Xenopath

Xenopath

A Bengal Station Novel

Eric Brown

This novel is for Julian Flynn, Michael Harrington and John Moran.

MIND NOISE

Vaughan was
refuelling
The Pride of Calcutta,
just in from Ganymede, when
the call came through.

He crouched
beneath the freighter's bulging belly, jacking fuel leads into the
main tank. The stench of high-grade octane made him dizzy and the
warm wind blowing in across the spaceport did nothing to stir the air
beneath the ship.

It was six, and
his shift was almost over for another day. He'd grab a beer or two at
Nazrud-din's before heading home.

When his handset
chimed he assumed it was Sukara, wanting to know what time he'd be
back. He smiled as he accessed the call. He never thought he'd be a
slave to domestic bliss. Hell, how things had changed in just two
years.

The face that
stared out from the tiny screen on his wrist was not Sukara's. The
woman was white, with a thin face, a peroxide blonde crew cut, and
feral suspicion in her squinting gaze.

"Jeez,
Vaughan. How long's it been?"

He recognised
the high Sydney whine a fraction of a second before he put a name to
the face.

"Kapinsky?"
Reception was bad. He crouch-walked from under the belly of the ship
and eased himself upright, his legs aching from the effort. The
running lights of the
Calcutta
threw his shadow ahead of him
as he walked across the deck towards the perimeter fence.

"Back from
the dead, pal," Lin quipped. "How's yourself?"

"I'm okay.
Fine. Never better."

"Christ,
you know something? You sound as though you mean it. Am I talking to
Jeff Vaughan here, Mr Cynical himself?"

"It's been
four years, Kapinsky."

"But you're
still at the 'port, still reading heads. So what's changed?"

He hesitated,
wondering how much to tell her, and curious about why she'd called.
He stared through the diamond mesh fencing, down to the moonlit
scales on the Bay of Bengal a kilometre below, then looked back at
Kapinsky's mug shot on his wrist-screen. "I'm still at the
'port, but I'm no longer reading."

She squinted out
at him. "Come again? No longer reading? What, you trashed your
pin?"

"It's a
long story, Kapinsky."

"You sound
as if you don't want to tell me."

"That's
right." He had no desire to share his story—his new-found
happiness—with someone as jaded as Lin Kapinsky.

"Okay, but
listen. Reason I called. I need to see you."

"Ah... I'm
busy right now."

"Listen,
Pal. I'd be doing you a favour."

He almost said
that that'd be a first: Kapinsky, doing someone a favour?

"Like
what?"

"Like, I
can offer you a job." She went on before he could register
surprise, "So you no longer read. You got promoted upstairs,
right? Admin. You pulling in, what? Five thousand baht a month?"

She had it so
wrong. Two years ago, after he married Sukara and settled down, he'd
needed a steady job for a while, something to tide him over for a few
months. So he'd applied for menial work at his old employers, the
spaceport authority, and found himself injecting octane into old
class III interplanetary tubs. A few months had lasted over two
years.

Five thousand
baht a month? He was on less than half that, which hardly paid the
rent on the coffin that passed for a two-person apartment on Level
Ten.

Despite himself,
his curiosity was piqued. "What job?" How was it that
Kapinsky, wasted, washed-up, chora-addicted Lin Kapinsky, was in any
position to offer him work?

"Not over
the air, Vaughan. Can you skip work and meet me at seven?"

He was tempted
to end the conversation there, but something stopped him. If Kapinsky
thought he was holding down an admin job at five thou a month, and
she could offer him more...

He nodded. "I
might be able to do that."

"Good man.
Look, I have an office on Level Two, outer edge."

He whistled.
"You on the outer? What happened?"

"Later,"
she said. Her smile was monomolecular thin. "I'm in Myrabad
district. Unit Seven on Gandhi Mall." She cut the connection.

He was left
gripping the fence, staring at the blank screen and wondering if he'd
dreamed the dialogue.

He returned to
the
Calcutta,
finished the refuelling and drove his truck back
to the garage, beetling between the big voidliners just in from the
colony worlds.

He made a quick
change from his grease-stained overalls and walked from the
spaceport. The streets around the 'port were tributaries flowing with
an ebb tide of humanity. Restaurant lights branded the tropical
darkness. The scent of cooking spices, wafted on the warm night air,
reminded him he hadn't eaten since noon. Half a kilometre ahead,
Nazruddin's faulty, flickering neon promised ice-cold Blue Mountain
beer. He was tempted, but he knew that one beer would turn in to
three, and he'd be late meeting Kapinsky, and then late home... And
Sukara, in her present condition, wasn't likely to be too forgiving.

He caught a
dropchute to Level Two, crammed into the cage with a gaggle of
near-naked, ash-coated sadhu mendicants. At times like this, he was
grateful he no longer possessed tele-ability. He'd used an
augmentation pin when reading, but even without it the background
mind-mush of the press around him would have been an intolerable
white noise.

Now he enjoyed
absolute mind-silence. His thoughts were his own. The noise—the
audible sound—of the creaking cage, the chanting mendicants,
and giggling schoolchildren, he could ignore.

The cage opened
and he spilled out onto a wide mall packed with citizens. Strip
lighting illuminated the tunnel and Hindi holo-movie music blared
from speakers placed strategically to leave no area unaffected.

His handset
chimed again. This time it was Sukara. Her broad Thai face filled the
screen, bisected by the knife wound that served only to make the two
halves all the more beautiful.

"Jeff,"
she said.

"Su, you
okay?"

"Just
wanted to see your face." She looked glum. "Baby blues
again."

Vaughan smiled.
"I'll be home soon."

"When?"
She sounded petulant. "I want you now."

