Xenopath - [Bengal Station 02]

by Eric Brown

  And without waiting for his response, she signed off.

  After breakfast, which he finished in silence, he hugged Sukara to him and set off for the park, managing to hide his apprehension for as long as it took him to quit the apartment.

  He hurried through the crowded corridors, then took an upchute to Level One, arriving at the park fifteen minutes later.

  Kapinsky was waiting for him in the passenger seat of an over-engineered Russian air-taxi. She signalled him and he slipped into the rear of the vehicle as it lunged into the air with a whine of labouring turbos.

  She passed him a holstered weapon. “Keep this on you. You don’t know when you might need it.”

  He took the pistol and strapped the holster under his jacket.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, as the taxi inserted itself into the flow of air traffic following colour-coded lanes high above the Station.

  “Big commission,” she said over her shoulder. “Biggest I’ve handled to date. Homicide is stretched as it is, and then this comes in. Guy got himself sliced up in the derelict amusement park in Kandalay. The commissioner got a Scene of Crime team in before realising they didn’t have enough detectives for the follow-up investigation.” She grunted. “Lucky us. It means all the groundwork will’ve been done by the time we get there. We just take the SoC’s collated information and do the footwork.”

  “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 xenozoologist.”

  “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.

  * * * *

  FOUR

  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.

  “I 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 forever, 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 oh 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.

  She turned to Abdul. “You were telling the truth,” she whispered in amazement.

  Down below, fixed into place amid a great web-work of girders, was the silver shape of a starship, like a great teardrop with fins. As her eyes adjusted to the sight, she made out many viewscreens along its length, with people moving about inside.

  All around the chamber, strange plants grew in the artificial light, big flowers and vines hanging from the girders. Abdul explained that when the ship had crashed it had been carrying a cargo of seed from a colony world, which had escaped and grown into this crazy jungle.

  “Welcome to my home,” Abdul said, leading her from the catwalk along a narrow bridge strung from the edge of the chamber to the entry ramp of the spaceship.

  He ran ahead, hardly touching the rail with his one hand. Pham followed, gripping both rails as the bridge swayed from side to side.

  At last they came to the ramp and climbed into the starship.


  He led her through a wide corridor to a place he said was the bridge, or control room, a big room shaped like an amphitheatre surrounded by screens and control panels.

  The first thing she noticed was that it was full of children. There were hundreds of them, of all shapes and sizes, Indians and Thais and Burmese and Chinese, and even a few white kids in among. They were sitting around, eating or playing or just chatting.