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far out across the sloping grass.
    When the morning became too hot he would make his
way home and go to bed, first taking a good dose of chora to help him
sleep. Later, when he awoke, he would attend to the arrangements of
Tiger’s funeral.
    A voidship rumbled overhead, a great freighter in
the orange and green livery of the Chandrasakar Line. Its shadow took
minutes to slide over the greensward; Vaughan looked up and regarded
the passage of its great curving underbelly. Through long viewscreens
he made out the tiny figures of the ship’s crew, going about
their work, oblivious of his presence, of Tiger’s death.
    The ship moved out over the sea and circled south.
Minutes later it was a kilometre from the Station and could begin its
phase-shift manoeuvre.
    The ship shimmered like a mirage, gained solidity,
became faint again—and then transferred into the void and did
not return. There was something spectacular in the disappearance of
so colossal an object; it was as if the laws of physics had been
disobeyed, as if magic had occurred.
    A year ago, when Tiger had tried to get closer to
Vaughan, she had followed him to the park and sat quietly beside him,
her unsure silence suggesting that she knew she was invading his
privacy. They had watched the ships for hours, and every time one
gave itself to the void Tiger would gasp with delight.
    It came to him that there would be many things now
that she could no longer witness.
    In his mind’s eye he saw again the image of
her tiny body lying on the bed. Like a persistent phrase of
remembered music, he recalled the failing, fading music of her mind.
    He told himself that it was over now, that Tiger
had confronted the fact of her oblivion and passed on. But he could
not banish from his mind the terror Tiger would have experienced upon
apprehending the oblivion which awaited her.
    His handset chimed. He pushed up his sleeve and
accepted the call. Jimmy Chandra’s smiling face stared up at
him. "Jeff. When can we meet?"
    Vaughan said, "You’ve got something?"
    "Something?" the cop said. "I have
discovered enough about your Director to cause him severe distress."
Vaughan smiled at Chandra’s quaint use of English.
    "I just got off shift. I need to sleep. How
about tonight, around nine? Meet me at Nazruddin’s?"
    "I’ll be there, Jeff."
    Vaughan contemplated what Chandra had said. Then
his thoughts were replaced by the image of Tiger on her deathbed, the
feel of her in his arms.
    Then, against his will, his thoughts slipped back
down the years, and he tried in vain to recall the special signature
of Holly’s mind.

THREE : DEATH OF A VIP
    Jimmy Chandra hunched over a glowing com-screen in
his office at the Law Enforcement Headquarters. The room was darkened
and insufferably hot, the ceiling fan doing nothing but stirring old
air into a slightly more breathable mix.
    What Jeff Vaughan had asked him to do was not,
strictly speaking, legal—but he owed the telepath a favour and
had, a little reluctantly, hacked into the police file core.
    And he’d discovered some interesting things
about Director Weiss.
    He sat back and considered Vaughan. He’d met
the telepath four years ago, when he’d worked briefly with the
security team at the ‘port. Their friendship, such as it had
been, had soon dissolved in the acid of Vaughan’s caustic
world-view. He’d tried to come to some understanding of
Vaughan’s cynicism, discover the incidents and events in his
past that had made him who and what he was. But Vaughan had blocked
all his questions, reluctant to let anyone into the locked room that
was his earlier life.
    "If you were cursed with the ability to read
minds," Vaughan had once said in a drunken outburst, "then
you wouldn’t be blessed with that damned Hindi optimism that I
find so sickening."
    Chandra had said, "Hindu."
    " What?"
    " Hindu optimism," Chandra replied. "Hindi is