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A few seconds later Jago points, and Sarah sees it. An exposed section of Tube tracks for London’s District and Circle lines. They make it in 15.8 seconds from the side of the hotel, and 7.3 seconds after that they are in the dark secluded safety of the tunnels. As they scramble into the shadows, the image of Christopher infiltrates Sarah’s mind, his head exploding, followed by his body. She tries to beat the image back, and she does. Moving, fighting, Playing are all at least good for one thing: forgetting.
iii
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Alice doesn’t like beds as much as she does hammocks, especially on ships, so she’s slung her hammock across her small cabin. She lolls around, letting the motion of the sea swing her back and forth.
She tosses a knife end over end and catches it. Tosses and catches. Tosses and catches. One slipup and it could land in her eye, skewer her brain.
Alice doesn’t slip up.
She’s not thinking of much. Just the knife and of slaughtering Baitsakhan when she finds him.
And of the fear on Little Alice’s face. She has seen it in her dreams so many times that it’s burned into her consciousness.
Little Alice.
Screaming.
What is it about this girl she’s never met? Why does Alice care about her? Dream about her?
Shari’s a good nut, that’s why. I am too. The rest are bastards, so fuck ’em.
Her satellite phone rings. She picks it up, presses talk.
“Oi, that Tim? Yeah, yeah. Right. Good! And you spoke to Cousin Willey in KL, yeah? Great. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Naw, none of that. Just my blades. No, Tim, I mean it! I don’t need any guns, I’m telling ya. You know me. Purist and all. Oh, all right, fine. You make a good point. Every one of these Player bastards is probably armed to the teeth, true and true. Just keep ’em small, and only hollow tips. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, any news on the rock? Anyone figure out where it’s gonna hit? ’Cause when it does, your Alice doesn’t want to be nowhere near. You neither? ’Magine that.”
She flicks the knife into the air above her head. It turns nine times. She catches it between her index finger and her thumb. Tosses again.
“Any luck with Shari? Oh, really? When were you gonna tell me, ya wanker? I oughta come back there and carve your freckle out, Tim. Well, what is it, then?”
She catches the knife by the handle and leans so far out of the hammock that she thinks she’s going to flip out, but she doesn’t. She sticks a leg out the other side and is perfectly balanced. She scratches a number on the wall. 91-8166449301.
“Thanks, Tim. Don’t die until you get to see it all go down. Gonna be a sight. Yeah, later, mate.”
She presses talk again, settles into her hammock, calls Shari’s number.
Rings 12 times, no one answers.
She calls again.
Rings 12 times, no one answers.
She calls again.
Rings 12 times, no one answers.
She calls again and again and again and again, and she will keep calling until someone does answer.
Because she has something very important to tell the Harappan.
Something very important indeed.
(#ulink_58d34f5c-3eff-5ee9-8013-d55ff4ce048f)
They are all here.
Shari and Jamal, Paru and Ana, Char and Chalgundi, Sera and Pim, Pravheet and Una, Samuel and Yali, Peetee and Julu, Varj and Huma, Himat and Hail, Chipper and Ghala, Boort and Helena, Jovinderpihainu, Ghar, Viralla, Gup, Brundini, Chem, and even Quali, toting a three-week-old Jessica, who is wrapped in soft linen cloths of alizarin and turquoise.
The other children are here too, more than 50, too many to name, from two to 17, including Little Alice. They’re playing and caring for one another in the adjoining room and in the herb-and-rock garden beyond, leaving the grown-ups alone, as they have been instructed. Seventeen servants are there, all of whom double as guards, and there are 23 more who are only guards, armed discreetly, stationed all around the hall.
They have been meeting, eating, and drinking juice and chai and coffee and lassis—never alcohol for the Harappan—for over three hours. The smells of curry and coriander, lentils and bread, turmeric and cream and hot oil, lemon and garlic and onions, fill the air, along with the rich and heady odor of bodies and sweat and cinnamon and rosewater dabbed behind ears and along necklines.
All of them talking at once.
For three hours they were polite and respectful, catching up with one another, kindnesses exchanged, the familiarity of close relations.
But 16 minutes ago the arguing started.
“The Harappan cannot sit on the sidelines,” Peetee says. He is 44 and the tallest of their clan, a former trainer in cryptography. He has dark, deep-set eyes that tell of sadness, and henna-dyed hair that speaks to his vanity.
