'It's unusual.' Rivers let his head fall back and returned the damp towel to his face. 'Disturbances to the airwaves over an earthquake area aren't rare, but this is different. I doubt that the two are related.'
'Another enigma, then,' mused Poggs. 'Something else our planet has decided to mystify us with.'
'It'll clear soon enough. I don't think it's anything dramatic at all.'
'Perhaps you're right.' Poggs let out a huff of impatience. 'We're in danger of blowing every slight deviation from the norm totally out of proportion. God knows, nature is constantly breaking its own rules.'
'Not quite. It breaks the rules we try to impose on it to create some kind of order for ourselves.'
'You're absolutely right, of course. Still, we have to work to some kind of pattern, otherwise everything is chaos.'
'Weather men work with the chaos theory: we've come to understand weather changes with our computer models, but we'll never be able to predict it with absolute certainty; there are just too many variables.' Rivers changed the subject, not in the mood for a lengthy debate on the nonlinear equations of turbulence and how they complicated, if not completely frustrated, the laws of physics. 'What was the problem with the twins?' he asked. 'Mack said they'd been upset by a dream.'
'What? Oh no, not a dream as such. That's just the way we refer to it. They were down by the pond feeding the ducks this morning when it seems they were lost to one of their trances. It's become a regular thing with those two little imps, too regular for my liking.'
'What happened?'
'Bibby was with them, thank goodness, although I don't believe anything terrible would have happened to them physically. But she was there to comfort them when they became upset.'
There were voices on the stairs.
'If that's my wife on her way down she can tell you for herself.' Poggs drained his glass and slipped it out of sight by the side of his chair. He grinned at Rivers. 'She doesn't like me drinking this early in the day unless it's a weekend. Says it's bad for my liver. Lot of nonsense, of course. Nothing finer to keep the blood flowing if taken in moderation. Ah, my two wood nymphs. Come along in.'
The two children were in the doorway staring at Rivers. Diane and Poggs' wife arrived behind them and ushered them forward. Curiously the twins walked straight across the room to Rivers.
Once again he removed the ice-pack and returned their gaze, uncomfortable under their scrutiny. Unconsciously he rubbed at the ache in his knee.
'Hello.' His greeting sounded awkward even to him.
'Does your leg still hurt?' Josh asked.
'Uh, yes. I had an accident once…'
'There?' Josh placed a finger on his knee.
'Kinda… All around there, actually. It's okay though, nothing to…'
Josh clasped both hands around Rivers' leg, his small fingers reaching behind the knee. He slowly pulled his hands away, as though wiping them against the denim. He repeated the motion. 'Your leg was hurting last time you were here, wasn't it?' the boy said. 'I saw you limping. The pain's really bad, isn't it?'
Taken aback, Rivers replied, 'Sometimes it is.'
'Let me do it, Josh.' Eva moved in eagerly.
Rivers looked around at the adults as if for help. Bibby smiled back at him while Diane merely offered him an ashtray for his cigarette. When he took it her look asked him to be patient with the children.
Eva was giggling as she touched his knee. Astonishingly, as the twins repeatedly brushed their hands against his trouser leg, taking it in turns, the throbbing began to ease, the pain began to subside. Rivers opened his mouth to speak, but no words came to mind.
'They're good with headaches too,' Bibby said proudly. 'They've given me the treatment more than once. They can't take away all the pain, not yet, but who knows what they'll be capable of when they're older? Now, how's it feeling?'
He was almost afraid to speak in case it broke the charm of what they were doing. He dogged his cigarette in the ashtray. 'It feels… it feels… What is this?'
'Psychic healing, I guess you'd call it,' said Diane. 'Sorry, Jim, Bibby persuaded me to let the children attempt it when we were upstairs and I mentioned you weren't feeling too good. We didn't mean to surprise you so.'
'I still don't understand-how could they stop the pain?' There was only a dull ache in his leg by now, an ache where before tiny demons had tormented him with red-hot needles.
