The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

Kusum shook his head again. 'I took care of him last year during my stay at the Consulate in London.'

Jack saw Vicky stiffen as her eyes widened.

'My Daddy!'

'Hush, child,' Kusum said in an incongruously gentle tone. 'He was not worthy of a single tear.' Then he raised his voice. 'So it's still a stalemate, Repairman Jack. But perhaps there is a way we can settle this honorably.'

'Honorably?' Jack felt his rage swell. 'How much honor can I expect from a fallen...' —What was the word Kolabati had used? —'...a fallen Brachmachari?'

Kusum’s face darkened. 'She told you of that? Did she also tell you who it was who seduced me into breaking my vow of chastity? Did she say who it was I bedded during those years when I polluted my karma to an almost irredeemable level? No—of course she wouldn't. It was Kolabati herself—my own sister!'

Jack was stunned. 'You're lying!'

'Would that I were.' He got a faraway look in his eyes. 'It seemed so right at the time. After nearly a century of living, my sister seemed to be the only person on earth worth knowing...certainly the only one left with whom I had anything in common.'

'You're crazier than I thought you were.'

Kusum smiled sadly. 'Ah! Something else my dear sister neglected to mention. She probably told you our parents were killed in 1948 in a train wreck during the chaos following the end of British colonial rule. It's a good story—we cooked it up together. But it's a lie. I was born in 1846. Yes, I said 1846. Bati was born in 1850. Our parents, whose names adorn the stern of this ship, were killed by Sir Albert Westphalen and his men when they raided the temple of Kali in the hills of northwestern Bengal in 1857. I nearly killed Westphalen then myself, but he was bigger and stronger than the puny twelve-year-old boy I was, and nearly severed my left arm from my body. Only the necklace saved me.'

Jack's mouth went dry. The man spoke his madness so casually, so matter-of-factly, with the utter conviction of truth. No doubt because he believed it true.

'The necklace?' Jack said.

He had to keep him talking. Perhaps he would find an opening, a chance to get Vicky free of his grasp. But he had to keep the rakoshi in mind, too—they kept drawing closer by imperceptible degrees.

'It does more than hide one from rakoshi. It heals...and preserves. It slows aging. It does not make one invulnerable—Westphalen's men put bullets through my parents' hearts while they were wearing their necklaces and left them just as dead as they would have been without them. But the necklace I wear, the one I removed from my father's corpse after I vowed to avenge him, helped mend my wound. I lost my arm, true, but without the aid of the necklace I would have died. Look at your own wounds. You've been injured before, I am sure. Do they hurt as much as you would expect? Do they bleed as much as they should?'

Warily, Jack glanced down at his arms and legs. They were bloody and they hurt—but nowhere near as much as they should have. Then he remembered how his back and left shoulder had started feeling better soon after he’d put on the necklace. He hadn't made the connection until now.

'You now wear one of the two existing necklaces of the Keepers of the Rakoshi. While you wear it, it heals you and slows your aging to a crawl. But take it off, and all those years come tumbling back upon you.'

Jack leaped upon an inconsistency. 'You said 'two existing necklaces.' What about your grandmother's? The one I returned?'

Kusum laughed. 'Haven't you guessed yet? There is no grandmother! That was Kolabati herself! She was the assault victim! She had been following me to learn where I went at night and—How do you Americans so eloquently put it?— 'got rolled.' That old woman you saw in the hospital was Kolabati, dying of old age without her necklace. Once I replaced it about her neck, she quickly returned to the same state of youth when the necklace was stolen from her.' He laughed again. 'Even as we speak, she grows older and uglier and more feeble by the minute!'

Jack's mind whirled. He tried to ignore what he’d been told. Couldn't be true. Kusum was simply trying to distract him, confuse him, and he couldn't allow that. Had to concentrate on Vicky and on getting her to safety. She was looking at him with those big blue eyes of hers, begging him to get her out of here.

'You're only wasting time, Kusum. Those bombs go off in thirty minutes.'

'True,' the Indian said. 'And I too grow older with every minute.'

Jack noticed Kusum's bare throat. He did look considerably older than Jack remembered him.

'Your necklace...'

'I take it off when I address them.' He gestured to the rakoshi. 'Otherwise they wouldn't be able to see their master.”

'You mean 'father,' don't you? Kolabati told me what Kaka-ji means.'

Kusum's gaze faltered, and for an instant Jack thought this might be his chance. But then it leveled at him again.

'What one had once thought unspeakable becomes a duty when the Goddess commands.'

'Give me the child!' Jack shouted.

This going nowhere. And time was passing on those bomb timers…he could almost hear them ticking.

'You'll have to earn her, Repairman Jack. A trial by combat...hand-to-hand combat. I shall prove to you that a rapidly-aging, one-armed Bengali is more than a match for a two-armed American.'

Jack stared at him in mute disbelief.

'I'm quite serious,' Kusum continued. 'You've defiled my sister, invaded my ship, killed my rakoshi. I demand satisfaction. No weapons—man to man. With the child as prize.”