Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER TEN

Friday, November 28, 2042

The spangled wrapping paper crackled as Jameela’s fingers found the little plush-covered box inside. She took out the diamond ring and held it up to the glow from Lessing’s Aladdin’s lamp on the center table.

“Your birthday, darling,” Lessing said. “Shall I say, ‘You shouldn’t have?’ Or shall I just take it and run?”

“Take it and stay.” The stone was small but of good quality; Wrench had gone with Mulder on a business trip to Amsterdam, and he had brought the ring back for Lessing.

Jameela bowed her head, letting her sable tresses coil down to cover her face. All he could see were her chin and her lips; he thought they trembled a little.

She said, “I… can’t.”

“Because of your father?”

“My family. Most of them. They don’t want me to marry a foreigner, a non-Muslim… even a non-Shi’i Muslim.” One comer of her mouth lifted in a smile. “Most especially a non-Shi’i Mus-lim!”

“Lots of Indians marry foreigners these days,” Lessing protested. “Shakeela and George Townsend over in Kanpur, Willa Buller and Muneer Khan… that professor from Texas and his Bengali wife….”

“It depends on the family… the level in society.”

“You’re no barefoot village maiden in head-to-foot pardah!”

“Purdah’s the custom. The head-to-foot tent our conservative women wear is called a burqa.”

“Some of your people call it a shuttlecock; that’s what it looks like! Damn it, you know what I mean. Your family’s not the sort that marries its daughter off sight unseen to some distant cousin!” Hemimicked a thick Indian accent: ‘“You should be putting on your best sari, my daughter! Today is your vedding day! Surprise!’”

Jameela dissolved into laughter. The lamp light turned the ring into a rainbow of scarlet and orange-gold upon her palm, and he knew that she was close to accepting it. He forced himself to stay silent, crosslegged on the carpet before her, letting her reach her own decision. The lamp spilled a warm, orange glow over her high cheekbones, and he found himself loving her more than he had thought he could love anyone. He was being trite, of course, but he didn’t care. If every human being on earth could experience this same exhilaration, this anticipation, then well and good! He, Alan Lessing, was going to savor his share to the utmost!

It was a lovely mood. They were snug and safe here, the room cozy, the electric heater bravely helping the Indoco staff quarters’ central heating system stave off the chill of the North Indian November night; it got a lot colder in India in the winter than most foreigners knew. The scene was as old as the Neolithic caves; it was exactly as Lessing had planned — and, he told himself, as Jameela herself wanted it

“Hi, in there!” Wrench’s light, tenor voice pierced through the closed door. “You two decent? Gotta talk to you, Lessing.” Only then did he knock.

“Let me think a little more,” Jameela whispered to Lessing. She knelt and let her tongue flicker briefly at Lessing’s lips, then rose in a rustle of silk and disappeared into the bedroom.

There were times when, all unknowing, Charles Hanson Wren came very close to getting himself unzipped.

“What is it?” Lessing glumly donned his white bathrobe, let himself out, and drew Wrench off down the corridor toward Goddard’s flat. The latter was off on a sales trip to Hong Kong or some place.

“Come up to the main house. Mulder wants you.”

Lessing almost refused, then thought better of it. The old man had seemed nervous, even anxious, since Lessing’s return from Paris, and if he summoned his security becgee at this hour there was a reason. Jameela watched impassively as he changed out of his bathrobe to khaki slacks and bush-shirt. She said nothing, which made him want to stay with her all the more. She was disappointed. The mood was broken, and there could be no mending it tonight. In fact, this might be a good opportunity to let her think.

Damn Wrench — and Mulder — anyway!

Wrench ushered him into Mulder’s private study in the upper story at the front of the main house. Its big windows looked out over the lawns and the driveway, and at night the lamp-spangled spires of the Indoco factory rivalled Divali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. Like the rest of the mansion, the study was furnished in Indian kitsch, courtesy of Mrs. Fairy Godmother Mulder: heavy, carved, varnished, pseudo-Mughal furniture; bone-inlaid tables; carpets in Persian designs; brass trays and bronze images of the Hindu gods; and tapestries and miniatures painted in gaudy Rajput red-oranges and blues, a style that Jameela privately labelled “Late Tourist”.

Mulder waved them both to seats. “Some good news, Alan.”

“Sir?”

“You’re apparently off the hook. Our people tell me that the Americans have withdrawn their A.D. request. The Israelis have also gone quiet.”

Wrench flashed his perfect, toothpaste-ad smile at him. You re old news, buddy, the paper on the bird cage floor. Be grateful! The only one who fondly remembers you is Hollister. He still thinks you tried to thumb him. But then Hollister thinks that of his own mother, so you’re in good company.”

