many things every poor Indian child learned. One never knew when the opportunity to own one of the wonderful beasts might present itself. Back in the days when most vehicles had been powered by ever more highly priced gasoline, camel cart drivers had looked down on frustrated vehicle owners and smirked, secure in the knowledge that their venerable means of transportation required neither petrol, nor lubrication, nor insurance, was unlikely to incur speeding tickets, used no imported parts, and in the absence of onboard computers or auto AIs was quite capable of parking itself.
All that had changed considerably with the advent of the hydrogen-driven, fuel-cell-powered car. But a camel was still cheaper to run.
Not this one, though. It was too sophisticated. As if to prove the point, the android dromedary looked down at him and said, in a no-nonsense preprogrammed voice, 'State your business.'
'I am Sanjay Ghosh.' He checked his chronometer. 'I have a ten o'clock appointment with Mr. Chhote Pandit.'
The camel looked him up and down, the gleaming lens of one eye recording his outward appearance, the lens of the other probing deeper to check him for weapons. It detected, among other things, the mollysphere packed carefully in the secret compartment of his left shoe, but did not remark on it.
'Go on in,' the camel directed him. Its business concluded, it resumed chewing its nonexistent cud. As he walked past, Sanjay couldn't keep from examining the robot's flanks. No doubt there were other, far more lethal devices buried within that faux furred body.
Pandit was not what Sanjay expected. Anticipating someone youngish, bright, and with an advanced degree from Bangalore or somewhere else in the southern Silicon Triangle, he instead found him self in a room more like an audience chamber or den than a modern office, facing a man considerably older but otherwise not unlike him self. As they shook hands and exchanged steepled fingers and head bows, it was all he could do to forebear from asking his host the name of the village he hailed from.
Taking a seat on a couch opposite another, Pandit gestured for his guest to sit. There was no table between them; only a fine rug predominantly woven of blue and red thread whose pattern Sanjay did not recognize. On the walls were delicate paintings of incredibly fine detail that hailed from the school of Rajasthan miniatures. Some of them looked old, though Sanjay was hardly an expert in such things.
'Persian,' his host told him. 'The rug,' he added when his guest did not respond. 'Royal Sarouk. Two hundred years old.'
Suitably impressed, Sanjay made sure his feet rested lightly on the dense fibers. 'It looks almost new.'
Pandit smiled and nodded. 'The hallmark of a good rug.' He was a small old man, shorter even than Sanjay, with a wispy white beard and prominent sideburns like steel wool. His prominent ears stuck out from the sides of his head like those of a baby elephant, he was missing several teeth that could easily have been regenerated or replaced with synthetics, and he wore a plainly embroidered sherwani coat of ivory-hued cotton over an equally basic, pajama-like chundar. The only sign of modernity on his body-indeed, in the entire room-was the gold-tinged control bracelet encircling his left wrist and the chronometer on his right. Absently, Sanjay wondered what the former could summon. He suspected he might have the opportunity to find out. He did not have to wait long.
'Tea?' asked his host. When Sanjay nodded affirmatively, Pandit whispered to his bracelet.
Through some mechanism Sanjay could not discern, the priceless rug rolled itself up and off to one side. A portion of the wooden floor slid silently aside to reveal an exquisite low table cut from a single block of white marble. In full pietra dura style, the marble was inlaid with flowers, leaves, and birds fashioned from shards of precious
and semiprecious stone: lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, carnelian, turquoise from Iran, jasper, agate, malachite from Africa, tiger eye, mother-of-pearl, and more. Built into the center of the table was a heating unit atop which sat a silver pot damascened in gold. Steam issued from the pot's curved spigot. Cups rested nearby, together with containers of milk, cream, and several kinds of sugar.
'Please.' Pandit gestured for his guest to help himself. Sanjay fixed a cup, sat back on the comfortable couch, and sipped. He eyed the cup as he gestured with it. 'Not marble?'
