by Eric Brown
“But I almost got away! I ran across the Pindi Bridge, but he chased me and kicked me. I fell off the bridge, breaking my legs. Even then, Pham, I tried to get away.”
Pham reached out and squeezed his hand, tears dribbling down her cheeks.
“The killer, he jumped down and kicked me, then searched for the mind-shield and threw it away. He was evil. He said he was going to kill you.”
Pham just shook her head, fear like a fist gripping her heart.
“Then he read everything, Pham. He read what we did that night in Kandalay amusement park, what we saw, where you were planning to spend the night.”
Pham nodded. “He nearly found me in Ketsuwan Park. I ran before he could shoot!”
“He saw you, and didn’t shoot?”
Pham nodded. “Ah-cha. He ran after me, called my name.”
Abdul frowned, then winced as the gesture pained him. “But he told me he was going to kill you... Why did he call your name, when he could’ve simply lasered you dead?” He thought about it. “What did this guy look like?”
Pham considered. “Tall, dark haired. He needed a shave. He was wearing a leather jacket.”
Abdul was smiling. “That wasn’t the killer,” he said. “That was Vaughan, the detective. Dr Rao said he’s a good man. He’s trying to find the killer, so he needs to question you. He was at Nazruddin’s a couple of days ago, with Dr Rao. Vaughan questioned me, asked all about you.” Abdul squeezed her fingers. “But you’re in danger, Pham. What if the killer is watching the hospital?”
Pham felt a cold hand grip her spine. She shook her head, wordlessly. “Okay, I should go.”
“Don’t go back to Ketsuwan Park!” Abdul warned. “Keep away from Chandi Road and everywhere else you’ve been lately!”
Pham smiled. “Do I look like a complete idiot? I haven’t been back to Ketsuwan Park since Vaughan saw me.”
They sat in silence for a time. Abdul smiled bravely, and indicated the machines on his legs. “Expensive healers,” he said proudly. “Dr Rao is paying for it all. He is a good man, Dr Rao.”
Pham thought about the last time she had seen Abdul, on the spaceship with Dr Rao. She said, “I’m sorry I ran away the other day. I didn’t want to stay on the ship. Something about it, about Dr Rao...”
Abdul reached up and touched her cheek with gentle fingers. “It’s okay, I understand.”
In a tiny voice, she asked, “Abdul, how did you lose your arm? Tell me, honestly?”
He smiled, and said, “Dr Rao removed it so that I could make a living, begging on the streets. Don’t hate Dr Rao, Pham. I agreed to the operation. I wanted it to happen.”
Pham nodded silently, too overwhelmed by the course of events to criticise an action she had no way of comprehending.
Abdul said, “You aren’t safe here, Pham. You should go.”
“I’ll see you again.”
“Don’t come back here. I’ll find you, ah-cha?”
“I’ll be—”
“Shh! Don’t tell me. If the telepath comes back and reads me...”
Pham shook her head. “I am a complete idiot!” A thought occurred to her. “If this Vaughan man is good, and trying to find the killer, I should try to find him and tell him everything I know.” Tell him, she thought, about the voice called Khar in her head.
Abdul nodded. “Perhaps that would be best.”
“But how would I find him?”
Abdul thought about it, then said, “Dr Rao will know where Vaughan lives. I’ll give you Dr Rao’s com number, ah-cha?”
She found a pen and some paper in her backpack and wrote down Dr Rao’s number.
She stood and smiled at Abdul, then leaned forward and kissed his face, attempting to find an area that wasn’t bruised and swollen.
She hurried from the hospital, half expecting the killer to emerge and laser her down. She ran along the street, found a com kiosk and hauled open the door.
She had difficulty reaching the receiver, and then-entering the code, but at last she heard the dial tone purring in the handset.
It seemed an age before an impatient voice snapped, “Yes, who is it? This is my private line and I am a very busy man.”
“Dr Rao, you’ve got to help me. This is Pham. I met you the other day.”
“Pham?” he said, uncertain. Then: “Kali strike me dead! Pham, the epicentre of the typhoon of chaos and destruction!”
“Dr Rao, you must help me. I need to find a man called Vaughan. He is a detective. He is working on the case of the laser killer.”
“Vaughan is attempting to locate you,” Rao said. “Where are you, girl?”
“I’m in the street near the hospital.”
“Where exactly, girl?”
She looked up and down the street, saw a sign, and said, “I am on the corner of Tagore Street—”
“One moment, please. Hold the line and I will attempt to locate Vaughan and tell him where you are.”
“Ah-cha!” Pham said, relief sweeping through her. She fed another ten baht note into the phone-machine and waited what seemed like five minutes while Dr Rao tried to contact the detective.
At last he said, “Pham, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Unfortunately, for some unknown reason I am unable to contact Mr Vaughan.”
