He and a friend launched the battering ram at the shutters and they flew apart like kindling.
Ana climbed through the window, recalling when she’d escaped from here two days ago. Now she jumped down from the sill and stared around the glittering, candle-lit room.
Fat Sanjeev sat upright on his bed, naked and glistening with oil. Lying on his belly beside him, also naked but sound asleep, was Prakesh.
Sanjeev glared at Ana. “I thought, as violence failed to give me what I wanted with you, I would be gentle with the boy. But…” His gaze slipped to the sleeping child. “But it would seem that even peaceable pleasures are denied me. Take him!”Ana crossed to the bed, knelt and stroked Prakesh’s short hair. “Prakesh,” she whispered. “It is me, Ana. Wake up.” She shook his shoulder, gently.
His eyelids flickered and he stared up at her drowsily.
“Prakesh,” she said, “I have come to take you away from here.”
He sat up on the edge of the bed, and Ana found his shorts and t-shirt on the floor and dressed him.
Sanjeev said, “He might be a little unsteady on his feet, Ana Devi, as we shared a little Bombay rum.”
She averted her eyes from the fat man and tried to shut her ears to his words. She pulled Prakesh to his feet. He swayed against her, and Gopal took his arms and together they walked him across to the window. Outside, twenty faces peered into the room, staring at Sanjeev with fear and hatred in their eyes.
Ana helped Prakesh over the sill, then climbed out herself. She paused and turned, staring into the room illuminated like a stage.
Sanjeev was smiling at her. He even lifted a hand in farewell. “Until next time, Ana,” he said.
She shook her head. “We are leaving Kolkata,” she said, “and never coming back. I hope I will never see you again, Sanjeev Varnaputtram.”
She had the sudden urge to reach back into the room and upset a candle so that it set fire to the curtains… but something stopped her — and she did not know whether it was the charea of the Serene, or her own conscience which made her turn and hurry from the open window.
They returned to the goods yard and Ana ordered everyone to gather their scant belongings. As they were about to set off for the station, Ana cornered Rajeev and Kallif and said, “You are coming too?”
The pair of ten year-olds regarded her suspiciously. “You said…” Kallif began.
Ana interrupted, “I am not sure I want to take two little spies along with me.”
They stared at her in silence, their big brown eyes regarding their bare feet.
Ana said, “Why did you tell fat Sanjeev all about me, hm?”
On the verge of tears, Rajeev said, “He made us spy on you, Ana. Then he asked many questions. He said that if we didn’t tell him all about you… he said he would hurt us again.”
“So you told him all about me, and he gave you sweetmeats and barfi in payment for your treachery…”
Kallif began blubbering. “But we did share them, Ana.”
“Can we come with you?” Rajeev begged. “Please don’t leave us behind!”
How could she, in all fairness, leave them here to suffer at the hands of fat Sanjeev?
At last she nodded. “But from now on, no spying, ah-cha?”
They beamed at her. “Thank you, Ana! Thank you!”
THEY MADE THEIR way to platform six, where the Cochin Express was steadily filling with passengers for the long cross-country journey.
She found carriage C, the rag-tag gaggle of street kids on her heels. A liveried attendant barred her way. “The train is full!” he snapped. “Everyone is heading south to see the alien starships. Go back and watch the show on television. Chalo!”
Smiling, Ana withdrew the tickets from her pocket and waved them at the man. “I have tickets for my twenty-three friends and myself, with six to spare.”
He took the tickets, examined them with incredulity, and shook his head. “Where did you steal these from, girl?”
At the end of the platform, a whistle sounded and the guard shouted, “All aboard!”
“Allow us to board the train like all the other passengers with valid tickets,” Ana demanded.
“You are thieves and dogs–” the attendant began.
Ana squirmed past him, pulling Prakesh after her. The others followed quickly. The attendant cried out and tried to stop the snaking street kids. They evaded his grasp with practised ease, and he stepped forward and raised a hand to lash out at them.
Ana turned to see the mortified attendant spasming, and her friends filing past him with verbal taunts and their own mimicry of the man’s galvanic, puppet-like spasms.
She led the kids to their seats and eased Prakesh down beside her. The other passengers were staring at Ana and her friends, some with distaste and others with tolerant amusement. Ana smiled back at them, defiantly. Minutes later the train pulled slowly from the platform.
She stared through the window at the decrepit station sliding past. She saw the buildings and advertising hoardings that she had known for years, the familiar faces of the station workers. She looked up, at the footbridge high above, and saw a grey-furred monkey staring down at her. The odd thing was, she thought, that she felt not the slightest regret at her departure.
His head on Ana’s shoulder, Prakesh murmured, “Where are we going, Ana?”
As the train slid from the station, she told him.
GOPAL WAS THE first to see the Serene starships.
They had been travelling for hours when Ana fell asleep, tired from staring out of the window at the passing countryside, the farmers toiling in the fields, identical stretches of dun-coloured land passing by without variation.
Gopal’s cry woke her in an instant. She sat up quickly, then worked to control her panic. She no longer had to fear being awoken in the dead of night by someone’s alarmed cries, ready to run from whoever had a grievance against her and her friends.
“There!” Gopal pointed, pressing his face against the window. Ana peered and made out, high in the distance, the ellipse of the eight conjoined starships. At this distance and angle they presented a discus-shape hovering over a green blur of land on the horizon.
“What did the Serene look like?” Danta asked.
“Were they green?”
“Did they have big eyes and claws?”
“Were they monsters?”
Ana smiled and said that she had not seen the Serene aboard the starships. The golden figure had explained that they were few and far between, and were not monstrous but humanoid.
“But who are the golden figures?” Gopal wanted to know.
“They work for the Serene,” she replied.
“Like slaves?”
Ana laughed. “No, more like… like servants.”
Of course, she thought, the golden figures might not have been telling the truth: what if the Serene looked like monsters, like big hairy spiders which human beings would find horrible to look at; what if the golden figures were just human-shaped in order to set human minds at rest?
She realised that, even if this were so, it did not really matter. The Serene had brought peace to the Earth for the first time in living memory.
Two hours later the train drew to a halt at the town of Fandrabad and Ana led her little tribe out into the sweltering midday heat.
They left the station, along with a thousand other pilgrims, all chattering excitedly at what lay ahead. Ana came to a sudden halt on the steps of the station and stared in amazement at the sight that greeted her.
On the edge of the small town, a great shimmering wall of white light stretched away on either side for kilometres. If she stared hard she could see through the veil of light. She made out a stretch of green land, dotted with domes and other buildings, but faint as if seen through gauze.