by Eric Brown
As if this were not attraction enough, Hendrick thought as he made his way from the Telemass Station and through the crowded carnival streets of the capital city, in two days from now it would be Starship Day.
And that would make his job here all the more difficult.
Still in the shadow of the station, he stopped and took in the view. The city stood at the base of a headland on the island of Nea Cyclades. From the Telemass Station, a wide boulevard extended along the headland for two kilometres. It was not the boulevard, busy with pedal carts and pedestrians, or the surrounding azure ocean that was striking, but what rose from the wide thoroughfare. At intervals of a hundred metres, great arching parabolas swept up into the stratosphere, with a thousand pendant jewels clinging to their inner curves. These were the famous sky hotels of Tourmaline, designed by the planet’s most famous son, the architect Nikos Theopopolous. Each building, though Hendrick found it hard to think of them in such mundane terms, resembled the stem of some spectacular alien plant, and each hanging jewel was a suite of rooms. The edifices, some one hundred on this island alone, swept into the sky for a kilometre or more, their end-points diminishing in perspective to invisibility.
At great expense, thanks to Starship Day, he’d managed to book a room in one of the sky hotels for two nights. It would take that long, he thought, to get his bearings and work out just how he might best go about tracing his wife and daughter.
Tourmaline orbited the star Alpha Reticuli A, along with the smaller star, Alpha Reticuli B. The planet was trapped between the two, and so enjoyed constant daylight. Now, the fiery yellow ball of the larger sun was rising over the sea in the east, and to the west the small orange ball of the minor sun was setting behind the towering Telemass Station.
He paused beside a café and consulted his wrist-com. The hotel was situated half a kay from the station. He was almost halfway there, but as the day was hot and he suspected that he was being followed, he decided to stop at the café and enjoy a beer.
He sat beneath a blue and white striped parasol overlooking the sidewalk, ordered a beer, and scanned the pedestrians. He’d materialised on the deck of the station over an hour ago, feeling nauseous. He’d rested in a medi-bay and accepted a glass of nutrient fluid from a medic, and had been about to go on his way when he’d noticed a small, thickset young man staring at him from an observation gallery. As soon as the man saw Hendrick looking at him, he’d slipped from the rail and lost himself in the crowd. Hendrick thought no more about him until, on leaving the station, he’d glimpsed the man following him at a distance. His pursuer, built like a pugilist from a high-gravity planet, was obviously a novice in the art of trailing a subject.
Now Hendrick sipped his beer and watched as the man paused across the boulevard and feigned interest in a kiosk selling news-zips from around the Expansion. The man was obviously an off-worlder, and Hendrick suspected that he was in the pay of his ex-wife, Maatje. At least, he hoped so; with luck, his inept tail might provide him with some clue as to Maatje’s whereabouts.
The man looked up from his wrist-com, which he’d just loaded with a news-zip, and stared across at Hendrick. His gaze was open, calculating—and Hendrick wondered whether the man was indeed working for Maatje. Hendrick sat up, alert now, as the young man came to a decision and crossed the boulevard to where he was sitting.
He was shorter than Hendrick had first thought, perhaps just a metre and a half tall, but broad and muscle-bound. He could have hailed from any one of a dozen high-gravity worlds, though his sun-excoriated skin and facial scarification suggested he was a citizen of one of the three planets orbiting Mintaka.
More interestingly, his left temple bore a singular tattoo.
“I will join you, if I may, Mr Hendrick?”
Hendrick tried to maintain some measure of calm. He sipped his drink and stared at the man, feeling an instant revulsion.
“What do you want?”
The man sat down and ordered a beer. He stared at Hendrick, and something about the intensity of the man’s gaze made Hendrick feel exposed, even violated.
“I’m here for Starship Day, like many others of my kind.” The man spoke English with a precise intonation suggesting it was not his mother tongue. He gestured around him. “If you look closely, you will see others like me.”
Hendrick kept his gaze on the man’s broad brown face; there was an arrogance to his expression, a sense of superiority that irritated Hendrick. “I meant, what do you want? Why have you followed me?”
