Free Necropath by Eric Brown Page A

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 foot, and the pyre ignited with a roar like a jet engine. The heat beat Vaughan further back and he stood with his forearm protecting his face, squinting to see the dark outline of the body in the orange heart of the leaping flames as the monk intoned a monotonous chant. Vaughan sat cross-legged, hung his head, and closed his eyes.
     
    Seconds later he became aware of sad mind-emanations. He opened his eyes. Gathered around the pyre were perhaps ten young boys and girls, quietly watching Tiger’s body burn in the raging flames.
     
    Dr. Rao, Vaughan noted, was not present. As if he’d really expected the rapacious doctor to pay his last respects...
     
    From time to time the monk added fuel, and the pyre exploded as if in anger. The sound of the flames, the cracking and popping of bones, lulled Vaughan to the edge of sleep.
     
    He awoke suddenly, jerking upright, disoriented for a second. He was the last mourner at this funeral: the children had departed. To the east, the sky was gradually lightening: it was almost dawn. Before him, the monk was sweeping the remains of the pyre into the sea with serene, measured strokes of his broom. Only a dark, oval stain remained on the deck to mark the position of Tiger’s pyre.
     
    Vaughan climbed uneasily to his feet, hung-over, his head throbbing. The monk called to him in Thai, waved at him not to leave. The old man hurried over to Vaughan and pressed something into his palm, patting Vaughan’s fingers shut around the gift like a magnanimous uncle. Vaughan watched the monk scurry across to the funeral parlour, and only when the holy man passed from sight did he open his hand.
     
    A small vial, containing a portion of Tiger’s ashes...
     
    Vaughan moved towards the edge of the ghats and climbed down the deep steps until he was standing before the slow swell of the ocean.
     
    He unscrewed the lid, then scattered the grey ashes into the sea. When it was empty, he tossed the vial in after them. He stood and watched the ashes turn the colour of the brine and disappear, and then he climbed the steps and crossed to the upchute.
     
    He rose to the fourth level and walked the rest of the way to his apartment. Ten minutes later he opened the door, closed it behind him, and locked out the world. 
     
    He pushed his armchair into position before the window that comprised the entire out-facing wall, then slumped into the chair and stared out at the two-tone view, the blue of the sea and the lighter blue of the dawn sky.
     
    He reached out, and from the table took the bag of red powder, the rhapsody, that had killed Tiger. He opened the bag and stirred the contents with a finger. It would be so easy to take the drugs in a glass of beer and end it all, to go the way of