Sagramanda, a Novel of Near-Future India

by Alan Dean Foster

  One entire rambling building that had, in the American vernacular, just growed, resembled a misshapen collection of giant child's blocks. The multiplicity of huge acrylic domes that protected the market quarter sheltered the architectural amalgam from the elements, enabling its dealers and customers to set up and do business outside. The entire complex was devoted to books. Real books, printed on paper made from pulped tree mass. Like the wheezy, aerodynamically challenged Ambassador, such relics possessed much in the way of nostalgia value.

  Far more upscale, and never set out on the hundreds of tables that backed up to storefronts, were ancient handwritten manuscripts boasting richly hued artwork and elaborate calligraphy. Some had been decorated with liquid gold and silver. There were maps for sale, and jewels of the Nizams that had escaped the attention of museums and collectors, and robotic astrologers that claimed to be more accurate than any human forecaster, not least because they were completely unbiased.

  A city within a city, Shrinahji seethed with activity. Shrines and other religious facilities catered to the needs of Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Animists, and Zoroastrians. Political parties and groups had their own meeting places, the market accommodating the vocal needs of everyone from the BJP to the Dalit Army, from Shiv Sena to the Militant Vegans. In their ubiquity busy personal communicators approached plague level. Their ringing and calling had been banned, lest their conjoined cacophony make the conducting of normal business impossible. Other means of announcing incoming calls had to be adopted. The reigning joke was that there were more vibrating units in Shrinahji than in all the brothels in Southeast Asia.

  Sanjay's unit remained in his pocket, quiescent and unmoving. Not wishing to be distracted by casual conversation, he had turned it off prior to entering the market. Now he strolled purposefully down Bagwan Street. A late-afternoon monsoon rain was washing the air outside. Half a dozen stories above his head he could just see the drops splattering on the curving, smoky acrylic that formed the roof over this part of the market.

  A tax on all sales concluded inside a covered market paid for the aircon that made Shrinahji and its less famous, less well-established siblings so popular with merchants and customers alike. Entrance was restricted to those who could prove they had legitimate business to conduct inside. Without such controls the market would be overrun with tens of thousands of street dwellers desperately seeking shelter and surcease from the city's relentless heat. Unrestrained by the special laws that protected pedestrians pounding the pavements outside, drifting bouquets of fanciful advertisements assailed him like flurries of electronic snow, badgering him to visit this shop, eat at this restaurant, patronize this clothing store, seek out this sly seller of secrets. Such unrestrained, unsupervised capitalism was restricted to enclosed places like the market, where it would not upset the delicate sensibilities of those who were easily offended by rampant commercialism.

  Sanjay reveled in it all-the noise, the pushing crowds, the vocal hawking, even the inescapable adverts. He was not so many years removed from the simple life of the village to have become jaded to such things. As he walked, it seemed to him that his left shoe, the one with the hidden compartment containing the tiny mollysphere, was slightly heavier than his right. It was all in his mind, he told himself. If anything, the unhollowed-out right shoe should be heavier.

  Despite the best efforts of the most powerful atmospheric scrubbers the market ownership could install, the enormous complex was still fragrant with the stink of the thousands of merchants and customers who plied its multiple levels and hundreds of narrow accessways. At least there were no vehicles to contend with, Sanjay thought gratefully as he turned a corner. All deliveries and services entered the market via specially designated underground corridors. The only way to get around Shrinahji was to walk, or utilize an approved personal transport mechanism. Being small and silent, the latter were no impediment to the foot traffic they complemented. Like everything else that came into the market, you needed a permit to use one.

  Sanjay preferred to walk. A personal transport would only have hindered his progress, since pedestrians always had the right of way. The noiseless electric transports were more useful for the aged, the crippled, and the lazy. He was none of these.

  Halting at an intersection, people flowing around him, he frowned at suddenly having three choices, three directions from which to choose. At a touch of his communications bracelet a glowing, three-dimensional map of the market materialized in front of his face.

