by Eric Brown
“And in so doing,” Morwell said breathlessly, “grant me oblivion?”
“Precisely so.”
He recalled the last time he had had dealings with the Obterek, and how that had failed spectacularly. “And you would be more successful than the last time…?”
“We had… limited resources then, limited access to the requisite power. We have had ten years to plan our next move, to wait until the time was right… The power drain will be great, but it will be required for seconds only. We know we will succeed.”
Morwell thought about humanity released from the slavery of the charea, humanity allowed to fulfil its true, evolutionary destiny, to expand and conquer… He would not be around to see this happen, of course — but he would be the catalyst for the change, the martyr who sacrificed himself for the sake of humanity.
He flung back his head and laughed at the idea.
He reached out his arms as if seeking to embrace the Obterek. “Inhabit me.”
“In time. First, I must tell you about the subject.”
Morwell assented, and wondered who they might use in order to gain access to the takrea. One of the human representatives, no doubt.
“Who?” he asked.
The figure said, “You knew her as Kat Kemp.”
He stared, rocked. He mouthed the name, “Kat? But… but why Kat?”
“Because, James Morwell, she has constant access to the takrea–”
“But why should I kill…?”
“Because she used you.”
Morwell shook his head, confused. “Used? We… for a year we were lovers. She helped me, not used.”
The creature stared at him in silence. He received, then, the distinct impression that the being pitied him. It said, “Just after our abortive attempt to plant certain representatives with the transmission devices, the Serene deemed that certain people should be… monitored in order to assess the level of their threat in future.”
He shook his head. “Kat? The Serene used Kat…?”
“James Morwell,” said the blue being, “Kat Kemp was… is… a Serene self-aware entity.”
He felt as if he had been hit an invisible blow in the solar plexus, an impact both physical and mental.
“She was charged with monitoring you, of assessing your threat, of being with you during the period that the Serene thought we might contact you again. After a year, she was discharged of this duty, and she brought about the end of your affair.”
He felt a sudden surge of anger at the idea of her betrayal… No, not her betrayal: its betrayal…
“She used me…” he said.
“As the Serene are using the human race to infect you with their own unnatural edicts, their own perverted ideals.”
He leaned forward. “And when you inhabit me, and then inhabit Kat Kemp… and we walk into the takrea?”
“Then I, we, will detonate, and Kat Kemp will die, and the takrea disintegrate, and the charea in the solar system break down… Then the Obterek will be able to supplant the Serene.”
He would be dead, then — he would have achieved that which, for ten years, he had sought relentlessly. It was only a small regret that he would not then be around to witness the liberation of humankind, the return to the old laws of the universe, the true way…
He was taken then with the urge to lash out, to commit violence, to kill.
An idea grew in his head, and he smiled as he said, “I agree to help you, but first… There is someone I wish to kill. You can allow me that one last wish? I will not be around to see my people returned to the old ways, so let my last voluntary action on Earth be to kill.”
The very idea excited him more than he had ever imagined.
The blue figure bowed its head. “First, I must consult with my peers. The execution might serve as a… test-run, as you would say… before the real thing.”
It felt silent, and very still, as it communed with its kind.
Seconds later it looked up, and said, “It is granted. For the briefest period, for a matter of seconds only, you will have the opportunity to contravene the Serene charea and kill.” The Obterek paused, then said, “And who will be your victim?”
Morwell smiled to himself. “Lal Devi,” he said.
“PLEASE,” SAID THE blue figure, “stand up.”
With difficulty, James Morwell pushed himself to his feet and stood facing the Obterek, swaying.
The blue being rose and faced Morwell, exuding power. It stepped forward, moving faster than he had expected, and slammed into him. He gasped; it was as if an electric charge had passed through his body, galvanising him, filling him with energy.
He closed his eyes and felt the essence of the being inhabit his body, his senses. He had never felt as alive as he did now.
He heard a voice in his head. Open your eyes, James Morwell.
He did so, and found that he was no longer aboard his boat on the ocean. He was standing in a hotel bedroom. He stared across the room, saw a neatly dressed young man staring at him — and only then realised that it was a reflection of himself in a mirror.
He raised a hand and stared at the flawless skin.
You, said the voice in his head, but a younger, more vital version…
He smiled to himself. He felt powerful; for the first time in twenty years, he had power and the ability to use it.
He stared through the window at the city of Kolkata sprawling far below.
Somewhere out there was the man who had betrayed him, Lal Devi, and he was about to die.
Smiling to himself, James Morwell left the hotel and crossed the teeming city.
CHAPTER FIVE
TO GET FROM the Serene obelisk in the centre of the city to the address which Ben Aronica had given her, Ana had to pass the railway station and the warren of alleyways where Sanjeev Varnaputtram had made his home all those years ago. As she negotiated the potholes and roaming, khaki-coloured cows, she thought back to her last encounter with him. He had been a sad, fat, pathetic figure, deserted by his followers, self-righteous and self-piteous. She wondered if she would find him alive still. If so he would be in his late seventies now — but she doubted he had survived for long after their last meeting.
She came to the pale green timber door in the crumbling wall. It stood ajar, and the riot of vegetation behind it formed a resistant pressure against the gate as she pushed it open.
She battled her way through the jungle and came to the house. The door stood ajar, its timbers rotten. An aqueous half light prevailed within, and Ana stepped cautiously over the mossy tiles of the hallway and approached the double doors to Sanjeev’s bedroom.
She reached out a tremulous hand and pushed open the door.
She had expected to find an empty room, stripped of all possessions, with little evidence of its former occupant and little to remind her of the crimes committed within.
She gasped as her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she took in the contents of the room.
Garish movie posters adorned the walls, moulded and ripped, and a table stood beside the charpoy where, when Ana was ten, Sanjeev Varnaputtram had…
She shut out the thought.
Lying on the bed was a skeleton.
Ana took a step forward, and then another, and stared with disbelief at all that remained of the monster, Sanjeev Varnaputtram.
She recalled him as vast — larger than life — with an attendant malignity that had seemed, to the child she had been, to make him all the bigger. Now, astoundingly, he had been reduced to a skeleton, and Ana found it hard to believe that his bones were no larger than any others.
His skull had slipped sideways, its orbits regarding her lop-sidedly. Its lower mandible hung comically open. He had been dead for so long, she thought, that there was no longer any smell or any sign of the putrescence that must have attended his death.
She considered his death — and the fact that he had lain like this ever since, his remains forgotten and unmourned, a fitting end to a life spent persecuti
ng those less powerful than himself.
She was about to turn away when she saw, pinned to the flaking plaster of the wall beside the charpoy, the photograph of a young girl.
Her breath caught and she gave a small sob of shock.
The image of herself as a girl of fifteen or sixteen smiled out at her — the photograph of her on the station platform all those years ago. To think that he’d had it with him to the very end… The idea almost made her sick, as if the evil man had possessed some small part of her down all the years.
Now she reached out and pulled the picture from the wall, and stared at the girl she had been.
She raised the photograph to her lips and kissed the faded image.
SHE LEFT THE house for the very last time and made her way through the tangle of creepers and vines that choked the pathway. She was about to reach out and pull open the gate when someone on the other side pushed it towards her.
She stood back quickly, expecting to see an aging Sikh or another of Sanjeev’s erstwhile minions.
A Buddhist monk in a bright orange robe stood smiling before her.
“Oh,” she exclaimed in surprise.
The beaming, bald-headed man — a diminutive figure she guessed to be in his eighties — gestured with palms pressed together at his chest and said, “Namaste, child.”
“Namaste,” Ana responded, raising her hands in a shadow gesture.
“May I ask what brings you here?”
In response, before she realised what she was doing, she raised the photograph of her younger self and showed it to the monk. She murmured, “When I was a child, one day the owner of this house…”
The monk raised a hand. “I have been told about what Mr Varnaputtram did here.”
She smiled and, emboldened, asked, “And what brings you here, sir?”
“You have heard of the Buddhist concept of contemplation, the practice of beholding the act of bodily decay?”
She nodded. At least, in death, the corpse of Sanjeev Varnaputtram had served some use.
“Sanjeev Varnaputtram died eight years ago, and since that time I come here every month and look upon his remains… There is a chai stall along the alley. Would you care to join me?”
“That would be lovely,” she said.
They sat on rickety wooden chairs in the alley, while children and rats played around them, and Ana said, “My name is Ana Devi, and now I live on Mars.”
“Mars!” exclaimed the old man, as if the fact of her residence so far away was a miracle. “Mars… but as a child you lived here, in this city.”
And she found herself telling the old monk all about her life on the station, her beatings at the hands of Mr Jangar, the station master, and Sanjeev Varnaputtram’s abuse of her and her friends.
“I last came here ten years ago, sir, and confronted Varnaputtram, and told him what I and the other children had achieved in life, and I thought that was the end of the affair.”
“And you were mistaken.”
“I think so. I realise now that this is the end, to have seen his bones, to have reclaimed this from his possessions.” She showed the monk her photograph again, and he took it in fingers as brown as cassia bark.
“I can see that you were a kind child, and strong, and you have grown into the woman this child promised to be. Tell me, what do you do on Mars?”
“I work in administration for the Martian legislature, and also… I am a representative of the Serene.”
“Ah, the Serene…”
Ana hesitated, then asked, “I would like to know what you think of the Serene, sir.”
He smiled, and nodded for so long that Ana thought he might never stop. At last he said, “I think the Serene were at one time like ourselves, child — that is, they were Buddhist.”
“And now?”
“Now, they have achieved satori and they have brought their ways to our world.”
They sat in silence for a time, drinking their sweet, milky chai, and Ana asked at last, “And Sanjeev Varnaputtram, sir? What of him?”
“Mr Varnaputtram was not enlightened, child. He was driven by ignorance, and a lack of empathy. He was also a very unhappy man.”