“My… employer… on the Marvelous Gap job?” Mulder shrugged. “Who knows if you don’t? Nobody’s heard a thing for a couple of months. We’ve turned up nothing.”

Wrench said, “They must’ve finally realized you couldn’t tell the difference between Pacov and a piss sample. Your Marvelous Gap spesh-op is common knowledge, though. They… whoever they are… can’t keep it secret, so there’s no point thumbing you. They’ve got Pacov, and you’ve got your pay. You can’t finger them, and so they have ceased to care about you. Game, set, and match to them!”

“Things’ve gone elsewhere.” Mulder picked up a sheaf of flimsies from his desk blotter. “We’ve heard from Joachim Kuhn, the young German we sent to help you in Paris. He says everything there

is peaceful, too “

“Whoa,” Lessing interrupted. “What about that kikibird who was on my tail there?”

“Oh, yes. The one with the nasty photographs. He was using the name ‘Harry Rosch’ in Paris. Actually, he’s Mordechai Richmond, an American Jew from Kansas City. Kuhn traded him back to the Vigilantes for Zion in exchange for one of our Austrians and a French Neo-Nazi teenager into the bargain.”

Lessing found himself blurting, “You should’ve thumbed the bastard!” Richmond’s offhanded malevolence affected him more than he would have admitted.

“No point!” Wrench said. “Europe’s like that. Full of our guys and their guys, double and triple agents, all kinds. We pop one of theirs, they pop one of ours. Better to trade… like baseball cards.”

“Maybe that’s how you play, but I play different!” Lessing looked down and saw that his fists were clenched. “How did Richmond trace me? Nobody knew I was going to Paris except for you two and Goddard. Yet Richmond was right there, Johnny on the spot”

“Have you ever heard of Eighty-Five?” Mulder asked. Lessing s face told him he had not. “That stands for A.I.T.I.-5: Artificial Intelligence Terminal Installation, Model Five. It’s a computer, the closest thing to a complete thinking machine ever made, better than a human brain. Besides almost unlimited memory, Eighty-Five’s got a personality. It uses deductive and inductive logic, it plans, it remembers, it theorizes… it thinks, Alan. The only thing it does not do is emote.”

“It walks, it talks, it sings, it almost dances!” Wrench piped up with sardonic merriment from the background.

“How does it concern me?”

“One of the American intelligence agencies ran your dossier through Eighty -Five. There are terminals in Washington and in other major defense complexes. Almost everyone who lives in the United States is on file: tax records, voter registrations, driver’s licenses, military service, social security, pension plans, insurance applications, civil agencies, charitable institutions… a lot more. John Q. Public isn’t told, of course, for fear of the ‘Big Brother’ screams that would go up.” He jabbed a finger at Lessing. “Mercenaries are especially interesting to Eighty-Five, as are splinter political parties, religious cults, draft protesters, minority organizations, big crime… all the misfits. It keeps tabs on the likes of you… and us, Alan.”

“This computer… this Eighty-Five… traced me to Paris?”

“We believe somebody punched you in and asked for logical contacts and activities according to your profile. Eighty-Five compared your data with Copley’s, added the rumors about you thumbing people… they were common knowledge in Euro-mere circles, you recall… and came up with Paris. Richmond’s side wants Pacov very badly, but whether to use it or stop it, we do not know.”

“Richmond said he wasn’t working for the Americans.”

“He wasn’t. Not directly. His Zionists share a lot with President Rubin’s administration, though. Some say they’re one and the same, puppets of a larger Jewish-Establishment network. Anyway, his people have friends with access to Eighty-Five. So do we. So do your erstwhile employers, and they were smarter: Kuhn thinks they were watching while you and Richmond had your tete-a-tete. They hoped he’d thumb you and save them the trouble, but you pulled your phony Pacov stunt first. Then our Herr Kuhn came to your rescue.”

“Christ! ” Suddenly Lessing needed a drink, a craving he had not felt for months. “Wait a minute… if this Eighty-Five could pick up on me, why can’t your people use it to pick up on my Marvelous Gap employers?”

“Whoever they are, they’re good. They’ve programmed blind alleys and blocked access paths into Eighty-Five, special codes, alarms that trip if you punch in the wrong password. We know because we lost an operative or two finding out.”

The ramifications were unsettling. “If they’re so clever, why don’t they use it on you, on Kuhn… on Indoco… on your movement?”

Mulder spread his short, spatulate fingers. “Oh, they try. But we’ve got people with clearances as well. We’ve programmed Eighty-Five to shunt our sensitive data into dead files. It buries what we don’t want seen.”