He laughed. "Su,
I'll be late. Another hour, say."

She scowled out
at him. "Jeff... I've been alone all day, and now you—"

He hadn't
planned to tell her about the job offer, but her tone prompted him.
"Look, Su. Something's come up. You know you're always telling
me to get a new job?"

She brightened.
"You looking?"

"An old
colleague contacted me today. There might be something. I'm meeting
her now."

"What kind
of job?"

"I'll tell
you all about it when I get back, okay?"

She beamed.
"Good luck, Jeff!"

He told her he
loved her and cut the connection, then headed west towards the outer
edge of Level Two.

He'd known Lin
Kapinsky for a few years way back, when he'd worked as a telepath for
'port security. She'd been in his team for a year, reading the
passengers on colony ships newly arrived on Earth. A model officer,
she'd discharged her duty with efficiency, but Vaughan had never
really warmed to her. Telepaths, as a breed, tended not to be the
most rosily optimistic of people—but Kapinsky had turned
cynicism into an art form. She had no friends, even among the usually
close-knit coterie of fellow teleheads, and she'd gone through lovers
as if trying to set a world record.

Misery loves
company, was the old adage, and while Vaughan back then had been a
miserable son of a bitch, he found Kapinsky's existential despair too
familiar a reminder of his own cares and concerns.

He'd worked with
her when he had to, and avoided her the rest of the time.

A couple of
years before he quit 'port security, Kapinsky's addiction had got the
better of her. All telepaths used chora—the drug kept the
mind-noise tolerable—but Kapinsky had snorted the alien dust in
brain-burning quantities. One shift she'd gone schizo aboard a ship,
punching a VIP from Rigel II, and a few weeks later she tried to hang
herself from one of the 'port loading gantries. An act of macabre
symbolism, Vaughan had thought. Someone had cut her down, saved her
life, and the last he'd heard she'd been committed to the state
psychiatric ward on Level Fifteen.

And now here she
was, arisen like a phoenix, and was offering him a job.

He found Gandhi
Mall and paused outside the sliding steel door of Unit Seven.

He touched the
broad lapel of his leather jacket, felt the reassuring bulge of the
mind-shield where he'd stitched it years ago. The last thing he
wanted was some snooping telepath rummaging around in his head.

The door slid
aside without Vaughan's announcing himself.

He stepped into
a bright reception area, equipped with a host of alien flora and a
secretary in a sharp suit.

The man looked
up from his screen. "You have an appointment with Ms Kapinsky?"

"Vaughan.
I'm due to see Lin at seven."

"Right on
through there," the man said.

Vaughan stepped
through a second sliding door and found himself in a big office. More
than just the acreage of floor-space indicated that Kapinsky had come
up—in all senses of the word—in the world. Modern
carvings, in real wood, adorned the corners of the room, and a vast
floor-to-ceiling viewscreen looked out over the neon-lit waters of
the Bay.

Vaughan tried
not to appear impressed.

"Jeff, you
look well."

Lin Kapinsky sat
behind a vast desk. She, too, looked healthier than Vaughan recalled.
He remembered her as being pale and anorexic, her expression forever
haunted.

Now she was
tanned and smiling, sporting a fashionable crew cut and outfitted in
a smart cream suit. Her face was as sharp as ever, though, her
steel-grey eyes almost silver, like eucalyptus leaves.

"Some place
you have here," he said.

"Sit down.
Still drink coffee as if it's going out of fashion?"

"Could do
with a cup," he said, sitting in a swivel chair across the desk
from her.

She was smiling
at him, and he found that disconcerting. Lin had never smiled. She
poured him a big cup of something that smelled authentically
Brazilian and pushed it across the desk to him.

He sipped.
Dammit, the stuff was authentic. He smiled, this time unable to hide
the fact that he was impressed.

Lin leaned back
in her chair, her thin lips pulled into a smile.

He looked
around. "This place must set you back... what? Five grand a
month?"

"This is
Myrabad, Jeff. Select district. Try ten a month."

He nodded,
staring through the viewscreen at a voidship coming in low over the
sea. "So... what the hell are you doing that allows you to pay
rent like that?"

"What I
always did, Jeff. What I was good at."

"Reading?"

"What
else?"

He shrugged.
"When I heard about what happened after you left the 'port, the
psych ward and all that... I assumed you'd had your implant removed."

Her cold grey
eyes regarded him. "I did."

He nodded. "So
you got rid of your implant, got sane... and then had it put back?"

If that was the
case, then it didn't make much sense to Vaughan.

She stood and
walked out from behind the desk. She was small, barely five foot
tall, approaching fifty, but her new-found wealth had bought her the
latest in body-couture and face-sculpting.

Vaughan
contrasted Kapinsky's vanity with Sukara's refusal to waste money on
having her scarred face fixed.

She stood with
her back to him, staring through the viewscreen.

"Why do you
think I asked you here?" she said.

He sipped his
coffee. "I seem to recall something about a job."

She nodded,
turned on a stiletto heel that endangered the thick pile carpet, and
stared at him. He was profoundly grateful that he was carrying a
mind-shield, then, as her gaze raked his crumpled trousers, scuffed
leather jacket, and unshaven jaw-line.

She said, "I
was always impressed with you, Jeff. You got the job done, and done
well. You were accurate. You didn't moan like some whinging
tele-heads, but the pain was always in your eyes."

She moved to the
corner of the desk, hitched herself onto it side-saddle and regarded
him. "Then I heard about what happened a couple of years ago.
You were involved in something big, some scam the then spaceport
director was running. You got wise to it and blew the thing sky
high."

Her precis was
vague, suggesting that she didn't really know what had gone down back
then. He intended to keep it that way.