Sagramanda, a Novel of Near-Future India

*12*

Sanjay was wrapping the rug when the call on his secure number came through. He was reluctant to take it. An early rule he had learned in this business was that when a customer agreed to a purchase it was prudent to conclude it as quickly as possible lest at the last minute they change their mind and ask for their money back. Even when a price had been agreed upon and a credcard debited, ever-fickle tourists had been known to insist on canceling the purchase. Someone decided they didn't like the color, or the item was too big, or they had gone overbudget on their vacation. This had happened to Sanjay several times before he caught on.

So he rolled and wrapped the rug with its gold and silver thread, hand-applied beadwork, and sewn-in bits of mirror as expeditiously as possible lest the bored Taiwanese parents and their giggling teenagers decide to move on without taking it. They were very happy with the price they had bargained him down to. Fashioned from a patchwork of elaborate, elegant wedding blouses all sewn together on a heavy backing, the decorative rug was an expensive item to begin with. No doubt his customers felt the obsequious shopkeeper badly needed to make the sale or he would not have come down so far on the price. They were confident in this because they had compared their acquisition with the cost of similar rugs for sale all up and down the street.

They were right about the price of the item, on which they were indeed getting an excellent deal. What they did not realize was that Sanjay would make back the difference together with a little extra by bumping up the cost of shipping and insurance. He did not feel guilty for doing this. After all, if his customers went away happy, and he was happy, then what was there to argue about?

The communicator would not shut up, and he could see that it was distracting his customers. In a burst of activity and a blur of hands he managed to finish the wrapping, double-check the total charge, and shoo his contented clientele outside onto the street before the device ceased demanding his attention. So anxious was he to take the call that he almost forgot to darken his windows and activate the exterior sign that said "Band/Closed." That way, if his visitors from the far east did change their minds, they would not be able to contact him until it was too late and the rug had already "shipped"-even if only to his back storeroom, where it would await eventual transport.

His satisfaction in completing the sale was muted when he saw that the communication was not only marked "urgent" but was triple-encrypted. Only a handful of trusted suppliers and buyers had the ability to put something that significant through to his machine. They, and one other.

"You're sure nobody can intercept this?"

"Yes sir, Mr. Mohan, sir." Inwardly, Sanjay sighed. He had been compelled to repeatedly reassure his exceptional client as to the state-of-the-art status of his shop's communications system. But no matter how many times he did so the assurance never seemed to stick. Reminding himself silently that he existed only to serve his customer, he patiently repeated himself yet again. "As I have told you previously, sir, once I have privatized my shop, no detection equipment can penetrate the electronic shielding and scrambling except those senders who possess the necessary key coding. And as everything is quantum encrypted before it is received by me, I am assured that the mere act of trying to intercept it would result in the secure communication being terminated. As before, you can speak with confidence that our conversation is completely private. Otherwise we would not be talking now." He frowned slightly. "You already know this. Is there some reason for you to perhaps be more concerned than before? Something you are not telling me, sir?"

"The last time I visited you, I was followed," Taneer told him. "Someone working on behalf of my ex-employers, I'm sure. I had more opportunities than was healthy to memorize his face. Tall guy, lean and muscular, part European or American. I just barely got away from him, and nearly got myself killed in the process."

"Oh my goodness gracious, sir! I hope you are all right." Sanjay was genuinely upset. Not so much because he particularly liked his sometimes overbearing, condescending client, but because the other man promised to make him rich; a task the gentleman who called him self Mr. Mohan would be unable to complete if he got himself dead.

"I'm okay, thanks," came the heartening reply. "But I can't come back to your place, and we can't see each other in person. At least not for a while, until I'm sure it's completely safe."

Sanjay found himself looking past his counter, through the shop, toward the darkened windows and the barely visible street beyond. "Tell me honestly, sir: do you think I am safe? Not that I care so much about myself," he lied facilely, "but I have a devoted wife and two fine children to think about."

