Sagramanda, a Novel of Near-Future India

*16*

Five people stood around the artificial water hole. A sixth had begun to retreat slowly through the dense undergrowth that concealed her. Given so many choices, all equally oblivious to its presence, the tiger logically settled on the one that had its back facing the jungle.

To his credit, Chal sensed the big cat's approach and whirled with almost superhuman speed. Expecting to find a human bearing down on him, he was sufficiently taken aback, for just an instant, to hold off pulling the trigger of his small but exceedingly deadly weapon. When instinct and reflex finally managed to overcome shock, it was too late.

Depahli screamed. Everyone screamed. In the darkness and shadows of the night, the tracker's blood spurted like black milk as the huge cat brought its jaws together across the man's neck. Paws big enough to completely cover a car hubcap slammed into the tracker; one digging deeply in his right shoulder, the other shredding his face like

an angry child toying with a piece of burnt toast. Muscle was pulled away from bone, bone splintered. The tracker went down with the cat on top of him.

It was Sanjay who had enough surviving presence of mind to grab hold of his employer and his employer's girlfriend and pull them in the opposite direction. "Run, Mr. Taneer, sir! And you too, lady! Run this way now, please, back to the fence! We need to get through the fence!"

"Y-yes." Stumbling backward in the clutch of the shopkeeper's determined fingers, a shocked Taneer had to rip his gaze away from the nightmarish scene in front of him. Once, the tiger looked up, glaring green eyes meeting his own. He had seen tigers before; in zoological parks, from elephant back in Bandhavgarh. But not like this. It stunned him, threatened to root him to the spot as effectively as an infinitesimal dose of the deadly fluid contained in the tracker's syringets. Only when the big cat looked down to check on its unmoving prey did the scientist find his feet again. It helped that Depahli, too, was now tugging at him.

Together the three of them turned and sprinted, stumbled, staggered back the way they had come. Only Sanjay dared to occasionally check back over his shoulder to see if the cat was in the mood to take multiple prey tonight. Mercifully, the jungle trail behind him remained empty in the pale starlight.

What was it with him and cats, anyway?

They were halfway back to the fence line before Taneer realized he was still clutching the security case tightly to his chest.

Mr. Vaclav, alias Karlovy Milesclova, was used to dealing with the dangers of large, civilized cities. He knew how to negotiate with muggers, with prostitutes plying their trade on public streets, with beggars and the desperately drug-addicted. He knew how to find his way rapidly and efficiently through airports and other congested public transportation termini. He understood traffic flow and corporate intrigue and social backbiting.

He had not wanted to be here, in Sagramanda, doing this thing. But the consortium's overboard had voted, and he had been designated. Or lost out, depending on one's perspective. More than willing to forgo the promised bonus, he had done his tactful best to beg off. His polite pleading had been turned down.

Now he found himself running for his life. Not from some addled street person with a knife, not from some bomb-throwing antiglobalization terrorist, not from some irate religious fanatic whose personal precepts the consortium he worked for had inadvertently offended, but from a tiger. A tiger, of all things! In this day and age! It was absurd, outrageous, unbelievable. That he, Vaclav Milesclova, executive vice president of an international family of companies whose name was known throughout the world, should be frantically huffing and puffing his way through the jungles of the subcontinent without a chauffeured Mercrysler or Rollsbach in sight, was too much to countenance.

Wild of eye, flushed of face, his heart pounding like a runaway bass drum despite all the hours he had spent on his office treadmill and electronic toner, he looked back. Nothing stirred in the dark behind him except the fronds of the plants he had brushed up against. The starlit path was devoid of devils and empty of pursuit. Though he knew nothing of the habits of wild creatures, it seemed to him quite possible that the beast might well be preoccupied with its fresh… meal. Shuddering, he turned to run on.

He tripped over an unkind tree root, and fell.

