Bheem Read online

  Then . . .

  Attck . . . undr attck. Taliban.

  The dreaded word. He clutched at the phone, heart hammering. Cheerfully, the phone beeped, mocking the grim import of the words that formed on the screen:

  Our hotel, shots on frst flr. Mst get out.

  They cmng up. My flr. . . cant escap . . .

  Outside door. Dont send msg. No sound. Phon mst not

  No sound. No sound. He must not send a message. Her phone must not beep. Ravi waited.

  2

  Bastar

  25 October 2017

  The window provided by the Inmarsat satellite’s flyby was closing rapidly.

  ‘It’s this damn cloud cover!’ Aviva muttered, exasperated. She struggled with the sat phone, its speaker crackling, the hiss of snarled signals washing over Bheem and Vineet as the archaeologist made repeated futile attempts to connect. ‘Even if I get through, what do I tell them? Why would anyone look for Aneeta Nair?’

  ‘Let Vineet-Sinha try,’ suggested Bheem. ‘Finding people is everyday work for his group of spies.’

  Which is a perfectly reasonable term for journalists, thought Vineet, as he took over. He struck gold at once, his perennial hot streak at gambling translating into luck with satellite and cloud positions.

  ‘Aneeta Nair?’ Despite the static, the irritation in the Old Man’s voice was unmistakable. ‘You break cover and call me on my unlisted number for this? The same question every reporter from here to Kabul’s been parroting for the last nine hours? What the fuck’s the matter with y—’

  A burst of static swallowed the colourful language with which the Old Man lit up the ether.

  Vineet looked at his companions baffled. ‘Every reporter?’ Hurriedly, he spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Chief! Chief! Can you hear me? What did you mean? Why is every reporter asking about Aneeta Nair?’

  ‘. . . the fuck have you been? In a jungle? The story’s everywhere! The latest terrorist attack in Kabul. Six Indians killed. But only one—and get this—only one with the blood drained from her body! Aneeta Nair.’

  ‘Blood drained from her body?’

  ‘Hell, yes! There were human tooth marks on her neck and chest! They drank her blood! Sucked it all out! Are those Taliban bastards terrorists or frigging vampires!’

  Vineet stared wide-eyed at Bheem and Aviva.

  A sharp crackle and the Old Man’s voice came through again: ‘. . . about Aneeta Nair . . . you had no clue about the attack. So where did you pick up the name? Do you have a new ang—’

  The voice disappeared again, this time with the white-noise finality that confirmed that the orbiting satellite had swung beyond range.

  ‘Ashvatthama and Kritavarma,’ Bheem said. ‘They got there first.’

  ‘But why did they drink her . . . ?’ Vineet looked wildly at the warrior. ‘What sort of crazy barbarian . . .’

  He stopped, suddenly all too aware of the history of the man who stood before him. This was Bheem, the fearsome warrior who had slain Dusshasan and revelled in his victory by drinking his fallen foe’s blood. Or so the legend went.

  Vineet scrambled to his feet, tremors rattling his body, looking like a frightened child in the shadow of the huge warrior. ‘Look, I—I’m sorry if I offended you, but I’m just an ordinary m—man, unlike . . . I—I need to know . . .’ His voice trailed off, leaving his mouth working comically.

  Bheem looked at him in faint astonishment. ‘You’re right, Vineet-Sinha. I have been remiss. You do need to know. Both you and Aviva-Fein.’

  Mandodari’s blood curse, the decimation of the vaanars, the doom unleashed by the cross-species leap of the disease to the human race—Bheem’s revelation of the coming Armageddon stunned Aviva and Vineet into horrified silence.

  ‘The blood drinking. This was not revenge,’ said Bheem grimly. ‘Ashvatthama is doing what he has sworn to do—ensure that the saviours’ blood cannot be used to deliver mankind from destruction.’

  Every instinct rebelled against accepting the warrior’s monstrous tale, but there was no denying the mountain of evidence that accompanied it: the massacre of the Royce team by savage marauders from nowhere, the appearance of the vaanar with his messianic prophecies, the presence of the legendary hero who had saved their lives. The world that Aviva and Vineet had known was gone. Their lives, the survival of humankind itself, depended on the decisions that Bheem made now.

  Aviva tried to think clearly despite the terror that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Is there any way I . . . we . . . Could we help?’

