The guards were close now. Seeing that Anand was up to something, the leader barked an order to his men and they broke into a jog, tubes aimed and ready. Frantically, Anand gabbled a protection spell. He was sure that in his panic he had left out a crucial line, but he felt a sudden heaviness behind him, as though a thick curtain had fallen. Had the conch come to his rescue?
Nisha and he had each managed to push some part of their body against the mirror, which Sumita was holding. Would it work? In the past, in order to use the mirror, they had had to place both feet firmly on it. But he had no option.
“Activate the jammer!” he heard the leader yell. A high whining filled the air, boring into his skull. The pain made him want to scream. It was hard to keep anything in his head, image or thought or word. For a moment he could not even remember what he was trying to do. Already the protection spell was fraying. He felt a muffled blast from a tubegun pierce his shoulder like an angry javelin.
With the last of his breath, he cried, “Mirror, please, take us somewhere safe!”
Immediately he was sucked into a lightless, airless tunnel. He couldn’t breathe or hear. He couldn’t see his companions. He put out a hand, but there was no one beside him. He could feel his body tumbling head over heels—falling or rising, he couldn’t tell which. A great weight pushed at him from every side until he thought he would implode. No. He was in a vacuum. His limbs floated, expanding, until they were as insubstantial as clouds.
Suddenly, all around him, a light bloomed, so bright that it hurt his eyes. He sensed that he was lying on something soft and white. Was this heaven? Was that how the mirror had interpreted his desire to go someplace safe? Was he dead, then? If this was how good death felt, he did not mind it.
He pulled off his mask, sensing that he did not need it here. He took a deep breath, massaging the lines it had pressed into his face. There was a delicious smell around him, like fresh, ripe fruit. Mangoes? He wanted to find them, but first he needed to discover where the light was coming from. Turning his head, he found himself looking out of a large window at the sun. There was a plant on the sill, buds peeping from between its glossy leaves. One of them had opened into a flower. He knew its name, aparajita, the unconquerable. As he gazed at the thin, silky petals, deep blue with purple centers, he realized where the mirror had brought them.
“This isn’t heaven,” he said. “It’s Sumita’s apartment.”
12
FRIENDS
“I take it back!” said Anand as he sat at the dining table, dressed in a clean white bodysuit, fresh from the first shower he had taken since he’d left the Silver Valley for the hermit’s cave. “This is heaven.”
“Mmm!” Nisha agreed, her mouth full. “These fried eggs are certainly fit for the gods.”
“Heaven, yes. That’s what I, too, thought when they first gave me this apartment.” Sumita’s smile was bitter. “What could be better than a place of one’s own, furnished with every gadget a scientist could imagine, clean clothes to wear, real food from the Farm instead of tiny portions of mutated mush, sunlight—even if it was artificial—and air that you didn’t have to look at as you breathed it?” She must have been as hungry as Anand and Nisha, but she pushed her eggs around on her plate. “Only now I’m realizing the cost—to others and to myself. Only now I’m realizing what a fool I was, what a willing pawn in X’s hands.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Nisha said. “You were only a child when he took you from your family. I know—because I lived on the streets myself—how terrible life can look when your stomach is empty, and how grateful you can feel toward anyone who fills it.”
“I can’t forgive myself so easily,” Sumita started to say, but just then the Pod on her side table sputtered to life. The announcer pulled nervously at the neck of his bodysuit as he spoke.
“The scientists have decided to ignore the earlier message urging a meeting of all the major groups that inhabit Kol. Dr. X has expressed serious doubts about its authenticity.”
Dr. X’s hologram radiated concern. “I’ve known Dr. S ever since she was a child. She was one of my most brilliant protégés. She would never voice such treacherous sentiments. The magicians who kidnapped her have clearly damaged her mind. We must, therefore, proceed with our original plan of quelling these insurgents, and do it so thoroughly that such an incident never recurs.”