"Nobody's interested in you." Sanjay took no offense at this cavalier and rather blunt appraisal of his evident nonimportance. It was after all nothing more than a statement of reality. "It's me they want." There was a pause on the other end before the client resumed. "If they should connect us, and someone should confront you, don't try to hold anything back. Don't let yourself get hurt. Tell them whatever they want to know. I don't want anyone else getting in trouble because of me and what I've done."

Suddenly Sanjay found that he did like the other man. "I will take care," he assured his client. "I have been very careful so far. So then, you do not think this person who came after you can connect you directly to me and my shop?"

"I don't know. But I didn't notice him until I was well away from your place. It may be that he was only told to look for me in the area, and is still unaware of our relationship. For both our sakes we need to make sure he remains ignorant in that respect."

Sanjay nodded, even though there was no one in the shop to observe the gesture. "Then it truly is best if you do not come into my establishment anymore."

"Agreed. We'll conduct the rest of our business via communicator and box. I don't foresee any difficulty. The added distance shouldn't impact our dealings." The scientist's tone softened slightly. "Though I will miss your tea."

Sanjay smiled. "When our business is finished, you can buy all the tea you want, I think. A whole plantation. Or two."

"I'm not interested in getting into the tea business," Taneer told him, evidently not detecting the humor in the shopkeeper's response. "What I am interested in is concluding ours as rapidly as possible. How soon can you make the final arrangements?"

Leaning back in his chair, Sanjay tried to conjure a reply that would satisfy his client. "My goodness, Mr. Mohan, sir: it is not as simple as trying to auction off a truckload of chickens, you know. I am still waiting for all the bids to come in. I do not know how familiar you are with business dealings, but the longer one waits and the more disinterested he seems, the better the price that can eventually be obtained."

The shakiness of the voice on the other end of the secure communication was not the fault of a poor connection. "Sanjay, my friend, we don't have time. If this person finds me again, I doubt I'll be able to get away from him. I could see it in his face. I don't doubt that if he feels it necessary, he will do whatever it takes to secure my cooperation. Or yours, you should know. You have to strike a deal now, while we still have the freedom to do so."

Sanjay nodded reflexively. "Very well, Mr. Mohan, sir. You are the instigator here, whereas I am only a humble facilitator working on a commission. Of three percent."

Exasperation replaced anxiety on the communicator. "Please, my friend. No last-minute renegotiations. I don't have time for that, either. If you're finding our agreement unsatisfactory, I can always -"

"No, no, sir!" Sanjay cut the other man off quickly. "Please excuse me. I meant no offense. You must understand, it is the way I was brought up. Surely you cannot blame a fellow for trying?"

"All right," the voice conceded. "But no more foolishness. This is a deadly serious business, as you should know from the stakes involved. How soon can you close the deal?"

Sanjay considered. "I will go today, if I can get an appointment, to speak with the intermediary who is working to arrange the sale on our behalf. I will explain to him what you have said. But in order to push the business forward, I need your permission to threaten to break off all talkings if the kind of speed you are requesting is not forthcoming."

"Tell him whatever you like," Taneer told the shopkeeper. "Do whatever you have to do. But we must have a deal and make the exchange this week."

"I understand from where you are coming, sir. I will do my very best."

"Oh, and Mr. Ghosh?"

"Sir?"

"Be careful, and don't accept any help from those of whose reliability you are not personally certain."

Sanjay found himself smiling again. "In my business, Mr. Mohan, sir, one learns very quickly about such things, or one morning he wakes up to find he no longer is the operator of a going concern."

A few brief closing pleasantries, and the communication was terminated. As soon as his client was off the line, Sanjay began making encrypted calls of his own. As expected, his contact was as reluctant as he had been to rush a transaction of such magnitude. And just as he had been, his contact did not dare risk losing his share of the deal. It might be done, Sanjay was told. It had to be done, he riposted. Other wise, the entire complex transaction risked falling to pieces.

The intermediary wanted confirmation of final details in person. Sanjay agreed to a meeting that very afternoon. Concluding the conversation, he made hurried preparations to close up shop for the rest of the day. Urgent family business was the explanation he gave to the merchants who operated the stores on either side of his. They nodded knowingly and sympathetically, not believing him for a minute, having themselves utilized the same generic excuse to cover the doing of secret business. But they would watch over his shop just as carefully, had the situation been reversed, as he would have watched over theirs.

