Pegasus In Space

1

As Peter Reidinger was teleporting in gestalt with the huge Jerhattan Power Station to bring the kinetics down from Padrugoi Space Station to Dhaka, an exhausted group of men and women were trying to reach the shelter of the nearest shomiti. With the bundles they had snatched from their homes before escaping the breached levees, they staggered to higher ground along the muddy banks of the Jamuna River. They had to scramble to bridge the gaps in the levee mounds that, in places, were sliding into the Jamuna's torrent. Despite Herculean efforts by the government and the local administrators in the Rajshahi Division, the levees had not supplied the longed-for protection to those living along its banks.

Anger at the "authorities" consumed Zahid ldris Miah and sustained him as he slogged at the head of the group from his bari, flashing the long-life light ahead of him. In the gloom of this monsoon, the tool at least kept them from slithering into places where the Jamuna had chewed ravines into the levee bank in its rush to the sea. He devoutly mumbled prayers to Iswah that this tool was truly a "long-life" torch. He half expected it to fade out now, when it was most needed, like so many other items that came to his small bari south of Sirajganj as Rajshahi Division tried to-what was the ingraji word?-"upgrade" him and the other jute farmers.

They should have kept a close watch on the levees in this storm. They should have worked more diligently to reinforce the collecting lakes along the Jamuna River. They had promised to do so, to keep more of Bangladesh from sliding beneath the Bay. He vaguely knew that a great new engineering process that had kept some city in Italia from drowning had been adapted to keep the Bay of Bengal from inundating the coastal regions near the mouth of the Padma. Much land had been lost along the seacoast in spite of the efforts of many, very gifted engineers. The once inland city of Khulna was now protected by the great Dike, which had been erected three decades ago. Barisal City was also ringed south and east by the Ocean Dikes, invented by yet other westerners who had been determined to keep their land from drowning. Those islands that had once dotted the Bay of Bengal: Bhola, Hatiya, and, Sondwip-where the Meghna River flowed into the Bay-had been inundated and the people saved only by the massive efforts of the World Relief Organization.

He had heard that the islands of Kutubdia and Maheskhali, near Cox's Bazar were also gone, and the tip of Chittagong. As Zahid had never been farther from his bari than Sirajganj, these places might as well have been in Great India or Meriki. What had happened to those who had helped before? Had they, like so many others, deserted the Bangla in their hours of need? He wiped the sudden spurt of winddriven rain from his face. Were they tired of rescuing poor Bangladeshi? He wasn't surprised; who cared, but Iswah, what happened to the poor? The wind smacked at his lean, work-honed frame again and he slid on the mud, the light briefly aimed to his right.

Was that debris now bobbing along on the swift flowing current the plants he had struggled so to keep watered during the dry season? There was always too much of everything-Iswah be praised, he added quickly-when it wasn't needed. The Jamuna had irrigated his fields but this was overdoing it.

"Where be those who aid? Curses be on their names and every generation of them!" Zahid roared above the wind, waving about both hands, making the torchlight stab about the darkness.

Behind him, Jamila wailed, berating her husband. "Do not wave our light about so! How am I seeing where to put my feet? If it falls from your hand, how will we be seeing where dry land is?" She had hiked up her sari, its sodden, muddy hem banging against her thin calves. He had already reprimanded her several times for her immodesty.

"Hush, woman. Rafiq and Rahim have torches. Watch your sari that you do not tempt Ayud Bondha. " To emphasize his displeasure in her demeanor, he lengthened his stride, sweeping the ray of light in front of him to see where he was going. This disgruntled him more, for it might appear to her that he was heeding her complaint.

"How far to go now, Zahid?" Salma, Ayud Bondha's young wife, cried in ragged gasps. She had to shout above the wind noise. She was many months pregnant with her firstborn, and clumsy. Ayud was half carrying her, both of them slipping about in the thick mud.

