Sagramanda Read online

  Because the tiger had now acquired a taste.

  It made the news, of course. The next day, free readers drifted among the morning commuters, teasing them to purchase and download the body of the report as well as the rest of the paper. Getting off at the museum, Jena Chalmette took note of the flashing, hovering words as they flicked past her in search of paying downloaders. She did not buy the report, or the paper that contained it. Not because it was potentially too distressing, or too gory. Actually, she was very much interested in death and its many manifestations. She envied the unknown tiger capabilities that were so much greater than her own.

  Not that she hadn't done all right with what small talent she had.

  Tall and decidedly non-Indian, Jena had been born in France. In the south of France, to be precise, near the Pyrenees and the border with Andorra. She had become interested in India and its rich history and multifarious cultures as a teenager. Unhappily, as a teenager she had also become deeply interested in assorted threads of mysticism. This had been the despair of her quiet mother and the outrage of her loud father. Her mother had reacted to the situation by becoming more and more withdrawn and by making ever more frequent trips to an online pharmacy, from which she drew enervation if not real peace. Her father, considering himself a practical man, had tried to beat the impractical obsession out of his daughter.

  Predictably, Jena had reacted by running away, to Outer Marseilles. There she had met Jean-Paul, who had introduced her to many things seventeen-year-old girls think they know all about but soon come to realize are entirely new to them. Among the delights the languorous, swarthy, serpentine Jean-Paul had introduced her to were group sex, wherein she was expected to share herself freely with his acquaintances; pharmaceuticals even her mother had never thought to try; and petty theft to support their respective habits—his that was well developed, and hers that was new and growing.

  Eventually she had settled on rapture-4. It sharply enhanced her emotions and heightened her perceptions. She believed it also altered the reality around her, allowing her to see things the sight of which was otherwise denied to mere mortals.

  It was while semicomatose in the throes of a particularly deep and spiritual rapture-4-induced mental trip that she found herself face-to-face with Kali.

  She knew Kali quite well, from her years of reading. But she had certainly never expected to encounter the goddess in person. Confronting the wide-eyed, gaping Jena, the goddess held a sword in one hand and the head of a recently slain demon in another while her other two hands beckoned encouragingly to the young woman kneeling at her feet. A necklace of fifty skulls garlanded her neck, one for each of the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, and each of her earrings was a dead body. She wore only a girdle comprised of the hands of dead men. Her eyes were red and her breasts and body smeared with blood. She was nigurna, the ultimate reality, beyond name and form. The bright fire of truth that burns away everything, including clothing.

  Her ivory-white teeth symbolized purity, while her red, extended tongue signified her delight in the enjoyment of everything that society considers forbidden. Smiling, she extended a welcoming hand downward. Taking it, Jena rose, utterly entranced.

  “Dance with me,” the goddess invited her. “The world is created and destroyed in my dancing. Your redemption lies in awareness that you are invited to take part in my dance, to yield yourself to the beat of my dance of life and death.”

  So Jena danced with the goddess. Entering the squalid fourth-floor walk-up they shared, a startled Jean-Paul nearly swallowed his Galois before trying his best to bring her out of her daze. He'd seen people on bad trips before, had partaken of a few himself. All he had to do was take one look at Jena's enraptured, glowing, thoroughly stoned expression to know that his girlfriend of the moment was way, way gone. But it was only when he saw the empty capsule box and realized just how much rapture-4 she'd taken this time, without him present to keep an eye on and moderate her consumption, that he realized the seriousness of the situation.

  If he couldn't bring her down, she might never come out of it. Without her feet ever leaving the ground, she would just keep on floating, floating—until the life floated right out of her.

  “Jena! Wake up! Merde, you stupid girl, stop stumbling around and listen to me!” Grabbing her by both arms, he began to shake her violently. When that didn't work, he started slapping her. Methodically, hard, back and forth right across the face. It had no effect. Jena fought weakly to pull away from him so she could continue dancing with the goddess, her smile blissful, her eyes focused on something he could not see.

