Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sunday, November 30, 2042

It was a night of shadows, of women weeping, of whispers, of voices, of lips that mouthed meaningless words. Later Lessing remembered lamp light, automobile headlights, the bare, hissing blue-white bulbs of the factory, Jimeela’s worried questions, Wrench and the others arguing on and on, and Mrs. Mulder’s brittle, near-hysterical giggle. Later he recalled dark-skinned men in loose flapping, bone-hued clothing hastening to and fro on what errands no one could say. It was indeed a night of shadows— and of fear. Later he remembered mostly the fear.

Sunday dawned like any other day, cool and bright and smoke-fragrant, as was expected in India at this time of year. Indoco’s American and European staff teetered uneasily on Mrs. Mulder s spindly-legged dining-room chairs on the mansion’s spacious screened verandah. Before them Inspector G. N. Subramaniam of the Indian C.I.D. paraded back and forth with the air of a man who has just seen an adversary fall flat on his face, but who doesn’t dare laugh. Not yet. Outside, squatting on the steps in the wintry sunshine, two squads of Indian army sipahis awaited the command to take possession of the foreigners’ property.

“Still we have no firm reports,” Subramamam was replying to Mrs. Satherly, the plump lady who ran Indoco’s accounts payable department. He spoke English with only a trace of the retroflexed consonants of his native Tamil, as different from the Hindi-Urdu of northern India as Zulu is from Hungarian. The inspector was small, dapper, and very dark, like most South Indians. He said. Everything is a shambles. We hear that much of Russia is devastated by this plague. Then a Soviet Politburo member came on the air from their defense headquarters in the Urals and accused you Americans of a sneak attack. Your people denied it, of course. Last night some Russian madman f.red seven missiles down from their satellites. They were promptly annihilated by particle beams from your A.S.A.T. space platforms. Preparations for war are in progress along the East-West frontiers in Europe. Today we have a news blackout! Chaos, madam, chaos!”

“War in Europe? My God!” Poor Mrs. Satherly mumbled dazedly “What about the United States?”

“It is still all right. No attack upon your country yet, so tar as New Delhi has deigned to inform us. But the world is stunned, paralyzed. Russians, Poles, Czechs… most of the people of the Eastern Bloc… are abandoning their homes and fleeing west, away from the plague. The situation is confused. Who can say what is happening?” Subramaniam took another turn around the polished concrete-chip floor. Mrs. Mulder fluttered in the doorway to the drawing room; behind her Lessing glimpsed Jameela’s turquoise qameez. The C.I.D. officer noticed her too and raked her up and down with a single, dark glance. He returned to stand in front of Herman Mulder.

“Which brings me to you people,” he said. “Our government has imposed an emergency powers act as of 0600 hours this morning. In order not to become involved with what we perceive as a Great Powers confrontation… and for humanitarian reasons… we are repatriating all foreign nationals. This is for your own safety. You will be flown to Delhi and thence to whatever destination your embassies deem appropriate. There is a forty-eight hour deadline.” He sounded as though he were reciting a catechism by rote.

“The Russians in India?” Wrench inquired sweetly. “You gonna just drop ‘em off at Moscow Airport?”

Subramaniam bristled. “Nationals of other countries are not your affair! Your evacuation is an act of mercy; we are helping you rejoin your families and countrymen at this difficult time. The government of India is providing the aircraft and dispensing with such formalities as exit permits and income-tax clearances!”

“And handing out tea and stale cookies in the Delhi airport departure lounge!” Wrench grumbled.

If the inspector heard he ignored him. He faced Mulder. “Arrangements have been made for the custody of foreign property.” He indicated the waiting soldiers outside. “Indoco will remain in good hands until matters become clear.”