Gup, a 53-year-old ex-Player and bachelor who lives in Colombo and who fought against the Tamils just for the diversionary nature of violence, nods with him. “Especially now that Endgame is under way. What is the point of our Player retreating like this? We are teetering on the precipice of, of, of—well, if not our destruction then certainly a sea change for humanity. The Event will see to that.”
“The Player has her reasons,” says Julu, one of Shari’s aunts. She speaks without taking her eyes from her hands, which are habitually fingering a strand of crimson prayer beads.
“Reasons?” several of them blurt at once. “Reasons?”
“What reason could there possibly be?” a booming female voice asks from the far end of the table. “I demand to know. It looks to me as if she fled at the drawing of first blood.” The voice belongs to Helena, 66, a former Player, the 2nd-most esteemed of the last 208 years. She is squat and round and strong and still swift. “A finger? I would have given an eye and a lung and a leg before I came hopping home. I would have given an arm and my hearing and my tongue! No, I would have given all! I would not have come home for any reason but death!”
Boort, her husband of 46 years—they were married at the stroke of midnight on the day she lapsed—reaches out and pats her forearm. “Now, Helena.”
“Aand mat kha!” she exclaims, shucking off Boort’s hand so she can point at Shari. “That—that—that girl gave up! She gave up. She never even made a kill in all of her training! Takes some effort to wiggle out of that time-honored obligation. More effort than what she put into Playing. I had thirty kills before I lapsed. But her? No! She is too good for death. Imagine that! A Player of Endgame. A Player of Endgame who also happens to be a mother. Can you believe it? That is what we have pinned our hopes to. A spineless quitter.”
Now the room is quiet; Helena’s words are like a volley of gunshots, everyone taking cover, not yet ready to poke their heads back out. Shari, for her part, does not flinch at any of it. She sits straight-backed and listens. Her eyes have moved to each speaker, and so now she stares at Helena. Her stare is calm and confident. She loves Helena like family, in spite of her ire. Loves all of these people.
Helena bristles at Shari’s look, which she mistakes for insolence. “Do not glare at me like that, Player.”
Shari tilts her head to the side as if to apologize, but remains silent. Her eyes drift past Helena to the children’s room, where she picks out a flash of Little Alice’s bright-pink trousers among the wheeling limbs of children. Jamal squeezes her knee under the table, just as he would if they were alone in their yard, watching a sunset.
“Helena, you may be right, but it serves no purpose to compare Shari Chopra to you or any other Player.” This is Jovinderpihainu, a former Player and the elder of the Harappan line. He is 94, as sharp as he was when he was 44, even 24. He is small and shrunken in his orange robes, skin as wrinkled and creased as the fabric. “She chooses a different path. She always has. We mustn’t question it.”
“But I am questioning it, Jov!” Helena persists. This is what everyone calls him, except the children, who call him Happy. They love his smiles, practically toothless, his last shocks of silver hair always sticking out every which way. He doesn’t smile much anymore, not since Endgame began. The children wonder why.
Jov raises a hand, a familiar and crystal-clear indication that he has heard enough. “I will repeat, but not again: this is not about you, Helena.” Helena crosses her arms. Boort whispers some soothing words into her ear, but she gives every appearance of not listening to him.
“Perhaps we should ask Shari’s father, hm?” Jov says. “Paru? What have you to say? Your daughter has taken a strange route in the game. Have you any insight?”
Paru clears his throat. “It is true that my daughter is not a natural killer. I am not sure that, had I been chosen in the past, I would have been much different. But while Shari may not be the bloodthirstiest among us”—he is interrupted by scattered snickers—“I can say one thing with confidence. Shari is the most compassionate soul of everyone in this room, yourself included, Jov. With respect.”
Jov nods slowly.
Paru takes a deep breath, trying to meet every set of eyes upon him. “Compassion may not seem like much of a weapon for Endgame. It is not hard like a fist or sharp like a sword or fast like a bullet. It does not travel in straight lines delivering death. It is not final, but it can be fierce. This I know. If Shari can survive and somehow win, then we will be better for it. The new world of men will need compassion just as much as it will need resourcefulness and cunning. Maybe more, if this blessed Earth will be as broken as we believe it will be. Ask yourself, my family—if the Harappan are to inherit the aftermath, would you prefer our champion to be a ruthless killer, or one who has mastered her fear and found her heart? One who can teach her disciples the ways of compassion in lieu of the ways of the fist?”