  Responding to voice commands directed at the bracelet, the map zoomed in response to the GPS built into the instrument until it fixed on his current position. Verbally, he entered an address. Shifting to an angled view, a green line appeared in the air, connecting the red dot that marked his position at the intersection with a building two blocks away. Satisfied, he deactivated the map, turned up the street that led off to his right, and resumed walking.

  The building was old, but Sanjay was not put off by its appearance. Many historic structures near the center of the old city had been saved as part of Sagramanda's diverse and energetic preservation projects. As long as the building was of no special historical value, modern con struction techniques allowed the interiors of buildings that sat on valuable property to be gutted and updated while preserving their original appearance from the street. Many sleek modern enterprises boasted compelling nineteenth- and twentieth-century facades.

  The four-story structure that rose before him was a mixture of both. Announcing himself to Security at the main entrance, he waited while his ident was checked and his appointment confirmed. Granted entry, he saw at once that the building originally had been a haveli, or house of a wealthy merchant. It had been taken apart somewhere in Mandawa, transported across India, and reassembled inside Shrinahji. In purpose it was perfectly appropriate to its present address and location within the market, as well as his reason for coming here.

  A central rectangular courtyard opened to the sky-or rather, to one of the multiple acrylic domes that roofed the market complex.

  Unlike those that still stood in distant Rajasthan, subject to the whims and weather of the harsh Thar Desert, the interior of this magnificent old residence had been well preserved. The upper portion of one exposed courtyard wall, where it met the overhang of the second-floor walkway, was covered with decorative old paintings; triptychs of Indian life from a century and a half ago.

  Elephants with howdahs, camel caravans, Europeans in black hats, dancing girls; all followed one another around the wall in a procession of bright hues and lost innocence. Similar depictions graced the upper portions of the other three walls, with two exceptions. The decorations there were of recent vintage, and they moved.

  A virtual of the highly endangered Indian lion preyed upon and brought down electronically terrified sambar deer. Elegant water birds, from egrets to spoonbills, frolicked in shallow lakes. Apsaras gave les sons to their descendants the nautch dancers while merchants in rich robes presented their wares to turbaned and bejeweled warlords who flaunted bejeweled knives and ferocious black beards. It was moving history, devoid only of noise. Adding accompanying sound might have been distracting to business. It was all very well and good, Sanjay mused as he moved through the courtyard, to honor one's past, but not at the expense of commerce.

  The lift was located within a four-story-tall precast statue of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. The voluptuous sculpture was mildly sexist, without a doubt, but undeniably beckoning. Any business woman who objected could take her trade elsewhere. Such thoughts did not trouble Sanjay as he stepped into the lift. He came from a small village, and was a traditionalist. Supplying aesthetic balance, an abun dance of virile, scantily dressed warriors pranced and fought mock bat tles as part of the wall decor. Fair was fair.

  The office he sought was on the top, fourth floor, at the rear of the complex. Standing out front was the owner's symbol: a richly garbed camel. Not a real camel, of course. It was an excellent simul
acrum, complete to the methodical, metronomic chewing of its cud. Sanjay studied it purposefully, striving to identify the breed on which the effigy had been based. Bikaneri, Jaisalmeri, or Gujarati? The superbly rendered hairy ears were a giveaway. Bikaneri, he decided. He had never been to Bikaner, but he had heard of its perfectly preserved palace and other wonders from the Rat. Bikaner was the nearest large city to the temple of the rats in Deshnok.

  As for being able to recognize the differences between kinds of camels, Sanjay could because it was one of many things every poor Indian child learned. One never knew when the opportunity to own one of the wonderful beasts might present itself. Back in the days when most vehicles had been powered by ever more highly priced gasoline, camel cart drivers had looked down on frustrated vehicle owners and smirked, secure in the knowledge that their venerable means of transportation required neither petrol, nor lubrication, nor insurance, was unlikely to incur speeding tickets, used no imported parts, and in the absence of onboard computers or auto AIs was quite capable of parking itself.

