Necropath (3 page)

“Not all. Some areas to east let out to engineering companies.”

The kid set off at a brisk walk into the shadows.

“I wouldn’t mind knowing where we’re going,” Vaughan called after him.

His guide turned. “We are going to see Tiger,” he said. “We are going home.”

A year ago, shortly after arriving back at his apartment from the ‘port, he heard a tiny knocking at the door. He was justifiably suspicious: he didn’t know his neighbours, and his few acquaintances never called. He peered through the spyhole, but the corridor was deserted. He returned to his bunk and the chora he had been about to take, and the knocking began again. This time he snatched open the door before the perpetrator could flee.

Tiger leaned against the door-frame, beneath the level of the spyhole, blood running from a gash above her right eye. He carried her across the room and sat her on the bed, then attended to the injury. She was dazed and unresponsive, her mind still in turmoil. He cleaned the wound and applied antiseptic cream, tore an old shirt into strips to make a bandage.

“What happened?” he asked, knotting the bandage above her ear.

In a small voice she told him that she’d had a fight with a boy called Prakesh, and that Dr. Rao had thrown her out.

“Dr. Rao?”

“He looks after us, makes sure we’re okay.”

“He threw you out with your head like that?”

“Nai. Later, some kids, they attack Tiger. They took money, chora. I was bringing you chora.”

She sat glumly on the edge of the bed, the out-sized dressing giving her an appearance of woeful vulnerability.

Vaughan was torn by the urge to tell her to go, and to allow her to remain with him.

That night she slept next to him on the bed, the stump of her left leg warm against his thigh.

In the morning, before he left for the ‘port, he knelt before her and said, “Tiger, you can’t stay here. I’m sorry.” He paused, considering what had occurred to him last night, the plan he had evolved as a sop to his conscience. It would take a good chunk of his savings, but it was money he could afford. “I’m taking you to a surgeon, someone who can repair your leg, okay?”

On his way to the ‘port he took her to the nearest rehabilitation surgery. He had left a silent Tiger sitting on a seat in the waiting room, her fingers closed around a thousand credits.

He did not see her for a month after that. He scanned the gangs of kids in the streets of the upper-deck, but she was not among them. Then in the early hours of one night during Diwali, with firecrackers detonating outside Nazruddin’s, Tiger appeared.

The expression on her face as stoic as if carved in wood, she limped towards his booth and stood silently before him, leaning on her crutch. She held out a small hand. Vaughan accepted the vial of chora. She made to turn and go, but he stopped her, took her hand.

They ate in silence. He had never asked her what had happened to the credits, but for the next year, whenever she delivered his drug, she would refuse to take his payment.

* * * *

They arrived at a riveted bulkhead and the kid pulled open a hatch as thick as a furnace door. He jumped inside and crawled off. Vaughan squeezed his shoulders through the gap and found that the pipe was no wider than the entrance, and pitch-black. He crawled on hands and knees, taking deep breaths to extract oxygen from the humid soup that passed for air at this level. His mind raced with the possibilities of what might have happened to Tiger. He had last seen her at Nazruddin’s for their customary meal five days ago, and Tiger had been full of enthusiasm about the skyball game she was going to see the following night. She was a ‘ball fan, was never without the latest magazine. The game left Vaughan cold—all sports depressed him with their display of microcosmic futility—and he had viewed her fanaticism with amused tolerance. She had failed to turn up last night, but she had gone missing often in the past, and he had not worried himself at her absence.

Up ahead, light showed around the crawling form of his guide.

The pipe terminated abruptly. The kid climbed down, revealing a scene that stopped Vaughan in his tracks. They were looking down into a cavernous chamber, lit haphazardly by jury-rigged arc lights and stolen halogens that created a mosaic of silver light and yawning shadow. The chamber was draped and festooned with strange plants and growths, a phantasmagoria of anaemic horticulture. Great rafts of pale fungus grew from the walls like shelves, and etiolated vines garlanded struts and spars that criss-crossed the cavern. Vaughan found the display of sun-starved plant-life amazing enough, but as his eye was drawn to the centre of the chamber by the web of spars, like vectors indicating perspective, he was struck by the image of the voidship. A bulky freighter of antique design, it hung in the centre of the metallic web like some imprisoned insect.