“How about standard intelligence methods?” Lessing asked. “Richmond talked about Indoco being ‘odd’… about looking into your operation later. He knows Kuhn. He knows me. Surely his people can put it together.”

“They’re on the perimeter,” Mulder admitted. “They know a little about us and about some of our front groups. They know a lot about the organizations we want them to see: Neo-Nazis, Pre-Nazis, Post-Nazis, Paleo-Nazis, Would-Be-Nazis, rightists, racists, survivalists, Born Again fascists, an anthill of fringe groups. But the intelligence agencies… and the sects and factions and parties and secret societies… are like dancers in a dark room. You bump up against somebody, feel the clothing, smell the cologne, maybe touch a bit of skin. They do the same. None of the dancers ever gets a complete picture of the others. The Zionists, the Americans, various European agencies all know we’re here, but they don’t know where, who, or how much. As far as our people can tell, the core of our structure is still our secret.”

“The Israelis, too, can’t be bothered with us now,” Wrench added. “They have problems that won’t quit: religious and ethnic factionalism, runaway inflation, deficits, international loans they can’t repay, depicted resources, too much yerida and not enough aliya, a huge military establishment to support, no more ‘war reparations’ from Germany. The Russians have thirty-four divisions on Greater Israel’s northeastern borders in Iraq, and if that’s not enough—”

“Their worst worry is the hundred million Arabs they can’t feed or control,” Mulder interposed. “Conquered people, in effect slaves. But slaves who are increasingly vociferous about civil rights and voting privileges.”

“The end of the ‘Jewish State’ right there.” Wrench slapped a hand down upon the delicately inlaid table beside his chair. “Like the rabbit said to his girl friend, ‘Shall we run, or shall we stay and outnumber ’em?’ Israel might’ve been able to keep up the pretense of being a nice, homey dream once, back in the nineteenth century: ‘next year in Jerusalem’ and all that. Now the mask is off, and everyone can see that it’s simply a military empire with ambitions of world rule: ancient Rome all over again… everything but the gladiators and the lions. Hell, they’re already eating the Christians, or the Christians’ pocketbooks anyhow! Israel’s had its day in the sun, and it’s starting to slide, just like every imperial state before it.”

Lessing could not resist saying, “I think you’re dreaming.”

“Maybe so,” Mulder conceded. “In any case Israel is stewing in its own kosher juices right now and can’t attend to us.”

“To them we’re nothing but a bunch of loonies who are still pumping a cause that died in Berlin a century ago: nasty, little fanatics in leather overcoats.” Wrench snapped his fingers in disdain. “We want them to go on believing that, too, right up until our last, big corporate takeovers occur and our movement is ready to go public.”

Mulder frowned across at Wrench. “The Vizzies are getting close to some of our doings in the United States. We must talk about that, Charles, when Goddard gets back.”

“Which reminds me,” Lessing said. “Assume that my former ‘employers’… plus the Americans, the Israelis, and everybody else on earth… have all forgotten about me. Who were those two burglars? The safecrackers who broke into this house? How did they know about your diaries, and what did they want with them?”

Mulder pursed his lips. ‘To be honest, we haven’t a clue. Our people are still looking into it. As soon as we have a chance we’ll get Eighty-Five onto it too. There is definitely a leak.” He raised his bulk a trifle so that he could look Lessing directly in the eyes. “Why not join us, Alan? Really join us? We can use you.”

“I told you. I’m just a mere, Mr. Mulder. I’ll run your security, I’ll step and fetch for you, and I’ll protect you to the best of my ability. But I’m not interested in movements.”

“Except bowel movements,” Wrench cackled. “You should hear him in the morning. The walls are paper-thin “

“Charles, please! Be serious! ” Mulder dug into the papers on his desk. “I have a cable here from your friend, Felix Bauer. He likes the job we gave him as security chief at Club Lingahnie. The South Pacific suits him nicely. You recall that I offered you a job out there too, Alan.”

“I was… I am grateful. I was close to accepting.“He had talked it over with Jameela, and she, too, had almost agreed. It was one way of getting her out of India and away from her family and Indian society. Ponape also made a fine refuge for someone running from a foe with a very long reach.

“Would you still like to go? We need military expertise.”

“Military…? On Ponape? The local government…!”

“Oh, no! Not what you think. Ponape is part of the United Republics of the South Pacific, a loose federation. Its president is a friend of ours. No, we want you for something different. We’ve been sending youth cadres out to Club Lingahnie on vacations, seminars, and study trips, all funded by respectable foundations in America and Europe. These young people come from our private schools, university fellowships, summer camps, labor organizations favorable to us… a great many sources.”

