Sagramanda

by Alan Dean Foster

  He determined not to give them the opportunity. Though he found himself in a strange neighborhood, there was nothing alien about his surroundings. It mimicked its cultural and social counterparts throughout the city. Storefronts emblazoned with “Sale!” signs offered Bata shoes, Nike sneakers, and cheap socks from China. The broad windows of kapri ki dukan—clothing stores—featured remarkably lifelike holoquins whose flashed-on garb changed every couple of minutes. Larger shops flogged every imaginable size and variety of consumer electronics from Japan, China, Europe, and Southeast Asia as well as the familiar homegrown brands. This not being a tourist area, there were few shops akin to his own.

  There was the usual line outside the local Starbeans. Ignoring the frowns of those waiting he forced his way inside, claiming that he was meeting friends already arrived. Pushing through the milling, chattering crowd, he worked his way up to the counter. One of a dozen automated serving stations politely inquired if it could take his order.

  He had to make it look real. After a moment's thought he replied, “I'll have a couple of chocolate-chip vadas, please, with a chota masala chaicchino.” While he waited for the lentil doughnuts and the spicy frozen drink, he kept glancing surreptitiously in the direction of the entrance.

  His heart sank when he saw the single-minded trio enter. Trying to remain inconspicuous, they approached the end of the counter nearest the door and placed orders of their own. That, at least, was a good sign. Sanjay doubted they would have bothered to do so had they believed their anonymity had been compromised.

  His order arrived. So nervous was he that he had to flash his cred-card three times under the reader before it would accept the charge. Moving away from the counter, he did his best to appear nonchalant as he slowly wended his way toward the rear of the establishment. It did not concern him that every seat and stool was taken by office workers on break or students from the nearby university. He had no intention of sitting down.

  The small doughnuts went down fast, the cardamom and ginger in the chaicchino tickling his palate. Beyond that, he barely noticed the food or drink. As expected, there were bathrooms in the back and lines for both. That didn't bother him, either. He no more had time to piss than he did to sit.

  There was no alarm on the rear doorway. Besides complying with municipal regulations requiring a second exit, it offered another way into the coffeehouse. The fact that no one was using it told him all he needed to know about the nature of what he was likely to find out back. Shoving hard against the door, he stepped out of the upscale enterprise and into another world.

  The air in the alley stank of illegally flushed washwater, uncollected trash, decomposing food, the presence of undocumented night-dwellers, rotting appliances, and the presence of monkeys, rats, mice, and snakes, all compounded by the furnace-like heat of midday. But this was an upper-class neighborhood, and so the service alley was cleaner than many all-too-public streets he had walked in poorer neighborhoods.

  An automatic closer had pulled the door shut behind him. Had his pursuers noted his escape, and were they even now moving to follow him? And if they confronted him in the alley, out of sight of witnesses, would their impatience lead them to put their questions to him directly, rather than continuing to follow to see where he might lead?

  Should he run left, or right? Leftwards led to a narrowing and darkening of the passage, where the upper floors of commercial buildings nearly touched and where a man could be beaten to within a heartbeat of his life without awareness of his battering impinging on the consciousness of any of the thousands of busy pedestrians swarming through the shops and on the main street beyond. Not the best option.

  To his right—to his right sat two figures, indifferent to the world but not unaware of their surroundings. One was old, while his companion was older. The first had a neatly trimmed short beard that was peppered with gray and hair bound up to one side in long black semi-dreads. The senior of the pair wore his hair in long braids and boasted a gray-black beard as dense and untouched as the rusting wire fence on the Ghosh family farm back home. Ash had been used to mark their cheeks and the sun-seared arms that emerged from folds of bright carrot-colored clothing, while their foreheads bore decorative marks in gold and orange.