He sensed the hum of minds emanating from the approximate direction of the ship.

The kid held out a hand. “Home,” he said.

Vaughan climbed down beside him.

He’d heard about the ship that had crash-landed on the Station fifty years ago. Rather than remove the wreckage, the authorities had considered it safer to leave the ship where it was, precariously balanced between decks, and weld it in position with girders. The overall effect, with the silver light, the colourless plants strangling the nexus of spars, and the ship as the centrepiece, suggested an optical illusion.

In explanation, his guide said, “Ship was carrying seeds from Speedwell. Cargo hold split and seed grew all over. This way.”

A bridge fashioned from rope and slats of metal spanned the gulf between the sheared pipe and the voidship. Vaughan held on to the rope rail and followed the kid, taking care to place his feet on the dead centre of the precarious walkway.

They passed into the freighter’s shadow. Vaughan looked up and saw a dozen urchins perched like observant monkeys on the great curved cowling of an engine nacelle.

The rope-bridge terminated at the entrance hatch of the ship’s hold. His guide hurried him inside and down a long corridor. They passed dozens of children sitting on the floor, playing games with stones or, if fortunate, expertly moving chessmen around boards painted on the deck. Others slept, bare limbs outstretched and vulnerable. Only when Vaughan saw a legless girl propelling herself down the corridor in a wheeled box, did he suddenly realise.

He stopped and turned to look back down the corridor. All the children were in some way deformed, paralysed, or handicapped. Most were missing arms and legs, some were blind, others facially disfigured.

He glanced at the boy who had brought him so far. His right hand ended in a white-bandaged stump.

“This way, Mr. Jeff.”

They turned right, and immediately confronted a Buddhist monk in saffron vestments standing sentry outside a sliding door. His eyes were closed, his lips moving in a silent mantra.

“In here,” the boy said, sliding back the door. Vaughan stepped inside. Two children scurried from the room. His guide said. “I will go and find Dr. Rao.” The door closed behind him and Vaughan found himself alone with Tiger.

* * * *

TIGER

Vaughan stood by the door, unable to move. Tiger lay on a narrow bunk that almost filled the room. She wore shorts and a shrunken T-shirt, her bare left foot stained with oil.

The music of her mind was faint, sweet as ever.

She was sixteen, but she looked about twelve. She had always been slim, but she was skeletal now. The waistband of her shorts hung between the jutting bones of her pelvis. To cool herself she had pulled up her shirt to expose her concave belly and fleshless ribcage. Her face was gaunt, cheekbones an angry chevron stretching jaundiced, sweat-soaked skin.

“Jeff...” Barely a whisper. It was all she could do to lift her hand a couple of centimetres off the bed and wave her fingers in greeting. “Knew you’d come.”

“Tiger.” He knelt by the bed and repeated her name, taking her hand and squeezing fingers. She winced, as if in pain, and then managed a smile.

“I’ve got to get you out of here, into a hospital.”

“Dr. Rao looking after Tiger,” she whispered.

“Where is he? I want to know what’s wrong—”

“Tiger was silly,” she whispered, and then laughed. The sound was tiny, cut short with a wince of pain.

“What happened?”

The words came, soft as her breath, “...was silly.” 

“Tiger...” Something like desperation gripped him. Where the hell was Rao? “What did you do?”

She gathered her strength, said, “There, in pocket. “ She glanced towards the foot of the bed. A tiny pair of shorts hung from a hook on the wall. Vaughan grabbed them, squeezing the greasy material to locate the pocket.