Zahid didn't like Salma. As a young girl, she had been chosen from her village to go to the school to learn to read and write and do sums. Because of that, she did not efface herself, as a proper woman should, speaking out often in the shomiti with unseemly disregard of custom. Ayud Bondha always indulged her, smiling and doing nothing to discipline her, as a husband should.

"We will be seeing shomiti lights soon Zahid said and sent his beam ahead of them, squinting to see any glimmer from their destination. Shomiti were still built on heavy concrete pillars, thanks be to Iswah, so their shelter remained above the flooded lands. There would be light cylinders-also of the long-life variety-hung on the comers of the covered veranda to show refugees their way through the day's darkness, wind, and rain.

"Aiyeee!" screamed his wife, sliding her length in the mud, face down. The fall both amused and irritated Zahid. Sputtering curses, he caught hold of her arm with his free hand, the arc of the light he held going every which way again. Ayud Bondha grasped her other flailing arm and, between them, they managed to lift her out of the mud. Solicitously, Salma used the long end of her already sodden sari to clear Jamila's mud-smeared face while she gasped for breath and spat out the grit in her mouth.

"Aiyeee!" Jamila screamed again, wildly pointing at the rushing water. "Something in the river!" She grabbed her husband's hand with her muddied ones and steadied the broad beam of the flashlight on what she had glimpsed when his beam was erratically flashing about.

"Nothing alive," Zahid retorted, trying to wrest control of the torch from her.

"I see something, too," Salma said, and Zahid snarled under his breath. That was all he needed. Her to side with the thin stick who was his wife.

"There is something," Ayud agreed, and by then the rest of their group had caught up to them.

Rafiq and Rahim added their lights to his reluctant one and even he had to admit that there was something, a small child perhaps, clinging to the fork of two branches. Zahid was stunned. A tree of such size had to have floated down all the way from the Terai region. Even as he watched, he saw movement, a wide-open mouth in a white face, probably calling for help. Suddenly, the current of the Jamuna whimsically pushed the tree closer to the levee.

"Joldi!" cried Salma, pushing at Zahid. "Sahajyo! Quick! Help!"

"Ki kore? How?" Zahid demanded, one hand gesturing his helplessness while, with the other, he stubbornly followed the slowly spinning mass with his light.

"Dig your feet in!" Rahim cried, leaping forward. "We make a chain. Grab my hand, Rafiq. You, too, Jabbar, Khaliq. Make a chain. Zahid, light us."

Rahim barely got a firm grip on Rafiq's hand before Zahid pushed Jabbar and Khaliq into place, making himself the end of the human rescue line. He was as heavy as Rahim and could be the anchor despite the slippery mud. His wife wailed and moaned that surely they would not be in time, that they would all fall in the water and drown, and then what would become of them? Then Salma grabbed the light from Zahid's hand as he was pulled forward, closer to the edge of the levee. Frantically he dug his heels into the slippery soil, determined to stop his forward movement. Khaliq also dug his feet in. Then Rahim, living up to his name of "mighty soldier," caught hold of the nearest branch of the tree fork and hauled it closer. He stretched the human chain to its full length as he made his first grab at the child. It let out a shriek that could be heard above the wind's screech and lay limp across the bole. Rahim made a second grab and got a firm grip on one leg.

"Tana!" cried Rahim, struggling to shift his balance back to the levee.

Pull the others did, Jabbar going down on his knees in the mud to keep from sliding further. As Rahim teetered backward, Khaliq dropped Jabbar's hand and rushed to grab Rahim's shirt to draw him and his burden to the relative safety of the higher bank. Salma focused the light on the tree that, its passenger now safely ashore, was caught by an eddy and swirled away.

"Light, woman!" Zahid shouted, angrily snatching it back and shining it on the child.

Rain slanted down on the unconscious face and the open mouth. Suddenly Rahim jerked the tattered shirt down, glancing warily at Jamila who had bent to examine the human flotsam.

"A girl child," she said. Then she saw and touched the limp left arm that dangled at an unnatural angle. "Broken."

"Give Iswah thanks for preserving the child," murmured Zahid.

"Did I do that?" asked Rahim, panting from his exertions and reaching out to the injured limb.