“I know what you meant, of course.”
Hendrick stared at the tattoo—the connected-minds symbol of a telepath—on the man’s left temple: )-( He wondered what it must be like to be privy to the thoughts of one’s fellow men.
“Then if you would kindly explain yourself . . .”
The man leaned back and sipped his beer, watching Hendrick. A dozen speculations raced through Hendrick’s mind, and it was galling to know that the young man opposite him was aware of every one of them.
He spoke, and what he said surprised Hendrick. “My wife left me five years ago, Mr Hendrick, so I can appreciate the pain I read in your mind. I, too, had a child, though in my case a son. The bitch took him. I’ve never seen him since. Your pain is my pain.”
Hendrick’s initial response, to ask again just what the hell the telepath wanted from him, was tempered slightly.
He’d only ever met a telepath once before, a cop seconded to the Homicide division of the Amsterdam police force. He’d been a nervous wreck, addicted to a cocktail of designer drugs to make his life bearable; his manner had been nervous, fidgety, his facial expressions twitchy as he read the thoughts of those in close proximity. By contrast, the young man opposite was relaxed, his expression neutral.
“What do you want, Mr . . . ?” Hendrick said.
“Vizzek,” the telepath said, “Karol Vizzek.” He shrugged. “I came to Tourmaline yesterday for the same reason that most people have come here. In my case, I am not a tourist, come to gawp at the arrival of the starship. I came here to work. My kind will be in demand when the ship finally lands.” He held up a hand to forestall Hendrick’s impatience. “But the reason I apprehended you, after I read you back at the station . . .” He paused, sipped his beer, and went on, “Being a telepath, Mr Hendrick, opens one to the tragedy of the human condition. You have no conception what it’s like to read the pain, the mental anguish, of those around you. From time to time you read in the mind of an individual a pain that . . . that resonates, you might say, with your own. In your case, your despair at what happened to your daughter, and subsequent events.” He paused. “I simply want to help you, Matt.”
Hendrick nodded, not wanting to feel the rush of hope that he knew the telepath would be picking up. “Very well . . . but how can you help me find my daughter?”
Vizzek leaned forward. “When I arrived on Tourmaline, quite by chance I scanned the mind of a tall, good-looking woman in her forties. She was accompanied by a man in his fifties, a doctor called Hovarth. They were travelling with a suspension pod containing your dead daughter.”
Hendrick’s heart skipped a beat. “And where are they now?”
Vizzek held up a hand. “I read from Maatje that she intended to remain on Tourmaline less than a day, before taking an onward transmission.”
Hendrick felt a stab of despair.
Vizzek went on, “I thought little of it at the time. You would be amazed at what I read in the minds of my fellow man, and must dismiss. Then, however, when I read your mind, I made the immediate connection, and my . . . my sympathy was invoked.”
“Why are you telling me this,” Hendrick asked, “other than from a sense of sympathy?”
“That’s not my only motive,” the young man said. “I will admit that I have . . . I could say an ulterior motive.”
“Which is?”
“I’m not an A-Grade telepath. I had the cut when I was twenty, six years ago, and it wasn’t wholly successful. As a result, I�
��m third grade. I can’t work for the various authorities who employ only the best, so I freelance.”
Hendrick sipped his beer. “You want paying for the information, right?”
Vizzek shrugged. “A certain remuneration would help, I don’t deny that.”
“How much?”
“For five hundred credits I’ll tell you the name of the planet where your wife went with her daughter and Hovarth. More, I can name the town she was heading for, and the person she was due to meet there.”
“Who was she due to meet?” Hendrick leaned forward.
The telepath smiled. “So you agree to my request?”
Hendrick tapped the console of his wrist-com, ready to transfer the scrip to Vizzek’s account.
The young man held up a hand. “There’s no hurry, Matt. First, you go to the station and verify that your wife left here yesterday.”
“They’re unlikely to release that information—” Hendrick began.
