by Abhishek Roy
The teashop was a compact one in which we entered. There were already some people enjoying their morning tea, sitting on wooden benches.
“Chaar chai dena bhaiya, “ The trucker requested the man standing adjacent to the tea pot who promptly, opened the lid of the earthen pot, lowered a cup-shaped spoon inside and poured tea into four cups. Each of us held our cups in our hands. The warmth was welcomed throughout my palms and travelled down my hand and eventually, spread into my body, raising the hair on my neck.
All of us sat around a small round coffee table. Vivek, his father and Ram took a sip and I did the same but was overcome with a strange taste. It was then that I realised that this was the traditional Indian tea and unlike the British tea, it had too much of sugar dissolved in it. I took a small sip however, careful not to offend the others.
Recognising the expression on Ram’s visage, I interpreted that he too was not pleased with the tea.
“Okay then. Where shall I begin?” started Vivek.
Kapittel 14
Mathias’s story
RISHIKESH, INDIA
March 8, 2017, Wednesday, 0625 hours IST
“It was 2016, mid-summer, when it happened. However, before I tell you about it, I want to give you a short prologue,” said the son.
“Of course,” I replied.
“I had joined the organisation in 2010. My father had put in all the money he had to educate me,” narrated the son, “He himself had to abandon school at the age of fourteen and start earning a living. He did not want same fate to be thrust upon me and hence, educated me fully. I was a bright science student and at the age of 22, I joined the Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO. They acknowledged my brilliance and thus after working as a trainee for nearly three years, they sent me off to one of their bases in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve. There ...“
Vivek’s father was alarmed. When he heard his son speaking of the ISRO base, he grasped his arm and looked worried about the fact that his son had informed us of an ISRO base in the Himalayas.
“Father, I have already been sacked. I have no job to lose. What will these guys do if they get to know of this secret laboratory, print it on the daily newspaper? I don’t think so.” He had a point. His words were successful in loosening the grip of his father’s hand around his arm, as he understood the scenario.
“So, as I was telling you both, I had been sent to one of their bases in the Biosphere Reserve. There I worked for the development of rocket propulsion systems and fuels and tried creating a better source of rocket fuel. My team obviously did not have many members. Only the most brilliant and accomplished minds were allowed to work in the project. Finally, after two years of continuous research, the scientists under whom I was working, discovered what they were looking for. A beautiful rocket fuel cell - it was the first in the world and could power a rocket for enough time to get it to Mars, during the opposition, in 90 to 100 days only. In fact, it was a fuel cell that could power a rocket for almost eternity. They were greatly lauded and revered of for their work. They thanked me too and the head decided to promote me to a senior scientist straight away! The following days went good but just as every cloud has a silver lining, the silver is never without some impurities,” said the son and suddenly he veered away from the flow. He had a vague and faraway look in his eyes.
“Excuse me,” Ram nudged him back from his pensive mood.
“Oh yes,” said the son, startled. “By the way, my name is Vivek Bindal you see. You can call me by my name.“
Ram and I nodded together.
“So as Vivek said,” his father continued. “He had received a large sum of money. The first few days went merrily. Vivek got up at daybreak, ate breakfast and went off to work. In the evening he would return, not with his twinkling morning face but with a face marked by fatigue. After so many hours of research, he used to get drained out of energy.
“Then one day in 2016 he was accused of a scandal. His boss was kind enough not to deliver him to the police but instead sacked him. From then till now, he has embarked on a search for a job but no company or agency would ever accept him after the fraudulent behaviour he was accused of.”
“So,” I along with Ram sat down on a chair before continuing, “What Bajrangi had really done was that he had hacked into Vivek’s computer and accessed the program from where Vivek manipulated data, executed his job and gave away the tickets to the customers. It was from there that he had cornered the tickets. It was a clean and smooth procedure. From the look of it, people thought that it was Vivek who was responsible for the wrongdoing. One failed to see inside the software except me.“
I turned my laptop to offer them a look of the screen.
“This looks familiar,” cried out Vivek.
“As a matter of fact, this is your desktop which now belongs to someone called,” I quickly checked the name of the user. “Sanjay Tiwary. Anyway, you realise how I can easily control your computer from here.” I showed him how I could open any folder, any file, any document.
“So that is how it is done.”
“It is still a little hazy to me. I do not understand how you can say that it was Bajrangi who had done this.” Vivek asked me.
I smiled and replied, “Easy. You see, every computer has something unique to it. Something not even a computer of the same ilk has in common. It is called IP address. It is a string of characters and figures and helps one identify a particular PC in a network.” I quickly punched some buttons, opened a folder and then another folder inside it and found what I was looking for.
“Aha!” I exclaimed. Turning the PC towards them, I should them a screen that was total gibberish and computer jargon to them indeed. But to me, it was the proof.
“What the hell is this?” cried out the father in bewilderment.
“You need not see the entirety of it. Just look at that small box right there,” I said as I pointed towards a small white dotted box on a black back ground had some writings in it also in white. The two of them along with Ram followed my direction.
