Xenopath (14 page)

She thought of
Abdul, who was nice. Perhaps her only option might be to live with
him and the other kids on the starship?

The voice in her
head said:
No.

"Voice?"
she said, sitting upright. "Are you there? Why don't you want me
to go back to the ship?"

The silence
stretched. Just when Pham thought Voice was not going to reply, it
said:
It is not a good place for you.

"But why?"

Silence.

"Voice,
what are you?" she asked. "You're a bad soul, right? The
man who was killed, you're his bad soul. But... but you won't make me
bad, will you?"

Maddeningly,
Voice did not respond.

"You can
live in my head until you've earned the right to move on, ah-cha?"

This time, after
a delay of a few seconds, Voice replied: Do
not be frightened. I
am not a bad soul.

I wish you no
harm. In time I will move on. Before that, I will try to help you.

"You will?
But how can you help me?"

Listen to me.
From time to time I will speak. Then, do as I say. The rest of the
time I will he silent.

Pham nodded.
"Ah-cha," she whispered. "Voice," she said after
a while, "what is your name?"

Voice said:
Call me Khar.

She nodded.
"Khar," she said. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Pham."

Khar was silent
for five minutes, then said:
Would you like to see the zoo on
Level Three?

"I didn't
even know there was a zoo."

I think you
will like it there.

"I don't
know the way—"

I do. just
get up and walk from the park, and I will show you...

She did as she
was told, leaving the park by the western exit and boarding a shuttle
train for the southern edge. The odd thing was, Khar never said a
word to her after she left the park. It was as if she knew how to get
to the zoo without being told. She wondered if Khar could put
thoughts, information, into her head.

She wondered if
she should be frightened, but another odd thing was that she didn't
feel a bit scared. Perhaps Khar was controlling her fear, too?

If Khar wasn't a
bad soul, she wondered as she jumped from the train and hurried out
into the street, then what was it?

The zoo was a
massive complex that ran for a kilometre along the southern edge of
the Station, with great viewscreens that overlooked the ocean. Pham
paid five baht for a ticket and received a brochure telling her all
about the zoo.

She read that
the animals didn't live in cages, but had whole compounds to
themselves. And, she discovered, the zoo housed not only animals from
Earth—like lions and tigers—but extraterrestrial animals
from many of the colonies across the galaxy. They lived here for one
year, and then they were returned to their planets and set free.

She wondered why
Khar wanted to visit the zoo.

A wide boulevard
ran between the vast viewscreens looking out over the ocean and the
animals' compounds. Pham strolled along the boulevard, stopping from
time to time to stare down at the strange beasts grazing on
odd-looking grasses. Some of the compounds were sealed, because the
atmosphere inside was not like Earth's, and these animals were even
stranger than the others. She saw things like blue crabs the size of
air-cars, and great orange creatures that rolled through a vast tank
of blue water.

She walked on.
She felt that Khar was moving her towards where it wanted to be.

At last she came
to a compound that stretched back for what seemed like a kilometre,
and was almost as wide. Tall blue grass glinted under the glare of an
artificial sun, and the plain was dotted with twisted trees bearing
big red flowers.

Then she saw the
animals, and she had the strange feeling that she had seen them
before somewhere. Which was impossible, because surely she would have
remembered seeing creatures like these in books and on holo-vision.

Three big
animals were grazing close to the glass canopy that arched over the
compound. They had hides like elephants, but brown and wrinkled, and
longer legs than elephants, and shorter, thicker trunks. Their eyes
were big and blue, and set on either side of their big heads. From
the sides of their mouths, several sharper tusks projected, and
similar horns sprouted from above their eyes.

They looked
fearsome, but at the same time friendly.

A recorded voice
from a nearby speaker said that the animals were called Grayson's
Pachyderms, and came from the colony planet of Mallory, Eta Ophiuchi.

