“Treat her well,” Jack said in a tight voice as he backed against the wall. “She’s all that’s keeping you alive right now.”
“What is she to you?”
“I want her safe.”
“She is not of your flesh. She is just another member of a society that would exterminate you if it knew you existed, that rejects what you value most. And even this little one here will want you locked away once she is grown. We should not be at war, you and I. We are brothers, voluntary outcasts from the worlds in which we live. We are—”
“Cut the bullshit!” Jack said. “She’s mine. I want her!”
Kusum glowered at him. “How did you escape the Mother?”
“Killed her. Matter of fact, got a couple of her teeth in my pocket. Want them?”
Kusum’s face darkened. “Impossible! She—” His voice broke off as he stared at Jack. “That necklace!”
“Your sister’s.”
“You’ve killed her, then,” he said in a suddenly hushed voice.
“No. She’s fine.”
“She would never surrender it willingly!”
“She’s asleep—doesn’t know that I borrowed it for a while.”
Kusum barked out a laugh. “So! My whore of a sister will finally reap the rewards of her karma! And how fitting that you should be the instrument of her reckoning!”
Thinking Kusum was distracted, Jack took a step forward: The Indian immediately tightened his grip on Vicky’s throat. Through the tangle of her wet stringy hair, Jack saw her eyes wince shut in pain.
“No closer!”
The rakoshi stirred and edged nearer the platform at the sound of Kusum’s raised voice.
Jack stepped back. “Sooner or later you’re going to lose, Kusum. Give her up now.”
“Why should I lose? I have but to point out your location to the rakoshi and tell them that there stands the slayer of the Mother. The necklace would not protect you then. And though your flamethrower might kill dozens of them, in their frenzy for revenge they would tear you to pieces.”
Jack pointed to the bomb slung from his belt. “But what would you do about these?”
Kusum’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Fire bombs. I’ve planted them all over the ship. All timed to go off at 3:45.” He looked at his watch. “It’s 3:00 now. Only forty-five minutes to go. How will you ever find them in time?”
“The child will die, too.”
Jack saw Vicky’s already terrified face blanch as she listened to them. She had to hear—no way to shield her from the truth.
“Better that way than what you’ve got planned for her.”
Kusum shrugged. “My rakoshi and I will merely swim ashore. Perhaps the child’s mother waits there. They ought to find her tasty.”
Jack masked his horror at the vision of Gia facing a horde of rakoshi emerging from the bay.
“That won’t save your ship. And it will leave your rakoshi without a home and out of your control.”
“So,” Kusum said after a pause. “A stalemate.”
“Right. But if you’ll let the kid go, I’ll show you where the bombs are. Then I’ll take her home while you take off for India.”
He didn’t want to let Kusum go—he had a score to settle with the Indian—but it was a price he was willing to pay for Vicky’s life.
Kusum shook his head. “She’s a Westphalen … the last surviving Westphalen … and I cannot—”
“You’re wrong!” Jack cried, grasping at a thread of hope. “She’s not the last. Her father is in England! He’s…”
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 Brahmachari?”
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 she had 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 minute
s.”
“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 was 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.”
Trial by combat. Insane! This man was living in the dark ages. How could Jack face Kusum and risk losing the contest—he remembered what one of the Indian’s kicks had done to the door in the pilot’s quarters—when Vicky’s life rode on the outcome? And yet how could he refuse? At least Vicky had a chance if he accepted Kusum’s challenge. Jack saw no hope for her if he refused.
“You’re no match for me, Kusum. It wouldn’t be fair. And besides, we don’t have time.”
“The fairness is my concern. And do not worry about the time—it will be a brief contest. Do you accept?”
Jack studied him. Kusum was very confident—sure, no doubt, that Jack was ignorant of the fact that he fought savate-style. He probably figured a kick to the solar plexus, a kick to the face, and it would be over. Jack could take advantage of that overconfidence.
“Let me get this straight: If I win, Vicky and I can leave unmolested. And if I lose…?”
“If you lose, you agree to disarm all the bombs you have set and leave the child with me.”
Insane … yet as much as he loathed to admit it, the idea held a certain perverse appeal. Jack could not still the thrill of anticipation that leaped through him. He wanted to get his hands on this man, wanted to hurt him, damage him. A bullet, a flamethrower, even a knife—all much too impersonal to repay Kusum for the horrors he’d put Vicky through.
“All right,” he said in as close to a normal voice as he could manage. “But how do I know you won’t sic your pets on me if I win—or as soon as I take this off?” He pointed to the flamethrower tanks on his back.
Kusum frowned. “That would be dishonorable. You insult me by even suggesting it. But to ease your suspicions, we will fight on this platform after it has been raised beyond the reach of the rakoshi.”
Jack could think of no more objections. He lowered the discharge tube and stepped toward the platform.
Kusum smiled the smile of a cat that has just seen a mouse walk into its dinner dish.
“Vicky stays on the platform with us, right?” Jack said, loosening the straps on his harness.
“Of course. And to show my good will, I will even let her hold my necklace during the contest.” He shifted his grip from Vicky’s throat to her arm. “It’s there on the floor, child. Pick it up.”
Hesitantly, Vicky stretched out and picked up the necklace. She held it as if it were a snake.
“I don’t want this!” she wailed.
“Just hold onto it, Vicks,” Jack told her. “It’ll protect you.”
