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they had fallen out of favour over the years,
superseded by the screaders. Books were heavy, awkward objects—yet
at the same time they had a certain... authority.
    Chandra read the title: The
Stars Beyond, by Rabindranath Bhindra.
The cover showed three explorers in some exotic jungle landscape. On
the back, Bhindra’s jovial smiling face stared out at the
world, a face of wisdom and experience.
    Chandra replaced the book and left the study.
    The various experts had packed up their equipment
and were filing from the lounge. Chandra waited until the last of
them had left before venturing a glance at the scene of the murder.
He might have prepared himself mentally for the sight, told himself
that the body in there was just a vacated shell, but he wished he
could have communicated the same logic to his stomach.
    The scene was particularly messy.
    Chandra joined Vishi in the centre of the room,
cast a quick glance at the corpse, then looked away and kept his gaze
resolutely averted. Bhindra had been sitting in an armchair by the
open French window when the assassin struck. The body had retained in
death the position it had last adopted in life: seated upright, feet
crossed at the ankles, hands placed on lap. What made a mockery of
the body’s posture was the absence of its head. The dark
orifice of the windpipe and a notched stub of backbone showed in
cross section. The impact of the projectile had blasted the skull and
its contents in a liquidised spray across the room and against the
far wall.
    "Where’s his widow?"
    "She was taken to hospital suffering from
shock."
    "So she was here when it happened?"
    Vishi nodded to a vacant armchair. "Right
there."
    Chandra sighed. "Okay. I want you to question
her, find out if she noticed anything. Talk to the neighbours. You
know the routine. I want a report ready by the next shift. Did the
experts come up with anything?"
    Vishi passed him a screader. "Everything’s
in here."
    There was a tap at the door. A white-coated Indian
poked his head into the room. "The clean-up boys," Chandra
said. "I’ll leave you to it."
    On the way back to headquarters, Chandra put the
screader on read-out and listened to the monotonous computer voice as
it reeled off the gruesome statistics. In his office, he downloaded
the contents of the screen into Sinton’s files, added a brief
report of his own, and sat at his desk for a minute.
    He was about to leave for home when he recalled
Vaughan.
    He tapped the telepath’s code into his
handset. It was almost four, and the first light of dawn was making
grey rectangles of his office window. If Vaughan kept to his old
routine, he should still be up.
    He got through to Vaughan. The telepath looked
tired beyond words, haggard and desperate—the type of character
you would not wish to establish eye contact with in a crowd.
    He told Vaughan about Weiss, then signed off, quit
his office, and took the flier home. First, he would grab a few
hours’ sleep, then enjoy a leisurely breakfast. Sumita was due
back from the university at noon today, and he’d promised to
take her out that afternoon.
    As he piloted the flier towards the blood-red
dawn, he considered his wife and tried to push images of the dead man
to the back of his mind.

FOUR : DEAR SISTER
    Another Bangkok night.
    Sukara’s day started at eight in the
evening. Her ancient Mickey Mouse alarm clock detonated on the table
beside her bunk, drilling its din into her dream-filled sleep. Half
awake, she swung her legs out of bed, searching for her sandals with
her toes. She smacked the clock silent and hung her head between her
knees. All the alcohol she’d consumed last night had not made
her drunk, but she had a throbbing headache and her mouth was dry and
sore. She reached out and opened the door of her cooler, dragged out
a bulb of orange juice and drank.
    Her room was just a little wider than the narrow
bunk it contained; from the bed,