Xenopath (25 page)

And if the
militia had barred this track, then he would test the Bison's
off-road capabilities and head for Lincolnville over the hills.

He set off again
and ten kilometres further along the highway turned right up a
pot-holed minor road, heading into the mountains.

He travelled for
an hour. The track was rough and unfinished, and at one point a
landslide had slurred the track ten metres down the hill, but the
Bison was equal to the challenge. He passed a couple of farms,
clearly occupied, but again detected not the slightest mind-noise
from within. He wondered if it were mandatory for the citizens of
Mallory to wear shields, and if so then why the government had passed
such a Draconian law. What might the average citizens of the colony
world know that their government did not want the rest of the
universe to find out?

The fiery orange
sun was a hand's breadth above the mountain peaks high to his left
when he came around a great loop in the road and was presented with a
spectacular panorama: the hillside shelved away to form a long, broad
valley, its blue grass scintillating in the twilight.

The track edged
along the margin of the valley, and Vaughan made out, perhaps two
kilometres distant, the telltale glow of a laser cordon. Beside it,
reduced to the size of a child's toy, was a militia truck.

Vaughan braked,
heart thudding, and considered his options.

According to the
map, he was still a hundred kilometres from Lincolnville. There were
no roads branching from this one that would take him anywhere near
his destination.

He supposed he
could always conceal the truck, wait until nightfall, and see then if
the military checkpoint remained—the laser cordon presented an
obvious indication of their presence. But if the militia were aiding
Denning's mission, then they would remain
in situ
until the
exec and his teams arrived.

He scanned the
surrounding land. The valley was wide, and easily navigable by the
Bison, but not so wide that his passage would go unnoticed by the
military. To his left the hillside climbed acutely, graduating to
rocky outcrops and minor peaks. Hardy though the Bison was, he
doubted it could negotiate such precipitous terrain.

He was startled
by a noise coming from behind him. He turned in his seat and made
out, perhaps a couple of hundred metres further up the valley, the
first of a herd of... animals, obviously, but animals the like of
which Vaughan had never seen before.

Only when
visually aware of the creatures did he sense their presence in his
mind: an inchoate, tuneless music, totally alien and unsettling. He
turned off his implant.

The leading
beast was huge—that was the first thing that struck him—perhaps
four metres high. It was brown-skinned, and wore its tegument in what
looked like sections of armour.

There, its
resemblance to anything Earth-like finished. Its four legs were thick
and long, its head huge. It had a thick trunk perhaps a metre long,
on either side of which sprouted a lethal array of tusks like tines.
Above huge black eyes, arranged on each side of the head, was another
set of tines. It looked ferocious, and the thunderous sound of its
bellow echoed like a war cry.

It approached
the Bison and slowed. The others, behind it, slowed too. Vaughan
counted over twenty in the herd, many of them the size of their
leader.

The others
halted, as one, and seemed to be watching their leader as it slowed
and took small, cautious steps towards the vehicle.

Two metres away,
the great beast halted.

Vaughan stared,
and the creature stared back at him. He felt suddenly, profoundly,
moved. After his initial alarm, it came to him that he had nothing at
all to fear from these animals, and only then realised that the
side-screen was still wound down.

The beast
blinked, regarding him, and though Vaughan knew that Mallory
possessed no intelligent life forms, he felt as if he were
communicating on some level with a creature wise beyond its
classification.

Then the beast
surprised him.

It moved
forward, a single step bringing it right up to the flank of the
Bison. Then, before Vaughan could react, it raised its short, thick
trunk and reached out towards his head.

His first
instinct was to draw away, his second to sit tight.

The trunk, its
nostril panting a warm, fetid breath, came in through the window and
caressed his head, pressing itself against his skin, inhaling like a
vacuum cleaner, sniffing, then settled on his forehead. There it
remained for perhaps ten seconds. Vaughan, his pulse racing, looked
up, along the length of its trunk, into the dark discus of its left
eye.

The eye blinked,
gently.

Then the animal
broke contact, swung around and harrumphed to the rest of the herd.
They began moving around the Bison, trundling across the track and
heading into the high foothills. Their leader was the last to move
off. Watching it back off, then move around the vehicle after the
others, Vaughan felt impelled to call out some kind of farewell, or
lift a hand in a valedictory gesture. Instead, he just watched them
go in silence, aware that he had participated in a once-in-a-lifetime
experience.

In single file
the herd passed through a cutting in the rocks above. When it came to
the leader's turn to ease itself between the slabs of rock, it
paused, turned, and stared at Vaughan. It lifted its truck and issued
a low, bassoon-like note, and Vaughan received the crazy impression
that it was telling him to follow them.

Convinced that
he was deluding himself, but curious nevertheless, he climbed from
the Bison and crossed the track, climbing through blue grass and
tumbled scree towards where the khaki rump of the creature was
shuffling on up the cutting.

The gap was
wider than he first thought, easily wide enough to admit the Bison.
He followed the beast, though its strides had taken it far up the
cutting, and found that the pass opened out into a greensward—or
rather bluesward—which ran aslant between a tumble of boulders
below and the flanks of rocks above.

By now the
leader of the herd had crossed the clearing and was moving through
another cutting, though this time it did not turn to encourage his
pursuit... if indeed it had originally.

Vaughan paused
and considered his options. He was no doubt anthropomorphising the
creature's actions, but what did he have to lose?

He returned to
the Bison, started it up and left the track. It bucked over the
uneven ground, rocking him in his seat, as he approached the cutting.
He slowed, and the truck scraped through with centimetres to spare on
either side. Minutes later he emerged on the bluesward and
accelerated across the sloping ground towards the far rocks. The next
five minutes would determine whether he had deluded himself.

