Necropath [Bengal Station 01]

by Eric Brown

  * * * *

  Necropath

  [Bengal Station 01]

  By Eric Brown

  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

  * * * *

  ONE

  SINS AND EVILS

  Vaughan was in scan-mode when the kid found him.

  He leaned against the enclosure rail and stared down at the Bay of Bengal a kilometre below. A dhow cut a shark’s-fin shape through the darkness, its triangular sail illuminated by the watch-light burning on the deck. The crew, three fishermen from the slums of the lowest level, appeared silhouetted behind the canvas like figures in an Indonesian shadow play. Vaughan sensed their minds, a tangle of thoughts and memories that impinged upon his consciousness in waves of words and images, too weak and impressionistic at this distance to cause him distress.

  As the dhow passed from sight beneath the fa ç ade of the Station, to dock at the burning ghats far below, Vaughan looked towards the horizon. To the west, over India, constellations rose in the indigo expanse of the hot night sky. Many of the stars harboured inhabited worlds, planets settled from Earth or occupied by sentient alien species— but they appeared tonight as they had for aeons: bright points of light scintillating in the interstellar darkness. As hard as it was to envisage life teeming beneath those distant suns, so it was almost impossible to imagine the many voidships vectoring in on Earth from all over the galaxy. The proof of their arrival, if he needed any, was here to see. He turned and narrowed his eyes against the halogen brightness of the spaceport. A dozen ships of all sizes occupied the docking berths across the five square kilometres of the ‘port, and many more were garaged—in storage or undergoing repairs—on the deck below. On the other side of the ‘port, arrivals and departures came and went with muffled thunder and strobing flight lights, moving like burdened behemoths from the Station and out over the bay. There they negotiated the phase shift into the void with the visual equivalent of a stutter and vanished in utter silence as if they had never existed. Watching their departures, he often wondered if he had made the right decision; perhaps he should have run off-world years ago as his head had told him, and not listened to his heart, his instinct, which had counselled him to remain on Earth.

  A hundred metres across the deck, the Pride of Xerxes was secure in its berth, the captive of a hundred magnetic grabs and grapples—a monstrous praying mantis fashioned from grey steel, its company colours excoriated by passage through the void. To complete the image of a captured insect, a dozen engineers swarmed over its carapace like tiny predators.

  Five years ago, when Vaughan arrived at the Station, he’d found something thrilling about these vast interstellar ships. But familiarity had fostered, if not contempt, then certainly apathy. There had been a time when he looked forward to his shift aboard a ship, curious about its make and origins—even curious about the mindset of the disembarking colonists. The repetition of the years, though, the incessant scanning of minds that displayed the same old set of human sins and evils, now made every shift a test of endurance.

  For three hours at the beginning of this stint Vaughan had mingled with the crew in the exit foyer of theXerxes, scanning the minds of the weary travellers for evidence of crime aforethought, the give-away guilt of illegal immigrants. For the most part he had merely skimmed the surfaces of the passing minds, reluctant to delve too deeply into the neuroses, psychoses and other mental aberrations of his fellow man. From time to time, detecting a flash of ill intent, he had probed further—but this shift he had discovered nothing more than the usual array of hatred, anger, and self-loathing.

  When the ship had emptied, he’d taken his team through every deck in search of stowaways, scanning for the telltale cerebral signature of frightened free-riders. As ever he had hurried ahead of his six-man cadre, not wanting to eavesdrop on the thought processes of the men in his command. He’d known these security guards too long, too well, and what passed for intellection within the confines of their skulls—their shallow hopes and desires, their suspicion and even dislike of him—he found almost unbearable. He recalled the words of a fellow psi-positive at the Institute twenty years ago, “Prepare yourself for a lonely life. No one likes a telepath.” Well, he’d not expected much from anyone even then, and his experience after the cut had merely confirmed his assumptions about life, humankind and the universe. Whenever he found himself loathing his current job, he reminded himself that it could be, and had been, much worse.

  The Pride of Xerxes had proved clean, and Vaughan had hurriedly quit the ship and crossed the deck to the rail, to be alone with his own thoughts for a while. With luck, he would have no more ships to board today: if there were any arrivals in his sector, Weiss would hail him on his handset soon enough. Going by the book, Vaughan should seek out Weiss to report on the Xerxes and receive further duty instructions, but Weiss could wait. He’d report in three hours when his shift was almost over.

  He often sought escape in this sector of the ‘port. The perimeter deck was cantilevered way out over the ocean, and so in theory, and often in practice, the most sequestered area of the entire spaceport. Here, the minds of the twenty-five million citizens of the Station were modulated to a manageable, low-level hum. If his personal space was invaded, either by the arrival of a ship or the passing of an engineering team, and he was besieged by the manic static of skull-chatter, he would slip the augmentation-pin from the console at the back of his head. Then, the millions of minds would be modulated to background noise, and those close at hand in the ‘port would be muted, an unreadable fugue of mind-sound he likened to music played far off.

