Cosmopath

Cosmopath

A Bengal Station Novel

Eric Brown

THE KORTH ASSASSIN

Vaughan
was three days into a routine murder investigation when the assassin
came after him with a pulse-gun.

The
monsoon rains were late this year and it was another sultry day on
Bengal Station. Soon the seasonal downpour would drop unannounced
from the heavens, deluging the top level and sluicing away the
accumulated filth of months. Until then the heat would remain
intolerable and the mood of the citizens increasingly fraught. The
humidity incubated anger, and hair-trigger tempers tripped at the
slightest provocation. Vaughan had been working for the Kapinsky
Agency long enough to know that the crime rate spiked in the weeks
leading up to the first rains. It was never his favourite time of
year.

He
sat at a table on the terrace of the Kit-Kat Bar overlooking Silom
Road, a glass of ice-cold Blue Mountain beer before him. He tapped
the keys of the handset on his left wrist, enabling his tele-ability,
and instantly the minds of those around him flared into life.

Four
days ago a high-class prostitute had been stabbed to death in an
alley off Silom Road. The death of another working girl would have
passed unnoticed, and uninvestigated, had she not been the favourite
of someone high up in the government. The Kapinsky Agency had been
called in to bring the killer to justice, and Lin had dropped the
case in Vaughan’s lap.

The
other telepaths in the agency had ragged him about the job, but Lin
had known what she was doing. Six years ago Vaughan’s wife
Sukara had left Thailand, where she had been a working girl in a
Bangkok brothel, and now she taught English to the girls who worked
the escort agencies around Silom Road. She had known the murdered
woman, and put Vaughan into contact with the woman’s friends
who might otherwise have been suspicious of an official investigator.

He’d
talked to the women, and scanned them, but come up with nothing.

Now
he scanned at random, on the off chance that he might happen upon
some stray thought, conscious or subconscious, that might lead him in
the right direction. He flitted through minds close by, dipping for
memories of the dead woman. She was known in the bar, but no one
working or drinking here today knew anything about her death. The
escort agency had its base next door, in the poly-carbon high-rise
that soared like a scimitar into the cloudless blue sky. Vaughan
moved through the minds of the women there, quickly, not wanting to
mire himself in the short-term memories of working prostitutes: some
had known the murder victim, and many were grieving. In the penthouse
suite, Vaughan came across the pulsing collective signature of an
orgy: four respected Indian politicians and a dozen Thai and Indian
women were working up a sweat in the air-conditioned, mattress-lined
room reserved for gold-chip customers. One of the men had been the
dead girl’s patron, now sublimating his grief with the
energetic assistance of his next favourite.

Vaughan
withdrew his probe, despite the first stirrings of arousal - or
perhaps because of them. These situations were common in his line of
work, and he felt like a voyeur.

He
touched a control on his handset and mind-silence sealed over him. He
wondered if it were guilt that moved him to dial Sukara’s code.

“Jeff!â€

IN TWO MINDS

Parveen
Das shut down her softscreen and smiled at the three’ seminar
students. “Right. That’s it for today, and for the term.
Enjoy your holidays.â€

COVER EVERY ANGLE

Sukara
clutched Li’s hand and stepped from the elevator into the busy
foyer of the St Theresa Hospital, Level Two.

The
little girl toddled alongside her, chattering away about puppy dogs
and kittens and grasping the certificate of bravery awarded her by
the medic. Sukara heard nothing, lagged in a layer of insulation that
numbed her to sensory impressions from the outside world. All around
her people came and went, citizens absorbed in their own illnesses,
staff intent on their duties, but Sukara felt as if she were locked
into a wrap-around holodrama that meant nothing to her.

Dr
Chang, a fat Chinese man in his sixties, had told Sukara his findings
after examining Li. He had gone over the facts, and then again,
accustomed to having to repeat himself to patients and loved ones in
shock. Li had leukaemia, Dr Chang had told Sukara; but with the
latest medical techniques available there was a seventy per cent
chance of Li making a full recovery in a matter of weeks.

Then
Dr Chang had handed her on to an admin clerk, who had gone through a
lot of facts and figures about the various treatments and their
respective costs. What it boiled down to, though the clerk had not
said this in so many words, was that the higher the grade of hospital
care Sukara’s insurance cover could pay for, the greater Li’s
chance of survival. Her daughter’s life would only be assured
if she had the requisite funds to pay for her treatment.

Numbed,
Sukara had allowed the clerk to download all the literature into her
handset, and told the woman that she’d contact the health
authorities when she’d discussed things with her husband.

The
first thing she’d done on leaving the specialist’s office
had been to contact Jeff, but she’d been able only to blurt a
few words before breaking down and cutting the connection. Now she
wished she hadn’t bothered him. He was working on a murder
case, and for all she knew he might have been scanning when she
called. She wondered if that might be why he hadn’t called back
yet.

Li
tugged her hand. “Pet shop now?â€

AN IRRESISTIBLE
OFFER

That
morning, Vaughan had a lucid dream. It was a replay of the chase the
day before, and its aftermath. He was sitting in the bar, thinking
he’d shaken the Korth, when Sukara called him with the news
about Li. Then the jade-green alien was standing on the threshold and
this time, with the arbitrary revisionism of dreams, Vaughan watched
as the Korth killed the security woman with a single burst of its
pistol and turned to face him...

He
cried out and sat up in bed, overwhelmed by the fact that had Sukara
not called him last night then the Korth would undoubtedly have
killed him.