This pass was
wider than the last, and longer, and when it ended the Bison emerged
into a dazzling wash of dying sunlight and Vaughan was amazed to find
himself on what was obviously a man-made track, rougher than the one
he had left but a track nevertheless... which meant that, at some
point in the past, it must have led somewhere.

He followed it,
the Bison pitching back and forth. The track climbed, then levelled
out and paralleled the lie of the valley to his right, hidden though
it was by a fold in the hills.

Of the
creatures—his unwitting helpers?—there was no sign.

He travelled for
two hours through the gradually dimming light, and at one point came
to a high crest in the track that afforded a vantage point over the
hills to the valley. He stopped the Bison and stared out. Far below,
and behind him now, was the dazzling line of light that was the laser
cordon.

He continued on
his way, and the track fell away down the hillside. At last, in
darkness now and the vehicle's powerful headlamps lighting the way,
the track joined the original road. Vaughan accelerated, hardly
daring to believe that he had bypassed the military checkpoint, and
an hour later he came to the highway leading to his destination. A
couple of kilometres further on a sign declared that Lincolnville was
just fifty kilometres distant.

The highway
climbed, wound through the foothills, and less than an hour later
Vaughan came to a collection of weatherboard dwellings, strung out
along a single main road, and a sign welcoming him to Lincolnville,
population five hundred. There was no sign, he was relieved to see,
of any military presence.

Half a dozen
four-wheel drives were pulled up outside the town's only
hotel-cum-bar. Vaughan parked the Bison beside them, shouldered his
holdall and made for the plinth of steps to the hotel's veranda.

He was about to
push through the double doors when he stopped. He dropped his bag and
considered his handset. So far on his journey south, he had yet to
come across an unshielded mind. He wondered if the citizens of
Lincolnville likewise had something to hide.

He activated his
implant, and instantly knew the answer.

Mind-silence,
except for the confused emotions of a newborn baby on the second
floor of the hotel.

Vaughan entered
and found himself in timber-panelled lobby. The place had the
appearance of something from a Wild West holo-movie set.

To the right was
a door leading to a small bar, occupied by half a dozen men and
women.

A Nordic blonde
girl in her teens, obviously surprised to see him, appeared behind
the reception counter.

He asked for a
room for tonight, and if he could buy a meal. He was in luck as far
as accommodation went, but the kitchen was closed. He took a small
room on the second floor, fetched a meal from the Bison, and ate it
while staring out of the window at the darkened main street and the
looming shape of the mountains to the south. They were shadowed and
dark against the starscape, and gave Vaughan the impression of dour
hostility. Tomorrow, first thing, he would be heading further south,
towards Campbell's End. He pushed the thought to the back of his
mind.

Melancholy, he
went down to the bar and ordered a local beer—thin and insipid
compared to his regular Blue Mountain. It was late, and he was the
only customer.

He took his beer
to a table near the window and stared out.

Minutes later,
snow began to fall, reminding him of Canada.

The girl's
question startled him.

"I said,"
she repeated, "are you with the military?"

"Excuse
me?"

She was wiping
the table next to his, camouflaging her shyness with a truculent
stare.

"You a
soldier?"

He smiled. "No.
A tourist?"

She shook her
head. "A tourist? Then how you get through the roadblocks?"

He considered
his reply. "I've been in Preston for a few days. Last night I
camped in the hills."

She seemed
reluctant to believe him. "So you're nothing to do with what's
going on in the valley? You're not with the S-L forces?"

He smiled again,
trying to reassure her. "What is going on?" he asked.

She resumed her
polishing with renewed vigour. "You're a tourist, so you don't
need to know, do you?"

"Still, I'd
like to know."

She stopped and
looked at him. "How do I know you're not an S-L spy?"

He showed her
his ID. "See. Earth citizen."

She peered at
it, then looked at him dubiously. "But then a S-L spy would have
cover, wouldn't he?"

He took a sip of
beer, considering his next words. "Someone told me that everyone
around here carries mind-shields? Is that right?"

She moved to the
next table, and Vaughan thought she was refusing to reply. Then she
said, "Carry them? We're implanted, mister. Everyone on
Mallory."

Vaughan nodded.
"Is that a government edict?"

"Huh?"
Incomprehension showed in her Scandinavian eyes.

"Is it a
law that everyone on Mallory should be implanted?"

"Everyone
over the age of ten, yes," she said. She thought about it, then
went on, "S-L don't want telepaths from Earth learning all about
them, do they?"

"All about
them?"

The girl decided
she'd said enough, wished Vaughan good night and told him that the
bar was closed now. If he wanted another beer he could help himself.

He did just
that, and sat in the darkened barroom considering the events of the
day. High above the mountains was a spread of stars in an alien
arrangement, and he wondered where Sol might be.

He realised he
was seventy light years away from Earth, and Sukara.

THE TELEPATH

Pham spent the
night under the banyan tree in Gandhi Park, and in the morning sat on
her blanket and wondered what to do next.

Since being
chased by the laser killer yesterday, she had been unable to rouse
Khar. At first she thought that he might be sulking, or that he was
so ashamed of nearly getting her killed that he couldn't bring
himself to speak to her.

Now she wondered
if he had left her in the night, flown from her head and lodged in
someone else's.

If he had done
that, then she was both upset that he had left without saying
goodbye, and a little afraid now that she was alone. Khar had helped
her since she had arrived on the upper decks. Okay, he'd got her into
trouble yesterday, but he had won her money and kept her company and
filled her head with interesting thoughts. And, to be truthful, there
was something exciting about being chased by a killer. It was like
something from her favourite holo-movies.

"Khar,"
she said now. "Why aren't you talking?"

The silence
stretched, then the familiar voice sounded in her head.
I am
communing.