Bheem

by Jyotin Goel

  They eyed him curiously as he punched some buttons on his smartphone.

  ‘The three victims—Aneeta Nair, Valsamma Nambiar, Aarthi Kutty . . . Has anyone noticed the connection?’

  The editor frowned. ‘Don’t play games, Sinha! What’s on your mind?’

  ‘They’re all from Kerala!’ said Vineet, holding out his phone to show the search results.

  ‘Of course!’ Nishi said excitedly. ‘I just spent four months there! Why didn’t I see this?’

  Bannerjee grabbed Vineet’s phone and peered at the display. ‘Malayali names.’

  ‘It makes sense!’ Nishi gripped Vineet’s arm. ‘The Z-6 outbreak. It started in Kerala—that’s the epicentre. There’s a definite link there!’

  Bannerjee suddenly looked less like a condemned man. Maybe he wasn’t doomed—yet! ‘Does this help?’

  ‘It shrinks the genome catchment to women of Keralite origin! Reduces search time significantly!’ It was a genuine breakthrough, the first one since finding Valsamma. Nishi felt like hugging Vineet.

  The reporter grinned. ‘And there’s another thing.’

  ‘What?’

  He waved his phone again. ‘There are places in Kerala, temples, private collections, that contain millions of genealogies preserved on palm leaves—South Indian versions of the Bhrigushastra.’

  ‘What? Let me see that!’

  Nishi took the phone and studied the display.

  Predictions on ancient palm leaves. Where had she heard that before? Her mind vaulted back to the virus-afflicted woman in her field clinic in Thekkady—Arunima Pillai. She had been unconcerned, strangely indifferent to the news of impending death.

  ‘We’re doomed, all of us,’ she had said. ‘The world is moving beyond humankind. It’s written on the leaves. They’re never wrong.’

  Nishi looked at Vineet and Bannerjee. ‘One of my patients in Kerala—she knows of a similar place. Family trees, individual histories on palm leaves, millions of them. Exactly like the Bhrigushastra. I didn’t take it seriously. It was impossible, irrational . . .’ She smiled with deep irony. ‘Could there be something in those leaves, a link to the saviours?’

  ‘What are the chances of finding a genome match?’

  ‘Even if we concentrate on Kerala alone, one in a million . . .’

  Bannerjee sagged as hope vanished.

  Vineet’s jaw set firmly. ‘In that case, we have nothing to lose. Let’s take a look at those leaves.’

  Outside the Clarion Building

  8.01 a.m.

  ‘Tell me!’ Talwar snapped into the microphone.

  ‘This came in, sir.’ The voice from HQ was even, professional. Talwar approved. ‘Two seats just booked on the ten-thirty IndiGo flight to Kochi via Aurangabad. Under the names of Dr Nishi Agarwal and Vinay Kumar Sinha.’

  Kochi?

  Talwar flipped open his laptop and scanned recent news from Kochi. Nothing of note.

  Via Aurangabad, he thought. The regular route to Kochi was through Mumbai. Aurangabad would add almost half a day to the journey.

  He scrolled through news from Aurangabad, and stopped.

  ‘Afghanistan Copycat Killing’

  Afghanistan . . . The recent Taliban attack . . . Was there a connection? Talwar frowned. What if that hadn’t been Taliban—and this wasn’t a madman’s copycat murder?

  ‘Call Aurangabad,’ Talwar barked. ‘Tell them to let us know at once if there’s any access request for the Bibi Ka Maqbara victim’s body. And get me on that flight!’

  ~

  Lakshadweep Islands, India

  400 km off the Kerala Coast

  Two Hours Earlier

  His eyes were rheumy with age, their light dimmed. The lash of centuries had withered his once powerful body and gouged deep furrows in his unusually ugly face—a face that Bheem loved, but one that now held no solace for him.

  ‘Sesha Nag has sunk its fangs into her,’ said Krishna Dvaipayan, the Maharishi Ved Vyas, examining Aviva’s motionless, darkening body. ‘She will not survive the hour. Neither will the child she carries.’