“I don’t understand. How do I fit in?”

“Not for indoctrination, certainly!” Mulder smiled ruefully. “Others are taking care of that: discussion groups in world history, economics, anthropology, sociology, and other subjects. There isn’t a word about our… ah… origins. What we promote is the Party of Humankind.”

“Yes, but….”

“Patience. Some of our students require military training, weapons discipline, field tactics: things in which you have experience and excel. This won’t be for every student, of course… just for those who are training for… ah… a more active role in the movement. We’ve taught these skills for years in the United States, but surveillance and restrictions keep making it harder there.” Mulder noted Lessing’s reluctance and added, “There’ll be only about four or five hundred trainees a year You won’t be working alone, naturally, but supervising teams of instructors. In addition, we’d like you to take on the job of manager at Club Lingahnie… Bauer’s boss. You’ll have a staff, facilities—”

“Wait a minute. You want me as a sort of glorified drill sergeant? A gym teacher? A scoutmaster? And a hotel manager to boot?”

Mulder looked pained. “You do put the worst possible light on things, Alan. The job I’m offering you is a big step up from beegeeing an old codger like myself out here in India. It pays well, too: eighty thousand U.S. dollars a year. Even with inflation, that’s not poverty level. And your living costs will be covered “

“Heat, light, a furnished, thatched hut,” Wrench chimed in, “with hot and cold running dancing girls “

“And a post for Miss Husaini,” Mulder finished with the air of a man who lays four aces down on top of an opponent’s four kings, “if she wants to go along.”

The offer was indeed tempting. Working with Bauer would be difficult but not impossible, and the remoteness of the Caroline Islands gave it all a romantic, tropical aura, like a setting from some old movie.

“Oh, and… uh ” Mulder tapped the desk blotter to regain his attention. “One last piece of pleasant news. Mrs. Delacroix, the lady you escorted to South Africa… you remember her?”

“Of course.”

“She’s arriving in Lucknow tomorrow to settle some business. She’ll have a couple of her people with her, and I’d like you and Wrench to show them around, please.”

With a sinking feeling Lessing realized who one of those people was sure to be. Anneliese Meisinger was one person he did not want to see, not now, when he and Jameela were so close to putting their lives together!

He would have made some excuse, but Mulder had already lumbered up to his feet. “Think over our offer, Alan. Club Lingahnie. Ponape.”

The next morning dawned crisp and cool. India’s brilliant hues were as sharp as a Mughal painting, and the metalled, two-lane road up from Kanpur to Lucknow was not crowded. Wrench drove Mulder’s big limousine, a Japanese Tora Ultra that had cost a fortune in bribes to get into the country. He appeared to enjoy dodging bullocks, water buffalo, great, creaking carts full of who knew what, automobiles and trucks, villagers in dhotis, and innumerable serious-looking men on bicycles and motorbikes. The drive to Lucknow’s airport was uneventful. Wrench remained outside with the car to fight off the hotel-touts, guides, souvenir-sellers, taxi-walas, and seekers of “personalized foreign aid,” while Lessing struggled into the breathlessly hot airport building and out onto the tarmac to seek his charges.

He saw Mrs. Delacroix’s silvery coiffure disembarking first, then the bright gold of Liese’s long, loose hair. She seemed to float down the aircraft landing stairway, a very private person, aloof and self-contained. She would always look this way, whether she were hosting a society ball in New York or standing naked and shamed in a Cairo brothel. Liese had class — in the truest sense.

Half an hour went by before the passengers were able to reclaim their baggage and the Tourist Registration Officer had peered at passports and documents. This was a new wrinkle in a land where bureaucracy was a six-thousand-year-old art form. Prime Minister Ramanujan’s ultra-conservative Hindu government yearned to rid India of every non-Hindu, and Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs, Jains, and even the tiny Buddhist minority were all non gratae. Creating minor problems for foreign residents and tourists was part of the program.

Suddenly Liese was there, twenty feet in front of him, one hand frantically waving, the other full ofluggage. Mrs. Delacroix and two other European faces were visible behind her. An Indian airport can be a daunting experience, and Lessing pushed in to the rescue, two porters trailing in his wake. After some further genial struggle, Liese was beside him, clutching his arm, neither sure how to greet the other.

“Alan!” Mrs. Delacroix cried. “Alan Lessing! Good…”

“…To see you,” he completed. They both laughed. “La! Such a foule!” She looked around. “Meet two frienas: Jennifer Caw and Hans Borchardt.”

