Dr. X locked all entrances into the lab, shut down the Insta-communicators, and announced on the intercom that unless the new council—now trapped on the roof—disbanded in the next two hours, he would activate the missiles, turning them on the most densely populated parts of Kol. However, if the council handed him control of the city, he would give them something far more valuable than what their far-fetched rain project could produce. He would harvest the objects of power in the X-Converter as he had originally planned, thus creating an enormous storehouse of energy that would last the citizens of Kol for years. He ended by warning them that if they tried anything foolish, he would blow up the lab with everyone—including himself—in it.
“Uncle Vijay thinks you two are their only hope,” Basant said. “Can you help them?”
Bitter regret filled Anand’s mouth. Why hadn’t he insisted on staying back at the lab with the conch? Maybe then this catastrophe could have been prevented. “We’ll do our best,” he said. He closed his eyes and tried to contact the conch, but a giant fist slammed into his skull, driving him to his knees.
“The jammers have certainly been activated,” he said through clenched teeth when he could speak. “And they’ve been notched up, too. I can’t reach the conch—and I must, if we’re to have the minutest chance of succeeding.”
Nisha grasped his hand. “Try again. I’ll call some of the pain into myself. It won’t be as bad if it’s shared.”
Anand hated to cause her any hurt, but the gravity of the situation was greater than his own desires. He nodded.
Basant leaned across the seat and clasped his other hand. “I’ll help.”
“And I,” his mother said, stopping the car to lay a palm on Anand’s shoulder.
This time, too, the pain from the jammers surged into Anand, but he could feel it draining out from his body into those of his friends. Their gasps of pain hurt him in a whole different way, though. But their efforts had worked. He was able to catch a small, stuttering pulse of energy. It was the conch.
Come to the front entrance. I’ll distract X. Use Transformation to get in. The words grew fainter. Find the control cen—The message melted into the pain in his head.
“But where’s the control center located?” Anand shouted desperately. But the conch had fallen silent.
“I can take you there,” Basant said. “That’s where we went on our last mission.”
“What will we do after we get there—if we manage to get that far?” Nisha asked.
But Anand didn’t know the answer to that.
* * *
The three of them stood in front of the massive steel wall that was the entrance to the control center. So far, things had gone smoothly. Sharing the pain with his friends, Anand was able to unlock the main door by using Transformation. Perhaps the conch had weakened the jammers, for the pain was less debilitating. Once inside, he feared that they would be apprehended by guards on whom Dr. X had used Persuasion, but the corridors were eerily empty. They had reached the control center, but now they were stumped. The door to the center—for there must be one somewhere in the massive wall they were facing—was completely invisible. In spite of focusing his total attention on it, Anand couldn’t feel its shape.
“Do you know where the door is?” he whispered to Basant, but the boy shook his head.
“The whole wall looks different,” he whispered back. “I think Dr. X has added a magical protection to it.”
Though Anand couldn’t see or hear Dr. X, he could sense the energy on the other side of the wall. It was at once hot and agitated, like a bull raging around a pen, and cold and lethal, like a cobra waiting to strike.
Conch, he called, make him open the door.
The conch’s response was still alarmingly feeble. Anand remembered what it had said earlier about the lab draining its power. I’m sorry, Anand. If I force him to obey me, I would break his mind. I cannot do that. The only thing I can do is to send you energy.
Anand felt a tingling in his face. The sensation moved down his entire body until he felt weightless. Then it was gone, but he could now hear faint voices from inside. Dr. X was talking to someone.
“No! I’ve made up my mind. I’d much rather die, taking all of you with me, than have to beg permission from a bunch of nincompoops every time I needed to sneeze. Already, in a couple of days, you’ve destroyed what I toiled to build over an entire lifetime.”
“You’re seeing only what you want to see,” the other voice said. “You always did. The truth is that everyone on the council is ready to respect you. We would welcome you as an advisor—”
“It’s Sumita,” Nisha whispered into Anand’s ear. “She must be talking to him on the intercom.”
She spoke in the softest of tones, but trained as he had been in the magical skills, Dr. X must have had extra-acute hearing. “Who’s that outside?” he said. “Answer me at once, or I’ll press the detonator.” His voice rose wildly as he spoke, and Anand had no doubt that, cornered as he felt he was, Dr. X would make good on his threat.
“It’s Anand from the Silver Valley,” he said. “I have my friends Nisha and Basant with me. We’ve come to ask you to reconsider your decision.”
“Reconsider, reconsider!” Dr. X gave a bitter laugh. “As though I didn’t know that if I gave in to the council’s demands, they would immediately put a collar on me and cart me away to a rehabitational.”
“We would never do that!” Sumita’s outraged voice crackled over the intercom.
“If you don’t, it’s only because you’re too weak,” Dr. X spat. “You think you can handle this city? Why, it’ll be overrun with Terrace vermin in a week—as soon as they figure out that you’re too soft to discipline them. Enough talk! Your two hours are up. I’m going to harvest the objects of power, and with that energy I’m going to blow Kol sky-high!”
