Necropath (15 page)

He was greeted with not the vaguest flicker of recognition. He sensed a pacific, calm mind—a far cry from the frightened signature she had emanated at their first encounter.

She reached into the wicker basket. Vaughan murmured, “Elly—don’t worry. It’ll soon be over.”

She stared at him, as if his words had meant nothing. She slipped a wafer past his lips and said, “Glory with the One. Peace be with you.” And before he thought to spit it out, the wafer dissolved, tingling on his tongue.

Numbed, Vaughan stood and returned to the front row. Carmine was sprawling across the stone bench, arms dangling like some melodramatic prima donna playing a death scene. He sat down heavily, the rhapsody beginning to take effect. He felt light-headed, slightly nauseous. He had to lie down. His last coherent thought, before he too sprawled out across the front row, was to wonder at the power of the drug to act so fast.

Then he lost all sense of self as a physical being. He was a mind afloat, and gradually even his sense of individual identity began to leave him. Soon he was just a sentient entity with no memories of past, of self, just an all-encompassing awareness that the light he was travelling towards was his goal.

He crashed into the light, and on impact it was as if his soul was satisfied at last, as if this was what he had been venturing towards all his life without knowing it. He felt a sensation of unification course through his being, but unification with exactly what he was unsure.

The sensation was inexplicable, and later he was to think back to Carmine Villefranche’s inarticulate attempts to describe the sense of unity, of oneness, experienced in communion. It was a feeling of fulfilment and affirmation unlike anything he had experienced before, and the entity that had been Vaughan could only marvel.

He knew that he was safe; he knew that he belonged; he knew that he was loved. All these things, and more. At the very edge of his perception, for a fleeting moment, he sensed the entity responsible for what was happening to him, the Godhead.

Then he was suddenly withdrawing from that light, returning to himself. He felt his senses return one by one, and then his awareness of personal identity, his memories, and his pain.

Slowly, he sat up. The rest of the congregation, having taken the drug after him, were still experiencing its effects. He held his head in his hands, trying to come to terms with what had happened to him.

The miasmic ecstasy of awed minds filled the amphitheatre.

It was, he told himself, nothing other than the hallucinogenic side effect of a very powerful drug—a pleasant and alluring side effect, without question, but a side effect nevertheless. It could be nothing more, he told himself. But it was understandable why people thought otherwise, and entirely understandable why people became addicted.

He glanced at the watch set into his handset. He had been under the influence of the drug for just thirty minutes.

Behind him, the other communicants were stirring. Elly Jenson knelt behind her dais, staring into space, the bowl empty. Carmine stretched and smiled at him dreamily. “Well, Tarzan. Was it worth it?”

Vaughan heard a sound from the rear of the amphitheatre: the crack of a door being forcibly opened, then a shout. Instantly he was on his feet and diving across the stage. He was only peripherally aware of the tall figure of Dolores, running from the performance area. As he knocked away the dais and picked up the girl, the illusion of the amphitheatre, the surrounding mountains, flickered and disappeared.

He felt a nexus of what seemed to be wires around the girl’s body, but for seconds he was oblivious of what this meant.

Then he was standing in an old warehouse, a grandstand of cheap wooden seats rising before him, garlanded with deactivated holo-capillaries, and the sudden transition from the idyllic amphitheatre to this bleak chamber was startling. The congregation, dazed with the after-effects of the drug, sat in stunned confusion at the disappearance of the colony world.

In seconds, the performance area was swarming with a dozen khaki-clad police. Others ran down the aisles, rousing the communicants to their feet and arresting those able to stand.

Jimmy Chandra moved down the aisle, directing operations.

Across what had been the performance area, Vaughan saw the cloaked figure of Dolores slump to the floor. Crying out, Carmine pushed herself from her seat and knelt beside her lover, imploring someone to do something. Dolores stared blindly into space, her face as inanimate as her discarded mask.

A cop knelt, examining the body. He stood and crossed to Jimmy Chandra. “She’s dead, sir. Something self-administered.”

“Take her away, round them all up, and take them in for questioning. Have the medics examine them for any side effects of the drug.”

A cop appeared and eased a sobbing Carmine to her feet and away from the performance area.

Vaughan clutched the Chosen One to his chest and could not let go, even though he knew that the raid had failed—could never have succeeded.

Chandra turned to Vaughan. “Jeff... Jeff, you can let her go, now.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Vaughan lowered the child to the ground and released his hold on her. She was no longer Elly Jenson, but a jet-haired little Thai girl. She wore only shorts and a T-shirt, her limbs and torso, head and face, enwrapped with the fine black mesh of holo-capillaries. She raised her arms as an officer knelt beside her and began gently unwinding the capillaries from around her body.

