by Eric Brown
There was a purity there, an innocence and vulnerability that reminded him of Holly, and at the same time a street-wise intelligence and determination that was all her sister, Tiger. To experience that music was at once agony and exquisite pleasure.
She approached him with painful hesitation, knuckles to her mouth in a timid gesture designed to hide the lower half of the horrendous scar that divided her face. She was nowhere near as pretty as her sister, with none of Tiger’s gamin precocity, but Vaughan was aware only of the signature of her mind, the music that gave a more truthful indication of her personality than did her physical appearance.
It seemed to him that he had been taken back years, to the first time he had encountered Tiger outside the restaurant, when he had been struck by the power and purity of her mind.
He found himself smiling at the girl in a genuine bid to put her at ease. She paused before the table, and he could see that her eyes were red from crying.
“You must be Tiger’s sister,” he said.
She nodded. “My name Sukara,” she said in a small voice.
“Why don’t you sit down and we can talk.”
With painful timidity, she slipped into the seat that Rao had vacated, placed her hands on the table, and stared at her entwined fingers.
He ordered a lassi for the girl. When it came, she lifted the glass in both hands, leaving a moustache of white froth on her upper lip. She licked it off self-consciously, darting a glance at him.
In a barely audible whisper, she said, “Yesterday Dr. Rao, he tell me Tiger die. He tell me, you Tiger’s special friend.”
Vaughan found himself reaching across the table, covering her fingers with his hand. He wanted to do with the girl what he had never done with Tiger—use his augmentation-pin and dive into her vital mind, scan her identity, access her memories, and know the girl wholly. He had stopped himself from scanning Tiger for fear of becoming too close to her—and now, for the same reason, he could not bring himself to read Sukara’s mental purity.
Intimacy , he told himself, could only lead to pain.
“I knew Tiger for years, Sukara. I was with her when she died.”
“She happy? She had good life?”
Vaughan smiled at Sukara in reassurance. “I think she had a better life begging here than she did working in Bangkok.”
“She talk about me—Tiger tell you about big sister?”
How could he tell Sukara that Tiger had never spoken about her life in Thailand, reluctant to relive her memories of abuse at the hands of her customers?
“She said that she loved you, Sukara,” he said.
She was silent for a while, staring at Vaughan’s hand on hers. At last she said, “When Tiger die, she feel no pain? She die peaceful?”
To spare the girl, Vaughan said that Tiger had died without pain and told her about the funeral attended by all her friends. Then, perhaps in a bid to assure Sukara, and himself, that she had had a good and full life, he told her how he had first encountered Tiger, how they had met regularly for years after that, sitting and chatting at this very booth. He told Sukara about her sister’s infatuation with the Bengal Tigers, a skyball team, from which she had earned her nickname.
Sukara occasionally asked questions in her halting, broken English, and Vaughan did his best to answer truthfully, only lying where the truth would be too painful for the girl to bear.
She looked up at him. “Dr. Rao, he say, Tiger had bad leg, disease.” She shook her head. “But I know: he cut off leg so she begs for him, so he get money, yes?”
Vaughan nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s what happened, and I know it sounds terrible. But Tiger wanted it that way, rather than having to go back to what she was doing in Bangkok.”
She was quiet for a while. At last, her lips moved, but no sound came, or none that Vaughan could hear. Sukara looked up, something unreadable in her eyes as she stared at him. She tried again. “Did you... you sleep with Pakara?”
He could not tell whether she wanted him to answer in the affirmative, whether she would have been pleased that her sister had found a lover/protector/father figure, or if Sukara would have then despised him.
He shook his head. “I’ve used a drug called chora for five years,” he told her. “I couldn’t have slept with Tiger even if I’d wanted to. We were just friends, Sukara. Good friends.”
She smiled and nodded.
Vaughan changed the subject. “How did you get to the Station?”
She seemed reluctant to tell him. She stared up at him, her eyes as brown and large as Tiger’s, as if assessing whether she might trust him. “Customer, he bring me. Buy me clothes...” She stopped, glanced down at his hand, still enclosing hers. “I think, he love me. He says, trust me, trust me. Then I see him go with other girl, young girl. He lie. He tell me, trust me, so I trust him, but he lie.”
Vaughan watched her, aware of the beautiful tone of her mind, aware that he should offer words of sympathy, but afraid that if he did so she might think that he was offering more.
“Will you stay on the Station?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She glanced up at him, quickly, through her fringe. “I find work, somewhere live. I stay here. Make new life.”
Vaughan nodded. “I hope you succeed.” He hesitated. “Do you have enough money?”
She shrugged. “Some. Money I saved in Bangkok, money he gave me.”
Vaughan reached into his pocket, unfolding the notes he had withdrawn from his second bank account that morning, to see him through the next month. He pushed a hundred-baht note across the table, and Sukara stared at it for long seconds before slipping it into the pocket of her shorts.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I go now.”