His face smacked into the dirt. Raising his head almost immediately, he wiped grit from his flesh and looked apprehensively back over his shoulder. Was that movement, there in the night? Or only wind stirring the trees? Hastily, he scrabbled to his knees and began searching the area where he had fallen. On contact with the ground, he'd dropped both of the prized packages. He found the one containing the molly almost immediately. Like most modern forms of portable information storage, it was well made and had survived the fall with no visible damage. The second envelope…

The second precious, irreplaceable envelope had ripped on impact. While a small portion of its contents lay scattered nearby, the bulk had thankfully remained inside the transparent glassine container. Rising to a kneeling position, he started to pick up what had fallen out, when he heard what was a loud cough somewhere behind him.

Utterly consumed with sheer terror, he struggled the rest of the way to his feet and ran on, heading for the pickup point located just inside the preserve's fence line. He would have used the communicator zippered into his inside shirt pocket to request an immediate pickup instead of the one already scheduled, but he did not want to spare either the time or the wind to make the call.

If the general outline of the massive heat signature that had appeared so suddenly and unexpectedly on his spinner had not been enough to identify its source, the reverberant snarl that traveled through brush and across trees to the place where Keshu had set up his temporary command post was confirmation enough.

"Vishnu!" Johar muttered as he stared at his own readout. He looked over at the chief inspector. "Seems to me I remember seeing something on the news about a rogue cat taking people in this part of the preserve."

"I knew we'd have to coordinate this operation with Transport, but not with Wildlife and Game." Keshu's words came sharp and fast. His difficult decision had been made for him. By an animal. "Tell the two flying squads to head this way. Instruct everyone on the ground to move in." He took a deep breath. "Pick up the Frenchwoman."

Johar eyed his superior uncertainly. "But Chief Inspector, you've been saying all along that without unassailable proof, a court case can't be-"

Keshu cut him off. "It doesn't matter now, Lieutenant. We've done as much as we could, and it's all flown to pieces. I won't risk letting this woman slip away and hide."

"What about the others-these other people?"

Keshu adjusted his turban as he regarded the officer. "One crisis at a time, please, Lieutenant Johar. First the Frenchwoman. Then we'll see if we have a need, or responsibility, to deal with these others." Motioning for the officer to follow, he started forward along a pre determined route that led through the jungle. "Inform everyone as to what is happening out there and instruct them to be extra alert, though all the noise and activity should be enough to frighten off-"

Johar reached out and gestured with his spinner. "Chief Inspector- look."

Frowning, Keshu rechecked his own instrument's readout. Some where overhead, above the ground and below the clouds, the drone was still doing its job. Only now the images it was transmitting made no sense: no sense at all.

When the new arrival had shot the big man and then confronted the others by the water hole, a puzzled Jena had decided that events had become too complicated. Her redemptions were models of simplicity and purity. Not knowing how to proceed under such increasingly baffling circumstances, she had decided to give up on her evening's original intent and had begun to withdraw.

And then the tiger had appeared, striking out of nowhere, slicing through the night like the incarnation of a god. The assassin had found himself slain. It had been a paralytic moment, one of those instants of unforeseen stupefaction capable of numbing even those who thought themselves permanently inured to all manner and kind of violence.

Unlike those clustered by the water hole, Jena hadn't screamed. She had just stared, hardly breathing, looking on as the tiger proceeded to first slay efficiently and then begin to dine on its prey. She crouched in awe, looking on in admiration. She was not frightened.

She was envious.

Never before had she been witness to such studied ferocity. Was the tiger nothing more than a big cat? Or was it truly, as the sacred scriptures declared, the mount of the goddess Durga herself? Jena's mind was awhirl, overwhelmed with the rigors of the long night's stalking, the warm enveloping smells of the jungle, the heat, and now this unexpected miraculous presentation right before her very eyes of death by tiger. From where she knelt she could smell the blood. It was something they shared. Deep, deep within herself, she knew she was more closely akin in spirit and desire to the tiger than she could ever be to its victim.

Was not the great goddess Durga, more properly known as Mahadevi, shown riding upon a tiger? Thus mounted, had not she defeated the demonic Mahisha against whose powers the combined might of all the other gods had shown themselves to be useless? And afterward, was not Durga acclaimed by all and anointed the leader of the gods in all matters of battle?

