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
'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.'