  The city that sprawled across the upper-deck of the Station was invisible behind the halation of lights that bathed the deck in a silver-white glow. Beyond the ‘port, the city was a patchwork of residential apartments, hotels, parks, and gardens, shot through with long roads and pedestrian walkways. Bengal Station was a cultural amalgam of Calcutta and Bangkok: on the upper-deck the latest polycarbon architecture designed in India and Thailand created a state-of-the art skyline, while overhead fliers mach’d along colour-coded air corridors.

  The nineteen levels below were enclosed, each shelf a claustrophobic hive-city of corridors, walkways, and roads between cramped, two-storey structures, inhabited by citizens who never saw the light of day for years on end. Over the years a definite hierarchy had stamped itself on the Station, with the lower, industrial decks inhabited by the poor, while the upper levels were the preserve of the rich and influential. Vaughan supposed that in this it was like most cities, except that here the divisions were emphasised by the literal stratification of society.

  The culture shock that hit all new arrivals was that such disparity could exist in such close proximity; later, after a week or so, amazement turned to indignation that wealth and poverty could commingle without reaction, like oil and water. If the traveller stayed long enough, he found himself accepting the situation with the same resigned apathy as the citizens of the Station. Vaughan had arrived here in ‘35 with no plans to stay above a day or two, but that day or two had stretched to a month, then three months, and he’d found himself adapting to the way of life, by turns appalled and fascinated, accepted by the locals if he in turn was willing to accept. After six months it came to him that the Station was the ideal place to go to earth, and he had found employment, an expensive sea-view apartment on the fourth level, and slipped into a routine of work, sleep, and occasional drunken binges—a present without a discernible future, haunted by the spectres of the past.

  Vaughan watched a cow shamble beneath the great prow of the Pride of Xerxes, something about its nonchalance indicating that it took for granted its sacred place in Hindu theology. As it clopped across the ringing d
eck, its head swinging and jaws chewing in syncopated rhythm, Vaughan was aware of the animal as barely conscious beside the cerebral noise of the two guards pursuing in an armoured car. They drew alongside the animal, and Vaughan read their indignation—they’d been watching a skyball game back at the mess—and at the same time their patient affection for the holy animal.

  Visually, it was a contradiction that seemed to typify the place. The security guards, squat and powerful beneath slabs of body armour, bearing arms enough to wipe out a battalion, looped a nylon leash about the creature’s head, boarded their vehicle and proceeded to lead the cow slowly from the ‘port.

  He was about to make his way over to the terminal building when he heard a roadster approach from behind him. The open-topped vehicle swerved around the bulk of the Xerxes and braked.

  Director Weiss sat at the wheel, staring at Vaughan with an expression that appeared habitually aggressive. He was a big man, his athleticism gone to fat, with a full head of silver-grey hair and great fists bedecked with ostentatious rings like gold nuggets.

  More disturbingly, Weiss was shielded—an odd static existed where his thoughts should have been—and Vaughan could not get over his suspicion that the Director had something to hide. Especially since his ban on boarding the last three ships from Verkerk’s World. Vaughan smiled to himself: he was on to the bastard. Last week he’d contacted an old acquaintance in the Station police force and asked him to run a few checks on the Director.

  “Vaughan.” Weiss’s manner was always brusque to the point of discourtesy. “Everything AOK? Anything to report?”

  “The ship’s clean.” He passed Weiss the screader on which he’d logged his report on the Xerxes.

  “You working tomorrow?”

  “For my sins.”

  Weiss nodded, started his roadster, and drove off.

  Vaughan was about to cross the deck to stores and hand in his pin when he became aware of another mind, close by. He turned and stared at where he thought the mind should be, but the stretch of deck to his left was deserted. Then he had a blast of a kid’s identity, his whereabouts, and the reason for his presence. The sudden flurry of images blazed in his awareness, threatening his own perception of self. Quickly he fumbled at the console at the base of the skull: he felt the thread of the pin unscrewing through bone, and the pain of having such a vibrant mind within his own ceased instantly. He slipped the pin into its case in his inside pocket, then traced the progress of the mind, now modulated to a tolerable hum, on its course beneath the plates of the platform.

  He’d read the kid’s apprehension at trespassing on the precincts of the ‘port—even though he’d tricked the guards with the decoy of the cow—and he’d read something else, too. An image of a mutual friend in distress and the desire to reach him, Vaughan, with the news.

  An inspection cover in the deck hinged open a grudging three centimetres, and a pair of jet black eyes stared out. “Mr. Jeff Vaughan! Please come with me immediately, right now!”

  Vaughan glanced around the ‘port, then knelt and hissed, “What’s wrong with Tiger?”

  “I am telling you that I don’t know. Dr. Rao was telling me to find you immediately.”

  “Is Tiger sick?”

  The boy blinked. “Yes, she is sick. She is wanting to see you immediately.”

  Without augmentation, Vaughan discerned no coherent thoughts in the boy’s mind, just the vague music of emotions.

  “Quickly, Mr. Vaughan!”

  “Stay there. I’ll be back.” He set off at a sprint, crossing the deck to the terminal building, and handed his pin to the bored clerk in stores. He hurried back to where the boy was waiting and, ensuring he was unseen, slipped through the iron cover. He was in the lighted crawlspace between decks, hunkering down before the buck-toothed grin of a stringy Sinhalese boy in a chequered dhoti and a soiled vest.

