by Greg Cox
Or worse.
CHAPTER THIRTY
BHOPAL CENTRAL
INDIA
DECEMBER 3, 1984
IT WAS ONE-FIFTEEN IN THE MORNING by the time Noon arrived, along with Gary Seven, in the moonlit streets of Bhopal. The glowing fog dispersed, leaving the sulking teenager and the older American in a murky alley between two modern concrete apartment buildings. A chilly breeze blew from the northwest, and Noon half-regretted leaving his heavy parka behind at Seven’s office, where they had dropped off Evergreen after their adventure in Antarctica. Rats scurried around and within the rusty metal Dumpsters hidden away in the alley. The squeaking vermin struck Noon as uncommonly restless and agitated, much to his annoyance.
“Quiet!” he barked, snatching up an empty soup can from the alley floor and hurling it at the nearest cluster of rats, which broke apart into a profusion of fleeing gray bodies.
His return to India did little to soothe Noon’s turbulent spirit, which still chafed at Seven’s obvious disapproval. Even now, the meddlesome American regarded him with mournful eyes and a dour expression. Noon knew that Seven remained disappointed that he had hurled his dagger at Evergreen, no matter how justified he had been in retaliating against the scientist’s treacherous taser attack. How dare he judge me? Noon thought angrily, glaring at Seven. I knew what I was doing!
[313] The light from Hamidia Road, north of the alley, cast elongated shadows upon the dingy asphalt. Distant voices and footsteps sounded from several blocks away, which was peculiar given the lateness of the hour, but Noon’s wounded pride took precedence over any curiosity he might have felt. “Well?” he challenged Seven, breaking an awkward silence. “Is that it? Did this misbegotten expedition discharge my debt to you, or was my performance too inadequate to serve as fit payment?”
Seven gazed at Noon, seemingly more in sorrow than in anger. “It wasn’t your fault, Noon,” he stated solemnly. “I should have never thrust you into such a combustible situation. You are too young, too apt to overreact.”
If Seven thought he was helping Noon save face, then he clearly did not understand the aristocratic teen at all. “Do not patronize me, old man!” Noon snarled, Seven’s condescending attitude only infuriating him more. “Do not blame me if you lack the will to fight your own battles.”
Seven shook his head sadly. “I hope someday you realize, Noon, that life is much more than a combat to be won.” He held out an open palm. “In the meantime, I’m afraid I have to ask for your servo back.”
“Take it,” Noon said defiantly, throwing the slender instrument at Seven’s feet, where it skittered across the uneven black pavement. “It is a feeble weapon anyway, limited and halfhearted, much like its wielder.”
His flawless vision rapidly adjusting to the murk of the alley, Noon watched Seven’s face, hoping to see his insult strike home. Maddeningly, the mysterious American merely offered another bit of unwanted advice as he stooped to retrieve the discarded servo. “Beware of more powerful weapons, Noon. They often inflict as much damage to your soul as they do to your enemies.”
Noon opened his mouth, intending to reject Seven’s cryptic counsel, but the hubbub of voices in the background, growing ever louder and nearer, could now be recognized as loud, anguished screaming, shocking both men out of their tense verbal duel. “What—?” Seven asked, apprehension deepening the lines of his craggy face. “That’s more than one person screaming. Many more.”
[314] On this, Noon had to agree. Straining his ears, even as he ran anxiously toward the unknown source of the tumult, he found himself unable to distinguish just how many men and women and children were shrieking in unmistakable pain and terror. For a single blood-chilling moment, his memory flashed back to the bloodthirsty riots in Delhi, only slightly more than a month ago, but, no, this was a different kind of madness, he could tell. The rising clamor of high-pitched human voices, steadily increasing in volume as it drew closer and closer, was not the sound of an angry mob; it was the many-throated cry of a city in mortal agony
Something terrible has occurred, Noon realized at once. The soles of his boots pounded the pavement as he charged out of the alley into the broad, well-lighted thoroughfare that was Hamidia Road. “Noon!” Seven hollered after him, unable to keep up with the younger man’s genetically engineered leg muscles. “Be careful!”