Why should she not be the same? Would not Mother Kali look with approval on her servant who, taking such initiative, would thereby render herself even more capable of serving? With her daily dose of drugs coursing through her system, dizzy with delusions of divine approval, she rose slowly from her place of concealment and began walking-not away from the scene of primeval carnage, but toward it.

Mesmerized, a flabbergasted Keshu and Johar stared at their readouts. It was the lieutenant who broke the temporary trance.

"Lord Krishna," he muttered, "she's not running away: she's heading right for it."

Roistering his spinner, Keshu broke into a run. "Tell everyone to hurry." He pulled his sidearm. "We have to get close enough so we can fire and scare it off, but I don't want to hit her!" He broke into the brush. Johar was right behind his superior, barking frantically into his spinner.

As she emerged into the small clearing by the water hole, Jena was chanting a favorite mantra to herself. Full of allusions to innocence lost, Mother Kali, India, loves gone astray, and murders committed, it would have provided ample fodder for even the least-demanding clinical psychologist.

It was doubtful that it had much of an impact on her present audience.

Instantly alert, able to see infinitely better at night than any human, the tiger looked up from its meal, raising its bloodied snout from the hollow it had chewed out of the center of the dead tracker's midsection. It stayed like that, staring unblinkingly at the creature that had interrupted its feeding, slowly and unconcernedly licking the blood from its exquisite muzzle.

Removing her clothes, singing softly to herself, Jena reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out the sword. The same sword that had, in the name of Mother Kali, sped so many on their journey away from this sordid, unhappy world. Jena had no necklace of skulls to dangle from her neck, no belt of dead men's hands to encircle her waist, but she had studied with the dedication of a true acolyte. She knew the reputed moves as well as any disciple.

Holding the sword tightly in one hand, regretting she had no head of a demon to display in the other, completely naked to the Sundarbans night, she began to dance.

Her movements were as graceful as those of the ballerina she had once thought, long, long ago, to become. As gracile and fluid as those of a sambar deer, as polished and controlled as those of a mass murderer. Twirling the razor-sharp weapon over her head and breathtakingly close to her sides, eyes half shut as if in a delirium of pleasure, she spun and twirled to the corrupt, unhealthy, soul-crippling music only she could hear. She alone, and Mother Kali, who was forever her lord and savior from the complete and utter insanity that years ago had threatened to overwhelm her completely.

Closer and closer she drew to the tiger, which lay on its belly, alert and watchful. Nearer to death but also nearer to Nirvana, to the trans formation that would make her invincible, unconquerable, indomitable. Soon nothing would be able to touch her, nothing would be able to harm her. Not ever, ever, again.

Voices sounding, coming rapidly nearer. Urgent voices, cajoling but not convincing. She knew those voices. The were the voices of men, that had never done anything but deceive her. She was very close now. She could smell the rancid stink of the dead man's eviscerated torso. She fan cied she could smell the bloody perfume of the tiger's breath.

"Cher pere," she whispered softly as she bent forward. "Do you have my mother's finger?"

"Nahi, no!" Keshu raised his pistol as he burst through the brush. So did Lieutenant Johar, and the half dozen officers who had closed in behind him.

Uttering a thunderous roar, the tiger leaped from where it lay crouched beside the disemboweled corpse of the tracker Schneemann and slammed into the slim, pirouetting form of the human that had dared to decisively intrude on its personal space, stepping over the invisible, imperceptible line the feeding cat had defined for itself. For just an instant smacked out of her self-imposed dream state and back to harsh, unforgiving reality, Jena had a second or so to stare with unglazed eyes up at the monster. Then she thudded into the ground with the big cat on top of her, her head twisted and bent unnaturally backward as she struck the unyielding earth.

Gunshots rang out. Intended to startle and not to kill, the multiple shots caught the tiger's attention immediately. Unsettled by the appearance of so many bipedal shapes and confused by the loud noise, it bounded away from the figure beneath its paws and raced off into the night, abandoning its latest prey and leaving behind only smells and shadows.