  The men were sadhus, wandering holy ascetics, who for the most part eschewed the trappings of Earthly existence in their search for the True Path, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Realization, Kavayla, Nirguna Brahman, or however one chose to define the ultimate seeking after knowledge. Pithy aphorisms drawn from venerated Sanskrit texts floated across the three-centimeter-wide transparent flexible headband that ran across the forehead of the less ancient of the pair, a moving (in both senses of the word) testament to a lifelong commitment to the dispelling of ignorance. The ancient sayings glowed brightly for all to see, no less ethically efficacious for being solar powered.

  The elder sat with his back propped up against the rear wall of the building that housed the Starbeans Sanjay had just fled. One hand helped to support the chillum, or straight pipe, that protruded from his mouth. The aromatic smoke that rose from its bowl reflected the traditional packing of tobacco and hashish, though this particular modern chillum added both chip-driven filter and concentrator to the otherwise old-fashioned pipe.

  Glancing in Sanjay's direction, the younger man greeted him politely while extending a hand, palm upward, in the shopkeeper's direction. Sadhus survived on the generosity of others, exchanging good wishes and prayers for alms. Sanjay had no time to waste on the giving of either. He started past them, heading for the far end of the alley where people could be seen rushing busily back and forth on the intersecting main street. His luck was holding: the back door behind him remained closed. He could not rely on that for very long. If those following had not missed him by now, they surely would very soon.

  Gnarly fingers reached out to clutch at his pants. “Namaste, sir. Kripaya, please, can you not spare a few rupees for wise men on pilgrimage?”

  Both sadhus looked too well established and too comfortable to be on a pilgrimage to anywhere but their local hash dealer, Sanjay decided quickly. But this modest indirection did not obviate their holiness. Whether in motion, standing, or seated, a holy man was ever on pilgrimage. Unable to dislodge the surprisingly strong fingers, glancing frantically back toward the door that he expected to see burst open at any minute to reveal his three restless pursuers, Sanjay fumbled in his pocket for loose paper. At fifty rupees to the U.S. dollar, only beggars and the truly poor bothered with coins, while the well-to-do hardly ever carried cash anymore.

  Finally finding a ten-rupee note, he handed it to the grateful ascetic, who promptly loosened his fingers. As Sanjay moved to go, the man looked up at him and smiled broadly. “No special blessing for you, good sir? And if not for you, is there no one in your circle in need of prayer?”

  Sanjay was about to snap that there was not, when a better response occurred to him. “Yes, as a matter of fact, there is.” He indicated the coffeehouse's still shut back door. “Three people, two men and a woman, are very likely to be soon coming quickly out of that doorway. Wise men such as yourselves will immediately see from their countenances that they are much troubled in mind.” Fumbling again in his pocket, this time he extracted a hundred rupee note and passed it to the sadhu. As he did so, the older man sucked harder on his pungent pipe and nodded appreciatively.

  “Do what you can to help them,” Sanjay urged both men. “Try to ease their stress. I promise you they need your prayers and intervention more than I.”

  “You are a generous and caring man.” Carefully pocketing the second banknote, the younger sadhu pressed his palms together in front of him, steeple-fashion, and nodded. “One who has concerns for the welfare of others is thrice blessed. Though we have already performed the morning puja, we will try our best to help these others who are in need of spiritual salving.”

  Sanjay hurriedly put his own palms together in front of him, closed his eyes, bowed his head quickly, and rush
ed off up the alley. As he did so there came the sound of a door opening violently behind him, followed by a feminine shout of “There he is!” Though short by Western standards, Sanjay still had the strong legs a farmer developed chasing down stray chickens and vagrant goats. Now as he sprinted madly for the main street ahead, he thought not of chickens and goats but of the leopard that had eaten his dog, and tried to imagine not one but three hungry carnivores behind him.

  The first of the hungry carnivores found his way intercepted by a bearded scarecrow clad in bright orange. “Stop!” With upraised hand and ash-decorated palm, the senior of the two sadhus had risen to block the bounty hunter's path. “Are you wise in the ways of Lord Krishna? Do you recite the proper evening prayers? I sense that you are full of disconnection and discontent and that your dharma is weak. We would help you.” He extended his other hand, that still held the smoking chillum.

