Dream thief

1

…

SPENCE FELT AS IF he had entered The Land That Time Forgot. India, apart from the glassy modern cities of the western coast and southern interior, was largely a country where poverty and population had united to halt the wheels of progress and even rock them backward a few paces.

It was a land retreating back into the past-almost as fast as the rest of the world advanced.

Spence found the contrast between the crumbling cities and ragged people and his own ultra-advanced space station too hard to reconcile. The foreignness astounded him, numbed him. He resented it, resented the screaming populace that reeked of stale sweat, urine, and other basic human smells. He resented their poverty and blamed them for their lack, although intellectually he admitted that one could not blame the patient for the effects of his disease. Still, his first reaction was a smoldering malice against a people who could allow themselves to sink so far.

In this reaction he was no different from the millions who had gone before him, and millions more who still held the blight of India against India herself.

The rocketplane ride into Calcutta had not prepared him for the scene that would greet him upon landing. He had felt the thrust of the rocket engines and endured the g-forces of takeoff. The plane rose to its peak altitude within ten minutes and began its gliding descent. Out of the small round window he saw the blue-black sky devoid of clouds above him and the crisp crescent curve of the Earth's turquoise horizon. He had placed his palm against the window and felt the heat from the friction of the air moving over the skin of the plane. Then they dropped out of the sky in the steep landing glide to roll to a stop outside a skyport like any other skyport the world over.

Upon emerging from the boarding tube the shock of India hit him hard. One moment Spence had been comfortable amid familIar surroundings, the next plunged into a churning mass of backward humanity. The effect could not have been more startling if he stepped out of a time machine into the Stone Age.

"What now?" he asked Adjani in a bewildered tone.

"Are you all right, my friend?"

"No, but I'll get used to it." Spence stared dully at the chaos around him-diminutive travelers scurried like cockroaches all over the dilapidated terminal. The din was a muffled roar.

"Follow me," instructed Adjani. He began plowing through the crush as a man wading through floodwaters. "I'll get us out here."

"In one piece, I hope," said Spence. His remark was lost in the havoc.

Adjani hailed a rickshaw outside the terminal and bundled Spence into it. He yelled something unintelligible to the driver and, with a creak and a sway and a clang of a bell, they were off, worming through the snarled traffic around the skyport.

If Spence's first glimpse of India shocked him, the view from the rickshaw crawling along the rutted streets sickened him.

Everywhere he looked he saw people, an ocean of people: dirty, poor, ragged, fly-bitten, naked, staring, grasping. He turned his eyes from one dismal scene only to witness another, still more miserable. And there were animals: white and brown cattle, little more than ambulating bags of bones covered with hide, roamed among the streets; horses, their large heads bobbing on bony necks, pulled rude carts; dogs, yapping endlessly, dashed between the wheels of careening vehicles; crows and other birds-even vultures-watched the stinking pavements for any morsel to fall, swooping down in an instant to seize the scrap in their beaks and make off with it before some dog or beggar could grab it.

At the corners of large intersections were piled great heaps of refuse and garbage containing every kind of filth imaginable, and at least forty kinds of pestilence, thought Spence. On these dung heaps it was commonplace to see a dozen or so of the populace defecating or relieving their bladders while keeping the rats at bay with flailing sticks. Once they saw a huge wagon piled high with carcasses of cattle and horses-the dead scooped off the streets and destined for the rendering plant.

They passed by a railroad depot where nuns had set up a relief station for mothers with babies. Spence could see the sisters' white scarves moving among a sea of black heads that threatened to overwhelm their feeble effort. The cries of starving babies filled the air.

Everywhere, along the road, on traffic islands-every square centimeter of space-trash huts were erected; bamboo sticks for a framework, covered with rags. Bricks pulled up from the street or from a nearby wall established a fireplace. Other dwellings consisted of nothing more than a grimy scrap of cloth or blanket with stones to hold down the corners. On such a scrap a whole family might be encamped beside gutters running with raw sewage.

Billboards depicting smart, well-dressed Indians enjoying soft drinks or cigarettes, or wearing the latest fashion creations, sheltered masses of naked homeless who lay wrapped in rags beneath their cheerful slogans. Roving throngs of orphaned children ran after the buses and wagons and rickshaws, chanting for coins or food or castoff objects.

The stench of all this-the cooking, rotting, festering, putrefying-hung over the city like a malodorous cloud, reeking in the hot sun. To Spence it smelled like death.

"The City of Dreadful Night," said Adjani. "Look around you, my friend. You will never forget it. No one who comes here ever does."

Spence did look around him. He could not help but look. It seemed to him that he had left the world behind and descended into hell. "It's a nightmare," said Spence.

They passed on through the murky air of Calcutta's human quagmire; past slums and open-air mortuaries with corpses stacked like cordwood, awaiting cremation; past children bathing in the gutters; past beggars collapsed on their haunches in the middle of busy streets; past crumbling facades of once-stately buildings blackened by the cooking fires of the refugees of the streets; past rusting hulks of old automobiles turned into brothels; past squalid, unwashed, infested, decaying habitations of meanest description.

Spence felt that he had contracted some cancerous disease in his soul and would never be clean again. He shut his eyes and lay back in his seat, but he could not cut out the cries of misery around him.

They finally rocked to a stop outside a tumbledown, tarnished building in the center of a commercial district. Spence surveyed the rotting structure, its yellow paint flaking off in great patches like skin off a leper.

"What's this?" asked Spence. The long, tiring ride had made,him surly.

