Sagramanda, a Novel of Near-Future India

by Alan Dean Foster

  Sheathed in fake sandstone and decorated with carvings of animals, plants, and temple dancers (but no gods) that had been brought forth not by artisans' hands but by a computer-controlled industrial lathe, the hotel combined Mughal architecture in the style of the Taj Mahal with the shikhara spires of a traditional Hindu temple. It was all very Disney. Keshu supposed the hotel's guests loved it. If only, he ruminated, the real India were so simple.

  While unobtrusive, the gate barring the entrance to the main hotel lot was solid enough to stop a war elephant-or a runaway eighteen-wheeler being driven by a wild-eyed terrorist or extortionist. Picking up the special low-frequency broadcast from the police vehicle, it opened automatically to admit them. His driver parked near a pair of cruisers and a van housing a mobile forensics lab. Seeing him step out of the car, a junior officer introduced himself while Keshu stared at the architectural jumble that was the hotel. If not for his purpose in being there, he would have found the sight amusing.

  "The fatality is still on site?" he asked the junior officer as the latter led him toward the nearest service entrance. It was flanked by two armed men; an officer from the department and a senior member of the hotel's security staff. Both nodded in recognition as the senior inspector and his escort passed between them.

  "Yes, Inspector," the younger man assured him. "Forensics have been taking their time with it. When the crime fits an ongoing modus, nothing is to be disturbed until the chief investigating officer in charge of the pertinent file has been allowed to make his own observations." He stepped to one side and gestured. "I'll take you there, sir."

  Straight from the manual, Keshu reflected, but he didn't upbraid the junior officer for reciting the blatantly obvious. One did not encourage improvement by slapping down those engaged in its pursuit.

  Their route took them through service areas camouflaged with expensive landscaping, around the back of the hotel grounds, out of sight of the laughing, yelling guests frolicking unknowingly in the pool. Happening to glance through the vegetation, Keshu noted the fashionable slenderness of many of the swimmers and sunbathers. While they eschewed food and lay in the heat of the tropical sun out of choice, a few hundred meters down the road and a world away local people were starving unwillingly and dreaming impossibly distant dreams of shade and air-conditioning. What a species, he reflected.

  The appalling handiwork of one of its more disagreeable extant representatives was to be found nearby, in the hotel's designer under ground facility dedicated to the ancient healing arts of Ayurvedic mas sage and the extraction of millions more rupees in supplementary fees from paying guests. Discreet signage at the top of the stairs leading down to the entrance indicated that the hotel regretted that the facility in question was closed for temporary repairs. At the bottom of the stairway, Keshu found inconspicuous plainclothes officers ready to assist hotel security staff in gently but firmly turning away any curious wandering guest who might happen to stumble across the crime scene. Or Krishna forbid, hotel management's worst nightmare, a representative of the media.

  So far, a sergeant on duty assured him, they had been able to keep this one off the Net and the vit. It was only a matter of time, of course, before the incident became common knowledge. In an age of near-universal access to and hunger for information, secrets were impossible to keep for very long. Where the police were concerned, this unstoppable flow of information cut both ways.

  Acknowledging the duty sergeant's assistance, Keshu adjusted his turban slightly and looked past the officer toward the shadowy interior of the closed facility. An idiosyncratic mingling of aromas he could not recall having previously encountered emanated from somewhere within: sandalwood, rose, and human blood.

  "Where is it?"

  The sergeant jerked his head slightly in the direction of the facility's interior before starting in. His expression grim, Keshu followed.

  Ignoring the forensics team that was still actively scouring the interior of the private massage chamber for evidence, the chief inspector studied the body without approaching or touching it. The poor victim was very definitely beyond the help of the Ayurvedic arts or anything else. Quite a lot of blood had been cleaned up. The woman's skin was pale and waxen. Kneeling, he had a look at the face on the front of the head that had rolled some distance away from the corpse after it had struck the floor and bounced, a consequence of having been neatly severed at the neck from the rest of the body.

