“No.”
TIMES OF INDIA FEATURE,
APRIL 15, 2040
TAJ
“You said they were going to China!”
Taj was heading for his car when Melani Remilla caught up with him.
They were in the same garage where the Adventure convoy had departed earlier that day; Taj had spent the hours since then essentially locked in the conference room, working his phone and calling up news reports on the screens.
The accident on the road to Bengaluru International had shocked him—which in turn surprised him. He had not only agreed to the idea of a second, clandestine convoy . . . it had been his idea! He was the one who always feared that the Adventure crew would be targets of violence, and not just from the Aggregates.
Tea often teased him that no matter how cynical he sounded, he was still a romantic. “Poor Taj! Loves flowers and pretty girls and the Moon . . . has to pretend about guns and treachery.”
No matter. Knowing Rachel and Pav and the others had lifted off from Bengaluru meant he could go home for a few hours, before returning to the Sanjay vigil—and trying to decide his next move.
Once he got rid of Remilla. “Didn’t we all believe they were going to China?”
“That doesn’t answer my question, sir!” If Taj had any doubts that Remilla was upset, they vanished.
“Until an hour ago,” he told her, and he wasn’t lying, “the only information I had was that the crew would be going to China. Edgar Chang was arranging it.”
“Then who took them to Australia?”
Here Taj was on trickier ground, since he had suspicions, though no data. “That I cannot tell you.” Strictly true, if not especially illuminating.
He had known Remilla for more than twenty years, since the Brahma days, first as a young female spacecraft engineer specializing in environmental systems, which could not have been an easy job, given the male-dominated ISRO world.
Then, after the arrival of the Aggregates and the subsequent wars and plagues, when India had no money for space exploration aside from spy satellites, Remilla had moved into program management, becoming the last woman standing.
Their interactions over the past year, all of them involving the Keanu return, had been completely professional. He knew nothing of her personal life, though he had some memory of a husband somewhere, and a grown son. During those contacts, Taj had found Remilla to be smart and open—possibly too open when it came to dealing with sharks like Kaushal—but too prey to emotion when things didn’t go her way.
Like now. “But you have had more information than the rest of us!”
“Why are you surprised? My son is one of them!”
“So he was telling you secrets!”
“I was spending more time with him than anyone else,” Taj said, losing patience with this woman. “So, yes, I undoubtedly heard more than you or Kaushal did.”
“You should have told us!”
“I told you everything that was important.”
Remilla frowned. Clearly she had no goal other than to express frustration at losing control of a situation that was never in control. “What are they going to do now?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said, though he was convinced that, ultimately, the Aggregates were their target. Pav had told him a bit about the Houston-Bangalores and their successful eradication of the Reivers on Keanu twenty years ago. Of course, sanitizing a Near-Earth Object was one thing . . . cleansing half a planet, quite another.
“Will you promise to tell me when they are back in contact?”
“Of course,” he said, not at all sure that he would. Remilla’s only role now was to make sure that Adventure remained unmolested, and that Sanjay Bhat was safe until he could be transferred.
Those happened to be Taj’s jobs, too. And he was going to fail at both if he did not get some sleep.
Remilla offered a conciliatory hug, and finally left him.
Taj climbed into his car and started it up, hoping that the drive to his apartment would be trouble-free. He and Tea had spent most of their married life living on Raisina Hill in New Delhi, close to the Ministry of Defence. But with news of Keanu’s looming return, they had moved to Bangalore.
It had not been an easy year and a half for Tea. In fact, the entire last decade had been a challenge for his wife. When the Aggregates erected their financial and other walls around the United States, she had faced a choice: Return and submit to the new order, or stay away . . . and lose her pension.
She chose to stay away, and found herself having to make a living as a former astronaut, first woman to walk on the Moon, in a world that had no time for space exploration.
(It wasn’t about survivaclass="underline" Taj could support both of them on his general’s pension and other investments. But naturally Tea resisted that.)
She had finally found a way to keep busy, making speeches to female students in secondary schools and college classes about opportunities in science and technology—ISRO supported it; more to the point, so did the Ministry of Defence. (The more engineers it could enroll in the coming war with the Aggregates, the better!)
But it was not a happy existence. Tea had grown unhappy, with her work, her future, with India . . . with Taj.
And now she was off with Rachel. Taj was grateful that she finally had something worthwhile to keep her busy. He was quite unhappy, though, that neither of them had been able to work together—he with the “secrets” he had learned from Pav, she with . . . whatever she was gleaning from Rachel—
He had barely pulled out of the garage when he saw movement in his peripheral vision; it was Kaushal with two of his guards literally running out of the hospital. He spotted Taj’s car and clearly ordered the guards to pursue him.
Taj chose to hit the pedal and keep driving.
It was ultimately a foolish maneuver. His car was an underpowered electric Tata Sanand III, good for cheap, comfortable commutes, useless for flight.
He was also restricted to Yelahanka Air Base, with its many speed bumps, stop signs, and competing vehicles.
All of which meant that he didn’t get far . . . Kaushal’s Jeep caught him at the exit gate.
“Why are you running away?” the wing commander said. He was wide-eyed and angrier than Taj had ever seen him.
“I wanted to go home.”
Kaushal just stared. It was likely that he was as exhausted as Taj, and almost as likely that he realized it. “You should answer your phone,” he muttered. Taj was carrying two of them, but only the one that would connect him to Kaushal was on his person. His official unit was in his briefcase. “And you need to come with me, now.”
“What is this all about, Kaushal?”
“It’s the Adventure man Sanjay.”
It was already over by the time Taj and Kaushal reached the ICU.
“He expired without ever regaining consciousness,” the senior surgeon said. “Time of death was one forty-five.”
Taj rubbed his face. He was torn between relief—he had judged Sanjay Bhat’s injuries to be fatal the moment he first saw him—and a growing sense of panic. “Let me see him.”
The surgeon stood aside and allowed Taj and Kaushal into the room where Sanjay lay. The IV and other lines had been removed and the sheets rearranged after what, to judge from the pile of bloody cotton and bandages on the floor, must have been a frantic struggle to save the Adventure engineer.
The secrets this man held! The things he had seen! The places he had traveled . . . outside the heart of the solar system! Yet he had died as a result of a stupid missile strike!
Then there were the various plans Pav and Rachel had discussed with him—assuming Sanjay recovered, they wanted him flown to their destination. “Wherever we have our cargo,” Pav had said.