Xenopath (16 page)

If his
suspicions were correct, and this Thai was indeed the killer of
Robert Kormier, then how had he traced Pham to the factory?

Prakesh pulled a
glossy pix of Pham's alleged uncle from the printer and passed it to
Vaughan.

He stared at the
image. There was indeed a disparity between the man's smooth Thai
features, his angular cheekbones and merciless eyes, and his broad
shoulders.

Prakesh was
saying, "To aid your investigations. Mr Vaughan, would you care
to inspect the dorm where Pham lived? I am very proud of the living
conditions of my charges. I will give you a conducted tour."

He decided to
accept the offer, if only to build a better picture in his mind of
the girl he was seeking. "Lead the way."

As Prakesh
hauled himself from his seat and waddled towards the door, Vaughan
tapped the access code into his handset and winced as the full force
of the businessman's mind hit him in a wave.

Contending with
an overlaid set of memories and emotions, Vaughan stood and followed
Prakesh from the office. As they wended their way between the
crashing machines, he worked at filtering out the bright minds of the
kids around him and concentrated on the Indian's fiery cerebral
beacon.

The first thing
that hit him was the realisation— surprising him—that
Prakesh was a good man.

He had taken the
Indian's high-flown sentiments about his charges, his altruism and
concern for their welfare, as so much hot air. But R.J. Prakesh,
Vaughan found, genuinely did care for the kids he employed in his
factory. He ran a profitable business, yes, but he paid his children
well, offered good holidays, and ensured that their working
conditions were the best possible in the circumstances.

He slipped
through Prakesh's recent memories, came upon his meeting with Pham's
"uncle" yesterday.

It had taken
place in the office, Prakesh seated in his swivel chair, the Thai in
the seat Vaughan had occupied minutes ago.

Something about
the man had profoundly unsettled R.J. Prakesh, and it was more than
just the disparity between the Thai's features and his soraa-type.

Vaughan had a
better picture of the Thai now, a whole body image, an impression of
how the man moved and gestured—and he knew that there was
something very wrong in the man's demeanour. It was as if the Thai
were an actor, playing a part, and playing it badly.

The man spoke
Hindi fluently, without a trace of an accent—but his hand
gestures were those of a Westerner mimicking a Thai.

Vaughan went
through their dialogue, and again sensed something not quite right
about the man.

Then he had it,
and the realisation sickened him.

Again and again
the man questioned Prakesh about the girl, Pham—where she might
be now, had she mentioned leaving, where might she go if she were to
venture topside?

And, again and
again, the man anticipated Prakesh's replies—hardly giving him
time to answer.

Suddenly,
Vaughan knew why. It was a technique—barraging a subject with
questions in order to guide the subject's mind—that he had used
again and again when mind-reading criminals in his old job at the
spaceport.

Pham's supposed
uncle, the killer of Kormier and no doubt of Travers too, was a
telepath.

Which would
explain how he had traced Pham to the factory. While chasing her from
the amusement park the other night, he had read her mind.

Sweating, he
deactivated his implant and enjoyed the ensuring mind-silence.

They had reached
the dorm without Vaughan being aware of the fact. Prakesh was saying,
"As you will be aware, the rooms here are all fully
air-conditioned. Cramped, yes—space is at a premium down here.
But I like to think that my children can rest in comfort and
security."

The rooms were
spacious, and lined with caged bunk-beds three high. Some held
sleeping children, and all were personalised with posters and
possessions as varied as teddy bears, holo-units, toy guns...

Prakesh led the
way to a bunk in the corner and indicated the lower berth.

The scant
possessions were pitiful: a battered black doll with one eye missing,
a battered holo-unit, and at the foot of the bed a pile of folded
T-shirts and shorts. Vaughan smiled at the poster stuck to the wall:
it was of the Bengal Tigers' star forward Petra Shelenko.

He noticed a
corner of notepaper sticking out from beneath the pillow.