  “Get out of my way, old father!” Irritated, the much younger man moved to step around the senior ascetic.

  As he did so, he was brought up short by a sudden projection from the headband of the younger sadhu. A tall, well-formed blue man clad in tiger and elephant skin smiled back at him. The figure's long, matted hair was tied into an elegant yet functional knot. Two of his four arms held a trident and a damaru, a small drum. The remaining two were held in the postures known as abhaya and varada mudras, confronting the three trackers. With one hand upraised, Shiva greeted them. The tracker swallowed, hesitated.

  The woman pushed forward. “It's only a virtual, you idiot! Step through it. Or if it offends you to do so, then go around.” She gestured anxiously. “He's getting away!” She started forward.

  “Bad karma flows from you as waste from the mouths of the Ganges,” declared the elder holy man. “You should work to cleanse yourselves.” So saying, he blew a puff of smoke directly into the face of the irate woman.

  It made her cough. Angrily, she turned toward him, reaching for something carried in a pocket. Then she wavered, swaying slightly. Contradicting Sanjay's original supposition, the chillum contained a considerably more powerful mix of blended substances than just hash and tobacco.

  “Get…” The woman broke off and swallowed, unable to complete the sentence. Alarmed, both of her companions rushed to support her.

  As they did so the third eye of Shiva, the one set between his brows, opened. It was the eye of wisdom, the opening of which serves to destroy unworthy selves and false illusions. As both of the male trackers turned toward it, the projection slammed into their wide-open retinas and stunned their brains. All in good cause, of course. The sadhus would never dream of harming anyone. Especially these three, who were so clearly suffering.

  “Relax, please,” murmured the senior sadhu soothingly. “Let Lord Shiva work on your imperfections. Let him destroy your illusions, desires, and ignorance, your evil and negative nature, the effects of bad karma, your passions and emotions and all the many things that stand between you and God as impediments to your progress and inner transformation.” Approaching each of the three mesmerized trackers in turn, he gently blew smoke from his chillum into their faces.

  “Be at your ease, for those who rush about aimlessly in this world will reap their fretfulness tenfold in their next incarnation.”

  Responding to the sadhu's suggestion the three dazed trackers sat down there in the alley and, one by one, fell into a contented and sudden sleep. At the far end of the passageway, Sanjay was stepping up into the powered rickshaw he had hailed.

  By the time his three groggy pursuers awoke from their photonarcotic sleep, rested in body if not necessarily in mind, both their quarry and the two elderly sadhus had long since moved on.

  The glassy eye of the suspicious robot camel studied him with the same scrutiny as before, but it finished the inspection more swiftly. Basic biometric information obtained during his previous visit, Sanjay suspected, was already stored in the elaborate automaton's memory.

  Somewhat to his surprise he was directed not to the same meeting room as before but to a much smaller room high up in one of the building's two towers. Noticing them on his prior visit, he had thought them merely decorative.

  The room was tiny and cramped, with hardly space enough to accommodate him and Chhote Pandit. The view out the single small window was spectacular, encompassing as it did a good portion of frantic, frenetic Shrinahji Market. As on his previous visit, there was tea. This time it was dispensed not from a tea service rising from the floor, but from the right breast of a three-foot-tall automated silver apsara that removed itself from a niche in the wall and executed a perfect, sensuous odissi as it danced over to them. If the intention was to take a visitor's mind off the business at hand and leave him slightly unsettled, it more than succeeded.

  Grinning, Pandit whispered to the gold control bracelet he wore. The gleaming apsara dipped its other breast toward Sanjay's cup. “Cream?”

  Trying hard not to appear more dumbfounded than he was, Sanjay nodded slowly, entranced by the sophisticated automaton. Chai service completed, it executed several additional dance steps as it backed off. Returning to the storage niche and plugging its reflective derrière into its charger, it settled back into Wait mode.