He pulled out a clear plastic pouch full of crimson powder. He snapped the seal, sniffed. The stench brought tears to his eyes.

“You took this?”

Her lips made a downward curve that signalled assent and a terrible admission that she knew she had done wrong. She tried not to cry.

“Tiger, you must tell me. What is it? Where did you get this stuff?”

“Kid sold Tiger it. Tiger took too much. Dr. Rao say I very ill. Feel bad, Jeff.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get help.”

He pushed up his sleeve and punched the surgery code into his handset, a lightweight polycarbon device that enclosed his forearm like a splint.

A voice from behind him said, “I’m afraid you’d be wasting your time, Mr. Vaughan.”

A small, silver haired Indian, severely upright in a Nehru suit, stood in the doorway. He clutched a walking stick in arthritic fingers.

Vaughan regarded Dr. Rao, realising instantly that he did not like the signature of the man’s mind; it made a noise that Vaughan through long experience had learned to associate with xenophobia and suspicion.

He stood and hustled Rao into the corridor. “What the hell do you mean? Why aren’t you doing something for her?” He glanced back into the room. Tiger was staring up at the ceiling.

“Mr. Vaughan, please. I appreciate your concern. Your desire for the welfare of the child cannot be greater than mine. But we must face certain realities. Fate conspires to bring down events upon our heads which we must face with fortitude—”

“If you don’t tell me what’s wrong with Tiger...” His grip on the little Hindu’s upper arm tightened.

“Mr. Vaughan, Tiger overdosed on a drug, colloquially known as rhapsody, a substance imported from one of the colony worlds.”

“What’s it doing to her?”

Rao stared into his eyes. “Mr. Vaughan, I’m sorry. There is no antidote, no cure for doses as massive as that which Tiger took. The drug is corroding her major organs, heart, liver, even her brain. She was comatose for a day after taking the substance, then wracked by severe internal pains. She is relatively comfortable now. I have treated her with a powerful morphine cocktail.”

Vaughan heard himself saying, “How long?” A ridiculously matter-of-fact statement at odds with the pain he was experiencing,

“I am truly amazed that she is still with us.”

Vaughan pushed Rao away and stepped back into the bedroom.

Tiger was smiling, something knowing in her expression. He sat down on the bed beside her.

“Jeff...” Her big eyes stared up at him. “You never told me...” She paused, marshalling her breath, her strength. Then, after a delay of ten seconds, “Never told me about
you...
Always so secret.”

A sharp pain like laryngitis gripped his throat. He managed, “What do you want to know?”

She said, “Want to know...
why?”

“Why? Why what?”

“Why me?”

Because... How could he make her understand his enigmatic psychological obsessions? How could he explain that because of her similarity to someone he had once known, he had been compelled to seek solace from her, and at the same time driven to push her away?

She would not, could not, understand. The truth would only hurt her. He shook his head.

She smiled up at him, something martyred in her expression now. Her eyes were soft-focused with tears. He felt the tune of her mind fading, slipping away.

He sat with her for an hour while she slowly died.

He cursed himself for not letting her stay with him a year ago. He knew it was impossible to look back and say what he
should
have done, but he could not help the retrospective wish-fulfilment, the fantasy in which he had been
able,
then, to let her remain with him.

He felt self-pity and grief lodge like a pain in his chest.

He held her insubstantial hand while her eyes lost focus and her breath became laboured. Her mind drifted away, became almost silent, but for the occasional soft sound, a grace note played far off, and then nothing.

He gave thanks that he was not augmented, could not ride her mind towards the ultimate annihilation that put an end to all identity, all vestiges of consciousness.

He stared at her stilled face. Where before had been life, music, there was now the terrible silence of oblivion.

The thought of it brought back terrible memories and filled him with horror.

He slipped his hands beneath Tiger’s shoulders and pulled the lifeless child to his chest, buried his lips in the fragrance of her hair.

