by Eric Brown
Rana remained stern-faced. For all she knew, he wanted the softscreen for the same reasons that Klien did. She wondered, though it was hard to believe, if he would be as desperate as Klien to obtain the screen.
‘Can I ask you why you are here, Mr Bennett?’
‘I . . . I’m an employee of the Mackendrick Foundation, Lieutenant. A pilot—’
‘The Mackendrick Foundation?’
She stared at him. So Bennett worked for her father, and was here in search of the softscreen . . . But how did he know that the screen was here, in this office? She felt dizzy with confusion.
Bennett was nodding. ‘I work directly for Charles Mackendrick himself. Years ago an item of property belonging to Mackendrick was stolen from him. A softscreen. It’s vital that the screen is returned.’
‘You . . . you’re in contact with Mackendrick?’ She felt as she had when awakening in the hospital, removed from the reality around her, watching proceedings as if at a distance. ‘How do you know the softscreen is here?’
Bennett ran a big hand through his receding hair, beginning a combing motion on top of his head, finishing at the nape of his neck. His hand stayed there as he considered her questions.
‘I’m in contact with him. Well, technically I suppose I’m not - he’s light years away on a Rim planet. But I was in contact with him. I ... I was given a device, a receiver, that would locate the softscreen.’
Rana shook her head, totally confused. ‘But why didn’t he use the receiver to locate the screen when it was originally stolen?’
‘Because he didn’t have the receiver then. He’s only just found out about it. He sent me to Earth to find the screen and take it back to him. It’s vital that he gets it. Look, if you doubt who I am, contact the Mackendrick Foundation, here in Calcutta. They’ll confirm that I’m employed by Mackendrick, at least.’
‘I believe you, Mr Bennett. Tell me, how is Mackendrick?’
He blinked. ‘You know him?’
‘I . . . I met him when he was resident in Calcutta,’ Rana dissembled.
Bennett gestured. ‘To be honest he’s very ill. He has only months to live. I need to get the softscreen back to him.’
Rana closed her eyes. She recalled her father’s voice, his smile as he played with her on the lawn of the mansion when she was five years old. She tried to assess her reaction to the fact that her father was dying. Shock, she supposed, even though she had not seen him in years, even though she could not claim to feel any degree of love for him, in the accepted sense of the word.
But he was her father, and he was dying.
She opened her eyes suddenly and stared at the pilot. ‘Why does he want the screen?’
How many times had she watched the softscreen unfold the dramatic story of three explorers on some far-flung alien world, as they trekked through blizzards into a high mountain range? She had found it entertaining as a child on the streets, a window on to an unimaginably cold and hostile other world.
Bennett gave her a shy smile. ‘Lieutenant, it’s a long and improbable story. To be honest, I don’t think you’d believe a word of it.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The recording was made by a man called Quineau, on a planet settled by the survivors of a crashed starship way outside the Expansion. The softscreen was ... is...the only means by which anyone could find the way back to where he claimed he’d discovered a race of aliens known as the Ancients. After returning from the expedition, Quineau left the planet to tell the Expansion of the colony’s existence. He was found by a Mackendrick salvage ship, which is how the softscreen came into Mackendrick’s possession. Quineau was followed from Penumbra by someone from the governing council who didn’t want the planet’s existence known to outsiders, an assassin called Klien, who killed Quineau in order to silence him—’
Bennett stopped as he noticed Rana’s expression. She stared into space, the pieces of the puzzle slowly falling into place.
‘Klien . . .’ she whispered to herself.
‘You know him?’
She smiled at Bennett. ‘We have met. He tried to get the softscreen from me.’
‘You mean, you had the screen?’ He looked confused. ‘But it was stolen years ago. How did it come into your possession?’
Rana sat back in her seat and stared at the ceiling. Then she looked at Bennett and smiled. ‘It’s my turn to tell you a story that you might find hard to believe,’ she said. ‘You see, thirteen years ago I stole the softscreen, and I’ve had it with me ever since.’
Bennett massaged his tired face with both hands, finally parting them like shutters and staring out at her. ‘This is crazy. I don’t understand. His safe was raided, his daughter kidnapped—’ He stopped, his eyes widening in sudden realisation. ‘You . . .’ he said at last.
‘I took the screen from the safe, along with some money. I ran away and lived on the streets.’
Bennett stared at her in disbelief. ‘To this day,’ he said, ‘your father grieves over losing you.’
Rana matched his stare. ‘Perhaps, had he been more of a father to me back then, I might never have run away.’
Bennett was shaking his head. ‘It’s hard to believe . . .’ He stared at her, then said, ‘You’re really Sita Mackendrick?’
‘Not any more, Mr Bennett. I’m Rana Rao, now, and I have been since I was ten years old.’
