collection in some upmarket emporium, priced beyond his reach? There were, he decided, a hundred possibilities, all of which were futile to contemplate. He would simply have to wait and see where the receiver led him.
He watched the screen count down, the arrow shift fractionally as the road took a slight bend. It was pointing directly at the skyscrapers of the city centre.
7 kilometres, 300metres, and counting down.
The Indian driver tried to engage him in small talk. Was this his first time in India? Was he here on important business? Bennett pointedly ignored him, watching the crowds stream by outside, and soon the Indian gave up.
4 kilometres, 600metres, and counting down.
Soon, the fact of the human colony on Homefall would be known to the Expansion. Then would begin the opening up of the planet dreaded by the Elders of the Church of Phobos and Deimos. He considered the media coverage of the event, the story of the discovery of a lost colony on the Rim.
2 kilometres, 100 metres.
They were passing through streets lined with old Victorian buildings, which soon gave way to more modern structures, ugly concrete office blocks, then the sleek, soaring shapes of modern polycarbon architecture.
1 kilometre, 200 metres.
But now the arrow was turning to the left, and the counter was rising. They were moving further away from the softscreen. Bennett leaned forward. “Left here…”
At the next intersection the car turned and joined a solid flow of traffic heading down a wide, palm-fringed boulevard. The receiver read 0 kilometres, 900 metres, and began rising again.
“Stop! Anywhere around here.”
The driver pulled into the side of the road, and Bennett paid the fare and climbed out. After the air- conditioned interior of the car, the humid air enveloped him in a viscous embrace. He unzipped the jacket of his flight-suit and glanced down at the receiver. He was 960 metres from the softscreen, and the arrow was indicating ten o’clock. He took a street at right angles to the boulevard, past a parade of plush shops lining the ground floor of a tall polycarbon skyscraper.
The counter fell with his every stride. The arrow indicated eleven o’clock—he was heading in the approximate direction of the screen. He moved through crowds of well-dressed shoppers, a multi-national mix of racial types, predominantly Indian and European, and tried not to make his glances at the receiver that obvious. His curiosity as to where he might find the softscreen was almost unbearable.
He was one hundred metres away when he came to a wide road that crossed the street at a sharp angle, and the arrow moved back to ten o’clock. Bennett turned left and watched the counter count down: 89, and, seconds later, 80.
He hurried along a wide pavement lined with stallholders and food-vendors, their cries loud and incoherent. To his left was the fa c ade of an ancient building, to his right the stalls of frying food, stacked fruit and vegetables set up in the gutter. He glanced at the screen: 25metres.
When he judged that he had walked that distance, he looked down at the screen again. The arrow had turned to nine o’clock, pointing towards the monstrous Victorian building to his left, and the counter read 10 metres. He turned and stared up at the imposing stone fa c ade. A flight of steps rose to the sliding glass doors, above which ran the legend: calcutta police headquarters.
He stood and stared up at the building, buffeted by impatient passers-by, and wondered how to proceed. Nearby was a chai stall, a wooden table covered by a makeshift carbon-fibre awning. He ducked under the cover, sat down on a rickety wooden chair and ordered a chai.
He sipped a glass of the sweet milky tea and considered his options. The softscreen could be inside the police building for a number of reasons: it could be stolen goods, or lost property, or the possession of someone who had it adorning the wall of his office. How best to find out? There was one obvious course of action.
He finished the chai, crossed the pavement and climbed the steps into the police headquarters. He was gratified to see that he was not the only civilian in there: the corridors seemed to be home from home to half the city, squatting on their haunches and looking doleful. He glanced at the screen. Two arrows had appeared: the main one read 3 metres and indicated two o’clock, and the new arrow in the corner of the screen was pointing straight ahead to the words: 6metres, up. So the softscreen was located six metres above him and then three metres in the direction of two o’clock.
He noticed a flight of stairs to his right. Civilians seemed to be using them, so he joined the procession and climbed the steps. When he came to the first floor and glanced down at the screen, only one arrow showed. It indicated three o’clock, and below it 5 metres.
He turned right and walked along the corridor. Offices opened off the corridor, each one bearing a sign projecting from the wall at right angles to the open entrance. The signs were printed with two legends, one in Hindi and the other in English.
He came to an office beneath a sign saying: security. He looked at the screen. It was pointing into the office and reading 2 metres.
A small man in a khaki uniform with sergeant’s stripes sat at a desk behind a com-screen. What now? Before Bennett could think, much less move from the open doorway, the sergeant looked up and saw him. “Yes?” he rapped in English. “How can I help you?”
Bennett slipped the receiver into his pocket, took a breath and entered the room. “I’d like to report the theft of a softscreen,” he said.
The sergeant stared at him. “This is not the correct office to be reporting stolen property.” Then he blinked. “What did you say has been stolen?”
“A softscreen, the recording of a mountain expedition—”
“Please describe the softscreen.”
“Well…” Bennett gestured. “It’s just an old softscreen, showing scenes of an expedition through mountainous territory.”
The sergeant stood. “Please stay here. I’ll be one moment only.” He moved around the desk and left the office.
Bennett slipped the receiver from his pocket. The screen indicated that the softscreen was located directly before him, and less than a metre away.
It was in the sergeant’s desk, then.
He considered looking through the desk while the sergeant was away. But if he was caught… No, better to wait, as instructed.
Two minutes later the sergeant returned and took his seat behind the desk. “If you would care to wait one moment, please. There is someone who would like to see you.”
Bennett nodded and sat back in his chair, confused by this turn of events. The softscreen, which he had travelled from the Rim to find, was less than one metre from him, and he was absolutely powerless to do anything about it.
He wondered who, in Calcutta, might wish to meet him.
20
Rana Rao thought that there were three types of pain. The first was the dull pain of dying, when the injury was so severe that the body shut down and anaesthetised the senses. The second was the sharp pain of recovery, when you often wished that you had died. The third type of pain was the pain of betrayal, and perhaps that was the most agonising of all. She had experienced all three types of pain, from the second Klien fired at her all the way through to being discharged from hospital.
She’d lost consciousness soon after she was shot, then came awake—disoriented and confused—some unknown time later in a private hospital room, abstracted from sensation by sedatives and analgesics. At that first stirring of consciousness, at some lonely time in the dark early hours, she was ridiculously concerned about only one thing. She had never been vain about her appearance, but now she tried to reach up and touch her face. Her arms seemed to be tied down—no, not tied down, but restricted by tubes and catheters, their plastic loops and lengths
