Totem Poles (2 page)

They were at the very brink of the mineshaft, with the rubble shifting and rattling beneath their feet. Below them the gigantic worm stirred, liquid, exultant, entirely happy in its garbage.

Drunk with love, helplessly wanting to impress Ida, Kalinin leapt out into the air and slashed his own throat with his razor-sharp bayonet. He dropped down the shaft amid a spinning gush of blood.

Kalanin hit the bottom so fast that his substance merged into that of the startled saucer worm. And then—so great was the creature's revulsion for human death—it explosively shattered into grubs. The sky-darkening plume of eruption was visible for hundreds of miles.

Ida was unharmed. Quickly and decisively, she took command of the paramilitary rabble—declaring a cease-fire and dismissing them all.

That night she set off for Mumbai, India. Following Kalinin's plume.

*   *   *

“Mumbai is the greatest city mankind has ever seen,” Puneet remarked to his business associate, Leela. “We nearly wrecked the planet with filth, but that was just our subcontinental exuberance. And now, thanks to the saucers, all is well. Our business is an integral part of Mumbai's greatness.”

Leela had brought in a bright stainless-steel tiffin-box full of free-range saucer grubs, fresh from the Ukraine. The edible grubs had blown in on the monsoon winds. They were unusually tasty. Leela offered one to Puneet, who gobbled it with his usual avidity.

Leela and Puneet were from the district of Maharashtra—elite school friends and now in business together. Their initial funding had come from Puneet's prosperous family. Leela and Puneet had rocketed to commercial success by marketing saucer worms as a general house-cleaning product called Kleen Kobras.

The source of the worms? Lucky Puneet had managed to stable a saucer-creature inside a Mumbai warehouse, an anomalous silver being the size and shape of a crocodile. There was no knowing why the creature had approached him, but there it was. He fed it a steady diet of human garbage, and the obliging lizard budded off as many Kleen Kobras as Puneet and Leela could use.

It was Leela who'd thought of selling the worms. An image of the saucer salamander was an integral part of her marketing campaign—it appeared in all the ads. These days in India, there was a fad for all things relating to the beneficent saucers.

“Our trade is indeed bringing us fine success,” said Leela. “And now we should seek entree to high society. Philanthropy, Puneet. Highly upscale. We do something momentous for dear old Mumbai, and then we are in the social register.”

“A stupendous civic gift,” mused Puneet. “With the proviso that we spend no cash. Commercial moguls such as us are too slick for that.”

“Agreed,” said Leela. “What if you petition our saucer lizard on behalf of Mumbai? Perhaps a public feast upon our worms? Surely the lizard will honor the astral grandiosity of your soul.”

“You are a most agreeable woman,” said Puneet. He raised his finger. “I have indeed been envisioning a saucer gambit. A grand stroke for urban development. Presenting it as a philanthropy would be genial indeed.”

Leela crossed her stockinged legs and opened a paper notebook. “Tell me your raga to riches, Puneet.”

Puneet toyed with a cufflink, suddenly shy. But then, warmed by the sun of Leela's smile, he found his voice. “I am proposing that we colonize Mumbai's outlying districts with eleven duplicate copies of the city center.”

“
What?
”

“A Dodeca-Mumbai. Twelve supercities united in one magical, intricate graffito of urbanism. We're far too crowded within our one small Mumbai. Once I issue my commands, we'll enjoy a megasprawl of twelve. This is a good thing. The saucer lizard can accomplish it.”

“Truly so?” said Leela. “All I've seen the lizard do is hatch Kleen Kobra worms. Exceedingly many of them, yes, but—”

“Our saucer lizard is deeply sensitive to my kundalini,” replied Puneet. “The only limits are those within my mind!” Warming to the sound of his own voice, Puneet waved his spotless cotton sleeve at the view from their penthouse office's window. “We'll make the Dodeca-Mumbai of your dreams, Leela.”

“But I've dreamed no such thing.”

“The lizard and I will cut-and-paste our entire downtown, warping and squeezing where need be.”

“And you said—twelve in all?”

“I have conceptualized a keen workflow,” said Puneet, glowing with pride. “We copy Mumbai once, and that makes two Mumbais. Then we copy the two Mumbais, so there are four. And then—” Puneet rose from behind his teakwood desk and rapped his Kleen Kobra distribution map with a swagger-stick. “Then we make two fresh copies of the four, arriving at twelve altogether!”