Kusum started to pull her back toward him. As he switched his grip from her arm to her throat, Vicky moved. Without warning she cried out and lunged away from him. Kusum snatched for her but she had fear and desperation as allies. Five frantic steps, a flying leap, and she crashed against Jack’s chest, clutching at him, screaming:
“Don’t let him get me, Jack! Don’t let him! Don’t let him!”
Got her!
Jack’s vision blurred and his voice became lost in the surge of emotion that filled him as he held Vicky’s trembling little body against him. He couldn’t think—so he reacted. In a single move he raised the discharge tube with his right hand and swung his left arm behind Vicky’s back to grasp the forward grip, holding her to him while he steadied the tube. He pointed it at Kusum.
“Give her back!” Kusum shouted, rushing to the edge of the platform. His sudden movement and raised voice caused the rakoshi to shift, murmur, and edge forward. “She’s mine!”
“No way,” Jack said softly, finding his voice again as he squeezed Vicky closer. “You’re safe, Vicks.”
He had her now and no one was taking her away. No one.
He began to back toward the forward hold.
“Stay where you are!” Kusum roared. Spittle flecked his lips—he was so enraged he was actually beginning to foam at the mouth. “One more step and I’ll tell them where you are. As I said before, they’ll tear you to pieces. Now—come up here and face me as we agreed.”
Jack shook his head. “I had nothing to lose then. Now I’ve got Vicky.” Agreement or not, no way was he letting her go. “The fight’s off.”
“Have you no honor? You agreed!”
“I lied,” Jack said, and pulled the trigger.
The stream of napalm hit Kusum squarely in the chest, spreading over him, engulfing him in flame. He released a long, high, hoarse scream and reached his arm out toward Jack and Vicky as his fiery body went rigid. Twisting, writhing convulsively, his features masked in flame, he stumbled forward off the platform, still reaching for them, his obsession with ending the Westphalen line driving him even in the midst of his death agony.
Jack held Vicky’s face into his shoulder so she wouldn’t see, and was about to loose another blast when Kusum veered off to the side, spinning and whirling in a flaming dance, finally falling dead in front of his rakoshi horde, burning … burning …
The rakoshi went mad.
36
If Jack had looked upon the hold as a suburb of hell before, it became one of the inner circles upon the death of the Kaka-ji. The rakoshi exploded into frenzied movement, leaping into the air, clawing, tearing at each other. Unable to find Jack and Vicky, they turned on each other. It was as if all of hell’s demons had decided to riot. All except one—
The rakosh with the scarred lip remained aloof from the carnage; it stared in their direction as if sensing their presence there, even though it could not see them.
As the struggles of the creatures brought groups of them near, Jack began backing down the passageway to the forward hold. A trio of rakoshi, locked in combat, black blood gushing from their wounds, blundered into the passage. Jack sprayed them with the flamethrower, sending them reeling away, then turned and ran.
Before entering the forward hold, he directed a tight stream of flaming napalm ahead of him—first high to drive away any rakoshi lurking outside the end of the passage, then low along the floor to clear the small ones from his path. Putting his head down he charged through the hold along the flaming strip, feeling like a jet cruising along an illuminated runway. At its end he leaped up on the platform and stabbed the Up button.
As the elevator began to rise, Jack tried to put Vicky down on the planking but she wouldn’t let go. Her hands were locked onto the fabric of his shirt in a death grip. He was weak and exhausted, but he’d carry her the rest of the way if that was what she needed.
With his free hand he reached into the crate and armed and set the rest of the bombs for 3:45—less than twenty minutes away.
Rakoshi began to pour into the forward hold through both the port and starboard entries. When they saw the platform rising, they charged it.
“They’re coming for me, Jack!” Vicky screamed
. “Don’t let them get me!”
“Everything’s okay, Vicks,” he said as soothingly as he could.
He sent out a fiery stream that caught a dozen of the creatures in the front rank, then he kept the rest of them at bay with well-placed bursts of flame.
When the elevator platform was finally out of range of a rakosh’s leap, Jack allowed himself to relax. He dropped to his knees and waited for the platform to reach the top.
Suddenly a rakosh broke free from the crowd and hurtled forward. Startled, Jack rose and pointed the discharge tube in its direction.
“That’s the one that brought me here!” Vicky cried.
Jack recognized the rakosh: Scarlip, making a last ditch effort to get at Vicky.
Jack’s finger tightened on the trigger, then he saw that the creature was going to fall short. Its talons narrowly missed the platform but must have caught onto the undercarriage, for the elevator lurched and screeched on its tracks, then continued to rise.
Jack didn’t know if the rakosh was clinging to the undercarriage or whether it had fallen off into the elevator well below. Wasn’t about to peer over the edge to find out—might lose his face if the rakosh was hanging there.
He carried Vicky to the rear corner of the platform and waited there with the discharge tube trained on the edge of the platform. If the rakosh showed its face he’d burn its head off.
But it didn’t appear. And when the elevator stopped at the top of its track, Jack pulled Vicky’s hands free to allow her to go up the ladder ahead of him. As they separated, something fell out of the folds of her damp nightgown.
Kusum’s necklace.
“Here, Vicks,” he said, reaching to clasp it around her neck. “Wear this. It’ll—”
“No!” she cried in a shrill voice, pushing his hands away. “I don’t like it.”
“Please, Vicks. Look—I’m wearing one.”
“No!”
She started up the ladder. Jack stuffed the necklace into his pocket and watched her go, continually glancing toward the edge of the platform. The poor kid was frightened of everything now—almost as frightened of the necklace as the rakoshi. He wondered if she’d ever get over this.