"Iswah knows," Jamila said with pious absolution. "Young bones heal easily."

"You were holding the other arm, Rahim Ali," Salina said, flinging a sodden braid over her shoulder.

"How could you see?" Zahid demanded.

"I was holding the light," she replied, but now Ayud Bondha tapped her shoulder in tacit reprimand. I did see," she said defensively. Then she fumbled in the bundle she had over her shoulder and brought out a smoothed stick, wood oiled by long usage in cooking. "Jamila, this for a splint. Tie with this." Dragging the end of a piece of fabric out, she gnawed a cut in the hem and then, with a strong gesture, tore off the end. She handed the strip and the utensil to Jamila.

With the experienced deftness of those accustomed to dealing with minor injuries, Jamila and Rahim straightened the thin arm against the smooth wooden stirrer and deftly wound the makeshift bandage around it. The fabric was already sodden from the persistent rain but it would hold the tiny limb to the splint.

"Jolki! Joldi! Be quick," Zahid said, irritated by the holdup. He flashed his light toward the Jamuna and everyone could see that the water had risen against the levee in the short time since the child had been rescued.

Jamila cradled the child in one arm and, with a toss of her head at the scowling Zahid, started off again. Zahid, imperiously waving his light, took a few running steps to take up his forward position.

"Ami neta," he said in a fierce tone. "I am leading."

They had gone no more than fifteen paces when he saw the bobbing of lights coming toward them.

"Are you all right?" someone shouted.

"HA!" Zahid yelled back, cupping his free hand to his mouth.

"We were seeing you stop," the someone said as half a dozen men came into the beam of his torch.

"We are all right but our women are tired," Zahid called back. He did not wish to explain that, at great peril to their lives, they had rescued only a girl child. The saving of a boy would have been worth bragging about.

"We have saved an injured child," Salina shouted.

Then the contingent from the shomiti converged on them and assisted the weary travelers the rest of the way up the slight but muddy incline to the welcome shelter of the community center. The greedy waters of the Jamuna were still below the levee on this stretch, not yet washing at the sturdy columns that held up the building.

Salma had gone to school in this shomiti so she called out to one of the Teachers in the largest room where a huge pot was simmering on a brazier.

"Rupoti Apa," she cried, and the woman looked up from stirring the rice mixture. "We found a child."

"A girl child," Zahid said.

"We are all precious to Iswah," the Shikkhika said, giving Zahid a mildly reproving glance as she rose and came forward to see the limp figure Jamila held out.

"With a broken arm. Is the daktar here?" Jamila asked.

Shaking her head, Rupoti Apa peered at the limp body, noting the splinted arm, the many scratches and bruises, and a skin wrinkled from long immersion. "He is not here. The child is not too badly hurt. Bring her and yourself, Salma, to the fire and be warm. Jamila, take bowls. We have rice and fish to eat. Hot and good." She waved toward the stack of rough pottery bowls on the far side of the brazier.

When Salma had eased herself to a sitting position by the fire, Jamila transferred the child to her and set about serving the piled bowls to those from her bari.

Salma was glad of the excuse of the child and a position by the fire. When Rupoti Apa handed her a bowl of the rice, she made a cradle of her damp sari and put the child in it while she fingered the rice into her mouth. It was hot and burned a little as it went down but the heat was welcome. So were the pieces of mach she was delighted to find liberally sprinkled in the rice. She tried not to eat too quickly but hunger was on her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ayud, Rafiq, and Jabbar in the corridor, eating as quickly as she. It was a generous portion and filled the empty places in her.

She was dozing, chin on her chest, when the child-older than a babe or it would not have survived in the flood-finally roused. Its thin pained squall roused others in the room. Before Salma could orient herself and remember why she had a child in her lap, Rupoti Apa lifted the little girl out of her improvised cradle.

"Daktar Mohammed is here and will tend her. Do you know whose child she is?"

Salma shook her head and went back to sleep, not willing to relinquish her place near the fire, now embers of red charcoal. She never saw the child again.

