Necropath (26 page)

He turned off the coast road and headed inland, through farmland at first, and then through undulating, uncultivated plains. The silence persisted. The nearest centres of population, villages located in the foothills of the central range, were three hundred kilometres distant. At one point the silence became so strange an experience that he slipped the case from his jacket and inserted the pin into his skull console, wanting to relish the silence all the more by contrasting it to any noise he might pick up.

In scan-mode, he read occasional signals in the vast and empty distance—the low hum of sleeping minds, the occupants of sequestered farmhouses. They were so distant that he perceived no mental images, just faint signatures. He drove through the cold, dark night, warmed by the heating in the roadster, half-listening to these slumbering minds as a driver half-listens to the radio, played low. He wondered if he found the evidence of these minds reassuring, in contrast to the emptiness of the northern mountains and what they might contain.

He looked ahead, considered the events that might occur in the hours to come.

He told himself that it was wrong to classify as evil the deeds done by the creatures in the Geiger Caves—they, after all, were merely fulfilling the demands of the biological imperative to survive. Even the humans in proximity to the troglodyte creatures, slaves to the promise of eternal euphoria, no doubt had little control over their actions. It was the Church hierarchy, expediting the transfer of the aliens to Earth, whose actions were reprehensible. And even then he warned himself against finding easy solutions to something he did not yet fully understand. Perhaps even people like Weiss, Dolores Yandoah, and Jenson believed that they were delivering the victims of the creatures to so me ultimate oneness with the Godhead.

He thought back to the euphoria he’d experienced at the Holosseum, and compared it to the experience he had had with the rhapsody he had taken in his apartment after the service. Then, he had achieved a dulled, torpid state, without any of the euphoria. He considered what Essex had said about the drug being effective only in a twenty-Kilometre radius of the mountains—in proximity, in other words, to the creatures that issued the summons. Did that mean that, in the Holosseum, he had been close to one of the aliens transported to Earth? But why, then, had he not experienced the calling, the second stage of the effect described by Essex, that followed on from the euphoria?

He wondered if it was something to do with the strength of the drug administered at the service. Perhaps the drug given out then had been a sampler, designed to hook the congregation into coming back for more, and passing on the word of the thrill of communion to others. Later, when the ranks of believers had swelled, the dose would be increased, the congregation would experience the calling, and the alien would feed upon the faithful.

The creatures had fed on Verkerk’s World, and now they were about to feed on Earth. Vaughan wondered how many of the things had been smuggled off-planet.

Essex said that the calling had about a week to run. The next ship left in two days, with another two days of flight time before they reached Earth. That would leave approximately three days in which to locate the aliens on the Station, and wherever else they might be, and eradicate the danger they posed.

* * * *

He had discussed tactics with Chandra for the first hour of the journey. They would approach the Geiger Caves and attempt to film, at a distance, any activity that might be taking place. They had decided to err on the side of caution. Better to come away with nothing than suffer Kuivert’s probable fate. They had come prepared. They had a vid-camera in the back of the car, and weapons, thermal clothing, and tents should they be caught out in the open come nightfall.

Vaughan drove on, his mind active with speculation, and before he knew it the short, dark night was at an end.

Dawn arrived with the rapidity of an activated holo-set. The period of half-light seemed to last only seconds, and then the rising sun beamed up from behind the mountain range like the rays of a searchlight. The land was revealed as an idyllic panorama etched in every shade of silver, from the dull pewter of the metalled road to blinding white magnesium of the snow-capped mountains.

He pulled off the road. Chandra, still sleeping, shifted and muttered at the discontinued lullaby thrumming of tyres on tarmac. Vaughan eased himself from the driver’s seat and closed the door quietly behind him. The cold clamped itself around him, bracing and bone-gripping. He took a deep, invigorating breath, dispelling the tiredness that had built up over the hours and leaving him clearheaded and alert. He walked away from the car along the side of the narrow road. There was not the slightest sign of human presence. He was surprised to discover, when he raised a hand to his console, that his augmentation-pin was still jacked in. He stood in the middle of the road and turned in a full circle, taking in the undulating hills, sparkling in the frost; the distant, flat line of the coastal plain; and, in the opposite direction, the rearing ramparts of the northern mountains. He turned and scanned, concentrating on picking up the slightest human signal out there, however weak. He had never in his life had to scan with such diligence; usually, in scan-mode, he could do nothing to keep the minds from encroaching. Now there was nothing out there, no mind-hum or individual signatures, nothing but absolute silence.

He stood in the middle of the road with his arms raised to heaven as if in supplication. The silence of the night, his first experience of this kind of mind-silence, had hardly prepared him: not for years had he experienced such peace, such a profound and ringing silence. It was amazing to be alone with one’s own thoughts, to have the fragmented identities, the angst-ridden detritus from the minds of a million souls, the scraps of psychoses, paranoia, and neuroses, banished from his sensorium. Once tasted, the silence would haunt him forever with its promise of peace. Now he knew that such cerebral relief was possible, he told himself that he could go on, could endure the agony of being a telepath, just so long as he could return from time to time to the silence.

The cold drove him back to the car. He slipped into the driver’s seat and pulled the map from inside his jacket, opening it out across the steering wheel. He judged that they were less than a hundred kilometres from where the road passed closest to the Geiger Caves. From that point, it was a hike of another twenty kilometres through the foothills to reach the source of the call.

