Vimana

whisper.

'I have him here, Kalki.'

'Go now and leave us alone.'

Kalki voice was deeper and more full throated in real life than he had sounded in his recordings or broadcasts. Maya and the others bowed deep and left the room.

Now it was just Aaditya and Kalki. 'So, tell me one thing. Why are you with the Devas?'

'Because you or your people killed my father.'

Aaditya had answered without thinking, and wondered just how true that was. And if it were true, then were his motives in siding with the Devas so selfish? Kalki chuckled.

'Honesty. I love that. You are honest and brave, but like so many of your people, you are also gullible.'

Aaditya realized that he was not really expected to reply, so he waited for Kalki to continue.

'Actually I don't blame you. You've had the very best deceivers to take you for a ride. Know who I am talking about?'

Again Aaditya kept quiet.

'Your Devas, that's who. For all their pretensions of trying to save worlds, they do enjoy the attention. That's why they secretly love being considered gods, and look at the fat lot of good organized religion has brought your world. People tearing themselves apart, in the name of god.'

As Aaditya listened to Kalki, he had to consciously remind himself that this was someone who had killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and not an innocent victim of the Devas' machinations. But Kalki was such a convincing speaker it was hard to not get carried away by his story.

'But you know what their ultimate deception is? The one that I find the hardest to fight?'

Another rhetorical question, another pause before Kalki proceeded. By now it was clear Kalki liked to do all the talking.

'Their biggest deception is that they have successfully demonized me in the eyes of my own children.'

The statement was so strange that Aaditya found himself blurting out, 'What do you mean your children? Where do they come into all this?'

Kalki laughed, a sound like that of an engine idling.

'My children. You. All of you. All the humans on this planet. I created the first of your ancestors, elevating you to become the dominant species on this planet from being little more than apes. And far from being treated as your creator, the Devas have labeled me as Satan, the Devil, Shaitan, call it what you will, while they enjoy the status of gods.'

He spat out the last few words.

'From what I have seen and heard, you've been quite liberal in killing off your so-called children to meet your goals.' Aaditya had found his courage and his voice, both born out of rising anger at Kalki's complaints and platitudes when just over the last few weeks, he had witnessed thousands of people dying due to the tsunamis unleashed by Kalki.

'When my children stray, I need to keep them in line!'

Kalki's voice had risen to a near shout, and Aaditya flinched as Kalki continued, 'You demonize me, you worship my sworn enemies, you deny me the world I shaped. And then you accuse me when I try and get you back into my fold! What has your independence given you? Genocide, wars, riots in the name of colour or religion? You humans have killed far more of your own than I can ever claim, and you lecture me about killing people!'

Kalki's voice was rising with every sentence, and Aaditya was beginning to get afraid that he would explode in rage and have him put away or worse even before he had a chance to put his plan, hare-brained as it was, into effect.

Kalki now stood up, and Aaditya immediately noticed two things. First, he seemed to be wearing a cloak that covered his head and his body, and second that he was huge. He was at least seven feet tall, if not more. He still had his back turned to Aaditya, so all Aaditya could see was his hulking size. Suddenly, Kalki's voice softened.

'You know Aaditya, it takes being a father, being a creator, to realize just how painful it is to be rejected by your own creation. You are yet young, so you may not realize it, but imagine how your father would have felt if you loathed him, if you loathed the very sight of him.'

At the mention of his father, Aaditya's head snapped up. Before the rational part of him could tell him not to appear weak before Kalki, he said, 'What happened to my father? In the room I was in, I saw his things.'

Kalki sighed, his breath coming out with a mighty gust.

'We will come to that. Of course we will. That is why you are here in the first place. I don't think for a minute that you would betray the Devas only for money. But if the truth about your father is what you seek, then you must embrace the full truth about me.'

Aaditya wondered what Kalki meant.

'Aaditya, my greatest tragedy and the Devas' greatest triumph is not just that they have demonized me in your legends and religions. It is that my own creation has learnt to hate and fear the very sight of me. How can I stand before humans today and claim them to be my own? How can I convince them that serving me, their creator, is their destiny, when I have been made the object of horror and revulsion through the ages?'

Now Kalki was facing Aaditya. He was walking slowly towards Aaditya, his face still obscured by the cloak. Aaditya realized that Kalki was even larger than he had first guessed. Aaditya found himself looking up at a creature at least seven and a half feet tall and so broad that Aaditya guessed his shoulders must be at least three times as broad as his own. Involuntarily, Aaditya took a step back, as Kalki chuckled.

'Aaditya, you have seen nothing yet. My size alone is nothing. Come, judge for yourself. Do I really look so repulsive?'

With that, Kalki pulled back the hood covering his face.

Aaditya found himself facing a red-skinned creature, skin scaled like a reptile, and whose red eyes seemed to blaze with a flame. At the top of his head were curved horns, and as he threw off the cloak, Aaditya saw that Kalki's bare body was rippling with muscles and crisscrossed with burn marks and scars. Two giant, leathery wings unfolded from behind his back. Kalki began laughing, as Aaditya shrank back in fear and horror.

He realized that he had truly come face to face with the devil.

***

Some hours later, Aaditya was back in his room, his mind in utter turmoil. It was one thing to show bravado when inside the cockpit of a vimana, quite another to come face to face with a monster like Kalki. Knowing that he was now totally at Kalki's mercy made things only worse. What kept him going was the hope that he could yet learn what had happened to his father, though it was hardly much comfort to contemplate the possibility that his father had served someone like Kalki. For his part, Kalki had refused to say much, saying that he would talk later at night, as he had urgent matters to attend to. However, he did say that Aaditya would find it well worth his time to go through his father's things and learn just how much his father had believed in Kalki's cause.

Aaditya rifled through the writing pad on the desk, but other than the doodles on the cover page, there seemed to be nothing else. He then took out his father's flight suit and began to go through the pockets. In one of the hip pockets, Aaditya found a sheet of paper. He unfolded it and spread it out on the desk. It showed many hand drawn diagrams with several equations and numbers in the margins. Aaditya had been an aviation buff, but this was too technical even for him. However as he studied the diagrams, he began to get the gist of what they showed. The top diagram showed the missile engagement envelopes of the weapons the Su-30 carried. The bottom diagrams were what appeared to be maneuvers that could defeat a Sukhoi in air combat. At least that was what he guessed from the diagrams of saucer shaped vimanas attacking Sukhois at their blind spots.

His mind began racing at the implications. There was no way his father would have carried such a paper on him before his take off, especially since they seemed to depict vimanas. His mind refused to admit the possibility, but if the paper did show what he thought it did, the implication was as clear as it was frightening.

His father had been collaborating with Kalki in teaching him how to defeat human fighter aircraft.

Aaditya folded the paper and put it in his pocket. If his father had not been able to resist Kalki, what chance did he have?

As the lights in his room began to dim automatically, apparently signifying night, the door slid open. It was Maya.