Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (29 page)

General assent all round.

“Let’s rest up and reconvene first thing tomorrow,” Parashurama went on. “Just to be on the safe side, I’m going to spend the night aboard the
Garuda
. It’s not that I don’t trust Captain Corday. It’s just that someone might give him an order he can’t disobey, and then we’d be without a ride.
Garuda
’s our transportational edge. It gives us a real chance of catching up with the Trinity, overtaking them even. It’s faster than anything they’ve got, and there’s nowhere they can go that it can’t reach. Without it we’d be pretty much marooned on Meru. Be a shame to lose it.”

This, too, seemed like a sound plan. The Warrior thought of all the angles. It was good to have a trained military mind like his in charge.

We went our separate ways. The only benefit I could see from the shocks and setbacks we’d experienced that day was that they had helped bring the team closer together. We were united in our disaffection, bonded by our shared suspicion of the Trinity. We had no idea then of the full scope of their machinations, but the glimpses we were getting made us a very unhappy band of brothers, and our main aim now was to get to the bottom of it all.

33. THE UNCLE GABBY SHIRT

I
DON’T KNOW
why I ambled over to Aanandi’s room that evening. I just did.

It was something to do other than watch the news on TV, which was what almost everyone else on the island was doing, the main preoccupation.

The situation on the subcontinent was spiralling into chaos. Pakistani forces had pushed as far south-east as Jodhpur and Jaipur and were dangerously close to New Delhi. Kashmir was entirely a war zone. China had closed its border with the region, as had Nepal, leaving Kashmiri refugees with nowhere to go, no sanctuary from the bloodshed.

India simply had not anticipated the ferocity and intensity with which the Pakistanis were attacking. Though Pakistan was by far the smaller of the two nations, it made up in sheer aggression what it lacked in troop numbers and firepower. India was firmly on the back foot, and flailing.

The UN Secretary-General had appealed for calm and was doing his utmost to broker a ceasefire with the UN ambassadors from both countries, but without success. The rhetoric spewing out of Islamabad and New Delhi was defiantly hawkish and belligerent. This was a war, it seemed, which needed to be fought, and which neither side was willing to back down from.

Neighbouring countries were voicing deep concern, as well they might. Iran and other Middle Eastern powers were offering support for Pakistan, as was Russia. At present they were confining themselves to vague expressions of sympathy and brotherhood, but the possibility of military aid or even direct intervention was not being ruled out if the crisis worsened. Israel, ever attuned to unrest in the region, heightened its alert status and tested a few long-range missiles for good measure. India, for its part, was looking west for allies and finding them in the US, largely among Republicans in Congress who deemed any enemy of a Muslim nation their friend.

Epic News had managed to embed journalists with both the opposing armies and was covering the fighting on the frontlines extensively. The channel also devoted airtime to the reaction back home in the States, where alarmed members of the public were panic-buying bottled water and non-perishable foodstuffs, stripping supermarket shelves bare like locusts. All the major American cities saw a mass exodus, long lines of traffic clogging the freeways and toll roads leading out. As one anxious father-of-three said from behind the wheel of a belongings-laden family SUV, “If the nukes start flying, who’s to say where it’ll end? Whole world could go bananas.” Meanwhile an enclave of doomsday preppers in the Ozarks were feeling justifiably smug. “Always said this day was gonna come,” said the mulleted patriarch of an extended clan who were all armed with assault weapons, right down to the youngest child, aged five. “Them ragheads wipe one another out, don’t make no never-mind with me, but they ain’t gonna take us down with them, hell no. We’ll be holding out in this here compound long after the rest of the planet is glowing ash. All hail the Free States!”

Rumours that the Dashavatara had been sighted in action on the battlefield were neither confirmed nor denied by an Indian military spokesman. “What I can tell you,” he said, “is that the gods have been on our side. Make of that what you will.”

India’s Chiefs of Staff had in fact been attempting to re-establish communications with us ever since the battle outside Chandigarh, but Parashurama had refused to respond to their efforts to hail us over the
Garuda
’s radio. Plaintive phone calls came from them direct to Mount Meru but these, too, were ignored. Whether the Indians tried contacting the Trinity, I can’t say, but I imagine they did and got nowhere. The Trinity were stonewalling everybody.

Should we devas have set aside our own private grievances and got involved again in the conflict? Might we have been able to stop it before it went too far? That’s one of those great imponderables, a question that frequently comes to me in the long watches of the night and guarantees a sleepless hour or so. In my view, if we
had
gone back in I doubt we would have made much of an impact in a war that was already being waged on several fronts and spreading fast. Besides, the Indians had not shown a great deal of aptitude and imagination in the way they utilised us. I suppose they could have sent us behind enemy lines to carry out some black ops raid on the Pakistani high command, cutting off the head to bring the body to a standstill, but ethically we would have had problems with that. I certainly would have. Battling soldiers, tanks and planes was one thing, but assassinating generals in cold blood? That’s the stuff of war crimes tribunals.