He returned the map to his pocket. Beside him, Chandra stirred again. It was strange to have experienced such profound mind-silence and yet be in the presence of another human being. He thanked himself for insisting that Chandra should take Weiss’s mind-shield back at police headquarters.

He was about to start the roadster and set off when a thought occurred to him. Chandra was fast asleep, snoring gently. If he reached into Chandra’s jacket pocket, removed the shield, and carried it the requisite distance from the car. Chandra’s mind would be revealed to him in blazing clarity, his every memory, his every hidden secret.

Chandra’s manner since arriving on Verkerk’s World, his reserve and attitude of suspicion, quite apart from the fact that he was careful never to be without his shield, suggested to Vaughan that he was hiding something.

As he contemplated the sleeping Chandra, he wondered how much of his reluctance to scan him was because he did not want to know what Chandra really thought of him. There had been times, over the past few days, when Vaughan had made cynical jibes at Chandra’s expense, and Chandra had regarded him with an expression little short of loathing, and quite justifiably so. Vaughan could do without a mindful of Chandra’s dislike.

He started the roadster and drove on.

The sun climbed, turning the frost to dazzling quicksilver on the surrounding meadowland. The road wound into the foothills, and the rearing mountains filled the width of the windscreen with a range of blue-grey flanks and snow-covered summits.

Chandra woke an hour later, stretched and yawned. “Oh, the mountains. How far have we come?”

“Five, six hundred kilometres.”

“You should have woken me, Jeff. Stop and I’ll drive.”

“Relax. We’re almost there. You could pass me a coffee, though.”

“Coffee coming up.” He passed Vaughan a steaming bulb of black coffee and sandwiches of the tasteless, rubbery cheese popular on Verkerk’s World.

Thirty minutes later he pulled off the road and parked the car beneath a concealing stand of fir trees. He opened out the map and indicated the route to Chandra. “It’s by foot from here. I reckon around eighteen, twenty kay.”

“You sure you don’t want a rest?”

He was feeling wide awake, the combination of caffeine and the mind-silence invigorating him. “We’ll stop and rest when the heat gets too much. Let’s get going.”

Vaughan opened the boot of the car and broke out the supplies: two backpacks, one containing a tent and insulated clothing, the other food and water. He took the pistols from their case—two automatics—and passed one to Chandra. He strapped his own pistol beneath his jacket, ensuring he could reach it without hindrance.

They drank a bottle of water, consulted the map, and then set off up a long, wide valley.

It was mid-morning and the heat increased by the minute, though the ground underfoot was still hard with frost. All around, Vaughan saw the unopened buds of a thousand flowers. He imagined the green meadow in an hour or two, when the sun climbed and the blooms decided to open.

The gradient increased; the last few hundred metres before they reached the head of the valley were littered with the rocky deposits of the glacier that had torn through the land millennia ago. They walked between boulders, and then the rocks became so closely packed that they were forced to climb them, jumping from boulder to boulder. Soon they reached the opening to a side valley, this one narrower and steeper than the last.

Vaughan stopped and unfolded the map. “This is the one. And when we get to the top,” he indicated the second valley, “there should be a trail through the rocks for a couple of thousand metres.”

He turned and surveyed the terrain they had crossed so far. The valley fell away steeply, a broad green sweep between two fingers of rock. In the distance, beside the twisting course of the road, was the stand of tiny fir trees behind which their roadster was hidden. Beyond the road and the vast, spreading expanse of the plain, the coastline was obscured by a morning mist that stretched the entire length of the horizon.

Chandra was shaking his head. “I’ve never been anywhere like it, Jeff. To someone brought up on the Station... you can’t imagine. The silence, the openness—it feels almost threatening.” He took a deep breath of the clean, cold air, turning three hundred and sixty degrees in a kind of disbelieving wonder. “Not a soul in sight for kilometres. Wait till I tell Sumita about this.”

Vaughan smiled to himself, oddly pleased by Chandra’s childish exhibition of wonder. He closed his eyes and scanned. Silence filled his mind, a void in which the only thoughts in his head were his own.

Down in the valley, the flowers were opening. The comprehensive transformation, from the uniform green of the meadow to the multi-coloured tapestry of the writhing blooms, was so sudden that it reminded Vaughan of something programmed—like a colour sweep on a computer screen. A swarm of insects buzzed over the land, a million individual pixels of iridescence scintillating in the light of the sun.

From behind them, long-beaked birds darted down the valley, heading for the bounty of pollen on offer. Vaughan was reminded of the scene reproduced at the Holosseum.

They set off again, heading up the narrow valley. The sun was almost directly overhead now and the increased temperature, combined with the steeper gradient, made for an arduous two-hour climb. They persisted doggedly, no longer exchanging talk. Vaughan was aware that years of inactivity were taking their toll on tired legs and lungs. They stopped frequently to rest and drink water. The head of the valley, a steep cutting in silhouette against the snow-covered mountains beyond, seemed to remain just as distant no matter how far they walked. He spurred himself on with the incentive of a long, well-earned rest when they reached the cutting.

Chandra forged ahead, reached the pass, and sat against a rock. Vaughan dropped his pack unceremoniously, sat and collapsed against it, hanging his head back and gulping in the mountain air. He pulled out a water bottle and chugged the cold liquid.