Almost, he determined to go straight to Shrinahji. Since time had become so important to his client, the last thing he wanted was to be late for the important appointment he had managed to secure. At the last minute he recalled Mr. Mohan's admonition to always employ a roundabout route when traveling on behalf of their mutual business.

It was well that he did. He was only halfway to the great market when it occurred to him that the same three people were on the back of the city bus that he had seen riding in the same subway car with him when he had left the central district. Two men and a woman. Trying to size them up without staring in their direction, he grew decidedly uneasy not at the sight of the men, but of the woman. Her expression was furtive and uncertain, as if she did not know where to aim her eyes. A woman in the company of two men should not look so uneasy. Also, he did not like the way she kept fiddling with the pallav, or end piece, of her sari. She kept pulling and pushing it up higher on her left shoulder, as if she was using the silken folds to hide something there.

It could be coincidence, of course. The three might really be traveling the same route that he was. Furthermore, neither of the two men fit the description of his client's tracker. They were of average height, and neither looked in the least bit European. Nor had Mr. Mohan said anything about a woman.

Sanjay knew he could not take any chances.

Exiting the bus at the next stop, well in advance of his intended destination, he found himself in an upper-middle-class commercial district. Drifting adverts assailed him, clamoring for him to try, buy, and not be shy about sampling the latest range of domestic products, imports, and joint-venture goods. Pushing through a loosely regulated street-storm of light and noise entreating him to acquire a new car, new furniture, new entertainment options, new hair, new body odor, and old vits recalibrated for contemporary playback devices, he worked his way through the comparatively well-dressed, well-groomed crowd of upwardly mobile service personnel, students, and technocrats who jammed the eastern sidewalk.

A single backward glance was enough to confirm his escalating fears. The somber menage a trois was still behind him, following at a discreet distance, striving assiduously to look everywhere but in his direction while not losing track of him.

He began wildly searching his immediate vicinity. Would they just continue to follow him? Or if they could catch him out alone somewhere, in a store or while waiting for transportation, would they decide their presence had been detected and choose to confront him instead? With questions, and the means to persuade him to provide the answers they sought?

He determined not to give them the opportunity. Though he found himself in a strange neighborhood, there was nothing alien about his surroundings. It mimicked its cultural and social counter parts throughout the city. Storefronts emblazoned with "Sale!" signs offered Bata shoes, Nike sneakers, and cheap socks from China. The broad windows of kapri ki dukan-clothing stores-featured remark ably lifelike holoquins whose flashed-on garb changed every couple of minutes. Larger shops flogged every imaginable size and variety of consumer electronics from Japan, China, Europe, and Southeast Asia as well as the familiar homegrown brands. This not being a tourist area, there were few shops akin to his own.

There was the usual line outside the local Starbeans. Ignoring the frowns of those waiting he forced his way inside, claiming that he was meeting friends already arrived. Pushing through the milling, chattering crowd, he worked his way up to the counter. One of a dozen automated serving stations politely inquired if it could take his order.

He had to make it look real. After a moment's thought he replied, "I'll have a couple of chocolate-chip vadas, please, with a chota masala chaicchino." While he waited for the lentil doughnuts and the spicy frozen drink, he kept glancing surreptitiously in the direction of the entrance.

His heart sank when he saw the single-minded trio enter. Trying to remain inconspicuous, they approached the end of the counter nearest the door and placed orders of their own. That, at least, was a good sign. Sanjay doubted they would have bothered to do so had they believed their anonymity had been compromised.

His order arrived. So nervous was he that he had to flash his cred-card three times under the reader before it would accept the charge. Moving away from the counter, he did his best to appear nonchalant as he slowly wended his way toward the rear of the establishment. It did not concern him that every seat and stool was taken by office workers on break or students from the nearby university. He had no intention of sitting down.

