Amitav Gosh - The Calcutta Chromosome

Urmila gave her arm a pat. 'I'm sure he'll be here soon,' she said in a soothing voice.

Sonali made a distracted gesture. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Everyone seems to be disappearing today. If he doesn't come soon I'll have to go and look for him.'

She laughed, a little nervously. 'Now what was it that you wanted to ask me about?' she said.

Urmila sat up eagerly, 'Iwas curious,' she said, 'about whether you ever heard Phulboni talk about someone called Laakhan?'

'Someone called Laakhan?' Sonali lowered herself into a sofa. 'That's interesting. Why do you ask?'

THE CROWD IN the restaurant was thinning now; the tables were emptying fast as people hurried back to work. Antar glanced from his watch to Murugan, sitting across the table. He was pouring from the restaurant's bamboo-handled teapot, evidently unconscious of the time. Antar decided to stay a few minutes longer.

'What's the joke?' Murugan said sharply, his voice cutting through the buzz.

Antar sat up, startled: 'I'm sorry?'

'Why are you smiling?'

'Was I smiling?'

'You bet you were,' said Murugan.

'Well, then,' Antar said. 'I suppose I was smiling.'

'You think this scenario is funny or something?' Murugan asked.

'Frankly, I don't know what to think,' Antar said. 'I've heard you out, and as far as I can see you don't have a shred of real evidence, or proof or anything… '

'And what if I said that's what my proof is?'

'The lack thereof, you mean?' said Antar, trying not to smile.

'I mean secrecy is what this is about: it figures there wouldn't be any evidence or proof.'

Antar shrugged. 'But even if I were to grant that,' he said, 'your version still wouldn't make sense. If I followed you correctly, you were suggesting that this other team – to use your phrase – was already ahead of Ross on some of this research. But then why wouldn't they just go ahead with this research themselves? Why wouldn't they publish their findings and put themselves in the running for the Nobel?'

Murugan ran his hand over his chin. 'All right,' he said, after a long pause. 'I'll sketch a scenario for you. I'm not saying that's how it happened: I'm just asking you to hear me out.'

'Go ahead,' Antar said politely.

'Let me put it like this,' Murugan said. 'You know all about matter and antimatter, right? And rooms and anterooms and Christ and Antichrist and so on? Now, let's say there was something like science and counter-science. Thinking of it in the abstract, wouldn't you say that the first principle of a functioning counter-science would have to be secrecy? The way I see it, it wouldn't just have to be secretive about what it did (it couldn't hope to beat the scientists at that game anyway); it would also have to be secretive i n what it did. It would have to use secrecy as a technique or procedure. It would in principle have to refuse all direct communication, straight off the bat, because to communicate, to put ideas into language, would be to establish a claim to know - which is the first thing that a counter-science would dispute.'

'I don't follow,' said Antar. 'What you're saying doesn't make sense.'

'You took the words out of my mouth,' Murugan said. 'Not making sense is what it's about – conventional sense, that is. Maybe this other team started with the idea that knowledge is self-contradictory; maybe they believed that to know something is to change it, therefore in knowing something, you've already changed what you think you know so you don't really know it at all: you only know its history. Maybe they thought that knowledge couldn't begin without acknowledging the impossibility of knowledge. See what I'm saying?'

'I'm listening,' said Antar. 'For what it's worth.'

'Maybe none of this makes sense,' said Murugan. 'But let's just try and take it on its own terms for a minute. Let's look at the kinds of working hypotheses it yields. Here's one: if it's true that to know something is to change it, then it follows that one way of changing something – of effecting a mutation, let's say – is to attempt to know it, or aspects of it. Right?'

Antar nodded.

'OK,' said Murugan. 'So let's run with this for a bit. Let's say that just about the time that Ronnie's beginning to work on malaria there's this other person – this team that's also been working with Pl asmodiu m j a l ciparum but in a different way; a way so different it wouldn't make any sense to anyone who's properly trained. But let's say that by accident or design they've made a certain amount of progress; they've taken their work to a certain point and then they've run smack into a dead end: they're stuck, they can't go any further – because of the glitches in their own methods, because they just haven't got the right equipment. Whatever. They decide that the next big leap in their project will come from a mutation in the parasite. The question now is: how do they speed up the process? The answer is: they've got to find a conventional scientist who'll give it a push.

'Enter Ronnie. But what do they do next? They can't tell him what they know because it's against their religion. Besides, they can't exactly walk up to him and say, "Hey there, Ron, what's cooking?" To begin with they wouldn't get past the guards of the 19th Madras Infantry. Even if they did, Ronnie wouldn't believe them. They've got to make it look like he's found out for himself. So they go into a huddle and try to think through their next move. Remember that these guys haven't got a whole lot going for them: they're fringe people, marginal types; they're so far from the mainstream you can't see them from the shore. On the credit side, there's a lot of them and they know all about Ronnie, but neither Ronnie nor anyone else knows anything about them. They've also got the best collection of parasites in town. They've just got to play their cards right and they can do it.'

'That's all very well,' said Antar. 'But it still leaves the basic question unanswered.'

'And what's that?' said Murugan.

'Why? Why would anyone go to so much trouble? It's clear enough what's in it for Ross: fame, prospects, promotions, a Nobel. But what could these other people accepting your premiss for a moment – hope to gain from all this?'

'I thought you'd ask,' Murugan said. 'And once again, I don't have the answer. But if I am right – and the way this game's set up, there's no way you're ever going to know whether I'm right or not – but if I a m right, let's just say even fractionally right, then what these guys were developing was the most revolutionary medical technology of all time. Forget about the Nobel, forget about diseases and cures and epidemiology and shit like that. What these guys were after was much bigger; they were after the biggest prize of all, the biggest fucking ball game any human being has ever thought of: the ultimate transcendence of nature.'

'And what might that be?' Antar asked politely.

'Immortality,' said Murugan.

Antar slapped the table. 'Oh, I see,' he said, with a laugh. 'You mean like Osiris and Horus and Amun-Ra? Were they hoping to grow nice little jackal heads? Or were they planning to sprout ibis beaks?'

'Maybe I overstated the case a bit,' Murugan said. 'What I'm really talking about is a technology for interpersonal transference.'

'Interpersonal wh a t ? ' said Antar.

Before Murugan could answer, the waiter appeared, and placed the bill between them. He was middle-aged, with a diffident, nervous manner. He looked on, smiling exaggeratedly and rubbing his hands as they counted out their money.

All of a sudden Murugan sat bolt upright in his chair. 'I'll give you an example,' he said. Jumping to his feet, he thrust his face into the waiter's. Then, at the top of his voice he shouted, 'Yo!'