  The duty sergeant hovered nearby. "Mai-ling Xinzhou. Vice presi dent Hiang Manufacturing Consortium, home office Guangdong Province, China." Unnecessarily, he added, "Had meetings scheduled with two local companies for this morning. Did not make either of them." He nodded at the headless cadaver. "Competitors playing rough?"

  "What do you think?" To his surprise, Keshu found that he was angry. It was rare that he allowed what he felt inside to seep out, but

  this time he could not keep his feelings from communicating them selves to the sergeant.

  The other man was clearly taken aback. "It was just a thought, Chief Inspector. I did not mean to appear disrespectful, either to you or to the victim."

  "Forget it." Putting his hands on his knees, Keshu straightened and walked over to Bachchan. Having completed necessary chemical analysis of the body and its surroundings, the elderly forensics spe cialist was now imaging the corpse from every angle.

  "Whaeguru ji ka khalsa, wabeguru ji ki. Fateh," Keshu murmured to his fellow Sikh. "The Khalsa belong to God, Victory belongs to God," following which he added immediately, "Haven't you retired yet?"

  It was a running joke in the department. Bachchan was one of those unfortunate men born with a long face and premature wrinkles, who had looked old when he was twenty and who was short to boot.

  "How can I retire, when there are so many incompetents in the department?" His grin flashed through a perfectly trimmed beard that was gray fading to white. With a nod, he indicated the cadaver. "Poor woman. I know what you are going to ask, Chief Inspector, and here is your answer." Holding up his scanner, he let Keshu have a look at the readout. As the technician had implied, the inspector did not need to ask for an explanation.

  "The pattern of the cut matches others already on file for similar cases."

  "Enough of them, anyway." The tech nodded. "You had better catch this evil person or persons, Chief Inspector. They are not going to stop killing until they are caught."

  "I know that." Mindful of the effect his tone had had on the sergeant, Keshu kept his response carefully neutral. "Don't you think I and my people are trying?"

  Bending over, Bachchan ran the tips of the sensor-implanted glove on his left hand over the stump of the dead woman's neck. "You need to try harder, Chief Inspector, or you will never achieve mukti."

  "This job isn't conducive to becoming a gurmukh," the inspector responded. "Candidate for residence in an asylum, maybe." He added something in Punjabi so that it would remain private between himself and the technician.

  Straightening, Bachchan looked up at his nominal superior. "You must not let your frustration lead you to make this personal. One murderer is no different from another, because a victim is always just a victim."

  "I know that's how I should look at it, my friend, but this is different." He gestured at the corpse. "A visiting Chinese businesswoman. Two Australian tourists. Local citizens respected and otherwise. Serial killings tend to follow patterns. They're sexual in nature, or the killer has a grudge against some business, or the government, or relatives. Nothing matches up here." Despite his determination to maintain con trol, his voice rose slightly. "There's no pattern to these slayings."

  "Does not that suggest a kind of pattern in itself? Could not this seeming randomness be suggestive of something in the murderer's state of mind?"

  "Yes, yes." Keshu agreed tiredly. "I've thought of that. But it makes it damn difficult to try and predict where she will strike next."

  " 'She'?" Bachchan's reaction showed that he had not been brought up to date on
the latest suppositions.

  "There are indications that the killer may be a woman, or perhaps a transvestite," Keshu informed him moodily.

  His gaze returning to the corpse, Bachchan nodded solemnly. "Not a virtuous date. But if true, one with a strong arm, who has had much practice at their vocation."

  "Practice?" Keshu frowned slightly.

  Leaning forward again, the technician did not hesitate as he ran his gloved palm across the dead woman's open neck. "This decapitation was accomplished with a single blow. The sharpness of a blade aside, one does not make a cut like this without being well versed in the use of the chosen weapon."

