and then abandoned her to her own devices.
Perhaps she could have tolerated the apathy of her nanny if her mother and father had shown her any affection. They were distant, monarchic figures she saw briefly—perhaps once a week. Her father was something to do with space exploration, and was often away in the colonies. He was like a stranger to her, and when he did return from the stars and pick her up and play with her briefly and insist she call him by his name, the forced and artificial quality of his affection pointed up the total lack of it the rest of the time. As for her mother… She had hated her mother even more, because there was no excuse for her lack of love. She was always somewhere in the house, arranging parties or working on this or that committee matter. She seemed to go out of her way to ignore Rana. She was not actively cruel—Rana had no stories of sadistic torture or punishment—but in a way her lack of connection was crueller still.
She had known at ten that she could not continue this way of life, but an alternative seemed impossible. She lost herself in books and holodramas, but these were temporary respites from a way of life she wanted to escape totally.
She had the idea one day when, driven by the family chauffeur to school, she had seen a gaggle of street- kids, scruffy tousle-haired urchins, playing kabbadi on the pavement. When eliminated from the contest they sat watching the game, arms about each other with unforced affection, laughing. They had nothing, she realised, and yet they had everything that she did not.
Two days later she joined them on the streets, having discarded her new clothes for a patched, thin dress belonging to her nanny’s daughter and rubbed soil into her face and hair. They had asked her name, and rather than say that she was Sita Mackendrick, daughter of the millionaire owner of the Mackendrick Foundation, she had made up a name on the spur of the moment: Rana Rao.
They had been suspicious of her, of course, wary of her precise way with words and her command of English, her fair skin that came as a result of having an American father, and the first few days had been hard. She had had to face taunts and jibes about her prissy manners and fastidiousness when it came to eating whatever scraps the others brought back, but she had found even in their laughing criticism a vital contact she had never known before. And in time, when they came to trust her and rely on her quick wits and even quicker tongue, they had shown friendship that made her weep with the joy of belonging.
She knew she had found true friends when, after perhaps a week of living in a derelict factory, the kids made her stay behind one day rather than join them begging on the streets. They had showed her a pix of herself—a prim, privileged self she hardly recognised—and said that police patrols were looking for her. They even moved themselves to another, distant part of the city for a month, until the search abated. Life was difficult: she often went hungry and was sometimes cold, and the ground made a hard and uncomfortable bed. But she became accustomed to hardship in time, and it was a small price to pay for the constant companionship of her new family.
One day, begging on the streets, she had caught sight of her mother through the window of an expensive restaurant, and this vision of a rich, sophisticated woman inhabiting another world had made her realise how right she had been to get away.
Now, Rana sat up, dislodging Vandita, and stared out into the darkness. That day her mother had been with another man, not her husband. The man had seemed to be comforting her. Her mother had been weeping, and he had reached out and touched her hand.
The man, Rana thought now, looked very much like the computer-generated image of the killer from Madrigal—but then so did many other handsome, dark-haired Westerners. She knew that the similarity in this case had to be a coincidence. She lay back and closed her eyes.
She had lived with the street-kids for four years—the last year spent under this very bridge—until begging for food became more difficult: people were reluctant to give money to older children, who they thought should be working for a living. Some of her friends had drifted into prostitution, but Rana had seen how abused these kids were, how their pimps took most of their money and their customers beat them.
One day Rana had read an advertisement requesting students to sit a police academy examination. Thinking only of the rupees she might one day earn, Rana had bought forged high-school certificates and enrolled. To her amazement she had passed the examination, and one year later began working as Calcutta’s only Child Welfare officer. For eight years she had worked to improve the conditions of the kids who made the streets their home, give them skills, in some cases professions, so that when they reached puberty they might find other means than prostitution to earn a wage.
Rana lay on the mattress beside Vandita. She was ten again, and living on the streets… She wondered where those kids were now, her friends for brief months or years. They had all grown up and drifted apart, in adulthood. She considered these children her friends, now.
Rana smiled to herself and wondered what some casual observer might make of the tableau, as she drifted to sleep beside Vandita and the other kids in the fading glow of the brazier.
11
Bennett and Ten Lee loaded the transporter with provisions and scientific equipment, Mackendrick supervising. He seemed to have gained strength since landfall, after the rigours of suspension. He was moving more easily, restored to his old ebullient self, as if looking forward to the exploration of Penumbra.
Bennett packed the containers of food on the flat-bed. Ten Lee fastened the inflatable dome with polycarbon ties and Mackendrick checked that the water canisters were full. At last they stood beside the cab of the vehicle, preparatory to driving from the Cobra’s hold. Bennett let out a breath; the gravity of Penumbra was slightly higher than on Earth, and the effort of loading the transporter had tired him. He felt the tug of the planet’s gravity pull on his entrails, making his limbs heavy and sluggish.
“We’ll need these as a precaution,” Mackendrick said, handing out facial masks. “The air’s breathable, but we won’t know about any possible dangerous microorganisms until the tests come in.”
Bennett took his mask and slipped it over his nose and mouth, feeling it seal itself to his skin like something alive. Mackendrick and Ten Lee did likewise.
Mackendrick opened a container on the side of the truck and passed a short, bulky rifle to Bennett. “Pulsers, for our protection.” His voice was muffled by the mask.
Ten Lee regarded Mackendrick, declining to take the rifle he held towards her. “Why do we need weapons?”
Mackendrick sighed. “We don’t know what’s out there, Ten. It’s merely a precaution.”
She shook her head, her eyes watching Mackendrick above her mask. “I could not bring myself to kill.”
Bennett said, “They’re pulsers, Ten. You can turn down the charge to stun. Look.” He adjusted the slide on his own weapon.
Her eyes pulled into a dubious frown, Ten Lee took the rifle from Mackendrick and pushed the slide down to its lowest setting.
“We’ll take it in turns to drive,” Mackendrick said. “Anybody for first shift?”
Bennett volunteered and climbed into the driving seat. Mackendrick sat beside him, plugging a com-board into the console on the dash. On a command from Mackendrick, the hatch of the cargo hold slowly lowered, forming a ramp.
A plain of purple grass stretched away from the ship, bejewelled with the result of the storm: diadems of captured rain-water scintillated in the half-light of Tenebrae, the gas giant, turning the grass into a shimmering, sequinned haze.
Bennett fired the engine and edged the vehicle forward, down the ramp and across the purple plain. The atmosphere of Penumbra invaded the cab, increasing the temperature with its cloying, sticky humidity.
The mountains on either side came into view, and Bennett made out the monstrous bulk of Tenebrae. It had risen since his first glimpse of it at landfall, and he had to tip his head back to stare through the clear roof of the transporter at the great bulging underbelly of the giant. There was something almost impossible about its vastness, like an optical illusion the brain knows to be a fact and yet cannot visually accommodate.
Mackendrick tapped the com-board with a gnarled finger. “This is our present position, this the location of the
