Cosmopath - [Bengal Station 03] by Eric Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

and she had done this.
     
    The party had turned her into a very efficient killer, and as with so many aspects of her life at the moment she was in two minds about the fact.
     
    * * * *
     

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 illnesses, staff intent on their duties, but Sukara felt as if she were locked into a wrap-around holodrama that meant nothing to her.
     
    Dr Chang, a fat Chinese man in his sixties, had told Sukara his findings after examining Li. He had gone over the facts, and then again, accustomed to having to repeat himself to patients and loved ones in shock. Li had leukaemia, Dr Chang had told Sukara; but with the latest medical techniques available there was a seventy per cent chance of Li making a full recovery in a matter of weeks.
     
    Then Dr Chang had handed her on to an admin clerk, who had gone through a lot of facts and figures about the various treatments and their respective costs. What it boiled down to, though the clerk had not said this in so many words, was that the higher the grade of hospital care Sukara’s insurance cover could pay for, the greater Li’s chance of survival. Her daughter’s life would only be assured if she had the requisite funds to pay for her treatment.
     
    Numbed, Sukara had allowed the clerk to download all the literature into her handset, and told the woman that she’d contact the health authorities when she’d discussed things with her husband.
     
    The first thing she’d done on leaving the specialist’s office had been to contact Jeff, but she’d been able only to blurt a few words before breaking down and cutting the connection. Now she wished she hadn’t bothered him. He was working on a murder case, and for all she knew he might have been scanning when she called. She wondered if that might be why he hadn’t called back yet.
     
    Li tugged her hand. “Pet shop now?” she piped.
     
    Sukara smiled, fighting back tears. She nodded. “Just for a short while. We’ve got to pick Pham up from school in an hour.”
     
    “Soon I go to school like a big girl,” Li said with all the pride of a four-year-old.
     
    Sukara nodded, biting her lip to stop the sob that welled in her throat.
     
    They left the hospital and entered the vast cavernous space that advertised itself as Level Two’s recreation area, a square kilometre of sculptured parkland, lakes and forests. To the west, the entire outer bulkhead of the station had been removed to allow a free circulation of air and sunlight - except that, with the monsoon late this year, the air here was as cloying and sultry as a sauna-bath.
     
    Next to the hospital was an arcade of kiosks and shops. Li dragged Sukara to her favourite: a tacky emporium selling all manner of furry creatures, and some not so furry, from the many colony worlds of the Expansion. Li had badgered her parents to be allowed an alien pet, but Jeff was having none of it.
     
    Sukara agreed. She didn’t agree with keeping Terran animals, even cats and dogs, and the latest fad for extraterrestrial pets she considered sick.
     
    Li squealed with delight and ran off down the aisle, pressing her nose up against the glass enclosure, which housed, Sukara read, a Merk from Sigma Draconis IX. Li laughed and pointed at the creature, a snowball with six legs and four eye-stalks. She moved on to the next animal, and the next, and Sukara stared down at a gallery of weird and improbable creatures. She wondered how they felt, captured and ferried across the light years to end up in the home of some