‘Okay. I don’t know what you went through then. Who am I to opinionate?’ He paused there, considering. ‘But your father needs the screen, Lieutenant. He’s dying, and he seems to think that maybe the Ancients - if they exist - might be able to heal him.’
‘Are you returning to Penumbra?’
‘Just as soon as I get the softscreen,’ Bennett said.
It began as an absurd notion, fleeting and soon dismissed. Then it returned, not so easily dismissed this time, because Klien had to be defeated, the softscreen had to be taken to where it was safe - and it was time for Rana to run away again.
She thought of her father. This would be her very last chance to see him, to tell him that she was sorry.
Rana pulled open the drawer of the desk, reached in and produced the folded screen. She began to hand it across the desk to Bennett, then paused.
‘I will give you the softscreen,’ she told him, ‘on one condition.’
His hand halted in the act of reaching. ‘Name it.’
She looked into his eyes as she said, ‘Take me with you, Bennett. I want to go to Penumbra.’
He smiled, accepted the softscreen, and said, ‘You’ve got yourself a deal, Lieutenant.’
* * * *
21
Klien had been waiting for this day for almost fourteen years, and when it came he was seized by a sensation of disbelief. He had marshalled his faculties and asked Control to corroborate what he was reading on his com-screen, and they had confirmed that a Mackendrick Foundation Cobra-class ship was indeed heading to Calcutta port from the Rim sector of G5.
Which meant that Mackendrick had at last discovered Homefall, and, for whatever reasons, the Council of Elders had allowed the ship to return. That, or the ship had been commandeered by the elders themselves. Klien knew that such speculation was useless. He had been away for many years. Anything might have happened in that time to change the situation on Homefall.
He had scrambled his top security team and had them ready and waiting when the Cobra made landfall. He wanted the ship searched from top to bottom, its flight system and programs analysed as fast as possible and relayed to his monitor. He had contacted Control and requested that, as the ship was making an unscheduled landing, it should be berthed within the secure compound beside the security tower itself. They had deferred to his seniority and experience.
Thirty minutes later he was waiting at the foot of the ramp. Control had informed him that the pilot’s name was Bennett, an employee of the Mackendrick Foundation. When the hatch had cracked, revealing a tall, long-haired figure, unshaven and dishevelled in a black flight-suit,
Klien had gestured for his team to get to work, and greeted the pilot.
He had taken Bennett into the interrogation room, requesting that he answer a few routine questions. Klien thought he had been informal and amicable, despite the thudding of his heart and a sweat he had no way of controlling, but Bennett was tired after four months in suspension, uncommunicative and unforthcoming, suspicion manifest in his brooding eyes. He’d claimed that he had explored the G5/13 system on the Rim, and had discovered no habitable planets. Klien knew that he had to be lying.
It was Klien’s one regret of the interrogation that he had been unable to ascertain whether the Mackendrick Foundation had possession of the softscreen.
As he was interviewing Bennett, a preliminary report came in from his team aboard the Cobra. The ship was pre-programmed for a return flight to the Rim and the G5/13 sector, departure indefinite.
Klien felt as if his innards had suddenly liquefied. So . . . Bennett was returning to G5/13. But what was he doing here on Earth?
There was, of course, one way to find out.
He passed Bennett an authorisation card, explained that he should keep it upon his person at all times, and watched the pilot stride from the room.
Klien smiled to himself. It had gone as well as could be expected, so far.
He seated himself behind his desk and inserted an earpiece. Seconds later he heard Bennett pass through customs, leave the terminal and board a taxi to a local hotel. Two hours later he took another taxi to the city centre. The sound quality was slightly muffled, as the card was in Bennett’s breast pocket, but his ear-piece managed to filter out most of the background interference.
Thirty minutes later Bennett left the taxi and walked through bustling streets. The noise of downtown Calcutta filled Klien’s head. He mopped the sweat from his face and neck.
Fifteen minutes later he heard Bennett order a chai and drink it noisily. Two minutes later the street noises diminished: he had evidently entered a building.
‘Excuse me,’ Bennett said in his American drawl. ‘I’d like to report the theft of a softscreen.’
Klien sat up, galvanised by the word softscreen. Report the theft of a softscreen? Where was Bennett - in a police station?
He missed what someone replied. There was a period of silence lasting a good five minutes. Klien waited, his heart thudding with apprehension.
Then: ‘I am Lieutenant Rao,’ a familiar voice said.
Klien smiled to himself. Was the softscreen lodged at the police headquarters?
‘Can I ask why you are here, Mr Bennett?’
‘I . . . I’m an employee of the Mackendrick Foundation, Lieutenant. A pilot.’
‘The Mackendrick Foundation?’ She sounded surprised.
‘I work directly for Charles Mackendrick himself,’ Bennett was saying. ‘Years ago an item of property belonging to Mackendrick was stolen from him. A softscreen. It’s vital that the screen is returned.’