When the telekinetics that Peter Reidinger had carefully 'ported to Zia Airport got to work, they managed to stem and control the flood crest before the Buriganga River could inundate the sprawling city of Dhaka.

They could not repair all the levees that had collapsed along the four main rivers, which shifted their beds as often as they changed their names, Ganges/Padma and Brahmaputra/Jamuna, along with the tributaries they acquired on their journey down to the Bay of Bengal. Those who lived in Dhaka called what flowed past them the Buriganga River. From the east came the less ferocious Meghna and Sitalakhya rivers. It was feat enough at first to reinforce the levees protecting a city of twelve million souls, spread out in the apex of the river already enlarged by its tributaries. Lance Baden set up his headquarters in a quickly evacuated building in Motijheel, the financial district of the city. There he directed the operations, quickly organizing and sorting out the problems of the most affected divisions: Rajshahi, Dhaka itself, Barisal, and finally Chittagong, which had its own special problems stemming from Kaptai Lake. Whenever district engineers could make contact with Lance's personnel, he directed his telekinetics to send stopgap materiel to be rammed into place.

He brought Bangladeshi workers in from the drier divisions, Sylhet, the upper Rajshahi, and Khulna. His kinetics managed to seal the worst levee collapses until reinforcing materials could be set into place along the Buriganga. A special team was making certain that the raging Jamuna would not undermine the Great Jamuna Bridge. That renowned structure was a source of great pride to all Bangladeshi, built as it was by their labor and their hard-earned takas.

Four days later, when the weather satellites reported the abatement of the monsoon, additional relief personnel and supplies were airlifted in and the work of mopping up began. Despite urgent entreaties from their section bosses on the Padrugoi Station, and outright threats and rantings from Commissioner Ludmilla Barchenka, the team did not rush back.

The injured were cared for, the homeless were sheltered, the hungry fed, and the bedraggled clothed. The most needy towns were supplied with food, fresh water, and seed. Fortunately, the extremely fertile soil of Bangladesh could produce two crops a year-with any luck-so there might still be a harvest later in the year. While the weather had certainly been unlucky around the world, it was late October and perhaps the monsoons were over.

Among the homeless, the orphans were assigned to the various facilities, examined, registered, and, depending on their ages and abilities, given such community tasks in the center as their age suggested. The child who had been rescued from the Jamuna, was sent to an orphanage just south of Bogra. The local industry of hat-making made use of the nimble fingers of the older children and their employment was carefully monitored by a telepath, Bahadur Ali Shan. He came as often as he could, when the press of duties permitted, but, as he had never seen any abuse or a shadow of it in the minds of the industrious and generally happy children, he did not worry too much when the floods enlarged the orphanage complement considerably

The orphan girl from a small shomiti outside of Siradjganj was judged to be four or five years of age. The broken arm that was mentioned on the tag carefully written by Shikkhika Rupoti at the shomiti did not appear on the X ray taken at the Bogra medical center during the routine examination. A greenstick fracture of the ulna was visible but the injury was so well healed that the splint and bandage were superfluous. If anyone noticed that the little girl kept stroking her left arm over the site of the old break, they did not mention it. The tag stated that the child was unknown to anyone in the shomiti. The examining physician found her uncommonly well grown and well nourished, but noted that she did not speak.

Possibly this is due to the trauma of her recent experience in the flood-waters. But attempts should be made to encourage her to speak. She hasn't got a cleft palate, she's not speech-impaired, and there is no physiological reason why she is incapable of speech, read the medical report.

The nuns at the orphanage gently tried to wheedle her name out of her but she only regarded them with wide eyes. A child of four or five should remember its own name.

"They're a deep blue, you know," Sister Epiphania said. "Not brown."

"Oh dear," said Sister Kathleen. A child of mixed races by no means shocked her for all they had both thought her Bangladeshi. She peered at the delicate features-so many Bangladeshi children were beautiful. Some subtlety of feature and physique made her feel that, whatever she was, the child was not half-caste. "Well, she's a child of God. We'd better give her a name."