Vaughan nodded.
Sukara said, “I go, say to customer, ‘You lie, you go with girl, so goodbye.’ I not stay with him, even if he begs.”
Vaughan smiled, unable to bring himself to speak.
She glanced up at him again, that utterly vulnerable, pleading quick look through her fringe. “Mr. Vaughan... maybe I see you again? We meet here, like you and Tiger?”
He shrugged. “Maybe, Sukara,” he said, and withdrew his hands from hers.
Her gaze downcast now, whispering an inaudible farewell, she slipped from the booth and hurried from the restaurant. Vaughan watched her go, something heavy and painful, easily identifiable as the incipient recognition of betrayal, expanding within his chest.
He ordered another beer and looked at his handset. It was four o’clock. He would give it another hour, until the sun was going down, then leave and descend to the lair of the Vaith on Level Twelve-b. He considered it ironic that a week ago he had gone down there to be with the dying Tiger, and now he was going down to do the killing.
He sat alone and drank his beer and considered Sukara, wishing that he could have reached out and offered her hope, but knowing, because of who and what he was, that that would have been impossible.
* * * *
TWENTY-SIX
PAIN AND CONFUSION
Sukara caught the New Mumbai Express north from Chandi Road. She sat beside the window and stared out at the passing streets and buildings, her fist clutched around the folded hundred-baht note that Vaughan had given her. She thought back over the meeting. Vaughan had done everything he could to make her feel at ease, and within minutes of meeting him she had received the impression that he was a good person. It was no wonder that Pakara had taken to him, and at the thought of her sister and her special friend, Sukara felt a strange, swift stab of jealousy. Right now, she would have given anything to have Vaughan as a friend—nothing more than that: she wasn’t asking for love, or commitment, but just someone who would listen to her with sympathy. What she needed right now, she thought, was a friend.
When she had summoned the courage to ask him if he would see her again, she had been unable to interpret the look that had come into, his eyes. It was as if she had struck him a blow. He had seemed pained,
and at the same time almost pathetically grateful that she, Sukara, had wanted to see him. And yet his reply, an unsure, reluctantmaybe, gave the impression that he would rather not get involved.
He was not the type of person she had first imagined when Dr. Rao had told her that Pakara had had a special friend. Sukara had expected someone older and richer, someone more outgoing and at ease with the world. Vaughan had seemed... haunted was the first word that came to mind, haunted and beaten and on the verge of giving up. She wondered if he had suffered mental problems—there had been that strange look of frightened anguish in his eyes, contained there by mental effort and not allowed to infect his behaviour. And yet his manner had been far from manic or obsessive: he was gentle and soft-spoken, almost, at times, seemingly on the verge of tears himself. She wondered if it had been Pakara’s death that had affected him so badly.
She wished she had asked Vaughan more about himself, where he was from and why he was on the Station; what he worked as and where he lived. But perhaps, looking back on it, it was just as well that she hadn’t been that inquisitive. He struck her as a lonely person, unused to talking about himself: she guessed that he would not have liked her questioning him. Maybe next time, maybe she would be able to ask him about himself when they met again.
As the train carried her away from Himachal sector and Vaughan, it was reassuring to know that someone who had known Pakara and grieved at her death was here for her to contact in the future.
Sukara looked ahead to her return to the hotel. She would pack her belongings and then tell Osborne that she was leaving. It would be hard to face him and tell him that she had seen him with the woman earlier, but it was something she had to do. She could pack and walk out without a word of explanation, avoid the emotional confrontation. But he had wronged her, he had taken her trust and betrayed her; he had taken from her mind what he had wanted and given nothing personal of himself in return. He had lied to her, and that had hurt. She could not let him get away without telling him what she thought of his betrayal.
At New Mumbai Station Sukara left the train in a press of commuters and crossed the street to the gates of the Hotel Ashoka. The uncrowded, peaceful grounds seemed like paradise after the chaotic hurly-burly of the streets. She walked down the gravel drive, her heart thumping like a drum, passed through reception and rode the elevator to the tenth floor. As she walked along the corridor, she rehearsed the words she would use to tell Osborne that he was a liar and that she was leaving for good. She repeated her best lines over and over, but knew in her heart that when the time came for her to use them, her mind would go blank and she would shout and cry like a child.
She unlocked the door and entered the room. She looked around, called his name, and then checked the bathroom. He was still out, then. A small part of her felt relieved, even though she knew she must wait until he returned and confront him.
She found her backpack and began stuffing her clothes into it. The new clothes, the dresses Osborne had bought her, she left on the bed. They had made her look silly, anyway. She packed her T-shirts and skirts and underwear. She fastened the backpack and sat on it in the middle of the room, so that he would see her as soon as he entered, and know that something was wrong; know, she hoped, that she had seen him with the girl. She hoped that he would not be wearing his pin when he entered the room, so that she would have time to tell him what she thought of him and get away—before he had the chance to read her and see that, alongside the hate she felt towards him, she felt love also, and the need to be loved in return.