“Thank you, Paru,” Jov says. “You speak wisely. I wonder, though—”
“But how”—a soft but clear voice interrupts—“will she win if she is here, and not out there pursuing Sky Key?”
This is Pravheet, a youthful 59, perhaps the most respected member of the Harappan line, even more than Jov. He was the Player during a false start of Endgame, one of only three false starts in history. The infamous Chasm-game perpetrated by the Zero line in 1972. The one that he alone exposed, but not before felling four Players of other lines. It was Pravheet who single-handedly obliterated the Zero line—that delusional band of outsiders—in the aftermath of the Chasm-game. Most importantly, Pravheet is the one who, after lapsing, swore never to kill again. He became an ascetic for 23 years before taking Una as his wife and making a family of his own. During his seclusion he studied the ways of the ancient seers, deciphering the secret texts of the Harappan and the Buddha that their line has protected for millennia.
“Pravheet is right to ask,” Jov says. “I think it is time we hear from the Player herself.” And now, all their eyes turn to Shari Chopra. Jamal takes her hand and straightens next to her, as if he’s readying for an onslaught.
“Elders,” Shari says, her voice serene. “We needn’t look for Sky Key.”
And sure enough the voices come fast and furious. Shari can make out only snatches of their confusion, their anger, their exasperation.
“But this is Endgame” … “What is this blasphemy” … “not look for Sky Key?” … “lose” … “We’ll lose” … “She dooms us all” … “All is lost and the dark is coming” … “What does she mean” … “Surely she’s loony” … “She is giving up” … “Maybe she knows” … “no no no” … “How can this child be a Player?”…
“ENOUGH!” Jov shouts. Even the cavorting children in the adjoining room stop playing. He holds out his hand, palm up, in Shari’s direction. “Please, my Player. Explain.”
“We needn’t look for Sky Key because we already have it.”
These words have the opposite effect on the assembly. Instead of vociferous objection, there is disbelieving silence.
Finally, Chipper says, “Already have it?”
Shari lowers her eyes. “Yes, Uncle.”
“Where? When did you go and get it? You can’t have gotten it before Earth Key,” Helena says, her voice accusatory.
“In a manner of speaking, Auntie, I did.”
“What are you saying, Player? Please, speak plainly.” It is Pravheet again.
“Sky Key is my Little Alice.”
All the adults go deathly quiet, save for Una and Ghala, who both gasp. Paru’s voice is quavering as he asks, “B-but how can y-you be sure?”
“It was my clue from the kepler. And it is what Little Alice has told me too, in her own way. She’s been having dreams. I’ve been having them as well.”
“But why would the Makers do this?” Chipper asks. “It is immoral to involve a child in this way.”
“The Makers are immoral, Uncle,” Shari says emphatically. “Endgame is immoral. Or rather … amoral.”
More gasps.
Over half the people in this hall truly believe that the keplers exist on a plane higher than the gods. The gods are Their children, after all, and humans are at another remove, the children of the gods. The keplers are the gods of the gods and, for many here, they are beyond reproach.
“I will not listen to this heresy!” Gup blurts. He stands quickly from his chair and stalks out of the room. Short-tempered and slow-witted Gup. No one follows him.
“I do not wish to cause dissension, elders, but I alone have met a kepler. After gaining some distance from it, and considering the clue it gave me, I have come to the conclusion that the one I met was … detached. At best. It came to announce the commencement of Endgame, and the coming of the Great Extinction, and all it really did was talk as if it were reciting some kind of history already passed. Don’t get me wrong—it was physically wondrous, unlike anything I have ever seen, and it had abilities that go far beyond anything we have learned. Yet for all this power, its message was thus: ‘Nearly every human and animal will die. You twelve will fight to figure out who doesn’t. Good luck.’ Like a child plucking wings off a butterfly. There is no nobility in that.”
Shari pauses. She expects another rush of questions. This time, the other Harappan stay silent. Shari continues.
“As for the other Players, they fall into two camps—those who should win, and those who shouldn’t. At least half were twisted monsters, poisoned by their vanity, by the knowledge that they are among the deadliest people on Earth. The others were different, more self-aware, perhaps capable of feelings beyond bloodlust. I would say that fewer than half deserve to win. In our brief meeting, only two distinguished themselves—and shamefully, I was not one. The first was the Aksumite, a dark-skinned and regal boy with the bluest of eyes, who begged us to pool our knowledge and work together in an effort to perhaps spare Earth from undue suffering. The other was the Koori, a wild woman of Australia, who saved my life in Chengdu. But mostly the Players were … just people. People driven by a purpose they don’t—we don’t—wholly understand.”