  ‘You can do very little, Aviva-Fein,’ Bheem said flatly, ‘but Vineet-Sinha, you know a woman, a healer called Nishi-Agarwal, who is aware of the blood scourge. She has spoken with you of finding someone who is unaffected by it.’

  Vineet looked at Bheem, astounded. ‘Dr Agarwal! How did you—forget I asked. But my piece on Dr Agarwal’s research was killed. The Old Man said she’d been arrested, taken away. I don’t know where.’

  ‘You last met her in a place called Delhi,’ said Bheem. ‘Let’s begin there.’

  ‘In Delhi?’ Aviva gestured to the surrounding jungle. ‘We’re in the middle of Bastar. Delhi’s more than a thousand kilometres away. That’s three hundred kos in your calculation. How will we get there?’

  The answer to that was buried deep—in Saragha’s wandering mind. Less than an hour before, Bheem had stepped into that swamp and floundered, his own mind trapped in the shifting sands of maya. Thoughts, memories, delusions, there was no knowing imaginary from genuine. Bheem had felt himself slipping into madness. And then, teetering on the brink of the abyss, he had been pulled back. A voice had pierced that slough of nightmares:

  Saragha, my friend . . . Saragha . . .

  Saragha’s mind had responded immediately.

  Vayuputra . . .

  Hanuman . . .

  And suddenly, everything had changed. Bheem had found himself in a labyrinth, moving smoothly, unravelling tangled pathways until, abruptly, his mind had broken free and re-entered the physical world that, laughably, is referred to as ‘real’. The episode had shaken Bheem as little had in his fierce, battle-scarred life.

  Bheem fixed a steady gaze on Aviva. ‘I have walked the road of madness,’ he said. ‘And though I am loath to repeat the experience, I have no choice.’ He paused, turning to the shattered rock face of the cavern. ‘Behind these walls, there lies another world, an internal world, Antaragata, where space and distance as we know them do not exist. The quickest route to any place in the outer world is through Antaragata.’

  ‘Another world? Through there?’ Aviva struggled to understand what he was saying. ‘You know this world?’

  ‘I have travelled its paths at other times, for other reasons, but never the passages that lie behind these walls. The map through these tangled byways is lodged only in the shrouded mind of the vaanar . . . I would have to open my mind to his, again.’

  Aviva looked at him worriedly, the implications of what he was saying sinking in. ‘But . . . Isn’t he insane? You said your encounter with the vaanar’s mind almost consumed yours. Why would you expose yourself again to that madness?’

  ‘Why . . .’ An enigmatic expression flitted across the warrior’s face. ‘You are right to ask. I am not of this time. My line ended in Kurukshetra’s bloody mud. Why should I risk my life in a battle in which I have no stake?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean—’

  ‘No. You have read me correctly.’ Bheem moved his shoulders, as if trying to shift a weight borne too long. ‘Lord Krishna . . . Do your duty,’ he said. ‘Without expecting any reward. Uphold dharma. I am no Arjun, but I did as I was asked—battle, slaughter, my duty. We won—and lost—everything. Ashvatthama . . . he destroyed my clan, massacred my kin while they slept. But my sons . . . He awakened them—and then cut them to pieces, slowly. Sarvaang was a non-combatant, a boy, not yet fourteen . . .’ He looked at Aviva. ‘It is not for dharma that I do this. Nor to save humankind. I do this for myse
lf.’

  Aviva shivered. Bheem grimaced and stepped towards the cave wall. His muscles bunched as he moved large blocks of fallen limestone aside, uncovering a dark gateway.

  Pale with fear, Vineet thrust himself forward. ‘Look, I—I apologize if I’m sounding selfish, but if you go in there . . . and . . . and of course you’re not coming out . . . so what happens to us? How do we get out of here?’

  ‘That is not a worry, Vineet-Sinha,’ replied Bheem, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. ‘You are coming with me.’

  ‘With you? In there? You must think I’m mad!’

  Something glinted deep within the warrior’s eyes. ‘You would not be the only one, Vineet-Sinha.’

  ‘We’re dead anyway.’ Vineet spun around to face Aviva as she continued quietly, ‘So is everyone, every last human, if he fails. It’s the end of everything, Vineet, the end of days. We have to go with him, don’t you see?’

  The journalist said nothing for a moment, then broke into hysterical laughter. Evidently, there was just one sensible choice possible, to follow a savage into madness.

