Read Xenopath - [Bengal Station 02] for Free Online Page B

then a small bedroom. Both had en suite bathrooms. “This one is for Li,” Sukara pronounced.
     
    Finally she showed him the kitchen. “I’ll be able to create feasts here, Jeff. Just look at all the space!”
     
    They returned to the lounge. “What do you think?”
     
    “This is the one. I don’t even want to see the other.” He held her. “Well done.”
     
    She lodged her hands on the jut of her belly. “We’ll be happy here, won’t we?” she said, tears in her eyes.
     
    He kissed her forehead, where the scar began. “We’ll be ecstatic,” he said.
     
    For the next hour Su was on her handset, arranging the lease of the apartment and hiring a company to move their possessions from Level Ten. She had packed their few belongings yesterday, and they would be delivered first thing in the morning.
     
    Vaughan sat in a sunken sofa, staring out through the viewscreen. They were not far from the ‘port here—and close to Kapinsky’s office, too—and he found the sight of the voidships, coming and going like so many bees at a hive, reassuring. Below, a variety of boats from lowly fishing dhows to oceangoing hydrofoils cut feathered wakes across the blue expanse of the sea.
     
    While Sukara was still busy on her handset, he slipped a penknife from the pocket of his jacket, laid the jacket over his knees, and sliced at the lapel.
     
    He withdrew the silver oval of the mind-shield, turning it in his palm.
     
    Sukara finished and joined him.
     
    “What’s that?”
     
    “A present, from me to you.” He handed her the shield.
     
    “Great. It’s what I’ve always wanted. But what is it?”
     
    He told her.
     
    She stuck out her bottom lip and nodded, staring at the silver oval in her hand.
     
    After due consideration, she passed it back to him. “I don’t need it, Jeff. I’ve got no secrets from you. When I married you, I told you everything. The good and the bad. Everything. If you read my mind, then that’s fine by me.”
     
    He smiled at her, wondering if she were offended.
     
    He had never read Sukara, even when he had tele-ability two years ago. He’d picked up, when not scanning, the background miasma of her thoughts, and he knew from these that she was a good person.
     
    But the notion of invading her private thoughts now disturbed him. For all she said that she had no secrets, what she could not apprehend was that everyone, often unbeknown to themselves, harboured subconscious desires and longings, prejudices and petty jealousies, that no one should pry upon, not even loving husbands.
     
    His relationship with Sukara was damned near perfect. He feared reading things deep in her mind that might spoil that.
     
    He passed the shield back to her. “Su, the chances are that I’ll never read you—I can switch the implant off—but other telepaths might. For security reasons, you’d better keep it. If I told you about a case, and a rival telepath scanned you... See what I mean?”
     
    She nodded, then slipped the shield into her shirt pocket and looked around the lounge like a child on Christmas day.
     
    As the sun set over distant India in a blazing panoply of saffron banners, Sukara said she’d treat him to a takeaway. She’d scouted out a couple of interesting Rajastani restaurants in the area. She left the apartment promising to return with a feast.
     
    Vaughan sat in the silence of the lounge, watching the sun go down, then stood and approached the viewscreen.
     
    A narrow balcony ran the length of the apartment, which he had failed to notice earlier. It was accessible from the kitchen. He slid aside the glass partition and stepped out.
     
    The breeze was warm, spice laden. He stood and gripped the rail, listening to the muted roar of the arriving voidliners, the distant drift of sitar music.
     
    He examined his handset, then looked along the length of the balcony. He was perhaps ten metres from the neighbouring apartments—sufficiently distant not to pick up the