The small doughnuts went down fast, the cardamom and ginger in the chaicchino tickling his palate. Beyond that, he barely noticed the food or drink. As expected, there were bathrooms in the back and lines for both. That didn't bother him, either. He no more had time to piss than he did to sit.

There was no alarm on the rear doorway. Besides complying with municipal regulations requiring a second exit, it offered another way into the coffeehouse. The fact that no one was using it told him all he needed to know about the nature of what he was likely to find out back. Shoving hard against the door, he stepped out of the upscale enterprise and into another world.

The air in the alley stank of illegally flushed washwater, uncollected trash, decomposing food, the presence of undocumented night-dwellers, rotting appliances, and the presence of monkeys, rats, mice, and snakes, all compounded by the furnace-like heat of midday. But this was an upper-class neighborhood, and so the service alley was cleaner than many all-too-public streets he had walked in poorer neighborhoods.

An automatic closer had pulled the door shut behind him. Had his pursuers noted his escape, and were they even now moving to follow him? And if they confronted him in the alley, out of sight of witnesses, would their impatience lead them to put their questions to him directly, rather than continuing to follow to see where he might lead?

Should he run left, or right? Leftwards led to a narrowing and darkening of the passage, where the upper floors of commercial buildings nearly touched and where a man could be beaten to within a heartbeat of his life without awareness of his battering impinging on the consciousness of any of the thousands of busy pedestrians swarming through the shops and on the main street beyond. Not the best option.

To his right-to his right sat two figures, indifferent to the world but not unaware of their surroundings. One was old, while his companion was older. The first had a neatly trimmed short beard that was peppered with gray and hair bound up to one side in long black semi-dreads. The senior of the pair wore his hair in long braids and boasted a gray-black beard as dense and untouched as the rusting wire fence on the Ghosh family farm back home. Ash had been used to mark their cheeks and the sun-seared arms that emerged from folds of bright carrot-colored clothing, while their foreheads bore decorative marks in gold and orange.

The men were sadhus, wandering holy ascetics, who for the most part eschewed the trappings of Earthly existence in their search for the True Path, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Realization, Kavayla, Nirguna Brahman, or however one chose to define the ultimate seeking after knowledge. Pithy aphorisms drawn from venerated Sanskrit texts floated across the three-centimeter-wide transparent flexible headband that ran across the forehead of the less ancient of the pair, a moving (in both senses of the word) testament to a lifelong commitment to the dispelling of ignorance. The ancient sayings glowed brightly for all to see, no less ethically efficacious for being solar powered.

The elder sat with his back propped up against the rear wall of the building that housed the Starbeans Sanjay had just fled. One hand helped to support the chillum, or straight pipe, that protruded from his mouth. The aromatic smoke that rose from its bowl reflected the traditional packing of tobacco and hashish, though this particular modern chillum added both chip-driven filter and concentrator to the otherwise old-fashioned pipe.

Glancing in Sanjay's direction, the younger man greeted him politely while extending a hand, palm upward, in the shopkeeper's direction. Sadhus survived on the generosity of others, exchanging good wishes and prayers for alms. Sanjay had no time to waste on the giving of either. He started past them, heading for the far end of the alley where people could be seen rushing busily back and forth on the intersecting main street. His luck was holding: the back door behind him remained closed. He could not rely on that for very long. If those following had not missed him by now, they surely would very soon.

Gnarly fingers reached out to clutch at his pants. "Namaste, sir. Kripaya, please, can you not spare a few rupees for wise men on pilgrimage?"

Both sadhus looked too well established and too comfortable to be on a pilgrimage to anywhere but their local hash dealer, Sanjay decided quickly. But this modest indirection did not obviate their holiness. Whether in motion, standing, or seated, a holy man was ever on pilgrimage. Unable to dislodge the surprisingly strong fingers, glancing frantically back toward the door that he expected to see burst open at any minute to reveal his three restless pursuers, Sanjay fumbled in his pocket for loose paper. At fifty rupees to the

U.S. dollar, only beggars and the truly poor bothered with coins, while the well-to-do hardly ever carried cash anymore.

