Free Necropath by Eric Brown

the
stepped platform, raised above sea level, encircled the Station like
a plinth. Countless fires burned on the broad upper step, a
succession of roseate beacons diminishing into the distance. Each
pyre illuminated a knot of mourners, dark figures washed in the ruddy
glow of the flames. Vaughan counted fifty individual fires before
they merged into one long, unbroken line.
    The cage clanked to a halt and Vaughan hauled open
the gate. The sadhus filed past him, pushing their limbless
compatriot in his cart and murmuring an eerie, monotone chant as they
stepped out onto the holy ground. A crowd of hawkers and beggars
swarmed outside the cage. They allowed the holy men through without
hassle, then surged at Vaughan, thrusting everything they had to
offer—joss sticks, images of Buddha and Kali, holy relics, and
amputated stumps—into his face. He pushed through the crowd,
ignoring their cries, swatting away the more persistent hands that
tugged at his jacket.
    The fires extended in both directions, north and
south, each pyre located in a narrow strip cordoned off from the next
by a length of white tape. On the sheer, polycarbon façade of
the Station bold black numbers were painted on circular white
backgrounds. Vaughan stood before a massive numeral Sixty-Seven. For
a period of perhaps thirty seconds, disoriented by the unfamiliarity
of the place, drink, and chora, he searched his memory for the number
the funeral director had given him over his handset. It was something
in the forties. The ghats numbered from one to fifty were Buddhist,
he realised; from fifty-one to one hundred, Hindu. He set off at a
hurried walk along the crowded ghats. It was almost one o’clock.
    His progress was impeded by the passage of
mourners crossing his path from the many funeral parlours set into
the wall of the Station. On biers they carried their dead, swaddled
in crimson, white, or saffron winding sheets, to the waiting pyres
beside the sea. From the cremations already in progress came the
stench of petrol fumes and burning meat, and the ululating cries of
prayer. The heat from the fires swept the ghats like a desert wind.
    He paused before the great painted number
Forty-Five. The parlour beneath was deserted but for a tiny,
orange-wrapped figure laid out on a trestle table. Slowly, his steps
retarded as if he were walking through mud, Vaughan approached the
cut-price catafalque. The tightly wound material robbed Tiger’s
body of individuality, reduced her to just another anonymous
corpse-shape.
    An old woman in funeral whites appeared from the
shadows of the parlour and prattled at him in Thai.
    "I’m sorry..."
    She switched to English, "You here at last.
Come to collect..." She rattled off a Thai name of many
consonants. Vaughan was nonplussed for a few seconds. Tiger had told
him her name, years ago, but he had always known her as Tiger.
    "Take her." The woman waved meanly.
"Monk waiting." She scurried back into the parlour to
prepare the next corpse.
    Vaughan reached out, removed the cloth from
Tiger’s face, and gazed at the sleeping girl. Her expression
was composed, serene. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted in the
hint of a smile. Her dark skin held a waxy sheen, where fuel had been
injected to accelerate the combustion of the corpse. Leaving her face
uncovered, Vaughan bent forward and slipped his hands beneath
shoulders and thighs. She was so light that, when he lifted her, he
almost fell backwards. He turned with her in his arms and stared
across the deck. The funerary area between him and the sea was
deserted but for the Buddhist monk standing beside the stacked pyre.
    He was conscious of his isolation as he carried
Tiger’s body across to the pyre and laid her atop the stack of
wood-substitute. The monk surrounded the body with a barricade of the
material, obscuring the saffron sheet and her clean profile from
sight.
    Vaughan backed off as the monk pressed a touchpad
with his sandaled