Which, Lessing suspected, probably meant never. This was Prime Minister Ramanujan’s chance to rid India of alien corruption — and acquire heaps of foreign loot, cancel repayments of foreign loans, and do away with unwelcome foreign trade treaties, all for very understandable reasons. Let the pardesis argue and complain and file claims and hold hearings and whine to the United Nations or the World Court, if those august bodies still existed! The lacily intricate convolutions of Indian bureaucracy would keep things tied up for years, and even then foreign investors would likely receive only partial compensation. The grandchildren of the people in this room might not live to see Indoco returned to its original owners. So much for Mulder’s belief that Third World countries were safer for his SS corporations than the West.

“What of us?” Mrs. Delacroix asked from the far end of the verandah. “Two of my companions and I hold South African passports.”

Subramaniam shrugged. “India has no relations with South Africa. You will have to return on a commercial aircraft — when and if available.”

“Our own plane and pilot are waiting for us in Delhi.”

“Then we shall fly you there. After that it is the government’s decision.” The inspector gestured to show that the assembly was dismissed.

“He ought to wear jodhpurs and carry a riding crop,” Wrench whispered to Lessing. “Bureaucrats: the true enemies of the human race!”

Chairs squealed on the cement floor. People collided, jabbered, and rushed off to pack. Mulder plodded grimly into the house, Mrs. Mulder flittering behind, trilling at him about her precious furniture and knickknacks. The Fairy Godmother had long since discovered that chinaware and brass statues made acceptable substitutes for non-existent children.

Lessing had little worth taking: a single valise and his gun-case. The one other thing he dared not leave behind was hidden in the factory: his cache of Pacov. But how could he reach it with Subramaniam’s officious doggies guarding the gates? He couldn’t just abandon the stuff. Some blundering maintenance man would find it, and then there would be deaths indeed: deaths like those in Russia, deaths that put earthquakes and volcanos and the Black Plague and even Hiroshima to shame! He had to assume that it was Pacov that now stalked the world. And he himself had helped to raise it from its tomb and give it life!

Alan Lessing: Doctor Frankenstein!

No, damn it! He refused to accept the guilt! Why should he? He was not responsible! It was not Alan Lessing who had ordered those canisters scattered across Russia; he had not released invisible murder upon the world! He was only the delivery boy, just weapons-transport, like the crew of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. Hell, he was less than that! He was the postman who unknowingly delivers a parcel with a bomb inside. So he told himself.

Wait a minute: just what did he think he was doing at Marvelous Gap in the first place? His employers hadn’t sent his team there to steal a new technological gewgaw or some piddling trade secret! A spesh-op like Marvelous Gap wasn’t mounted for peanuts! He should have guessed, of course, but he hadn’t let himself think about it. The comparison with the Enola Gay was accurate, therefore, but the “innocent postman” excuse clunked like a lead five-dollar piece.

But was he responsible? He had no idea his objective was so monstrously lethal — and he would never have believed anybody would be insane enough to use it!

As Wrench said, they hadn’t bought that one at Nuremberg either.

There had not been time to assimilate the enormity of what had happened; now it was beginning to hit home. He felt shaken, sick, empty in the pit of his stomach, like a kid who sets a school wastebasket on fire for a joke and then watches the building bum to the ground with his friends inside.

Whoever had unleashed Pacov, the world was now altered forever. Nothing would ever be the same again.

The flat was empty when he entered, as impersonal as a hotel room between guests. A few hours ago it had been a home of sorts; now it was a stop-over, a bus station lobby. He would have sworn that the place even smelled different. He collected his kit from the white-tiled bathroom, then emerged to stand aimlessly in the middle of the sitting room. The fireplace was dank and charred; it reminded him of Syria, of a house shattered by artillery fire, of a broken doll and a smashed chair. For want of anything else to do, he picked up his Aladdin’s lamp. There was room in the suitcase, and he stuffed it inside.

Jameela’s clothes were gone, her closet door ajar. Desolation washed over him: it would be like her to vanish quietly, without a scene, without a long good-bye.

He fingered the nubbly tan fabric of the sofa. Just last night she was there. He knew it even before her jasmine scent reached his nostrils. He turned to find her in the doorway.

