Cosmopath by Eric Brown

ONE
    THE KORTH ASSASSIN
    Vaughan
was three days into a routine murder investigation when the assassin
came after him with a pulse-gun.
    The
monsoon rains were late this year and it was another sultry day on
Bengal Station. Soon the seasonal downpour would drop unannounced
from the heavens, deluging the top level and sluicing away the
accumulated filth of months. Until then the heat would remain
intolerable and the mood of the citizens increasingly fraught. The
humidity incubated anger, and hair-trigger tempers tripped at the
slightest provocation. Vaughan had been working for the Kapinsky
Agency long enough to know that the crime rate spiked in the weeks
leading up to the first rains. It was never his favourite time of
year.
    He
sat at a table on the terrace of the Kit-Kat Bar overlooking Silom
Road, a glass of ice-cold Blue Mountain beer before him. He tapped
the keys of the handset on his left wrist, enabling his tele-ability,
and instantly the minds of those around him flared into life.
    Four
days ago a high-class prostitute had been stabbed to death in an
alley off Silom Road. The death of another working girl would have
passed unnoticed, and uninvestigated, had she not been the favourite
of someone high up in the government. The Kapinsky Agency had been
called in to bring the killer to justice, and Lin had dropped the
case in Vaughan’s lap.
    The
other telepaths in the agency had ragged him about the job, but Lin
had known what she was doing. Six years ago Vaughan’s wife
Sukara had left Thailand, where she had been a working girl in a
Bangkok brothel, and now she taught English to the girls who worked
the escort agencies around Silom Road. She had known the murdered
woman, and put Vaughan into contact with the woman’s friends
who might otherwise have been suspicious of an official investigator.
    He’d
talked to the women, and scanned them, but come up with nothing.
    Now
he scanned at random, on the off chance that he might happen upon
some stray thought, conscious or subconscious, that might lead him in
the right direction. He flitted through minds close by, dipping for
memories of the dead woman. She was known in the bar, but no one
working or drinking here today knew anything about her death. The
escort agency had its base next door, in the poly-carbon high-rise
that soared like a scimitar into the cloudless blue sky. Vaughan
moved through the minds of the women there, quickly, not wanting to
mire himself in the short-term memories of working prostitutes: some
had known the murder victim, and many were grieving. In the penthouse
suite, Vaughan came across the pulsing collective signature of an
orgy: four respected Indian politicians and a dozen Thai and Indian
women were working up a sweat in the air-conditioned, mattress-lined
room reserved for gold-chip customers. One of the men had been the
dead girl’s patron, now sublimating his grief with the
energetic assistance of his next favourite.
    Vaughan
withdrew his probe, despite the first stirrings of arousal - or
perhaps because of them. These situations were common in his line of
work, and he felt like a voyeur.
    He
touched a control on his handset and mind-silence sealed over him. He
wondered if it were guilt that moved him to dial Sukara’s code.
    â€œJeff!â€

TWO
    IN TWO MINDS
    Parveen
Das shut down her softscreen and smiled at the three’ seminar
students. “Right. That’s it for today, and for the term.
Enjoy your holidays.â€

THREE
    COVER EVERY ANGLE
    Sukara
clutched Li’s hand and stepped from the elevator into the busy
foyer of the St Theresa Hospital, Level Two.
    The
little girl toddled alongside her, chattering away about puppy dogs
and kittens and grasping the certificate of bravery awarded her by
the medic. Sukara heard nothing, lagged in a layer of insulation that
numbed her to sensory impressions from the outside world. All around
her people came and went, citizens absorbed in their own