Xenopath (6 page)

"Who's the
guy?"

She shrugged.
"That we'll find out when we get there. All I know is what the
Commissioner told me—a laser slaying in the park, and it's a
messy one. Hope you didn't have a late breakfast."

He stared
through the side window as the air-taxi whined in a tight arc, coming
in low over the skeleton of an ancient big dipper and tumbledown
amusement arcades.

The taxi settled
on a concrete apron between a broken-down starship simulation and the
shell of a bankrupt McDonald's franchise. Vaughan stepped out,
staring across the apron to where a knot of SoC officers were
kneeling beside a body in front of an old ghost train ride.

Kapinsky
introduced herself and Vaughan to the officer in charge, a big Sikh
called K.J. Kulpa. As the SoC team wrapped up their work, dismantling
cameras and laser-measuring apparatus, Kulpa gave Kapinsky the
lowdown and Vaughan stared, despite himself, at the murder victim.

The guy was
Caucasian, in his fifties, dark haired and pale skinned. He wore a
neat business suit and had died, Vaughan hoped, instantly. It was
hard to tell, though. The killer had taken no chances, scoring a big
X through the guy's chest, joined at the top so that the loop had
effectively decapitated his victim and dismembered the arms.

Vaughan had seen
the work of a laser before. A single, fraction of a second blast at
long range was enough to halt a charging rhino: this gory elaboration
was either the work of a sadist or someone who was taking no chances
that his victim might survive.

The SoC team
boarded a police flier, leaving Kulpa and a corpse crew to mop up
when the preliminary investigation was through.

Kulpa handed
Kapinsky a pin. "That should contain everything we have on the
case, Linda. Call me if you need anything. Good luck." He nodded
to Vaughan and climbed into a private flier.

Only the corpse
team remained, kicking their heels while Kapinsky knelt and examined
the body.

Still crouching,
she tossed Vaughan the pin and said, "Access that. The usual
questions."

He slipped the
pin into his handset and spoke into the mouthpiece. "Victim?"

The program's
voice, female and Indian, answered,
"Robert Kormier,
fifty-eight, male, South African. Victim employed by the
Scheering-Lassiter Colonial Corporation. Position: Executive
xeno-zoologist."

"Estimated
time of death?" Vaughan said.

"Midnight,
plus or minus twelve minutes.'"

"Means of
death?" It was always worth asking the seemingly obvious
question in case the laser wounds were intended to cover the real
cause of death, strangulation or some such.

"Instantaneous
laser laceration of right pulmonary ventricle."

"Weapon
used?"

"Kulatov
MkII blaser, set at maximum burn."

"Estimated
range of laser when fired?"

"Between
fifteen and twenty metres."

Vaughan looked
around at the eerily deserted amusement park. "Witnesses?"

"None."

Kapinsky stood.
"Ask who discovered the body."

Vaughan relayed
the question and the program responded with, "
Night-watchman
employed by Raja Amusements PLC. Alibi corroborated: at midnight he
was in visi-contact with superior at Kandalay Security."

Vaughan said,
"Dependants, next of kin?"

"Victim's
marital status: Married, no children. Spouse: Hermione Kormier."

"Address?"

"Two
Gulshan Villas, Allabad, Level One."

He looked at
Kapinsky. "Anything else?"

"Ask about
his last job posting, when he arrived on Earth, things like that.
It's a long-shot, but you never know."

"Victim's
last professional posting?"

"Information
unavailable."

"Arrival on
Earth?"

Again the
information was unavailable. Kapinsky shrugged. "We'll get all
that when we question his boss at Scheering-Lassiter."

She nodded to
the corpse boys. "Okay, we're through here."

They moved in,
and Vaughan turned away—but not fast enough. With the
dispassion of their calling they lifted the corpse onto the waiting
stretcher, torso and legs first, leaving behind the head and arms
like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Vaughan looked
around at the rusted stanchions. He shook his head and said to
Kapinsky, "We're out of luck if we thought a security cam
might've caught the killing."

"None
installed?"

