by Eric Brown
Chandrasakar introduced her to a loud, rangy Australian with a mop of red hair, David McIntosh, and a diminutive Japanese woman who could have passed as a twelve-year-old schoolgirl, Kiki Namura. Her interest piqued, Parveen fell into conversation with the pair. They were, if her controller Anish Lahore was correct, FNSA plants. She would probe them later, to see what their friendly, open personas were concealing.
She talked to them about their specialisms - McIntosh was a geologist, Namura a biologist - and guessed that they were more than just friends; something about their body language, the mirror gestures and the looks they gave each other when the other was talking, suggested recent intimacy. She wondered if she and Rab were so transparent.
“What are you hoping to find on Delta Cephei VII, Dr Das?” Namura asked, with the odd breathless intonation of her race. “According to the reports, the planet is uninhabited.”
She nodded. “I’m along for the ride,” she said. “More as an... observer, let’s say. And you never know-” she twinkled a smile at the minuscule Japanese woman, “we might come across some little green men.”
McIntosh boomed a laugh and raised his beer at her.
Chandrasakar took her elbow and moved her on.
A group of a dozen blue-uniformed men and women moved to accommodate her and Rab into their midst. They were abstaining from alcohol and sipped juices instead.
Rab singled out a giant Sikh and introduced him. “Anil Singh, my head of security.”
Singh was tall and proportionally broad, with shoulders like yokes and pectorals almost obscenely defined by his shrink-wrapped uniform.
He enclosed her hand in his, and she thought that the slightest pressure would crunch her metacarpal bones. He smiled and inclined his turbaned head, but his brown eyes lacked the slightest civility.
I don’t like this man, she thought; and something told her that the sentiment was mutual. She wondered at his reserve, though it wasn’t that difficult to work out. He suspected her, firstly, for her political affiliations and, secondly, for her intimacy with his boss: Chandrasakar had said on more than one occasion that Singh was his most loyal employee, who’d served the organisation for more than twenty years.
“I trust you won’t have a lot on your hands during this mission, Mr Singh,” she smiled.
He replied coldly, “We must be most vigilant at times when a civilian might think there is no call for vigilance, Miz Das.”
She smiled at him. “That’s Dr Das, Mr Singh. Well, I’m delighted that Rab will be more than adequately protected,” she said, pointedly took her lover’s arm and moved on.
They stood beside the floor-to-ceiling observation screen overlooking the busy port. Chandrasakar said, “Did I miss something there?”
His boyish puzzlement was endearing. She squeezed his arm and whispered, “Singh is suspicious of me, not to say jealous. He doesn’t like the idea of his boss slumming it with an Indian low-life.”
He stared at her. “You read that?”
She laughed. “I don’t need to read him,” she said. “It was obvious from his body language, and the little he did say.”
“I’ll have a word with him, tell him that you’re a great friend and to be trusted.”
“No,” she said quickly, “that would only antagonise him even more. Just let him be.”
He nodded. “If you say so, Parveen.”
He pointed out the shuttle, surrounded by maintenance engineers and techs, and looked at his watch. “We should be boarding in little under thirty minutes. Will you excuse me one moment?”
She smiled as she watched him stride to the centre of the room; eyes followed him and a silence fell.
“Ladies and gentlemen...” he began. “First of all, my sincerest thanks that you consented to join me on this mission. It isn’t every day I fly to the edge of the Expansion to explore a newly discovered planet, and I wanted only the very best scientists, technicians, and back-up staff to accompany me...” A patter of applause greeted his words, which he damped with a raised palm and a smile. “We’ll be taking my best ship, Kali’s Revenge...” He went on, detailing the ship’s attributes for those who might be interested.
Das watched him, noted how he commanded the room with his presence, and not for the first time thanked her lucky stars.
She was still daydreaming when a figure loomed at her side. She turned to see Anil Singh staring down at her.
“Mr Singh...” she said, edging away.
“I just thought I’d tell you,Doctor Das,” he said, with sarcastic emphasis, “that despite the fact that you’ve gained Chandrasakar’s... intimacy, shall we say... neither that nor your eminence cuts it with me. Do I make myself clear?”
She tried to outstare him. “But Mr Singh,” she tried, “I have absolutely no idea-”
He took her elbow in a grip like a robotic claw. “Then I’ll be plain. I don’t trust communists as far as I can piss.” He smiled, sweetly. “And you can tell the boss what I said in exactly those words, if you dare.”
He unhanded her and strode away before she could marshal a reply.
