The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

The elevator glided to a smooth halt, the doors slid open, and Kolabati headed directly for the door numbered 9B. She hesitated before inserting the key. This was not going to be easy. She loved Kusum but he intimidated her. Not physically—for he would never raise his hand against her—but morally. It hadn't always been so, but lately his righteousness had become impenetrable.

But not this time, she told herself. This time he's wrong.

She turned the key and stepped inside.

The apartment lay dark and silent around her. She flipped the light switch, revealing a huge, low-ceilinged living room decorated by a hired professional. She’d guessed that on first sight. She could find no trace of Kusum in the decor. He hadn't bothered to personalize it, which meant he didn't intend to stay here very long.

'Kusum?”

She went down to two steps to the wool carpeted living room and crossed to the closed door that led to her brother's bedroom. It was dark and empty within.

She went back to the living room and called, louder now. 'Kusum!'

No answer.

He had to be here! She had to find him! She was the only one who could stop him!

She walked past the door that led to the bedroom he had supplied for her and went to the picture window overlooking Central Park. The great body of the park was dark, cut at irregular intervals by lighted roads, luminescent serpents winding their way from Fifth Avenue to Central Park West.

Where are you, my brother, and what are you doing? What awfulness have you brought back to life?

10

The two propane torches on either side of him were lit and roaring blue flame toward the high ceiling of the hold. Kusum made a final adjustment on the air draw to each one—he wanted to keep them noisy but didn't want them to blow themselves out. When he was satisfied with the flames, he unclasped his necklace and laid it on the propane tank at the rear of the square platform. He’d changed from his everyday clothes into his blood red ceremonial dhoti, arranging the one-piece saronglike garment in the traditional Maharatta style with the left end hooked beneath his leg and the bulk gathered at his right hip, leaving his legs bare. He picked up his coiled bullwhip, then stabbed the Down button with his middle finger.

The lift—an open elevator platform floored with wooden planks—lurched, then started a slow descent along the aft corner of the starboard wall of the main hold into the dark below. Not completely dark, for he kept the emergency lights on at all times, but these were so scattered and of such low wattage that the illumination they provided was nominal at best.

When the lift reached the halfway point, he heard a shuffling sound from below as rakoshi moved from directly beneath him, wary of the descending platform and the fire it carried. As he neared the floor of the hold and the light from the torches spread among its occupants, tiny spots of brightness began to pick up and return the glare—a few at first, then more and more until more than a hundred yellow eyes gleamed from the darkness.

A murmur rose among the rakoshi to become a whispery chant, low, throaty, guttural, the only word they could speak.

'Kaka-jiiiiii! Kaka-jiiiiii!'

Kusum loosed the coils of his whip and cracked it. The sound echoed like a gunshot through the hold. The chant cut off. They now knew he was angry; they would remain silent. As the platform and its roaring flames drew nearer the floor, they backed farther away. In all of heaven and earth, fire was all they feared—fire and their Kaka-ji.

He stopped the lift three or four feet above the floor, giving himself a raised platform from which to address the rakoshi assembled in a rough semicircle just beyond the reach of the torchlight. They were barely visible except for an occasional highlight off a smooth scalp or a hulking shoulder. And the eyes. All the eyes were focused on Kusum.

He began to speak to them in the Bengali dialect, knowing they could understand little of what he was saying, but confident they would eventually get his meaning. Although he was not angry with them, he filled his voice with rage, for that was an integral part of what was to follow. He did not understand what had gone wrong tonight, and knew from the confusion he had sensed in the Mother upon her return that she did not understand either. Something had caused her to lose the Scent Something extraordinary. She was a skilled hunter and he could be sure that whatever had happened had been beyond her control. That did not matter, however. A certain form must be followed. It was tradition.

He told the rakoshi that there would be no ceremony tonight, no sharing of flesh, because those who had been entrusted to bring the sacrifice had failed. Instead of the ceremony, there would be punishment.

He turned and lowered the propane feed to the torches, constricting the semicircular pool of illumination, bringing the darkness—and the rakoshi—closer.

Then he called to the Mother. She knew what to do.

A scuffling and scraping from the darkness before him as the Mother brought forward the youngling that had accompanied her tonight. It came sullenly, unwillingly, but it came. For it knew it must. It was tradition.

Kusum reached back and further lowered the propane. The young rakoshi were especially afraid of fire and it would be foolish to panic this one. Discipline was imperative. If he lost his control over them, even for an instant, they might turn and tear him to pieces. There must be no instance of disobedience—such an act must ever remain unthinkable. But in order to bend them to his will, he must not push them too hard against their instincts.

He could barely see the creature as it slouched forward in a posture of humble submission. Kusum gestured with the whip and the Mother turned the youngling around, facing its back to him. He raised the whip and lashed it forward—one—two—three times and more, putting his body into it so that each stroke ended with the meaty slap of braided rawhide on cold, cobalt flesh.

He knew the young rakosh felt no pain from the lash, but that was of little consequence. His purpose was not to inflict pain but to assert his position of dominance. The lashing was a symbolic act, just as a rakosh' s submission to the lash was a reaffirmation of its loyalty and subservience to the will of Kusum, the Kaka- ji. The lash formed a bond between them. Both drew strength from it. With each stroke Kusum felt the power of Kali swell within him. He could almost imagine himself possessing two arms again.