As she watched,
two of the pachyderms wandered off, but the third looked up and
seemed to stare directly at her. Slowly, it approached the canopy and
stood perhaps three metres from where Pham leaned against the padded
rail, looking down with wonder at the strange beast.

She felt
suddenly sleepy. "Khar," she said, "why did you want
to..."

But she never
finished the sentence. Her eyes fluttered shut, incredibly heavy, and
though she fought against slipping into sleep, she felt herself going
under.

Then she was
awake, and amazingly she was still standing upright, and the
pachyderm down below was moving off, its big feet plodding
ponderously through the high blue grass.

"Khar?"
she said. "What happened?"

Maddeningly, the
thing in her head chose not to reply.

She watched the
animals for a while longer, then wandered along the boulevard and
stared in at the other alien exhibits.

The sun was
going down over the ocean when she decided that she had seen enough
for one day. She would return to the park, get something to eat and
sleep on her bench—even though Abdul had said the park was not
a safe place.

As she was
leaving the zoo, Khar decided to speak to her.

Thank you,
it said.

"Khar—what
was so important about seeing those animals?"

It did not
answer her question, but said instead:
You have little money for
food and other things. Listen to me when 1 speak.

It said no more.
Pham boarded a train heading north for Ketsuwan, and ten minutes
later alighted at the station beside the park.

Instead of
entering the park—which is what she wanted to do—she
found herself walking down a nearby street. Many stalls were set out
here, selling food and trinkets and ornament for tourists. Pham
elbowed her way through a crowd surrounding a small stall, and when
she reached the front she saw a stick-thin Indian in a loincloth. He
stood behind a small table, and had three cups placed upside-down
before him. Under one of the cups was a small bronze model of Kali.
He showed it to the audience, then clapped a cup over it and with
lightning speed moved the cups around. Pham watched closely, sure
that the figure of Kali was underneath the right-hand cup when the
man finally brought them to rest.

A Thai boy
beside Pham, who had laid a ten baht note on the table, now pointed
at the right-hand cup.

Grinning and
shrugging his shoulders as if in commiseration, the Indian lifted up
the cup. Kali was not there. The Indian snatched the ten baht and
lifted the cup on the left to reveal the bronze statuette.

The crowd
laughed and the Thai boy skulked away.

The Indian
beamed around at the watching crowd. "Ten baht—or even
more! I'll match it if you guess where Kali's hiding! Come, do none
of you trust your eyes?"

Khar said:
Take the fifty baht note from your pouch and put it on the table. Do
as 1 say.

Fifty baht, she
thought.

Do
it!

Hesitantly,
wondering if she was acting wisely, she did as instructed. All around
her the crowd laughed in derision.

The old Indian
smiled. "Aha! The little girl is braver than the rest of you."

"Or more
foolish!" someone called out.

The Indian
winked at her. "Watch closely, little one. If you guess where
Kali is hidden, I will match your fifty baht!"

He dropped the
central cup over Kali, then shuffled them around, slowly at first,
then a little faster. Pham watched closely, her heart beating fast.
She followed the cup under which she knew the figure was hidden.

Suddenly, the
old man's thin brown claws stopped their movement.

Pham smiled to
herself. This was easy. The figure was under the cup to the left.

The Indian said,
"Well, little one, are your young eyes faster than my old
hands?"

She was about to
point to the left-most cup—but Khar said:
No! The central
cup. The figure is beneath the central cup, Pham.

She hesitated,
her finger reaching out. She was so sure that Kali was sitting under
the cup to the left. The Indian smiled, his eyes twinkling with
greed.

The central
cup!
Khar called in her head.

At the very last
second, just as she was about to indicate the left-hand cup, she
moved her finger and pointed to the cup in the middle.

The Indian's
expression turned to barely suppressed rage.

The crowd
roared. "Lift the cup! Lift the cup!"

Grudgingly, with
bad grace, the Indian snatched away the cup to real the figure of
Kali.

"Give her
the money!" someone called out.

The Indian
muttered something in Hindi.

