Xenopath, page 11
“Voice?”
It was stubborn. It spoke to her only when it wanted to, and never replied to her questions. She wanted to know more about it, see if it would agree to be good while it lived in her head.
She had a worrying thought. What if it wanted to be bad, put bad thoughts into her head, and made her do bad things?
But, she told herself, it had told her not to be frightened, that it would help her. And in the crashed spaceship, it had told her to get out...
She finished her dhal and took a long drink of water. She checked her money pouch and found that she had just fifty baht left, which was not a lot. It would buy her food for another three days, four if she had only one meal a day. The thing was, how did you find work on the upper levels? She hadn’t seen any kids working anywhere up here, only boys and girls begging. What would she do when her money ran out? She didn’t want to beg, and she didn’t want to go back to Mr Prakesh’s factory.
She thought of Abdul, who was nice. Perhaps her only option might be to live with him and the other kids on the starship?
The voice in her head said: No.
“Voice?” she said, sitting upright. “Are you there? Why don’t you want me to go back to the ship?”
The silence stretched. Just when Pham thought Voice was not going to reply, it said: It is not a good place for you.
“But why?”
Silence.
“Voice, what are you?” she asked. “You’re a bad soul, right? The man who was killed, you’re his bad soul. But... but you won’t make me bad, will you?”
Maddeningly, Voice did not respond.
“You can live in my head until you’ve earned the right to move on, ah-cha?”
This time, after a delay of a few seconds, Voice replied: Do not be frightened. I am not a bad soul. I wish you no harm. In time I will move on. Before that, I will try to help you.
“You will? But how can you help me?”
Listen to me. From time to time I will speak. Then, do as I say. The rest of the time I will be silent.
Pham nodded. “Ah-cha,” she whispered. “Voice,” she said after a while, “what is your name?”
Voice said: Call me Khar.
She nodded. “Khar,” she said. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Pham.”
Khar was silent for five minutes, then said: Would you like to see the zoo on Level Three?
“I didn’t even know there was a zoo.”
I think you will like it there.
“I don’t know the way—”
I do. Just get up and walk from the park, and I will show you...
She did as she was told, leaving the park by the western exit and boarding a shuttle train for the southern edge. The odd thing was, Khar never said a word to her after she left the park. It was as if she knew how to get to the zoo without being told. She wondered if Khar could put thoughts, information, into her head.
She wondered if she should be frightened, but another odd thing was that she didn’t feel a bit scared. Perhaps Khar was controlling her fear, too?
If Khar wasn’t a bad soul, she wondered as she jumped from the train and hurried out into the street, then what was it?
The zoo was a massive complex that ran for a kilometre along the southern edge of the Station, with great viewscreens that overlooked the ocean. Pham paid five baht for a ticket and received a brochure telling her all about the zoo.
She read that the animals didn’t live in cages, but had whole compounds to themselves. And, she discovered, the zoo housed not only animals from Earth—like lions and tigers—but extraterrestrial animals from many of the colonies across the galaxy. They lived here for one year, and then they were returned to their planets and set free.
She wondered why Khar wanted to visit the zoo.
A wide boulevard ran between the vast viewscreens looking out over the ocean and the animals’ compounds. Pham strolled along the boulevard, stopping from time to time to stare down at the strange beasts grazing on odd-looking grasses. Some of the compounds were sealed, because the atmosphere inside was not like Earth’s, and these animals were even stranger than the others. She saw things like blue crabs the size of air-cars, and great orange creatures that rolled through a vast tank of blue water.
She walked on. She felt that Khar was moving her towards where it wanted to be.
At last she came to a compound that stretched back for what seemed like a kilometre, and was almost as wide. Tall blue grass glinted under the glare of an artificial sun, and the plain was dotted with twisted trees bearing big red flowers.
Then she saw the animals, and she had the strange feeling that she had seen them before somewhere. Which was impossible, because surely she would have remembered seeing creatures like these in books and on holo-vision.
Three big animals were grazing close to the glass canopy that arched over the compound. They had hides like elephants, but brown and wrinkled, and longer legs than elephants, and shorter, thicker trunks. Their eyes were big and blue, and set on either side of their big heads. From the sides of their mouths, several sharper tusks projected, and similar horns sprouted from above their eyes.
They looked fearsome, but at the same time friendly.
A recorded voice from a nearby speaker said that the animals were called Grayson’s Pachyderms, and came from the colony planet of Mallory, Eta Ophiuchi.
As she watched, two of the pachyderms wandered off, but the third looked up and seemed to stare directly at her. Slowly, it approached the canopy and stood perhaps three metres from where Pham leaned against the padded rail, looking down with wonder at the strange beast.
She felt suddenly sleepy. “Khar,” she said, “why did you want to...”
But she never finished the sentence. Her eyes fluttered shut, incredibly heavy, and though she fought against slipping into sleep, she felt herself going under.
Then she was awake, and amazingly she was still standing upright, and the pachyderm down below was moving off, its big feet plodding ponderously through the high blue grass.
“Khar?” she said. “What happened?”
