Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (29 page)

Anand looked away. “I think so, too, Jani-ji,” he said.

“I think, in many ways, my father saw the British through rose-tinted spectacles. He liked to think that with the Raj it was all cricket and fair play. He thought the... the killings and such like, were aberrations.”

He stared at her. “And you? What do you think?”

“Oh, Anand, I don’t know. I would like to have confidence in the British and their rule, but I know they are weak, like anyone else, and I do so wish that we Indians could one day rule our own nation. My father had worked too long for the British, and could not envisage life without them. But I can.”

Beside her, Anand was silent.

“Have I shocked you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. Well, perhaps a little. I thought you believed what your father believed. I thought, with your English education... I thought you looked up to the Raj.”

“Anand, in many ways I do. I see the good they’ve brought to the country, the bureaucracy, the order, the healthcare, the egalitarianism in trying to abolish the caste system... despite all their own inherent faults. But at the same time I think that we, as a nation, a people, are advanced enough to take over the reins of governance.” She stopped, then laughed. “But listen to me, Anand! I am sounding just like a Nationalist pamphlet!”

She fell silent, confused in her own mind, and overwhelmed suddenly by the realisation, for perhaps the hundredth time that day, that she would never again see her father.

Six hours later the rising sun sent spears of light low through the jungle cover. Individual trees became defined, no longer the dark masses through which Mel crashed. Jani saw parakeets flash through the air like explosions of stained glass. Through a gap in the trees ahead she made out brilliant blue sky and a distant snow-capped peak.

Anand brought the elephant to a halt beneath the spreading shade of a baobab tree, and the sudden cessation of motion, after hours of jouncing this way and that, was disorienting. As the silence settled around them, Jani stretched and suggested they climb out to get some fresh air and something to eat.

They sat on the back of the elephant, picking at a selection of roasted nuts Anand had bought at the Dehrakesh market, as the sun rose over the jungle and an orchestra of insects tuned up. Jani was too tired to appreciate the food and wanted only to curl up on the chesterfield and sleep.

Anand fetched the map and unfolded it before them, dropping a finger on their position. “We are halfway to Rishi Tal, Jani-ji, which is about twenty-five miles away now. There are no roads in the area, so with luck the British will not find us.”

Jani stared at the map. “It is when we near Rishi Tal that I will become nervous.”

“If we set off again when darkness falls, we will reach Rishi Tal tomorrow morning,” he said. “Then we should leave Max and Mel well away from the town, hidden safely, and make our way there on foot.” He looked up at her. “And then? Why do you think this Jelch wanted you to go to Nepal?”

She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know, Anand–” She stopped speaking, cocked her head to one side and listened.

“What is it, Jani-ji?”

“Don’t you hear it?”

Above the birdsong, the repetitive paddling sound of an airship’s impellors made itself heard, growing louder.

Alarmed, Jani looked up, attempting to see the sky through the jungle canopy. At least, she thought, if she was unable to see the sky, then anyone up there would be unable to see the elephant.

Anand was scrambling down Mel’s flank, and Jani followed him. They hurried through the jungle, following the rising gradient towards a bare hillock high above. The sound of the airship grew louder, became a din almost overhead. In due course they came to the last of the trees and stopped side by side, crouching in the cover of a fern and staring into the patch of bright blue sky.

Seconds later the shape of a two-man airship came into view. Jani’s heart thumped as she made out, on its bulging hull, the union flag and the RAF roundel. The vehicle banked, veering north-east, and a minute later was a dwindling dot soon lost to sight.

She stared at Anand. “They cannot have been searching for us, surely?”

He shook his head. “I think it was just a routine patrol,” he said.

She led the way back to the mechanical elephant, heavy of heart, and then curled up in the darkened interior of the pachyderm’s belly and slept.

S
HE LOOKED UP
from her Tagore as the swaying motion of the elephant, like a galleon on the high seas, ceased and the engine began its long diminuendo towards silence.

She had joined Anand in the control seat for much of the last leg of this journey, and towards dawn had retired to the chesterfield to read. They had travelled throughout the night, and the journey had passed without incident.

The door in the Mech-Man’s back swung open and Anand slipped out. “We are about one mile from Rishi Tal, Jani-ji. We will leave Mel here and walk the rest of the way.”

Jani set her book aside. “I need to change, and you too. We will pass ourselves off as tourists, brother and sister, ah-cha, if anyone asks.” And hope, she added to herself, we don’t run into any policemen looking out for us.

“Tourists?” Anand gestured to his ragged shorts and shirt. “But these are the only clothes I have.”

“I have a surprise.” She reached for her bag and withdrew a new pair of shorts, a shirt and a pair of shining leather sandals.

“For me?” Anand said.

“In them you’ll look like my younger brother. And remember, you must be respectful – and obey me at all times.”

He squinted at her. “I think I do anyway, Jani-ji.”

He took the clothes, returned to the control room and dressed, while Jani changed into clean underwear. Last night, before setting off, they had bathed in the icy water of a mountain stream, which had been all very well, but Jani looked forward to finding a hotel in Rishi Tal and drawing herself a hot bath.