  All that had changed considerably with the advent of the hydrogen-driven, fuel-cell-powered car. But a camel was still cheaper to run.

  Not this one, though. It was too sophisticated. As if to prove the point, the android dromedary looked down at him and said, in a no-nonsense preprogrammed voice, "State your business."

  "I am Sanjay Ghosh." He checked his chronometer. "I have a ten o'clock appointment with Mr. Chhote Pandit."

  The camel looked him up and down, the gleaming lens of one eye recording his outward appearance, the lens of the other probing deeper to check him for weapons. It detected, among other things, the mollysphere packed carefully in the secret compartment of his left shoe, but did not remark on it.

  "Go on in," the camel directed him. Its business concluded, it resumed chewing its nonexistent cud. As he walked past, Sanjay couldn't keep from examining the robot's flanks. No doubt there were other, far more lethal devices buried within that faux furred body.

  Pandit was not what Sanjay expected. Anticipating someone youngish, bright, and with an advanced degree from Bangalore or somewhere else in the southern Silicon Triangle, he instead found him self in a room more like an audience chamber or den than a modern office, facing a man considerably older but otherwise not unlike him self. As they shook hands and exchanged steepled fingers and head bows, it was all he could do to forebear from asking his host the name of the village he hailed from.

  Taking a seat on a couch opposite another, Pandit gestured for his guest to sit. There was no table between them; only a fine rug predominantly woven of blue and red thread whose pattern Sanjay did not recognize. On the walls were delicate paintings of incredibly fine detail that hailed from the school of Rajasthan miniatures. Some of them looked old, though Sanjay was hardly an expert in such things.

  "Persian," his host told him. "The rug," he added when his guest did not respond. "Royal Sarouk. Two hundred years old."

  Suitably impressed, Sanjay made sure his feet rested lightly on the dense fibers. "It looks almost new."

  Pandit smiled and nodded. "The hallmark of a good rug." He was a small old man, shorter even than Sanjay, with a wispy white beard and prominent sideburns like steel wool. His prominent ears stuck out from the sides of his head like those of a baby elephant, he was missing several teeth that could easily have been regenerated or replaced with synthetics, and he wore a plainly embroidered sherwani coat of ivory-hued cotton over an equally basic, pajama-like chundar. The only sign of modernity on his body-indeed, in the entire room-was the gold-tinged control bracelet encircling his left wrist and the chronometer on his right. Absently, Sanjay wondered what the former could summon. He suspected he might have the opportunity to find out. He did not have to wait long.

  "Tea?" asked his host. When Sanjay nodded affirmatively, Pandit whispered to his bracelet.

  Through some mechanism Sanjay could not discern, the priceless rug rolled itself up and off to one side. A portion of the wooden floor slid silently aside to reveal an exquisite low table cut from a single block of white marble. In full pietra dura style, the marble was inlaid with flowers, leaves, and birds fashioned from shards of precious

  and semiprecious stone: lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, carnelian, turquoise from Iran, jasper, agate, malachite from Africa, tiger eye, mother-of-pearl, and more. Built into the center of the table was a heating unit atop which sat a silver pot damascened in gold. Steam issued from the pot's curved spigot. Cups rested nearby, together with containers of milk, cream, and several kinds of sugar.

  "Please." Pandit gestured for his guest to help himself. Sanjay fixed a cup, sat back on the comfortable couch, and sipped. He eyed the cup as he gestured with it. "Not marble?"

  Pandit smiled back as he poured for himself. "Too easily stained by tea, as I'm sure you know." Adding sugar and milk, he sat back on the other couch and stirred slowly, regarding his visitor out of narrowed eyes. "You are a walking contradiction, Mr. Ghosh."

  Sanjay maintained his poker face; his business face. "How is that to be, Mr. Pandit, sir?"