  Enjoying his guest's startled reaction, Pandit sipped daintily from his own cup. “As you may know, humanoid robots are far more costly than the purely functional kind.” He cackled with amusement while gazing possessively in the direction of the mechanical. “Ones that can dance as well as serve tea like this are absurdly expensive. This one is taken from the template of an apsara found on the second level of the temple to the Sun God at Konark. An expensive toy. I will not tell you what she cost, except to say that the silver shell was the cheapest component.”

  Betraying his lack of sophistication, Sanjay could not take his eyes from the now-motionless figure. “I do not care what it cost. I want to see it in action again.”

  Lowering his head to hide his laughter, Pandit tolerated his guest's artlessness because he had encountered it before. “Then drink your tea and state your business, and it's possible you might be served again.” Looking up, his expression as pleasant as ever, he added while stroking his frizzle of a beard, “Or I might call for servants larger and less metallic to throw you out that window, if I feel that you're pissing on my valuable time. You insisted that we arrange this meeting or that any and all dealings would be called off.” Clasping his hands together in front of him, he leaned forward slightly, cutting in half the distance between their respective chairs.

  “I do not like to be pushed, Mr. Ghosh. Or crudely cajoled, much less threatened. If not for what the mollysphere you brought me contained, you would not only not be seeing me now, you might not be seeing anything at all.”

  A lifetime spent dealing with scorching summers and frigid winters, with predatory beasts and corrupt officials, had toughened Sanjay. To take just one example, he knew that starvation was a greater threat to survival than a gun. His host's blatant warning left him attentive but not shaken.

  “I must remind you, Mr. Pandit, sir, that what has been done and what is being done is being carried out specifically according to the wishes of my client, and that while I personally might have approached today's get-together differently, as a conscientious agent in this matter I had no choice but to follow the wishes of the one who is employing me in this capacity.”

  His host grunted grudgingly. “All right—I understand. But since he isn't here, I can only threaten you.”

  Sanjay nodded as if he had found himself in similar situations many times before, when in fact this was the very first. “I appreciate your position as well, Mr. Pandit, sir.”

  “Well then,” his host muttered, “to business, and the need for this unseemly urgency.” He brightened. “And then, more tea.”

  Sanjay took a deep breath and began. “Recently, I am most sorry to have to say, my client was trailed and nearly killed by a professional tracker most probably working for his former employer. Only today,
I myself was followed by three people.” When Pandit looked startled the shopkeeper hastened to add, “There is no reason for concern. I was able to lose them long before I arrived at the market.”

  His host nodded slowly. “It is good that you understand the need to take proper precautions. We are dealing here with sums more common to exchanges among governments than between individuals and private concerns.” He gestured amiably. “Of course, anyone who attempted to break into my place of business would immediately be electrocuted, incinerated, intercepted, or shot.”

  “I had assumed as much.” Sanjay swallowed hard and tried not to look uneasy.

  It was possible that he succeeded. Or perhaps old Pandit was too preoccupied, or too polite, to take notice. “Imminent death has a way of wonderfully focusing the mind. I understand now your client's need for speed. I have engaged with a number of different potential customers. There are one or two who I believe to be on the brink of coming to terms.” Suddenly clapping a hand to each knee, he broke out in a wide grin that emphasized the gaps in his teeth.

  “We will do this thing! I myself will do this thing. I will see it done as you ask. Not because I am a considerate person. Not because I am concerned for the safety of your client—or for yours, for that matter. I will do it because I would be loath to lose this commission!” Breaking out into gales of laughter, more witchlike than hearty, he managed to choke out a command to his semiautonomous apsara. Emerging from her niche, she resumed dancing, this time choosing to essay a complex bharat natyam from Tamil Nadu: less sensuous than the odissi but more involved. The serving of tea, as yet, did not come into play. Doubtless that required another verbal command from her proud owner.