by Eric Brown
“Well... it will mean being off-planet for a while. Two weeks.”
“While Li undergoes treatment,” she said in a small voice.
He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”
“So... what’s the catch? And it can’t be just that you’ll be off-planet for a couple of weeks. What’s so special about this mind?”
He hesitated for a second or two, then nodded and said, “It’s dead.”
She stared at him, her stomach turning. “Oh, Jeff! No! No way. You said, after what happened... You said you’d never do it again.”
“That was before Li fell ill,” he said, picking at the label on the beer bottle.
The terrible thing, the treacherous thing, was that she wanted him to take the job. “Tell me about it, Jeff...”
So he told her about a mission that had gone wrong out on the limits of the Expansion, some woman had gone and got herself killed, only she wasn’t properly dead but in cold storage or something, and the rich-ass tycoon wanted Jeff to go in there and read her dying mind when they’d thawed the corpsicle out... and it would be hell, but it would save their daughter’s life.
So how could she not agree to that?
She looked at him. He remained impassive, hard-faced.
“What do you think?” she murmured.
“I’ve got to do it, Su. How could I refuse? Just think, if I passed up the opportunity, and we bankrupted ourselves to buy the best we possibly could... and we knew we could afford a bit more if only we had it... and what if Li - what if she didn’t make it? Christ, how would we feel then?”
She stared at him, tears filling her eyes.
“Chandrasakar will assure that she gets the very best treatment money can buy. We couldn’t do that, even with the insurance policy. We’d get what we could afford, good treatment but not the best. And I’m not willing to take the risk.”
She said, “I want the best for Li, Jeff, but I’m frightened for you.”
“Hey...” He reached out and thumbed tears from her cheeks. “I can handle it. I’ll think of you and Li and Pham, and it’ll be all worthwhile, okay?”
She nodded, staring into her cold coffee. She looked up. “I’ll miss you, Jeff,” she whispered.
He pulled something from his pocket, what looked like a small velvet pen case. He opened it and withdrew two silver pins. He passed one across to her.
“What is it?”
“A com program. We’ll be able to communicate through the void. I’ll be able to tell you what’s happening out there on Delta Cephei VII. You can keep me updated on Li’s progress.”
She held the pin up before her; it scintillated in the sunlight. “I never realised they could do that...”
Jeff smiled. “State of the art, newly released.” He slipped the pins back into the case. “Anyway, I’ll contact Chandrasakar and tell him I’ll do it, okay?”
Mutely, avoiding his eyes, she nodded. “When do you leave, Jeff?”
“Tomorrow, just after midday. A shuttle up to an orbital station, and then aboard a voidship called Kali’s Revenge. I’ll be back in a little under two weeks.”
“God, Jeff, I’ll miss you. I know we’ll be able to talk, but...”
He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. “I’ll soon be home and Li will be as good as new. Then everything will be back to normal again, okay?”
She forced a smile and nodded, and wondered why she had the gut fear that things wouldn’t turn out quite so well.
* * * *
SIX
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.”
They kissed. He took her hand and escorted her into a lounge furnished with sunken sofas and a long bar, overlooking the margin of spaceport and the sea beyond. He poured her a beer and himself a scotch and soda, and they curled in a luxurious sofa and talked.
“You can’t imagine my relief that you’re here, Parveen. I’ve been having nightmares ever since your call.”
She had contacted him that morning about the assassin, and he’d ordered her to take the first available flier to the Station.
“And the assassin?” he asked.
“He’s alive. The police questioned him, but I can’t imagine they’d learn anything more than what I read.”
“And you said he was probably working for the Chinese?”
She shrugged. “That’s what the assassin suspected, anyway.”
“And he was a necropath?”
“The idea was he’d kill me and read what I knew about the Delta Cephei mission.” She took a long swallow of icy beer.
Chandrasakar shook his head, worried. “Needless to say, the mission was supposed to be known only to myself, my security staff, and a few trusted technicians and scientists.”
“One of them,” she said, “is working for... whoever.”