  Too well versed, Keshu mused. "I can understand that. If, as we are coming to believe, it is the same individual who is responsible for all these murders, then she has had plenty of practice indeed." Nodding farewell to the technician, he walked back to rejoin the duty sergeant.

  "Witnesses?" he inquired tersely.

  "Nothing yet." The sergeant indicated the electronic pad he held. "We have to be circumspect about it. The hotel management is naturally frantic to keep this as quiet as possible."

  "I know." Keshu let his gaze take in the entire crime scene: the white walls presently devoid of full-depth virtuals, the curved ceiling stripped of its projected sky and clouds, the pair of massage beds; one with its marble-like victim. The blood stains on the floor. The disem bodied head near the feet of another forensics tech. Unbidden, a line from the Sidhha Goshth came to him.

  " 'The perverse are gone astray and are under the sway of death.' "

  A sudden and atypical wash of claustrophobia overtook him. He needed to get out, back into the sunshine and the heat, the city air that was far from fresh but was at least alive with familiar smells and not the stink of waning death. He needed a break from dreadfulness.

  "Let me know the moment you have anything." He headed out before the sergeant could reply.

  To help clear his mind, he and his wife spent the evening in their local Gurdwara, helping out in the langar, the community kitchen that was open to people of all faiths. On the way out he made sure to swipe his credcard through the reader at the entrance so that it would deduct his regular, voluntarily pledged sum to help with the running of the place of worship and the community service in which it was engaged.

  The evening's prayers helped to settle his emotions, but not his thoughts. Every crime assigned to him that he could not solve caused him to lose sleep, but it had been a long time since he had taken the activities of any lawbreaker as a personal affront, as he was doing with this still-unidentified serial killer. The sheer randomness of the attacks, the indifference to the innocence of the slain, rankled him both personally and as a Sikh. The ineffectualness of the ongoing investigation was beginning to trouble him night and day. He could not put it out of his mind even as he recited the sohila, the prayer before retiring for the night.

  "The Khalsa is of the Wondrous Destroyer of darkness." So the prayer went. It was incumbent on him to find and stop the person or persons responsible for these killings, not only professionally but because of who he was-and he was failing in that responsibility.

  What was it Bachchan had said? "Could not the seeming random ness of the killings be suggestive of something in the murderer's state of mind?" Something like that. Randomness, randomness. The reason the killer was killing seemed to be nothing more than that he or she enjoyed killing. Reveling in murder. In death.

  It gave him an idea, but he could only put it into practice tomorrow.

  There were a number of cults that venerated death. Put the word out on the street and perhaps something useful would come back.

  As it turned out, the following morning brought to light information more useful and specific than he could have hoped for. Nor could it have come at a better time, what with the pressure from his superiors to produce results threatening to become onerous. Not that he blamed them. As was inevitable, word had finally reached the media about the death of the visiting businesswoman and the gruesome manner of her passing. The Chinese embassy was now involved. Coming so close on the heels of the deaths of the two Australian tourists, the travails of his section were threatening to go global. It was the kind of international publicity his department, the municipality of Sagramanda, and the country at large could do without.

  Efficacy arrived in the person of a familiar diminutive operative from downstairs. Mustering a smile and waving to one side the projections that were hovering above his desk, the chief inspector greeted his visitor. "Ah, Mr. Subrata-the man who likes to search for patterns. I hope you've found a useful one."

  The researcher permitted himself a half smile; about as effusive an expression as he allowed himself while on duty. "Better even than that, it may be hoped. A match. May I?" He extended the police spinner he was carrying.

  In response to a positive gesture from his superior, Subrata switched on the compact device he was holding in his right hand. Exchanging codes with Keshu's desk, it inserted therein a number of items of information together with several three-dimensional images. As the images rotated, the chief inspector's excitement rose. One image was the computer-generated re-creation of the woman seen by the elderly museum guard in the company of the two Australian tourists just before they had turned up dead in the Hooghly. The second was brand-new, but similar enough to excite immediate comparisons. He asked his visitor for clarification.