Sister 'Phania considered this, laying a callused forefinger athwart her lips in thought. "Zada? That means lucky."

"You're assuming she is Bengali?"

"Well, yes. The report says that the bandage around her arm had been torn from a sari. And look at her black hair!"

Sister Kathleen held a strand out, before tucking it back over the child's shoulder. "What about Jamuna as a name? She was plucked from it, after all."

"Not at all," 'Phania said, pressing her lips together.

"Kalinda? Because she came from the river?"

"Hmm." That didn't seem appropriate to 'Phania either.

"If we go to a floral name, remember we already have two Lilas. You wouldn't like Kusa for grass? After all," and Kathleen pointed to the little patch of ground, neatly fenced off with twigs, which had absorbed the little girl once she had finished helping to weed the kitchen garden, "she's clearly interested in growing things. Maybe a farmer's child?"

"Ruchi?" 'Phania suggested, "since that means taste?"

"Hmm." Kathleen deliberated a moment, then shook her head.

"Rudra? That, I think, is for the rudrakha plant."

"I want something that's her," and Kathleen smoothed the girl's hair back and smiled with success. "Shaila," she said emphatically. "It means small mountain."

Kathleen squatted down beside the newly named child. "Say Shaila, dear. That's your name." The deep blue eyes regarded her calmly. "Let me hear you say Shaila, dear?"

"Shy… Ia." The light voice stumbled.

"Shaila," Kathleen repeated the syllables. "You need a name. You are Shaila."

"Dida?" the child asked, smiling at the nun.

"I do believe that's the first time she's smiled," 'Phania said, pleased.

"No," Kathleen said to the little girl. "Shai… Ia," and Kathleen repeated it, accenting no syllable and poking the child lightly in the chest. "You are Shaila. I am Sister Kathleen." She pointed to herself. "Sister Kathleen."

"Sss… er," was the response. "Kaaa.

"She's old enough," 'Phania said with marked patience. "She should be able to handle three syllables."

"The report says there's no physiological reason for her not to speak." Kathleen sounded dubious even to herself. She hadn't heard a single word from the child, even to one of the other babbling children. Bangladeshi loved to talk and children chattered all the time among themselves. Except this one.

"The trauma of nearly drowning," 'Phania stated.

"Shaila!" Kathleen repeated, determined to succeed in getting the child to speak her new name if she did nothing else that day. They had neglected this little waif long enough, getting the others settled in. She put a finger on the small chest, repeating the name once again.

The child shook her head solemnly and poking her chest with a muddy thumb said distinctly, "AmaREEyah!"

"Amareeyah?" The two nuns were flabbergasted and looked at each other. Sister Kathleen looked back at the girl. "Amareeyah is your name?"

"Amareeyah!" Then the child turned back to her endless gardening, crooning softly at her seedlings.

Sister Epiphania smiled. "Amareeyah is a lovely name." She did not add, "better than Shaila" because that would have been unkind.

"I don't recognize that as a Bengali name," Kathleen murmured.

"It could be," 'Phania said. "But she's definite that it's her name."

When Father Salih arrived, he was somewhat doubtful about the propriety of baptizing an orphan who might yet be claimed by a Muslim family. He did write "Amareeyah" down in his diary. Uncles or grandfathers had now taken away all of the older boys who had been lodged at the Holy Innocents Orphanage after the flood. Even though the traditional Hindi thinking was giving way to modem pressures, girls were not so quickly claimed. Still, he sided with Sister Kathleen that Amareeyah had a more European cast of countenance and physique.

"She might even be younger than the doctor thought. She's well grown, which might be more her ethnic background than her chronological age. Look at her bone structure and compare it with the more fragile-looking Muslim girls."

The three of them did, watching Amareeyah, her hair neatly braided down her back, as she squatted by her "garden," carefully hoeing the ground with her fingers. As usual she was crooning to her sprouting vegetables.

"What is she singing?" Father Salih asked the two European nuns.