Finally finding a ten-rupee note, he handed it to the grateful ascetic, who promptly loosened his fingers. As Sanjay moved to go, the man looked up at him and smiled broadly. "No special blessing for you, good sir? And if not for you, is there no one in your circle in need of prayer?"

Sanjay was about to snap that there was not, when a better response occurred to him. "Yes, as a matter of fact, there is." He indicated the coffeehouse's still shut back door. "Three people, two men and a woman, are very likely to be soon coming quickly out of that doorway. Wise men such as yourselves will immediately see from their countenances that they are much troubled in mind." Fumbling again in his pocket, this time he extracted a hundred rupee note and passed it to the sadhu. As he did so, the older man sucked harder on his pungent pipe and nodded appreciatively.

"Do what you can to help them," Sanjay urged both men. "Try to ease their stress. I promise you they need your prayers and intervention more than I."

"You are a generous and caring man." Carefully pocketing the second banknote, the younger sadhu pressed his palms together in front of him, steeple-fashion, and nodded. "One who has concerns for the welfare of others is thrice blessed. Though we have already per formed the morning puja, we will try our best to help these others who are in need of spiritual salving."

Sanjay hurriedly put his own palms together in front of him, closed his eyes, bowed his head quickly, and rushed off up the alley. As he did so there came the sound of a door opening violently behind him, fol lowed by a feminine shout of "There he is!" Though short by Western standards, Sanjay still had the strong legs a farmer developed chasing down stray chickens and vagrant goats. Now as he sprinted madly for the main street ahead, he thought not of chickens and goats but of the leopard that had eaten his dog, and tried to imagine not one but three hungry carnivores behind him.

The first of the hungry carnivores found his way intercepted by a bearded scarecrow clad in bright orange. "Stop!" With upraised hand and ash-decorated palm, the senior of the two sadhus had risen to block the bounty hunter's path. "Are you wise in the ways of Lord Krishna? Do you recite the proper evening prayers? I sense that you are full of disconnection and discontent and that your dharma is weak. We would help you." He extended his other hand, that still held the smoking chillum.

"Get out of my way, old father!" Irritated, the much younger man moved to step around the senior ascetic.

As he did so, he was brought up short by a sudden projection from the headband of the younger sadhu. A tall, well-formed blue man clad in tiger and elephant skin smiled back at him. The figure's long, matted hair was tied into an elegant yet functional knot. Two of his four arms held a trident and a damaru, a small drum. The remaining two were held in the postures known as abhaya and varada mudras, confronting the three trackers. With one hand upraised, Shiva greeted them. The tracker swallowed, hesitated.

The woman pushed forward. "It's only a virtual, you idiot! Step through it. Or if it offends you to do so, then go around." She gestured anxiously. "He's getting away!" She started forward.

"Bad karma flows from you as waste from the mouths of the Ganges," declared the elder holy man. "You should work to cleanse yourselves." So saying, he blew a puff of smoke directly into the face of the irate woman.

It made her cough. Angrily, she turned toward him, reaching for something carried in a pocket. Then she wavered, swaying slightly. Contradicting Sanjay's original supposition, the chillum contained a considerably more powerful mix of blended substances than just hash and tobacco.

"Get…" The woman broke off and swallowed, unable to complete the sentence. Alarmed, both of her companions rushed to support her.

As they did so the third eye of Shiva, the one set between his brows, opened. It was the eye of wisdom, the opening of which serves to destroy unworthy selves and false illusions. As both of the male trackers turned toward it, the projection slammed into their wide-open retinas and stunned their brains. All in good cause, of course. The sadhus would never dream of harming anyone. Especially these three, who were so clearly suffering.

"Relax, please," murmured the senior sadhu soothingly. "Let Lord Shiva work on your imperfections. Let him destroy your illusions, desires, and ignorance, your evil and negative nature, the effects of bad karma, your passions and emotions and all the many things that stand between you and God as impediments to your progress and inner transformation." Approaching each of the three mesmerized trackers in turn, he gently blew smoke from his chillum into their faces.

"Be at your ease, for those who rush about aimlessly in this world will reap their fretfulness tenfold in their next incarnation."

