Sagramanda Read online

  The nature of the intruders and their offense became clear as soon as she entered the food court. McDonald's and Pizza Hut had been targets, but so had Cum-In Chicken, Flash Satay, and other non-American fast food outlets. A quick survey of those that had been vandalized and those that had been spared gave more than a subtle clue to the agenda of the attackers. All of those outlets that had been despoiled served meat. Those whose offerings were strictly vegetarian had been spared.

  The attackers had been members of one of several underground but well-known radical vegan groups. Perhaps the Pushkar Commandos, she mused. Their members had been much in the news lately, ever since their fire-bomb attack on the offices of a certain national concern that had its headquarters on the east coast and specialized in the cloning and genetic engineering of avian foodstock. Having no sympathy for their aims, she deliberately and defiantly sought out an undamaged outlet that served not only meat, but beef. Bright, stinging memories of preadolescent starvation tend to trump whatever philosophies purport to discredit particular kinds of nourishment.

  She ordered a double burger and fries, and to wash it all down, a Nathmull's teacola.

  Sitting there, watching the crowd recover from the shock of the intrusion and temporarily free from the persistent drifting ads that were kept outside the dining area, she had time to ponder how drastically her life had changed. From a future promising nothing better than an arranged marriage to another Untouchable like herself, or worse, indentured servitude in a child sweatshop or outright sale as a lifetime servant to an abusive family, she had come to this. Sitting in the Chowringhee Mall eating American-style food, gold dangling from her ears and neck and encircling her fingers, a bag of designer clothing resting at her feet. Her perfectly made-up mouth contorted into a grimace of self-reflection, but not even that could distort her beauty. Not too many years ago she would have been abysmally grateful had someone just given her the shopping bag.

  Gold, jewelry, clothing. An apartment, albeit a secret one, with a real induction stove, and a vit, and a molly player. A car, surely, was in her future, though until things were resolved her beloved insisted it was safer for the both of them to continue to rely on public transportation, where their movements would be far more difficult to track. And Taneer Buthlahee. She had him, too. Nothing would or could make her let go of any of that.

  The two men did not ask permission to sit down opposite her. Like her, they were in their mid-twenties. They were fashionably dressed. Both wore gleaming wrist communicator/chronographs that reeked of money. So did their attitudes.

  “I don't think I've seen you in here before,” said the first. He made it sound like a challenge.

  His companion grinned, showing perfectly capped (or regenerated) white teeth. He had a very thin, movie-star mustache and was to all appearances as confident in his looks as in his money. “I know I haven't. There is no way I would forget you, if I had seen you.”

  She bit down into the last of the hamburger, wishing the curried ketchup were hot enough to match the heat rising inside her. But she kept her voice level. “That's all right. You can pretend.”

  Sudden confusion did not diminish the man's smile. “Pretend what?”

  “That you've never seen me.”

  Now the smile did fade, though the man's companion laughed appreciatively. “Looks and wit! Where are you from, beautiful?” Resting his chin in one hand, he leaned over the table and did his best to establish unbreakable eye contact with her.

  “From the place to which I am now going.” Flashing a quick, tight smile of her own, she swallowed the last of the teacola and reached down with one hand to pick up her shopping bag. Before she could rise, the disappointed smiler had grabbed her other wrist. Not painfully. Just hard enough to restrain her. As her uncle Chamudi had often restrained her. Gently but irresistibly, his grin returning to its full enhanced orthodontic brilliance, the man started to pull her across the table toward him.

  Somewhat less gently and just as irresistibly, she raised her left leg, locked it out straight, and pushed the heel of her foot against his crotch underneath the table. “Keep pulling,” she suggested encouragingly

  The smile drained away from the man's face. So did some of the color. Letting go of her wrist, he sat back in his chair and affected the air of the unaffected as he looked around to see if anyone else noticed what was happening. In this he had only partial success.

  She withdrew her foot. What she wanted to do was ram it into him hard enough so that it came out his asshole, with his balls balanced on her heel. But it would do no good to antagonize this spoiled pair any further. Mall security might take an interest in any more expansive confrontation, and if there was one thing Taneer had impressed on her more than anything else it was a need right now to avoid attracting any kind of official attention.

  So she fought off the urge to make a point, drew back her leg, and rose. At least she could enjoy the look on the face of Mr. Smiley's now bewildered companion. As for Mr. Smiley himself, he was looking increasingly unwell.

  “So interesting to make your acquaintance. Not seeing you again soon, I think.” She sashayed off, lengthening her stride as she reached the boundaries of the food court, deliberately refusing to look back. When she finally did so, her smarmy, self-confident accosters were nowhere to be seen. She started to shake: with anger, not with fear. Getting herself back under control, she began working her way toward the exit that linked the mall to its proprietary subway terminal.

  Never again would a man, any man, treat her the way Uncle Chamudi had done. Touch her the way he had. The pop-out ceramic blade that was built into and took the shape of the heel of her shoe remained sheathed. Smiley-face would never know how lucky he had been that she had decided only to make an impression on him.

