by Samit Basu
So engrossed are Aman and Tia in this that they completely fail to notice Sundar Narayan wander into the room and walk right by Uzma, slumped on her sofa. They don’t know he’s there until he announces his presence by saying, “Good people, my Tia’s unconscious. Can I have another one?”
Aman and Tia both gasp and look at Uzma, but Uzma doesn’t waste time asking questions: she springs up from the sofa and runs out of the room, ignoring Narayan’s feeble greeting and Aman and Tia’s shouts. She runs up the stairs, panting, barges into Narayan’s lab and sees, lying on the floor with an ugly bruise on her forehead and a glowing green wire hissing and spitting in her badly burned hand, another Tia.
And when Aman, Tia-from-downstairs and the Scientist catch up with her, she’s standing, grim and angry, arms crossed, eyes flashing.
“They’re twins,” Aman offers weakly.
“Forget it, Aman,” Tia says. “It won’t work. You might as well tell her, she’s nice.”
“Who are you people?” Uzma thunders. “And what the hell is going on?”
CHAPTER FOUR
“You want the short version or the long version?” Aman asks.
“Short.”
“We have superpowers.”
Uzma scans the room and considers her response, wishing she had taken self-defence classes at school.
“She thinks we are mad,” Sundar says.
“Show her,” Aman says.
“Don’t be scared,” Tia says gently, and suddenly there are two Tias where there was one, a second copy stepping smoothly out of her body and moving beside it, as silently and effortlessly as a computer file. They stand, side by side, completely identical, hair, clothes, everything but the expressions on their faces — one smiles, the other looks uncertain.
On the floor behind Uzma, the injured Tia opens her eyes and says, “So, she knows, huh? Told you we wouldn’t last a single night.”
“Are you all right, Uzma?” Sundar enquires, extracting a chair from his junk-mountain. “Would you like some water? Would you like to sit down?”
Uzma sits down on the floor, her eyes unable to leave the Tias. She gulps a few times, struggling to speak.
“Superpowers,” she says eventually.
“I know it sounds stupid,” Aman says, “but you did want the short version.”
“You’ve already seen Sundar in action,” a Tia says. “Aman, why don’t you give her a little display?”
Aman smiles and closes his eyes. Nothing happens. He grins widely after a while and looks at Uzma.
“You’ve left your phone in your room, haven’t you?”
“That’s your power? Phone location?” she says.
“No, there’s a little more to it than that,” says the Tia on the floor behind Uzma and giggles. “He does things with wi-fi. He wishes it were kung fu, but he’s got wi-fi. He’s a super internet nerd.”
“It’s a crap power, but it can be useful,” Aman says. “Now would you like the long version?”
Uzma stands up.
“No,” she says. “I — I’ve got to go.”
“No. Why?” a Tia asks.
“You’ve got superpowers. That’s — great. But I can’t afford to get mixed up in whatever it is you’re doing.”
“But we’re all —”
“I won’t tell anyone about you. But I’m starting out on my own in this country, and I have plans, and the police — I’ve got to go, okay? You people are lovely, but I don’t want to know any more. Let me leave now, please.”
“You’re one of us,” Aman says.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Uzma starts for the door.
“No, really. You have powers as well. We were all on the plane. You had a dream. We all did.”
Now Uzma freezes, and her hand involuntarily flies up to her mouth.
“Sit,” Sundar says. Uzma finds the chair this time.
“Aman dreamt of aliens,” a Tia says. “I dreamt of talking photo albums, all with me in them, but different lives. Bob was in a giant kitchen in the sky, Sundar —”
“I met Edison and da Vinci and a Chinese man no one understood,” Sundar says sheepishly.
“And within a few days, strange things started happening,” Aman says. “Did the police find you?”
Uzma nods.
“They found all of us. Took us to strange hospitals. Ran tests. Found nothing. Sundar was awake, my brain tested normal — I got into their computers and saw — and all of Tia’s copies are perfectly unremarkable on their own.”
“Apart from their beauty and grace,” Tia puts in.
“Of course,” Aman says. “So they let us go. But I heard the calls they made, and I figured I was in big trouble — everyone on BA142 was in big trouble. So — moved to Mumbai, bought this house, and got these guys to join me.”
“I don’t have a superpower,” Uzma says. “The police did come to me in Lucknow, but they were very cool. They said they didn’t need to even test me. I’m normal. I — this isn’t happening.”
“I’ll get you some water,” a Tia says, striding towards the door.
“A young, beautiful girl with no one to protect her gets taken to an Indian police station to have tests done on her and walks out unscathed, talking about how cool the police are. That’s not normal, Uzma,” Aman says.
“I thought everyone in India was just very nice.”
Uzma watches, fists clenched, as Aman, Sundar and Tia laugh heartily for several seconds.
Aman then wipes his eyes and says, “I think your power is that people like you and are nice to you. That fits in with your wanting to be an actress. You want to be a star, right? You want people to love you.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
A Tia bursts into the room.
“Aman, we have a problem.” The door is open behind her, and hot air rushes into the room. “Bob got hot.”
“How?” Aman snaps.