He
stared around the luxury hotel room, momentarily confused. The
floor-to-ceiling window looked out over stepped gardens, and beyond
them the vast expanse of the Bay of Bengal shimmered in the early
morning sun.

Sukara
stirred beside him. She rubbed her eyes and smiled, and Vaughan
reached out and cupped her head. Even first thing in the morning,
even with the scar that bisected her face, she was beautiful. They
kissed.

“Jeff,â€

GUT FEAR

Every
month Sukara took the girls to the Extraterrestrial Zoo on Level Two,
watching them as they moved in wonder from one alien habitat to the
next. Usually she was as excited as the girls, but today she was
unable to summon the enthusiasm as the girls shrieked and pointed at
one bizarre creature after another. She thought of Jeff, somewhere
above her at the spaceport, meeting with the big-shot billionaire
voidline owner. No doubt the tycoon could help them out financially,
but what might the man want from Jeff that he was willing to pay to
save the life of a girl he had never met?

The
reappearance of Dr Rao after so many years had brought back a slew of
painful memories. Six years ago Sukara had arrived on the Station
looking for her sister, Tiger, who had left Thailand hoping to make a
new life for herself. Instead she had fallen into the clutches of Dr
Rao, who had amputated her left leg and sent her onto the streets to
beg for a living. Rao lived with 200 kids on a crashed starship
welded into position between Levels Twelve and Thirteen, and he liked
to think of himself as an altruist, the benefactor without whom the
streets kids would be subject to the jungle laws of the streets.
Sukara still didn’t know what to think of Dr Rao, even though
Jeff bore the man a grudging respect. What Rao did might seem evil to
some, but as Jeff had more than once pointed out Rao was the last
chance many of these kids had, even if he profited by their
servitude.

Her
memories of six years ago were painful. Tiger had died of a drug
overdose a week before Sukara reached the Station - but through Dr
Rao she had met Jeff, and the meeting had changed her life.

If
only Tiger could have lived to meet Li and Pham, she thought; if only
they could have lived together on the Station like one big, happy
family.

She
wondered how Jeff was getting on with Chandrasakar. She trusted her
husband’s instincts. Being a telepath made him - even when he
wasn’t able to read someone - an astute judge of character; he
was able to pick up on subliminal traits in someone’s gestures
and mannerisms, almost unconscious signals, which told him whether a
person was to be trusted or not. She was sure that the billionaire
wouldn’t be able to put anything over on him.

She
watched Li, jumping up and down in front of the glass enclosure which
housed a Lyran octopoid, a hairy creature which looked like a cross
between a spider and a squid.

Absently,
Sukara read the caption on the enclosure while the girl listened,
rapt.

As
they walked to the next habitat, Pham said seriously, “When I’m
older I want to travel to other planets and see all kinds of animals,
just like Dad has.â€

A GOOD MAN

Parveen
Das leaned to starboard in the cushioned seat as the flier banked on
its approach run to Bengal Station. This was the first time she’d
ever set eyes on the marvel of twenty-second-century design and
technology, a foursquare, twenty-level hive that was home to over
thirty million citizens. It was the size of ten cities, or even a
medium-sized country, a military-industrial power in its own right
and independent of Indian political influence and that of the China,
Europe, and the Federated Northern States of America. Despite all it
represented, Parveen could not deny that something about it - its
sheer size for one thing, the teeming vitality of the place -
inspired awe.

The
flier levelled out and flew low over the Station’s north-west
sector, and what before had been nothing more than a colourful
circuit-board seen from afar now resolved itself into a vast expanse
of streets and avenues, buildings and parks; even from this height
she could see that the place was packed with humanity; pedestrians
filled many of the streets and fliers criss-crossed the sky,
travelling along a complex skein of colour-coded air corridors.

Below,
the spaceport came into view. This took up a good eighth of the
Station’s top level, a rectangle marked with docking rigs and a
hundred starships at rest, and dozens more phasing in or out.
Vehicles beetled their way between the behemoths and port personnel
scurried like ants between the ships and terminal buildings.

Chandrasakar’s
new voidliner stood beside the perimeter rail overlooking the ocean.
It dwarfed those ships nearby, a sturdily massive ship like a
towerpile on its side. It was painted in the racing-green livery of
the Chandrasakar Organisation, and bore an entwined CO in gold within
a ring of stars.

The
symbol gave Parveen a kick in the stomach at the thought that very
soon she would be in Rab’s arms.

The
flier landed and she climbed out. Efficient as ever, Zonia,
Chandrasakar’s PA, was waiting to greet her and lead the way
through the ship.

Ten
minutes later - it took that long to negotiate the corridors,
elevators, and vast chambers of the ship’s capacious interior -
Parveen hurried through the sliding door into Rab’s private
suite.

He
was facing a wall-mounted softscreen, speaking with someone - but he
ended the conversation as soon as he saw her and hurried across the
room, arms outstretched.

“Parveen,
it’s been too long.â€

PHASE OUT

Vaughan
stared down at the Station as the shuttle climbed rapidly. He located
Himachal Park and the tiny speck of the café where he, Sukara,
and the girls went for coffee. His thoughts turned to Li and the
treatment due to commence in the morning.

He
touched the back of his neck. He’d arrived at the port at nine
that morning and Chandrasakar’s crimson-uniformed PA had
introduced him to a Dr Pavelescu. The medic had examined Vaughan’s
occipital system, then inserted the necropath program - a simple
data-pin - into his handset and instructed him in its use. All told,
the procedure took fifteen minutes; the program would run parallel
with his current tele-ability, so that his regular telepathic
awareness would not be compromised. The pin would be ejected once
Vaughan had read the dead engineer.