  She did not go straight home. Taneer's instructions as to how she needed to travel had been very explicit. He had only to tell her something once and she would remember it. Halfway across the city she got out of the subway, took the escalator up to the street, and began to walk. Baroghly was a border area. As she covered ground, her surroundings changed very quickly from lower middle-class to poor. Not to abject poor. She did not go as far as the antiquated hovels of Outer Sealadhan. She did not have to. There was enough of a mix in the human crush of Baroghly to suit her needs.

  The reek from the public restroom was almost overpowering. No tourists could have stood it for more than a few seconds, and few respectable citizens of the city would have tried. Waiting until the entrance to the women's section was deserted, Depahli did not hesitate, but walked straight toward it and entered. She did not like the stench, but she had no trouble tolerating it. It was more than familiar to her from her childhood as well as from her early years in Sagramanda.

  On the third try she found an empty plastic stall that was not overwhelmed with the stain of urine, the slickness of vomit, and the smear of human feces. Removing the collapsible, lightweight garment holder from her bag, she undressed as quickly as possible. Every gleam of gold went into a small box. The contents of a can of deodorized antiseptic played over her naked body. From the bottom of the bag she extracted a second, airtight container. The pre-stained, simple cotton sari it held fit her loosely, badly, thoroughly obscuring her figure. Today's veil was beige, with strategic yet unrevealing rips and tears.

  She stood thus inside the stall, listening to the comings and goings of poor women and their chattering, bawling, screaming children, before finally emerging. The stink of the restroom clung to her clothing but, thanks to the spray, not to her skin. No one looked in her direction when she stepped outside the overwhelmed public facility. No covetous female or lustful male eyes followed her progress as she limped up the street.

  A short stroll through the sultry, steaming early evening would bring her to a bus stop. The creaking fuel-cell bus would carry her to the terminal for an older subway line, one that did not cross the gleaming tracks of the line that ran past Chowringhee Mall. One more change to anoth
er line, suffering the disapproving stares of irritated middle-class commuters, would deposit her a few blocks from the innocuous apartment building that was home. That would be followed by another foray into a much cleaner public restroom where she would change again, finally able to walk free and clean back to the temporary home she and Taneer shared.

  It was a lot of effort simply to get home from a day of shopping, but she did not mind. She knew what real work was, and having to endure repeated changes of clothing and public transportation was not work. Operating a hand loom until your fingertips bled and your fingernails fell out in a poorly ventilated, un-air-conditioned sweatshop surrounded by dozens of other vacant-eyed children, that was work. Begging in the streets for the occasional pitiful rupee or two while fighting off the come-ons of fat, leering, sweaty old men, that was work. Complying with Taneer's directives to repeatedly change her clothing and return home by multiple devious routes, that was not work. It was a game. An important game, to be sure. He had impressed that on her. But not work, nonetheless.

  There were people who very badly wanted to take what he had, he had explained to her as he had held both her hands in his and stared solemnly into her eyes. People who would do terrible things to both of them to learn the secret he knew. Better to avoid such people until he could make arrangements to sell the valuable knowledge the details of which only he knew. He was in the process of organizing that sale. It would make them rich. Once the sale was an accomplished fact, there would be no point in anyone hunting them any longer. They would be able to go anywhere they wanted, in confidence and safety. To Delhi, perhaps, or Mumbai, or Hyderabad, or even overseas. In America, Taneer had a distant cousin on his mother's side. Perhaps they could go there. The cousin had told Taneer's father Anil that there were many people of Indian extraction in America, and that life there was very good indeed.

  Of course, they were in hiding from Anil Buthlahee too. Taneer's father had not been shy in expressing his disapproval of their relationship. But he could not reach them, could not harm them, in America.

  Live in America. Depahli had seen America. In movies, on television, on the Net. It was a place of wonders. Violent, yes. Confusing, yes. But she had not seen anything that suggested she would not be able to adapt to it or that was likely to give her problems.

  She lived in Sagramanda.

  The tiger had come out of the Sundarbans. That was certain. Under cover of night, it had worked its way into the southeastern suburbs of the city. This was not as difficult to do as a visitor from elsewhere might imagine. Sagramanda was full of parks and residential green-belts; a necessary if permanently insufficient counterweight to the burgeoning pressure of its swollen and always growing population. Eternally in need of land, the expanding megalopolis had long ago pushed and shoved its way up against the immense delta complex where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra merged to form the world's largest remaining mangrove swamp. The ever-shifting waterways on the western side of the border with Bangladesh constituted the Indian portion of the Sundarbans Preserve. Traveling only at night, it was possible for large animals to migrate, to work their way into the outskirts of the metropolis itself. Monkeys did so with ease. The chital and sambar deer that populated many of the city's green areas moved freely between parks and the delta of the Sundarbans.

  But not usually a tiger.

  Three meters long and twelve years old, the big male weighed more than a quarter of a ton. Among the trees and paved pathways and benches and fountains he drifted silently, a striped wraith invisible beneath the wan illumination of a splinter of moon. He was strong and experienced—but he had also lived a long time. He was old enough to hope for easier prey than the skittish sambar and the swift chital. Also, he had not fed in some time, and was very hungry.

