Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (12 page)

Jani didn’t know whether to be cheered by this news or alarmed. “What exactly...?” she began, her voice catching.

“Your father presented three months ago with severe stomach pains. I performed an exploratory operation and discovered a massive tumour, unfortunately malignant. Though the procedure to remove the growth was successful, by then it had already spread. There are secondary cancers in your father’s liver, lungs, and bones.”

Her vision blurred. She made a conscious effort to pull herself together and found herself saying, “But... but just earlier today we were chatting and he seemed well and talked about working tomorrow.”

Dr Hammond smiled. “That’s your father all over, Miss Chatterjee. He will never admit defeat.”

She stared at him. “And now?”

“Your father is very, very ill. I’ve been expecting him in here for the past month. We’ve sedated him, eased the pain.”

“But?”

He reached out and laid a massive hand on her arm. “I’m afraid you must be very brave, Miss Chatterjee.”

A cold weight plummeted from her chest into her stomach. “But he will regain consciousness?”

“Perhaps a little later, when the sedative has worn off. I’ll send in his private nurse to be on hand.”

Dr Hammond took his leave, and a minute later Vikram entered the room and eased his considerable weight onto the second bed. Jani stood and drew the curtain around her father’s bed, not wanting to suffer Vikram’s impassive, silent scrutiny.

She resumed her seat and took her father’s hand. She could feel his weak pulse beneath her fingers.

A little later she dropped off, then woke suddenly, convinced that only seconds had elapsed but finding, when she consulted her tiny gold wristwatch – a present last year from her father – that two hours had passed. It was the early hours of the morning and the hospital was in silence.

Her father’s eyes were open and he was looking at her, and Jani felt a surge of joy.

“Father!” she said quietly, not wanting to be overheard by Vikram.

His words were hardly louder than a breath. “Jani-ji. You’re here.”

She squeezed his hand, fighting back her tears. “I love you, papa-ji!”

His thin lips twitched into a smile. “And I love you too...” He took a breath and went on, “I’m sorry...”

“Sorry? For what?”

“Earlier... I so much wanted to dine with you. Cook had prepared mutter paneer and aloo palak with special chilli roti.”

She pressed his hand to her lips. “When you get out of here, then we will have a feast!”

“I would like...” he whispered, and Jani had to bend close in order to hear. “I would like one last meal with my daughter.”

It was as if a hand had reached for her throat and was squeezing. She could not bring herself to speak.

At last she said, “Are you in pain?”

His watery eyes regarded her. “No pain at all. I feel... wonderful. You are so... special to me. So beautiful.”

“Oh, papa-ji.”

He took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. Jani felt a stab of panic. He could not die now, not now, when she had so much to tell him. Frantically she felt for the pulse in his wrist, found it and whispered, “Papa-ji?”

“Jani, I need to tell you...” The effort seemed to exhaust him. After several seconds he went on, “I need to tell you...”

“Tell me what?”

“About...” His eyes focused on her with greater intensity. He gripped her hand. “About
everything
.”

She smiled uneasily, alarmed that perhaps his mind was going the same way as his body. “Everything?”

“Nothing,” he said, with renewed vigour, “nothing is as it seems.”

She shook her head. “In what way?”

“Annapurnite,” he said.

It seemed to be the extent of the sentence. “What about Annapurnite, papa-ji?”

“Annapurnite... What makes us great, what made the Empire what it is today, the greatest power the world has ever seen. We owe it all to Annapurnite – and to the fair play of the British, of course.” He fixed her with his watery gaze. “Do you know what it is?”

“Annapurnite? It is a... a very rare precious metal, with remarkable properties. It can be... processed to act as a power source.”

“And where do you think it comes from?”

“Why, the foothills of the Himalayas, in Nepal,” she said. “It was discovered fifty years ago, and to this day the mining goes on, surrounded by the highest security.”

He managed a smile. “The highest security!”

Nepal was a no-go area, the entire country closed off to outsiders, its population relocated over the decades to purpose-built villages and towns in northern India. She tried to imagine the logistical feat of moving over two million people from one country to another.

She frowned. “It does seem a little excessive, doesn’t it, merely to protect British interests?”

“Not British interests solely. Our interests, Indian interests, and ultimately the Empire’s interests. But no, these measures, and the security that surrounds the foothills to this very day, is not excessive, not in the slightest! Russia would stop at nothing to discover the secret of Annapurnite, and China too!” The speech seemed to exhaust him, and his head fell back to the pillow as he smiled at her.

“And the irony is, my beautiful daughter,” he went on in a whisper, “the wonderful irony is that Annapurnite does not exist!”

She stared at him. Had he gone mad? Had the cancer spread from his torso to his brain? She fought the urge to weep. “Does not exist?” she said. “But how can that be?” She gestured hopelessly, the sweep of her hand taking in the length and breadth of the Empire, the super-fast trains, the vast airships, the jaggernath land-wagons, all powered by the miracle of Annapurnite. “But what powers all our machines if Annapurnite does not exist?”

He stared at her for a long time, and she wondered if he was about to admit that he was talking nonsense.

Instead he said, “What powers the wondrous machines of the Empire, the envy of all our enemies, is a process of harnessing the energy inherent in the smallest particle of matter – by annihilating that smallest particle!”

She shook her head, frightened now for her father’s sanity. What he said made no sense at all.

He went on, “Annapurnite is simply an umbrella term for all the wonders discovered in the foothills of the Himalayas. Annapurnite is a word used to convince the gullible and to confuse our enemies.”