Lessing recalled the woman at once. Jennifer Sims Caw was the American with the loud, bullying voice at the conference in Guatemala City. Up close, she possessed a certain overdone beauty: in her mid thirties, big-boned, with large breasts, good legs, dark-aubum hair, and a vivid, reddish complexion. He didn’t know her companion: a pale, very blonde, sensitive-looking, late-thirtyish man, whose old-fashioned, hornrimmed glasses gave him a bookish look. Lessing would bet that Mr. Borchardt had a copy of the tourist guide to Lucknow in his bulging jacket pocket.

Lessing wanted to get Liese alone and prime her for the inevitable meeting with Jameela, but Mrs. Delacroix showed no signs of fatigue. She still wanted to see Lucknow, even after “doing” Delhi the previous day. As Mulder had warned, she was retired but still active, a key figure in a dozen Euro-African corporations and causes. She must have been a holy terror in her youth!

Wrench donned a gentle half-smile of martyrdom and started Mulder’s fancy car.

“What would you like?” Lessing inquired. “The markets in Ameenabad? The jewellers, perfumers, and sari shops in \hechauk? The palaces and mosques of the nawabs of Awadh? The Residency, where the British held out during the Mutiny of 1857?”

Borchardt glanced over at Liese, beside him in the back seat “The monuments, please. Isn’t there a handsome mosque built in the late eighteenth century by Nawab Asafu-d-daulah?” Lessing’s assessment of Borchardt as a pedant was confirmed. The man sounded British but with a hint of central Europe. Knowing Mulder’s friends, he was probably a German or an Afrikaner.

Two could play at scholarship. Lessing said, “Yes, and beside it is the Bara Imambara, where the Shi’a hold their majalis, huge meetings commemorating the death of Imam Husain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. In the upper stories of the Imambara there’s a labyrinth, the Bhul-bhuliyan. It’s a maze of tunnels, balconies, stairways, and passages. Some’ll tell you the old nawab used to play hide-and-seek with his harem girls up there, but others say that honeycombing the top stories takes the weight off the supporting arches of the lower floor. The guides’ll bet you money you can’t find your way out by yourself.”

“You seem to know a bit about it,” Borchardt admitted grudgingly. Let him think Lessing was a scholar, too; actually, Jameela had told him all the tourist talcs during their Sunday outings together.

“There’s also supposed to be an identical maze underneath the Bhul-bhuliyan, but it’s bricked up.” Lessing was beginning to enjoy playing the local dragoman. “The story is that a company of British soldiers chased some of the mutineers down into it, and none of ’em ever came out.”

Borchardt cocked his head suspiciously, and Wrench grinned with beatific innocence.

Lessing said, “Nearby is the Baoli Well. The last nawab threw his gems and treasures into it and then lowered a big iron plate down on top to keep the English from getting them. Lucknow’s a fascinating place. During Muharram the Shi’i faithful walk on beds of hot coals in the courtyard of the Bara Imambara.”

“A true test of faith!” Wrench said, joining in the spirit of the thing. “You should see the Shi’i Tazia processions then, too; some of the men flog themselves with whips and chains until they lose consciousness!”

“Ugh! Why?” Jennifer Caw questioned abruptly from the rear jump-seat. “What’s Muharram?”

“Muharram’s the first month of the Islamic lunar year,” Lessing answered. Jameela had once spent a long, lazy evening explaining her people’s religion. “It was during this month that Husain, the younger of the Prophet Muhammad’s two grandsons, and his family were massacred at a place called Karbala in Iraq. After the Prophet’s death there was a power struggle in the new Islamic state. His son-in-law, Ali, founded a party, the Shi’a, which believed in a divinely inspired, hereditary caliphate… with Ali or some other blood-relative of the Prophet as imam, or leader. The rest of the community, the Sunnis, claimed that the Prophet had said that his successor ought to be elected. Both groups thought God was on their side. They fought, and Imam Husain was slain.”

“They’ve been at it ever since,” Wrench flung in. “Every year there are Sunni-Shi’a riots… shops and houses burned, sometimes people hurt. Not as bad as Protestants and Catholics in Europe, but still pretty rough.”

“Martyrdom and mourning,” Borchardt announced portentously, “the two most salient features of Shi’i Islam.”

“Not exactly,” Lessing contradicted. “It’s complicated. But the Sunni-Shi’a controversy did help keep Islam from overrunning Europe during the Middle Ages.” He chuckled. “Otherwise you and I would be wearing turbans, Mr. Borchardt.”

“The Muslims would have had to face the Germanic peoples,” the other shot back.