But Noon wasn’t worried about himself, only his people. Eyes wide, his long dark hair streaming behind him, he ran headlong into a nightmare. Dozens of people came stampeding toward him, pursued by some horror whose nature Noon could not yet determine, but whose torturous effects were all too visible. A common sickness afflicted the distraught, disorganized crowd; crying, gasping, retching, they tried and failed to outrun whatever ailment was ravaging their defenseless bodies. Men and women in various stages of undress, seemingly driven from their homes and beds in the middle of the night, collapsed onto the street, only to be trampled to death by their panicking neighbors. Tears streamed down a cavalcade of tortured faces, as the fleeing victims clutched their throats and clawed at their eyes, rushing blindly down the road toward Noon. The wailing mob smelled of sweat and vomit and excrement, having lost control of their stomachs and bowels. By my martyred mother, Noon wondered, agog with horror, what kind of plague strikes so quickly?
A tide of reeking bodies slammed into Noon, almost carrying him away. Thinking quickly, he wrapped an arm around a sturdy lamppost and batted away the frantic refugees whose chaotic flight carried them too near him. “Stay back!” he commanded, gagging at the touch and smell of the befouled wretches jostling against him. “Don’t touch me!”
[315] The crowd parted around him as Noon clung to the lamppost with all his strength. Consumed by the necessity to know what had caused this pandemonium, he randomly grabbed one of the refugees by the arm, halting the man’s breakneck dash for safety. He yanked his chosen informant, a bearded man wearing only a soiled bathrobe, around so that the stranger was forced to look Noon in the face. To his shock, Noon saw that the man’s eyes had been blackened and blinded by some unknown agency. “What is it?” the anguished teen demanded. “What’s happened?”
Desperate to get away, to elude the unnamed menace to the north, the man tried to break free, but could not escape Noon’s powerful grip. “Let me go!” he yelled, tears gushing from sightless eyes. His voice gurgled wetly, as though his lungs were slowly filling with liquid. “Please, I don’t want to die!”
The man was scared out of his mind, Noon realized, but by what? Still hanging on to the lamppost with his strong right arm, Noon longed for a spare hand with which to slap the man in the face, to snap him out of his hysterical state; instead he could only shake the man roughly before interrogating him again. “Speak to me—quickly!” he ordered. The incongruity of a fourteen-year-old boy bullying a grown man several years older than he was went unnoticed in the frenzied chaos threatening to engulf them. “What’s happening? What started this panic?”
“I don’t know!” the man protested, trying futilely to tug himself free. He swung at Noon’s chin, connecting with his fist, but the indomitable youth shrugged off the blow, then retaliated by yanking on the man’s arm hard enough to dislocate his shoulder. The man yelped in pain, his face contorting beneath his bushy black beard. “Stop, please! My arm!”
“Speak!” Noon gave the injured limb a vicious twist. He took no pleasure in hurting this unlucky stranger, but he craved answers and would do whatever was necessary to extract them from his unwilling captive. “Tell me now and you shall go free.”
Wincing in agony, the man nodded and cradled his aching arm with his free hand. “Yes, yes! Of course!” he babbled, his watery eyes [316] pleading for mercy. “It’s something in the air! Poison! It killed my wife, my daughters ... they died where they fell, coughing out their last breaths!” His entire body quaked at the memory. “For pity’s sake, young sir, let me go!” Blackened eyes stared past Noon, into the north wind. “We have to go now, believe me! The poison—i
t’s coming toward us even as we speak! Death is in the air!”
Satisfied that the man knew little more about the catastrophe, Noon expertly popped the dislocated arm back into its socket, then let go of him as promised. Sparing neither another word or backward glance, the unfortunate man staggered away as quickly as he could, holding on tightly to his bad arm as he disappeared into the flood of scrambling refugees. Noon forgot the man just as swiftly, sifting instead through the particulars of the story he had just heard. Poison in the air?
Perhaps this was an enemy attack, he speculated, but his keen mind immediately cast doubt on that theory. Located at the heart of the subcontinent, Bhopal was hundreds of miles from the nearest border and, although the state capital, hardly a prime military target. Aside from the government bureaucracy, its principal industry was the old, and increasingly obsolete, pesticide factory at the outskirts of town. Just north of here, in fact, Khan recalled. An alarming possibility intruded into his mind, filling his soul with dread. Oh, no! Not that ... !