  Subrata halted the rotation of the second projection. "This composite is based on a description provided by the young man who was tending the poolside bar the afternoon of the Chinese businesswoman's murder. It depicts, as best he could recall, a woman seen sharing drinks with the deceased that same afternoon. Notice, sir, the similarities between the two separate descriptions."

  "Unavoidable." Keshu had to restrain himself from thrusting a fist skyward. "Can you do a fusion?"

  "Already programmed, sir." Murmuring into his spinner's pickup, Subrata complied. As both men watched, the two three-dimensional images merged into one. Unseen software smoothed and blended.

  Where two composites had hovered, a single woman now hung in the air between them.

  "Doesn't look Indian," Keshu observed tautly. "That was apparent from the description provided by the guard at the museum. This con firms it."

  "Not a Latin type, certainly not Oriental." The technician had resumed rotating the combined image. "Preliminary maxillary-cerebral structural analysis suggests a European or North American origin. She could still be a resident, or an expat working here."

  "Those possibilities are already being considered," Keshu informed him. "But this finally gives us something solid to work with. See that suitable reproductions are distributed to all media as well as being put out on the street. Unless she is Muslim or a pretend Muslim and goes about veiled, sooner or later someone is bound to recognize and report her. Given that she's been seen unveiled by at least two witnesses, that may not even be a concern."

  "Yes sir." The tech turned to go.

  "Oh, and Mr. Subrata? My compliments to you and your associates downstairs. Very good work. With luck and continued persistence, hopefully we can take this person and her associates, should she have any, into custody before she can kill again."

  "That is the hope of myself and my colleagues as well, sir." Subrata let himself out.

  For the first time in weeks, a tiny bit of the gloom that had hovered over the chief inspector's every working day lifted. They had, at last, a plausible description of the possible killer-or at least someone who could be a link to the actual killer. It seemed too far-fetched for coincidence to expect that a museum guard and a hotel bartender had seen the same woman in the company of three unreleated people just prior to their untimely deaths.

  Maintained by his desk, the representation continued to hang in the air before him. The impassive face was that of a still young woman, attractive without being striking. It could not show what lay within, what drove someone like this to commit or conspire to commit multiple
murders. Though it was difficult to tell just from a computer-generated image, the visage hovering before him did not have the aspect of the criminally insane. All the more dangerous, then, for not being non compos mentis

  Privately, he was ashamed to admit he was relieved that the first solid lead they had obtained on the serial killer strongly suggested that she was not Indian. It distressed him to think that he could be so provincial.

  *11*

  There was no question about it. The man he had been trailing had picked up on the tail, broken into a near run, and taken an unexpected detour, seemingly all at the same time. In the gathering darkness and following from behind, Chal could not be positive it was the person he had been charged with finding: Taneer Buthlahee, missing scientist and absent employee of the very anxious and very nervous multinational concern to which his immediate employer Nayari-sahib kowtowed on a daily basis.

  Though not familiar with the surroundings through which he now ran, Chal Schneemann recognized that both he and his quarry had entered and were moving steadily deeper into a part of the city for which the description "unsavory" would have been a marked understatement. The absence of nighttime pedestrian traffic, of open shops and stores, of virtually anything in the way of vehicular traffic either private or municipal, active or furtive, was sufficient to verify his initial hasty impressions. He was not afraid to enter such an area. In the course of his sin gular career he had found himself forced to operate in far more threatening surroundings. But it did not make his task any easier.

  How far should he go in his pursuit of the well-dressed younger man he had been stalking? The information he had received that had led him to track the individual in question had been suggestive rather than positive. Wait at such and such a corner and you might see the man you're looking for, he had been told. He had waited, in the heat and crush, ignoring nattering tourists in their garish, unsuitable clothes, watching and hoping.