Later, he lay her down gently and closed her eyes, then looked around the room at the pathetic collection of her belongings: a dozen tattered posters of skyball heroes, two faded Calcutta Tigers T-shirts, a pile of ‘ball magazines, and an effigy of Siddhartha Gautama.

He saw the bag of rhapsody on the bed and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Behind him, the door scraped open.

Dr. Rao stood on the threshold, the Buddhist monk behind him. He glanced at Tiger’s body. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vaughan,” Rao said. “If you would like more time alone...”

“I’m fine.” He looked back at Tiger, but found that he could not contemplate her face. He stared at her small hand, palm up, fingers slightly curled.

“I’d like to attend the funeral.”

“We had not planned an official ceremony, Mr. Vaughan. The monks are taking her for Contemplation. Perhaps, in a month, a small service might be arranged.”

His heartbeat loud in his ears, Vaughan stared up at the doctor. He could hardly believe what Rao had just told him.

“Contemplation? You’ve sold Tiger for Contemplation?”

“Not Tiger, Mr. Vaughan. Tiger is no longer with us. Her essence has moved on. I have merely sold her remains.”

“No way.” Vaughan was shaking his head. “No, you can’t—”

“I have the welfare of the children to think of, Mr. Vaughan.”

He could not let the monks take Tiger for Contemplation. He imagined Tiger’s naked corpse laid out for the inspection of the monks, the subject of an exercise in which they contemplated the body and in so doing came closer to understanding their own mortality, the fact of their own place in the passing show called life. The remains would then be taken away, and ten days later brought out again. This time the monks would contemplate not only the fact of death, but the stench and corruption of the flesh. It was considered a worthy deed to sell the corpse of a loved one to the monks. The very idea sickened Vaughan.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you do this.”

“Mr. Vaughan—”

He stood and pushed Rao and the monk from the room. Rao tried to brace himself in the doorway, but Vaughan took his wrists and twisted. The old man capitulated and backed into the corridor. “Mr. Vaughan! You are making a grave mistake. In the name of an ancient and noble religion, please think again. It is an honour to be the subject of Contemplation in the Buddhist faith.”

“Damn you!” He wanted to go on, shout that Rao would know the sham of all religions if he could only look into the human mind as he had, read the fear and the guilt and the universal desire to be saved.

Something in Vaughan’s stance caused Rao to back off further, raising his hands in a gesture of self-protection. “Mr. Vaughan, I am not a violent man...”

Vaughan turned and stared into Tiger’s room, repeating Rao’s claim and trying to summon a suitable reply. He turned and stabbed a finger at the doctor. “You’re not violent?” he said. “Are you trying to tell me that what you did to those kids out there—what you did to Tiger—do you mean to say that wasn’t violent?”

Rao spread his hands. “Mr. Vaughan, I ensure that my children suffer no pain. It is a sacrifice they willingly make. I look after them, take care of all their needs.”

Vaughan dropped his head and closed his eyes. He let the seconds build up, fought to control his rage. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you go through with this.” He paused, contemplating Rao, then said, “How much?”

Rao blinked. “Excuse me?”

“How much is the monk giving you? I’ll give you more if you’ll let me arrange Tiger’s funeral.

The monk tipped his head towards Rao’s ear, whispered something that Vaughan didn’t catch. Rao replied with a whisper of his own. The monk bowed with impeccable serenity, first to Rao and then to Vaughan, and retreated down the corridor.

Dr. Rao said, “I can see that Tiger’s funeral means much to you, Mr. Vaughan. The monk would have paid me five hundred Thai baht.”

Vaughan felt nothing but contempt for the Indian. “I’ll give you six hundred. I want Tiger taken to Level Eleven where she can be collected. I’ll make all the arrangements.”

Rao placed his palms together before his face, performed a servile bow.

Vaughan took out his wallet, counted out six one-hundred-baht notes, and thrust them into Rao’s palm.