The telepath smiled. “If you speak to a clerk named Tania Grammakis, and offer her fifty units . . .”
“How do you know this?”
Vizzek tapped his head. “How do you think? I read her as I passed through, read that she regularly supplements her income with the release of supposed classified information.”
“Very well,” Hendrick said. “And where did Maatje Telemass to?”
Vizzek said, “The world of Crammond, Groombridge IX.”
Hendrick sat back in his seat, heartened by the turn of events. “And who was she due to meet?”
The telepath drained his beer. “A specialist in xeno-pathology. He is a colleague of Dr Hovarth, your ex-wife’s lover, and he believes that he might be able to . . . to help your daughter. Bring her back from the dead.”
Hendrick’s heart thudded. “Who is this man?”
“I’m sorry. That’s all I know.”
“Help my daughter . . . ?” He felt lightheaded. “Do you know exactly how he—?”
“As I said. I’m sorry. I read your ex-wife only briefly.”
Hendrick nodded. “Okay.” Again he made to access his wrist-com in order to pay the telepath, but the young man restrained him. “As I said, pay me when you’ve verified that your ex-wife has left Tourmaline. I won’t be going anywhere fast.” He ordered another beer.
Hendrick nodded, shouldered his pack, and hurried from the bar. He made his way back to the Telemass Station, wondering at his ex-wife’s duplicity and the possibility, however remote, that she and her lover might have discovered a cure for his daughter’s condition.
TWO
HE LOCATED TANIA GRAMMAKIS BEHIND A DESK IN the administration chamber of the Telemass Station. There were three other tourists in the queue before Hendrick, enquiring about transmissions back to Earth following Starship Day.
When his turn came to approach the desk, Tania Grammakis smiled and asked, “And how can I be of service, sir?”
“I’m trying to find out whether friends of mine have left Tourmaline for Crammond yesterday.”
Still smiling, Grammakis said, “Ah . . . there are certain procedures we need to follow before I can disclose such information.”
She dragged a com through the air before them and tapped the screen. “There is a fee to be paid, sir, that will ensure the release of the relevant information. If you would authorise the transfer of fifty units to this code . . .” She relayed the code—no doubt that of her bank account.
Hendrick tapped his wrist-com and uploaded the bribe from his account.
“Now . . . the names of your friends, sir?”
He gave her the name of his ex-wife and her lover, and Grammakis tapped the screen hovering in the air before her.
“Maatje Hendrick and Emanuel Hovarth departed Tourmaline yesterday on the noon transmission to Crammond, Groombridge IX,” she said. “Is there anything else I might assist you with?”
“Yes, I’d like to book my passage on the next transmission to Crammond.”
Grammakis pointed across the chamber. “If you’d care to cross to the bookings counter . . .”
“How soon is the next transmission to Crammond?”
She consulted her screen. “The next direct transmission is in thirty-six hours, sir.”
Hendrick thanked her and crossed the chamber to the bookings desk.
Ten minutes later he’d booked his place on the next transmission to Crammond and made his way back to the bar. All that remained now was to pay Karol Vizzek for his help and kick his heels on Tourmaline for the next thirty-six hours.
The telepath was sitting where he’d left him, a fresh glass of beer at his elbow. “All done?” he said as Hendrick seated himself across the table and ordered a beer from a passing waiter.
“I leave for Crammond in thirty-six hours. I owe you five hundred.”
The telepath waved. “Later. First . . .” He hesitated, then went on, “Look, I have a proposition to put to you.”
“Go on.”
“You’re chasing your wife, her lover, and your dead daughter across the Expansion, from planet to planet, in the hope of one day tracking them down.”
“And?” Hendrick wished Vizzek wouldn’t look so damned smug, then felt embarrassed that the telepath would be reading his resentment.
“And, I hope you don’t mind me saying this . . . but even though you’re an ex-cop, you’re not making much progress.”
Hendrick shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not doing that bad. Always one step behind, but . . .”
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you need help.”
Hendrick stared at the young man over the rim of his glass.