  They were blind, helpless, terrified. Was it just a quarter of an hour since they had stumbled into the lightless catacomb uncovered by the fragmented cavern walls? There was no turning back now. Towed along at the end of the rope that tethered them to Bheem, Aviva and Vineet panted and gasped, their voices alone providing a link with reality. Vineet tripped and fell heavily.

  ‘Stop!’ Aviva shouted, but the warrior kept moving forward, dragging them along.

  Aviva put out a hand in the utter blackness, found Vineet and managed to get him to his feet.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Vineet panted. ‘Why didn’t he stop? Is he crazy?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. He did warn us before we started out.’

  The labyrinth—did it exist at all? Or was it just a figment of his tormented mind? Did he actually feel the smooth floor under his bare feet, were there stone walls on either side or was the passage itself an illusion? Bheem had no way of ascertaining reality, lost as he was in the twisted alleys of the vaanar’s deranged mind. He had chosen to plunge into maya with the same defiance with which he had challenged Samay. He would survive it—he must! Uncertain of everything, the floor, the walls, the distant shrieks of the vaanar, the rope around his waist that linked him to his companions, Bheem forged on through a warren of passages that may or may not have existed. Fiercely, he concentrated, focusing on the maze imprinted in his mind, the memory of the pathways down which he had travelled, following that invisible presence that had calmed Saragha’s storm-tossed soul. This was Antaragata, the Internal, the smelter where the iron rules of the outer world were melted down and recast. There was a plan, however, an intricate pattern that underlay this illusory world, and Bheem refused to stray from it despite the screaming, whirling phantasms that assaulted him without end.

  Abruptly, he sensed danger, and stopped. The pair behind stumbled into him, but Bheem paid no heed. His warrior’s instinct was jangling, slicing sharply through maya’s clutching web, overriding his compromised mind. Bheem looked around blearily, trying to see in the impenetrable murk. There must have been light in the passage, too faint to register consciously—but if light indeed had existed, it was gone now, sucked out completely, the darkness that lay before him an even blacker shade of black. The image of a pit, a bottomless shaft, glimmered in Bheem’s mind. He reached out and, precisely at that moment, something dropped from above, brushing against Bheem’s fingers: ropes, vines, a mesh in the form of a cage that dangled in the air over that indeterminable drop. Had the labyrinth waited for the intruders to fall? And when they didn’t, had it rewarded them by providing this means of safe descent? Bheem did not even try to winkle out an answer. He simply moved forward into the cage, dragging his companions along. They gasped as the cage swung under their weight, suddenly sensing the depths below. It was too late for second thoughts, though. Every moment now was a leap of faith for Aviva and Vineet, faith in the giant warrior from nowhere.

  An hour later, the vine cage that enclosed them was still hurtling down the shaft.

  ‘I think I just saw a rabbit with a pocket watch!’ Aviva muttered wearily.

  There was nothing to see, of course, in the all-enveloping dark, just a churning hollowness in her stomach and the rush of increasingly dense air over her skin as the cage plummeted a nausea-inducing fifty feet every second. Though she couldn’t see Bheem, she sensed he was in control of himself again, his arms extended through the vine mesh, hands gripping and controlling the thrumming cords of the counterweight, preventing the cage from free-falling to the bottom of the pit. And how far below was that? How deep had they descended? There seemed no end to the blind, vertiginous descent. The deepest mines in the world were the TauTona and the Mponeng gold mines in South Africa, Aviva remembered, their shafts plunging almost four kilometres into the earth. They must be as far below the surface, perhaps farther. The temperature was rising rapidly as they neared layers of magma buried miles below the external crust. What was it now: 50°C? 55°C? Vineet had collapsed to the floor of the cage at least thirty minutes before; Aviva felt her own strength drain away. Dehydration, she thought.

  If this goes on for much longer . . .

  The cage jerked to a halt. Blue light flickered from a narrow fissure in the wall facing them, a constricted tunnel behind the cleft twisting away into the depths of the earth.

  ‘We’re here,’ Bheem said. ‘The serpent’s mouth.’

  The serpent’s what?

  The sound rolled in and out of the colossal underground canyon like the hiss of a giant kettle.

  ‘T—tea’s on the b—boil.’ Vineet’s teeth chattered, as he tried to stave off despair with forced flippancy.