“
All
the wonders?” she echoed. “There is more than one...?”

“Jani-ji, how do you think it is that we keep the Chinese and the Russians at bay along the long length of our borders?”

She was about to quip that, just the other day, the Empire had been unable to stop the Russians from crossing the border into India and striking a fatal blow to the airship. She held her tongue and said, “Tell me.”

“We have super-weapons that make us almost invincible,” he said.

“Yes, Annapurnite-cannons,” she said.

He gave a feeble laugh. “A crude term, devised by politicians for public consumption. No, these weapons are lances of light that melt our enemies and their armaments. And we have more! Devices that render people and things invisible, devices that allow us to read the thoughts of selected subjects, and many, many more...”

Shaking her head, and wondering what to believe, she asked, “So where did all these wonders come from, if not from Annapurnite?”

He licked his cracked lips. She took a glass of water from the bedside table and raised it to his mouth. He drank gratefully and sank back onto the pillow.

“They come from far, far away, Jani-ji. So far away...”

He seemed to find the concept amusing, and laughed to himself, then closed his eyes and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Jani clutched his hand. “Oh, papa-ji...”

A little later his breathing became ragged and, alarmed, Jani called out for Mr Vikram. Instantly he pulled the curtain aside, took one look at her father and hurried from the room.

Over the course of the next ten minutes Dr Hammond and three nurses came and went from the room, consulted with Mr Vikram, and at last administered an injection to her father’s stomach. Dr Hammond placed the oxygen mask over her father’s thin lips and in due course his breathing grew easier.

Alone with him in the curtained area, Jani clutched his hand and eventually, despite her best efforts, slipped into a fitful sleep.

When she woke much later she checked her watch and saw that it was almost four o’clock.

Her father’s breathing was shallow now, and something told her that he would not live to see the dawn.

She held his hand and quietly sobbed.

“Jani-ji,” her father whispered.

“Papa!” She leaned over and kissed his papery cheek, shocked at how cold it was.

“Brigadier Cartwright phoned me yesterday,” he murmured.

“Cartwright?” She had trouble recollecting the name, out of context. Then she remembered and her blood ran cold.

“He told me that he had interviewed you.”

“That’s right.”

“And... and he was concerned.”

“Concerned?” Jani felt her pulse quicken. “About what?”

“About you. About what happened to you. About what you told him had happened to you. You see, he did not believe you.”

Jani swallowed. “He did not believe me about what, exactly?”

“About you not witnessing... what happened to the Russians. He said that three dead Russian soldiers were found very close to you. He said it would have been impossible for you not to have witnessed what fate befell them.”

She stroked her father’s hand. “Papa-ji, I saw something terrible in the debris of the airship – and I mean apart from all the death and destruction. I saw someone who had been imprisoned and tortured by the Russians.”

Her father tried to raise his head from the pillow, his eyes wide as he stared at her. “A pale creature, hardly a man at all?”

“That describes the poor creature I saw,” she said. “You know about him?” She shook her head. “But why was he imprisoned aboard the airship?”

He squeezed her hand. “The Morn. We were bringing him from Greece to Delhi, where we would question him.”

“But he was imprisoned like an animal!”

“Jani-ji,” her father said in barely a whisper, “he was locked up as he was for his own safety, as well as that of the troops transporting him. He was insane when we found him; God knows what the Russians had done to the poor creature. He had to be restrained until we had him here and could sedate him, reassure him of our honourable intentions.”

“He told me that he had come here in peace, though no one would believe him.” She gripped her father’s hand. “But do you know why the creature came here, and from where?”

He regarded her for a long time, his weak gaze steady. “He came here many years ago, accompanied by another of his kind. One fell into the hands of the Russians – the creature you happened upon. The other we discovered in London, in such a mentally parlous state that we could not decipher the truth of what he told us.”

“There was a second creature?” she asked. “And where is it now?”

“The poor thing is insane, and kept locked up for its own safety.”

She wondered at the relationship between the two – lovers, or family, or mere comrades – separated now by over four thousand miles. “Tell me, papa-ji, why did they come here?”

He licked his lips, and his breathing became laboured again. “The creature in London told us terrible stories, stories that we could not bring ourselves to believe, of vast invading armies bent on taking over the world...” His eyes grew large. “But Jani-ji, these were the rantings of an insane creature, who could not be held accountable for his words.” He stopped and gripped her hand. “Tell me, Jani-ji – you saw what the creature did to the Russians?”

She bent her head and said, “I saw what he did. At least, I saw him kill the three Russian soldiers.”

He said in a whisper, “And it killed, single-handedly, the remaining fifty-odd. It is truly a creature to be feared.”

She recalled the creature and said, “But I felt no fear in its company, papa-ji, only compassion at what it had suffered. I... I tried to help it, to give it painkillers, but it refused. In return it gave me something.”

“Gave you... what?”

“A coin. Or at least that’s what I thought it was.”

“You have it now?”

She looked at him. “No. I assume Cartwright or his men found it amongst my possessions, or that it was stolen or lost.”

He shook his head. “He mentioned nothing of it to me,” he said. “But then it was merely a courtesy call to a dying old man, to tell him that his daughter was fit and well following her ordeal. I wonder...”

“Yes?”

“I wonder why the creature gave you a coin?”

She said in a small voice, “A simple gift to thank me for my offer of help – perhaps it was the only thing of worth that it possessed.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Oh, I implore you to be careful, my darling...” His words were less than whispers and his eyes fluttered shut and, within seconds, he was asleep.