  “Confront death, my child,” the goddess was urging her. “Accepting the eventuality of death will free you. I am your true mother. Accept me, and I will release you to act fully and freely, release you from the nasty, restraining constraints of pretense, practicality, and rationality.” One of two left hands rose. It was missing its little finger. This reminded Jena of something, but she was too far gone to make the connection. “Accept me, serve me, and find my finger. I will be your mother, as I am mother to all. I will protect you.”

  “Yes,” Jena murmured. “Yes, Mother. I will do it.”

  “Do what? You stupid bitch, do you want to OD? Wake up. Come out of it! I'm not taking you to the hospital! I can't risk getting arrested again.”

  An angry Jean-Paul smacked her again, harder than ever. Crimson began to trickle from one corner of her mouth. Reaching up, she touched the flow and gazed down at her red-stained fingertip with childlike wonder. Blood. Mother Kali would be pleased.

  “I—I'm sorry, Jean-Paul.” She shook her head, blinked, finally looked up at him and smiled faintly. “I'm all right now. It's moderating.”

  “Damn good thing, too.” Roughly, he let go of her. “I thought I was going to lose you. Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a dead body in this town?”

  “No.” She put a reassuring hand on his arm. “Tell me. How is it done?”

  Sudden uncertainty colored his expression as he looked back at her. “You really want to know?” Her eagerness seemed genuine, guileless. So he told her. It gave him yet another opportunity to play the big man, the knowledgeable one.

  Later, they made love on the old mattress on the floor that served for a bed. Later, she killed him, wielding a kitchen knife with all her weight behind it, plunging it so deeply into his chest that the tip passed between two ribs to emerge from his back. She dedicated the slaying, the first of what she hoped would be many such sacrifices, to Mother Kali, who had finally shown her the Way. The next day she made arrangements for the disposal of his corpse, scrupulously following the directions he himself had described to her the previous afternoon. Then she sold what she could, packed a single suitcase, and bought a one-way ticket to India. To Sagramanda, where the most prominent temple of Kali in the entire country was located. It seemed the logical place to begin looking for the missing finger of a goddess.

  She considered placing a farewell call to her parents. She had not spoken to her father for years, to her mother in months. But there was really no need, she assured herself. She was no longer part of their world.

  Besides, she had a new mother now. One who would look after and protect her in ways she had never imagined.

  She shook the last of the old thoughts out of her mind as she approached the museum. She had visited here many times before, searching the corridors, the less-visited rooms, for signs of the Mother's missing digit. Always without success. The ticket-taker recognized her as a regular and did not even ask to see the annual pass she had bought. Neatly, even primly, dressed, she attracted no more than the usual attention. Years living beneath Sagramanda's sun had turned her skin the color of weak tea. Youth kept it free of blemishes. In her lean, tall, almost model-like slenderness, she was moderately attractive without being eye-catching. Her height alone was enough to draw the attention of those local men brave enough to approach her. Whenever she felt too many native eyes on her, she would don large, ugly
glasses.

  Maybe it was the bookish look that drew the young couple to her. They appeared to be about her age, certainly no older. The man smiled hopefully and addressed her in English. When she had first arrived in Sagramanda, Jena had spoken only a few words of that language. Now she was as fluent as the stockbroker from New York she had encountered several months earlier.

  “Yes, I think I can help you,” she told the man in response to his questions. He and his wife were Australian, but their accent was not impenetrable.

  She ended up giving them a tour of the museum, whose contents were intimately familiar to her. By the end of the afternoon, the three of them were chatting together like old friends.

  “I'll tell you what you should do,” she told them over iced coffee in the museum's café. “Everyone sees Sagramanda from the land. But to really appreciate it, you need to see it from the water. From the river.” Her hands traced architecture in the air between them. “From a boat you get an unobstructed view of everything: new buildings, old warehouses, ghats, the itinerant sadhus trolling for contributions along the riverfront walkway.”

