Xenopath (30 page)

The radical held
the cards in one hand, the pistol in the other, still aimed at
Vaughan's chest.

Weiss looked up.
"You're telepathic?"

"That's how
I know so much about what Denning's up to," he said.

Weiss narrowed
his eyes. "How come? Ail Scheering's operatives are shielded."

"Yeah, they
are until you cut their shields out with a scalpel," Vaughan
said. "Then they're not."

Weiss returned
the cards. "When's Denning due on Mallory?"

"This
morning. His ship landed at ten. How long would it take for him and
his team to fly down here from Mackintyre?"

"Say two
hours, three maximum."'

"And
another hour to trace you this far." Vaughan looked at his
watch. "I reckon they'll be showing up any time now." He
activated his implant and sent out a scan. The man before him, like
every other adult on the planet, was shielded—and there was no
distant mind-noise from the approaching Denning.

Weiss said,
"What's that?"

Vaughan told
him.

"Early
warning system," the radical said, "or are you signalling
to him my whereabouts?"

Vaughan sighed.
"I understand your suspicion, Weiss. I'd feel the same way."
He thought about it. "Look, do you think I'd've walked in here
unarmed, risking my life when you've just shot dead two of
Scheering's men?"

"How do I
know you're not armed?"

Vaughan raised
his arms. "Search me."

Warily,
one-handed, Weiss did so—keeping his laser on Vaughan at all
times.

Weiss nodded.
"You're clean."

Vaughan smiled.
"Believe me, I'm on your side." He paused, then said,
"Look, with Denning on his way, I don't think we should be
hanging about."

Weiss nodded and
looked at the starship, then back at Vaughan, as if wondering how
much to tell the stranger.

Vaughan said,
"Scheering seems to think that you're pretty important. He told
Denning you had vital information. Scheering wants it so desperately
he's sent a necropath along, so if you were killed in the
confrontation she'd be able to read you."

Weiss said, "And
you expect me to tell you what that information might be?"

Vaughan said,
"Like I said, I'm on your side."

Weiss nodded,
slowly, watching Vaughan. "I know the whereabouts of
Breitenbach, Vaughan," he said at last.

Vaughan blinked.
"Who?"

Weiss smiled.
"Know something, either you're a damned fine actor, or you're on
the level. Breitenbach is how it all began—the guy who
discovered that certain of the pachyderms were intelligent. Then he
vanished, around five years ago. We thought Scheering had got him.
But word got out— he contacted Travers, told him to tell Jenna
what he needed. What Breitenbach needed, that is."

"Which is?"

Weiss took a few
seconds to reply, looking at Vaughan and then towards the starship.
"We've got to take something from the ship, ferry it to
Breitenbach. It's important. Vitally important."

Vaughan nodded.
"Look, I won't ask where Breitenbach is, okay? That way you
might trust me."

"Thing is,
I'll need your help with this stuff, now that Jenna..." He
stopped, then went on, "We were going to take the off-roader,
but seeing as how the bastards have left their flier, we'll take
that."

They crossed to
the flier and climbed aboard. Weiss checked the controls, then eased
the vehicle into the air and through a fracture in the ship's
panelling.

"What are
we looking for?" Vaughan asked.

"Breitenbach
calls them alien crystals, and before you ask, no, I have no idea why
he wants them. We work in cells of two and three. We're told as much
as we need to know. It's safer that way, in case Scheering captures
us."

Weiss settled
the flier and Vaughan climbed out.

After the
sunlight, it was dim within the belly of the ship. After a few
seconds his eyes adjusted, and for the first time he became aware of
the ship's true dimensions. From the outside, he had seen only the
bulging flank, unaware of the vessel's width.

It was as if he
were standing on the grass of a sport's stadium. The decking
underfoot was missing, presumably ripped up on impact, and the
vegetation grew unhindered. Higher decks had collapsed, so that it
was possible to look up and see, overhead, great rents in the
panelling where patches of daylight showed through.

He looked right
and left along the length of the ship, where corrosion and stress
fractures from the impact had removed bulkheads. Pillars and fallen
panels and twisted wreckage had become supports for vines and various
grasses.

