Endgame: The Calling (17 page)

Shari Chopra has a new problem, an unforeseen problem.

29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

She cannot calm her mind.

29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

All her life she has been peaceful inside, but something has changed. Something happened after the Calling, after getting her clue. Something started worming away inside her, digging away at her, wanting out, wanting.

The numbers.

29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

Slithering through her mind.

She tries to relinquish expectations, to take shelter in her breath, tries to see through her closed eyes.

Nothing works.

29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

What do they mean?

What do they want?

29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

What Shari wants is a chai in a terracotta cup. She wants to drink the sweet, warming liquid, throw the empty cup on the ground, see the red shards. She wants to hear the wallah in the background as she strolls away. She wants dum aloo and dalchini pulao for dinner. She wants her
dadi
’s coconut chutney. She wants home, home. She wants her love, the love of her life. She wants to see him. Touch him.

But whatever the numbers want, that takes precedence. They crowd her mind and shove everything else aside.

29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

Shari is on a 3rd-class bus approaching the outskirts of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan. She got on the bus because she followed Alice Ulapala. She saw the big Koori in the woods and tracked her into Xi’an. It is less than 30 hours after the Calling. Alice hasn’t seen Shari, or at least she hasn’t let on. Alice is in the front. Shari snuck past her and is in the middle. The bus is full.

Her mind is full.

Too full.

Boiling over.

How could this happen? Shari has always had such rigorous control over her mind. While other Players of Endgame have focused on their physical skills, Shari has honed her mind like a blade, meditation her whetstone. Shari’s memory is close to perfect. Her mind drinks in details as thirstily as a man would drink water in the desert. Perhaps it is this openness that is causing her so much pain; perhaps she was
too receptive
to the clue.

29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

A passenger behind her starts crying. She says her stomach hurts. There is no air-conditioning and it is hot and getting hotter, and the heat from the engine is washing through the bus, the heat from the churning, belching engine that reeks of oil and gasoline and fire.

Should they be reversed?
4, 2, 8, 9, 29.
Is it a sequence?
4, 2, 8, 9, 29.
What’s next? Is it a single number? A formula? 2 squared is 4, cubed is 8, plus 1 is 9, put the digit 2 in front and get 29. But then what?

What?

What what what.

Shari is sweating. Sweating from the heat and sweating from the pressure building in her mind.

She wants to see him. She wanted to see him as soon as the Calling started and again as soon as it ended.

She wants to see him now.

She wants to see Jamal. Her best friend. Her
jaanu
.

The other Players cannot know about him.

About
them
.

Her husband and her young daughter, also named Alice, just like the Koori who Shari is tracking. She took it as a good omen that the two should share a name, her daughter and this Player.

Shari is only 17 years old, but she’s a woman. A mother and a wife. This must stay secret.
They
must stay secret. If not, they will compromise her. They will compromise her because she loves them. They have to live. They have to.

The others cannot know.

The woman in the back continues to wail, her pain getting worse. Others are yelling. Shari tries to block it out, tries to concentrate on the numbers.

29, 9, 8, 2, 4. 29, 9, 8, 2, 4. 29, 9, 8, 2, 4. 29, 9, 8, 2, 4.

But the woman won’t relent. She screams louder, pounds the glass of the window so hard it might break. Shari turns to look and sees a throng of passengers hovering and gesturing wildly. They look like they’re starting to worry. The driver is unfazed, keeps bumping along. Shari sees a hand shoot up from behind a seat, a clenched fist. Someone is asking if there is a doctor on board.

Doctors do not ride 3rd-class buses.

The person asks for something else. Shari understands a word:
midwife
. Is there a midwife on board?

Shari is not a midwife, but she is a mother and has 13 little sisters and seven brothers, 29 (that number again!) nieces and nephews, dozens of cousins. Her father has had five wives. This is the way with her line. It is messy and big and thank goodness it is full of resources. And full of little mouths.

In the back of the bus, there is a new little mouth struggling to come out, trying to breathe and eat and cry.

Calm.

Be calm.

There is a little mouth in there trying to live.