The announcer reappeared, looking unhappy. “Due to the volatile atmosphere of Kol, the Security Council has decided to have the prisoners executed privately inside the various rehabitation facilities tomorrow morning. Images of the executions will be Podflashed to all citizens throughout the day. The magicians have responded to this decision with a serious threat of their own.”
Now the Pod projected a hologram of the commandant, his jaw set, his fist raised. “With each execution, we will undertake retaliatory executions of our own!”
The hologram vanished.
“I knew they wouldn’t agree!” Sumita cried passionately. “They’re too selfish. Too shortsighted.”
Anand paced up and down, trying to think of a way to break this gridlock. “Do you have personal friends among the scientists? Maybe you could talk to them individually, explain about the conch and the mirror; ask them to persuade their friends to come to the Maidan. All we need is one meeting—”
Sumita gave a harsh laugh. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? I don’t have any friends. None of us do. That’s how we survived inside Futuredome. That’s what we were taught—to always be at each others’ throats, to betray each other for the slightest chance of gaining X’s favor.”
Nisha had been quiet all this while, but now she said, “Why don’t you look in the mirror, Sister Sumita? It has shown you so many valuable things. Perhaps it will suggest a solution.”
But when Sumita looked into the mirror, she gave a disbelieving gasp. “If anyone else had suggested this,” she said, “I would have said he was crazy.”
“Who did you see?” Nisha asked.
“Dr. A!”
Anand remembered the haughty woman at the party who had accused Sumita of voicing treacherous sentiments.
“She’s my biggest rival,” Sumita continued. “My arch enemy. We came to Futuredome around the same time. Ever since then she’s been trying to outmaneuver me and become X’s favorite. We rarely have a conversation that doesn’t end in an argument. But the mirror insists that she’s the one I need to contact, so I guess I’ll have to swallow my pride and do it.”
She picked up her Insta-communicator and began typing into it. In a moment, however, she looked up, her face drawn. “The message won’t go through. X must have had my communicator neutralized.” She hurried to the table and lifted a small gadget to her ear. “My Electrafone’s dead, too!” she said, throwing it down. “He has cut me off from everyone! Only the Pod works, but as soon as I use it, he’ll know where I am. And you’ve already seen how rapidly those guards move.” Tears of helpless rage sprang to her eyes.
Nisha watched the door of the apartment as though at any moment guards might burst through it. “What’ll we do now, Anand?”
But all Anand could think was that the window of time left for returning to the valley was rapidly shrinking.
Well, for one thing, you could all calm down, the conch said with some asperity. You humans—always so excitable! Anand, could you perhaps get the scientist woman to stop crying? I’ve observed that she has a tendency to weep at the drop of a hat—or should I say phone? Once she’s managed that, tell her to hold me as she turns on the Pod. I’ll provide a shield so no one can overhear or locate her. By the way, I’d appreciate it if she doesn’t get any tears on me. They tend to corrode my shell.
* * *
In the hologram that appeared over the Pod, Dr. A stared at Sumita, flabbergasted.
“I can’t believe you called me on the Pod, S! You must be even stupider than I thought all these years. Don’t you know they’re scouring Kol—up, down, and sideways—looking for you?
Dr. X has declared a Level 16 emergency, stating that you have a hazardous weapon that could blow up all the domes at once. The public has been told that you’ve been kidnapped, but Dr. X called a private meeting of the top scientists—I was included, of course—where he informed us you’ve defected and gone over to the magicians. He also promised a hefty reward to anyone who can give them news of your whereabouts.”
“Are you going to do that, A?” Sumita asked softly. “Are you going to turn me in?”
“I should—but I don’t have to! Every Finder in the system is already tuned in to the Pod frequency. In about three minutes, guards will be gift-wrapping you in Adhesaweb. By this time tomorrow I’ll be inheriting your office—and your projects.”
“You’re welcome to them,” Sumita said. “I have no intention of going back to the lab.”