"Dr. Gita's home, remember?" Adjani jumped out of the taxi and spoke to the driver, offering him coins and asking him questions in a rapid babble of Hindi. "Come on," he called, motioning for Spence to follow as he strode into the disintegrating building.

Spence followed without attending to his steps and walked into a pile of cow manure laying on the sidewalk. He heard a snicker and scowled in the direction of the sound. A swift movement caught his eye, but he heard only the echo of small feet patter away.

Fuming, he cleaned his boot off as well as he could and made to enter the building. Just as he was about to disappear into the darkened interior, a loud voice boomed out above him. He looked up to see a dark brown face leaning out an upper window and beaming merrily down on him like an oriental sun; a pudgy little hand waved a cheery greeting.

"Namastey, Spencer Reston. Welcome to India." …

DESPITE THE UNPROMISING EXTERIOR and the decrepit stairs swarming with cockroaches and mice, where a family of squatters had taken up residence, Dr. Sundar Gita's rooms were clean and fresh and fairly gleamed with the shining presence of the little man who inhabited them-along with his wife and five daughters. Spence had expected a dingy grimecaked hovel of the kind he had seen on his trip through the decaying city. In his foul mood he was a little disappointed to find the good doctor's rooms light and airy; he almost grumbled at the sight of fresh-cut flowers in a delicate hand-painted vase which brightened the living room.

"Sit down, my guests. Please, sit. We will drink tea," the round man said as Spence entered a square room which was dominated by a wide bed. "Now you can come out!" called Sundar and, turning to his guests, explained, "They have been waiting all day to meet you. They have never seen visitors from America before."

There was a titter of female voices and a bead curtain parted and a parade of dark-eyed beauties came into the room, each one bearing a small tray with something to eat upon it. They lined up in stair-step fashion before their guests, and Gita introduced his family.

"This is Indira, my wife," he said, "and my daughters: Sudhana, Premila, Moti, Chanti, and Baki." As he called their names each bowed demurely and stepped forward with their trays. Spence soon had a plate full of sesame cakes, date cookies, and rice balls balanced precariously on the arm of his low bamboo chair while he held a hot cup of jasmine tea first in one hand and then the other.

Their service completed, the women disappeared into the next room where Spence could hear their chippering whispers.

Dr. Sundar Gita was quite dark skinned, much darker than Adjani. He was short, coming only to Spence's shoulder, and almost as broad as he was tall. His full, round face shone with constant good cheer as if he were lit from within by a warm inner glow. His plump form was wrapped in an ivory-colored muslin suit, and, as if to emphasize his overall rotund shape, a bulbous blue turban topped him off.

As Spence was studying him, there came a loud shout from outside in the street below. Dr. Gita put down his cup and saucer and trotted to the window and leaned out. A quick conversation took place which ended with the doctor shouting, "No patients today. Come back tomorrow!"

He returned to his guests with a apologetic smile.. "A linguist must make a living," he explained. "I am also the local dentist."

Spence sipped the rest of the tea and placed his cup on the floor. He felt a light tickle at his wrist and something cool and polished pressed against the inside of his hand. He looked down and saw an enormous snake curled beside his chair. The great gray and brown speckled creature was pushing its wide angular head into his hand.

"Ahk!" Spence yelped, jerking his hand away.

"Rikki! You naughty girl! Come away from there and stop pestering our guests." Gita gave the snake an exasperated look and the reptile slowly uncoiled itself and slithered silently away behind Spence's chair, leaving him with a prickly, queasy sort of feeling. He would almost have preferred having it beside his chair. There, at least, he could have kept an eye on it. Now he did not know when it might jump out at him again.

"Rats," Dr. Gita was saying. "They are such a problem in the city. But Rikki is a remarkable hunter. They do not bother me at all."

"Dr. Gita," Adjani began, "we are grateful that-"

"Please, I am only Gita among you learned men. And the pleasure is mine. When your message came last night I was very much excited to hear of your visit and of course I will help in any way I can. Your father has been my dear friend all these many years, Adjani. I remember our school days fondly.

"Now." He spread his short hands on his round thigh, "What brings you to Calcutta and to my humble home?"

"I think I will let Spence tell you his story first, and then 1 will explain."

Gita turned inquisitive black eyes upon his guest and nodded, settling himself with a sigh onto the wide bed. This piece of furniture took up fully a third of the room. Spence realized that the whole family probably slept in that bed.

"What I am about to tell you may sound a bit-well, incredible, but I assure you it is true. Every word. And I ask that what I say will never be repeated outside this room," Spence began nervously. "May I have your promise on that?"

Gita touched his forehead and nodded with an oriental bow of submission. Spence could see the excitement mirrored in the black eyes, though his listener's face had lost all expression.

Taking a deep breath Spence began his tale. He told once again of his dreams, of his wandering lost into the deadly sandstorm on Mars and his discovery of the tunnels leading ultimately to the city of Tso. He told of his thirst and hunger-this made his listener squirm-and of the nightmarish illness. He described the oblong box and his manipulation of the controls, the strange sounds and sights that came from it, and lastly his meeting with Kyr, the Martian, and all the wonderful things he had seen and heard.

When Spence finished, an hour had elapsed like the blink of an eye. Gita sat as one in a trance, spellbound by the magic of his story.

"Truly fantastic," Gita said at last, breaking the fragile silence which had enveloped the room. "I have never heard anything like it. Incredible." He turned to Adjani. "You said I would be amazed, but that is not the half of it. I am astonished beyond words."

After another long silence in which Gita sat staring at Spence and nodding, muttering under his breath, he leaned forward and said, "Now, then. That is but half a tale, remarkable though it is. You did not travel halfway around the world to tell me that. What is it you require of me?"