Shari looks at Alice. She can see her mop of hair rising above the seat back. The Koori Player looks to be asleep. In this heat, with the bouncing bus, and the screaming woman—Shari is amazed that anyone could sleep. The Koori’s mind must not be as cluttered as her own. Shari wishes she could sleep herself. Alice is not going anywhere. She is oblivious.

So Shari will help.

She rises and walks down the crowded aisle. As she walks, she removes a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her fanny pack. She rubs a dollop in and around her fingers and palms.

“Excuse me,” she says, switching to poor Mandarin and stashing the little bottle. The smell of rubbing alcohol is strangely refreshing.

A few people turn to her and shake their heads. She is not what they expected.

“I know I am young and a foreigner, but I can help,” she says. “I have a child myself and have been to twenty-one births. Please, let me see.”

The remaining people step aside. The birthing woman is not a woman but a girl. Maybe 13 years old.

Like Shari was once.

Except that Shari did not give birth to her Little Alice aboard a sweltering bus. It was a lovely day and Jamal was there to hold her hand. She wishes he could be here now.

The baby is crowning. It is not long in arriving. It would be here already if something weren’t wrong.

“May I help?” Shari asks the girl.

The girl is scared. Blood vessels have popped across the bridge of her nose and over the rise of her cheeks. She nods.

Such pain.

Such sweat and tears, such fear.

Shari is suddenly calm. For a moment she forgets about Alice, about Endgame. Her head clears of those blasted numbers.

“My name is Shari.”

“Lin.”

“Breathe, Lin. I am going to put my hands here. After you breathe, I will feel. Don’t push. Am I saying the right words? My Mandarin is not good.”

“I understand. I won’t push. You will feel.”

“Right. Good. Now, one, two, three, big breath.”

Lin fills her lungs and blows out her cheeks.

Shari touches the girl’s skin. It is hot, damp. She kneads the girl’s abdomen. Shari can feel the baby’s arm. It is caught. The cord is wrapped around it. If the cord is short, the baby will die and possibly the mother too. If the cord is long enough, there is hope.

A man brings an armful of water bottles from a box at the front of the bus.

Shari looks at him.

He is scared too.

He is not a man.

A boy, 14, maybe 15.

The father.

She puts a hand on the boy’s wrist. “Don’t worry.”

He nods quickly, nervously, doesn’t even look at Shari. He is locked on Lin. Lin is locked on Shari.

Shari has him open a bottle and pour the water over her hands to remove the alcohol. While doing this she looks Lin intently in the eye. “The cord is holding the arm. I have to try to free it.”

Lin nods, her eyes full of fear.

Shari searches the faces around her. And there, like an apparition, appears Alice Ulapala over the heads of the diminutive Chinese throng. They lock eyes for a tense moment.

“What’s happening?” the Koori asks, but her voice is casual—friendly, even.

Shari is shocked. “Helping this girl,” she answers in English.

The other riders regard Alice like she is a giant from another world. And in a sense, she is.

“We need to stop the bus,” Alice says. Shari hesitates. If they stop the bus, it will be easier for Alice to get away. But if they don’t, this girl and her baby could die.

“Yes,” Shari says, deciding. “Please, Alice, go ask the driver to stop.”

“Will do, mate.”

Alice turns. Shari doesn’t know what comes over her then. It’s an impetuous feeling, but it somehow feels right. Even though she knows she should keep her family a secret, her instincts tell her that this is the right course of action. She shouts after Alice, “My daughter is also named Alice!”

Alice Ulapala freezes. Looks over her shoulder. Shari can see the crescent-shaped birthmark like a waxing moon rising on the Koori’s darkened skin. She looks like she’s trying to decide whether to trust this new information or not. Whether to trust Shari. “That so?”

“Yes,” Shari says desperately. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“That’s all right. Kids are angels, they are. I hope you see yours soon, I really do.”

“Thank you.”

“No worries, mate.” The Koori continues down the bus, and the peasants part for her like the Red Sea did for Moses.

Shari watches as Alice speaks with the driver, and within a minute the ride has stopped. Everyone on board is now paying attention, some of them hopeful that Lin will be all right, others just annoyed at the delay.