Chandra said, “Dolores Yandoah killed herself like Gerhard and Genevieve Weiss before her. My guess is she knew more than she wanted us to know.” He looked around the warehouse. “As soon as we get near them, they have no qualms about killing themselves. In a way, you know, I admire their faith.”

Vaughan looked at the corpse. If he had his augmentation-pin, he would be able to dive into the dying mind, learn all her secrets... If he dared.

Chandra glanced at Vaughan. “We’ll find the Jenson kid eventually, okay?” Then he looked away, embarrassed by the platitude.

Vaughan left the Holosseum with Chandra, declined a ride home, and took the train to the Himachal sector. One hour later he entered his apartment and slumped into his armchair.

He stared at the graphic of Elly Jenson on the wall, mesmerised by her radiant face, her brown eyes. He remembered her fear in the freighter, his failure to save her. He wondered what they were doing with the girl, the true, real life Chosen One. He wondered who
they
were.

He pushed himself from the chair and rummaged through the contents of a drawer in his desk, found the bag of rhapsody he had taken from Tiger’s room. He opened it and stared for a long time at the crimson powder. He recalled the sensation of communion he had experienced in the Holosseum, the affirmation of existence, and although he knew it to be a lie—yet another lie—he laid down a line of the powder and rolled a ten-baht note. Perhaps, with the drug, he might exorcise the ever-present spectre of oblivion that had haunted him for so many years.

He snorted the line and felt the powder pinch his adenoids.

He staggered over to the bed and sprawled out. He waited for the euphoric rush, the journey to the rhapsodic light. He waited for the union, that sense of vital affirmation.

This time, though, it never came. He wondered if this was how Tiger had died. Chasing euphoria, she had overdosed on inferior rhapsody.

For an hour all he felt was a certain remove, a distance. Then the effects of the drug wore off, and reality returned, and with it the pain.

He turned off the lights and lay awake in the darkness for a long time, waiting for sleep.

* * * *

DR. RAO

Vaughan was in Nazruddin’s, nursing a beer and watching the crowds surge down Chandi Road, when Dr. Rao entered and approached the booth. He lofted his walking stick in greeting.

“Namaste
, Mr. Vaughan. I have good news for you. I have procured the implement which you were desiring.”

“Take a pew.”

Dr. Rao seated himself primly and ordered a lassi. “You cannot begin to imagine the degree of difficulty I experienced in endeavouring to guarantee the delivery of the augmentation-pin. My resources were stretched almost beyond their limits. It was only through my innumerable contacts in very high places, and the esteem with which I am regarded in these quarters, that I succeeded at last in making the purchase.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Rao dug into the pocket of his Nehru jacket and pulled out a battered, black velvet container the size of a pen case. He slid the container across the tabletop.

Vaughan lifted the hinged lid, took out the pin, and held it up between forefinger and thumb. It was a three-inch long needle, with a threaded barrel opposite the pointed end. It looked to Vaughan like a ten year-old model, and the needle which would interface with the circuitry in his cerebellum was tarnished.

“And now, if you are satisfied, perhaps you might see your way to reimbursing—”

“It
looks
okay,” Vaughan interrupted. “But that doesn’t mean it’ll work, does it?”

“But surely you do not mistrust the word of a loyal and trusted servant?”

“I’ll just test it first, if you’ve no objections.”

“In here? Won’t the mass of minds interfere...?”

“Surely you have nothing to hide from me?”

Rao spread his hands in a gesture of benign candour. “Mr. Vaughan, my conscience is as clear and pure as my mind.”

Vaughan nodded. “Good to hear that, Rao.” He reached behind his head with the pin, inserted it into his console, and felt it pull away from his fingers and screw into position.

Instantly, what had been a general background hum became a clamorous din. Stray thought fragments entered his head from the surrounding diners. He tuned out much of the noise, allowed only the mind across the table to impinge upon his consciousness.

The bootleg pin was not as efficient as the one he’d been equipped with at the ‘port, which would have brought Rao’s thoughts into his head with three or four times the clarity of this device—but Vaughan had no complaints. The notion of being any more privy to Rao’s secrets disturbed him.

He’s a foreigner and not to be trusted! Untouchable! I should be wary in future! Deal only with Brahmin fellows...

And below this sanctimonious mind-babble, Vaughan detected a self-importance based on Rao’s knowledge of himself as a Brahmin, as the recipient of karma gained in previous incarnations.

Vaughan delved further, swam through the depths of the doctor’s memories, and looked upon scenes and images from Rao’s past that piqued his curiosity.

He discovered the image of Tiger at the age of eleven, and the sight of her, small and helpless and wholly reliant on Rao’s charity, fuelled Vaughan’s grief.

He shared in Rao’s earliest memory of the girl.