He pulled it out
and read the childish Thai script:
Dear Mr Prakesh, Thank you, but
I must go up to see the sky and the Tigers and everything else up
there. I will be back one day when I am rich and happy. Don't worry,
I will find a safe place to sleep.
Signed,
Pham.

Vaughan stared
at the note, then passed it to the businessman.

Only then did it
hit him.

His pulse
quickened and he cursed himself for being so slow.

Prakesh looked
up. He thumbed something from his eyes. "The airborne pollutants
down here are annoying, Mr Vaughan. I must attend to the filter
system—Mr Vaughan?"

Vaughan reached
out and took Prakesh's pudgy hand in a fierce shake. "You've
helped considerably, Mr Prakesh. I'm sure I'll find Pham soon. I'll
be in touch, okay?"

He hurried off,
leaving the fat Indian staring after him as he made for the exit.

He had been a
blind fool. As soon as he realised that the Thai was a telepath, he
should have made the connection.

If the Thai had
read Pham's mind as he chased her from the park, then he must have
read her intention to spend the night in Ketsuwan Park.

Vaughan quit the
factory and followed the signs to the nearest upchute station.

After the
congested hell of the lower levels, Level Three seemed an oasis of
space and calm. From the 'chute station he caught a southbound
shuttle to Ketsuwan, an affluent residential area bordering the
exclusive outer edge. The Park, a five hundred square metre area of
lawns and gardens—like some vision of old England transplanted
in space and time—was lighted by a series of mirrors and
daylight halogens and gave the exhilarating impression of existing in
the open air.

Couples and
families strolled across the manicured lawns, street-kids played
kabadi and soccer between the trees. Vaughan, aware of the bulk of
the pistol under his jacket, made a quick circuit of the park, on the
lookout both for the Thai telepath and for Pham. There were about ten
entrances to the park, and he was unable to keep them all covered at
the same time.

Lone men stood
out among the couple and families. Vaughan stared at them,
discounting them one by one. It was almost impossible to keep a watch
on everyone entering the park, and on this occasion his tele-ability
would be of no use, as telepaths wore mind-shields as a matter of
course.

He stopped at a
chai stall by a southern entrance to the park, bought a mug of spiced
tea and a plate of mixed bhaji and pakora. Wolfing down his first
meal since that morning, he eyed the kids begging food from the
stallholder.

Discarding his
mug and plate, he tapped the startup code and his implant kicked into
life.

He moved from
the group, wincing, as the flares of a dozen minds cascaded into his
consciousness. He worked at winnowing through the thoughts and
emotions of the kids and the stallholder, accessing their short-term
memories for an image of the skinny, Tiger T-shirted Pham.

He found nothing
and moved off, making a circuit of the park, then crossing it, still
scanning. He sorted through individual minds, one after the other,
discarding hopes and dreams, fears and anguish, love and hate. He
didn't allow himself to dwell long in any one mind: that way might
lead to disorientation, to the sympathetic identification with
individual psyches to the detriment of his own sense of self. He'd
worked with teleheads in the past who'd suffered identity trauma from
empathising too readily with subject personalities. Vaughan skipped,
butterfly-like, hoping to come upon an image of Pham.

He stopped.
Something connected in his head, the answer to his earlier inkling
that his reasoning had been flawed. Impatiently he killed his
implant. Basking in mind-silence, he concentrated on his own
thoughts. His logic had been skewed by the natural assumption that
the assassin wanted Pham dead because she had witnessed Kormier's
killing.

He sat on the
nearest bench and thought it through.

Why would the
assassin want to eliminate Pham? There was no way that, from where
she had been crouching in the mouth of the ghost train, she could
have made out the assassin firing from over twenty metres away, on a
dark night. She had seen Kormier killed—but would that have
been enough to set the assassin on her trail?

Why would the
assassin want to kill her? He had obviously read her mind immediately
after the shooting, and then had elected to shoot her.

For some
reason
—that was the question at the heart of Vaughan's
consideration.

If Pham had not
seen the killer, then what had he to fear from her continued
survival?

