Termination Shock

“I understand,” T.R. said.

“We’ll have to time it.”

Apparently they timed it. Willem didn’t know. He’d slumped down until he was on the floor of the SUV. All he could see out the windows was the blue-black stratosphere, as yet unmarked by streaks of SO₂ but occasionally diced by the rotor of a helicopter. There was another helter-skelter transfer. Not at the official helipad—which frankly was nothing to write home about—but some alternate site. And then they were in the air. Were people shooting at them from the ground? One had to assume so. But you couldn’t see the bullets, so they’d have no way of knowing unless they got hit. To make that less probable the pilot was operating the chopper in a way that involved all the passengers getting slammed to one side of the cabin or other every couple of seconds. They hadn’t had time to buckle their safety belts; the chopper hadn’t even really landed, getting into it had been like diving through the window of a moving car. Willem ended up supine on the floor, gasping like a landed fish, vision desaturating until Amelia’s hand grew vast in his field of view, reaching toward his face with a hissing oxygen mask.

TRAIL

Who have you been talking to?” Dharmender asked him a few hours later as they were pulling out of the gas station under cover of darkness. Laks was naked in the back seat of Dharmender’s Subaru, the better to writhe into his black wet suit. His black waterproof pack was strapped into the passenger seat. On the floor in front of that was a not-so-waterproof care package that had been assembled during the last few hours by Gurmeet and others, containing sufficient provisions for Laks to crawl to Texas on hands and knees. Dharmender had already solved a potentially awkward problem for Laks by indicating, discreetly, that all of it would end up being eaten by bears at a nearby campground.

“What do you mean?” This was one of those conversations that was going to happen through eye contact in the rearview mirror.

“You flew straight to YVR from Hyderabad. But you only spent a couple of days in Vancouver before you came here.”

“That’s true, yes.”

“Do your parents know?”

“No.”

“So you did not talk to them about what you are doing.”

“I was told not to. They think I am going to relax in one of your little cabins and do a lot of fishing.”

“So all your conversations with friends and family, until now, took place in Hyderabad.”

“Cyberabad.”

“Whatever. Did you feel that your friends and family were speaking freely there? As freely as you and I are speaking now?”

“I don’t know. For much of that time, you know, I was not quite myself. It was only in the last few weeks that—”

“Did you ever see people doing this?” Uncle Dharmender glanced theatrically up at the Subaru’s dome light.

“I don’t understand.”

“It is a gesture people make, meaning, this room is bugged, we are being listened to, I am not really speaking my mind.”

“Perhaps. I don’t remember.”

“What about the people who recruited you for this mission? Who briefed you?”

“People I got to know during the fighting along the Line of Actual Control.” He referred here to Major Raju, who had “befriended” him during his Himalayan exploits and who had stayed in touch with Laks during his convalescence.

“Indian Army.”

“Yes.”

“Not people like us.”

“No.”

“What did these people say to you that made you want this?”

“Want what?”

“To be in the back of your uncle’s car getting into a wet suit so that you can sneak into a foreign country.”

“Our country is in danger.”

“India? Or the Punjab?”

“Same difference. If there is drought in the Breadbasket, all of India suffers.”

“And was this their claim? That there is drought in the Breadbasket?”

“The monsoon was late.”

“Late, yes. But it came. It did come, Laks.”

“Next year it may be later still.”

“That’s always true. To be Punjabi is to live in continual anxiety about next year’s monsoon.”

“But now people are messing with the weather.”

“You’re talking of this thing in Texas. That’s what they told you, isn’t it?”

“They showed me pictures. Explained the science.”

“I’m sure they did.”

They passed through a roundabout on the southern fringe of town, where three roads came together. “This is not the fastest way,” Laks said.

“What!?”

“You should have taken the first exit. Not the second.” He considered it. “This will get us there, though. It’s only 1.23 kilometers farther.”

“How would you know these things? That intersection was just built last year.”

“I can just feel where I am. Where I need to go. Like a sixth sense. I was leaning into the turn—but it never came.”

“Perhaps your uncle doesn’t want to take you down that first road because it is notoriously rough and winding, and your uncle wants to make it easier for you to get that crazy thing on.”

“Thank you, Uncle. I’m sorry I questioned your navigation.”

“Also, perhaps getting there absolutely the fastest is not most important thing in world.”

“Why not?”