“Do you see what is written beneath the IP address?”
“Why? It is Bajrangi Singh,” exclaimed Vivek and his father in chorus.
“So you see?” I asked them triumphantly, “This clearly proves that Vivek is innocent and the one guilty is Bajrangi. I am sorry Vivek, but you have been betrayed.“
As the truth dawned on him, Vivek face grew solemn. He backed off from the laptop screen and sat on his chair staring out into the open. He was showing no indignation, no rage. His face reflected only one emotion.
There was a small gap in between after the revelation concluded.
Vivek’s father finally interrupted the silence.
“We need the proof. It is the only way we can condemn Bajrangi as guilty.”
“Well, we will hand you the proof, but you have to give us something in return. A trip to the biosphere reserve, getting us inside and arranging for a guided tour around,” Ram was now speaking like a professional negotiator. “We have some specific coordinates and we intend to get there as fast as possible.“
Sometimes a moment comes in your life, which you remember forever. It picks you up and shakes you completely apart. Years later when we looked back at our times together, we had many a time thought about this moment, the definitive point of time, when our fates got intertwined forever; a point of no return.
Kapittel 15
ELSEWHERE
BALDR’s SECRET BASE
March 8, 2017, Wednesday, 0800 hours GMT
“I reckon I should send more men after the two of them. Am I not correct Migdur?” asked Baldr to his advisor and lieutenant who was literally thousands of miles away, in another secret location in the Himalayas.
“I am not quite sure my lord. I do not mean to offend you but your impatience may lead you into trouble. I would advise you to stay calm and let them walk over to us. Remember, your last attempt of sending in men to get them to you quickly was a fiasco. Thankfully it was not
advertised publicly much. A few people saw them and that was it. The next time, I am sure it will be on the news for everyone to see what our men had done,” Migdur spoke wisely.
“I am very impatient but you are my loyal and wise advisor and abiding by your advice has always helped me. Hence, even now I shall listen to you,” acquiesced Baldr and started pacing with anticipation.
“Thank you my lord,” Migdur bowed. “I shall look over your spies and supervise the data handling sector.” Shortly after Migdur finished speaking, there was a reverberating sound of bending metal and there was a slight tremor in the room they were standing in. It stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“And I shall also check over the reinforcement systems,” Migdur added, his image carrying his message though he was very far apart from Baldr’s secret base.
This second secret base of Asr-Gawa has been in place for over 20 years now in the Himalayan region spanning India and Nepal. The hyper activity in the region has been detected by some scientists from Cal Tech in collaboration with the Department of Mines and Geology of Nepal. This area has been identified within a 100 km radius called the Seismic Permanent Network but nobody has been able to understand it yet.
Just before he was about to close the hologram conversation, Baldr asked Migdur, “How much of silicon have we managed to ship so far?”
“Not too much to make a significant difference but the amounts have increased after the mass transportation technology came up recently.”
“This new machine for mass transfer - it cannot be seen from outside, no?” asked Baldr.
“Not at all. No one will even guess where it is kept. Over that, the entire system is guarded by an intricate firewall and code. Everything is running just fine.”
“That’s nice to hear,” sighed Baldr. “You may proceed with your work now.“
Migdur closed the hologram leaving Baldr in solitude.
“I cannot send men. I have already lost some. I need manpower Let him walk into the mousetrap. I shall wait and when he comes, I shall reveal myself,” muttered Baldr under his breath while he paced his high ceilinged conical room vigorously, trying to suppress his anxiety and maintain his calm. A few of his gadgets were splayed out on a table in a corner.
“If he can reach the temple, then I shall implore him to join my cause. If he doesn’t... well, he has to. The boy is extremely valuable. Using him, I will get the power to take over Asr-Gawa. The power that has been lost for decades now. The boy has to join my cause,” Baldr mused over his plot with glinting eyes.
Kapittel 16
Mathias’s story
RISHIKESH, INDIA
March 8, 2017, Wednesday, 0810 hours IST
“Alright. We accept your offer” nodded the trucker. He and his son had been talking for a while. Clearly they had been impressed by my information gaining skills.
“You may stay with us for two days during which, we should be able to gather our resources, clothes and tools and plan for your journey ahead,” said Vivek’s father.
Ram and I were delighted to hear it and followed them to their house that was located atop a small hill and hence had a perfect view of the town and the gargantuan Himalayan Mountains. Their house was a modest one. It had two rooms, a living room and a small kitchen. Along with these, it also had a veranda and just one bathroom. Yet, it promoted a good living, away from any noise of a city or the honking of cars. Just the mild wind and the distant sound of the gurgling of the waters of the river Ganga.
After settling down and having lunch that was made by Vivek’s mother, I saw Vivek standing in the veranda with a cup of tea in his hand. He was looking out at the sprawling town below with a face marked by tension. The yellowish orange light that bathed his face accentuated his serious look.
“Hey. I see that you are deep in thought, huh?” I asked amicably, trying to normalize the relations in between us. Vivek simply looked at me but couldn’t really find the right words.
