Asha raised an eyebrow. “We must?”
Priya touched her friend’s arm. “We would be happy to stay here a short while to offer what help we can to your men,” she said in Hindi.
The bearded man looked a bit confused but seemed to interpret her words to indicate compliance, so he pointed to the left and led the two women through the camp past smoldering cook fires, rotting food swarming with flies, and dusty tents that blew open from time to time to reveal the dusty blankets lying on the rocky earth. Finally they came to a cluster of tents at the western edge of the camp where their guide pointed at the ground. “Here.” And he walked away.
Asha pressed her lips together for a moment. “Here?”
There were eight tents around the last fire pit and all of their entrances were curtained to hide the men within them. But from nearly all of the tents came the soft coughing and retching of many sick bodies.
Priya nodded. “Here.”
2
Asha entered the first tent unannounced and found four men lying on the ground trying to share a pair of tattered blankets. They were all coughing almost without pause, sometimes grunting softly into their closed lips and sometimes roaring with congested barks and shouts, to be followed by exhausted groans, gasping, and spitting. Small specks of blood dotted the ground and the side of the tent flaps.
Nudging Priya back, Asha unslung her shoulder bag and knelt by the head of the closest man. He rolled his eyes up to focus on her for a moment, murmured something unintelligible, and resumed his coughing fit.
“Is it contagious?” the nun asked.
Asha leaned down to listen to the man’s wet and ragged breaths. Then she peered at his lips and nostrils and the small black flecks of blood on the blanket. “No. I’ve seen this before with coal miners. It’s the dust. It’s in their lungs. They should be wearing masks when they work.”
“Is there anything you can do for them?”
The herbalist shook her head. “I can’t. Once the dust is in the lungs, there is no way to remove it. They’ll continue to cough like this for the rest of their lives.”
“So they will live?”
“Maybe. If they haven’t inhaled too much dust, then maybe.”
Priya exhaled slowly. “Are you certain there isn’t something you might try? There may not be a treatment for this dust-cough yet, but that doesn’t mean that one cannot be created.”
“No,” Asha said. “Maybe with enough time and enough materials and tools, I might be able to find a way to make them more comfortable. But this is not a new or exotic condition. It’s been studied for years. There’s nothing I can do for them now, not without better supplies.”
“I see.” Priya nodded. “Then we must go to the men in command and tell them about the masks and other precautions to safeguard the workers’ lives. Yes?”
Asha frowned. “They didn’t strike me as the sort of men who cared too much for their workers’ well-being. I think we should wait for evening and then leave when no one is watching.”
“No.” Priya stroked the long mongoose on her shoulder. “Someone must speak for these men. Someone must help them.”
“I wish I could, but I told you, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Then it falls to me. I will do something.”
Asha narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”
“Take me to the man in command.”
“I don’t think that would be wise.”
“I understand that. Take me. Please.”
She almost said something else, but Asha simply pressed her lips together, shook her head, and led her friend briskly back through the camp toward the wooden houses at the southern edge of the field. One of the grim foremen noticed the women coming and he stepped inside one of the houses only to emerge a moment later with the man in the green robe.
“Is this your camp?” Asha asked.
“I sent you to tend to the sick men,” he said.
“And I-”
Priya touched Asha’s arm and the herbalist fell silent. The nun said, “Sir, we have been to see your men. They suffer from an incurable cough caused by the dust from the digging. There is nothing we or anyone else can do for them.” Asha translated her words into Eranian.
The man sighed. “That’s what I feared. Well, if they cannot work, then we’ll get rid of them and find others to take their place.”
After Asha translated his reply, Priya said, “Sir, these men will need your help to return to their homes, but even then they may not be able to work to support themselves and their families. Surely a man of your wealth and resources will want to help care for them?”
The man in green smirked and shook his head. “The railroad must be completed on schedule. I have no time or money to waste on men who can no longer work.”
“Railroad?”
He pointed at the black beast lying on the steel rails. “The Trans-Eranian Railway runs for thousands of leagues across Ifrica and Eran. Soon it will reach the countries of the Far East as well, and our steam trains will race across half the world.”
“Why?” Priya asked.
The man blinked. “Why?”
“Yes, why? What is it for?”
“To travel! To trade! To cross the breadth of the empire in mere days instead of weeks.”
“But what is it you hope to find in Rajasthan and India? What is there in the east that you so lack in the west that you need this railroad to reach it so quickly?”
The man stared at her in silence, his eyes narrowed and brows thrust furiously together with a sea of wrinkles on his forehead.
“My friend and I are journeying into the west,” the nun continued. “I suppose we might reach distant places sooner using your railroad, but then we might miss all of the places along the way. All of the people. All of the sounds and tastes. And if we miss our own journey, then what was the purpose of the journey at all? We might as well stay at home if we wished to see and hear and learn nothing new.”
The man’s glare faded into weary annoyance. “Obviously, you don’t understand.”
Priya smiled. “If I did, I wouldn’t have asked the question. But we have wandered far from our original purpose here. The men. The men who are sick will not recover, and the men who are still working are in danger of becoming sick as well. What will you do about this?”
“What would you suggest?”
“Masks,” Asha interjected, not waiting for Priya to answer. “A heavy strip of cloth to cover the nose and mouth, and to be soaked in water at least once an hour to keep the dust out of their lungs.”
The man squinted a bit. “This will keep them healthy enough to work?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “All right. It’ll mean more water, which is precious right now. I suppose I’ll think about it.”
Before Asha could reply, a deep crackling sound echoed up from the earth beneath their feet, and then a single titanic boom shook the ground. A pale brown plume of dust erupted from the work site at the eastern end of the camp, and the workers came running out of the dirty cloud.
“Damn,” the man in green grimaced. “What now?”