“She let him have some lobster,” the Tia says, pointing at the Tia in front of Uzma. “It’s a furnace outside, and Bob’s groaning.”
“Lobster. Jesus. Why?”
“That doesn’t matter now, does it?” Tia-near-Uzma says. “I’ll fix it. Do we have more ice-cream?”
“Ice-cream won’t help,” Aman says. “Wait.”
He closes his eyes and tilts his head.
“Coconut water, oatmeal, wheat, green vegetables, radish, dal, unripe banana, black pepper, pomegranate, papaya.”
“We got nothing,” a Tia says. “Should I just feed him some ice?”
“Watermelon, dandelion, yogurt, soya milk,” Aman continues. “Or, yeah, ice. Get busy. And for god’s sake, close the door behind you.”
Two more Tias emerge from the Tia-near-Uzma. Four Tias run out. Aman and Sundar look pointedly at the Tia behind Uzma, currently engaged in studying her burns.
“I’m staying,” she says defiantly. “I want to listen.”
“What’s wrong with Bob?” Uzma asks.
“Bob’s got a slightly weird power,” Aman says. “His stomach controls the weather near him.”
“So you guys keep his stomach cool and save on air-conditioning?”
“Precisely. But just imagine what this power could mean on a grand scale.”
“I was wondering why you knew so much about what he should be fed.”
“Oh, I don’t, Tia takes care of all that,” Aman says. “I Googled it just now.”
Sundar clears his throat portentously.
“About what you and Aman were discussing earlier,” he says, “we — I — have deduced that the power given to each passenger on the plane is intrinsically linked to whatever he or she desired most in life. That is why Aman said your powers make everyone love you. For us, too, it is true. I was a successful physicist before, a string theorist at the Indian Institute of Science, but as the years passed I found myself moving further and further away from what had first fascinated me about science as a child in Madras — the sense of being an explorer, a vo
yager into the unknown, an inventor with the power to change the world.”
“A mad scientist,” Tia says.
“Classic mad scientist,” Aman says. “Complete with the need to infodump whenever he’s awake, until your sleep schedule is as messed up as his.”
Sundar smiles. “I was certainly being driven insane. In fact, I was so tired of the endless routine of conferences around the world and bitter politicking to publish in journals that I was contemplating giving it all up and retiring to play the mandolin. Then, of course, I went to London to attend a conference — against my will,” he says.
He stands, head bowed, in silence.
“And?” Uzma asks after a few seconds.
“He’s going under again,” Aman says. “You might want to get out of the way.”
Sundar’s arms swing up, elbows moving like a puppet’s, and Uzma stifles a scream. Sundar heads, unseeing, towards his work in progress.
“Should we take this outside? Which is worse, unbearable heat or zombie scientist?” Aman asks.
Uzma drags her chair as far away from Sundar as possible and sits.
“Keep talking,” she says.
“My powers let me hook up to anything on a network — computers, phones, satellites, all sorts of stuff,” Aman says. “All our powers grow the more we use them, and I’m sure there are lots of applications I haven’t even thought up yet. I don’t really know how this connects to what I wanted most — I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have broadband, and more importantly I’ve never had the slightest clue what I wanted in life. But Sundar’s theory is pretty true for me as well.”
“How?” Uzma asks. “I don’t think I became an actress because I wanted to be loved — but even if we let that go, why do you have powers if you didn’t want anything?”
“Well, this is what I figured. Growing up in Delhi — and Delhi’s a city of networks, the social kind, and contacts and families — I’ve always felt left out of things, like I didn’t know anything, the right people, the right places. It’s not like I lacked anything I ever needed to live a comfortable life, but I’ve never had the connections I needed to make a difference, to be relevant in any way. I don’t know how it was for you growing up in the UK, but here nearly all of us have this huge sense of irrelevance. We’ll never change anything. The world will never know us. We grow up thinking hard work and a certain amount of ability are all we need — and then we eventually have to accept that they can only take us so far. I’m not even talking about being famous here — I’ve never wanted to be famous. But we never feel like we’re a part of anything. Nothing to believe in or fight for. I don’t know if I’m making sense.”
“You’re making as much sense as anything else at this point,” Uzma says. “Why were you on the plane?”
“I was coming back from New York. I’d gone there with my mother, and she stayed on with an old friend of hers.”
“It would have been fun if she’d been on the plane,” Tia says.
“Yeah, I would have been married by now,” Aman says. “She’s supposed to come back in a couple of weeks, actually. I’ve been trying to persuade her to hang out there for a while. Anyway, this has nothing to do with my powers, Tia’s story has a more direct connection.”
Uzma looks at Tia, eyebrows raised.
“I have a family,” Tia says. “I have a three-year-old son. He and I are sleeping next to each other right now, at home. At least I hope we are. I grew up in Assam —”
“I know that.”
“Oh, she told you. Sorry, I was here. I don’t know how much she told you, but if she told you anything you probably know I was very unhappy. My in-laws were horrible, and I used to dream about having many other lives, going to an office instead of sitting at home all day, being a teacher, being a dancer, an actress, a cricketer — anything else. I talked my husband’s family into letting me go to work, but it was so difficult to manage the house, the work, the baby — and then I found out my husband was having an affair. I ran away — I had this online friend, a Brazilian journalist in London who said he was in love with me, so I went. But then it turns out he wasn’t really serious, and I missed my son so much — I came back. On that flight.”