“This house of yours is situated in a really good place.”
“Yes. I would say so,” finally, he replied.
“Hmmm... Listen, I wanted to tell you that I could assure you, my friend and me are not bad guys. Considering our predicament, we are obliged to do some things which we should not but do not worry. We will not harm you. I promise.”
Vivek turned his face to me. He took a sip of his tea.
“You see, the world right now is such that no one can be trusted,” he replied. “You already know my situation, right? After all this, I would surely need some time to get my confidence up.“
“I understand. Even I was betrayed once because I believe that I was abandoned by my parents and left at an orphanage. I can understand,” I replied solemnly, the dreams of my parents filling my head.
“Abandoned? Well, I don’t think any parent in the world could be cruel enough to abandon their offspring. I reckon, there must have been a concrete reason behind it. Maybe they were forced to do so,” Vivek said.
“Maybe... but I am not sure. I occasionally have dreams of my childhood. In them, I am a small boy and am being admitted to the orphanage I am currently in. That is the dream where I can see my parent’s faces. You may be right because in my dream they do seem to be pretty warm but at the same time, it just is very disappointing-to know that you have parents but who never look after you.”
“Mathias, I think that it is wrong to judge someone based on a dream. A dream is just a creation of your mind. Yes, it might be from your past but that doesn’t mean that it is accurate, does it?” Vivek was now talking to me properly and it was quite refreshing, having someone to guide you like that.
“I agree. Thanks Vivek. I really appreciate your advice.”
Vivek gave me a wry smile.
“Now you see? We are not entirely different,” I said.
“Hahaha!” he laughed. “You are not at all what I had imagined you to be — an uptight foreigner. You seem to be a very nice guy Mathias.“
“I can assure you that and also that we will be very good friends.”
We stood for a while in silence, gazing at the mountains.
“I never got the opportunity to ask you about your wounds, Mathias. They seem to be pretty painful,” said Vivek, looking at my face. Then he looked at my feet. “And... you are limping too.“
“I um... had an encounter with some unpleasant men who were probably trying to kidnap Ram and me. We evaded them thankfully, but it wasn’t easy.”
“They were trying to kidnap you?” asked Vivek.
“Yeah, kidnap. Abduct. I don’t know the reason but...”
“But what? Vivek asked me impatiently.
“It’s just that.... I feel that this quest is more than finding a lost father. There is something more behind it. Something big. It might be a trap too but I am not sure. I can’t even discuss these things with Ram because he will just turn a deaf ear to me. He is hell bent on finding his father,” I tried to explain to Vivek.
“It is quite natural isn’t it?”
“Yes, and he has never known his mother who died at chidbirth. But just give it a thought. Why would a father, lost in the Himalayas, send a distress signal now after 15 years? He was a theoretical physicist, something like you. According to Ram he was a really intelligent man and also took interest in history and mythology. That explained why Ram is good in humanities too but don’t you think, that he would have been able to find some other way to communicate sooner if he weren’t dead?”
“True,” said Vivek, understanding.
“There has to be something else behind this. A master puppeteer.”
Vivek took a sip of his tea. A short pause ensued. This topic had to wait.
“Vivek?”
“Yes.”
“Do not think that I want to be your friend to know more about your personal life. I just love science and mathematics and just out of curiosity, I would like to know how that fuel cell worked,” I said with the most polite tone I could muster.
&
nbsp; Vivek thought for a while and replied, “My friend, it really appears to me that you want to learn more than you ought to. However if you want to know, I will tell you because it is very difficult to create one of the fuel cells by any other organisation in the world except us. But frankly, your inquisitive nature is a little disturbing sometimes.”
There was a small pause. The only noise was the chirping of the last few birds before they went back to their nests and the faint whistling of the wind.
“The base of ISRO in the biosphere was a really advanced one,” he started talking. “We had almost all the resources we needed and funding in order to research. Hence, we decided to use all the resources provided to us and made a cyclotron. Now I don’t know whether you know what it is...“
“It is basically a machine used to accelerate particles at mammoth speeds around a spiral trajectory. The particles can then be collided to form new ones. It uses strong electromagnets and probably superconductors too. Yes I know what a cyclotron is,” I smiled.
Vivek’s right eyebrow went up. “Impressive indeed. So, we made a cyclotron — a smaller version of the one in CERN, Switzerland. In this generation, particle physics is a field of immense discoveries and opportunities. The scientists then, tinkered a little and made small modifications to it and after a year and a half, it was fully functional. I had just arrived as a trainee when some construction was still left. Therefore, I was one of the few people to see it work for the first time. The senior most members of the organisation were skeptical about our idea. Ironically, it was in the particle accelerator that we hit jackpot.”
Vivek’s eyes were gleaming with delight as he continued saying, “Mathias, tell me. You must be surely aware of the properties of a magnet.”
“Well of course,” I replied.
“Can you tell me the most important point about the polarity?” he asked expectantly.
