside the ocean. The pilot indicated a funeral underway, and Vaughan climbed out and crossed the deck towards the assembled mourners and their attendant mind-noise. He remembered Tiger’s funeral, and it came to him that the only similarity between the two services was the funeral pyre itself. Whereas Tiger’s service had been attended by Vaughan and three or four of her friends, there must have been three or four hundred mourners here. Which, he supposed, was to be expected: Jimmy had died valiantly in the line of duty and was accorded a full police service in consequence.

He eased himself through the crowd until he stood near the front. The pyre had already been lit by Chandra’s widow, Sumita, in the Hindu tradition, and the flames licked through the stack of wood-sub built about Jimmy’s body. As Vaughan stared into the pyre, sweating in the heat from the blaze and the summer sun, he thought back quite involuntarily to Jimmy’s death in the pit on the mountainside, and not for the first time since the incident he realised how pointless was the complex charade of existence.

He looked around the mourners for Commander Sinton, and spotted him in the front row of the gathering.

He watched Sumita step back from the pyre as a holy man began a dolorous chant. She appeared calm, composed: a slim, oval-faced Indian woman in her mid-twenties. Jimmy had never spoken of her, had kept the personal side of his life strictly private, and that had been fine by Vaughan.