Free Necropath by Eric Brown Page B

Tiger.
     
    Then he considered what Jimmy Chandra had discovered, and what Weiss might be doing, and as ever he postponed the decision to terminate his existence. He had a sudden flash vision of the minds he’d read back in Canada, and the truth that experience had given him. Anything but that, he thought to himself. He could get lower, he knew from experience, much lower than this. He was in the situation he was in now through his own stupid mistakes. He should never have allowed Tiger to get close to him—he should never have allowed himself to get close to her.
     
    But it would never happen again. He told himself that he would allow no one to penetrate his defences from now on.
     
    Vaughan replaced the rhapsody on the table, lay down on his bed without undressing, and slept.
     
    * * * *
     

SEVEN

 
    THE PRIDE OF VANDERLAAN
     
     
    Vaughan stood on the windswept deck of the spaceport, his stomach knotted with apprehension as he waited for the freighter to complete its transfer from the void.
     
    It was all very well planning to board the ship in the comfortable safety of Nazruddin’s, but the fact of what he was about to do—the danger he might face aboard the ship—only became real as the time to act approached.
     
    As he watched, the Pride of Vanderlaan appeared briefly to the south of the ‘port, a grey ghost in the darkness, and then disappeared. For fifteen seconds it flickered like an image on ancient film, before it mastered the slippage and appeared finally, solid and substantial, in this reality. The ship engaged auxiliary burners and moved in slowly across the sea, a wasp-like shape garish with the silver and electric blue company colours.
     
    Across the ‘port the loudspeaker system relayed orders, the bored woman’s voice duplicated in Vaughan’s earpiece. “Okay... twenty-three hundred hours. This one’s ahead of schedule. Coming in due south, estimated docking: four minutes, Berth twelve prepare lines. Hauliers at the ready. Emergency services on stand-by. Class-3 freighter out of Verkerk’s World, Vega, terminates at the Station. It’s all yours, boys and girls. Out.” The drawl clicked off abruptly, the silence immediately replaced by the dull drone of the freighter’s engines.
     
    Vaughan stood beyond berth twelve, an oval crater of raised steel flanges. Fuel lines, coloured cables and leads, turned the berth into a snake pit. The freighter swung in over the superstructure of the terminal building, its stanchion legs braced akimbo, landing lights sequencing along its sleek flank. Behind lighted lozenges of viewscreens, crew-members could be seen chatting casually around tables or leaning against the rails and staring out with the relaxed postures of travellers at journey’s end.
     
    Around the berth, one by one, ‘port authority vehicles drew up: a fire truck, an ambulance, a tanker to siphon off unused fuel, and three or four other specialist juggernauts. Their personnel climbed down, stood around in bored cliques, chatting and mopping their faces in the relentlessly humid night. Vaughan could not help but read their thoughts, just as he would have overheard music played loud. Without concentrating, he caught only fragments of verbalised cognition from a nearby engineer: Last one this shift, thank Allah. Home... Parveen... Then non-verbal thoughts of security, warmth, sex, and accompanying mental images.
     
    His handset chimed. He accessed the call. “Jimmy?”
     
    Chandra’s smiling face looked up at him. “Mission accomplished.”
     
    “You took your time.”
     
    “Weiss was a bastard. He kicked up a fuss when I hauled his flier down and demanded to see his papers. Called the odds—you know these big shots. He nearly gave me an excuse to arrest him for abusive behaviour to a police officer. He’s in interrogation now and demanding a solicitor. He’s here for a good three, four hours. Hope that gives you long enough. Catch you later.” The screen blanked.
     
    The