She sat there, defiant, for ten minutes, twenty. She got up, wandered around the suite. She stopped in the middle of the lounge, considering. Soon she would be on her own in a strange place, with only her savings, the dollars Osborne had given her, and Vaughan’s gift of a hundred baht to keep her going. On the drinks cabinet, beside the bottle of bourbon he had brought with him, was a pile of Station currency, baht and rupees, along with over a hundred American dollars. She scooped the notes from the cabinet and stuffed them into the pockets of her shorts. She would be out of here before he noticed it was gone. And, anyway, he was rich and would not miss the money.
She moved to the window and peered out. She would wait another five minutes, and if he had not returned by then she would just walk out. She returned to her backpack, sat down, and counted off the minutes on her watch.
At exactly five minutes she stood and returned to the window, looking down at the extensive grounds. She was about to move off, shoulder her pack and leave, when she saw him. Her stomach lurched sickeningly. He was striding through the grounds towards the entrance. She hurried over to her pack, hauled it onto her shoulder, and stood facing the door, waiting for what seemed like hours.
At last she heard the handle turn, watched the door swing open. Osborne stepped inside. He stopped when he saw her, displaying his easy smile.
At the sight of him, she knew that she could not leave. The feel of his arms about her, his lips hot on the top of her head, returned to her; she recalled his promises, that they would be together forever, and she began to weep.
She let her pack slip from her shoulder and stared at him through her tears. “You lie!” she wailed. “You betray me! I saw you today, I saw you with woman! You go to hotel!”
For a second Osborne was speechless, then, “Su... Su—she was no one. She doesn’t matter to me. Su, you’re the only—”
“You fuck girl, not me. You think I’m ugly. You lie! You betray me.” She was sobbing now, her words hardly coherent. She gestured to her pack. “So I come back, pack up. I leave you.”
Osborne looked stricken: his eyes widened in panic and he rushed towards her, took her in his arms, and hugged her to him. She tried to resist his embrace, tried not to find solace in the strength of his arms. “No! Christ, please, no— you don’t understand. The other girls... they don’t matter, only you.”
She slumped against him and sobbed. “I no understand! I want to leave, I want to stay—I want to understand!”
He fumbled in the pocket of his suit, and she knew he was looking for his pin. He found the case, opened it clumsily, and drove the pin into the back of his head.
She knew with a sudden, burning shame that all her thoughts, her very identity, was now open to him. She hated his knowing how vulnerable and afraid she was.
He just stared at her, an expression of amazement crossing his face. His reaction to scanning her anger, pain, and sense of betrayal, shocked her. He laughed in disbelief at something he had found in her head.
Then he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Where is he now?” he yelled. It was as if, upon using his augmentation-pin, he had become someone else.
“Where is who—?” She stared at this suddenly transformed Osborne.
“The man you call Vaughan! Where?” And he slapped her across the face, backhanded, knocking her to the floor. He knelt beside her, grabbed her chin, and turned her face to his.
She gagged, shocked and sickened.
He stared into her eyes, into her mind, found what he wanted, and pushed her away. He rushed into the connecting bedroom. From her position on the floor, Sukara saw him pull a case from beneath the bed, open it, and take things out, slip them into his jacket. Then he closed the case and returned it beneath the bed and came back into the lounge.
He knelt beside her again, and she flinched at the expectation of further blows. Instead, he reached out and thumbed the tears from her cheeks. “Su... I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll explain, okay? I’ll come back and explain, and then we’ll be together, just the two of us, no more chasing about, no more...” He stopped himself, stood, and hurried from the room.
Sukara lay on the floor, weeping with pain and confusion. She pushed herself to her feet and stood unsteadily, ran into the bedroom, and knelt on the floor beside the bed. She reached underneath and fumbled for the case. She pulled it out, tried the catches. The case was locked. In anger and rage she grabbed the case by its handle and swung it aga
in and again at the wall. On the sixth blow, the catches broke. She collapsed onto the floor and opened the lid.
Three hollow, gun-shaped recessions, one small pistol still in place... Then she saw, in a pocket in the lid of the case, the graphic. It showed Vaughan, but a younger Vaughan, standing beside a younger version of Osborne. Sukara stared at the image of Vaughan, smart and handsome, and tried to reconcile this vision with the man she had seen at Nazruddin’s.
She reached for the case, pulled the pistol out, fumbled with the chamber until it snapped open. The gun was loaded with a dozen bullets. She was about to close the case when she saw something else: a golden pendant, identical to the one that Osborne was never without—a spare mind-shield?
Quickly she looped it around her neck. If she were to follow him, then she would have to be shielded. The thought of what she was about to do filled her with terror.