“But I need to find him...”
A long silence followed, broken by Dr Rao’s, “Ah-cha. Very well, I will give you his address. When you find Mr Vaughan, tell him that Dr Rao sent you, ah-cha?”
“Ah-cha. I’ll do that.”
“Mr Vaughan has recently moved from Level Ten and now has a big place on Level Two, 12 Nehru Boulevard, Chittapuram. Have you got that?”
“Thank you Dr Rao!” Pham called, and slammed down the receiver.
She left the kiosk and hurried along the street, losing herself in the crowd and heading for the train station on Chandi Road. When she reached the station she took her map-book from her backpack and looked for Nehru Boulevard on Level Two.
A minute later she found it. It was not far from here, a couple of kilometres south of the spaceport. She boarded a southbound train and five minutes later alighted at Jaggernath station, then dropped to Level Two and followed the map towards the exclusive outer edge.
Nehru Boulevard was a wide street with occasional viewscreened recesses, which overlooked the ocean. Between these viewing points were luxury apartments. Pham found number ten and stood across the boulevard, nervous now that the time had come to approach the detective.
“Khar,” she said under her breath, “am I doing the right thing?”
Seconds later, the voice in her head responded. There are certain dangers inherent in approaching Vaughan, especially if the killer is aware that Vaughan is working on the case.
“So you think—”
However, it is also true that Vaughan might be of use to us.
Pham nodded. That was that, then.
She was about to cross to the double doors of number twelve when a small Thai woman approached the doors, loaded with shopping. She was heavily pregnant and beautiful, even though her face was divided in two by a big scar.
Resting the bag of shopping on one knee, the woman fumbled with a key-card and let herself into number ten.
Pham smiled to herself. She liked the look of the woman. Could she be Vaughan’s wife or lover, she wondered.
Feeling oddly confident, Pham crossed the boulevard and knocked on the door.
* * * *
TWENTY
RADICALS
Vaughan woke early on his first full day on Mallory. Intense sunlight filled the room with gold and, outside, burned up last night’s fall of snow.
He breakfasted at the same table he’d occupied the night before, served this time by a middle-aged woman who showed no inclination to chat. Over a bowl of local fruit salad and good coffee, he consulted the map and charted a route to Campbell’s End.
The highway passed ten kilometres from the smal
l township. Two minor roads branched off it and headed for the settlement, one direct and the other taking a circuitous route and coming into the town from the rear. Vaughan recalled that Scheering had told Denning about a shack on the outskirts of the town, being used by the S-L agents. The question was: on which road was the shack situated? Vaughan sipped his coffee and considered his options.
The only other customers were two men in their fifties, who Vaughan had watched draw up in a small truck. Bales of blue grass stacked on the flatbed suggested they were farmers.
They sat at the next table over steaming mugs of coffee and cooked breakfasts, and when they nodded good-morning Vaughan returned the pleasantry. “I’m heading for Campbell’s End,” he said. “I was wondering what the roads were like?”
“Campbell’s End?” one of the farmers said around a mouthful of egg. “Why the interest, all of a sudden?”
Vaughan assumed ignorance. “Interest?”
“Campbell’s been deserted ever since the drought, twenty years back. It’s a ghost town—or was. Then a month back a couple move in, fix a house up on the main street. Last week two guys move into a shack out of town a-ways.” He shrugged. “Place is awful pretty in summer, but come winter...” He smiled at his partner, who laughed.
Vaughan nodded. “I’m just passing through, on my way to do a little hiking in the mountains.” He hesitated. “I was thinking of stopping in Campbell’s for a night. I don’t suppose one of the couples would put me up?”
The farmer shrugged. “That’d be for them to say. We Mallorians are a pretty hospitable people, so you might be in luck.”
Vaughan leaned towards the farmers’ table, indicating the map on his handset. “The shack on the outskirts, do you know which road it’s on?”
The farmer looked at the screen, then jabbed a weathered forefinger at the lower road. “This one. Around here, about a kay out of town. The roads should be fine at this time of year.”
“And roadblocks?” he asked, confident now he knew where the S-L agents were holed-up.
The farmer shook his head. “The military finished what they were doing last night.”
Curious, Vaughan considered his next question. “What were they doing?” he asked with all the innocence of a wide-eyed off-worlder.
This time the second farmer replied. “The annual cull,” he said, casting a glance at his partner.
Vaughan sensed an uneasiness about the pair. “The cull?”
“The military are taking out a few tuskers,” the second man said, and fell to finishing his breakfast.
Vaughan nodded his thanks and returned to his coffee. The tuskers...? He wondered if they could be the gentle pachyderms he’d encountered on his way here.
He set off south again immediately after breakfast, the side-screen of his Bison wound down to combat the increasing heat of the day.