Night-goggle-equipped junior officers fired off a few more shots and continued to pursue the fleeing cat. But not too energetically, and only to the edge of the clearing. The huge animal could be anywhere, and special starlight-magnifying goggles notwithstanding, night was its ally, not theirs. Keshu and Lieutenant Johar slowed to a stop near the supine figure of the suspect. Other than a quick, repulsed glance in the direction of the partly eaten carcass, neither showed any interest in the dead man.

Attractive, Keshu thought as he stared down at her. More so than the computer-conjured composite suggested. The sword that lay in the dirt not far from her outstretched right arm was traditional in shape and style. It looked almost as if it had been modeled after a museum piece. That was hardly surprising, he reflected. The multiple murder victims whose killer he had been tracking had not had their heads and limbs cut to pieces with an epee.

At first, he had trouble interpreting the expression on her face. Then it struck him. Ecstasy. That made no sense. In which case, it fit with everything else that had transpired recently. Opposite him, on the other side of the body, Johar was kneeling to examine the motionless form more closely.

"No bite marks." He paused, studying harder. "No claw gouges: not even a scratch." Obviously confused, he looked up at his superior. "But she is dead. I do not need someone from Forensics to tell me that."

Kneeling on the other side of the corpse, Keshu slipped his left hand beneath hair and head and started to lift it. Though he applied very little pressure, it moved freely. Too freely.

"Neck's broken. Must have hit awkwardly and then the cat fell on her. Too much weight for small bones." In death, she looked quite peaceful. At ease. Now he would never know what had motivated her to commit all those killings, all those senseless murders. Because even without conclusive proof, based on everything he had seen this night he was confident that the department had found its serial killer. The stealthy stalking, the presence of the sword: everything pointed to not just a suspect, but to one who was as guilty as he and Subrata and all the others who had participated in the hunt for this woman believed.

And while he might have preferred it to have turned out otherwise, at least he would be spared the need to produce irrefutable evidence at a trial.

He straightened. Overhead, the first of two backup choppers was descending toward the water hole clearing on noise-cancelled blades. "Pack her up. Make sure Forensics handles the weapon carefully. There might be indicators present: blood, DNA, hair. Like sins, evidence is not easily washed away. Minute amounts can get caught between blade and hilt, or on the decorated handle."

"Yes, Chief Inspector." Turning, Johar gestured in the direction of the two unknown dead men. "What about them?"

Keshu was only mildly curious, but wholly professional. "Full body workup. Might be some kind of connection that can be established later. In a case like this, when you can't be sure quite what's going on, you don't want to overlook anything."

The lieutenant nodded. Pulling his spinner, he began establishing contact with the arriving teams. Walking slowly away from the increasingly busy site, Keshu halted at the place where the clearing gave way to dense undergrowth. The tiger had vanished within, swallowed up as if it had never been. A specter, a wraith, a phantom of the jungle. But one that had left behind all-too-graphic evidence of its presence.

They would have to notify Wildlife and Game of the incident, he knew. He did not think he would have to remind Johar to do so. The lieu tenant was very efficient. Standing there in darkness increasingly filled with the noise of men and their machines, an old rhyme came to him.

Tyger, tyger, burning bright, In the forest of the night.

Turning, he looked back to where specialists were now swarming around the broken body of the foreign woman. Was she truly, for certain, inarguably, the serial murderess? Or were the improbable events of this night no more than a fantastical sequence of misattuned coincidences, and the real mass murderer was still out there somewhere, stalking the depths of the city?

Well, there was one way he would know for certain. If the killings stopped. In that event, he did not know whether to thank the tiger or condemn it. If the woman lying dead on the ground behind him was in truth the one responsible, then victims unknown and unnamed should give thanks to the big cat. If not…

He decided he was confident. The circumstantial evidence might not be conclusive, but it was credible. There would be no court trial, no summoning of witnesses, no lengthy parade of long-winded authorities. The thing was done.

Sometimes, he reflected somberly, in spite of what its tens of mil lions of fractious, exuberant, milling inhabitants might want, or even just one very weary police inspector, India went ahead and took matters into its own primordial, indomitable hands.