“The Arabs beat the pants off the Germanic Visigoths in Spain… and the Byzantines and their Germanic Vandal subjects in North Africa,” Wrench pointed out. He winked at Lessing in the front seat beside him and hissed, “Classic Comics World History Issue Number Seven!”

Borchardt retired into miffed silence in the back seat. Jennifer Caw, too, sat quietly, a glassy expression on her face; India sometimes did that to first-timers. Liese and Mrs. Delacroix seemed to enjoy themselves; they chatted, ate the luncheon Mulder had sent along, and drank copiously of the thermos jug of ice water. Lessing himself had seen to its boiling that morning, as well as the water for the ice. He had endured too many go-rounds with the diarrhea foreigners called “Delhi Belly,” “the Rajah’s Revenge,” or “the Lucknow Two-Step” to take chances with important guests!

The Bhul-bhuliyan was entertaining; the great mosque graceful and mysterious, something out of the Thousand and One Nights; the Residency wistful and solitary under its veils of greenery. There were still other sights, but Lessing insisted on calling a halt. The November sun had been merciful, but it was deceptive, and Mrs. Delacroix was fragile.

“We’ll go back through Ameenabad… the middle-class bazaar… to Hazrat Ganj, where the nicer shops are. If you can stand the crowds and the sights and smells of the bazaar, you get your Good Tourist Medal.”

Wrench jockeyed the big limousine through narrow streets into the chaotic traffic of the central section of the city. “I hate driving through the bazaar,” he grumbled. “You owe me one, baby!”

“Collect from Mulder.” Lessing straightened up. “What’s this?”

Ameenabad Park was a dusty, grassless, open square surrounded by the shops and tenements of Lucknow’s middle-class districts. Today it was awash from one side to the other with a sea of saffron. People in garments dyed an orangy-yellow swarmed in front of the car, Hindi banners and signs tossing above their heads. From the opposite end of the square they heard the echoing bellow of a loudspeaker turned up to near-incomprehensibility.

“A goddamned parade… a political meeting!” Wrench swore. “Looks like the B.S.S.!” He slammed the car into reverse.

“What? Who are they?” Borchardt asked.

“I don’t know what the initials stand for. But they’re Hindu rightists,” Lessing told him. “Far right, the ones who want all foreigners out of India. Bharat… that’s India… for the Bharatis. We’re unbelievers to them. They call us unclean, cow-eaters, outcasts.”

“Hey, Lessing!” Wrench snapped. “See if you can persuade the nice folks behind us to let me back the hell up.”

Lessing poked his head out and used his best Hindi: “Rasta dijiye, Janab! Mehrbanikar-kehatjaiye!”

A youth who looked seventeen came up to peer into the car. His yellow dhoti was clean, and his wire-rimmed glasses offered hope of an educated person, one who could be reasoned with. Then Lessing saw the three whitish, horizontal stripes daubed across his forehead, the mark of a devotee of Lord Siva. His head was shaved except for a little pigtail left at the back. Here was a zealot.

“From where are you coming?” the young man demanded.

“We’re tourists,” Lessing said, not untruthfully. “This lady is French. The dust is too much for her. Could you help us get out of your way, please?”

Others came up to stare and confer, and more arrived by the moment as the street behind the limousine filled up. It would take a major miracle to back the car out now. In India a foreigner could sneeze and look around to find a mob gathered to watch him wipe his nose. Wrench muttered between his teeth: “Curiosity, thy name is unemployed Indian!”

“You do not belong here! ” the bespectacled youth accused. “You go to your own country, away from India! This is not your place!”

“Yes, yes,” Lessing agreed. He smiled as winningly as he knew how. He had to keep things friendly. “We are visitors. We want to get out of your way. Please help us.”

The boy scratched at his stubbled skull. Then he made motions to clear the street.

“God damn,” Wrench whispered admiringly. “You got natural charm, guy!”

He spoke too soon. One of the other youths dashed around from the rear of the limousine shouting. Lessing guessed at once what was wrong: this was an Indoco company car, and government regulations required foreign-owned business vehicles to letter their firm’s name on the license plate above the numerals. American companies — American anything — were anathema to the Hindu far right at present, just as they were to the far left Moreover, Indoco made fertilizers and pesticides: wicked poisons to corrupt the soil of sacred Bharat!

The second youth began a harangue; the Siva-worshipper replied, and others joined in. Some raised sticks and lathis: heavy, metal-tipped staves. A stone spanged off the limousine’s roof. There went Mulder’s paint job.