Shari looks at Lin. She forgets about Alice and Endgame and the Calling and Jamal and her Alice too. She is focused only on this task. Her mind is sharp and clear.

“This will hurt,” she says to Lin in Mandarin. “But it will be over soon.”

One way or another it will all be over soon
, Shari thinks.

“Breathe!”

The girl inhales. Shari reaches down and slides her hand over the baby’s head and face. She can feel its heart beating, beating, beating. It’s a strong baby. The girl screams. Fearing for Lin, the father reaches for Shari, but a middle-aged man in round spectacles and a beaten canvas hat holds the boy back. Two women gasp. The girl screams some more.

Shari can feel the cord. She probes and gets a finger under it, between the arm and the tube, and then another finger. The baby arcs its back and pushes its face into Shari’s wrist. She can feel both heartbeats now, the mother’s and the child’s, striking against each other. Shari tries to slide the cord over the fingers. Lin is panting. Her legs start to quiver.

“Hold on, I’ve almost got it!”

A car passes on the road honking its horn; someone shouts from its open window.

Shari glances over. Just across the shoulder, opposite the bus, is Alice Ulapala. She’s looking directly at Shari. She raises her hand to her forehead and snaps a respectful salute, then gets into the car. Shari knows she should go after her. That she should go and Play.

But she can’t.

She moves her finger. The cord slides down one centimeter. The heartbeats race each other. Shari’s own heartbeat joins the contest, galloping away like a thoroughbred.

Alice is gone.

Shari is here.

Here she will stay.

The cord is squeezed and snags on Shari’s index finger. She lowers her shoulder. Lin heaves, her breath is erratic, and her midsection is locked in a contraction.

“Breathe!”

The baby’s heartbeat slows. Slows. Slows.

“Breathe! Breathe!”

Lin tries but the pain is unbearable.

Shari gets lower and pinches the cord in the crook of her finger, forcing her knuckle uncomfortably into the girl’s pelvis.

Lin begins to pass out.

“Pour water on her face!”

A woman does. Lin wakes. She’s exhausted, can barely function.

Shari is calm. It’s strange to her. She holds a life—two lives—literally in her hands. It’s calm, peaceful.

I
am
Playing, she realizes.

It is the puzzle of life
, kepler 22b said of the game.
The puzzle of life.

29. 9. 8. 2. 4.

They’ll come together.

She’s a Player and she is Playing.

The baby pushes against her wrist. Shari works her hand around, and finally the cord is free. Slowly she unhooks her finger and pulls out her hand. As she does, she feels the baby’s heartbeat go up up up.

“It’s done.”

The middle-aged man with the glasses and the canvas hat smiles at her and pours water over her hands. Shari washes the blood and amniotic fluid onto the hard floor of the bus.

“Lin. Are you with me, Lin?” The girl nods weakly. “The baby is almost here. After the next—” Shari doesn’t know the word for contraction, so she mimes one by flexing her arms and stomach and wrenching her face. Lin understands. “After that, you breathe and push, breathe and push, breathe and push.”

“Okay.” She is still frightened.

They wait. Shari offers her hand to hold. Lin takes it. Tries to smile. The father takes her other hand.

The contraction comes.

“Go!” Shari lets go of the girl’s hand and gets ready. “Go go go!”

Lin does as she’s been told and does it again and again and it comes it comes it’s crying.

“A boy! A boy! A boy!” people shout as they see. The news ricochets down and around the bus. The driver fires the engine back up, but an old lady hits him with a rolled newspaper and he turns it off.

Shari holds the baby. Lin cries with tears of everything—hope, joy, grief, pain. Shari passes the baby to the beaming father. Someone hands him a scarf, and the baby is wrapped up. Shari reaches in her fanny pack and pulls out a folding knife. She opens it and cuts the cord.

A throng pushes in on the new mother and father. Shari steps back. Her heart is still going fast.

There is more than one way to Play Endgame.

She smiles.

And as she retreats to her seat, people make way for her. She’s a hero. They give her space. She sits, silently thanks the Koori for being there. Something about her presence helped. And as the adrenaline from the birth starts to fade, she realizes the numbers that were taunting her, tormenting her, are gone.