A chorus went
up, "Give the girl her money!"

At last, with
bad grace, the Indian slapped a fifty baht note next to Pham's on the
tabletop, and Pham, unable to meet his eyes, snatched the money and
pushed her way back through the crowd amid much cheering.

She hurried
towards Ketsuwan Park. "How did you know?" she asked Khar.

No response.

She tried again.
"Khar, tell me. How did you know where Kali was? Did you read
the Indian's mind?"

At last it said:
Do not worry yourself with that, Pham. Trust me. I will ensure that
you come to no harm.

She entered the
park and hurried towards her bench. A young Indian girl was sitting
there, shoving barfi into her mouth. She smiled at Pham when she
approached.

"You're new
here, aren't you?" the girl said. "I haven't seen you
before."

Suddenly shy,
Pham nodded. The Indian girl smiled. "Did you know that Raja,
the stallholder by the eastern gate, gives away all the food he
hasn't sold by eight o'clock? If you're quick, you'll be able to eat
for free tonight."

"Ah-cha,"
Pham said. "Thank you."

She turned and
hurried towards the eastern gate. She might have won fifty baht, but
that didn't mean she must miss the opportunity of free food. She had
to think of the future, when she might need the money in an
emergency.

She found the
stallholder, and sure enough he was handing out plastic plates of
puri and deep-fried chillies. Pham lined up and received a big
portion.

She sat down
beside the stall and began eating. The puri dripped with oil and the
chilli peppers were good and hot.

As she ate, she
thought about what had happened to her since arriving on the upper
decks, and something occurred to her.

"Khar,"
she said. "Why did the killer kill you?"

Because,
Khar replied,
he thought he
could
kill me...

Pham thought
about that for a long time. It did make a kind of sense, she
realised. The killer had killed the body of the man, but he hadn't
killed the man's soul.

She wondered
what would happen to her, if the killer succeeded in killing her.
Where would her soul fly away to?

She tried to
question Khar again, but he would not reply.

LEVEL TWENTY

In the old days,
even dosed up on chora, the din of mind-noise had been like an
incessant migraine, and the thought of descending to levels where he
would be surrounded on ail sides by a clamorous press of humanity had
not appealed.

Now Vaughan
dropped through the levels with impunity, enveloped by total
mind-silence. The knowledge that, at the tap of a few keys, he could
access that mind-noise made the silence all the more wonderful.

From the
dropchute station on Chandi Road he plummeted five levels, and then
caught a crowded shuttle train west to the nearest dropchute station.
It was impossible to drop from Level One right down to Level Twenty.
For one thing, it had never been economically viable to build a
'chute accessing all levels, as few citizens had business on more
than their immediate levels; for another, the Station had been built
in stages, two or three levels at a time, and it had not always been
expedient to extend existing 'chutes to the new levels. If citizens
should wish to travel the Station from top to bottom, they had to do
so in series of tortuous steps involving vertical dropchutes and
horizontal shuttle trains.

Vaughan decided
to check out the girl's old workplace on Level Twenty first, and
later have a look around Ketsuwan Park. It would make sense to check
the park when there was more chance of finding the kid settling down
for the night.

All he had to go
on were the pix in his wallet and the mental image of her he had
gleaned from Abdul's mind. The latter, as it happened, was clearer
than the pix. It was as if Vaughan had met her himself, seen her
laughing and joking, climbing with the agility of a chimp through the
abandoned rides of the amusement park. Abdul had been a little in awe
of the precocious slave-kid from Level Twenty, not least because she
had escaped her employer and set out on an adventure he would never
have contemplated himself. Also, she had shown an intelligence,
quick-wittedness, and confidence he had never come across before in a
girl so young.

Vaughan felt as
though he knew her already—and her resemblance in both
character and appearance to Sukara's sister, Tiger, amazed him.
Having her in his head like this—a vicarious recollection, as
it were—brought back memories at once painful and wonderful,
for had it not been for Tiger he would never have met Sukara.