Maddeningly, the thing in her head chose not to reply.
She watched the animals for a while longer, then wandered along the boulevard and stared in at the other alien exhibits.
The sun was going down over the ocean when she decided that she had seen enough for one day. She would return to the park, get something to eat and sleep on her bench—even though Abdul had said the park was not a safe place.
As she was leaving the zoo, Khar decided to speak to her.
Thank you, it said.
“Khar—what was so important about seeing those animals?”
It did not answer her question, but said instead: You have little money for food and other things. Listen to me when I speak.
It said no more. Pham boarded a train heading north for Ketsuwan, and ten minutes later alighted at the station beside the park.
Instead of entering the park—which is what she wanted to do—she found herself walking down a nearby street. Many stalls were set out here, selling food and trinkets and ornament for tourists. Pham elbowed her way through a crowd surrounding a small stall, and when she reached the front she saw a stick-thin Indian in a loincloth. He stood behind a small table, and had three cups placed upside-down before him. Under one of the cups was a small bronze model of Kali. He showed it to the audience, then clapped a cup over it and with lightning speed moved the cups around. Pham watched closely, sure that the figure of Kali was underneath the right-hand cup when the man finally brought them to rest.
A Thai boy beside Pham, who had laid a ten baht note on the table, now pointed at the right-hand cup.
Grinning and shrugging his shoulders as if in commiseration, the Indian lifted up the cup. Kali was not there. The Indian snatched the ten baht and lifted the cup on the left to reveal the bronze statuette.
The crowd laughed and the Thai boy skulked away.
The Indian beamed around at the watching crowd. “Ten baht—or even more! I’ll match it if you guess where Kali’s hiding! Come, do none of you trust your eyes?”
Khar said: Take the fifty baht note from your pouch and put it on the table. Do as I say.
Fifty baht, she thought.
Do it!
Hesitantly, wondering if she was acting wisely, she did as instructed. All around her the crowd laughed in derision.
The old Indian smiled. “Aha! The little girl is braver than the rest of you.”
“Or more foolish!” someone called out.
The Indian winked at her. “Watch closely, little one. If you guess where Kali is hidden, I will match your fifty baht!”
He dropped the central cup over Kali, then shuffled them around, slowly at first, then a little faster. Pham watched closely, her heart beating fast. She followed the cup under which she knew the figure was hidden.
Suddenly, the old man’s thin brown claws stopped their movement.
Pham smiled to herself. This was easy. The figure was under the cup to the left.
The Indian said, “Well, little one, are your young eyes faster than my old hands?”
She was about to point to the left-most cup—but Khar said: No! The central cup. The figure is beneath the central cup, Pham.
She hesitated, her finger reaching out. She was so sure that Kali was sitting under the cup to the left. The Indian smiled, his eyes twinkling with greed.
The central cup! Khar called in her head.
At the very last second, just as she was about to indicate the left-hand cup, she moved her finger and pointed to the cup in the middle.
The Indian’s expression turned to barely suppressed rage.
The crowd roared. “Lift the cup! Lift the cup!”
Grudgingly, with bad grace, the Indian snatched away the cup to real the figure of Kali.
“Give her the money!” someone called out.
The Indian muttered something in Hindi.
A chorus went up, “Give the girl her money!”
At last, with bad grace, the Indian slapped a fifty baht note next to Pham’s on the tabletop, and Pham, unable to meet his eyes, snatched the money and pushed her way back through the crowd amid much cheering.
She hurried towards Ketsuwan Park. “How did you know?” she asked Khar.
No response.
She tried again. “Khar, tell me. How did you know where Kali was? Did you read the Indian’s mind?”
At last it said: Do not worry yourself with that, Pham. Trust me. I will ensure that you come to no harm.
She entered the park and hurried towards her bench. A young Indian girl was sitting there, shoving barfi into her mouth. She smiled at Pham when she approached.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” the girl said. “I haven’t seen you before.”
Suddenly shy, Pham nodded. The Indian girl smiled. “Did you know that Raja, the stallholder by the eastern gate, gives away all the food he hasn’t sold by eight o’clock? If you’re quick, you’ll be able to eat for free tonight.”
“Ah-cha,” Pham said. “Thank you.”
She turned and hurried towards the eastern gate. She might have won fifty baht, but that didn’t mean she must miss the opportunity of free food. She had to think of the future, when she might need the money in an emergency.
She found the stallholder, and sure enough he was handing out plastic plates of puri and deep-fried chillies. Pham lined up and received a big portion.
She sat down beside the stall and began eating. The puri dripped with oil and the chilli peppers were good and hot.
As she ate, she thought about what had happened to her since arriving on the upper decks, and something occurred to her.
“Khar,” she said. “Why did the killer kill you?”
Because, Khar replied, he thought he could kill me...
Pham thought about that for a long time. It did make a kind of sense, she realised. The killer had killed the body of the man, but he hadn’t killed the man’s soul.
She wondered what would happen to her, if the killer succeeded in killing her. Where would her soul fly away to?
She tried to question Khar again, but he would not reply.