Sister Kathleen, who had a strong alto voice, shrugged. "Nothing I ever heard. Surely nothing remotely Bangla. But she's no trouble. And she's very good about weeding her rows. If she's younger, are we asking too much of her?" she finished with a worried frown.

"If she is doing it, let her," was Father Salih's advice.

"Would you also tell them in the diocese office that we may have a European cygnet among our Bangladeshi chicks?" 'Phania asked.

"I will be doing that," the priest replied but he didn't make a note of it when he should have. Later, he could not remember exactly what it was he should have entered into his report of the visit to that area.

In Dhaka, Lance Baden had continued to hoist in supplies. The heavy concrete curves that could be sunk in the torrents to prevent more levee breaches were vitally needed if they were to keep any more of Bangladesh from flooding into the Bay of Bengal. The Australian kinetic and his teams worked round the clock. He never thought he would yearn for the six-hour shifts of Padrugoi Space Station. But he wasn't working under the tactless, stifling personality of Barchenka and that made a difference. Kayankira, the head of the Delhi Parapsychic Center, had managed to get through by fourwheel-drive truck and now handled the emergency telepathic traffic.

The third day after they had controlled the worst of the flooding, local non-Talented relief personnel approached him to locate some of those listed as missing. That list was by no means complete. The drowned or fatally injured bodies-quickly buried or cremated-were slowly being registered. Among the missing were a civil engineer, Tony Bantam, his wife, Nadezhda, and their five-year-old daughter. They had not reached their destination, Nawabganj, where Bantam had been assigned to survey the Tajhat Palace for possible restoration before the beautiful palace disintegrated. Nadezhda was a qualified architect and teammate. Their last known stop was Sirajganj, located at the confluence of the Tista and the Jamuna rivers. They had purchased fuel at the station there; Bantam had signed a Division chit the evening before the monsoon hit. He had probably heard the weather report, since he was prudent enough to fill his tank and several reserve containers, but what had happened the next day was anyone's guess. Bantam had a sturdy four-wheeldrive vehicle with flotation capabilities, in case he had to ford rivers, so they should have been safe enough even in monsoon conditions. Tony was known to be a competent driver. His wife was equally able for most contingencies. There was no sign of the vehicle anywhere along the logical route they should have taken to reach Nawabganj, nor was the chassis number reported when the flooding receded enough to disclose abandoned cars and trucks.

"Look, if you have anything of theirs to give my 'finder,' Bahadur Rafi…" Kayankira asked hopefully of Bantam's Bangladeshi supervisor. The man had come to the improvised office to find out if the missing family had been found. Kayan's large eyes and expressive mouth conveyed the urgency of her request.

Lance had only one man in his group, Fred Kiersey, who had some "finding" ability in his mainly kinetic Talent. Kayankira, unfortunately, had no one stronger at her Center. Fred was already working longer than normal hours, shifting materiel kinetically to where it was urgently needed. In his "spare" time, he tried, with possessions of the missing, to find them. He was inordinately pleased with his success rate even if he was only finding those still alive.

"In Engineer Bantam's office will be items he has been handling," replied the man who had authorized Tony Bantam's expedition. The Bahadur bowed humbly, hand to his forehead, and with great sadness in his large brown eyes. "I will be sending them to you as soon as may be."

"More chance of finding a trace if we also have something of the wife and child," Lance added, raising hopeful eyebrows.

"Their house was one of the many drowning," and Rafi Siti sadly gestured to the northwest where the Jamuna had swamped low-lying lands.

"Oh," Lance said, grimacing. Waterlogged items would not emanate sufficient traces of their owners to be useful to a limited finder like Fred.

"It will take a few days to-" Rafi Siti broke off when Lance raised his hand discouragingly. "Accha! That may be too many days?"

"No, the water. We have no strong finder available," Kayankira said apologetically. "We were lucky enough to muster the kinetics," and she gestured at Lance Baden, who had never explained exactly how he and his men had managed to land safely at monsoon-swept Zia Airport. She felt the Bahadur's intense sorrow at his impotence and inwardly grimaced because she could offer no real assistance. The monsoon had claimed so many lives.