'They're not. They're merely opening your energy channels so that your own body can help itself. There's no medical way of explaining this, Jim, you just have to go along with what's happening. Don't question it.'
'My apologies for springing this on you too,' said Poggs' wife as she sat on the arm of her husband's chair. 'I wanted you to experience a part of Josh and Eva's uniqueness for yourself, so I asked them to come down and show you. As a matter of fact, they were very anxious to help you; for some reason you're important to them.'
The children stepped away, pleased with themselves, and Rivers gingerly touched his leg. 'That's unbelievable,' he said, and flexed his knee, expecting the pain to come shooting back. When it didn't, he shook his head in wonder. 'Unbelievable,' he said again.
Diane sat next to him, her pleasure at his incredulity evidenced by her smile. 'It must be hard to take for someone so practical. You haven't been drugged or hypnotized, yet your pain has been eased by two kids who don't even know the nature of your injury. How does someone like you cope with that?'
His attention was still on his leg. 'With difficulty, I suppose. And with gratitude. How long will it last?'
Diane shrugged. 'No way of knowing. Maybe for an hour or so, maybe for the rest of the day. Like medicine, more than one dose is needed if the cure is to be effective.'
'These two could make a fortune.'
Hugo Poggs and his wife laughed. 'There are plenty of other healers in the world without putting pressure on Josh and Eva,' said Bibby. 'Besides, their talent hasn't been developed yet.' Rivers gave his attention to the children. 'Thank you for stopping the pain,' he said. 'Do you know how you do it?'
Both shyly shook their heads.
'Do you feel anything when you do it?'
Josh spoke up. 'It sort of tingles a bit.'
Eva nodded agreement. 'We pull the hurting out. It comes very easily if we think hard enough.'
'Doesn't it hurt you?'
They giggled at one another. 'Of course not,' replied Josh scornfully. 'We just throw it away.' Eva giggled again.
'Your mother said you wanted to see me. Is that right?'
They nodded as one.
'Will you tell me why?'
'Oh yes,' said the boy.
Rivers waited, but was forced to prompt them when they offered nothing more. 'So tell me why.'
This time it was Eva who spoke up. 'You've got to find the Dream Man,' she said.
16
The children stood on chairs before the large map of the world on Hugo Poggs' study wall, while Poggs himself, with Diane, Bibby and Rivers crowded behind them.
It had been Diane's idea to bring them in there and confront them with the map, for persistent but patient questioning of the twins had failed to reveal the identity of their Dream Man, or where he came from. He was just there in the dreams, they insisted, and he was kind, not like the other person. They refused point blank to talk about this 'other person'. The kind one was old, they said, although they had never actually seen him. They had only felt him being there, but they knew he was very old and wise, and that he wanted to help them. Rivers had asked why they felt he, of all people, could find this very old and wise man. Because you're part of the light, had come the baffling reply.
Rivers had let the others continue with the questions after that, for the children's simple statement had left him full of unease. What the hell did that mean? How could he be part of the Light?
He had witnessed it, but it had nothing to do with him. Noticing his discomfort, Poggs had poured him another drink.
Eventually
Josh and Eva had grown tired of the interrogation and that was when Diane had suggested the game with the map. It would be similar to a game they had played a few times before, she explained to them, when something had gone missing around the house and she or Bibby drew a rough room sketch of Hazelrod so that they could point out a particular place where the lost article could be found. Seven times out of ten when they went to the room Josh and Eva homed in on the missing item, she assured Rivers.
He had followed them through, taking the whisky with him and lighting another cigarette on the way. This was ridiculous, he reminded himself as if afraid of falling under the spell of Hazelrod's residents. They were good people, sincere people, of that he had no doubt; but they had to be misguided, surely? What they were doing-what they were dragging him into-had nothing to do with reality. Yet the children had stopped the pain in his leg. At least temporarily. And they had been aware of the world disasters as they happened. According to Diane. It was with mixed feelings that he gazed at the map with the others.