  “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “No problem. I know all fastest routes around Station. That why Dr. Rao send me.” As he spoke, his head rocked like a metronome and his grin expanded with pride. “Now we go. Follow me.”

  The kid turned and waddled awkwardly along the narrow crawlspace, oiled hair steaming in the heat of the occasional fluorescent. Vaughan followed, having to bend almost double to squeeze his bulk down the corridor. The lights increased the hothouse temperature. He felt rivulets of sweat trickle down his face. “What’s wrong with Tiger?”

  “All I am knowing is Tigerji is sick. Dr. Rao told me she want see you.”

  The kid stopped and hauled open the wire-mesh front of a cage elevator. Above the lift, Vaughan made out the glare of the spaceport lights and the kiosk where the elevator delivered men and supplies to the deck. The stench of liquid manure in the cage indicated that the kid had brought the decoy cow this way. He stepped inside, back muscles protesting as he stood upright. The kid manned the push-button controls, and the lift dropped with a squeal of cable and pulleys.

  They fell through the second deck, a dimly lit chamber occupied by the bulking shapes of quiet spaceships, and continued their descent. The kid concentrated on the controls, paying him no attention. Vaughan knew he would elicit no more information from the boy. He leaned against the mesh wall and closed his eyes.

  He had known Tiger for three years—a skinny, one-legged street kid with a mind as pure and simple as a Thai folk song, a mind that filled him with joy at its innocence, and at the same time swamped him with regret.

  In his mind’s eye Vaughan saw her big eyes laughing at him beneath the high fringe of her jet black bob.

  They dropped into the depths of Bengal Station, falling so fast that the lighted levels flicked by between the dark bars of the decks like the individual frames of old film. Vaughan caught frozen glimpses of frenzied activity on every level. Avenues stretched into the distance, narrowing with the perspective, and even at this midnight hour each channel was thronged with citizens. Noise strobed as they descended, the collective hubbub of a thousand citizens about their business. Along with the noise came the tidal wave of their emotions; unaugmented, he was unable to read individual minds, but he caught impressions, whiffs of subtle emotion, too fleeting to probe. He likened the effect to hearing a myriad individual musical instruments in the distance, each one playing a different tune so that the overall effect was a clashing discord.

  The kid brought the lift to a halt between levels. He opened the cage door and hurried along a flimsy catwalk. Vaughan followed, able to stand upright this time. He could see nothing in the blackness, and judged his distance from the boy by the strength of the kid’s mind emanations. He trailed his hands along the rails to right and left, his boots ringing on the metal walkway. The stench of oil added to the humid atmosphere, a fetid miasma he found difficult to inhale.

  The boy’s diluted emotions grew stronger: he had halted. Vaughan paused behind him. Light spilled from a rectangular aperture in a broad pillar, revealing the boy swinging aside a heavy metal hatch. He climbed down, and Vaughan followed with difficulty. He was inside one of the columns that ran through the Station from top to bottom, anchoring the construction to the seabed. He climbed down a narrow metal ladder welded to the condensation-slick wall, a meagre light every five metres illuminating the way.

  “Hope we don’t get caught,” Vaughan muttered.

  “Maintenance fellows no problem, Mr. Jeff. Dr. Rao pays them and they say nothing. Everything okay.”

  Vaughan descended until the muscles of his arms and legs tightened in pain. He stopped from time to time and stretched, then began the monotonous, measured routine again. Rather than stare at the scrolling rungs that demarcated the passing of endless seconds, and the occasional welding scars that provided visual relief, he closed his eyes.

  He recalled the first time he had met Tiger. Five years ago, when he’d started regularly dropping, into Nazruddin’s bar and restaurant on the upper-deck, she was just one of the many street kids who sheltered from the monsoon downpour beneath the red and whi
te striped Mylar awning. Their outstretched, importuning palms were at once a nuisance and a nagging reminder of his privilege.

  That night a piping voice offered him chora, and a young girl came close enough for him to catch the melody of her innocent mind. He was hit by a wave of familiarity, quickly followed by pain. Her cerebral signature reminded him of Holly’s—and he was taken back years, to a time he would rather have forgotten.

  He’d turned on the threshold of the restaurant and looked down at a girl of perhaps ten. The first thing that struck him was her seamless Thai face beneath the universal bowl haircut; big eyes, snub nose, lips that seemed swollen beyond sensuality to the point of pain. She wore a shrunken T-shirt and soiled shorts.

  Then Vaughan saw the hatchet job some back-street surgeon had made of her amputation. Her right leg terminated above the knee in an ugly, criss-crossed pudding of scar tissue.

  Vaughan had fled into Nazruddin’s, determined to have nothing to do with the girl, afraid of the emotions and memories her mind provoked in him.

  She was there the following night, as if waiting for him. She leaned on a crutch, staring up at him with beseeching eyes. It was almost as if she were the telepath, could see into his mind and read his memories of the past.