Pandit smiled back as he poured for himself. 'Too easily stained by tea, as I'm sure you know.' Adding sugar and milk, he sat back on the other couch and stirred slowly, regarding his visitor out of narrowed eyes. 'You are a walking contradiction, Mr. Ghosh.'
Sanjay maintained his poker face; his business face. 'How is that to be, Mr. Pandit, sir?'
'You do not look in the least like the sort of person to be demanding the kind of money that is being asked. You look, and please do not feel slighted when I say this, like a dirt farmer.'
Somehow Sanjay managed not to flush. He certainly would not have thought of responding with something like, 'That's funny-so do you.' Instead, he replied, 'I am only a poor servant of another, who wishes to remain anonymous.'
Pandit coughed slightly into his tea, availed himself of a longer swallow. 'As am I, as am I. Both of us being middlemen, then, it should be easy for us to reach an understanding. I am sure you are being paid a commensurate fee. As I will be.' Sanjay, properly, said nothing.
Abruptly, Pandit looked bored. 'Well, let's get it over with. This should not take long. It cannot, because despite what you may think from appearances, I am a busy man. You have only been allotted this brief bit of my time on the personal recommendation of another whose information I value highly. Otherwise you would not have gotten past the entrance to this complex, much less into my ante office.'
'I know that, Mr. Pandit, and I am grateful.' Sanjay's response rang of honesty because it was just that. 'I have only one thing to show you. It represents what my client has to offer for sale. I don't pretend to understand it. The details are unfamiliar to me personally. But I was assured by my client that when it was presented to you, you would know how to read between the lines it will make available to you to such an extent that you will be able to bring my client in contact with an appropriate buyer for what he is offering to sell.'
'Yes, yes.' Pandit checked his own chronometer impatiently. 'Well, drink your tea and get on with it. Let's see this wonderful thing- whatever it is.'
Without further comment Sanjay lifted his left leg and crossed it over his right, the better to access the hidden safety compartment in the sole of his shoe. Pandit paid hardly any attention to the process, as if such low- tech subterfuges were old news to him. Extracting the packet holding the small molly, the shopkeeper slid it across the inlaid tabletop to his host.
Pandit opened it and removed the contents. 'Standard information storage device.' Sharp eyes focused on his guest. 'Is there anything special I should know before I try to access it?'
Sanjay looked appropriately innocent. 'All I was told was that removing it from my shoe would allow it to be activated. I am not sophisticated in such things.'
His host studied both mollysphere and merchant for a moment before addressing his command bracelet once more. Mimicking the ascension of the beautiful coffee table, a small pedestal console rose out of the floor in front of the couch. Pandit popped the molly into one of its available receptacles and waited for the precision internal alignment of magnetic field and variable focal-length lasers to lock in. He was mildly disappointed when the box unit generated only two-dimensional information.
His eyes widened, however, as he studied the readouts that were generated in the air before him. Eyeing their backside, Sanjay could make out words and diagrams, charts and numbers. It was doubtful that he would have been able to make sense of the highly technical terminology even if he had been sitting alongside Pandit on the other couch and viewing the display from the front. Though intensely curious, he did not say anything. For one thing, he did not want to break his host's sudden concentration. For another, if he were to view the display he might be asked to comment on its meaning, thus revealing the extent of his ignorance about the contents of the molly.
'By Mohini's girdle!' Pandit breathed softly as page after page of heads-up information automatically winked in and out of existence in front of him. He took a moment to peer around the display at his patient guest. 'Have another cup of tea. Do you know what you have here?'
Sanjay might not be highly educated, but he was mentally agile. 'Something of great value.'
'Be obscure, then, if it pleases you.' There was no rancor in Pandit's voice as he returned to studying the floating fount of information. Either his guest was truly ignorant of the molly's contents, or else he was playing dumb for commercial reasons. While Pandit might prefer to believe the former, from a business standpoint it was much safer to believe the latter. The older man's reaction rendered Sanjay even more curious about the molly's contents. Just what was it that the furtive Taneer had given him to sell?