Heart pounding, she turned to the viewscreen and stared out, hating herself for feeling so shaken.
Later, she told herself, she’d probe him. If his shield was cutting-edge, then she’d get round that by employing a virus. She wouldn’t let the fascist prick treat her like shit...
She grabbed a beer from a passing waiter and drank quickly.
Chandrasakar wrapped up his address and rejoined her. “I saw Singh...?” he began.
She smiled easily. “He just came over to apologise for his coolness earlier, Rab.”
He nodded. “Good man,” he said. He indicated the shuttle; a fuel tanker was beetling from its flank. “Ten minutes and we’ll be on our way.”
Parveen looked around the room. She noticed someone standing alone further along the rail; he was staring out at the port, one foot lodged on the lower rail, holding a nearly empty bottle of Blue Mountain beer.
He was tall, dressed casually, with a thin face, close-cropped, receding hair and dark eyes. He was handsome in a paired-down, sinewy kind of way, and noticeable as the only person in the room not wearing a Chandrasakar Organisation uniform.
“Rab,” she said, indicating the loner, “who’s that?”
He looked. “Oh, the telepath. Jeff Vaughan. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
“No,” she said, surprised by her vehemence. The encounter with Singh had troubled her more than she’d first thought. There was something self-contained and coolly calculating about Vaughan. In her experience, male telepaths were arrogant, and she could do without another dose of macho posturing right now.
“No, but I’d like to scan him, if that’s okay?”
Rab smiled. “Be my guest.” He said, watching her with obvious curiosity.
She touched her handset. She was instantly aware of many points of mind-shield static in the room around her. She filtered them out and concentrated on Vaughan.
He was shielded, of course, and with an efficient system. She concentrated, but her probes slid uselessly around the static enclosing his mind.
Rab said, “Well?”
She shook her head. “He has a damned good shield.”
He looked disappointed. “So you can’t...?”
She smiled. “There is always a way, Rab.” She gestured to a waiter bearing a tray of drinks; at the same time she touched her handset. She felt an almost imperceptible tickle travel from her metacarpal hardware to her fingertips.
The waiter stopped before her. She touched the bottle of Blue Mountain beer on the tray, and the tickle ceased. “Would you take the beer across to Mr Vaughan,” she told the waiter, “and say that Mr Chandrasakar sent it?”
The waiter snapped a bow and hurried over to Vaughan.
“What was all that about?” Rab asked, nonplussed.
“A virus,” she explained. “You’d be surprised at the number of aliens who use shields, even though we can’t re
ad their thoughts, as such.”
She glanced at him. He nodded, oblivious of her lie.
Vaughan listened to the waiter, took the beer, and lofted it at Chandrasakar with what looked to Parveen like a sardonic salute.
The telepath tipped the beer into his mouth and resumed his inspection of the tarmac.
Rab murmured, “But won’t his system alert him to the breach?”
“It doesn’t cause catastrophic failure; just enough to let me through.”
She tried another probe, and a minute later she broke through his compromised defences.
She closed her eyes, leaned against the rail, and was swamped by his psyche.
She was rocked by the strength of his personality, by the love he felt for his wife, Sukara, a small, plain Thai woman... except to Vaughan she wasn’t plain at all, but radiant... Parveen accessed his memories, the person he was years ago, before Sukara, and she experienced pain at the despair he’d felt then, his nihilism, as the world he inhabited was a world without hope, and his job as a telepath brought him into contact with the worst that world had to offer... And then, over the course of a few weeks, as Sukara saved his life literally, he got to know her, to love her, and she saved his life again... only this time she’d saved his soul.
And then Parveen read about his sick daughter Li, and the pain he was feeling at having to leave behind Sukara and the girls, and his anxiety, despite all his reassurances to Sukara that everything would be okay... And she read his suspicion of Chandrasakar, and his fear at what lay ahead, at having to read the dead mind of the engineer - and that brought forth another slew of deeper, more unpleasant memories of when he’d read dead and dying minds more than twenty-five years ago for the Toronto Homicide department...
She withdrew quickly, pulled out her probe and shut down the program. She leaned against the rail, breathing hard and sweating.
Rab was all concern. He touched her hand. “Parveen-?”
“I’m fine. It’s... I’m always like this when I’ve read...”
Except, she told herself, she...wasn’t... Some people had the kind of personality that... swept you away; there was no other word for it. She suspected that Vaughan was personable in company, but to be privy to the inner workings of his mind was to be made aware of how good a man he was... and the love he felt for Sukara... Parveen reddened as she realised that she felt - what was it? Jealousy? To be the subject of such committed and constant devotion...