'Look at all the countries,' Diane was instructing the twins, 'and clear your minds of everything else.'
Josh and Eva stared at the map, looking from left to right, up and down.
'Ignore the coloured pins,' she told them. 'They're just where bad things have happened in the world.' Her voice became low and soothing. 'Now, take your time and think of the Dream Man, not what he looks like, but the kind of feeling you get when you know he's there. Can you do that?'
They indicated that they could.
'Okay. When you're ready, point at the map where you think the Dream Man is.'
They hesitated only a second or two; Josh pointed at Africa and Eva pointed at India. Then Josh pointed at Brazil and Eva pointed at Russia. Then they pointed at Bulgaria together.
Rivers watched Diane's concerned expression turn into one of triumph.
Then Josh pointed to Sri Lanka and Eva pointed to Japan. Josh changed position and Eva's finger went to China. They laughed when their separate fingers sought out Mexico and Portugal.
Diane looked round at Rivers in dismay.
'He's all over the world, Mama,' Eva exclaimed delightedly as she singled out Pakistan and Josh indicated Cuba.
***
Young Salim Prabhu reached for another battery from the pile before him and brought the short-handled hammer smashing down on the casing. His body and shorts were covered in carbon dust; even his face was smeared with the red powder. His back ached and his head throbbed with the incessant hammering-not just his hammering, but that of the other seven boys who shared the work in this cheerless lock-up set between a rickshaw mechanic's shop and a butcher's. He had arrived even earlier than his workmates-just before dawn-so that he could take up a position close to the open doors where he could at least enjoy the daylight and breathe air that was slightly less clogged with the dust of their labours. Those boys at the back had to work by the light cast by a single clay lamp and their eyes were white and ghostly in the cavernous gloom. For every battery broken for its carbon they received one paisa, and each of them hoped to have earned at least nine rupees by the end of the day or, as Salim knew it, by cow-dust hour (he lived outside the city where the farmers herded their cattle home from grazing at dusk). Not that any dust would be raised in this third month of the monsoon season, he reflected as he hammered, for the rains had arrived early and the pandas, the Hindu priests, predicted they would leave late. As they had the year before, and the year before that.
At that moment, however, the rain was at rest, and outside in the streets the populace went about its business regardless of the brown floodwaters of the Ganges that swirled through the city. The Ganga Flood Control Commission had striven to improve drainage over the years, and had built dams to lessen the flood's impact, but soon now the deep-cut streets would no longer be able to cope with the rising levels and even the platforms on which goods and food were stored would be under threat.
Salim hoped that his sister, Nergish, a year younger than his ten, would find garbage dumps high enough to scavenge plastic and tin to fill her huge bag this day. Their father would be displeased if the bag was not bulging with recyclables for the greedy scrap merchants and he would take his anger out on them all.
Salim had left Nergish just before dawn at the edge of the shanty town where they lived with their parents and baby brother, Tipu, he journeying into the waterlogged city, his sister taking a short cut through the jungle scrub to the dumps on the outskirts. Their father, Rakesh, had been in a drunken rage the night before and even at this mid-morning hour probably tossed in his sleep and dreamt of his glory days as an officer in the Indian Army. He had been a proud man then, a short service commission officer, serving his country gladly only to be cast aside like a bonded labourer after ten years, without pension, medical cover, or subsidized ration, but with a young family to feed. For a while he had worked as a pandal builder, but such toil was not to his liking, nor did it suit his dignity as an ex-officer. Now Salim and Nergish laboured to keep him and their tuberculosis-stricken mother, Rajnee, and Tipu, while he consoled himself with cheap liquor and railed against the fates that contrived so spitefully against him, sometimes his language so crude and his mood so clumsily violent that his family would flee across the sewage canal that ran by their shack to wait until snores took the place of his ramblings.
