What he was smelling right now was a blend of dangerous and good, though. It was definitely smoke. But not the smoke of burning wood or coal, which was what you normally smelled in this part of the world. This smoke had an herbal, almost perfumed aroma.
He was not the first to wake up. He could hear Pippa, Bella, and Sue talking in their tent, quite cheerfully and with outbursts of laughter and of delighted surprise.
It sounded and smelled like someone had re-stoked their little campfire; but where had they obtained that much wood?
Laks extracted himself from his sleeping bag and stumbled out into the Fellowship’s mini-compound to find an officer of the Indian Army sitting there in a low-slung camp chair next to the campfire, which was blazing. He was sipping something hot from a thermos, swiping his finger across a tablet, and somehow—as if he were one of those many-armed Hindu deities—managing, at the same time, to smoke a pipe.
The officer looked up over his reading glasses at Laks. Fortunately Laks, anticipating a need to get up in the middle of the night, had slept fully clothed and with his keski on his head.
“Major Raju,” said the visitor in English. “I’d get up, but it’s hard to clamber out of this thing once one is settled in.” His accent was spiffy. “Do I have the honor of addressing Big Fish?”
“Huh?”
“You may know yourself as Laks, or Deep Singh. Big Fish is what you’re called now. On the Internet. Someone took the liberty of translating your nickname into a proper nom de guerre. All the cool kids have them. The man you absolutely destroyed yesterday? That was Thunder Stick. Can’t remember how to say it in Mandarin. Not his real name, I’d imagine.” Major Raju, gripping the bowl of his pipe in one hand, used its stem to point at features in what must have been an imaginary spreadsheet hanging in space. “Thunder Stick’s fall in the MRLB has been . . . precipitous.”
“MRLB?”
“Oh, Meta-Ranking Leader Board. Many who drafted Thunder Stick into their fantasy squads are gnashing their teeth this morning!” Major Raju sipped from his thermos and added, “I expect you need to urinate! Don’t let me stop you.”
Laks needed to do more than just that. When he got back some little while later, he found that Pippa had emerged from the ladies’ tent. She, Bella, and Sue, who had been so chatty when Laks had awakened, had all suddenly gone silent when they’d heard the voice of Major Raju. By the time Laks got back, though, Pippa was squatting comfortably on her haunches, long shanks doubled in front of her face, drinking tea and having what sounded like a very professional sort of conversation with the major. She probably was not one who needed to have MRLB spelled out for her. Laks had been puzzled by the lavish expenditure of firewood, but he now saw that Major Raju had been conveyed here in an army truck. He’d actually brought his own firewood with him. His driver was awaiting the major’s return in the comfort of its heated cab.
As he neared, Pippa turned to look at him with a bemused smile. “Big Fish!”
“So I’m told.”
“You’re number one on the Force To Be Reckoned With metapoll, and you’ve broken the top 25 overall.”
“Vegas is going bananas,” Major Raju put in. “Macao less so, but what would you expect from those people?”
“Oh, because . . . China?”
“Have you signed anything yet?” the major inquired.
Laks’s confusion must have been obvious because Pippa said, “He means deals with sponsors or agents.”
“While I was taking a shit in the rocks? No.”
“Good. Don’t. Sign anything, I mean,” Raju said. “Classic mistake for one in your position.”
“Sir, why are you . . . here?” Laks asked.
“What you did yesterday added five point seven hectares of territory to India and subtracted an equal amount from China. It was the largest single shift that has occurred on this front in the last three weeks. If bookies in Vegas are interested in you, why, you can assume that the Indian Army is much more so. I work for the Indian Army.”
“And when you say interested, that means . . .”
“He knows you’re Canadian,” Pippa said.
“It will hardly surprise you to know that the volunteer units on both sides of the Line are supported, under a thin veneer of plausible deniability, by their respective military establishments,” Major Raju said, with a glance down at the generous stack of firewood. “Thunder Stick didn’t bring his now world-famous oxygen tank with him from Hebei; it was supplied when he got up here and discovered he couldn’t breathe. Any crew on our side that can turn in your kind of results with no support at all . . . well, it merits . . . some support. So I am here to ask you, Big Fish, what you need? Other than an agent, a manager, and a lawyer, that is.”