“Why did you Pod me then?” Dr. A asked, looking suspicious. “Are you trying to entangle me in your troubles so you can take me down with you?” She stood up and raised her right hand and announced, “I hereby declare that I have nothing to do with S’s seditions and in fact am turning my Pod off right now.”
“Dramatic as always!” Sumita said. “Don’t worry. No one’s listening in on our conversation because I have a shield around us. No, don’t ask me what kind of shield, because I can’t explain it. I want to show you something, though—the hazardous weapon X has warned everyone of.” She held up her palm with the conch in it.
Dr. A squinted, craning her neck. “That’s a dwarf-sized strombus gigas, if I’m not mistaken,” she said in an irritated voice. “Long extinct and quite useless. S, are you playing mind games with me?”
Long extinct? Quite useless? Anand heard the conch say indignantly.
“No, Asha,” Sumita said. “I’m showing you what almost no one now living in Kol has seen—a magical conch, an object of the greatest power, though it is a power that heals instead of causing destruction. It is what placed the protective shield around me.”
Anand expected Dr. A to scoff at the notion of a magical conch, but she seemed to not have fully registered what Sumita said. A look—half wonder, half shock—had come over her face.
“What did you call me?” she whispered.
“I called you Asha, the name your parents gave you.”
“I had forgotten!” Dr. A’s voice was a mere whisper.
“The name I used to call you by when we lived in the Terraces and played together,” Sumita added.
“The Terraces! And my little brother, who always used to make a pest of himself by tagging along with us! How could I have forgotten him?”
“I too had forgotten everything—even my grandmother whom I loved best in all the world—until the mirror, another magical object I hope to show you sometime, helped me to remember.”
“I never did go to the Outer Lands to see them, like I’d promised my little brother,” Dr. A said, biting her lip. “What must he have thought of me!”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Sumita said. “X and his team tampered with our memories. It would have done us no good to go there anyway.” Succinctly, she told Dr. A how their families were taken outside the boundaries of Kol and left there to die. “I’m sorry to break this terrible news to you,” she added, “but I needed you to know the truth about X. You’ve got to help me foil his plans. You have to pass on this information to the other scientists who were brought in from the outside like us.”
“What if they don’t believe me?”
“Tell them their birth names.”
“But how will I know those?”
“They’ll come back to you, as yours did to me. Urge the scientists to come to the meeting at the Maidan at noon. Once you get them to agree, announce it on the Pod. This will encourage the magicians to come, too. The meeting is our only chance of changing things: of removing X from power, of working together with the magicians to save our world, of making sure our families didn’t die for nothing.”
There was a new determination on Dr. A’s face. “Then I’ll do it! You can count on me, Sumita. I can’t promise I’ll be successful, but I’ll try my best.”
* * *
Sumita’s hands were shaking as she switched off the Pod. “I never thought she’d listen.” She cupped the conch in her palm. “Thank you, Conch! Every time I got angry at something Asha said, I could feel you sending me the strength to remain calm. But you did something else, too. As I spoke, I could sense the jealousy I’d held on to all these years draining away. I felt, instead, how scared she must have been when she was brought here—just like me. Thank you for that!” She lifted the conch to her lips and kissed it. “No matter what happens, I’ll treasure this gift the rest of my life.”
Yechh! said the conch. Didn’t anyone ever tell her that saliva dulls our sheen?
But Anand guessed that it was pleased.
“I suppose there’s nothing to do now except listen to Podflashes and hope the scientists decide to come to the summit,” said Nisha. “Well, as long as we’re waiting, Sister Sumita—do you have any more of those scrumptious fried eggs?”