"Once upon
a time." He gestured to the vandalised remains of surveillance
cams.

He turned and
stared across the park, wondering if a cam surveying the streets
beyond the park might have caught something. It was a long shot, but
one worth checking out later.

He copied the
information to his handset's memory, ejected the pin and handed it to
Kapinsky.

He watched the
corpse-wagon rise into the air and bank low over the decrepit
panelling of the amusement park, leaving silence in its wake. Gaudy
advertisements for unlimited family fun hit the eye from every
direction, contrasting with the forlorn ghost-town aspect of the
abandoned park. Vaughan thought it a ghoulishly apposite setting for
a laser slaying.

"Two
things, Lin," he said. "What was Kormier doing here anyway,
and why at midnight?"

"Meeting
someone?" She shrugged. "Okay, looks to me like we have two
obvious lines of enquiry. His employers—the Scheering-Lassiter
outfit—and his widow." She went on before Vaughan could
state a preference, "I'll take his bosses. You talk to his
widow, find out if—"

"Lin, I
know what to do, okay?"

She flicked him
a smile. "Two years out of practice, driving a tanker..."

"Fuck you,
Kapinsky." He strode towards the waiting Russian flier. "I'll
take the taxi, okay?"

"You're
such a gentleman, Vaughan."

He slumped into
the padded rear seat and said, "Gulshan Villas, Allabad."

He stared out as
they rose. Far below, Kapinsky was a tiny figure dwarfed by looming
epitaphs to a happier time.

He watched the
streets flicker past, then turned his thoughts to Sukara, and their
daughter, and wondered what his wife was doing now.

VOICE

"Pham..."

A voice nearby,
and a hand on her shoulder, waking her up. She opened her eyes and
blinked up at a small brown face. She recognised the young boy, then
remembered his name.

"Abdul?"
She sat up. "How did you find me?"

He grinned. "You
told me you'd spend the night here, remember?"

She did, and she
remembered everything else, too. The ghost train, the laser killing,
the white light that had smashed into her face.

Then the voice
in her head.

She had been so
sleepy that she had thought it might have been a dream. The voice had
said nothing more, just told her not to be frightened, that it could
help her.

Then silence,
and she had slept all night.

Abdul was
kneeling before her, staring into her face as she rubbed her eyes
with both fists. "What happened, Pham? When I got away I waited
for you in the Level Two tunnel. You were ages, and when you did
appear you just ran off before I could catch you."

Pham smiled.
"The murderer. The man with the laser. He came after me, tried
to kill me."

Abdul's eyes
were massive. "Did he see your face?"

"I don't
know. I don't think so. He just saw me. He fired at me. I had to run,
Abdul."

He reached out
and squeezed her fingers. He looked around. "You're not safe
here. If the killer's still after you, the parks are the first place
he'll look. It's where most of the homeless street-kids live."

Pham grinned at
him. "So you're going to take me to see this make-believe
spaceship of yours?"

"You still
don't believe me, do you? Like to bet on it?"

He looked
serious. Perhaps there was a crashed spaceship, after all. And
perhaps she would be safer there than out here.

"1 don't
have enough money to gamble," she said, "and anyway, I
think I believe you."

He grinned.
"Come on then," he said, holding out his hand.

She wadded her
blanket and stuffed it into her teddy-bear backpack, took Abdul's
hand and hurried from the park.

He took her
along a wide corridor bustling with well-dressed people. Big shops
lined the way, with windows as wide as holo-movie screens. Pham had
never seen so many things on sale before. There were no big shops on
Level Twenty, just stalls and kiosks selling essentials.

She wanted to
stop and look into the shop windows at all the new clothes and
jewellery, but Abdul was hurrying her along as if the killer were
still chasing her.

They turned down
a narrower tunnel, this one not so busy. Abdul stopped at the foot of
a metal ladder welded to the wall. "Follow me."

For a boy with
only one hand, he climbed the ladder with amazing speed, pulling
himself up with a series of one-handed grabs at the next rung. Pham
followed, going more slowly, careful to reach for the next run only
when she had a good grip on the one below.