Lessing turned to Wrench. “Get ready to run for it!” He pointed. “Move forward, get momentum, and ignore anything but a solid wall. Blow your horn like crazy!” To the rest he said, “Lock your doors and windows. This car is bulletproof, and it’s heavy. It’ll be hard for them to break in or roll us over. If worse comes to worst, there’s a compartment right behind you, Miss Caw; in it you’ll find a Riga-71 automatic rifle, a stitch gun, tear-gas grenades, and a couple of pistols.”

“We know how to use weapons,” Borchardt stated grimly. “We have similar problems in South Africa.”

Lessing heard the snick of the weapons compartment opening. He thought: God, don’t let Borchardt be a trigger-happy hothead!

He should have worried more about Jennifer Caw.

“Keep the guns out of sight!” he commanded. “What we don’t want is a bloodbath! If we hurt somebody, either these people will massacre us or we’ll face charges in an Indian court! Either way we lose!”

Distorted faces pressed against the windows. A club smashed at the windshield; they saw the wielder’s surprise as his weapon bounced harmlessly away. Fists pounded on the roof, paving stones battered the glass, and lathis jabbed at the headlights, the hood, and the door panels. Wrench got the vehicle in gear and began to creep forward. The front bumper pushed into yielding, writhing human flesh. One man started to slip down under the wheels. He disappeared. All Wrench could do was brake helplessly. Another marcher saved himself by clambering up onto the hood.

The car lurched violently. Lessing called, “Liese, hold on to Mrs. Delacroix! They’re trying to tip us over!”

The tide of saffron robes against the windows turned the interior into a gloomy, airless oven. The vehicle tilted in the opposite direction, then bumped down again. As soon as their assailants got coordinated, they would go over.

“Pardes’C. Pardesti” the mob chanted: “Foreigner! Foreigner!”

The chorus swelled to a deep-throated roar and became a rhythmic, bestial grunting. There were hundreds of people outside. One face squeezed against the glass nearest Lessing was bleeding from the nose, the eyes open but rolled up so that only the whites showed. The man was probably dead or dying, suffocated in the crush. Somebody passed the youth on the hood a mattock, and he swung this against the front windshield. Even bulletproof glass would eventually give way. The din was unbearable, the yelling and pounding and banging a single, sustained, howling clamor. The car stank of dust, sweat, blood, and perfumed hair-oil.

“We’re dead in here! ” Jennifer Caw shrieked. Lessing yelled and ducked as she poked the muzzle of the Riga-71 past his ear. The limousine was rocking violently now; in seconds it would go over. He couldn’t catch all she said: “One burst… open window… scare them off….” He did understand her last word clearly: “Gasoline!”

She was right. A sea of waving hands arose to pass five gallon tins of gasoline over the crowd to those closest to the car. Fire was a good way to deal with a bulletproof vehicle. Puncture the fuel tank or bring up your own inflammables; wait for the flaming, screaming occupants to crawl out; then massacre them at your leisure. Lessing had a sudden vision of Syria again: dry, yellow grass, a litter of dust-grimed barrels and ammunition boxes, concrete blocks, rocky soil, all blossoming yellow and orange and black as the Israelis used a flamethrower to pour death into an Arab house. The fate of those inside did not bear remembering.

Jennifer Caw had the rear window down an inch or two. Liese screamed a last protest. Then the chatter of the automatic rifle drowned out all else. The universe became chaos and the reek of gunpowder. Spent shell casings rattled against the roof above Lessing ‘s head, and he threw up his arms to protect himself.

The car jounced down again onto all four wheels. The chanting mingled with screams, then faltered to a stop. Some of the attackers hurled themselves away in terror, a jumble of brown, sweat-shining limbs and faces, clawed fingers, staring eyes, open mouths, and orange-and-yellow garments. Some went down, others clutched and scrambled to stay on top of them. The man on the hood threw away his mattock and leaped off onto the backs of those below. He hopped, fell, got up, balanced like an acrobat, and staggered until he, too, slipped down and vanished under the millipede feet of the mob.

“You hit anybody?” Wrench called out.

“I don’t see how,” Jennifer Caw yelled back. “Some bastard got hold of the barrel and pushed it straight up in the air!” Lessing had a glimpse of her in the rear-view mirror. She was a valkyrie: wild, reddish hair, high spots of color in her cheeks, eyes glittering with battle-lust. Combat did that to some people, both men and women. He recalled many who had died of it.

“Now, God damn it!” he snarled at Wrench. The little man did not need urging; he already had the big Tora Ultra moving. The press and the dust kept them from seeing much, and the car bumped horribly over unseen objects in the street. The relentless hammering of stones and lathis on the roof kept pace with them as they inched toward the end of the square. The broad avenue there led to Hazrat Ganj and the comparative safety of the upper-class districts.