Her bag slung over her shoulder, she climbed down from the back of the elephant and moved to its great head. She patted the sun-warmed trunk. “With luck, Mel, we will see you again in a little while.”

They turned and walked through the forested glade, heading downhill towards the wide valley in which the town nestled.

“And where will we meet Jelch?” Anand asked.

“He did not specify a place, or a time. He merely said that I would know the place.”

He glanced at her. “And do you?”

She smiled. “I must admit that I don’t. But perhaps once we get there, ah-cha?”

“I’m curious to meet Jelch, Jani-ji. From what you said of him, he sounds like a monster.”

“Perhaps physically, yes, though a very human monster. But in here...” she touched her brow, “in here he is...
humane
is the only word I can think of.”

“And if we fail to meet him?”

Jani shook her head. “I don’t know. We’ll have to consider our options then, won’t we?”

They walked on, and she wondered at Jelch’s reaction to finding that she had lost the gift he had given her, the silver coin-like object. She feared his censure at her neglect.

To wipe away this thought, she asked Anand the first thing that entered her mind. “Do you miss your little sweetheart at Mr Clockwork’s factory?”

He blushed and regarded his new sandals. “I would rather not talk about her, Jani-ji,” he murmured.

They walked on through the pine trees; the sun was rising, warming the resin on the tree trunks and filling the air with its scent. Anand said, “And you?”

“Me?”

“Do you miss your young man?”

The odd thing was, when she thought about it, she had to admit that she did not. Events of late had swept thoughts of him away. Which was odd as, back in England, he had been constantly on her mind.

“Well?” Anand prompted.

“It’s strange, Anand, but I’ve had so much to think about of late that I haven’t had time to dwell on Sebastian.”

He was silent for a time, nodding, and then asked, “Do you love him, Jani-ji?”

She laughed. “Oh, what is love? I thought I did when I was with him. Had anyone said that we would be parted like this, then I would have thought it terrible. But the reality is that it is not so terrible after all. So, perhaps, I cannot love him...” And saying these words, and seeing in her mind’s eye Sebastian’s face as he said farewell to her at the London airyard, she felt as if she were betraying him.

“Then again... perhaps I do love him, Anand.” She shook her head. Perhaps only when she was back in England, and in his company again, would she know the true feelings of her heart?

Beside her, the boy stared at the ground and said, “Oh.”

There had been a time, a few months ago, when Jani had dreamed of a life with Sebastian in England... But since returning to India she felt, more and more, that her future belonged in her homeland, working as a surgeon and ministering to the needs of her own people. She sighed; oh, how torn she was, between loyalty to her country and gratitude to Britain. Sometimes she felt as if she belonged in neither place, and wondered if a life somewhere else entirely might be the answer.

Her thoughts were interrupted when they arrived at the margin of the trees and looked down on the town. Jani took a breath and exclaimed at the beauty of the scene laid out before them.

A long, brilliant blue lake nestled at the head of the valley, and rising on the far bank was the hill station of Rishi Tal. A long promenade flanked the lake, the wide boulevard a favourite place for tourists to stroll at sunset.

At one end of the road was a square surrounded by benches, with a statue of Queen Victoria at its centre.

Jani smiled. “I first came here with my mother and father when I was three,” she told Anand. “Do you see the statue?” She pointed. “Well, one day I was out walking with my mother. My father was watching from the balcony of their room in our guest house. I ran away from my mother, across the square, and just in front of the statue a horse galloped out of nowhere and knocked me down. I went tumbling under its hooves, and my mother and father thought I was dead. But by some miracle I picked myself up and toddled back to my mother, totally unharmed.”

She recalled her father telling her the story many times over the years; and he never told the tale without a tear coming to his eye. Thinking of how he must have felt at the time, seeing his daughter trampled by the galloping horse, Jani felt a swelling of emotion in her chest.

Anand said, “And to think, if you had not survived, Jani-ji, I would never have known you.”

She smiled, and recalled suddenly what Jelch had told her when she had asked why she should make her way to Nepal:
“For the ultimate benefit of your planet, Janisha, and all who live upon it...”

She gasped.

“What is it, Jani-ji?”

“I know!” she said.

He stared at her. “You know what?”

She laughed. “Where I should meet Jelch.” She shook her head. “The thing is, I don’t know how I know. It just came to me in a flash. But... but, Anand, how could Jelch be certain? How did he know where we would meet?”

“Perhaps he has special powers, Jani-ji. But where are we to meet him?”

“Every time we came here we stayed at my father’s favourite guest house. He always spoke of that first holiday he spent here with my mother... I think it was a magical time for him; he was young, and in love with my mother, and... and a year later she would be taken away from him.” She looked down at the town. “The guest house was called the Varma Singh, and it overlooked the lake. It is there that we will meet Jelch, I am sure of it!”

Jani felt a swelling in her heart as she stared across the lake, a sense of communion through time to the people her mother and father had been. And at the same time she felt a knot of fear when she made out, barrelling along the promenade on the far side of the lake, a jeep carrying khaki-clad military policemen.

She gripped Anand’s hand and they set off down the track.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN