“I’ll be right back.” I kept moving. I was through the door now.
“Jal, Raj!” she called. “He’s leaving!”
I bolted. I didn’t know the area, but it was unlikely that any of them was in the kind of shape I was in. Barring any ill effects from the accident, I should be able to easily outdistance them.
Raj was an athlete. He caught up to me in a couple of blocks. We were running in the street since the narrow sidewalks seethed with pedestrians. Cars honked and bicyclists swore at us as they maneuvered by.
“Stop,” he called. “Wait.”
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the least bit out of breath. I was. He sprinted up alongside me.
“Can’t we talk about this, Sid? We’ll help you get through it. There’s no reason to panic. And this isn’t something you can run away from, is it?”
He doesn’t understand. He believes I’m spooked by what they’d rigged up on the computer.
“Just let me run it out,” I said. “I’ll be right back. Exercise helps me cope.”
“I’ll run with you,” Raj said. “You don’t know your way.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
So we continued. I ran 10Ks and trained for a marathon once a year. I’d wear him down, get a lead, and then duck into a store or something.
In two miles or so, most of it on less busy sidewalks, Raj began to slip back. He called to me, imploring me to stop. Instead I focused on my breathing, increased my pace, and took several random turns. The pounding on the uneven concrete accentuated my accumulation of injuries, and my headache was throbbing again.
When I looked back after a while, I couldn’t see him anymore. If I were Raj, I’d be calling Jal to drive over and search for me. I needed to get the hell out of there. But where was there, anyway? I slowed down and glanced around. I was lost on a busy shopping street somewhere in Mumbai. A motorbike sideswiped me, the boy’s knee lightly scraping my hip. Several other people yelled at me to get out of their way.
I knew no one, nor which direction represented escape. What now?
Chapter Seventeen
I found a substantial-looking taxi several streets away. A foot longer than the others, it sported oversized black bumpers. For what was probably a ridiculous amount of money, the dapper driver agreed to take me all the way to Meher Baba’s pilgrim center outside Ahmednagar. He’d been there before, he said.
He wore an immaculate, cream-colored, short-sleeved jumpsuit, and he had fastidiously trimmed his black beard. His eyes were a bit dull, as if driving didn’t interest him too much, no matter the destination. He was probably my age. The movie he’d appear in would be set in a 1970s disco, and he’d be the guy inappropriately approaching the hottest girl in the place, only to be shot down by a snarky retort.
It seemed like a good idea to get out of town, and my people were probably still at Baba’s. I’d call Sam and Chris en route; I could always switch destinations if he and Marco had taken off for somewhere else. Also, I wanted to experience the tomb, even if I had to do it on my own. I was no longer intimidated by its purported energy.
As we climbed in the taxi—I sat in the front passenger seat—the driver told me that his name was Burt.
“Burt?” I asked after introducing myself.
“My parents were Christians, so they liked Burt Lancaster,” he told me.
I nodded my head as though that made sense.
“But they were wrong about being Christians. There is no God,” he continued. “And Meher Baba was just a very clever magician. Seeking wisdom from such a man is a waste of time. Especially once he’s dead.”
“Oh.”
Burt explained many more things before we reached the highway heading northeast. Then, mercifully, my disrupted sleep schedule asserted itself, and I conked out. I slept for a couple of hours until Burt took a gas/bathroom/snack break at a modest truck stop—very modest by US standards. Two pumps and a tiny restaurant sat in the middle of a vast dirt parking lot. An ancient man pumped our gas.
“Where are you from?” he asked me in a very thick accent as I climbed out of the car to stretch. Burt had lit out for the men’s room after telling me to “exercise vigilance on the vehicle.”
“California,” I told him.
“Oh yes. My nephew’s son owns a motel there—in one of those towns named after a Catholic saint.” He studied my face. “You’ve come a long way. Are you visiting family? No, wait. You’re a seeker, aren’t you? Are you journeying to Osho’s—or perhaps the Ashanti Yoga ashram?”
“Meher Baba’s tomb,” I told him.
“Very good. You will not be disappointed there. Unless you are trying to stay the same. You cannot stay the same once you go there.” He looked me in the eye and smiled. For some reason I really liked this man, and he seemed quite happy.
Perhaps the Indian culture with its historical caste system helped its members have a more realistic idea about the odds of getting things to go their way. If there was no possibility of doing something grander than pumping gas, maybe it was easier to be content with your life.
“Life is change,” I finally said.
“Precisely,” he agreed.
When it was my turn to visit the bathroom, I was faced with four holes in the floor with raised tiles beside each to support feet. I was glad that I only needed to pee. Being ethnically Asian hadn’t blessed me with an ability to squat particularly well.
I rejoined Burt in the taxi and, for the next hour, watched the scenery and tried to call Chris and Sam on my state-of-the-art cell phone. Apparently, its creators hadn’t reckoned on rural India. Burt was mercifully silent.
We passed through small towns every five or six miles. It was hard to distinguish one from another. They were assemblages of small, flat-roofed cinderblock buildings, most of which had been stuccoed over. Sky blue seemed to be the most popular color. Men on elderly green tractors farmed the surrounding farmland. There were virtually no trees.
As the trip continued, I grew stronger and more centered. I was so much more than I’d been a week before. At that moment, in Burt’s noisy, bumpy taxi, I felt capable of generating whatever response a given situation might call for.
Of course, I told myself, somewhere back in here is the usual human idiot mismanaging whatever amazing tools and skills he’d been given. It’s only a matter of time before that guy reasserts himself in some spectacularly self-defeating way.
Finally, with another hour to go on our trip, after failing to reach Sam yet again, I got through to Chris.
“Hi, it’s Sid,” I told him.
“Bro!” he said. The signal was weak and staticky, but I could hear the excitement in his voice. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m okay. I’m heading your way—assuming you’re at Baba’s. But it’s been an adventure.”
“How so? And yeah, we’re at the pilgrim center.”
“A truck ran us off the road in Mumbai, and I got a concussion. Then one of the fake clones sort of kidnapped me. Have you heard from Sam? I’m worried about her.”
“She’s fine. She called Marco a while ago. Major head trauma, huh? It’s always something with you, Sid, isn’t it? Did you get away, or is this a ransom demand call? I may have money, but you know how cheap I am. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
“What if I hadn’t pulled off a dramatic escape? You’d feel terrible saying something like that, wouldn’t you?” I found myself pointing my accusation at the windshield.
“Probably not,” Chris admitted.
“What does it take to knock the wiseass out of you, Chris? Do I have to get killed?”
“That might do it. I dunno.”
I didn’t need this crap right then. “Is Sam due to arrive soon?”
“She’s en route,” Chris said. “That’s all I know. Are you on a bus or something? Sam said the airport wasn’t safe.”
“I’m in a taxi. Is Marco there? Can I talk to him instead? Really, anyone else would be fine.”
“He’s doing samadhi. I mean
he’s sitting right here, but he’s totally checked out.” Chris’s tone was warmer now—evidently he’d sensed my irritation.
“Has he been working you over?” I asked.
“Not too much. He says he needs my brain intact. But we went to two ashrams in Pune before we got here. These gurus knew Marco, and everybody at the ashrams meditated with us. I do feel kinda different since all that.”
“Sounds good.” Perhaps Marco and a squad of gurus could reform him.
“Plus if the women hadn’t been so damned celibate, I think I could’ve worked the coattail effect and scored big time,” Chris added.
“Gee, what a shame.”
Then the phone cut out. “Hello? Hello?” I said.
“I’m surprised it worked at all,” Burt the driver said. “There are no cell towers here.”
“It’s a special phone,” I said.
“Special or not, it’s all the same. No towers. Did I hear you correctly? Were you telling someone about a clone? Are you a science fiction writer?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I see,” he said. “What are you, then? A software engineer?”
“I’m like a psychologist,” I told him.
“This is another ridiculous notion. Psychology!” He was off and running. According to Burt, the entire field was a hoax perpetrated by greedy con men who desired nothing less than to strip mankind of its dignity and make everyone much poorer.
I made an effort to find something positive about Burt. His syntax tended to be very interesting. And I liked his haircut. It had square notches over his ears and unusually well-defined edges.
“How is it,” I asked, “that you developed such a strong negative opinion about both spirituality and psychology?”
“My great-uncle.” He stopped, as though that fully answered my question.
“Did someone take advantage of him?”
“Oh no. That’s entirely wrong. No one could take advantage of my great-uncle. He was a psychiatrist—the first Indian one in this part of the colony. It was a colony back then. Did you know that we are only a country since 1948?”
“Yes, actually.”
Burt ignored that. He seemed to only notice whatever fit his preconceptions. “Well, my uncle had my father locked up. That’s one thing. I was very young, but I knew it wasn’t right.”
“Was he ill?”
“They said he was schizophrenic—that he heard voices. So what? All great men hear voices. This means nothing.” He waved the notion away with a grand gesture, swiping his hand across the taxi’s headliner.
“I can understand your suspicion.”
“Suspicion? Hardly!” He snorted and glared at me. “Then my uncle became involved with your Meher Baba. He would go and stay with him for months on end and talk about him all the time. After that big fraud died, my uncle would bring me to the tomb. He said it was good for me to spend time in it. This was 1970. At first I liked it. I got to be with my rich uncle who was away so much, and, after all, my father wasn’t here anymore to take me places. Everyone treated us well because my uncle had been so close to Baba. In fact, Baba secretly spoke to my uncle once, even though he was supposed to never talk. This was very special. My uncle told me all about it when I was eleven. He said he needed someone to tell his secret to in case something happened to him. He said I was like a son to him.”
“What did Baba say? I’m imagining it was either something very mundane like ‘pass the salt’ or something incredibly profound.” I smiled at my own notions.
“Well, my uncle told me exactly what it was, but I promised not to say, so I will not say. I am not a man who breaks his promise.” Burt stated this forcefully, as though I was about to try to make him tell and he needed to head me off at the pass.
I took a break from talking and gazed out the windshield for a while. The scenery had become less rural now. The towns were much larger, with less space between them, and numerous side streets branched off from the two-lane highway. When I peered down these, I saw tiny, makeshift shacks and storefronts jammed together all the way to the horizon.
“So what eventually soured you on spirituality?” I asked Burt. “I understand why you might feel bitter about psychology, but it sounds as though you had a good time with your great-uncle.”
“He abandoned us. One day he was there—well, down the street from us where he lived—and the next day he was gone. No one has seen or heard from him since.”
“Could there be some sort of innocent explanation? Maybe he had an accident while he was traveling or something.”
“No. He took his clothes and his money. He just left. For months, his crazy patients would come to our door looking for him. One big fellow attacked my mother, and the police had to take him away.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly and snorted.
I thought about all this. “So Burt, something did happen to your uncle. You said that he told you his secret in case something happened. Doesn’t that free you to share what Baba said? I’m sure the world would be very grateful if you did. From what I understand, many people were expecting him to break his silence before he died.”
“My uncle only disappeared. He would be very old indeed, but he may still be alive. Because I’m angry at him doesn’t mean I can turn him into a dead person in my mind. A promise is a promise. The day after his funeral I will go to the newspapers.” He nodded in an exaggerated fashion.
I pondered a bit more. Clearly, Burt wouldn’t accept any challenging ideas unless they were phrased diplomatically. “What do you think the odds are that I hailed a cab in Mumbai to go to Meherabad and the driver happened to be the great-nephew of Meher Baba’s only confidante?”
“Astronomical, of course. Many things are.”
“Do you think that this could be an indication that there’s more than meets the eye here—that there’s purpose or meaning in the world beyond logic?”
“No.” He shook his head vigorously now. I thought his ears might fall off.
“Have you ever experienced spiritual energy?”
“I once believed this, but now I know there is no such thing,” he said.
“Pull over,” I said.
“What?”
“Pull over the car. Park. I want to show you something.”
“Your tricks will not work on me, but very well.” He slowed down and turned into a dirt track between two dark brown fields. No one was around—the first time I’d seen that in India. There were always a ton of people everywhere. “Go ahead,” Burt said. “Get this over with. My time is money.”
My hands arranged themselves and shot a strong burst of energy to Burt’s chest.
His eyes closed, and he began to smile—for the first time. “I know this,” he said in a soft, dreamy voice. “I have felt this love before.”
Then he passed out and slumped over the steering wheel, honking the taxi’s horn. It was the loudest horn I’d ever heard. Oops.
I couldn’t rouse him, and I wasn’t sure what to do next. I tried calling Sam, but I couldn’t get through. With the phone in my hand, it occurred to me that perhaps it had been preloaded with international GPS or some handy map app. At least then I’d know where to go. So I started exploring the touchscreen, which used a different operating system than my old phone. When I pressed the largest icon, which resembled a stylized globe, Marco’s face appeared on the small screen, and he began talking.
“Good,” he said. “You’re on the road to Baba’s.”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Don’t bother talking. I prerecorded this back in Paihia,” he said and paused to let me digest that.
It didn’t make any sense. I’d bought the phone in Auckland after we’d parted company. How could he have recorded anything on it in Paihia the day before?
“Don’t worry about the details,” he continued. “Remember what I said to you in the rowboat the first day—about things I say not making sense to you sometimes? Just get behind the wheel and keep going the way you were going. W
hen you get to Ahmednagar—there’s a sign—take your first right and then ask directions from the oldest person you see.”
“Okay,” I said to the phone, which had somehow shut itself off.
Chapter Eighteen
Burt was still out. His breathing was regular, though, and when I checked in on him at the energy level, that seemed fine too. On the other hand, I was only a few days into my career as an amateur medical intuitive. What the hell did I know?
Had I inflicted the energy experience on him simply because he’d irritated me? This thought pushed me toward the rather-be-safe-than-sorry option—seeking local medical help (which probably didn’t exist).
Marco’s message was clear, though, and I ultimately decided to follow his direction. It seemed likely he knew what had happened to Burt. He seemed to be able to use his psychic abilities to track most anything. By inference, then, he was okay with my driver’s holiday in blissville.
I managed to lever Burt into the passenger seat after a few false starts. I buckled him in, walked around the taxi, and eased myself behind the wheel. Since they drove on the left side of the road in India—à la England—the manual transmission shifter was on my left instead of my right. Not only would I need to remember which side of the road to drive on, I’d need to train my left hand to operate the gear shift. After adjusting the mirrors, playing with the seat, and fidgeting more than I needed to in a futile effort to postpone my inaugural Indian driving experience, I started the engine and tried to engage the first gear. No matter how I played with the clutch and the black plastic shifter, the transmission would not cooperate. Instead, it made horrible grinding noises, which might’ve been worth enduring if they’d awakened Burt, but they didn’t.
After several frustrating minutes, I sat back in the beige vinyl seat and let out a sigh. My foot was still on the clutch. Along with the sigh, without willing it, I released energy to the car, and the gears meshed without protest. The car was in first now, and it surged forward. I jammed on the brake and put the car back in neutral, avoiding a collision with a slim fencepost.
Apparently, my spiritual superpowers worked on machinery—or at least cars. For some reason, this latest mind-bending weirdness was among the most unsettling so far. How could esoteric energy make gears mesh? Wasn’t the energy operating on a nonphysical level? What else might happen without any conscious participation from me?
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