“Like I said, I’m not an A-Grader. But I’m not bad, and I need the work. I came here on the off chance, it being Starship Day soon, but . . . Look, how about I accompany you to Crammond and help you locate your ex-wife and daughter? I’ll charge three hundred a day, and one thousand once you have your daughter back—all payable on a successful resolution of the affair.”
Hendrick regarded his beer and was about to comment when the telepath raised his hand and said, “Don’t say it. You’re uncomfortable at the thought of me dogging your footsteps, reading your every thought.”
Hendrick smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t quite put it like that . . .”
“There is something I could do to put you at ease.” Vizzek reached up into his thatch of dark curls, pulled a silver loop from his head, and yanked a jack from his skull. “There, my ability is effectively neutralised.”
He laid the silver loop on the table between them. “It’s called a ferronière.” He leaned forward, parting his curls, and Hendrick made out a silver port embedded in the young man’s scalp. “A ferronière is an amplification device. It boosts a subject’s thoughts, allowing my ability to pick them up with greater clarity.”
“So you can still read me?” Hendrick asked.
Vizzek shook his head. “Not your thoughts, as I could read them earlier. All I’m detecting now is a fuzzy rendition of your emotions. Your memories, your thoughts, are indecipherable.”
Hendrick contemplated the telepath’s offer. “So, three hundred a day and a thousand if I get my daughter back? That could amount to a tidy sum.”
Vizzek shrugged. “I won’t start charging until we set foot on Crammond. I reckon we’ll be able to trace your ex-wife in a day or two. What’s that, less than a couple of grand? I’ll tell you what, if the chase goes on for any longer, I’ll ask no more than three thousand.”
Hendrick had nothing to lose, after all, except a few hundred units.
“Very well.” He reached across the table and shook Vizzek’s hand. “It’s a deal. On one consideration—you don’t wear that ferronière until we arrive on Crammond.”
“Frightened of what little secrets I might find out, Matt?”
It was a crass thing for a telepath to say, he thought. He nodded. “Yes, I am. None of us like our private thoughts made public. I suspect you’re the same.”
Vizz
ek smiled. “Of course, that’s why I try to keep out of the way of fellow telepaths. There’s a whole posse of them over at the Paradise Bar”—he pointed across the boulevard—”and I’m avoiding them like the plague.”
Hendrick made out a dozen men and women, sitting and drinking under the ceaseless sun; they looked no different to any of the other tourists on the island. “You don’t have a shield?”
“There isn’t a shield yet invented that would be effective against a really top-grade telepath, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Hendrick finished his drink. “I’m still running on European time, and it’s way past the time I was turning in.”
“When you wake, give me a call. We could have a meal, a drink, and see the sights.”
Hendrick nodded. “I’ll do that.”
He copied Vizzek’s com-code to his wrist-com, picked up his pack, and strode from the bar.
THREE
HENDRICK WAS TOO TIRED TO FULLY APPRECIATE THE SPLENDOUR of his hotel room when he turned in but, nine hours later after a sound sleep, he awoke refreshed, lay in the oval bed and stared through the diaphanous wall at the gut-churning view.
He rolled out of bed, crossed to the concave window wall and laughed aloud at the audacity of the architect. The walls of his suite had been a neutral shade of magnolia when he’d arrived, but somehow—perhaps attuned to the waves of his sleeping brain—had become transparent when he awoke.
His suite was one of a hundred that hung beneath the curving scimitar sweep of the edifice’s main column. The neighbouring pendant suite was perhaps fifty metres away, and he could just make out the tiny shapes of a man and woman within, making love. It was not so much the other rooms, hanging like diadem fruit, that were so spectacular but the curve of the column as it arched high into the stratosphere in one direction and, in the other, swooped towards terra firma. He calculated he was perhaps half a kilometre from the ground. From this elevation he could make out the curvature of the oceanic hemisphere to east and west, and the scatter of tiny archipelagic islands strung out across the scintillating blue waters like a thousand brilliant emeralds.