What it came down to was this. The war had cost us a teammate, and it was a price we begrudged paying. Our reasons for becoming embroiled in the conflict were tangential to begin with. We had no real sense of commitment. Neither patriotism nor ideology was spurring us. We’d participated mainly because the Trinity had told us to – and in the Trinity we did not trust any more.

So, in the end, we were content to relegate ourselves to the same status as almost everyone else on earth. We became uneasy spectators, following the progress of events on television with an appalled fascination, hoping for the best, dreading the worst.

Going to Aanandi’s room was my way of taking a break from the unfolding international mayhem. I still found it hard to fathom why she had sneaked off with Lombard and chums. She didn’t belong with them. Morally and spiritually, I mean. The Trinity were pure corporatism, greed machines, human on the outside but with dollar-green blood flowing through their veins. There was more to Aanandi Sengupta than that.

The door was locked, of course, but that was no obstacle, not to Hanuman. I went outside and monkeyed my way up the exterior of the building. The sliding door to the balcony was also locked, but a bit of deva-strength tugging snapped the latch, and I was in.

There had to be something in the room, some clue as to why she had left and maybe as to where she had gone.

That was what I told myself, at any rate. That I was there to solve a mystery.

But in truth, I was there because I was miffed and miserable. Hanuman might not care what a mortal woman thought of him, but Zak Bramwell did. I took Aanandi’s abrupt departure personally. I felt we had a spark between us. Damn it, we
did
. So how could she just go, without giving me some explanation, some justification? Did I mean that little to her?

Her room was spick and span, as ever. Not a single thing out of place. She’d even made the bed before she went. Touch of OCD maybe?

I sat down on the bed and ruffled up the covers a little, to make the room look more lived-in. Now her absence wasn’t quite so total. She hadn’t left a complete vacuum behind.

I stayed there for ten minutes, breathing in ghosts of her scent.

Something caught my eye. I’d thought there wasn’t anything out of place, but there was. One of the books protruded at an angle. The rest were in tidy rows like soldiers on parade, except for this one which leaned drunkenly out from the shelf.

It wasn’t just any old book, either. It was one of Aanandi’s own publications:
The Field Of Truth
. Her survey of the
Bhagavad Gita
.

I took it down and riffled through it.

There was something lodged between two of the pages. A sheet of paper.

I slid it out.

A handwritten note, beginning with the words “From A to Z”.

“No way,” I murmured to myself.

From Aanandi to Zak
.

Had she left me a clue after all?

I read on and found that actually it was a whole lot more than that.

I’m betting you’re going to break into my room. You’ve done it once, why not again? I know you. You’re a nosey so-and-so. Can’t leave well enough alone.

Well done, though, on finding this. A credit to your powers of observation, or my arts of subtle direction. It was almost painful to leave something not straightened and squared away, but I had to. So you’d spot it. You and no one else.

Got a message a half-hour ago. Lombard wants off the island, pronto, and he wants me to come with. Duty calls. Can’t reasonably say no. I haven’t got much time. That’s why this is so hurried and low-fi. If I could have done something cooler and cleverer, I would have.

There’s more to Meru than you realise. More going on here than you can possibly guess. The game is bigger and reaches further. The Dashavatara were only ever the beginning.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Probably I shouldn’t. But you seem like what my dad calls a “pukka cove,” and I hate to see you being used.

There’s a second site. Another Meru. That’s where we’re headed. Lombard’s old stomping ground. If I knew exactly where it was, I’d say, but I’ve not been there myself before. I know it’s in a disused mine of some sort. That’s all. Sorry.

I’m scared. What the Trinity have started, I don’t think can be stopped. But I think it should be. I think someone has to stop it before it goes too far. I wish that someone were me, but I don’t have the resources or the power. You and the other devas might.

There was a postscript.

P.S. Look in the top drawer of the vanity unit. A little gift. I ordered it in from the States. Had it made specially for you.

I opened up the drawer indicated, and inside lay a T-shirt. It was printed with an image lifted from a
Sock Monkey
comic by Tony Millionaire.
¹
It was a blow-up of a single, intricately drawn panel showing Uncle Gabby, the titular sock monkey, puzzling over a Chinese finger trap. The speech bubble read: “It is an ingenious device!”

I chuckled.
Sock Monkey
, with its anthropomorphised animals and quaint Victorian-engraving look, was a weird read, as unnerving as a recording of a nursery rhyme played backwards. I liked it, but only in small doses.

Aanandi had left a second note with the T-shirt.

You don’t have a proper uniform of your own. I hope this will do.

I tried the shirt on. Looked cool, I thought. On the back there was a Sanskrit-style “10½” in a circle. My unofficial Dashavatara number emblem. I chuckled again.

Then I reread the first note, and a sombreness settled back over me.

What the Trinity have started, I don’t think can be stopped
.

War.

They had wanted this war all along.

They had meant for devas to fight in it.

Why?

That remained to be discovered.

But at least now we had some indication where they might be holed up.