promised to get back to the shopkeeper with firm offers and a high bid before the end of the week. Sanjay could not keep a touch of awe from his voice as he reported this.
'We're both going to be rich, my friend,' Taneer had assured him.
Sanjay had nodded. 'You are going to be much richer-but I have no problem with that. I am only taking a commission.'
'Some 'commission,' ' the scientist had responded, whereupon both men shared a laugh.
Was that a shadow behind him?
Without thinking, he looked back sharply. He was not the only one using the sidewalk on this side of the busy street. There was no such thing as an empty sidewalk in Sagramanda. If not thick with pedestrians, it was occupied by the homeless. Any open space greater than a meter square was considered fair game for squatters.
A particularly tall man had halted by a makeshift lunch counter and was buying what at a distance appeared to be patra ni machhi-fish in banana leaf. That was a Parsi dish, not a specialty of the state where Sagramanda lay. Food from Mumbai-and originally from Persia. Could the man be Iranian? Certainly his height caused him to stand out among the average city dweller. You are being paranoid, Taneer accused himself.
Paranoia is healthy, his brain reminded him. He resumed walking. But instead of following his usual path toward the nearest subway station, he turned left at the next corner instead of right. Using the excuse of crossing the street, he managed a surreptitious glance back the way he had come.
Munching on his fish, the tall man was still behind him. The distance separating them had not changed.
Don't panic, he told himself. It is not impossible that you are both heading in a similar direction. It may be nothing more than coincidence. He kept walking long after he would normally have been aboard the first subway car heading for the next station in his carefully worked-out roundabout route home. And it was getting dark.
Was the tall man closing the distance between them? Without con stantly looking back over his shoulder it was impossible to tell. And if he gave in to that impulse to repeatedly check on the other man's location, it would signal to the other that his purpose had been discovered. What would happen then? Taneer lengthened his stride and increased his speed. When he finally decided to risk another glance backward, he found that he had opened up some distance between himself and his shadow. Deliberately, he maintained the new, faster pace.
Another half an hour passed before he felt reasonably confident he had either lost his pursuer or else had sloughed off someone who had not been tracking him in the first place. Ten minutes' additional walking at a much slower pace served to confirm his hopes. He was not upset. Far better to burn a little time and be sure than to rush and commit a fatal mistake. There was only one problem.
It was dark, and he was lost.
So focused had he been on trying to lose a possible tail without giving himself away that he had neglected to properly keep track of his surroundings. Always a fast walker anyway, he had covered a respectable number of kilometers in less than an hour. A glance up at a street sign's softly glowing luminescent letters indicated that he had arrived at the intersection of Saranad and Aberdeen. The intersection was notable for several things: an alarming lack of light, either from passing vehicles or storefronts; an absence of purposeful pedestrian traffic; and the feeling of complete disorientation that had come over him.
No matter. Better to be momentarily lost and unnoticed than in familiar surroundings and hunted. He would seek directions from a shopkeeper.
But of the few shops that were not gutted and abandoned, all were shut tight. None were boarded up, of course, because the homeless would steal the boards to fashion makeshift homes of their own. From the vicinity of their wretched residences of clapboard, scavenged metal, and plastic, the hollow eyes of the enduringly destitute eyed him with curiosity. The dominant scent in the night air was one of urine and human waste thickened to a lugubrious miasma by the unrelenting humidity. It struck him that he must be by far the most well-dressed and most prosperous-looking individual on the street, perhaps in the entire neighborhood. That was not necessarily a good thing. Not on a moonless night in a zone devoid of busy shops and cafes.
Then, quite without warning, the attention that had been increasingly focused on him shifted. Figures standing or sitting in alleys melted back into the narrow slot canyons of concrete and stone from whence they had initially emerged. Synthetic sheeting was unrolled to drape disheveled families in plastic shrouds. Those who were healthy enough began to walk faster, then to run. They all seemed to be looking in the same direction, back up the street down which Taneer had come. Could it be the tall man? If so, what had he done, what reputation preceded him, to inspire such fright in so many with nothing to lose?
Turning to gaze in the same direction, he saw not one but several figures coming toward him. Bunched tightly together, they advanced slowly, in several lines. He did not know whether to be relieved or afraid. On the one hand there was no sign of a tall man among them. In fact, as they drew nearer he saw that there was no sign of a man of any height among them. The methodically advancing group was com posed entirely of women.
He seemed frozen to the spot. Not knowing where he was, entirely ignorant of his immediate surroundings, he had no idea which way to run. Could he stare these women down? Or would they simply ignore him and walk on by? Surely they couldn't be robbers. Not because there was no such thing as female bandits. From Phoolan Devi on down, the country had a rich tradition of notorious dacoits of both sexes. It was just that from what he had already seen there was nothing in this neighborhood worth stealing. A chill ran down his back. Body parts, perhaps. There was a nasty underground market in body parts harvested largely, though not exclusively, for export.
He was almost right.
One thing was made clear immediately. As they drew near enough for him to meet their eyes, it was evident that their attention was focused on him and him alone. None were looking elsewhere. With a start, he realized that they might have been following him for some time. Intent on monitoring the whereabouts of the tall man, who an uneasy Taneer now realized had probably been nothing more than another wandering citizen engaged in perfectly ordinary everyday business, he had neglected to note if he was being trailed by anyone else. He had allowed himself to become preoccupied with one person to the exclusion of all others. The wrong person.
Were the members of this group among the many who had been engaged by his furious former employer to find him? He kicked himself mentally. He should have known better than to be watchful only of men. But if that was the case, why were there so many? He counted a dozen of them. An excessive number of professional trackers to run down one lone scientist, surely. And if that was not the case, if they were not bounty hunters or company security personnel or independent investigators, then what did they want with him? Thoughts of organlegging returned. But as a well-read, well-informed citizen, he had never encountered a report or heard tell of an all-female gang of organ thieves.
Was he misinterpreting the hunger in their eyes, and they were not after him at all? A case of mistaken identity, perhaps. Bands of women, especially poor women, often organized themselves to mete out vigilante justice in vast swathes of the immense city where law enforcement was lax and the sight of a policeman infrequent. The hunger in their eyes… The hunger.
Oh God, he thought abruptly as he started to back up. Oh Vishnu. Depahli, I love you. He knew what they were now, these relentlessly advancing poor women with their burning, intent eyes. The knives were coming out now, emerging from the depths of cheap, ragged saris and puffy blouses. Cheap but razor-sharp, the blades glittered as brightly as the eyes of those who gripped them. They
As the lowest of the low, the poorest of the poor, society expected them to eke out a pitiful existence until disease and especially starvation overtook them. Except that some years ago, no one could say exactly when, three such women had impertinently refused to remain complicit in their own quiet, courteous demise. All had children. No matter what their mothers consumed and no matter how it affected them in this life or the next, these women had determined that their children would thrive and survive on a diet of normal mother's milk.
The foundation of that milk was immaterial. It was the survival of the children that mattered. It justified everything. Anything.
Though never boasting many formal adherents, the cult the triumvirate of poor women had founded had grown large enough to alarm the authorities. Despite repeated efforts, they had never been able to completely stamp it out. There were too many poor women, too many starving children. The moral rationalizations offered by the cult were sufficient to sustain its always fluctuating membership. Besides, it was only one of hundreds of cults old and new that boasted believers scattered throughout the city's vastness.
They weren't going to sell him, a terrified Taneer realized as he backed up. They were going to gut and eat
