Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1)

Also by Eric Brown

Novels

Murder at the Chase

Salvage

Satan’s Reach

The Serene Invasion

Murder by the Book

Starship Seasons

Helix Wars

The Devil’s Nebula

The Kings of Eternity

Guardians of the Phoenix

Cosmopath

Xenopath

Necropath

Kéthani

Helix

New York Dreams

New York Blues

New York Nights

Penumbra

Engineman

Meridian Days

Novellas

Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV

Starship Spring

Starship Winter

Gilbert and Edgar on Mars

Starship Fall

Revenge

Starship Summer

The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne

Approaching Omega

A Writer’s Life

Collections

Rites of Passage

Strange Visitors

The Angels of Life and Death

Ghostwriting

Threshold Shift

The Fall of Tartarus

Deep Future

Parallax View
(with Keith Brooke)

Blue Shifting

The Time-Lapsed Man

Published 2014 by Solaris

an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

Riverside House, Osney Mead,

Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

www.solarisbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-84997-763-0

Copyright © 2014 Eric Brown

Cover art by Dominic Harman

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

To Jack and Katrina Stephen

CHAPTER

ONE

Mr Gollalli displays his wares –

The dowager to the rescue – The Russians attack –

“Show a bit of mettle under fire...”

J
ANI WAS ABOARD
the
Rudyard Kipling
, somewhere over the Hindu Kush, when the Russians attacked.

For much of the journey from London she had remained in her cabin, reading a volume of poetry and composing a letter to Sebastian. Her peace of mind was in tatters, torn by her affection for Sebastian, her interrupted studies at Cambridge, and the terrible communiqué from Delhi informing Jani that her father was gravely ill. She had last seen him almost a year before, when government business had brought him to England. He had seemed so full of life then, so vibrant with energy and ideas, that it was almost impossible now to imagine him stricken. He was not yet sixty; surely, she thought, the wonders of modern medicine could do
something
... Had she believed in any of the plethora of gods so popular these days, she would have prayed for his health. Her refusal to do so had upset Sebastian whose Christian faith, she thought, was less a matter of committed belief than a nebulous notion of good form.

She pushed thoughts of Sebastian from her mind and stared through the porthole of her cabin. The sun was going down and spreading a tangerine glow over the foothills of the Hindu Kush. The fires of scattered villages glowed in counterpoint to the stars just appearing overhead. In a few hours the airship would be docking at Delhi air-terminal, and Jani would step out onto the dusty soil of her homeland for the first time in five years.

She realised that she was crying. She dried her tears, picked up her book, and slipped from her cabin.

She had dined in her cabin earlier, avoiding the forced sociability of the dining room, and now made her way to the observation lounge on the second level. The lounge was a vast area of pile carpeting, with ornate brass-work and a plethora of potted plants and ferns like an airborne Kew Gardens. Padded velvet
chaises longues
and armchairs occupied booths around the perimeter, each with a porthole that looked out across the curving expanse of the land. The lounge was occupied by perhaps fifty passengers, mainly middle-aged and elderly Englishmen and -women – servants of the Raj returning to their postings in the subcontinent after holidays in Blighty. She was the only Indian in sight, discounting the servants and bar-staff; not that she was in any way discommoded by the fact. She had become accustomed to being the only brown face in a sea of white, the perceived exotic amidst the mundane.

She caught sight of Lady Eddington with her crocheting on her lap – the dowager looked up and smiled at Jani, perhaps expecting the courtesy of her company. Jani acknowledged her, but decided that she could do without the old lady’s well-meaning solicitations and crossed the lounge to an unoccupied booth.

She sat on the sprung cushions of the
chaise longue
, ordered a juniper cordial from a passing waiter and stared through the window. Night had come on apace, rendering the folded foothills all but invisible; only the occasional village fire showed. She sat back, lulled by the thrum of the engines – a dozen Annapurnite-powered turbos, Sebastian had announced with wonder at the sight of the de Havilland at the London airyard two days ago. She opened her book and tried to read, but Wilfred Owen’s latest collection failed to hold her attention and her gaze wandered to the scene far below.