Klien leaned forward, listening intently.
‘You . . . you’re in contact with him?’ A brief silence, then: ‘How do you know the softscreen is here?’
Klien clenched his fist on the table top and almost wept. He listened to the conversation unfold, learned that Charles Mackendrick himself was on Homefall, terminally ill and wanting the softscreen.
He sat back and listened, his heartbeat loud, and knew that soon his mission would be over.
As Rana Rao’s high, precise voice filled the room, he wondered if she realised how lucky she had been. The first he had realised that he had not killed Sita Mackendrick - or Rana Rao, as she liked to call herself now - was when Commissioner Singh dropped by to see him at the port. He had taken some time to come to the point, perhaps finding the matter a cause of embarrassment. The simple fact of the matter, he had said, is that one of my officers was shot recently, lasered in the chest and almost killed, and she claims - this is absurd - she claims that you were responsible. Of course the matter is outrageous, but there are formal lines of enquiry that protocol dictates I follow.
Klien had gone out of his way to accommodate the investigations of Singh and his team. He had nothing to fear. He might have killed the ten victims, but he had ensured that the crimes could not be traced back to him. He told Singh that he understood fully, and if he could help in any way, any way at all . . .
So Rao had managed to survive, and was obviously trying to persuade Singh that he, Klien, was responsible for the attack, and the so-called crucifix killings.
Klien swore to himself that she would not survive a second encounter with him.
Singh’s investigations, as he had known they would, came to nothing. He had alibis for all the murders, friends in high places willing to vouch for him. The commissioner had been almost servile with his apologies.
Now Klien listened as the dialogue between Bennett and Sita Mackendrick wound up. He clapped his hands and laughed out loud. How perfect that they would be travelling together! He would soon kill two birds with one stone. He would make the woman regret that she had ever denied him, and Bennett that he had high-tailed it back to Earth on Mackendrick’s errands.
And then, he would have the softscreen.
He listened as they made arrangements to gather a few of Rao’s belongings and take a taxi to the port, then switched off the ear-piece.
He estimated that he had about one hour.
He set up his hologram projectors in the interview room, timed to start up in ten minutes and shut off in three hours, and gave instructions to Frazer that he was not to be disturbed until he called again. He contacted his team and ordered them to leave the Cobra and check another ship way across the port. Then he left the interview room and locked the door behind him. He took the elevator to the basement and unlocked the door to the armoury. He selected a pair of laser pistols from the rack on the wall, slipped spare charges into his pocket, and left.
Klien crossed the tarmac towards the Cobra, and paused to glance back at the tower. Through the window of the interrogation room he could see the holographic projection. For all the world it was himself, diligently working away at his com-screen. It was a foolproof method of providing him with an alibi. He had used it often in the past. Now, it would keep Frazer and his team from bothering him while he boarded the Cobra.
Ahead, the sleek silver ship squatted on the tarmac while the blue-uniformed resupply team ferried sealed containers up the ramp. Klien followed them into the hold and supervised them as they worked, relishing their palpable unease. He ordered them to leave a container on the tarmac to be checked over by his security team - it was, he judged, approximately his own body weight. He was probably being paranoid, but if Bennett checked the payload before taking off and discovered that he had a stow-away . . .
When the last of the resupply team exited the ship, Klien hurried to the storeroom behind the flight-deck, excitement coursing through him. He could hardly bring himself to believe that his time on Earth was coming to a close, at last.
He collected food-trays and canisters of water sufficient to last him four months, and then moved through the Cobra seeking a suitable hiding place in which to secrete himself when Bennett and the girl were not in suspension. He decided on the starboard engine compartment, a cramped space beneath the ion-drive booster. Unless something drastic happened during the flight, he judged that Bennett would not be using the compartment. He sat on the floor and switched on his ear-piece.
Ten minutes later Bennett and the girl arrived at the port and passed through security. They made their way across the tarmac towards the waiting Cobra. Seconds later Klien heard the hatch slide open and their footsteps moving through the ship.
He held his breath as they made their way along the main corridor to the flight-deck. Bennett was giving Sita Mackendrick a guided tour. The Indian girl could offer only monosyllables of wonder in response.
One hour later the ship was tugged across the port to a blast-pad. Klien braced himself in the cramped confines of the engine compartmen
t and waited tensely as Bennett ran through the systems checks. The period of waiting seemed to last an age, and Klien closed his eyes as he considered the possibility that Bennett might find him. He told himself that he had nothing to worry about.
One hour after that he was deafened as the main drive engaged. The Cobra lifted, and Klien grimaced as he was forced against the floor. He experienced intense pain throughout his body as the ship vibrated, shaking him as he attempted to hold himself in place between two narrow metal spars. He felt as if a giant fist was squeezing his torso, and his lungs protested as he gasped for air. His vision swam and he cried out in pain.