She looked across at Vaughan, and realised that his demeanour of aloof indifference was a charade he’d perfected over the years of practising his trade as an investigative telepath. The psychological truth was far more intriguing than the misleading physical appearance. She looked forward to getting to know the telepath over the course of the next few days.
“Well?” Rab asked.
“Well, I think he’s good at his job, Rab. You’ve picked one of the best. You can trust him.”
“But,” Rab said, “does he trust me?”
She smiled. “Let’s say that he has his suspicions.”
“Anything definite?”
“I’ll be able to get a better idea over the next few days,” she told him.
A port official entered the room and signalled across to Chandrasakar. Minutes later he led the way from the lounge and across the tarmac towards the waiting shuttle. Parveen accompanied him to a private cabin at the front of the craft and strapped herself in for take-off.
Minutes later the main engines fired and she found herself thrust back into the padded seat as the shuttle attained escape velocity. She peered through the viewscreen at the diminishing scale model that was Bengal Station as the shuttle rose towards Chandrasakar Station high above.
* * * *
SEVEN
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.
He was now a necropath, once again. He sat back in his seat and stared through the screen, wondering what the next two weeks might bring.
“Quite a view, isn’t it?”
He turned at the sound of the voice. An Indian woman smiled down at him, outfitted in the bottle-green uniform of a Chandrasakar Organisation scientist. She gestured to the couch opposite. “Would you mind...?”
“No, of course not.”
She folded herself elegantly into the seat and extended a cool hand. “Parveen Das. I’m a xenologist with Kolkata University, seconded to the team for the duration of this mission.”
“Jeff Vaughan,” he supplied. “Telepath. But I’m not reading.”
She smiled. “We’re all shielded, as a matter of course. It’s something that Chandrasakar insists upon.”
He suspected her ancestry was largely Dalit, or one of the other low-castes. She was slightly stooped, her round faced pockmarked, her chest concave: all of which could have been corrected by modern surgical and medical techniques. It was some indication of her personality, and perhaps even her political leanings, that she had elected to remain as nature intended.
Vaughan thought that her various individual physical defects should have made for a less than prepossessing whole, and yet something in her elegant poise, and her cultured accent - precise Indian English - made her oddly attractive.
He said, “A xenologist... Is Chandrasakar expecting to find alien natives?” Or has found them, he wondered. Was this one of the things that the tycoon had failed to mention at their original meeting?
“Chandrasakar likes to cover all eventualities, Mr Vaughan. The chances are that my specialism will be redundant on this trip, but he’s asked me to act as your guide and nursemaid for the duration.”
“In other words you’ve been paid to keep an eye on me, make sure I don’t stray?”
Her brown eyes hardened. “I’m not Chandrasakar’s dogsbody, Mr Vaughan.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be flippant. And call me Jeff, okay?”
Her eyes relented and she smiled.
He looked around the cabin, ensuring that the scientists and techs were out of earshot. “What do you know about the mission?”
She slipped a rubber band from the top pocket of her uniform, gathered her long black hair, and cinched it in a ponytail. “Rab lost a ship on Delta Cephei VII, then sent another ship to investigate. I suspect they found something... interesting. You?”
He considered, then said, “No more than that.”
Das slipped her gaze through the screen and gazed down. Bengal Station had vanished in the cerulean immensity of the ocean. The rucked swathes of India, Burma, and Thailand - all scorched khaki - were stark against the blue sea.
“I’m intrigued.”
She cocked an eye. “Yes?”
“I saw you with Chandrasakar at the reception... I would have thought someone of your background, and a man like Chandrasakar, would mix about as well as oil and water.”
She nodded, tight-lipped. “I can keep what he stands for, and the man himself, in separate compartments.”
He refrained from making a snide comment. Instead he said, “So you agree that he’s just another capitalist who makes millions for his shareholders, and for himself, while he and his fellow capitalists keep millions of people in conditions of slavery?”
She regarded him neutrally. “He would argue that he does what he can for those in his em
ploy.”
He shrugged. “But what do you think, Parveen?”
She smiled, and refused to answer the question. “My politics lean towards an incremental reform of the present global system,” she said, “moving towards old-fashioned late twenty-first-century socialism and arriving eventually at what we have achieved in India. And you?” she went on quickly. “Where do you stand?”
He looked at her, then shook her head. “I have an innate mistrust of any group of more than three people. Who was it who said that power corrupts?”