“So?” She had a knack of summing up a whole lifetime in a single word.

“So I go.” He sucked in the empty-house smell. “You coming?”

“How can I? The Americans won’t take me.”

“They would if you were my wife. We could say you were… that we didn’t have time to collect our documents. Mulder and Wrench will back us up.”

She was silent. Then she said, “No. I can’t leave my family.”

“Damn your family!” he exploded. “Talk about us!”

She hesitated again. “No, Alan. You don’t understand. We are not so… so individual as you. To us a marriage is more than a bride and groom, a husband and a wife. The families must be involved, social obligations met, people satisfied.”

He snarled an obscenity.

“Please. Try to see.” She put her fingers to his cheek. “Maybe later, when things are calm again.”

His fists were clenched so tightly they hurt. “Don’t you see? Things never will be calm again! After I leave we may never even meet again! Mulder’s talking about going back to South Africa with Mrs. Delacroix and Liese…”

“Yes, Liese. The American woman with the South African passport.”

This was no time for jealousy. “Yes, her. Back to South Africa, or maybe to that resort… what’s its name?… on Ponape in the South Pacific.”

“Not to the United States?”

“No. Mulder says that would be pointless. He has nothing in the States. He says we can’t do any good there, not now, not under the… the circumstances. He still wants me as his bodyguard.”

“Most of Indoco’s cartel is out here, in what you call the Third World. My father says that Herman Mulder is a powerful man in many countries.”

“Your father is right.” This was the first time she had mentioned her father in this context. “What’s Mulder got to do with us?”

“He is your boss.” Jameela stood nose to nose with him, her long-lashed eyes watching him levelly. “He is the owner of the SS diaries, is he not?”

“You know about that!”

“We know.” She stressed the pronoun slightly. “My father knows. A few others high up in our C.I.D. Not Subramaniam. He’s a small fish.”

The diaries again! It was too late to worry about such irrelevant things now. The whole world was upside down, and Mulder’s secrets were less important than tomorrow ‘s breakfast, than gasoline for Mrs. Delacroix ‘ airplane— than the guns Lessing had just packed away.

He couldn’t resist a question. “The two men who broke into Mulder’s safe?”

“Ours. Arabs, I think. Not very good thieves. They weren’t supposed to hurt anyone. And you weren’t supposed to hurt them. They were ordered to bring the diaries out to be photographed, to give the government of India leverage against Indoco. Then they were to put them back. That business with your friend… Mauer? Bauer?… put you too much on the alert.”

“Your people knifed him?”

“No. We still don’t know what that was about.” She flung him a brooding look. “It had to do with you though, didn’t it, Alan?”

He scowled. “Yes… possibly… hell, I don’t know! But not with Mulder’s diaries.”

It was her turn to frown. “I… I didn’t want to become involved with you, Alan. That wasn’t in the plan. I do want to go with you… you don’t know how much.”

“Then come. Your job’s over. Mulder’s leaving, and there’s nothing more to report. We get married; later we make your father and your mother and the rest of your family… all of India, damn it… understand!”

Her features softened. “All of India? It will be hard convincing all of India that we… my father, my family, my Shi’i co-religionists, the Sunni Muslims… should even continue to live. My people came from Iran and the Middle East as conquerors, but we stayed to work, to serve… to partake. We became Indians. We are Indians. We were outsiders, like the Greeks and the Aryans before us, but now we are Indians.” She saw his puzzlement. “Why do I talk of this now? Because of Subramaniam and his ilk… zealots like those who attacked you in the bazaar yesterday. To them, we Muslims are as alien as you are. We are polluted and unclean. Sooner or later we must fight a civil war.”

“The army…?”

“Previously neutral. The older generals were intelligent enough to realize that tearing India to pieces and killing or expelling a hundred and fifty million people would destroy us all. But now Prime Minister Ramanujan has stacked the high command with his own people. The army obeys the orders of the B.S.S.”