Anand stood aghast. He wanted to force open the door with Transformation, but he feared that the slightest move might push Dr. X over the edge. Inside the room, he could hear a steel drawer opening and then clanging shut. Dr. X had taken out the conch and the mirror.
Help us! he called to them.
“Dr. Akshay!” The voice bloomed beside him, silvery as the lotuses that once floated on the lake beside the House of Seeing. It was Nisha; she was using Persuasion, her tone soothing as balm on a burn—but at a level far higher than anything he had heard yet. But would it work on Dr. X, who was a Master of the skill himself?
There was silence inside the room.
“Please trust us. We promise we will not harm you. Let us in. You can lock the door behind us again.”
“Why should I listen to you?” Dr. X asked. But he sounded less furious, and there was a note of curiosity in his voice.
“Because we will find you a solution. If you aren’t satisfied with it, you can go ahead with your plan and blow up the building.” Nisha spoke so reasonably, she could have been asking a child to hand over a toy that might injure it. Only her eyes, squeezed shut, and her sickly pallor indicated the agony she was undergoing to create the spell despite the jammers. Anand put an arm around her shoulders and flinched at the pain that tore through him. Basant grasped her other hand and gasped. Even with their help, Anand doubted that she could sustain the spell for long.
He heard a series of whirring clicks, and a small crack opened in the center of the wall.
“Inside!” ordered Dr. X’s voice. “Only the two other worlders! Quickly!”
As soon as Anand and Nisha had squeezed through, the door closed behind them. In front of them stood Dr. X, arms crossed. In the pitiless glare of the overhead lights, he looked older than before, with dark circles under his deep-set eyes. To his side, the X-Converter, which resembled a gigantic oven, yawned darkly. On a table next to it were the mirror and the conch. Anand clapped a hand over his mouth. He longed to call out to them, to rush forward and gather them to him, but he knew that a single wrong move would undo what Nisha had worked so hard to achieve.
“D
r. X? Dr. X? What’s going on?” Sumita’s anxious voice called through the intercom.
Without taking his eyes from Anand and his companions, Dr. X reached out and switched it off. “I was crazy to let you in,” he said, his voice rising.
Nisha opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She had exhausted all her strength fighting the jammers. Anand could feel the Persuasion spell disintegrating.
“Street scum like you coming up with a solution! What was I thinking of!” Dr. X shook his head disdainfully and, grabbing the conch and mirror, turned to the X-Converter. He ignored Anand’s strangled cry. As he bent to slide them into the machine, the mirror caught the overhead lights and flashed.
And just like that, a solution came to Anand.
“You don’t want to compromise with the council, and I understand that,” he said. “But if you blow up the place, that’s not going to get you what you want, either. What if, instead, you could go away somewhere? Somewhere totally different? A world that didn’t have the overwhelming problems of Kol? Where no one knew you, so you could start anew? A world where your enormous intelligence would be appreciated?”
“You’re lying,” Dr. X said. “There’s no place like that.” But a look of desperate hope flashed on his face.
“There are many worlds out there, beyond even where imagination can take us, and the mirror has access to them all,” Anand said. “I won’t pretend to know which one is right for you, but I have no doubt that the mirror does. Look into it, and it will show you.”
Scowling, Dr. X pulled at his ear, but Anand could see that he was tempted. “Don’t move—not even a hand span,” he said. “And say your prayers. Because if this doesn’t work, in a moment we’ll all be bits of exploded flesh.” He gave the mirror a wary glance.
Immediately, a light radiated from the mirror. It wasn’t a blinding flash but a diffuse glow, like moonlight from behind a lace of clouds. In it Dr. X’s face looked younger, yearning. He stared with rapt attention at what the mirror was depicting. Nisha craned her neck, but Anand held her back. Although he, too, was consumed with curiosity, he knew that the vision was private, meant only for Dr. X.
After a long moment, Dr. X turned to Anand and handed him the conch.
“I’ll go where the mirror takes me,” he said, sounding surprised at his own decision. Then he gave a deep sigh. They could see his clenched shoulders relax.
Nisha came forward, took the mirror gently from his hands, and placed it on the floor. Sure-footed, unhesitant, as though the mirror had explained to him what must be done, Dr. X stepped onto it. This time the mirror pulsed with a light so bright that Anand flinched and covered his eyes. He felt the conch send forth an answering pulse of energy.
When he removed his hands, Dr. X had vanished.
17
THE RETURN
Anand stepped from the white hover van—now no longer so pristine—onto the cracked pavement. Nisha, Sumita, Basant, and Vijay were with him. They were in the alley where Anand had found himself upon being transported to Kol eight days ago. But how different it looked already! Much of the street garbage had been carted away to the dumps by the newly formed Youth-Kol group headed by Basant and Ishani. Old buildings were being torn down, and a billboard proclaimed that new structures, built from materials salvaged from the domes, would soon take their place. Anand closed his eyes for a moment to picture the new Kol, glittering festively with those shiny, reflective walls, and his heart gave an exuberant leap. But the next moment anxiety constricted his throat. Dr. X had cost them that last, precious day, forcing them to remain in Shadowland beyond the crucial limit of a week. Now they were returning, but perhaps it was already too late to heal the valley.