Responding to the sadhu's suggestion the three dazed trackers sat down there in the alley and, one by one, fell into a contented and sudden sleep. At the far end of the passageway, Sanjay was stepping up into the powered rickshaw he had hailed.

By the time his three groggy pursuers awoke from their photonarcotic sleep, rested in body if not necessarily in mind, both their quarry and the two elderly sadhus had long since moved on.

The glassy eye of the suspicious robot camel studied him with the same scrutiny as before, but it finished the inspection more swiftly. Basic biometric information obtained during his previous visit, Sanjay suspected, was already stored in the elaborate automaton's memory.

Somewhat to his surprise he was directed not to the same meeting room as before but to a much smaller room high up in one of the building's two towers. Noticing them on his prior visit, he had thought them merely decorative.

The room was tiny and cramped, with hardly space enough to accommodate him and Chhote Pandit. The view out the single small window was spectacular, encompassing as it did a good portion of frantic, frenetic Shrinahji Market. As on his previous visit, there was tea. This time it was dispensed not from a tea service rising from the floor, but from the right breast of a three-foot-tall automated silver apsara that removed itself from a niche in the wall and executed a perfect, sensuous odissi as it danced over to them. If the intention was to take a visitor's mind off the business at hand and leave him slightly unsettled, it more than succeeded.

Grinning, Pandit whispered to the gold control bracelet he wore. The gleaming apsara dipped its other breast toward Sanjay's cup. "Cream?"

Trying hard not to appear more dumbfounded than he was, Sanjay nodded slowly, entranced by the sophisticated automaton. Chai service completed, it executed several additional dance steps as it backed off. Returning to the storage niche and plugging its reflective derriere into its charger, it settled back into Wait mode.

Enjoying his guest's startled reaction, Pandit sipped daintily from his own cup. "As you may know, humanoid robots are far more costly than the purely functional kind." He cackled with amusement while gazing possessively in the direction of the mechanical. "Ones that can dance as well as serve tea like this are absurdly expensive. This one is taken from the template of an apsara found on the second level of the temple to the Sun God at Konark. An expensive toy. I will not tell you what she cost, except to say that the silver shell was the cheapest component."

Betraying his lack of sophistication, Sanjay could not take his eyes from the now-motionless figure. "I do not care what it cost. I want to see it in action again."

Lowering his head to hide his laughter, Pandit tolerated his guest's artlessness because he had encountered it before. "Then drink your tea and state your business, and it's possible you might be served again." Looking up, his expression as pleasant as ever, he added while stroking his frizzle of a beard, "Or I might call for servants larger and less metallic to throw you out that window, if I feel that you're pissing on my valuable time. You insisted that we arrange this meeting or that any and all dealings would be called off." Clasping his hands together in front of him, he leaned forward slightly, cutting in half the distance between their respective chairs.

"I do not like to be pushed, Mr. Ghosh. Or crudely cajoled, much less threatened. If not for what the mollysphere you brought me con tained, you would not only not be seeing me now, you might not be seeing anything at all."

A lifetime spent dealing with scorching summers and frigid winters, with predatory beasts and corrupt officials, had toughened Sanjay. To take just one example, he knew that starvation was a greater threat to survival than a gun. His host's blatant warning left him attentive but not shaken.

"I must remind you, Mr. Pandit, sir, that what has been done and what is being done is being carried out specifically according to the wishes of my client, and that while I personally might have approached today's get-together differently, as a conscientious agent in this matter I had no choice but to follow the wishes of the one who is employing me in this capacity."

His host grunted grudgingly. "All right-I understand. But since he isn't here, I can only threaten you."

Sanjay nodded as if he had found himself in similar situations many times before, when in fact this was the very first. "I appreciate your position as well, Mr. Pandit, sir."

"Well then," his host muttered, "to business, and the need for this unseemly urgency." He brightened. "And then, more tea."

Sanjay took a deep breath and began. "Recently, I am most sorry to have to say, my client was trailed and nearly killed by a professional tracker most probably working for his former employer. Only today, I myself was followed by three people." When Pandit looked startled the shopkeeper hastened to add, "There is no reason for concern. I was able to lose them long before I arrived at the market."