He turned on to the highway and headed towards the silver mountains, rising ahead of him like a thicket of scimitar blades. The highway bypassed Campbell’s End and cut through the mountains a hundred kilometres south.
An hour after setting off, Vaughan came to the first of two turnings to the settlement. The first looped around the town, while the second, five kilometres further south, headed directly into Campbell’s End.
The S-L agents occupied a shack on the second road, a kilometre out of town.
Vaughan turned left along the first turning, leaving the metalled highway and bucking over another neglected track, climbing through a spectacular landscape of undulating hills, the blue grass catching the light of the sun like a billion blades.
To his right was a broad valley, with the highway he had left bisecting it as straight as a laser. He made out the direct track, which left the highway and meandered towards the town. Ahead, the hills crumpled before the massifs and Vaughan saw, nestling picturesquely on ridges high above the valley, a series of tiny, white-painted dwellings. He slowed the Bison and looked back along the direct track: there, perhaps a kilometre out of town, were three or four tumbledown buildings.
He accelerated, considering the best course of action. The obvious thing would be to locate the so-called radicals and warn them of the danger they faced, without alerting the surveillance team to the fact. He would leave the Bison on this side of town and make his way in on foot. He was beginning to wish that Kapinsky had come up with some way of smuggling a weapon onto the planet, but they had decided it would be safer not to attempt the subterfuge.
Vaughan hauled the Bison over a rutted crest of track, rounded a outcropping of grey rock, and braked suddenly. He sat at the wheel, staring through the windshield with a mixture of shock and revulsion.
Slowly, he eased open the door and climbed down. He stepped off the track, onto the sward of blue grass, which shelved steeply towards the broad valley.
He was not mistaken—the shapes dotting the valley were not boulders, but beasts identical to those he had encountered the previous evening. The tuskers, as the farmers had called them.
There were nine of the creatures, a couple of families, perhaps. He counted four full-sized animals, as big as the leader of the herd he had encountered, and five smaller creatures, including two no larger than small ponies.
He stood before the slaughtered beasts and was overcome by a wave of anger.
They had been lasered through the head, though two tuskers had obviously survived the first strike, as they bore macabre lacerations to their necks and bodies.
They had died where they fell, crumpled with legs splayed or bent beneath their bodies, as undignified in death as they had been full of dignity and ponderous grace in life.
Vaughan examined the wounds. He was no expert, but he guessed that the slaughter had occurred a matter of hours ago, perhaps last night as he’d followed the other herd through the cutting in the rocks.
The culling of various types of animals on settled worlds was not proscribed—some beasts were considered vermin, or a danger to settlers—but Vaughan could see no way that the tuskers might fit into either category.
As he walked away from the scene of carnage, he began to wonder if this had something to do with the deaths of Kormier, Travers, and Mulraney, and perhaps why members of Eco-Col were being targeted by Denning’s team.
But surely the culling of the tuskers was being carried out legally, with the permission of and supervision by the colonial council? Why, otherwise, would Scheering risk the illegal slaughter of innocent creatures?
Troubled, and wondering where the killings might fit into his investigations to date, Vaughan gunned the Bison’s engine and accelerated towards the distant township.
* * * *
He braked on a ridge a few hundred metres above the scattered buildings of Campbell’s End, climbed down and stared out across the ghost-town.
The fifty-odd buildings were in a state of disrepair, ravaged by both the forces of summer and winter: paintwork seared by the sun, the wood beneath warped by rain and frost.
More importantly, there was no sign of life. He activated his implant and scanned, but sensed nothing. He looked for the radicals’ vehicle—assuming they had one, which was likely—but in vain. When he walked into the village, he would check the garages and other places of possible concealment. None of the dwellings looked lived in, and many of them appeared uninhabitable. If the radicals knew of the likelihood that they would be either watched or followed, then they would have selected the least likely building in which to conceal themselves. Which begged the question, what were they doing up here anyway?
Perhaps, he thought as he returned to the Bison and backed it behind a concealing outcropping, they were here to monitor the cull.
He left the vehicle and made his way down the incline and into the township.
An eerie silence hung about the place, though he realised that the town was no more silent than any of the other places where he had stopped on his way south. It was the presence of buildings and the absence of people—of the everyday commerce of such communi
ties, the noise of cars and music and conversation—that seemed so unnatural, lending the settlement the melancholy atmosphere of somewhere evacuated in haste, the focus of some tragic happening.
There were fewer than fifty buildings strung out along the main street, and Vaughan entered them one by one and scanned for telltale signs of recent habitation.
All the houses were empty, rotting inside and taken over by animals, the Mallorian equivalent of rats and mice and larger rodents.
He trod carefully over the planks of dilapidated verandas, pushing open screen-doors to reveal front rooms and kitchens devoid of human life. There was something mausoleum-like about many of the houses, with items of furniture, pictures and personal possessions stillin situ.