Lance was equally distressed. Had Barchenka not been so unreasonable in her demands on the Talents, the necessary teams would have been in place long before the flooding got out of hand. Lance clenched his fists. Well, he had to console himself that the telekinetics had gotten to Bangladesh at all-thanks to young Peter Reidinger, the "skeleteam" that Rhyssa Owen was training at the Center for Parapsychics in Jerhattan. "Bring anything Bantam had handled a lot. We'll do what we can."

The Bahadur brought his palms together and bowed his gratitude, slipping out of the Talents' temporary office with sorrow and dignity.

"We will do what we may," Kayankira said. "But first we need something to trace with." She jotted a note down on her screen, adding to a list that was already many pages long.

"If we get hold of something traceable, Kayan," Baden said, firmly resolving that he would do what he personally could, "we can send it to Carmen Stein in Jerhattan. She's the best finder I know of. Or we could ask Rhyssa if we can borrow her."

Kayankira gave a self-effacing grin. I have already asked, for I know her reputation. Rhyssa said she is desperately needed on some Linear problem. Maybe later."

They both turned to more immediate problems and all but forgot their resolve in the press of other emergencies.

The Bahadur had evidently delivered Tony Bantam's journal at a time when both Lance and Kayankira were out of the office. Lance found it six days later, when he could no longer delay the return of all his kinetics to Padrugoi Station. Cursing under his breath at failing to find the missing couple, Lance was about to stuff the leather-bound book in his luggage when a picture fell out, one of the old flat type that had been largely replaced with tri-d's. All three Bantams had posed for this, their daughter sitting between her parents, looking straight at the camera, her expression solemn, her hands crossed in her lap. Tony Bantam-Lance vaguely remembered seeing him at some of the Southeast Asia conferences-and his exotic-looking wife were both looking down at their child, with such proud and doting expressions that Lance felt a sudden stab of anguish. Surely they hadn't perished. They deserved to live long and happily together. He carefully slipped the photograph back into the journal, making sure it was secure before he closed the book, and wrapped it in a clean hand towel so that the "traces" of Tony Bantam would not be marred. He'd send the journal to Carmen Stein. She was good at finding lost people, especially families.

He must remember to mention getting the journal to Kayankira, who had already returned to Delhi where she was facing crises of her own. Meanwhile he had a shuttle to catch and the newly promoted General John Greene might be casual about many things, but not about being on time for a launch. As Lance took his seat in the rattletrap ground vehicle that would take him to Zia, he thought that the heat in Bangladesh had one great advantage: Bantam's sweaty hands would have left very traceable marks on the leather cover of his journal. Carmen Stein would find the Bantams. He was sure of it.

Weeks later, a report was forwarded from the Bahadur that the bodies of two Europeans, identified by their DNA as Tony and Nadezhda Bantam, had been found. They had been trapped by debris in one of the little inlets along the Jamuna, several kilometers south of Sirajganj. Their four-wheel-drive vehicle was discovered not far from their bodies. No trace of their daughter had been found. The theory was that such a small body had been flung free of the vehicle and the child had probably drowned.

That was when Lance Baden, so constantly plagued by Barchenka's demands, recalled that he had not sent the leather journal to Carmen. He found it, still wrapped in its clean towel, at the very back of his personal storage space.

He found the photo, and now he knew why he had felt unaccountable anguish at seeing it. The Bantams were already dead. He touched each face with a light finger of benediction for their deaths. Maybe… just maybe, the child had somehow survived. After all, her body had not been found.

He hesitated before rewrapping the journal; a clean towel was a treasure not lightly to be given away. Up on Padrugoi, clean clothes were a luxury, so he'd had all his clothes washed prior to leaving. With quick movements, he wrote a covering note to Carmen Stein, slipped it and the photograph back in the journal, relinquished the towel as a cover to protect whatever trace the leather might bear, put it all in one of the special Talent-locked envelopes, and sent it off with the next Talent shipment to go downside.