His host nodded slowly. "It is good that you understand the need to take proper precautions. We are dealing here with sums more common to exchanges among governments than between individuals and private concerns." He gestured amiably. "Of course, anyone who attempted to break into my place of business would immediately be electrocuted, incinerated, intercepted, or shot."

"I had assumed as much." Sanjay swallowed hard and tried not to look uneasy.

It was possible that he succeeded. Or perhaps old Pandit was too preoccupied, or too polite, to take notice. "Imminent death has a way of wonderfully focusing the mind. I understand now your client's need for speed. I have engaged with a number of different potential customers. There are one or two who I believe to be on the brink of coming to terms." Suddenly clapping a hand to each knee, he broke out in a wide grin that emphasized the gaps in his teeth.

"We will do this thing! I myself will do this thing. I will see it done as you ask. Not because I am a considerate person. Not because I am concerned for the safety of your client-or for yours, for that matter. I will do it because I would be loath to lose this commission!" Breaking out into gales of laughter, more witchlike than hearty, he managed to choke out a command to his semiautonomous apsara. Emerging from her niche, she resumed dancing, this time choosing to essay a complex bharat natyam from Tamil Nadu: less sensuous than the odissi but more involved. The serving of tea, as yet, did not come into play. Doubtless that required another verbal command from her proud owner.

"Within twenty-four hours I pledge that I will get back to you with a concrete offer that you can convey to your client," Pandit promised. "To ensure the speediest possible acceptance, he may have to come down somewhat on his asking price." Aged but wiry shoulders shrugged. "That is a decision for him to make. Me, I would be more than content with a tenth of what he is asking. But as a merchant your self, you understand the need to begin bargaining with the most out rageous asking price."

Sanjay felt himself nodding absently by way of reply. His attention was focused on the silver dancer. Grinning like the wizened monkey-god Hanuman, whom he somewhat resembled, Pandit reached out to put a hand on his guest's knee. That finally drew the shopkeeper's concentration back to his host.

"Twenty-four hours. Chhote Pandit's word is his bond. Then it will all be up to your client."

Their business concluded, Sanjay had the delicious pleasure of being uniquely served one more time by the extraordinary automaton. Tea was sipped, dancing observed, music listened to. Ten minutes later Pandit rose, a signal that the meeting was at an end.

"Be careful, my friend." He wagged a warning finger at the departing Sanjay, who was not surprised to find two very large gentlemen of serious mien awaiting his exit. "Try not to get yourself killed; at least not until tomorrow evening after we have concluded this matter."

"Do not worry," Sanjay told him. "I am most assuredly not going back to my shop. I am not even going home, in case that is being watched. I will spend the night in a truck driver's hostel. Trackers would have to be very clever indeed to find me there, and braver still to try kidnapping someone from such a rough place. Tonight I will contact my client. Tomorrow, you and I will speak via secure communicator." He hesitated. "I will tell you one thing, sir, and then I ask that you tell me a thing."

Pandit nodded sharply, once. "Tell and ask, then."

"I believe that my client will accept any reasonable offer you can secure." There was no harm in saying this, Sanjay knew, because as agents for the sale both his commission and that of Pandit would rise or fall according to the final offer. "That is what I have to tell you. As to the asking…" He hesitated for a moment, not wishing to appear any more ignorant than he doubtless already had.

"I know the sum that is being stipulated. It seems impossible to me, the kind of figure that is met only in dreams, or in the stories of Mughals and maharajahs, sultans and nizams. Yet my client has not wavered in his asking price, and in the course of our previous meeting neither did you. What I want to ask is this, and you of course do not have to answer if you feel it is not in your interests." With the air of a man laboring under a cloud of disbelief, he took a step back into the lightly scented chamber.

"Is what my client has to sell really worth such an astonishing sum?"

It was silent in the little room for a moment, a state of affairs not entirely due to its sound-muting capabilities. Then Chhote Pandit looked over at the shopkeeper and replied easily, without a hint of a smile.

"Cheap at the price."