“I’m in contact with him. Well, technically I suppose I’m not—he’s light years away on a Rim planet. But I was in contact with him. I… I was given a device, a receiver, that would locate the softscreen.”
Rana shook her head, totally confused. “But why didn’t he use the receiver to locate the screen when it was originally stolen?”
“Because he didn’t have the receiver then. He’s only just found out about it. He sent me to Earth to find the screen and take it back to him. It’s vital that he gets it. Look, if you doubt who I am, contact the Mackendrick Foundation, here in Calcutta. They’ll confirm that I’m employed by Mackendrick, at least.”
“I believe you, Mr Bennett. Tell me, how is Mackendrick?”
He blinked. “You know him?”
“I… I met him when he was resident in Calcutta,” Rana dissembled.
Bennett gestured. “To be honest he’s very ill. He has only months to live. I need to get the softscreen back to him.”
Rana closed her eyes. She recalled her father’s voice, his smile as he played with her on the lawn of the mansion when she was five years old. She tried to assess her reaction to the fact that her father was dying. Shock, she supposed, even though she had not seen him in years, even though she could not claim to feel any degree of love for him, in the accepted sense of the word.
But he was her father, and he was dying.
She opened her eyes suddenly and stared at the pilot. “Why does he want the screen?”
How many times had she watched the softscreen unfold the dramatic story of three explorers on some far-flung alien world, as they trekked through blizzards into a high mountain range? She had found it entertaining as a child on the streets, a window on to an unimaginably cold and hostile other world.
Bennett gave her a shy smile. “Lieutenant, it’s a long and improbable story. To be honest, I don’t think you’d believe a word of it.”
“Tell me.”
“The recording was made by a man called Quineau, on a planet settled by the survivors of a crashed starship way outside the Expansion. The softscreen was… is...the only means by which anyone could find the way back to where he claimed he’d discovered a race of aliens known as the Ancients. After returning from the expedition, Quineau left the planet to tell the Expansion of the colony’s existence. He was found by a Mackendrick salvage ship, which is how the softscreen came into Mackendrick’s possession. Quineau was followed from Penumbra by someone from the governing council who didn’t want the planet’s existence known to outsiders, an assassin called Klien, who killed Quineau in order to silence him—”
Bennett stopped as he noticed Rana’s expression. She stared into space, the pieces of the puzzle slowly falling into place.
“Klien…” she whispered to herself.
“You know him?”
She smiled at Bennett. “We have met. He tried to get the softscreen from me.”
“You mean, you had the screen?” He looked confused. “But it was stolen years ago. How did it come into your possession?”
Rana sat back in her seat and stared at the ceiling. Then she looked at Bennett and smiled. “It’s my turn to tell you a story that you might find hard to believe,” she said. “You see, thirteen years ago I stole the softscreen, and I’ve had it with me ever since.”
Bennett massaged his tired face with both hands, finally parting them like shutters and staring out at her. “This is crazy. I don’t understand. His safe was raided, his daughter kidnapped—” He stopped, his eyes widening in sudden realisation. “You…” he said at last.
“I took the screen from the safe, along with some money. I ran away and lived on the streets.”
Bennett stared at her in disbelief. “To this day,” he said, “your father grieves over losing you.”
Rana matched his stare. “Perhaps, had he been more of a father to me back then, I might never have run away.”
Bennett was shaking his head. “It’s hard to believe…” He stared at her, then said, “You’re really Sita Mackendrick?”
“Not any more, Mr Bennett. I’m Rana Rao, now, and I have been since I was ten years old.”
“Okay. I don’t know what you went through then. Who am I to opinionate?” He paused there, considering. “But your father needs the screen, Lieutenant. He’s dying, and he seems to think that maybe the Ancients—if they exist—might be able to heal him.”
“Are you returning to Penumbra?”
“Just as soon as I get the softscreen,” Bennett said.
It began as an absurd notion, fleeting and soon dismissed. Then it returned, not so easily dismissed this time, because Klien had to be defeated, the softscreen had to be taken to where it was safe—and it was time for Rana to run away again.
She thought of her father. This would be her very last chance to see him, to tell him that she was sorry.
Rana pulled open the drawer of the desk, reached in and produced the folded screen. She began to hand it across the desk to Bennett, then paused.
“I will give you the softscreen,” she told him, “on one condition.”
His hand halted in the act of reaching. “Name it.”
She looked into his eyes as she said, “Take me with you, Bennett. I want to go to Penumbra.”
He smiled, accepted the softscreen, and said, “You’ve got yourself a deal, Lieutenant.”
21
Klien had been waiting for this day for almost fourteen years, and when it came he was seized by a sensation of disbelief. He had marshalled his faculties and asked Control to corroborate what he was reading on his com-screen, and they had confirmed that a Mackendrick Foundation Cobra-class ship was indeed heading to Calcutta port from the Rim sector of G5.
Which meant that Mackendrick had at last discovered Homefall, and, for whatever reasons, the Council of Elders had allowed the ship to return. That, or the ship had been commandeered by the elders themselves. Klien knew that such speculation was useless. He had been away for many years. Anything might have happened in that time to change the situation on Homefall.
He had scrambled his top security team and had them ready and waiting when the Cobra made landfall. He wanted the ship searched from top to bottom, its flight system and programs analysed as fast as possible and relayed to his monitor. He had contacted Control and requested that, as the ship was making an unscheduled landing, it should be berthed within the secure compound beside the security tower itself. They had deferred to his seniority and experience.
Thirty minutes later he was waiting at the foot of the ramp. Control had informed him that the pilot’s name was Bennett, an employee of the Mackendrick Foundation. When the hatch had cracked, revealing a tall, long-haired figure, unshaven and dishevelled in a black flight-suit, Klien had gestured for his team to get to work, and greeted the pilot.
He had taken Bennett into the interrogation room, requesting that he answer a few routine questions. Klien thought he had been informal and amicable, despite the thudding of his heart and a sweat he had no way of controlling, but Bennett was tired after four months in suspension, uncommunicative and unforthcoming, suspicion manifest in his brooding eyes. He’d claimed that he had explored the G5/13 system on the Rim, and had discovered no habitable planets. Klien knew that he had to be lying.
It was Klien’s one regret of the interrogation that he had been unable to ascertain whether the Mackendrick Foundation had possession of the softscreen.
As he was interviewing Bennett, a preliminary report came in from his team aboard the Cobra. The ship was pre-programmed for a return flight to the Rim and the G5/13 sector, departure indefinite.