Borchardt shook Lessing ‘s shoulder and shouted in his ear. “They’re thinning out… giving up… going.” He repeated himself in Afrikaans — it might have been German — for Mrs. Delacroix’s benefit The old lady had survived intact, disheveled but calm, a .38-caliber pistol on her lap. Not exactly Whistler’s mother, but then Lessing had come to expect no less from Emma Delacroix.

Borchardt spoke the truth. Their attackers were dropping back. Many seemed to be heading for the open-fronted shops that lined the square. Only a few good Samaritans knelt by the half dozen bodies sprawled where their vehicle had been attacked. Lessing looked over the heads of the mob, thinking to see an advancing wall of Indian policemen, or perhaps a phalanx of the B.S.S.’s paramilitary troops, wearing saffron armbands and cast-off army uniforms. He saw neither.

“What the hell?” Wrench put Lessing’s puzzlement into words. “Just a few loose cops over there by the speakers’ stand. And they re headed out, too. All going away… or into the goddamned shops.”

“Or standing around in little groups…,” Liese added from the

The rally had indeed broken up, apparently for reasons other than the near-mayhem that had just occurred. The loudspeakers still blared, and Lessing could see men standing and gesticulating on the podium, but nobody was paying attention. The crowd was dispers—

Lessing took a chance and rolled the window down. “Hey!” he called to an older man, one who looked more prosperous than the rest. “Janab-i-ali! Kyahai? Kyaho rahahap.”

The man turned, pointed, and shouted indistinct words back.

“Something about a radio,” Lessing told theothers. “Stop the car. There, in front of that electrical goods store.”

“You’re crazy! They’ll kill us!” cried Jennifer Caw, and Borchardt echoed her.

Lessing put a hand on the wheel. “Not likely, now that the fun’s over.”

“Please, Alan…!” That was Liese.

He had the door open. “Just a moment. Most of the people in this shop are Muslims. I can tell by their clothes and other things. The B.S.S. has no more use for them than it does for us!

The shop sold electric heaters, refrigerators, stoves, and small appliances. Perhaps fifty people, young and old, from various faiths and classes, clustered about a pyramidal display of glittering transistor radios. Most of these were turned on, tuned to the same station, the Urdu Broadcast Service of the government of India.

Lessing knew the shopkeeper slightly. He and Jameela had bought a toaster here three weeks ago. He struggled with his Urdu, gave up, and asked in English, “What’s happening? What’s on the radio?”

The merchant gazed at him from huge, gentle, slightly crossed eyes and shifted his cud of betel nut from one side of his jaw to the other. He made no reply but jerked his head toward the radios. The crowd watched.

Lessing felt a presence beside him. It was Liese. “Get back,” he insisted. “Get back in the car!”

She shook her head. Some of the onlookers murmured.

“Sahib, you take this!” An elderly, dignified-looking Muslim gentleman picked one of the transistor sets off the display, twisted the dial, and thrust it at Lessing. “English, sahib, English.”

The radio sputtered. Lessing adjusted it, and they heard an announcer’s voice speaking that elegant British English only educated Indians seem able to achieve:

“…Communications from some areas are disrupted, and only shortwave emergency bands are operating from cities in the interior. The Soviet Union has mobilized its military forces, its police forces, and all available medical services to combat the epidemic. Neighboring countries, particularly Poland and Czechoslovakia, are affected to a lesser degree. The Austrians, Germans, and Chinese have closed their borders. The United States, the United Kingdom, and others have promised epidemiologists and other needed aid as soon as the situation clears.”

There was a pause followed by static; then: “American eye-in- the-sky satellites report seeing bodies… lifeless bodies… lying all over, in the streets… columns of medical lorries and ambulances… earth-moving machines digging mass graves outside Leningrad.” The announcer began to stammer; (here could be no script for this.) “Dead, dying… a tragedy of unknown proportions… no one can tell who or how many. No… no warning.” The voice stuttered to a halt.

The radio hissed in empty, eery silence. Someone had deemed it politic to take the station off the air. From the other sets in the background they heard the Urdu announcer still speaking excitedly. Then he, too, broke off. The first strains of the Indian national anthem came on.

“What is it, sahib?” the shopkeeper touched Lessing’s sleeve. “What happens?”

Pacov.

Only Pacov could do this.

He, Alan Lessing, had handed Death the scythe with which to harvest the human race.

“Home,” he choked. “We’ve got to get home. Oh, God in Heaven!” At that moment he wished, devoutly and sincerely, that he believed in God… and God in him.