  The young woman eyed her husband. “Sounds romantic as well as educational. Where do we find a tour boat?”

  Jena smiled knowingly, as if conveying some intimate secret. “That's why so few people see the city from the water. Believe it or not, there aren't any tour boats. But you can rent small electric watercraft by the hour.”

  The husband looked unsure. “We're from Newcastle, and pretty much at home on the water. But taking a boat out here, with all this commercial river traffic—I don't know….”

  “Tell you what.” Jena leaned forward. “You pay for it, and a takeaway dinner, and I'll give you the tour. Even the small boats have collision-avoidance electronics built into them. At least, the one we'll use will.”

  They were delighted by the suggestion and immediately agreed to her offer. At minimal cost they were acquiring a boat driver and a knowledgeable guide all in one.

  “Meet me at the Hooghly South private slips, number twenty-four. Seven o'clock. Any taxi driver will know where it is.”

  Though they arrived before the scheduled departure time, Jena was earlier still. The small, slightly tubby craft's batteries were fully charged and waiting for them. The sheila was surprised to see Jena wearing a veil.

  “As the sun goes down, the men here grow bolder,” she explained to the other woman as she removed the face covering, folded it neatly, and placed it inside a long shoulder bag resting on a bench seat. With a nod in the husband's direction she added, “I don't have a mate to shoo away the obnoxious. They're worse than flies.” Seeing a troubled look cross the woman's face in response to her suddenly threatening tone, Jena added serenely, “I won't need one now. We have your man to protect us.” The Aussie had the grace to blush.

  Under her practiced hands the boat backed out of the slip and spun away from the docks, humming smoothly upriver as its driver accelerated. Along the way she pointed out one sight of interest after another. Ensconced in the padded double seat situated forward of the wheel, husband and wife relaxed in each other's arms, content to let Jena do all the driving and most of the talking.

  They stopped in midriver to enjoy a late supper, unpacking the takeaway meals just before nine o'clock. Around them, river traffic had slowed out of respect for the darkness. The Hooghly was still a highway for traditional boatmen who could not afford running lights, not even solar-powered LEDs, and who were reluctant to venture out into the busy watercourse after the sun went to sleep. It was also much cooler out in the middle of the river, a partial respite from the day's heat if not from the omnipresent humidity.

  “So, what do you do?” Completely relaxed, utterly contented, the woman peered over at Jena. Their guide was busying herself with the contents of an open storage container beneath the driver's chair. “Are you a professional guide?”

  Jena had to laugh. It was a musical sound, but one with a hard edge. “I'm the one who needs a guide. I can't find what I'm looking for.”

  “What might that be?” the husband asked casually, cold brew in hand.

  “Enlightenment. Release from the cycle of karma. I have been promised that.”

  The woman was unsure whether to smile or frown. Having consumed several beers, she decided on the former. “I'm not even bloody sure what that is, but anyway, who promised it?”

  “The Mother Goddess. Kali.” Reaching up with her right hand, Jena pressed a sequence of small buttons that rimmed the device concealed beneath her blouse. Instantly responsive, the braceletlike pressure syringe resting there obediently slammed a stream of rapture-4 directly into her bloodstream. It was very clean, very pure, very clear stuff. Full-on Shakti. For all that she was used to it, it never failed to have the desired effect. She welcomed the dreamlike contentment that rolled over her mind and surged through her body, lowering her blood pressure, elevating her spirits, and lifting her soul. Exactly as Mother Kali would have approved.

  Maybe if he'd had a beer or two fewer, maybe if he'd been a little less relaxed, the husband might have found the sudden shift in their new friend's choice of conversation off-putting. Maybe he would have thought the way she now began to sway slightly from side to side unsettling. But the open boat was drifting lazily downstream on autopilot, they were heading back, and in an hour or so he and his wife would be back in the familiar confines of their comfortable mid-price-range hotel. Tomorrow would see them off to Mumbai. Meanwhile, their charming if suddenly sloe-eyed hostess was doing nothing to generate suspicion. Anyway, she was alone, and he was much bigger than she was.