Guessing the truth, but needing confirmation, he grabbed on to the lamppost with both hands and shinned up the iron post until he was several feet above the onrushing crowd. Peering north up the length of Hamidia Road, he saw thick white fumes blowing toward him, only four or five blocks away. The swirling mist was carried by the same icy wind that had chilled him ever since his arrival in the alley, and, through the fumes, he glimpsed a multitude of bodies littering the streets and sidewalks, some twitching and shuddering, others moving not at all. Fallen bodies were everywhere; he couldn’t even begin to count the casualties.
Sirens blared overhead, too late for the blinded man’s wife and daughters, and a police helicopter came flying over Hamidia Road, high above the throngs of scared and ailing civilians. “Warning! Poison [317] gas is spreading!” the copter’s loudspeakers bellowed over the heartrending cries of the frightened populace. Whirring propellers whipped up the air around Noon, but could do little to drive back the toxic cloud advancing southward. “Run! Run for your lives!”
Too little, too late, Noon thought bitterly, while yet admiring the courage and discipline of the police officers trying to spread the alarm. The suffocating white fumes crept forward, forcing the helicopter to climb higher to avoid being caught within the toxic cloud, even as Noon’s worst fears cemented into certainty.
The chemical plant up north, he realized. Built decades ago by an American company, Union Carbide, to manufacture various forms of insecticide. Critics had been insisting for years that the outdated and run-down facility, housing many tons of toxic chemicals, was a disaster waiting to happen; as an engineering student, Noon had personally toured the plant in the past, and been appalled by its crude design and deteriorating condition, as well as by the slipshod conduct of its poorly trained employees. Corporate greed and inertia had kept the plant in operation, however.
Until tonight, when Bhopal’s luck finally ran out.
Fools! Noon thought angrily, gripping the pole with both his hands and ankles. Who had allowed such an obvious hazard to fester all this time, upwind of a major population center? Even knowing what he did about the plant’s defects and dangers, Noon was still taken aback by the scale of the catastrophe unfolding around him. At least four kilometers of densely packed slums and shantytowns, as well as a major railway station, he recalled, were crammed between the Union Carbide plant and this suburban district. How many victims have there been already? he wondered, envisioning the deadly fog as it swept through block after block of crowded neighborhoods, suffocating people in their sleep. How many deaths?
“Thousands,” he estimated, his voice a whisper. Thousands would die—no, were doubtless dead already. He railed inwardly at the entrenched corruption and incompetence that had made this atrocity possible. If I were in charge of the world, he vowed, such criminal carelessness would not be allowed. A fierce resolve gripped him, that the world, [318] overrun by imbeciles and charlatans, was careering out of control, sorely in need of a firm hand at the wheel. Someone needed to put this long-suffering planet to rights, and Noon could think of no one better suited to do so than himself. Not if I ruled the world, he corrected himself, fully understanding his true destiny at last.
When.
A voice from the street below intruded upon his lofty musings. “Noon!” Seven shouted, having fought his way through the tumult to catch up with the youth. Like Noon before him, he hung on to the bottom half of the lamppost to keep from being carried away by the panicked horde. “We have to get away from here!”
Was that all this colossal slaughter meant to Seven? Merely another daring mission to escape from? With a disdainful sneer, Noon dropped to the sidewalk below, his muscular legs easily absorbing the impact of his landing. “Leave me alone!” he snapped.
Twin antennae sprang from Seven’s servo. He aimed the sensors at the approaching cloud, then scowled at the sequence of beeps the wand emitted. “That’s methyl isocyanate,” he informed Noon urgently. “Even you can’t survive that.”
Despite the youth’s justifiable wrath, Seven’s warning caught Noon’s attention. He was quite familiar with MIC, a volatile and highly toxic compound that reacted violently with water. He could readily imagine what a cloud of gaseous MIC could do to a human being’s eyes and lungs.
Even still, he was not yet ready to abandon Bhopal to its ghastly fate. “But all these people!” he objected, his adolescent voice cracking. “They’re dying by the hundreds!”