“The list is pretty long,” he said. “Any of my competitors in business, the big Expansion-wide lines; the superpowers, Europe, China, America...” He looked at her. “I wouldn’t rule out India, either.”
She hated the duplicity, but she had to nod at his suggestion.
“Anyway, I have my security chiefs trying to worm out the traitor.”
She looked at him. “And then? What’ll happen to him, or her?”
As far as he knew, she was no more than an eminent professor of xenology, untainted by the tooth-and-claw machinations of the realpolitik arena. She had failed to mention that she’d dealt with the assassin herself, telling him instead that she’d called in the police when neighbours had seen someone entering her apartment, and had removed his shield and read his mind before they’d stretchered him from the apartment.
She wished she could open up to him, tell him t
he truth, but that was an impossibility.
He said, “What happens in that situation, when we find a spy in our midst... and it’s only occurred once in my memory... is we mind-wipe the traitor to erase any knowledge of the Organisation’s secrets and then return him, or her, to our competitor.”
Which was a long-winded lie, she suspected: traitors would be summarily executed. It was exactly what her government would have done, and she couldn’t blame Chandrasakar for protecting his interests.
“If they’re employing necropathic killers to try to learn details about the Delta Cephei mission,” she said, “it suggests that they don’t know that much.”
“And it also suggests,” he said, taking her hand, “that the traitor is not someone I’ve entrusted with priority information, which is a relief.”
He told her about the other telepaths murdered recently.
“Do you think the same people who came after me are responsible for the killings?” she asked.
He nodded. “The three were telepaths I’d targeted as suitable to have accompany me on the mission.”
She stared at him. “Not so much a security leak as a deluge...”
“And don’t I know it, Parveen? Anyway, since then I’ve hired the best telepath on the Station.” He shrugged. “I’d rather not have an outsider along, but he’s good-”
She stroked his cheek. “I could always replace him,” she said. “It’s not too late, Rab.”
He laughed at this, surprising him. “Parveen, I wouldn’t wish his ability on anyone...” And he told her what she’d already learned from the pin Anish Lahore had given her: that the only surviving crew member of the Chandrasakar exploration ship that had landed on Delta Cephei VII earlier this year was a woman who, though technically dead, was in cryogenic suspension awaiting a necropath’s attention.
She asked him about the mission, but he seemed unwilling to tell her much more. “When we’re aboard the Kali,” he said, “and I can be certain of ultimate security.”
“I can always help you with that,” she said.
Chandrasakar laughed. “If you could keep tabs on Vaughan and the scientists... I’d like to think the latter can be trusted, but who knows?”
She nodded. “I’ll do that.”
“Vaughan’s been around. I had my people do the usual checks. He’s a very closed, reserved person. There’s a phrase - a cold fish. Well, Vaughan’s one of those.”
“How did you buy him?”
“I exercised my altruistic nature,” he said. “His youngest daughter is seriously ill, and I arranged for her treatment and care. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“I’m curious to meet this Mr Vaughan.”
“Like I said, if you could keep him under observation... It’s a delicate mission and the last thing I want is a maverick telepath pouring oil on smooth waters.” He laughed and reached out for her. “But all this talk...” he said, slipping a hand through her hair.
She didn’t really know if he was an expert lover, never having had many lovers, but she suspected that he was experienced, and he certainly knew how to make her happy. They made love in the sunken sofa as night fell and the ocean beyond the viewscreen glittered with the light of the full moon.
In his arms, she wondered not for the first time what he saw in her. She was scrawny and flat-chested, her face too round to be classically pretty, her nose too snub. She had considered cosmetic surgery, when she was younger, but when she’d become politicised she’d rejected the idea, dismissing stereotypical images of beauty as a bourgeois materialistic concept.
She had learned to be happy with what she’d got.
Rab certainly enjoyed the sex, but she thought that what really attracted him was the conversation, their political arguments: she suspected that few women in his social circles dared argue the point with him on any subject, and certainly not politics. But that had been how their relationship started, in the ambassador’s mansion, when they’d been introduced and Rab had said, “Ah, yes, I have read one of your papers, if I’m not mistaken. Thought-provoking, if politically naive...”