ELEVEN
LEVEL TWENTY
IN THE OLD days, even dosed up on chora, the din of mind-noise had been like an incessant migraine, and the thought of descending to levels where he would be surrounded on all sides by a clamorous press of humanity had not appealed.
Now Vaughan dropped through the levels with impunity, enveloped by total mind-silence. The knowledge that, at the tap of a few keys, he could access that mind-noise made the silence all the more wonderful.
From the dropchute station on Chandi Road he plummeted five levels, and then caught a crowded shuttle train west to the nearest dropchute station. It was impossible to drop from Level One right down to Level Twenty. For one thing, it had never been economically viable to build a ’chute accessing all levels, as few citizens had business on more than their immediate levels; for another, the Station had been built in stages, two or three levels at a time, and it had not always been expedient to extend existing ’chutes to the new levels. If citizens should wish to travel the Station from top to bottom, they had to do so in series of tortuous steps involving vertical dropchutes and horizontal shuttle trains.
Vaughan decided to check out the girl’s old workplace on Level Twenty first, and later have a look around Ketsuwan Park. It would make sense to check the park when there was more chance of finding the kid settling down for the night.
All he had to go on were the pix in his wallet and the mental image of her he had gleaned from Abdul’s mind. The latter, as it happened, was clearer than the pix. It was as if Vaughan had met her himself, seen her laughing and joking, climbing with the agility of a chimp through the abandoned rides of the amusement park. Abdul had been a little in awe of the precocious slave-kid from Level Twenty, not least because she had escaped her employer and set out on an adventure he would never have contemplated himself. Also, she had shown an intelligence, quick-wittedness, and confidence he had never come across before in a girl so young.
Vaughan felt as though he knew her already—and her resemblance in both character and appearance to Sukara’s sister, Tiger, amazed him. Having her in his head like this—a vicarious recollection, as it were—brought back memories at once painful and wonderful, for had it not been for Tiger he would never have met Sukara.
He left the shuttle on Level Five and dropped to Level Ten, taking the same ’chute he had used every day on his way back from the spaceport. Strap-hanging in a press of tired Indian factory workers, he considered his apartment on Level Two, and Sukara’s manifest joy at no longer being buried in the Level Ten coffin. The thought of bringing up a child down here had worried him for months: what had Rao said about Pham, that she had never in all of her seven years seen the light of day?
At least Li would have the opportunity of seeing the sun every day of her life.
At Level Ten, he made the short walk to the dropchute station and fell to Level Thirteen.
He had read that each level possessed its own unique character; its own identifiable atmosphere, much as land-based cities even within the same country varied in character and appearance. Certainly in his experience of the various levels he had visited and lived on, he knew this to be true. Levels One and Two were obviously affluent and, as a rule, less congested; Levels Three to Five were spacious but crowded, boasting parks and gardens created when the Station’s architects had assumed that the levels would rise no further. All these levels had about them a liberal, cosmopolitan air, an atmosphere of privilege, which manifested itself in the confident demeanour of the residents.
From Levels Five to Ten, the standard of living corresponded to the appearance of the various areas. For one thing, the space between floor and ceiling was a mere six metres, far less than that of the levels higher up. The tunnels were narrower too, forever thronged with a noisy, elbowing press of humanity, and the individual buildings more cramped. The lighting this far down was poorer: although the halogen bulbs in the ceiling were spaced at the compulsory five-metre intervals, they radiated a paler light than those on the upper levels. Vaughan suspected that some cut-price company had greased palms for the commission to light the lower levels, and had done so with third-rate materials.
He could only assume that the levels below Ten were even more impoverished, even more at the mercy of unscrupulous councils and maintenance departments: the citizens down here were, after all, by definition poor and therefore lacking in political influence.
He squeezed from the cramped dropchute cage in a press of surging humanity, carried along involuntarily before elbowing his way free of the flow and gaining his bearings. The tunnels were amazingly confined down here—a mere four metres from wall to wall. The air of claustrophobia was not helped by stallholders who had set up shop along the length of the main thoroughfare to the next dropchute station. Vaughan passed a mixture of Thai and Indian entrepreneurs selling everything from miracle cures to outdated artificial limbs, their microprocessors long since worn out so that the limbs were no more useful than wooden legs or arms.
As if the physical press of humanity was not daunting enough, the noise and stench was overpowering. Every stallholder yelled in a bid to out-do his neighbour, and the sickly sweet miasma of incense and dhoop filled the air, masking other, more noisome aromas: the waft of human excrement, sweat, and the gagging reek of bad meat peddled by illicit market traders.
Vaughan made the dropchute station five minutes later and stepped into the cage with relief.
He descended to Level Twenty, wondering what horrors of human endurance might greet him there. The cage itself, if a microcosm of the degradation below, was bad enough. A woman and three near-naked children were squatting in the corner; she had set up a gas-stove and was cooking puri on a griddle. While good sense told him that the cage could not be her home, he feared otherwise. Fellow travellers in the cage included a gaggle of holy men in loincloths and group of mendicants missing various limbs, returning home from a day’s begging on the rich upper levels.