Perhaps it was
not that she had witnessed the killing, but something that the
assassin had read in her head which made it imperative he locate her?

Or, perhaps, he
was wrong—the killer simply feared that Pham had seen him,
feared she might be able to identify him, and had reasoned that she
had to die.

Frustrated, both
by inability to fathom the killer's motive, and the fact that he was
getting nowhere in trying to find the kid, Vaughan activated his
implant again and set off on another circuit of the park.

One hour later,
he got the break he'd been looking for.

It was after
nine, and the lights were dimming. The kids who had been playing
among the trees had either drifted away or settled down in the
bushes, their minds small points of fire in the gathering twilight.

Vaughan was
considering whether to quit and go home, or contact Sukara and tell
her he'd be an hour or so late, when he read something in the mind of
a six-year-old Indian girl nesting in a stand of frangi-pani. She had
spoken to Pham about fifteen minutes ago, told her that the
stallholder by the eastern gate would soon be giving away leftover
food.

Galvanised,
Vaughan jogged across the grass, making for the dark shape of the
eastern archway silhouetted against the lights of the level beyond.

He could see the
stallholder, packing up his poly-carbon cart. A couple of kids were
standing close by, munching on puri and deep-fried chilli peppers.

One of the kids
was Phamtrat Kuttrasan.

Her mind was
ablaze. He caught only a second of it—a few memories of the
factory, the adventure of rising through the levels, and then the
frightening night in Kandalay amusement park—and then, as if
sensing his presence in her mind, she looked up, across the
intervening twenty metres, and saw him advancing. Her mind took
fright.

She ran. She
barged through the knot of kids by the gates, and Vaughan lost his
grip on her cerebral signature. It became confused with the other
minds in the vicinity.

He called out in
bad Thai, "Pham, wait! I can help you!"

She darted
through the gate, into a long boulevard that flanked the park, and he
gave chase. He scanned ahead, attempting to read her intentions, but
intervening minds scrambled her signal. He gave up scanning,
concentrated on running after her instead.

She turned a
corner, into a narrower corridor packed with late-night shoppers, a
diminutive barefoot girl with the natural athleticism of her age.

He ran around
the corner, scattering shoppers, provoking angry cries, and sprinted
in pursuit. He could not see her now, obscured as she was by the
milling citizens. Her fiery mind signature was drawing farther and
farther away by the second, until it merged with the overriding
mind-hum of the Station, and then was lost.

Vaughan came to
a panting halt, braced his arms on his knees and breathed hard.

Not giving up
yet, he continued along the corridor at walking pace, scanning minds,
coming up with nothing. She might have darted down any one of a dozen
tributary tunnels, might be a kilometre away by now.

He returned to
the park, read the minds of the kids there, the girl who had spoken
to Pham earlier—but they knew nothing of her intentions for the
future. She was just another waif and stray, a playmate for the
evening, soon absorbed into the mass of seething humanity on the
Station.

Vaughan stilled
his implant and enjoyed the respite. He might not have captured the
kid, but at least he'd frightened her away from the park. With luck,
she would have more sense than to return.

With luck, she
might evade the assassin for a while yet.

He made for the
nearest 'chute station and home.

REAL DANGER

It was late by
the time Sukara cleared away the remains of the meal and Jeff
suggested they take a bottle of wine onto the veranda and relax for a
while.

Jeff sat with
his outstretched legs propped on the rail. He looked exhausted. He'd
eaten his meal quickly, as if he'd had nothing since breakfast, and
told Sukara all about his investigations between mouthfuls.

A warm breeze
wafted in, and soft music drifted down from the top level.

Sukara leaned
against him, clutching his hand, and said, "This kid, Pham.
She's in real danger, right?"

Jeff nodded.
"For some reason the killer's trying to find her."

"Because
she saw him in the amusement park."

He was silent
for a while. "Maybe. Or maybe because of something he read in
her mind. I don't know. The only clear-cut fact is that he's after
her."