“We’re repairing the sturdier buildings,” Vijay said, pointing to a structure ahead of them. Anand and Nisha saw that broken glass had been replaced and lamps gleamed from behind the windows.
“What’s that delicious smell?” Nisha asked. Anand sniffed. Even through his mask, the air smelled like lentil and rice stew.
“We’ve opened a kitchen on the next street, one of several,” Sumita explained. “They’re nothing fancy—just spots on the roadside with chairs and tables where people can get a simple, inexpensive meal. They’ve become more popular than we expected!”
“Folks were starving—not just for food but for company, because the previous laws had forbidden them to gather except when ordered to by the council,” Vijay said. “Now they sit together for hours, talking, laughing, gathering news—and gossip!”
Sumita laughed. “You should hear what they’ve been saying about you and Nisha, the warrior magicians from the distant past!”
Then her face grew solemn. “Must you really leave?”
“Stay with us,” pleaded Basant. “We could use you on our Youth-Kol team.”
“We’d be honored if you stayed,” Vijay added.
Anand shook his head with a smile. “We thank you, but our world needs us, and we’ve been here longer than we should have,” he said. Too long, cried a small, worried voice within him. But he did not want to burden his new friends with his fears.
After Dr. X had disappeared into the mirror, Anand and Nisha had been faced with a torturous choice. If they left for the valley at once, they would be able to reach it just as the seventh day ended. But they knew that without the conch to help the launch of the rocket, the rain project would fail again.
“We can’t do that to Kol,” Nisha had said. And though every fiber of Anand’s being cried out to return home, he knew she was right.
Joining the council on the roof, they had explained what had occurred. Amazed though they were at Dr. X’s disappearance, the council had put aside their questions and conjectures and focused on setting up the rocket. Finally, in the brown, lightless dawn, with the magicians chanting songs of healing and the conch streaming its energies into the launcher, they sent the rocket into the sky. That was only a few hours ago, but Anand thought he could see the first swirls of clouds.
He missed the mirror, which was now set in the center of the council table in the lab. They had been through so much together. But objects of power belonged to no person and no place. They bestowed themselves where they were most needed. Or where they had a connection of the heart, he thought, touching his pocket.
Sumita removed her mask to kiss Nisha on both cheeks. Giving Anand a hug, she said, “I often wondered how it must feel to have a brother or sister. Well, now I know! My apartment will feel so empty when I return to it.”
Anand returned her hug shyly. He was surprised at the affection he felt for Sumita, considering that a few days back they had been bitter antagonists. How mysterious this changing world was!
Sumita unclasped a chain with a small, glittery pendant from around her neck and gave it to Nisha. “I had this made for you. I don’t know if you are allowed to take things from one world to another, but if you are, I hope this will remind you of us.” Looking closer at the pendant, Anand realized that it was a piece from the wall of Futuredome.
Vijay stepped forward. “Thank you one final time, on behalf of the council,” he said, bowing stiffly. “You saved our people.” Then he cleared his throat. “As for myself, I owe you an apology for trying to wrest the mirror from you.”
Anand knew it was difficult for the proud commandant to admit his fault. “In your place I might have done the same thing,” he said.
Now, though, he was impatient to leave. He took out the conch and felt its heat in his cupped palm. Waving good-bye and grasping Nisha’s hand, he said to the conch the words he had longed to say ever since he arrived in Kol.
Conch, take us home.
Thought you’d never ask! the conch replied.
There was a swirling around them, like a cloud of cool fire. It lifted them off their feet, rocking them gently. Against his will, Anand felt his eyelids begin to close. Already the scene in front of him was receding, the figures as tiny as dolls. “It’s like a magic tale come to life!” Basant sho
uted, pointing to them.
Just before Anand’s eyes shut, he saw Sumita wiping her eyes. Vijay put an arm around her and kissed her forehead, and he knew that they would soon be married.
He felt moisture on his face. “The rains!” he heard Nisha cry. “It was worth it to stay back!” But what had it cost them? he wondered. The last thing he was aware of before he was whisked into the abyss that lay beneath time was Nisha’s hand, that dear, familiar clasp, a comfort in the face of what might come.
* * *
Anand found himself lying on hard, icy ground, the air around him so cold that his breath made puffs in the air. Shivering, he scrambled to his feet, brushing crusts of snow off his yellow wool tunic—the same one he had worn on his visit to the hermit’s cave. He looked around, disoriented, feeling that something important was missing. He was outside the main entrance to the Silver Valley. Ahead of him, gleaming in the morning sun, was the three-pronged peak he had first viewed when he rescued the conch from the sorcerer Surabhanu and brought it back to its rightful home. And here was the flat rock on which he had stood and requested entry into the valley. He stepped onto the rock once again, his heart beating with excitement and fear and love. What would he see when he spoke the password that Abhaydatta had given him seemingly a lifetime ago? Had the return of the conch from Shadowland healed the valley, or would he enter it to find only a frozen wasteland? If so, what would he and Nisha do?
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