Free Cosmopath - [Bengal Station 03] by Eric Brown

to have gone without a mind-shield.
     
    Now was one of the times he wished he was equipped with the latest anti-shield viruses. He’d approached Lin just last month, requesting she at least think about investing in the programs. She’d reminded him that they were illegal, and that she wasn’t prepared to stump up the hefty fines if her agency was discovered to be using the viruses. Vaughan had decided not to argue.
     
    He stepped over the threshold and behind him the door hissed shut, leaving him alone with the billionaire voidship tycoon.
     
    On the way to the port he’d accessed all the information on the tycoon available to the agency’s com program, which was precious little. Chandrasakar was a notoriously private person who kept a low profile. He was also one of the richest men in the Expansion and something of a philanthropist, subsidising hospitals and children’s homes on Earth and on the many colony worlds under his financial aegis.
     
    Vaughan had never seen an image of the tycoon, and he was surprised by what he saw now. Perhaps he’d been expecting someone who in the flesh might be a match for all his mercantile achievement, more of a film star than a captain of industry: someone tall and thrusting, endowed with the armour of arrogance that had earned him his current eminent position.
     
    The opposite was true. Chandrasakar was short, rubicund, and seemingly perpetually cheerful. He had a full head of oiled hair and wore an old-fashioned black suit, opened to accommodate the thrust of his ample belly.
     
    He moved nimbly around a desk, hand extended to take Vaughan’s.
     
    “It’s good to meet you at last. Dr Rao has told me much about you.”
     
    “I...” Vaughan hesitated, wondering whether what he was about to say would be considered undiplomatic. “I must say that I’m surprised you know the good doctor.”
     
    Chandrasakar laughed as he made his way over to a well-stocked bar. “The truth to tell, Rao and I were schoolboys together over sixty years ago. Blue Mountain, isn’t it?”
     
    Vaughan smiled his acceptance, wondering what else the tycoon might know about him.
     
    “We’ve kept in contact ever since. Rao, for all his scheming, has a veritable heart of gold. There have been times when Rao has proved, shall we say, a useful contact.”
     
    “Such as now?” Vaughan suggested.
     
    Chandrasakar gestured towards a semicircle of sofas positioned before the delta viewscreen overlooking the sloping nose of the starship. Vaughan sat, nursing his beer.
     
    Chandrasakar sat down opposite, legs apart, so that the globe of his belly was ensconced upon his lap. “Dr Rao mentioned that you were the best telepath working on the Station.”
     
    “Dr Rao flatters me.”
     
    “He also mentioned your current... situation.”
     
    Vaughan smiled without humour. “Rao gets his nose into everything.”
     
    “I calculate that the cost of your daughter’s treatment and aftercare should total in the region of a quarter of a million dollars. I hope you don’t mind my observing that your current insurance might not cover such an expense, and that even a telepath of your renown might be working for a long time in order to meet the shortfall.”
     
    Vaughan said what he was thinking. “Rao said that you could help me. He also said that whatever you wanted would get me off the Station.”
     
    “Ah, yes, my people apprised me of yesterday’s contretemps. You’re not the first telepath to be targeted. You might be pleased to know that I have the best people working on the case.”
     
    Vaughan nodded. “How can I help you, Mr Chandrasakar?”
     
    “Please, call me Rabindranath.”
     
    Despite his innate distrust of both those in power and those with wealth - which often amounted to the same thing - Vaughan found it hard to dislike the tycoon. He wished, though, that he could have read what the man was thinking.
     
    Chandrasakar sat back on the sofa with a little body-hop that left