Weiss gestured
towards a hunched figure beside a hole in the side of the ship. "I'd
like to give Jenna a decent burial. Help me with the body—in
the trunk."

A single laser
strike had caught her in the sternum, and as Vaughan took her beneath
the arms and lifted, he avoided the stare of her glazed eyes.

They laid the
body as gently as possible in the flier's trunk, and Weiss closed the
lid and gestured. "This way."

Vaughan followed
the radical across the grass, passing through columns of sunlight,
two small figures dwarfed by the dimensions of the derelict alien
architecture.

They walked the
length of the ruptured starship for perhaps half a kilometre,
arriving at a section relatively undamaged in the crash-landing. Here
they passed down buckled, tubular corridors, obviously designed for
beings smaller than themselves. Weiss and Vaughan were forced to duck
as they hurried along, sometimes encountering lengths of corridor
crushed like children's drinking straws along which they had to
crawl. Some sections were in darkness, others lit by sunlight
slanting in from slashes and fractures in the walls.

At last the
corridor opened out into a circular chamber, the silver, curving
walls marked with hieroglyphs. Vaughan stared around him, then looked
up at a transparent dome.

"This was
some kind of observatory," Weiss said. He indicated the
lettering etched into the metal walls. "Breitenbach says those
are a kind of star-chart."

"How does
he know?"

Weiss looked at
Vaughan. "Breitenbach knows a lot about the aliens, according to
what Travers told Jenna. Don't ask me how. Perhaps when we meet
him..." He shrugged. "Okay, this way."

They passed down
another corridor, this one undamaged. Vaughan had never before been
aboard an extraterrestrial starship, and he was surprised at how
similar this one was to Terran vessels in general layout and design,
and at the same time how alien it was in the specifics, the
small-scale details of hand-holds and press-select panels: they
seemed designed for small, childlike hands.

"What did
the aliens look like?" he asked Weiss at one point.

"I heard
this third hand, from Jenna, who got it from Breitenbach. They were
humanoid, two arms, two legs, but small—like kids, only covered
in short, wiry hair. And red."

"So
scientists found remains?"

Weiss looked
back at him over his shoulder. "That's the odd thing. They
didn't. None were ever discovered."

"So how
come Breitenbach—?"

"I'm as
curious as you, Vaughan. Down here. We're nearly there."

A recess, let
into the wall of the corridor, dropped to the deck below by means of
staple-shaped rungs, clearly meant for small feet. Weiss went first,
gripping the flashlight in his teeth, and Vaughan followed, his feet
slipping off the rungs as he descended.

They found
themselves in a small chamber, its corners curiously rounded off. The
only illumination was the dancing beam of Weiss's light.

He found what he
was looking for: at the far end of the room was a circular plug like
the door of a bank vault.

Weiss paused
before it, studying a press-select panel in the wall. Vaughan
squinted at the hieroglyphs on each tiny keypad. Quickly Weiss tapped
in a code, then stepped back quickly as, with a sudden hiss, the
great metal plug ejected itself and swung open.

He grinned at
Vaughan.

"This
hasn't been opened for thousands of years, Vaughan. We're the first
humans to enter here."

Vaughan
gestured. "After you."

Weiss stepped
inside, and as he did so a light came on overhead. The chamber was
small, two by two metres, and surprisingly cold, as if refrigerated.

Three racks
stood against the walls, and stacked on each one were what looked
like faceted, blood-red gemstones the size of a fist, scintillating
in the light. Vaughan counted eighteen individual stones, six to a
single rack.

Vaughan gestured
towards the glittering, bloody stones, and found himself whispering,
"What are they?"

"Nobody
knows," Weiss said, then grunted a humourless laugh. "Well,
no one but Breitenbach.

The scientists
didn't have a clue. They guessed at some form of propulsion device,
or even fuel."

"What does
Breitenbach want them for?" Vaughan murmured to himself. He
reached out and touched one of the stones, expecting a cold surface.
To his surprise, it was warm.