  His voice is the same, unchanged by the years, thought Bheem incongruously, the most pleasing voice he had ever heard, like a duet between a flute and a mountain stream. He shook himself, realizing that his mind was deliberately focusing on irrelevancies, keeping at bay a fact it refused to accept. And why, indeed, should he accept it? Nothing was a fact until it was in the past. Aviva-Fein was not dead yet. And they were in the presence of a chiranjivi, an immortal, one who had conquered death. Surely, he could . . . Bheem made to speak but the sage held up a restraining hand.

  ‘Your words,’ the maharishi said, ‘rein them in, my son, until you have heard what I have to say. The girl will not die in the few moments I take.’

  The warrior and the woman had emerged from the mystic coils of Sesha Nag a short while ago, suddenly taking form on the mud floor of a palm-thatched hut. Bheem could not have known that he was on an island in the Indian Ocean, four hundred kilometres from the mainland; nor did he care. He was only intent on the fact that Aviva-Fein lay unmoving on the floor, her skin scorched as if by fire. And then he had felt the presence of serene power and his eyes had lifted to encounter the all-seeing gaze of his grandsire.

  The sage and the warrior now sat on an outcrop of coral abutting the two huts that made up the hermitage, gazing out over the moonlit lagoon, the island on the far side silhouetted against the shifting silver sea.

  ‘You come to me, Bheem,’ the maharishi said, ‘because you are aware it was I who sheltered the four sisters, the ur-mothers of those you call the saviours; it was I who brought them to the southern shores of the land. And you are convinced that I can lead you to the last saviour, the one still alive.’

  Bheem was surprised—and then, not surprised. This was Ved Vyas; his knowledge was supreme. Of course he would know!

  ‘You are right,’ the sage continued, ‘I can.’ The rheumy eyes sharpened abruptly, transfixing Bheem. ‘Or I could save the girl. One or the other. Not both. The choice is yours.’

  Bheem was dumbfounded. This was no choice at all! He could not understand it. Why was the maharishi foisting this impossible condition on him? Was this a way of turning him down? His own grandson!

  ‘Your being my grandson has nothing to do with it.’ As always, Bheem’s mind was an open book to the sage. ‘Or perhaps it does. I erred similarly once. A very human error: I chose saving those who were my own over doing my duty. And the fate of the world turned on the choice I made on the mountain that night.’

  Fate of the world? What is he talking about? Saving his own?

  The sage looked weary. ‘You are my grandson. You have a claim on me, a right to my powers. But then why stop at saving the girl or asking for the path to the last saviour? Why not demand the head of Ashvatthama? And more, why not banish misery and outlaw death itself?’ The maharishi’s eyes glowed, brimming with power. ‘Do you see now why Lord Krishna chose neutrality in the great war? Why Eternal Ones do not pick favourites among mortals? Like every other praani, each living being, if humankind has outlived its purpose, it must be allowed to perish. Death is as vital as life. Without Shiva, there can be no Brahma, no Vishnu. It is the one iron law that must be upheld if the world is to survive.’ His eyes drifted away, bleak, regretful. ‘I made that error—and paid a price: death was taken from me; I was condemned to this never-ending, meaningless life, though its task was complete centuries ago.’ A grim mask settled on the old, old face. ‘My penitence, my praayschit lies in exiling myself to this remote isle, in curtailing my powers severely. I grant but one boon, as do my margdarshaks. So choose, my son: the life of your comrade or the path to the last saviour.’

  The waves whispered ashore, white in the moonlight, like ribbons fluttering in a breeze. How beautiful this place was and how natural that his grandsire should choose an island on which to live his penitent, unending life. After all, he was dvaipayan, island-born.

  I’m doing it a
gain, Bheem thought, focusing on the irrelevant to avoid a decision.

  He gathered himself and concentrated. What had the sage said? That he had made a very human error—chosen his own over his duty.

  Aviva-Fein or human survival. I am human, the warrior thought, and the fate of humankind is in my hands. The choice is obvious.

  Bheem looked up and faced the waiting sage.

  ‘Save the girl!’ he said.

  Terminal 2, Cochin International Airport

  Kochi, Kerala

  7.16 p.m.

  ‘Follow that car!’