  Or at least he was until she cut him in half.

  In a single flowing, almost dancelike movement, she drew the sword from its place of concealment among the boat's tools and equipment and struck with it, making sure to guide it with her left hand. Honed to extreme sharpness and wielded with both hands, it cut through flesh and bone in equal measure, only slowing to a halt somewhere in the vicinity of the man's spleen. The look on his face rendered shock passé. Never wavering, his eyes were still locked on her as he fell over sideways in his seat, the beer falling from his hands, the bottle rolling across the deck of the small boat, blood gushing everywhere.

  There was just enough time for the dead man's wife to let out a single scream. It went on and on, until Jena cut off her head. The head flew into the river, which was dangerous, but Jena did not want to take the time to look for it. Anyway, there were voracious fish in the depths of the great waterway that would make short work of the unexpected bounty.

  Hands upraised, head back, she chanted over the two bodies as blood filled the bottom of the boat, until the deck was awash with red. Regrettably, none of the four still, limp hands she inspected boasted a finger that might serve to replace the one Mother Kali was missing. But she knew that the goddess would be pleased by the sacrifice. When she had finished her prayers, she weighted the two bodies with what she could find and wrestled them over the gunwale, a gift to the fish and the crocodiles. Then she opened the appropriate valves. As the rental craft began to sink, she inflated the small lifeboat and pushed it over the side. By the time the boat went down, she was paddling toward the near shore.

  While serving Mother Kali was an endless pleasure, finding the goddess's missing finger was a task difficult enough to take even a dedicated servant a lifetime. Jena felt certain she was up to the challenge. It was only a matter of time.

  Rapture-4 coursed through her body, filling her with chemicals as well as visions. Tickling her neurons and inflaming her thoughts. In the course of her searching and servitude there would be more such sacrifices, she knew.

  There had already been many.

  Today was Friday. Fridays were always difficult, he knew. There were families trying to get out of the city for the weekend, businesspeople fighting to finalize deals, couples arguing over how they were going to relax. He usually chose to work through the weekend. For one thing, it endeared him to his colleagues. F
or another, crimes committed on weekends often tended to differ from those committed during the week. Having been a cop for thirty years, Keshu Jamail Singh had learned to seek variety wherever he could.

  He was a senior investigator, head of a department—but not the head of the department. In a city of a hundred million, there could be no single heads of anything. Oh, there was Commander-in-Chief Mukherjee, but his was largely a ceremonial position. Mukherjee was the public voice of the Sagramanda police force. With his Bollywood-star looks and sonorous voice, he was the perfect choice to intercede between the city government and the public. And, more importantly, the media. He quite fancied himself the knowledgeable investigator. Keshu and his hundred fellow senior investigators kept their opinions of Chief Mukherjee's abilities to themselves. They recognized his value to the department, and his uses, and knew that none of them could have smiled so fatuously at so many politicians, or presented requests for budgetary overrides with such oratorical skill. They needed Chief Mukherjee to facilitate actual police work. But not one of them would trust him to find his ass with his own hands in a darkened room.

  Keshu Singh was responsible for supervising the investigation of the most serious crimes in the district known as Parganas Southeast. Six million people, more or less, fell under his jurisdiction. More or less, because it was impossible to maintain an accurate count of the surging, swelling, shifting population of Sagramanda. And that six million didn't even try to take into account the vast number of illegals who swarmed into the city seeking work: impoverished Bangladeshis, hopeful Burmese, resolute Nepalis, displaced Tibetans—all sought the promise of success in Sagramanda. For all but a very few, it remained nothing more tangible than a promise.

  It was Keshu's job, and that of his fellow senior investigators, to keep citizens and supplicants from each other's throats and, failing that, to punish those who stormed egregiously over the top of what was deemed legal.