Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

The two Kapalikas disappeared from the dim rectangle above us. Our own movement was nightmarishly slow. One of us would become stuck and use the other's body as leverage to free himself.

I had waded most of the length of the alley when a sudden thought made me want to retch again. There was no light ahead of us. What if we're going the wrong way, toward a brick wall, a dead end ?

We were not. Five more waded steps, and the alley turned sharply to the right and the level of trash diminished. Fifteen more steps and we were out.

We stumbled out onto a wet and empty street. Rats brushed by our ankles, hopping in their panic, and splashed off through rain-filled gutters. I looked left and right but could see no sign of the last two Kapalikas.

"Quickly, Mr. Luczak," hissed Krishna; and we ran across the street, moved quickly over tilted slabs of sidewalk, and blended into the dark shadows under sagging metal awnings. We ran from shop to shop. Occasionally there would be sleeping forms in the wet doorways, but no one called out; no one tried to stop us.

We turned down another street and then dodged through a short alley onto an even wider street where a truck was just disappearing from sight. There were streetlights here, and an electric glow came from numerous windows. Above us, a red flag flapped in the breeze. I could hear the sound of traffic on nearby streets.

We stopped for a minute in the dark doorway of a caged and shuttered store. We were both gasping, bent over from the pain of exertion, but Krishna's narrow face showed the gleeful, blood-sport mask of joy I had seen there that first night on the bus. He started to speak, took another breath, and straightened up.

"I will leave you now, Mr. Luczak," he said.

I stared at him. He steepled his fingers, bowed slightly, and turned to walk away. His sandals made soft sounds in the puddles.

"Wait!" I cried. He did not stop. "Just a minute. Hey!" He was almost lost to the shadows now.

I took a step forward into the pale circle of the streetlight. "Stop! Sanjay , stop!"

He stopped. Then he turned and took two slow steps in my direction. His long fingers seemed to twitch. "What did you say, Mr. Luczak?"

"Sanjay," I repeated, but it was more of a whisper this time. "I'm right, aren't I?"

He stood there, a basilisk with a wild corona of dark hair framing his terrible gaze. The smile appeared then and widened into something far worse than a shark's grimace. It was the grin of a hungry ghoul.

"I'm right, aren't I, Sanjay ?" I paused to take a breath. I had no idea what to say next. But I had to say something — anything — to keep him at bay. "What's your game, Sanjay? What the fuck is going on?"

He did not move for several seconds; and I half expected a silent rush, long fingers reaching for my throat. Instead, he threw back his head an laughed. "Yes, yes, yes," he said. "There are many games, Mr. Luczak. This game is not yet over. Good-bye, Mr. Luczak."

He turned and trotted into the darkness.

If I had found a taxi sooner . . .

If I had gone straight to the hotel . . .

It took me the better part of an hour to get back to the hotel. At first I staggered from street to street, staying in the shadows, freezing when I saw anyone walking my direction. Once I jogged through an empty courtyard to get to a wider avenue from which came the sound of traffic.

A man lurched out of a shadowed doorway at me. I yelled, jumped back, and threw up my fists in an instinctive gesture. I screamed again when my little finger tried to bend with the rest of my left hand. The man — an old man in rags with a red bandana around his forehead — stumbled back in the act of saying "Baba" and let out his own scream of fear. The two of us left the courtyard in different directions.

I came out onto the avenue to see trucks passing, private cars swerving around cyclists, and, most welcome of all, a public bus moving slowly down the street. I banged on the side of the moving vehicle in my eagerness to board it. The driver stared as I dumped a pocketful of coins at him. Along with the required paisas there must have been several days' worth of his salary in the American money I dumped there.

The bus was crowded, and I squeezed through the standing passengers to find a position less visible from the street. There were no straps. I grabbed a metal bar and hung on to it as the swaying bus ground through gears and lurched from stop to stop.

For a while I fell into a half-dream state. The overload of the past few hours had left me drained of everything except the desire to stand there and be safe . Many blocks had passed before I realized that a wide space had been opened around me and that the other passengers were staring.

Haven't you ever seen an American before ? I thought at them. Then I looked down at myself. My clothes were soaked and reeking from the unmentionable filth I had waded through. My shirt was ripped in at least two places and no one could have guessed that it had once been white. My bare arms were caked with scum and my right forearm was still redolent from my own vomit. The little finger on my left hand protruded at an impossible angle. From the way my brow and forehead felt, I had the beginning of a spectacular bruise there, and caked blood still adorned my brow, eyelid, and cheek. No doubt my hair and expression looked wilder than Krishna at his wildest.

"Hi," I said and gave a limp wave at the group. Women raised their saris over their faces, and the entire huddle pressed back until the driver shouted at them not to crowd him.

A thought occurred to me then. Where the hell was I? For all I knew, this might have been the nightly express to New Delhi. At the very least, the odds were great that I was going the wrong way.

"Does anyone here speak English?" I asked. The staring passengers pressed even farther away from me. I bent and peered out the barred windows. A few blocks passed before I saw the neon-lit facade of some sort of hotel or café. Several black and yellow cabs were parked out front.

"Hold it!" I called. "I'll get out here." I pressed through the quickly parting throng. The driver screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. There was no door to be opened. The crowd made way to let me pass.

I argued with the drivers for several minutes before I remembered that I still had my wallet. The three drivers had taken one look at me and decided that I was not worth their time. Then I remembered to take out my wallet and hold up a twenty-dollar bill. Suddenly the three were smiling, bowing, and opening their car doors for me. I settled into the first cab, said "Oberoi Grand," and closed my eyes. We roared away through rain-slick streets.

Several minutes later I realized that I was still wearing my watch. The dial was difficult to read, but when we passed a lighted intersection I could make it out. It said 11:28 . . . that was impossible! Only two hours since the car had brought me to Das? A lifetime had passed since then. I tapped the crystal, but the second hand continued pulsing steadily.

"Hurry!" I said to the driver.

" Atcha !" he called back happily. Neither of us had understood the other.

The assistant manager saw me enter the lobby and watched me with an expression of horror. He raised his hand. "Mr. Luczak!"

I waved at him and enterd the elevator. I did not want to talk to him. The adrenalin and mindless euphoria were wearing away to be replaced by nausea, fatigue, and pain. I leaned against the wall of the elevator and held my left hand steady. What would I tell Amrita? My thoughts stirred sluggishly and I settled on a simple tale of being mugged. I would tell her the rest of the story someday. Perhaps.