She came to a
catwalk, which ran the length of the tunnel. Abdul tugged her towards
another ladder and they climbed again. This time they climbed through
a small trapdoor and Pham found herself in a dark crawlspace.

"We're in
the maintenance space between Levels One and Two," Abdul
informed her self-importantly.

"I thought
your spaceship was on Level Twelve, Abdul?"

"Twelve-b,
but this is the quickest way to get to it from here."

On hands and
knees he crawled away from her, and Pham gave chase. A minute later
he stopped. He was pulling something open in front of him, a big
square door set into a thick metal column.

He slipped
through the door feet first, and peered out at her. "And now we
climb all the way down to Level Twelve-b."

She climbed in
after him and peered down past Abdul. Occasional dim lighting in the
thick column showed that the ladder dropped for ever, vanishing to a
tiny point far below. Pham gripped the rungs in fear. If she slipped
and fell now, she'd hit Abdul and send them both crashing down until
they hit the bottom... wherever that might be—Level Twenty, she
thought. She smiled at that as she began the long climb down. If she
lost her grip, she would end up where she started, only then she
would be dead.

The descent
seemed to last for ever, Pham became tired and slowed, then called
down to Abdul to stop and wait for her while she rested. He grinned
up at her, his single arm hooked around the rung as he took a
breather too.

They began
again, and Pham called down, "How long have you been living on
the spaceship, Abdul?"

"Oh...
since I was four or five, I think.

"What
happened to your parents?"

"I don't
know. I can't remember ever having any. I lived with a stallholder on
Level Fifteen when I was three. He might have been my uncle. One day
he took me to Dr Rao and I've lived in the ship ever since."

Pham thought
about life on a spaceship, begging every day and giving half the
money to Dr Rao. "Does Dr Rao give you food?" she asked.

"Food and a
bed and blankets and clothes. Dr Rao provides everything for his
children."

Perhaps it might
be a good life, living on the spaceship with Dr Rao and the other
kids... but she didn't like the idea of begging. Perhaps, if she
could find a proper job, she could live on the ship and pay Dr Rao
some rent money... if she liked it down there, of course.

"Abdul,
what happened to your arm?"

A silence from
below, and then, "I don't know. I think it happened when I was
two or three. Maybe a wild animal bit it off!"

"On Bengal
Station?"

"Or maybe
it got pulled off in a sugar-cane press!"

She said, "Maybe
it got stuck in a 'chute cage door!"

"Or maybe I
was so hungry I ate it for breakfast!"

"Or
perhaps," she laughed, "it decided it didn't like you, and
one morning decided to go its own way and see something of the
world."

"I'll keep
a look out for it, then," Abdul said.

Thirty minutes
later he called out, "Pham, we're nearly there."

"Thought we
were never going to stop! My hands ache so much!"

She heard a
sound below, the creak of hinges. When she looked down, Abdul was
slipping through an open hatch. Pham climbed down and squirmed
through the opening, then stood and looked around her.

She was in a
vast, dark space, lighted with a few dim tubes in the distance. The
floor was metal, and hundreds of columns filed away into the
distance, holding up the deck above.

"Where are
we?" she asked.

This is the
level between Eleven and Twelve," he explained. "Many years
ago it was the upper level, then the starship crashed. Later the
bosses decided to build even more levels, so they just left the ship
where it was, for safety reasons, and built around it."

It was an
amazing story. Pham said, "I really don't know whether to
believe you, Abdul!"

He laughed.
"Come on, then, I'll show you."

He grabbed her
hand and they set off, stepping over the seams and joins in the floor
where years ago walls had stood. They passed great hanks of wires and
bulky, throbbing machinery, and two minutes later Abdul opened a
trapdoor in the floor and climbed down. Pham followed, pulling the
hatch shut after her.

They were in a
brighter area now, and when the ladder ended Pham turned and found
herself on a catwalk overlooking a vast chamber.

She stared,
gasping. Abdul was smiling at her reaction.

She moved to the
edge of the catwalk, gripped the rail and stared.