  The wildlife division of the municipal authority was as aware of animal movements as were the monkeys and mongooses. Steps had been taken long ago. Though in a city of a hundred million other demands took budgetary precedence over wildlife considerations, some few millions of rupees still trickled down for observation and reaction.

  The tiger's approach to the outermost city limits did not go unnoticed. Its heat signature was detected by one of the dozens of automated monitoring stations located on the border between inhabited suburb and unpopulated Sundarbans. Identified as a Panthera tigris tigris large enough to present a potential danger should it continue on its present path, the station automatically activated the two interceptors nearest the big cat.

  Quarter ton or not, the tiger moved in utter silence, advancing with less noise than the wind. On a nearly moonless night it was all but invisible. Movement directly ahead made it pause.

  Two figures stood staring into the woodland, trying to penetrate a night that was dark as smoke. Both held rifles. Their eyes scanned the tree line intently, unblinkingly. Another person might have found the lack of any eye-blinks unnerving, but they were characteristic of the interceptors. The big cat's nostrils flared; the tips of his whiskers rose. The night air was suffused with the distinctive scent of human. He hesitated.

  Ordinarily, a tiger confronted with a pair of armed human shapes would have turned and retreated. Ordinarily, the scent alone would have been enough to send it loping swiftly back the way it had come. But the tigers of the Sundarbans were and always had been particularly bold. The emptiness in the male's belly was profound.

  It charged.

  Both figures turned immediately to confront it. Rifle muzzles rose, and the sound of gunfire split the night. Flying through the air, two hundred and forty kilos of wide-eyed, gaping-mouthed cat struck the nearer of the two interceptors.

  And passed completely through it.

  Surprised, the tiger hit the ground, dug in powerful claws, and whirled. Both interceptors had turned to face it. The echo of large-caliber weapons had grown repetitive. Puzzled but not frightened, the tiger attacked again. This time a massive paw swiped directly through the middle of the other interceptor. Its gun muzzle dropped until it passed right through the tiger's head and neck.

  The interceptors were virtuals. Like their images, the strong stink of human was projected from a small, tracked vehicle the size of a lawnmower. The autonomous vehicles could go where no human watchman could go, stay on duty twenty-four hours a day, never grew tired, did not need bathroom or meal breaks, and did not go on strike over the lack of a comprehensive health plan.

  Reaching down with a paw, the inquisitive tiger batted hard at the nearest of the motorized devices. The projection of an armed human hunter was skewed sideways, then flickered out entirely as the vehicle was knocked completely over on its side. Half the lights within the device went dark. Meanwhile, the second vehicle had turned toward the tiger, aiming its virtual in the cat's direction. Nose in the air, the tiger turned away and, ignoring the repeated recorded sounds of a heavy weapon being fired, resumed pacing along its original path.

  The children should not have been out that late. There were six of them, evenly divided between boys and girls, all friends, all giggling and laughing at their special adventure. They had the playground area on the edge of the housing development all to themselves. It was an upscale complex, benefiting from its proximity to the wildlife preserve, offering its fortunate residents views toward Bangladesh of trees and water and birds instead of the seething urban stew that was the city interior.

  One of the girls tripped one of the boys as he was heading for the gel-coated spiral slide. Uttering a mildly shocking grown-up word, he rose, brushed sand off his pants, and began to chase her. The other boys urged him on while the remaining girls encouraged their darting, weaving companion in her flight. She was a good soccer player and at first avoided his pursuit easily, leaving him frustrated and half angry, half exhilarated. But he was a little faster. Closing on her, he reached for the long, flying, fashionably blue-and-green streaked black hair that trailed behind his teaser.

  An enormous dark mass erupted out of a clump of bushes just to their left. It struck silently:
no growls, no intimidating roars designed to stop prey in its tracks with blood-chilling sonics. That kind of hunting the tiger left to its cousin the lion. It did not even have to bite. The force of the charge and the weight behind it snapped the girl's neck on impact.

  The boy who had nearly caught her stumbled and went down onto his knees, then his face, wrapping both hands protectively over his head as he pushed his face into the sandy soil. Behind him his friends were screaming, girls and boys alike. He did not, could not, look up, so he did not see the tiger carrying the girl off, her neck in its mouth. Bobbing loosely, her head hung straight down, the tips of her carefully streaked hair just brushing the ground. She had died instantly, on impact, so fast it was mercifully doubtful she had even known what had happened.

  One of the other boys finally summoned up enough courage to run forward and check on his friend. He was able to comfort him somewhat, but he could do nothing to still the shaking that was convulsing the other boy's body. Behind them, the surviving girls could not stop screaming.

  Farther back, across from the playground, a few lights were starting to wink to life within the nearest apartment building. Anxious adults who were not virtuals were hurrying toward the children. They were not armed, and there was nothing they could do.

  Living close to Nature sometimes brought with it things that were not benefits.

  The killing would be reported, but it was unlikely anything would be done. Hunting tigers took time and money the city did not have. Furthermore, the status accorded to large predators was inviolate. Cold as it seemed on paper, there were far more children in India than tigers. The incident in the night was an isolated one. It would soon, however, prove itself to be that rare exception to the rule.