Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

We said little to each other. Amrita seemed lost in her own thoughts and my head still ached abominably. Occasionally I would remember fragments of my dream, and the muscles in my gut would clench in tension and embarrassment.

"If worse came to worst," I said, "and you missed this evening's Pam Am connection, you could stay overnight with your aunt in New Delhi."

"Yes."

"Or stay at a good hotel near the airport."

"Yes, I could do that."

A Belgian tour group squeezed into the coffee shop. One of them, an incredibly ugly woman wearing open mesh trousers, was carrying a large plaster statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesha. They were all laughing uproariously.

"Call Dan and Barb when you get to Boston," I said.

"All right."

"I should be there the day after you. Hey, are you going to call your parents from Heathrow?"

"Bobby, I really wouldn't mind staying another day. You might need help . . . with the translating. It's about the manuscript, isn't it?"

I shook my head. "Too late, kiddo. Your luggage is already loaded. You could do without any clothes, I suppose, but we'd be doomed without the extra disposable diapers."

Amrita did not smile.

"Seriously," I said and took her hand, "I've just got to do some follow-up work with Gupta and those clowns. Hell, I just don't have enough stuff to put into an article yet. One day should do it."

Amrita nodded and tapped my ring. "All right, but be careful. Don't drink any unbottled water. And if Kamakhya comes by to exchange my material, make sure she gives you just the material . . ."

I grinned. "Yeah."

"Bobby, why didn't you let the maid in?"

"What?"

"To clean the room. Right before we left you told her to wait until tomorrow."

"The Das manuscript," I said quickly. "I don't want anyone nosing around."

Amrita nodded. I drank the last of my warm Fanta, watched a small ghekko scurry across the wall, and tried not to think about the .25-caliber automatic on the shelf of the hotel room closet.

The plane was ready to board and I had kissed both of them farewell when Amrita remembered something. "Oh, in case Kamakhya doesn't come to the hotel, would you drop by her home to get the material?" She began rummaging through her purse.

"Is it that important?"

"No, but I'd appreciate it if it works out."

"Why didn't you just exchange her material at the shop?"

"It was all cut to length. And I was certain we would see her again. Darn, I was sure I had the slip here. Never mind. I remember the address." Amrita took out a book of matches she'd picked up at the Prince's Room and jotted the address inside the cover. "Only if you have time," she said.

"All right." I would not have time. We kissed again. Victoria twisted between us, confused by the crowd and noises. I cupped the baby's head in my hand, feeling the infinite softness of her hair. "You two have a good trip. I'll see you in a couple of days."

There were no enclosed boarding ramps at Dum-Dum Airport. The passengers crossed a wet expanse of tarmac and climbed a stairway into the waiting Air India jet. Amrita turned and waved Victoria's pudgy arm before disappearing into the French-made Airbus. Normally I would have waited for the plane to take off.

I checked my watch and walked quickly back through the terminal to a stand of telephones. Gupta answered on the fifth ring.

"It is arranged, Mr. Luczak. Here is the address . . ."I fumbled for my notebook but came up with the matchbook Amrita had given me. I jotted the street number next to Kamakhya's address.

"Oh . . . and Mr. Luczak . . ."

"Yes?"

"This time you will come alone."

The rain had stopped when I stepped out of the taxi. Vapor rose from the streets and drifted between the old buildings. I had no idea where I was. The address Gupta had given me was a street corner in the old section of the city, but I had seen no familiar landmarks on the way there.

The streets and sidewalks were filling up with people after the rainstorm. Bicycles glided by with bells jangling. The steamy air was thickened further by the fumes from motorcycles. An old bullock, its back a mass of scabs and open sores, lay down heavily in the center of the busy street. Traffic swerved around it.

I stood and waited. The sidewalk there was actually a a four-foot-wide strip of pockmarked mud between the gutter and the walls of old buildings. There were three-foot gaps between the buildings, and after being assaulted by a terrible smell, I walked over and peered into one of the narrow apertures.

Garbage and organic wastes rose eight to twelve feet high down the length of the long alley. It was obvious that the residents had thrown their refuse out the upper windows for many years. Dark shapes moved through the stinking heaps. I quickly moved away from the opening and stood by the stream of rainwater and sewage that marked the separation of street and sidewalk.

I watched every face in the moving crowd. As in any large city, the pedestrians had set their faces in masks of hurried irritability. Many of the men wore stiff polyester shirts and bell-bottomed polyester slacks. I marveled that — in a nation which produced some of the world's best and least expensive cotton clothing — the sign of middle-class prestige was the more expensive, unbreathable polyester. Occasionally a sweaty face under oiled black hair would glance my way, but no one stopped except some children, naked except for filthy khaki shorts, who danced around me for several minutes calling "Baba! Baba!" and giggling. I handed out no coins, and after several minutes they ran off splashing through the gutter.

"You are Luczak?"

I jumped. The two men had come up behind me while I was watching the traffic go by. One of them was dressed in the usual polyester, but the other wore the stained khaki of the service classes. Neither looked especially bright or pleasant. The tall, thin one in a print shirt had a wedge-shaped face with sharp cheekbones and a narrow mouth. The man in khaki was shorter, heavier, and dumber-looking than his friend. There was a sleepy, disdainful look about his eyes that reminded me of all the bullies I'd ever known.

"I'm Luczak."

"Come."

They moved off through the crowd so quickly that I had to jog to catch up. I asked several questions, but their silence and the uproar of the street convinced me to keep quiet and follow them.

We walked for the better part of an hour. I had been lost to start with, but I was soon terminally disoriented. Because of the omnipresent clouds, I couldn't even use the sun for dead reckoning. We went down crowded side streets no wider than an alley and actual alleys crowded with people and debris. Several times the two led the way through short tunnels into courtyards of residential buildings. Children ran, squealed, and squatted everywhere. Women pulled their saris half over their faces and watched with dark, suspicious eyes. Other tunnels led to other courtyards. Old men hung over rusted iron railings and looked down with glazed expressions. Babies screamed. Cooking fires burned on concrete landings and smoke hung in the foggy air.

Another short tunnel brought us out into alley which was several blocks long and more crowded than most American main streets. This led to an area where buildings had been razed, but tents and impromptu shelters sat between mounds of rubble. One large pit, perhaps a basement in some previous time, had been flooded by monsoon rains and the filthy drainage. Scores of men and boys splashed and shouted in the water while others leaped from second-floor windows in buildings surrounding the brown pool. Nearby, two naked boys laughingly poked sticks at what appeared to be a drowned and bloated rat.

Then we were out of the residential buildings completely and into a chawl of loosely piled rock walls, gunny sack apartments and multi-leveled condominiums constructed of old billboards, sheets of tin, and bleached scrapwood. An empty lot held twenty or thirty men squatting to defecate. Farther on, young girls sat on a rocky terrace behind their younger siblings, carefully pulling lice from matted hair. An occasional scrawny dog slunk away as we passed, but none seemed to possess any territorial instincts here. Human eyes watched from the deep shadows of the hovel doorways. Every once in a while a child would run out, palm extended, but a shout from an unseen adult would quickly call him back.