  An ironic smile curved Talwar’s lips. He had never imagined he would actually use that phrase. But then nothing about this case was normal. He strapped himself into the front seat of the unmarked police sedan and sat back as the driver pulled out, skilfully keeping them precisely three vehicles behind the Ola cab. A professional, Talwar thought, observing the driver’s expert handling of the car. Good. His skill would be needed now that it was almost night; colours had faded and the Ola was just a pair of tail lights weaving through the turgid rush-hour traffic. Talwar glanced around and picked out a van in the crush of cars behind, assiduously maintaining the three-vehicle distance. He nodded. Reinforcements, as requested.

  The stopover at Aurangabad had taken most of the day, but Talwar wasn’t complaining. It was as he had surmised: this thing was tied to the Maqbara murder. And to the Kabul attack? Very likely. The jigsaw’s hidden picture was gradually emerging. Talwar had followed the pair to the Aurangabad morgue where, in line with his covert instructions, they were allowed access to the girl’s corpse. But a snippet of the girl’s skin, a photograph of her right hand—why had they needed those? They were pieces to the puzzle, of course; he had simply to fit them in. And the answer could be right here, in Kochi.

  The Ola signalled left and turned into a driveway. The police car followed unobtrusively.

  The Arunachalam Memorial Hospital and Research Centre—something to do with the skin sample?

  Talwar decided not to speculate. His car eased to a halt in the hospital’s parking area, providing him an unobstructed view of the driveway. The Ola was at the hospital entrance, its motor idling. The man and woman had alighted, the specialized metal container with the skin sample in the woman’s hands. A middle-aged man in a white coat emerged from the building.

  Nishi smiled. ‘Thank you for meeting me, Dr Rao. It was brave.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the doctor. ‘From what you’ve told me, this is the only chance we have. And I’ve learnt to trust your instincts.’

  Talwar couldn’t hear the exchange, but he saw the newcomer hand the woman a brown envelope, take charge of the container and walk past the revolving door back into the hospital. The CIG agent grunted. The skin sample—so he had been right. The envelope, though . . . what was in that? The woman slid out what appeared to be a photograph; the man with the dead arm looked at it, nodded approvingly, and then leaned across and lightly kissed the woman’s cheek. She looked surprised, smiled and hugged him briefly. Talwar raised an amused eyebrow. A relationship developing, was it? The pair got back into the cab. A minute later, the Ola slipped into the traffic outside, with Talwar and the unmarked police van following.

  The cab took the highway out of Kochi, heading south along SH-15, towards Vaikom and Kumarakom. Was that where the Israeli was holed up, in that tourist town of verdant backwaters? But they turned eastward, skirted Pala, and continued uphill, ploughing through the darkness. The road rose steadily, as the plains fell behind. The cavalcade was deep within the Western Ghats now, and soon the mountains themselves were lost in the thickening mantle of fog. Talwar wasn’t worried, though. The Ola had slowed and the police drivers were old hands at this, speeding up to sight the cab in front, dropping back into the foggy cover. Two hours, and they were in Thekkady, approaching the vast riverine forests of Periyar. A rutted dirt track forked to the left; the cab turned into it.

  ‘Dead end, sir,’ the driver said. ‘I know area. Old temple there.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Other side of trees, sir. Maybe two hundred metres.’

  Talwar asked him to pull over. This needed thinking. Even with the heavy mist, the pair ahead could hardly miss two vehicles cruising up a little-used road behind them. The agents would have to do this on foot. Talwar stepped out, signalled to the men in the van and set off through the trees.

  SERC, Indian Institute of Science

  Bengaluru

  29 October 2017

  2 a.m.

  Massive firewalls protected India’s fastest supercomputer, the petascale Cray XC-40. Ashvatthama took them down in the precise sequence necessary to keep the hypersensitive software from crashing. Fortunately, he had access to that information through the memory of Professor Ravi Sathyamurthy, who had been working on the giant computer cluster at 2 a.m. Not so fortunate, of course, for the professor, whose etiolated body lay on the floor, its ghostly pallor a reflection of both the supercomputer’s glow and his sudden death. The delicate Cray system was now completely compromised, connected as it was online to millions of insecure information repositories. Security, though, was of little concern to Ashvatthama. He swept through cyberspace imperiously, tracking his prey with all the superb skill with which, in the good days before the war, he had hunted down the notoriously elusive Himalayan musk deer.