  Despite the numbing cold that wracked her, Aviva smiled. She had to admit that it was a surprisingly accurate comparison. They stood atop a precipitous cliff. In the abyss six hundred feet below, a river of smoke spurted and ebbed as if powered by enormous bellows. The cliffs themselves were like beehives, riddled with holes from which the gas flowed into the canyon. The vapour glowed, exuding a brilliant blue light that lay upon the skin of the cliffs. The cold was getting hard to bear, with each icy breath. Aviva longed for the heat of the pit they had left just minutes ago, but it had dissolved as if it had never existed. Perhaps it hadn’t. Perhaps the maze, the pit, everything she had experienced since leaving the cavern was just a delusion. Perhaps she was mad. Abruptly, stone-hard hands gripped her, shook her as if she were a rag doll.

  ‘Aviva-Fein!’ Bheem stood before her, looking at her, annoyed. ‘Do not fade now. I would not care to leave you behind.’

  Leave her behind? What was he talking about? Aviva snapped out of her stupor and glared at the warrior. ‘Don’t you dare! You’re not leaving either of us, you hear me?’

  Bheem smiled. ‘That is much better.’ He gestured towards Vineet, who had sunk to his knees, upright only because of the rope that tied him to the others. ‘We need Vineet-Sinha for the next step of the journey, but he is weak from within. That is your task, Aviva-Fein, to keep him going as long as he is needed.’

  Aviva shivered. ‘W—what did . . .’ She controlled herself. ‘What did you mean by the . . . the serpent’s mouth?’

  ‘We are inside it,’ Bheem said, ‘the maw of Sesha Nag.’ He pointed at the river of smoke below, hissing, spitting, snaking away until it vanished behind a distant bend in the cliffs. ‘There he is, the serpent that rings the world.’

  The sages, the stories, those ancient tracts and folk tales—so this is what they had been talking about! thought Aviva. Sesha Nag. The many-headed cobra that girdles the earth. Sesha, the zero, the primordial soup from which everything springs, where everything begins and ends. They had it right all along.

  ‘Vineet-Sinha and Nishi-Agarwal,’ said Bheem, ‘they have been together. Within Sesha Nag, the connection remains. They can be reconnected in an instant. Physical distance
means nothing.’

  Teleportation, Aviva thought, awed. Quantum theory! Her advanced physics lectures came back to her in a rush. She could almost hear Professor Beckmann: ‘Two previously entangled particles, even if separated by the width of the universe, can easily interact.’ So Einstein was wrong, after all. Aviva forgot the biting cold, the deadly peril they faced, and could think of nothing but what lay before her: A quantum Internet! A chain of entangled particles girdling the entire world!

  Bheem shortened the rope that bound him to the others, hoisted Vineet to his feet and moved towards the cliff’s edge. ‘Keep the healer in your mind’s eye, Vineet-Sinha,’ he said, ‘when we hit the river.’

  ‘Hit the riv—?’ Vineet stumbled, trying to stop.

  ‘And, Aviva-Fein, focus on Vineet-Sinha. Our minds must flow as one stream.’

  ‘Stop!’ Vineet dug in his heels but was dragged forward, his resistance pitiful against Bheem’s giant strength. ‘Stop, you crazy freak!’

  Bheem halted. ‘Control your fear, Vineet-Sinha. When entering the serpent, your mind must be clear.’

  ‘Screw you!’ Vineet screamed. ‘I’m not going in there!’

  This was a problem. There was no point in forcing the feeble maanav in against his will. Bheem knew that the serpent was unforgiving; uncertainty would be dealt with ruthlessly.

  Aviva moved forward, reached out, held the traumatized reporter’s hand. ‘It terrifies me too, Vineet,’ she said gently. ‘But what choice do we have? There’s no going back now.’

  ‘I know,’ he whispered, sinking to his knees. ‘I know . . . I . . . have this fear . . . of heights. Passed out in that shaft too, didn’t I?’ He looked up at her. ‘Sorry . . . sorry I’m so weak.’

  ‘No, I’ve seen this before . . . in war. You don’t have to be ashamed of fear.’

  Bheem snorted, but refrained from commenting.

  ‘Warrior!’

  The shout ricocheted off the cliffs, rising above the pervasive hiss of the torrent. Bheem spun around, cursing himself for having allowed his companions to distract him. There he was, on the other side of the chasm, suspended from a ledge, his madness on display in wild, threatening gesticulations—Saragha.