  "You do not look in the least like the sort of person to be demanding the kind of money that is being asked. You look, and please do not feel slighted when I say this, like a dirt farmer."

  Somehow Sanjay managed not to flush. He certainly would not have thought of responding with something like, "That's funny-so do you." Instead, he replied, "I am only a poor servant of another, who wishes to remain anonymous."

  Pandit coughed slightly into his tea, availed himself of a longer swallow. "As am I, as am I. Both of us being middlemen, then, it should be easy for us to reach an understanding. I am sure you are being paid a commensurate fee. As I will be." Sanjay, properly, said nothing.

  Abruptly, Pandit looked bored. "Well, let's get it over with. This should not take long. It cannot, because despite what you may think from appearances, I am a busy man. You have only been allotted this brief bit of my time on the personal recommendation of another whose information I value highly. Otherwise you would not have gotten past the entrance to this complex, much less into my ante office."

  "I know that, Mr. Pandit, and I am grateful." Sanjay's response rang of honesty because it was just that. "I have only one thing to show you. It represents what my client has to offer for sale. I don't pretend to understand it. The details are unfamiliar to me personally. But I was assured by my client that when it was presented to you, you would know how to read between the lines it will make available to you to such an extent that you will be able to bring my client in contact with an appropriate buyer for what he is offering to sell."

  "Yes, yes." Pandit checked his own chronometer impatiently. "Well, drink your tea and get on with it. Let's see this wonderful thing- whatever it is."

  Without further comment Sanjay lifted his left leg and crossed it over his right, the better to access the hidden safety compartment in the sole of his shoe. Pandit paid hardly any attention to the process, as if such low-tech subterfuges were old news to him. Extracting the packet holding the small molly, the shopkeeper slid it across the inlaid tabletop to his host.

  Pandit opened it and removed the contents. "Standard information storage device." Sharp eyes focused on his guest. "Is there anything special I should know before I try to access it?"

  Sanjay looked appropriately innocent. "All I was told was that removing it from my shoe would allow it to be activated. I am not sophisticated in such things."

  His host studied both mollysphere and merchant for a moment before addressing his command bracelet once more. Mimicking the ascension of the beautiful coffee table, a small pedestal console rose out of the floor in front of the couch. Pandit popped the molly into one of its available receptacles and waited for the precision internal alignment of magnetic field and variable focal-length lasers to lock in. He was mildly disappointed when the box unit generated only two-dimensional information.

  His eyes widened, however, as he studied the readouts that were gene
rated in the air before him. Eyeing their backside, Sanjay could make out words and diagrams, charts and numbers. It was doubtful that he would have been able to make sense of the highly technical terminology even if he had been sitting alongside Pandit on the other couch and viewing the display from the front. Though intensely curious, he did not say anything. For one thing, he did not want to break his host's sudden concentration. For another, if he were to view the display he might be asked to comment on its meaning, thus revealing the extent of his ignorance about the contents of the molly.

  "By Mohini's girdle!" Pandit breathed softly as page after page of heads-up information automatically winked in and out of existence in front of him. He took a moment to peer around the display at his patient guest. "Have another cup of tea. Do you know what you have here?"

  Sanjay might not be highly educated, but he was mentally agile. "Something of great value."

  "Be obscure, then, if it pleases you." There was no rancor in Pandit's voice as he returned to studying the floating fount of information. Either his guest was truly ignorant of the molly's contents, or else he was playing dumb for commercial reasons. While Pandit might prefer to believe the former, from a business standpoint it was much safer to believe the latter. The older man's reaction rendered Sanjay even more curious about the molly's contents. Just what was it that the furtive Taneer had given him to sell?

  Whatever it was, the mollysphere's sales pitch was having the intended effect. Chhote Pandit was not merely interested: he was entranced.

  Fine tea or no fine tea, Sanjay was beginning to squirm when his host finally shifted to the other end of his couch, leaving the molly activated and the last page of information hanging in the air. As