Lessing asked, “What will you… your people… do?”

“We have nowhere to go. Iran was Shi’i; now the western half is Israeli and the eastern half Russian… if the Russians are still alive to hold it. Afghanistan has been theirs for almost half a century, ever since the re-invasion. The Middle East? Israel would never let us in. Pakistan? A Sunni majority and a rabidly pro-Communist Mullah as leader! Sajid Ali Lahori would prefer us to starve in refugee camps in the deserts of Kutch and the eastern Panjab.”

“Like I said: what will you do?”

She shrugged gracefully, and his heart went out to her. “Do? We will live on here. If Ramanujan tries to expel us, we will fight. We will lose, of course, but we will fight. So will the Sikhs and some of the Christians. We will die as Muslims should.”

“Martyrs!” Borchardt’s characterization of Shi’i Islam arose to infuriate him. “What the hell good is that? God damn it, you are coming with me! Get your clothes! Get what you want to take!”

She melted against him, and he thought he had won. Then she pulled away. “You still don’t… never will… understand! I cannot! I must not!” She retreated toward the door. “I have my principles, Alan, just as you have yours. Your Party… your SS oaths “

“Wait a minute! I’m only a beegee… hired help! I’m not one of Mulder’s closet Nazis!” It was logical for her to think so; her father’s C.I.D. kikibirds had undoubtedly classified them all as Nazis, from Mulder on down to the kids who wiped the dishes.

“It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point, not now.” She pressed her fingers against her cheeks to hide tears, let her night-black tresses drift down to curtain her face, and backed into the hall. “Whatever you are, you are not mine… not for me… not a part of India!”

He followed her, reached for her. Then he saw that there was someone in the hall behind her: one of the faceless, rag-wrapped sweeper women who wielded short-handled straw brooms around Indoco’s buildings. He opened his mouth to tell the woman to go elsewhere, but Jameela spoke first:

“Sahib ko de do! Voh chiz jo turn ne pa’i thi, de do’.” She was ordering the crone to give him something, that much he understood.

The woman approached him shyly, crab-wise, head bowed, face hidden by her faded, green shawl. She extended both skeletal hands. Wondering, he cupped his own beneath hers.

Two objects dropped into his palms.

He knew at once what they were: one a smooth egg, the other a short, thick cylinder.

“My God!” He almost dropped them.

“My present,” Jameela said. “To you, Alan. In memory of… of us. They’re yours, aren’t they? Drugs? Weapons?… No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

He couldn’t speak. He was only glad that she seemed to have no idea what these containers held.

“Hameeda here saw you hide them. It’s impossible to remain unseen in India. We are so many: peasants, laborers, children, people with no jobs and little to do. Everybody watches. A rupee buys a day’s food. It’s cheap to hire watchers. Or anything else you want.”

“Thank her for me.” He stowed the Pacov containers into his shaving kit. “Why didn’t you tell your father? Subramaniam?”

“I would report on Mulder, on Wrench… certainly on Goddard… but never on you, Alan. As for Subramaniam, he hales you… all foreigners. But he hates us Muslims too… and the Christians, and the Sikhs, and everybody else who isn’t a caste Hindu. I told him only what I thought was my duty. As for Hameeda, she is a Christian, the lowest of the low, the outcasts who joined Christianity during British times to escape persecution. She would rather die than tell the mighty Inspector Sahib a single thing!”

He went to her, and this time she did not pull away. Hameeda watched impassively as they kissed.

“When this is over…,” Jameela murmured.

It would never be over. The world had turned; a new day had dawned, a Judgment Day of wrath and chaos and terror. It would never be over, but he smiled anyway and held her close, letting her warm, dry, spice-fragrant body nestle against his own. He rumpled her hair m his fist, strained against her, and let her feel his yearning. Soon,” he whispered. “I’ll be back for you.”

He hoped he wasn’t too bad a prophet.