Turn of the Cards

Chapter Fourteen

“Dr. Meadows,” the tall, sleek, dark-skinned man in the blue turban said, “we have satisfied ourselves as to your bona fides. You have a most impressive résumé. I must admit, however, that it surprises me that one of your qualifications should have spent the last several years as a merchant and restaurant operator.”

“Uh,” Mark said, brushing his nose with the thumb of his closed right hand. He had an answer ready for that one. “Burnout, man. I just couldn’t take the pace any longer. Like, New York, y’know? But I’m ready to get back to work now.”

He also had a blue vial stashed away in his right fist, ready to slam down at the first hint of trouble. He wasn’t trusting anybody these days. Another sign of his moral corruption.

Mr. Singh nodded, one of those extremely precise nods that make you suspect a person has click-detents in his cervical vertebrae. “The Maharajah is definitely willing to consider accepting you into his service.” He smiled. His teeth were too white for his own good. His English was mellifluous, steady, and Oxonian, not the singsong high-pitched whine of most Indians Mark had tried to converse with. In his dark European-style business suit Mr. Singh looked as if he played a lot of handball or found other means of keeping himself trim.

Mark leaned forward in his chair, his heart jumping around in his ribcage. Visions of himself as Mother Teresa danced in his head. “I can start you out on production of 108 certain basic antibiotics right away. From there we can move to simple gene-engineering stuff like making E. coli — create insulin — kids’ stuff, anyone can do it. In a couple of years, given the current state of the art and the availability of biotech equipment, we start doing original work. It’s time somebody made a real move with monoclonal antibodies, or if your maharajah wants to be ambitious, he can shoot for the whole enchilada: creating a counter-virus that will attach to the gp12O sequence on the protein coat of the AIDS virus — it never changes, no matter how the virus mutates, ’cause without it, it wouldn’t still be AIDS.”

Laughing, Mr. Singh held up his hands. He had a rich, deep laugh. “Dr. Meadows, please. Your enthusiasm does you credit; no doubt you will accomplish many great things for our people.”

Mark stopped with his face hanging over the huge mahogany desk. He was practically panting with eagerness. He had had no idea until this instant how much he really wanted to get back to work.

It’s Sprout, he thought. When I get settled here, I can bring Sprout over, settle her down in a nice bungalow.

“But we must first concern ourselves with practicalities,” Singh said. Mark’s heart folded its wings and fell to the floor of his chest like a buckshot dove. No joy had ever come into his life from speeches with the word practicality in them.

“Haryana is a poor state, Doctor. We lack the enormous wealth of Kashmir to the north. It is a substantial drain upon our resources to keep ourselves in a state of readiness to resist any encroachment from the Punjab or Uttar Pradesh. You will have your fine research laboratory, but first we must discuss our immediate need for revenue enhancement.”

He leaned his fine turbaned head forward. “Now. What would it take you to begin producing the drug rapture for export?”

In the main square of Ambala it was hot as hell. The seat of the Maharajah of Haryana was practically in the Himalayan foothills, but it was still about 103 in the late-morning, and the heat hit the pavement and bounced up into your face and stomach like medicine balls.

He walked around two sides of the square to a little sidewalk café with parasols. He bought a copy of a newspaper and sat down thankfully in the shade, ordering a bottled fruit juice from the bowing waiter.

You told him you’d think about it? There was no mistaking J. J. Flash’s voice, blaring out from the cheap seats of Mark’s mind. You’re a total schmuck. These little vest-pocket princes and their grand viziers are the only law west of the Pecos, and they aren’t used to being told you’ll “think about it.” You tell them, “Yes, O great and powerful Lord of All Creation, I am your eager and obedient slave.” Then you run like a bunny.

He found himself sweating from more than the heat, which was more than enough by itself At least I had sense not to turn him down pointblank.

Oh, Flash said, impress me. You’re just dumb, not suicidal, is that it?

Maybe if Mr. Singh had hit him with a proposition to manufacture a different drug, Mark would have responded differently. Despite the attempts of the government and media to demonize them, the major recreationals weren’t very dangerous. As a general thing they had fewer side effects than a majority of prescription drugs, and all of them were physically less harmful by a long shot than legal drugs like alcohol and nicotine. And Mark had no reason in the world to love America’s drug warriors.