Another pause. Shari watches the children in the next room. Some of the older ones have stopped playing and instead stand in the doorway, listening.
She continues. “Helena—you said that I am not a natural killer, and I concede that I am not. But I have killed, and I will kill again if Endgame requires it. But I will not take pleasure in it. Do you understand?” Helena makes an audible huff. Shari ignores this. “I will not kill a person who is a true human being, do you see? The boy I killed was a monster. I broke a chair to pieces and drove a wooden stake through his heart.”
Shari stands and looks over the faces in the room, meeting the gaze of each of her elders with a sad smile on her lips. She can see that many do understand. Jov and Paru and Ana and Pravheet and Una and Chem especially. She finishes by turning to Jamal. He squeezes her hand tightly. As she speaks, she doesn’t take her eyes from Jamal. “I do not tell you of this murder of mine to boast,” she says quietly, “but to demonstrate that I will stand for my people. I have stood for my people, and chief among all of you, I will stand for Little Alice. She is Sky Key. I know it, and it is only a matter of time before the others do too. They will come for her. We, all of us, every initiated member of our line, must protect her.”
“You mean you must protect her,” Helena says, a desperate bitterness creeping into her voice.
Shari looks lovingly at Helena. “No, Auntie. I mean we. I mean you especially. With respect to all of you, please listen. I have thought long and hard on this. The kepler said explicitly that there are no rules in Endgame. I am the Player, and the Event is coming in fewer than ninety days—perhaps even sooner if the kepler wills it. We must prepare. If the keplers have the, the, the”—she searches for the words—“the immorality, the cynicism, to make a child, one of our own children, a piece of the Great Game, then I say we can do whatever we like. I propose that we go to the Valley of Eternal Life and take Sky Key with us. We take our people there. That ancient fortress is one of the most defensible keeps in the entire world. Let the others Play the way they want to—by hunting and killing and saying to themselves, ‘I am the best, I am the best, I am the best.’ We will wait. We will wait for them to bring Earth Key to us, and they will break hard on our walls, and we will take Earth Key. I will take it, and bring it together with my Sky Key for the last leg of the game. But I need you, and want you. We are the Harappan, and we are going to protect our own. We are going to save our line. We.”
She sits down. Everyone is still. The only sounds come from the very small children still playing in the next room. Shari watches as Little Alice pushes through the legs and arms of her cousins and says, “Did you say my name, Mama?”
Shari’s eyes well with tears. “Yes, meri jaan. Come sit with us.”
Little Alice, precocious and far more confident in her movements and speaking than an average two-year-old, prances across the hall to her mother and father. She is oblivious to all the eyes upon her. As she climbs onto Jamal’s lap, Jov says, “I will consider your words before deciding on a course of action, Shari. But I would like to talk more with you, along with Helena, Paru, Pravheet, and Jamal. I want some more assurance that what you say about Sky Key is true.”
Shari bows her head. “Yes, Jovinderpihainu.”
And as each individual in the room thinks about what Shari has just said, Shari’s maid steps into the hall, practically folded in half out of deference, and says with her voice shaking, “Madam Chopra, please forgive me but I have an extremely urgent message.”
Shari holds out her hand. “Come, Sara. Stand and don’t be afraid. What is it?”
Sara straightens and shuffles forward, the balls of her feet scuffing the floor, and hands Shari a piece of white paper.
Shari takes it and reads.
“It is a message from the Koori,” Shari says. “She found me. She found us.”
Shari pauses.
“What does it say?” Paru asks.
Shari shows it to Jamal, who stands and carries Little Alice in his arms back to the playroom, whispering silly things in her ear as they go, Little Alice giggling and nuzzling her father’s neck. The wall of teenagers parts for them, and they disappear into the next room. The teenagers come back together and stare at Shari.
When her husband and daughter are out of earshot, she says, “The note reads, ‘Stay sharp. Your Little Alice is in danger. Grave danger. The others will come for her. I don’t know why, but I have seen it. The Old People have shown me in my dreams. I will try to stop them. The keplers have given me a way to do this. Keep her safe. Keep yourself safe, until the end. May we be the last standing, and fight it out then. Two of the good ones. Yours, Big A.’”
Jov claps, and it is like a giant clapping away a covering of clouds.
No more confirmation is needed.
The 893rd meeting of the Harappan line is over.
They must move.