  Hidden yourself, have you? he thought, enjoying the game. Gone to earth? Not for long. I have your spoor.

  The Temple

  Thekkady

  2.03 a.m.

  In the fog-shrouded night, the temple was a brooding presence, its ancient facade cut directly into the rock of a squat hillock. But that wasn’t where the self-possessed woman, who evidently had been waiting for the visitors, led them. A spartan wooden enclosure abutted the temple entrance, a meeting area, a mandapam. Oblivious of the silent watchers behind the trees, Nishi and Vineet slipped off their shoes and followed their guide in.

  Less than a month to live, thought Nishi, looking at Arunima Pillai. She’s at peace with it. Will I be able to . . . ? Three months for me—unless there’s something here.

  The Leaf Reader would never agree, Arunima had said when Nishi had telephoned her from Delhi. A seeker had to be there in person. Approaching the temple for a reading was not an act of free will, she had explained; it meant that the seeker had heard the call of the leaves and was heeding it. The Leaf Reader would not proceed unless he was satisfied about the genuineness of the seeker. A dead end, Nishi had thought. They would get no information about Aarthi Kutty or any of the other saviours from the palm leaves.

  And yet, here they were, sitting on a floor around a small table in a dimly lit room in the mandapam. The night was still, and despite the shutterless window, no breeze stirred the steady flames of the diyas placed at the table’s four corners. Nishi’s Malayalam was rusty, but she listened closely to the rapid exchange of words between Arunima and the grey-haired, bare-chested, mundu-clad Leaf Reader, who looked at them with undisguised scepticism.

  ‘A special case,’ Arunima insisted. ‘The seeker is here, as per the rules. In person.’

  In person . . . Nishi smiled nervously. Vineet had come up with this mad idea. Would it work? The Reader looked unconvinced, but intrigued enough to explore the matter.

  Arunima turned towards Nishi. ‘Doctor madam, the Sri is a good man,’ she said, indicating the Reader, ‘but he is troubled. He has never done this before.’

  The Reader nodded, speaking in rapid Malayalam that Arunima translated. ‘Millions of palm leaves stored in the temple—the record of hundreds of generations. There is only one way to unearth a single leaf: the seeker’s right handprint.’

  ‘We understand.’

  ‘In keeping with our traditions, the temple is cut off from everything of this age: electricity, telephones, machines. We take the print ourselves.’ The Reader held up an old-fashioned, well-worn stamp pad, the kind still used only for government work and in village post off
ices. ‘Therefore, the seeker must be here. In person.’

  Vineet’s lips stretched in an approximation of a smile. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am here. In person.’

  The Reader nodded. ‘But Arunima says we cannot take your print.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because recently you have had an accident.’

  Vineet lifted his limp right hand with his left and placed it palm up on the table. The Reader leant over, looking closely at the blackened limb. Suddenly, he gripped the hand and rubbed the palm firmly. The ruined skin crumbled like burnt parchment.

  The Reader looked up, and smiled. ‘You will forgive me. I could not take a chance. You would be surprised how much fraud there is. People pretending to be seekers even when they have not received the call.’ Arunima continued to translate the Reader’s words, his voice friendly now, relaxed, as it hadn’t been earlier. ‘Arunima tells me that you have a photo of your right hand as it was before the accident . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nishi extracted an eight-by-ten-inch print from the brown envelope. Her friends at the hospital had done a good job with the image of Aarthi’s hand that Nishi had emailed from the Aurangabad morgue. The print was sharp, enlarged slightly to match Vineet’s hand, the whorls and indentations on the skin’s surface clear.

  The Reader examined it and nodded. ‘Yes, this will do, I think.’ He turned the print around, so that they could see it too. ‘We don’t look at the whole hand, of course; just certain points on it. They guide us through the 105 basic groups that make up the entire human race, leading us to the personal leaf of the seeker.’ He rose, stepping towards the door. ‘This will take about half an hour,’ he said, glancing around. ‘But once the leaf and seeker come together, all is revealed: your past and your present. And your future—if any.’

  If any? Worry scampered like a frightened mouse across Vineet’s face. What does he mean? Was this confirmation of what Arunima had said—that the human race would cease to exist in three years?