But rapture was one of those synthetics that crop up when the government actually does manage to put a temporary squeeze on the importation of recreational drugs. Unlike heroin, say — which, according to the DEA, has no clinical side effects — the synthetics, the “designer drugs,” have unpredictable and frequently horrible side effects, commonly including things like neurological dysfunction and death. Mark wanted no part of that.

But even if Singh had offered him his own marijuana plantation, Mark probably would have felt miffed and recalcitrant. He wanted to do real work, wanted to be a scientist again. On Takis he had seen just what biochemistry and bioengineering could accomplish. Earth’s technology was ready for a revolution, a nanotechnological upheaval that would produce plenty and prosperity for all humans while not only eliminating pollution but actually providing the means to repair the damage Man had done his planet. That was where Mark wanted to be.

A sacred elephant was wandering across the plaza with a mahout on his back. Japanese tourists stood snapping pictures as devout locals ran up to touch its trunk. Mark reached into his shirt pocket and took out the head of the rose Au Sher had been wearing behind his ear. It was definitely the worse for wear, and getting black around the edges.

When they’d finally parted company at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, Mi Sher had wept like a baby and kissed him on the cheeks. He had wanted to do considerably more, he had made clear, but there was a limit to how understanding even Mark was willing to be. Freewheelin’ Frank had given him a thousand bucks American for his escort services and said that any time he wanted to go into the caravan line along the old Silk Road, he should look him up. Mi Sher had broken the head off the rose he wore behind his ear and given it to Mark to remember him by.

A bus honked at bicyclists. Mark sighed. India was not shaping up to be the way he’d imagined it. The gurus weren’t interested in you if you didn’t have your Gold Card. And riding into town at dawn two days ago on the Delhi Express from Amritsar, Mark had looked out the window to see the fields covered with hundreds and hundreds of locals, hunkering down for their morning constitutional. It looked like the whole cast of Gandhi taking a communal crap.

Mark had never bought into the dirty hippie part of the sixties trip. Sunflower used to say he was anal retentive, back in their Bay student days — though she’d turned into Ms. Clean quick enough, once she actually moved in with him. Mark was too much the biochemist not to have a handsome regard for hygiene. It didn’t seem like a number-one priority here.

He sipped his juice and opened the paper. It was a copy of the Haryana Times, written in this funny stilted Babu English. The first thing he saw was an article on Vietnam.

“‘We suffered forty years of war,’ said Mr. Tran Quang, a cultural and ideological spokesman for the Central Committee. ‘More than other countries we need friendship.’”

Vietnam. They were still holding out, holding on to the socialist dream. It was tough on them; the Soviets were telling them they had to go it on their own from here on in, according to the article. Even wanted the Viets to start paying them back.

Most of the world had turned its back on communism, Mark knew. In fact, most of the world seemed determined to forget there’d ever been such a thing in the first place. Mark guessed maybe it hadn’t worked so well.

But he remembered the old days, Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh/NLF is gonna win, Bonnie Raitt dedicating her second album to the people of North Vietnam. There was something stirring in Vietnam’s defiance, something grand. Something that spoke to the old hippie in Mark.

And then he saw it. “Mr. Tran announced that the Socialist Republic is opening its doors to all the people across the world who have been touched by the wild card virus. ’When all the rest of the world is turning against the aces and jokers,’ he said, ’we welcome them. We invite them all to come and enjoy the benefits of life in our progressive republic.’”

Mark laid the paper across his thighs and for a while just stared out into the heat shimmer. Then he stood.

A couple of tall bearded guys in turbans, Sikhs most likely, had been loitering half a block from the outdoor café. When Mark stood, one of them touched the other on the arm. Very discreet motion, but Mark caught it anyway.

He turned and walked directly away from them. As he came up alongside a parked Hyundai, he glanced in the wing mirror. Sure enough, they were following him.

Obviously the maharajah thought he was too priceless a pearl to be permitted to slip through his fingers. It was flattering in a way. He turned a corner.

The two Sikhs broke into a run. Just as they reached the corner, a giant Pushtun came around it. He stopped a moment, glared at each of them in turn. They stood their ground — Sikhs don’t give way to any scabby Khyber trash, even when it looms half a head taller than them — but they shared a look of frank relief when he grumbled and went his way. They hustled around the corner in pursuit of Mark.

“What buttholes,” Mi Sher said in the voice of Cosmic Traveler. He grinned in his beard, stuck the dead rose over his ear, and walked off toward the train station, whistling Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”