“I know,” Seven said grimly. The servo’s antennae retracted and he hurriedly gave his all-purpose instrument a new set of coordinates. By now, the bulk of the fleeing crowd had moved on, leaving them alone upon the sidewalk, amid the dead and the dying. Only a few paces away, in the middle of a street, an old woman in a bright yellow sari writhed upon the asphalt, drowning in her own fluids. She was only one of many dozens, unable to outrun the choking death that had come upon her in the night. “It’s too late,” Seven insisted, his face hardening into a stoic mask. “There’s nothing we can do now.”
[319] A familiar blue fog began to form behind Seven, but Noon resisted stepping toward the shimmering portal. “My friends!” he reminded Seven, staring upward at the nearby apartment complex. His classmates from the university—Darshan, Rajiv, Zail, Maneka—were surely up there now, in a penthouse apartment belonging to Zail’s older brother. “I can’t just leave them!”
Seven followed Noon’s gaze to the upper stories of the towering concrete building. “If they’re high enough, your friends should be all right,” he stated confidently, “provided they stay indoors and keep the windows closed.” He looked north, toward the sprawling slums surrounding the city. “It’s those who live closer to the earth, or without shelter at all, who will bear the brunt of this horrible accident.”
His cold-blooded analysis of the situation fanned the flames blazing within Noon, but the brilliant teen could not refute Seven’s assessment. In theory, his friends would likely survive, unlike the gasping masses impelled into the streets by the ever-expanding cloud of poison. Already, the first faint whiffs of the MIC threatened him and Seven, causing Noon’s eyes and throat to burn. This is it, he realized. My last chance to save myself. He could either join the retreating mob in their panic-stricken flight from the gas—or take the preternatural avenue of escape offered by Gary Seven.
Misty white tendrils slithered down the sidewalk, licking at his ankles. Seven lingered at the periphery of a very different fog, one that glowed blue and radiant. “Noon!” he called out stridently, his face and figure growing indistinct within the numinous azure mist. “We can’t wait any longer!”
He was right, damn him. Holding his breath, his eyes screwed tightly shut against the searing chemical fumes, Noon swallowed his pride and ran into the roiling cloud of plasma, his fists clenched in anger and frustration. He half-expected to collide with Seven inside the incandescent haze, but he encountered no resistance at all, the older man having apparently dematerialized mere in
stants before. Opening his eyes, Noon slowed to a trot within the opaque blue limbo Seven somehow used to flit hither and yon about the Earth. The transporter’s electric tingle was pleasant compared to the caustic [320] effects of the MIC. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, which still burned slightly, but the pain quickly faded, suggesting that no permanent damage had been done. Not to me, that is.
Many thousands in Bhopal could not say the same. Even the survivors, he expected, would bear the scars of this day for the rest of their lives, in the form of lasting illnesses and injuries, not to mention painful memories of loved ones lost. Never again, he decided, a look of unshakable determination upon his youthful face. I shall not permit it.
He kept walking forward until the mist began to thin. “Seven!” he cried out impatiently, desiring to waste no more time dealing with the crafty American’s technological sleight-of-hand. There was too much to be done, there were too many injustices to be remedied. “Can you hear me, Seven? We must speak at once!”
As he stepped out of the tingling plasma, Noon expected to find himself back in Seven’s offices in New York. Instead he had returned to his college dormitory in New Delhi, over six hundred kilometers north of Bhopal. The glowing fog evanesced rapidly, leaving the irate teenager and the older American in the center of Noon’s private room, which was just as cluttered and cozy as he had left it. An electric typewriter and pocket calculator sat atop the heavy sheshamwood desk, next to piled textbooks and research papers. More books, ranging from advanced engineering texts to classics of Asian and Western literature, bulged from the inadequate bookshelves or accumulated in stacks upon the simple dhurrie carpet covering the floor. An ivory chess set, the pieces carved in martial poses, rested on a hand-carved chowkie stool, beside a smallish television set perched atop a heap of painted wooden milk cartons. Light mosquito netting covered the wrought-iron posts of his unmade bed, while the Nishan Sahib, the scarlet pennant of the Sikh people, adorned the monsoon-blue wall above his desk.