Ignoring the immense black flies (they had become known as the beasts of the air) that swarmed while the rains regathered their strength, Salim briefly looked up from his labours to watch the teeming activity outside. There were no yellow Ambassador taxis to clog the streets today, for they kept to the city's higher ground, but cycle rickshaws and camel-driven carts waded in abundance through the waters, while enterprising boatmen drifted by, their small boats and gondolas filled with fare-paying customers. Pilgrims and worshippers were everywhere, making their way through the bazaars and narrow alleyways to the Mother Ganges, mourners among them bearing shrouded burdens, lamented loved-ones whose bodies would be purified by flames on the banks of the great river and their ashes cast into the flow. Some seasons before, an even greater multitude of worshippers had flocked to this city of the dead to witness the miracle of the goddess' menstruation, for the river had suddenly begun to run red; not even when the Grasilene factory further upstream was prosecuted for using rayon grade pulp in its manufacturing process and discharging its effluence into the river, did the fresh influx of pilgrims diminish. Sacred cows wandered at their will, and dhobi-wallahs, on their way to the river carrying their laundry, scrupulously avoided them, afraid to even brush by the lumbering beasts with their bundles.
Across the street a tea-seller called out 'Chai! Chai! Chai!' and Salim's dry mouth ached for the thick sweet cardamom taste. Someone else called his name and he looked up to see Rekha waving down at him from one of the small individual balconies that graced the top floor of the building opposite. Below her, a covered wooden gallery ran the length of the building, and below that, at ground level (but still raised from the street itself) was a line of shops. Rekha was a hijri, a eunuch whose manhood had been removed at the age of twenty-one (she had been known on occasions to lift her skirts and reveal the castration scars to any passerby who might be interested) and she lived among others of her kind with their guru in the top-floor brothel. They proclaimed themselves the chosen guardians of the prophet's grave and would often descend on marriage and birth ceremonies dancing and singing and demanding money for their blessing, a curse taking its place if no rupees were forthcoming. Her sari was of the brightest yellow and even from where he squatted Salim could see her lips were painted the deepest rouge and her eyes were kohl-lined, her skin lightened with turmeric paste. She pouted her lips at him and lowered her eyelids in seductive manner, screeching with laughter when the boy quickly lowered his gaze and became intent on his work.
She called his name again, a tease with no spiteful intent, for she liked the boy and would often, when the streets were dry and she flaunted herself a
mong the tourists and pilgrims, stop to talk to him and sometimes toss him a boiled sweet as he pounded away at his batteries. Salim sneaked another look and grinned from ear to ear; he returned the wave. An itinerant barber shaving a customer in a doorway nearby caught the exchange and hawked phlegm in to the muddy water his lower legs dipped into, for the hijra were reviled as well as respected, not just because they had power to bless or curse as they pleased, but also because their lifestyle was considered disgusting by the pious of the community. He growled at Salim, who busied himself with his task once more. Rekha waggled her tongue at both the boy and the barber and swanned back into the room she had come from.
As Salim hammered, his thoughts drifted to things less dull, the thoughts becoming daydreams: of celebrations with elephants wearing flower garlands and painted with vegetable dye, of tiny bells tinkling on chains over soft beds, of tiger hunts (now banned) and polo matches, of fresco painters high on bamboo ladders adorning virgin walls with India's past glories, of bejewelled dancers dressed in brocade and transparent veils, their ankle-bells tinkling to their rhythms, of flaunting peacocks and colour-transient chameleons. He dreamed of such things because the world outside these very doors held none of them; save for the occasional glimpse of Rekha and her lurid companions, his daily vista was drab and unexciting. So his mind presented him with things bright, adventurous and beautifully gay.
Sometimes he daydreamed of the little ball that glowed like a sun-filled pearl and floated as a petal on the breeze.
It filled him with joy, this vision, and was as welcome as a visiting friend. In night-dreams, for he saw it in those too, the light brought others to him whose companionship was utter, their bonding supreme. Usually he sensed them, those other children, but occasionally he saw them and they were of all races and creeds. And all were charged with the same unfathomable yearning as he.