Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

"Why did you do that?"

"I promised your father."

The boy waved both hands at me and repeated something that sounded urgent and angry.

"What's he saying?"

Amrita frowned. "I'm not sure through the dialect, but it's something about photos of the bridge being against the law."

"Tell him it's okay."

She spoke in Hindi, and the boy scowled and responded in Bengali.

"He says it's not okay," said Amrita. "He says that we Americans should let our satellites do our spying."

"Jesus."

The rickshaw pulled up in front of an interminable brick building that was the Howrah Railway Station. There was no sign of Chatterjee's Premiere or of the gray sedan in the snarl of traffic coming off the bridge. "Now what?" I said.

The boy turned to me and handed over the canvas bag. I was surprised by its weight. I tugged the drawstring loose and looked inside.

"Good heavens," said Amrita. "They're coins."

"Not just coins," I said, holding one up. "Kennedy half-dollars. There must be fifty or sixty of them here."

The boy pointed to the entrance of the building and spoke quickly. "He says you are to go inside and give these away," said Amrita.

"Give them away? To whom?"

"He says someone will ask you for them."

The boy nodded as if satisfied, reached into the bag, grabbed four of the coins, and was out of the rickshaw, into the crowd.

Victoria reached for the coins. I tugged the drawstring tight and stared at Amrita. "Well," I said, "I guess it's up to us."

"After you, sir."

When I was a child, the Merchandise Mart in Chicago was the biggest building I could possibly imagine. Then in the late 60's I had the opportunity to see the interior of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. The friend who was showing me around told me that clouds formed indoors on some days.

Howrah Railway Station was more impressive.

It was a structure built to a giant's scale. There were a dozen tracks immediately visible; five locomotives at rest, several pouring steam; several score of vendors selling unnamed things from carts that sent up eye-scalding plumes of smoke, thousands of sweating, jostling people; more thousands squatting, sleeping, cooking — living there; and a cacophony of sound so deafening that one couldn't hear himself shout, much less think. That was Howrah Railway Station.

"Mother of Mercy," I said. A few feet from my head, an aircraft propeller protruded from a girder and slowly stirred the heavy air. Dozens of similar fans added their racket to the ocean of noise.

"What?" shouted Amrita. Victoria cringed against her mother's breast.

"Nothing!" We began walking aimlessly, shoving through a crowd moving nowhere. Amrita tugged at my sleeve, and I leaned over so she could speak in my ear. "Shouldn't we wait for Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Gupta?"

I shook my head. "Let them get their own Kennedy half-dollars."

"What?"

"Never mind."

A short woman came up to us. On her back was a thing that might have been her husband. The man's spine was twisted cruelly, one shoulder grew out of the middle of his humped back, and his legs were boneless tentacles that disappeared inside the folds of the woman's sari. A black arm more bone than flesh unfolded our way and his palm opened. "Baba, Baba."

I hesitated a second and then reached into the bag and handed him a coin. His wife's eyes opened wide, and both her hands thrust at us. "Baba!"

"Should I give him the whole thing?" I shouted at Amrita, but before she could reply there were a dozen hands being thrust into my face.

"Baba! Baba!"

I tried to back away, but more imploring palms struck at my back. Quickly I began dispensing coins. The hands would grasp the silver, disappear into the fray, and then thrust back for more. I caught a glimpse of Amrita and Victoria ten feet away and was glad there was some distance between us.

The crowd grew magically. One second there were ten or fifteen people shouting and holding their hands out, and a few seconds later the mob had grown to thirty, then fifty. I felt as if it were Halloween and I was dispensing candy to a crowd of trick-or-treaters, but this harmless illusion disappeared when a dark hand rotted from leprosy came out of the crowd and scabrous fingers batted at my face.

"Hey!" I shouted, but it was a weak sound against the noise of the mob. There must have been a hundred people pushing toward the packed center of a circle which held me as its locus. The pressure was frightening. A groping hand accidentally ripped my shirt open and left parallel tracks across my chest. An elbow struck me in the side of the head and I would have gone down then if the press of bodies had not kept me upright.

"Baba! Baba! Baba!" The entire mob was moving toward the edge of the platform. It was a six-or seven-foot drop to the metal rails. The woman with the cripple on her back screamed as the man was torn loose and fell into the surging pack. A man near me began screaming and repeatedly striking another in the face with the side of his hand.

"The shit with this," I said and threw the bag of coins into the air. The canvas pouch turned over once in a lazy arc and spewed coins across the mob and a shouting rice vendor. The screaming rose in pitch and the frenzied mass lunged away from the edge of the platform, but not before I heard something or someone heavy fall to the rails. A woman screamed inches from my face and saliva spattered over me. Then a heavy blow caught me in the back and I pitched forward, grabbed at a sari, then went down on my knees.

The mob pressed around me, and for a second I panicked, covering my heads with my hands. Stained trouser legs and sharp knees in rags struck at my face. Someone tripped over me, and for a second the full weight of the mob was on my back, forcing my face to the floor, crushing me. I distantly heard Amrita's shouts above the animal roar of the crowd. I opened my mouth to scream, but at that instant a filthy bare foot struck me in the face. Someone stepped on the back of my leg and a searing pain shot up my calf muscle.

One second I was lost in the darkness of tumbling forms and in the next I could see the glow from broken skylights high above and Amrita was bending over me, holding Victoria in her left arm while she used her right arm to shove aside the last of the jostling beggars. Then the mob was past and Amrita was helping me to a sitting position on the filthy platform. It was as if a tidal wave had appeared from nowhere, spent its violence, and was now flowing back into the random sea of people and pools of huddled families. Nearby an old man crouched over a large pot of boiling water that had remained miraculously unspilled in the confusion.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I kept repeating to Amrita when I could get my breath. Now that the danger was past, Amrita began sobbing and laughing as she hugged me and helped me to my feet. We checked Victoria for bruises or scratches, and the baby chose that instant to begin wailing so loudly that both of us had to reassure her with hugs and kisses. "I'm sorry," I said again. "That was so stupid."

"Look," said Amrita. There, next to my feet, lay a plain brown briefcase. I picked it up, and we pushed our way outside past packs of rickshaw coolies clamoring for our business. We found a relatively open space near the street and leaned against a brick pillar while the flow of people broke around us. I checked Victoria again. She was fine, blinking in the stronger light and obviously debating whether to resume her wailing.

Amrita grasped my forearm. "Let's see what's in the briefcase and get out of here," she said.

"I'll open it later."

"Open it now , Bobby," she said. "We'll feel pretty foolish if you went through all that to come away with some businessman's lunch."