13
SHOWDOWN
It was almost noon when Anand threaded his nervous way through the ragtag crowd that had gathered in the Maidan. If he had not known it to be the same park he used to visit on holiday afternoons with his family, Anand would never have recognized it. Gone was the grass, stretching as far as his child eyes could see, on which he had sat with his parents, eating old-woman’s-hair candy that turned his mouth a sticky pink. Gone were the Krishna Chura trees that dropped red flowers on the walkways. Gone were the vendors of hot snacks and the balloon makers who twisted long colorful balloons into animal shapes. Now the Maidan was barren, its earth so dry that it had cracked into deep chasms that Anand had to navigate cautiously. And the people surrounding him—mostly the slum dwellers of Kol—were a grim and silent lot. Dressed in patched bodysuits and taped-up masks, they looked around distrustfully, as though they expected a horde of guards to materialize and arrest them. Still, they had responded to Sumita’s appeal and emerged from the mazes of the Terraces to attend the summit. That, Anand thought, adjusting his own mask carefully to hide as much of his face as possible, was a victory in itself.
Anand was wearing one of Sumita’s discarded bodysuits, which she had found in her rag box. For good measure, she’d ripped one of the sleeves before giving it to him and rubbed some grease onto it as well. She’d done the same with her own bodysuit and Nisha’s. Once the mirror had transported them to a side street choked by garbage, she suggested that they each move separately toward the center of the Maidan.
“I’m sure the guards from the laboratory have informed the Security Council that we are a group of three,” she said. “That’s what they’ll be looking for. Alone, we each have a better chance of reaching the platform.”
The thought of separating made Anand anxious. What if the crowds stampeded and they lost each other? What if one of them was caught—Sumita most likely, as everyone must have seen her hologram on the Pod? What if someone snatched the mirror, which she was carrying in a backpack? How could Anand help her if he was far away? And Nisha—he worried about her most of all. Sumita had the mirror and Anand the conch, but she would have no magical object to protect her. However, he could not come up with a better suggestion, so he agreed reluctantly.
“Stay close to the platform,” Sumita instructed, “but don’t reveal yourself until I give you the signal. We’ll climb onto the platform at the same time.” She ducked into the crowd, and so did Nisha. Anand tried to keep them in his sight as he pushed his way through the throng, but the beating of drums distracted him. A procession was making its way to the platform, figures with once-bright cloaks draped over their bodysuits, accompanied by musicians. The men wore turbans on their heads. The women’s arms jangled with cheap bracelets, and above their breathing masks their eyes were boldly painted in many colors. The magicians had arrived, dressed in their finery—whatever was left of it—and they wanted to
make sure everyone noticed them.
“It’s the spell casters,” a man in the crowd shouted, and others took up the cry, some calling it out in awe and some with suspicion. Anand surmised that their responses depended on whether they had known the magicians personally, or had only heard of their reputation on Podflashes. In any case, several people backed away from the platform, and Anand made use of this opportunity to edge forward until he was close enough to overhear the magicians’ conversation.
Chief Deepak led his people onto the platform, where they seated themselves cross-legged along one side, all except Vijay, who paced up and down, his worn but elegant blue cloak swishing around him. “It is almost noon,” he cried. “Where are those vermin? The prisoners aren’t here, either.” He scowled at his uncle. “You should have taken my advice and remained home. This is a trap to capture our entire clan all at once.”
The chief, who looked frailer than ever, said something in a placating voice, but Vijay retorted, “If we go down, we’ll take as many of them with us as we can!”
Basant’s mother, wrapped in a faded maroon shawl, sat to one side of the platform, her eyes restlessly combing the crowd. Anand knew she was looking for her son. He, too, searched the crowd with a sinking heart. There was no sign of the guards from the rehabitationals. They had decided not to risk bringing the prisoners out.
Vijay stood up angrily. “This is an insult to us, and unsafe besides, to sit and wait here, easy targets for the guards, who are in the scientists’ pay. I insist—”
But the rest of his words were lost in a giant roar. A fleet of blood-red bullet cars sped down the middle of the Maidan, scattering a terrified crowd—for everyone knew to whom these cars belonged. The magicians jumped to their feet, their faces drawn. Several of them reached inside their cloaks, and Anand realized that they had not come unarmed. He stiffened. Was the summit he’d pinned all his hopes on going to turn into a blood bath before it even started?
Shadowland Page 13