“I hated him for many years.”
“But no longer?”
She looked into her heart, and said truthfully, “No longer.”
“That is good.” He reached out and clasped her hand. “I am so happy for you, for hatred is corrosive; it sours the heart; it achieves nothing. You are wise beyond your years, child.”
Ana smiled, and wanted to tell him that she was thirty-six years old, but the truth was that, sitting here in the presence of the ancient monk, she did indeed feel like the child she had been.
“And now?” he asked.
“Now I must search for my brother.” And she told the monk all about Bilal and what had happened ten years ago.
“I feel that you will find him,” he said. “And then?”
“I don’t know. I… I would like to tell him that I forgive him what he did to me, but to do that I think I must first try to understand why he did what he did.”
“Understanding, empathy, is always enlightening. Only he who understands can forgive.”
She finished her tea and smiled at the monk. “I must be going…”
“I have enjoyed our conversation, and have learned something.”
She stared at the man, and wanted to ask what he might have learned, but felt that it might be impolite, or immodest, to ask. She pressed her palms together and murmured, “Namaste.”
“Namaste,” said the old man, and then. “But one more thing. If I may ask… in what do you believe, child?”
Ana thought about it for long seconds, then said, “I believe in the Serene, sir,” and turned and walked away down the alley.
SHE TURNED ON to the main street and walked towards the station. She would take a short-cut over the footbridge across the multiple tracks, where as a child she had perched on the girders like a station monkey.
The station was not so crowded as it had been in her childhood; more people owned electric cars now, and scooters, and consequently the platforms were almost deserted. She crossed the footbridge, noting that the nimble grey monkeys still cavorted through the girders on the lookout for unwary children with bananas.
She left the station and strolled down the busy streets, passing Bhatnagar’s restaurant. She had half a mind to stop and eat a masala dosa, but the desire to find Bilal’s address drove her on. Maybe later, and maybe accompanied by Bilal, she could stop and eat… or was she being too hopeful? Who was to say that her brother would still be at the same address? And even if he were, would he anything other than angry and resentful at her sudden reappearance after all these years?
She came to a residential area that in her childhood had been a slum but which was now an affluent district of poly-carbon apartments on wide, leafy streets.
Heart hammering, she consulted her softscreen implant and read the address she had entered there. 1025 Nanda Chowk… She summoned a map of the area, which showed her present position in relation to her destination. She was fifty metres from the turning, and her chest felt fit to burst as she hurried to the corner and turned down Nanda Chowk.
1025 was a small, neat weatherboard building with a lawn and a flower-embroidered border — not the type of house where she had imagined her brother might live.
She pushed open the gate and walked up the path. She stood before the white-painted door for a minute, working to control her breathing and marshal her thoughts. She recalled the time she had confronted Bilal in his office ten years ago, when despite all her determination not to accuse him she had done just that, and regretted it.
This time, no accusations.
She touched the sensor beside the door, stood back and waited.
She heard a sound from within, footsteps approaching the door. She was sweating. She fixed a smile in place and stared at the door where she expected Bilal’s face to appear.
; The door opened and a portly Sikh in his fifties smiled down at her. “How can I help you?” he asked, suspiciously.
She began to speak, her words tripping up over themselves, then took a breath and began again, “I am trying to find my brother, Bilal Devi. I was given this address…”
“Ah, Bilal. Yes, yes. But I am afraid that Bilal moved out just last year.”
“Moved out?” Ana repeated as if she failed to comprehend the meaning of the words.
“Yes, yes,” said the Sikh. “He took up residence in his place of work.”
“And where might that be?”
“Bilal worked in the new Gandhi State Orphanage on Victoria Road, beside the river. Your brother is a fine man and does good work there.” Smiling, he reached out and took Ana’s hand in a prolonged shake. “It is a privilege to meet Bilal’s sister. When you find him, please convey my compliments, ah-cha? I am Mr Singh-Gupta, and for many years my wife and I had the honour of having Bilal lodge in our family home.”
Ana smiled and promised to convey these sentiments to her brother when she found him. Thanking Mr Singh-Gupta, Ana took her leave and hurried across the city towards the river.
Bilal worked in an orphanage? Her brother, the trendy, materialistic, Serene-hating businessman… he now worked in a state-run orphanage, doing good work with needy children?
As she hurried along the busy street, Ana wondered if the person in question was indeed her brother, or someone else entirely — then chastised herself for the thought.
Was it too much to hope that Bilal had indeed seen the error of his ways?
The Gandhi State Orphanage was an ultra-modern poly-carbon building more like a rearing ocean liner than a government building, all curving sleek lines and convex silver planes.
Taking a deep breath Ana paused before the sliding doors, counted to ten, then plunged inside.
She asked a young man at reception where she might find Bilal Devi.
“And why do you wish to see Mr Devi?” he asked.
Over her surprise that he was indeed here, she said, “I am his sister, and I have not seen my brother for many years…”