Weiss said,
"Let's get them back to the flier."

He lifted a rack
from the wall and carried it from the chamber, and Vaughan took a
second. One was as much as he could carry in comfort. "We'll
come back for the other," Weiss said, propping the rack against
the wall as he climbed from the room. Vaughan passed him the
crystals, and then his own rack, and followed the radical up the
narrow ladder.

Slowly, carrying
the racks with care, dragging them through crushed corridors, they
made their way along the length of the ship to the open area where
they had left the flier.

They stowed the
gemstones on the back seat of the flier and were about to return for
the third rack when Vaughan raised a hand to his temple.

The sudden,
faint signal of a distant mind impinged upon his consciousness.

"What is
it?" Weiss looked alarmed.

"Denning.
They're on their way."

Weiss nodded.
"Where are they?"

Vaughan scanned,
sending out a probe. He could not make out, at this remove,
individual thoughts— merely a miasma of mind-noise, fragments
of emotion, like faint music heard briefly on a weak radio frequency.

"Hard to
tell. I'd guess they're about five kilometres away, maybe less."

"We got
time to fetch the third rack and get out of here?"

Vaughan
calculated. "It's not worth the risk. If I'm wrong, and they're
closer..."

"We could
always leave them in the flier, come back later."

"And what
if the bastards are at the other side of the valley," Vaughan
said, "and have the ship under surveillance?"

"So what do
we do?"

"If we
conceal the flier somewhere in the ship, then lie low..."

Weiss nodded.
"They'll find the wreckage of the off-roader, and the bodies.
Thing is, will they realise the bodies are their own men... or will
they assume they're mine and Jenna's? They're beside our off-roader,
after all."

"Christ,"
Vaughan said, remembering Indira Javinder. "They've got a
necropath with them."

Weiss was
staring at him, his thin face slick with sweat. "Will he be able
to read the bastards' minds? They're burnt pretty bad."

Vaughan
calculated. "They died less than an hour ago—but as you
say, they're badly burned. It's touch and go. There might be a
lingering cerebral signature, enough for Javinder to identify
them..." He shook his head, aware of the adrenalin slamming
through his system. "We'll just have to hide..." He was
about to suggest that Weiss should fry the bodies' heads with his
laser when he caught the faint beacon of Denning's mind-signal.

"What?"
Weiss said, alerted by something in Vaughan's expression.

"They're
entering the valley. We have about three minutes, maybe less."

Weiss looked up,
scanning the ship. "Okay. We'll take the flier up there, conceal
it on the gallery, and lie low."

They jumped
aboard the flier and Weiss lofted it into the air. Vaughan held tight
as they rose with a dizzying rush. Weiss banked the flier and they
slipped over the crumpled lip of an upper deck, which overlooked the
belly of the ship like a gallery.

He eased the
flier down, out of sight from below, then jumped out and opened the
trunk of the flier. He took something from Jenna Larsen's belt and
tossed it to Vaughan. "Do you know how to use it?"

It was a
standard automatic laser pistol. He nodded.

Weiss made for a
rip in the flank of the ship. Vaughan followed, heart thudding, aware
of a cold sweat clamping his torso.

It was a long
time since he'd last endangered himself like this and, despite the
adrenalin thrill, he had the crystal clear desire to be back home
with Sukara, drinking coffee in some top level cafe bar.

He crouched
beside Weiss, pressing himself against the curving skin of the ship
and peering through the gap that cut through the metal like a slash
in a Chinese lantern.

He concentrated.
Denning's mind was closer now, individual thoughts discernible
against the background music of his emotions.

Denning was in a
flier with Javinder and two other Scheering men. They were entering
the valley, and Denning could make out the starship and the wreckage
of the off-roader. The exec felt relief that at last the chase was
over, then a stabbing resentment that the surveillance team had got
there before him.

Denning raised
binoculars, focused on the off-roader, and made out the two twisted
corpses.

>>Hope
to hell Javinder can read something in there...
Vaughan read,
along with apprehension as to what Scheering might say if the
radicals had died without divulging their information.