“And they took you back?”
Tia nods. “Yes, but things were really difficult, of course. And I wasn’t really mad at my husband — I just wanted a life of my own, you know? I’ve often wished I could be several people. Travel, live several lives, learn so many things. This power is amazing. Your power is lovely too. I can’t imagine how it must feel, knowing everyone likes you.”
“I’m still not convinced that’s because I have superpowers. It’s not a very nice thing to think,” Uzma says. She turns to Aman again. “Well, now that you’ve told me this, what do you want? What’s the plan?”
“We want to form a real-world Justice League — of India,” Aman says.
“I’m British. My parents are Pakistani,” Uzma replies.
“I know. I was kidding.”
“Well, stop. Why did you bring me here? How did you find me?”
“Finding you was easy enough. Powers.”
“I don’t get it.”
“My powers are more than a free internet connection. The whole cyber-security thing — it doesn’t really apply to me. I can go backstage on any site. Nobody asks me for passwords. If your computer or phone is on, and connected, I can see everything on it. I just have to ask nicely.”
“You have really creepy powers, don’t you?”
“I haven’t been reading your email, if that’s what you’re worrying about. But, yes, when I found out what was going on I went to the British Airways system and took out the list of people who were on that flight. Wiped information from credit card records, visa agencies, everything I could think of. And then I poked around in a lot of other places. And I wasn’t the only one. The police didn’t just come after us. They were sent after everyone on that flight. Someone found out what happened. I’m just — faster at getting numbers, jumping from system to system. I’ve been learning.”
“You messed with my records?”
“Don’t get mad at him,” Tia says. “The truth is, we’re all in danger. A lot of the people on that flight are dead or missing. He’s been trying to get in touch with everyone. I know we seem like a bunch of clowns, but people like us are disappearing. Or dying, like the Iyers we just saw on TV. It makes sense to get together, then, doesn’t it?”
Aman and Tia wait as Uzma digests this.
“Plainclothes policemen went to my parents’ house,” she says finally, her hands shaking slightly. “Are they in danger?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Aman says. “They know you didn’t leave India, and they don’t know where you are, so I don’t think there’s any immediate threat. The people who visited your parents weren’t policemen, anyway — probably private detectives hired to find out if you’d left the country. Whoever’s looking for us can’t afford to go public — they don’t want the British authorities looking for them. The Brits don’t know about this yet. No one on that flight was allowed to leave the country after the investigations kicked in, which was two days after we reached Delhi. Twenty-four people were on transfer flights or left India within a day. Someone hunted them down. Killed each and every one of them. All over the world, from Hong Kong to Toronto.”
“What should I do? Should I warn my parents? Should they talk to the police?” Uzma asks.
“I really think it’s best we lie low as much as possible for now,” Aman says. “We really don’t want them — whoever they are — to know where you live. If this news explodes all over the world — and I could make that happen — it hurts them, but it doesn’t help us. I’ve pretty much changed all the data they had on anyone on that plane. I did this as soon as I found out people were dying. Right now, a lot of the information on the passengers on the flight has been changed to Britney Spears lyrics. There are multiple lists floating around, mostly with fake addresses, dead
people, criminals. But someone must have printed hard copies of the original list at some point. Now they’re not keeping anything online, or on computers at all. They’ve also switched phones.”
“Hang on. ‘They’?”
“Whoever ‘they’ are, they’re not the government,” Aman explains. “This operation’s being run by a few people, probably Indian, high up enough in the military or the government to arm-twist other people into organising a large police operation, but it’s all very hush-hush. The police thought they were looking for terrorists who were carrying some sort of biological weapon. Lots of people are lying to lots of other people. And there are limits to how much I can find out — sometimes, I just don’t know where to look.
“There were a few politicians, a few government officials and a couple of Air Force officers on the flight. Of the 403 people on the plane, at least a hundred were cleared by the tests — they couldn’t find anything abnormal about them. I’ve been attacking their records fairly consistently wherever I can find them, so it’s safe to assume they’ve simply lost track of a lot of these people. A few of the others are fairly rich, some are famous — they might have bought their way out of trouble, or they haven’t been attacked because they’re well-protected, or because it would bring more attention than they’re ready for now. But the rest of us won’t get off that easy.”
“What about the people who weren’t cleared by the tests? What was wrong with them?”
“Maybe their powers were visible. I don’t know. Also, the ones who got cleared were all Indian — except you and a few other people of South Asian descent, all of whom were visiting family here. All the other British people, all the passengers from other countries — all gone. They’ve been taken away. There’s not been any outcry in the press abroad, so there must have been some kind of cover story. High-level officials, nothing put down on email, I don’t know. There are no records of where they all are now, but I think they’re being held in Kashmir, somewhere near the Air Force base in Udhampur. The Air Force officers are both involved. But one of them, Vir Singh, was sent off on a suicide mission by whoever’s running the show. He’s the key to finding out more.”