She had caught the twinkle in his eye, and proceeded to argue her corner.
She’d come to know the tycoon over the following weeks. A lonely man surrounded by yes-men and women who were attracted only to his wealth, his wife had died ten years ago and he’d never remarried. The relationships he’d embarked upon since then, he’d told her, had been abject failures.
Now she lay in his arms, stroking his chest, and he reached out and touched a control unit, indicating the ceiling. “Look.”
She laid her head next to his and together they watched the domed ceiling turn transparent. A thousand scintillating stars flung their light down around them. “And when we’re on Delta Cephei VII, we’ll make love beneath new and unfamiliar constellations...”
She propped herself on an elbow, sliding a leg across his loins. He reached up and slipped a hand around her neck. He frowned.
“Oh, I had an upgrade the other day,” she told him. She indicated her handset. “It’s all in here now. Less noticeable. Some of the people of the colony worlds I work on are a little on the conservative side and mistrust tele-heads, as they call them.”
She’d told him that she was a telepath just before the first time they made love, explaining that although it was impossible for humans to read the thoughts of alien species, in her line of work as a xenologist the ability did help to occasionally gain impressions, however abstract, of a subject race’s mental processes. It was a thin piece of reasoning, she knew, but Chandrasakar seemed to buy it.
Oh, how she hated having to lie, she thought, especially to the man she loved.
They made love again, for the last time on Earth.
* * * *
She woke early the following morning, the intimacy of the night before a warm glow in her mind. Chandrasakar was already up, sitting in his dressing gown and conducting business via a wall-mounted softscreen. He brought her coffee and a croissant when he saw her stirring, and they sat on the bed and ate.
“We’re all set to take the shuttle at ten,” he told her. “I’ve staged a little reception at the spaceport before we go, just to allow people to get to know each other.”
She stroked his hand. “I’ve never made love in the void.”
He laughed. “Then it will be a first for both of us.”
“Rab...” She felt a sudden explosion somewhere within her. “Love you...” she murmured, and she wondered if she had weakened her position by showing her hand.
He smiled, reached out, and touched her cheek.
* * * *
They showered and dressed, Parveen slipping into a racing green Chandrasakar Organisation uniform and checking herself in the mirror. She liked what she saw. The uniform gave her an air of authority that her casual clothes had lacked. They left the ship and took a flier on the short hop across the port to a reception lounge.
Before they stepped from the flier, Parveen asked, “Rab, do... I mean, your team, the scientists and security... do they know about me and you?”
He shook his head, then squeezed her hand. “But they soon will.”
His words, his reassuring smile, worked as an affirmation, and she was walking on air as she left the flier and entered the reception lounge.
There were perhaps fifty people milling about inside. Drone waiters and humans circulated with trays bearing drinks and snacks. People stood in small groups, chatting casually. Most of them wore the Organisation uniform, green denoting Chandrasakar’s scientific staff, blue security, and red the ship’s crew - the various pilots, co-pilots, engineers and catering staff. Parveen noted very little colour mix: each specialism preferring the company of their own.
“Come, I’ll introduce you.”
He led her across to the far side of the lounge where three groups of scientists were talking shop; when Chandrasakar arrived, they turned as one and merged to form a larger group, smiling at the tycoon and conferring the
same, though tempered by curiosity, on Parveen.
Rab introduced her as one of the world’s leading xenologists as they moved around the group. The scientists were unfailingly polite, but behind the amity, the smiles and witticisms, she noted a few raised eyebrows at the pairing of the world’s richest businessman and a scientist from communist India.
She returned their pleasantries; she wanted to access her tele-ability and read what these people were really thinking about her. They would be shielded - being employees of the Chandrasakar Organisation - but she suspected that her viral software would be sufficient to overcome their guards. She decided that there would be plenty of time to probe during the coming days.