“I understand,” said Leela, her expression studiously blank. She would never want the wealthy Puneet to know she thought he was an idiot.

“Imagine our tourism,” crowed Puneet. “Our exotic Indian fastness—twelve times as magical as before. Dodecaduplicated by saucer aliens! What a place for a honeymoon.”

Leela tapped her front teeth with her mechanical pencil. “But—twelve Mumbais means twelve times the slums. Dodgy to promote.”

“We won't be copying the
people
of Mumbai,” said Puneet. “Human reproduction is for the likes of you and I. The saucer lizard will only be replicating the infrastructure. Dodeca-Mumbai will have twelve classic Royal Taj Hotels. Twelve Bombay Stock Exchanges. Twelve Marine Drives. Each and every Mumbai dweller will have twelve times as much room!”

Leela made jotting gestures in her notebook. She gazed up at Puneet, widening her eyes. “Brilliance! The lowest slumdog sleeping on the pavement will prosper as a landlord. Imagine the looks on their faces in Dubai! The Arabs have a mile-high skyscraper, yes, but our metropolis will be twelve times so flat as ever before!”

“It's good to have you as my business soulmate, Leela. Our brainpower is more than doubled. Dodeca-Leela-Puneet!” Puneet paused, studying Leela's fair form. “May I venture another idea? What if we launch the first wave of Dodeca-Mumbai tourism with a fertility festival?”

Leela frowned. “Sex tourism?”

“Nothing so hole-and-corner as that,” said Puneet, adjusting his coiffure with his manicured fingertips. “In Dodeca-Mumbai we are looking for the stars.” His voice grew soft. “Listen to me, Leela. You and I might inaugurate the fertility festival, should you permit. We two have been selling saucer worms for months. Isn't it time we discovered our mutual humanity? Carnal yet noble—like the conjugal sculptures of Khajuraho. Stirring the milk of life with the cosmic cobra.”

“This is a marriage proposal?”

“Who but Leela can be a worthy mate for the architect of Dodeca-Mumbai!”

“Very jolly,” said Leela.

Their nuptial ceremony was glamorous and elaborate. But in the midst of greeting the mass of wedding guests, and tying his robe together with Leela's, and circling the sacred nuptial fire—all this while talking to the saucer salamander on his phone—well, Puneet made some slip-ups.

The twelve copies of Mumbai failed to appear. Instead, there was only one copy of Mumbai, botched and glitchy, and shoehorned higgledy-piggledy into the streets and intersections of an existing sector of the town. The intended replica of the core metropolis consisted of 7,777 Royal Taj hotels.

These sumptuous and vacant lodgings were immediately set upon by the angry Indians whose access streets had been built over. They now had to climb over the tops of buildings to get in and out of their homes. The citizens didn't know whom to blame for their urban mishap, but they knew they'd been disadvantaged by some typical big-city swindle. Some of them settled into the massed new hotels' million-plus rooms. Others began diligently stripping out carpets, doorknobs, towels, soap, and brass bathroom fixtures.

Adroitly dodging the burst of public anger, Puneet and Leela crept incognito into one of the 7,777 bridal suites. They were drained by their intricate marriage ceremony—and dejected over Puneet's bungling. Their initial attempt at sexual congress was desultory.

“Let's lie low,” said Puneet, sprawling on the wadded satin sheets. “Until the Mumbai corruption squads become bored with searching for scapegoats. Our fresh new married life should be about propriety, stability and impeccable Hindu values. No more saucer grubs. Just rice, coriander and chamomile tea.”

Leela clumsily adjusted her incendiary wedding-night nylon-and-satin lingerie, which was a rumpled splash of sexy vermilion in the hotel's saffron sheets. “I can write a press release blaming the Dodeca-Mumbai mix-up on that plume of grubs from the Ukraine. I've been in touch with a Russian woman who just arrived from there. She noticed our saucer lizard logo and she wants to meet the lizard herself. She has some odd notion about rebirth. Anyway, she's offering me diamond earrings.”

“Birth?” said Puneet, always a half-step behind. “This reminds me of the fertility festival I'd mentioned. All singing, all-dancing, very fine. I'll take the stage and announce that my new bride is on the way to bearing me a son and heir! Thereby bringing us sympathy. The sooner the better, Leela.”

“I knew you would request this, Puneet, but the time is not right. I'm a successful businesswoman, embroiled with international intrigue.”

Puneet raised a chiding finger. “Human fertility is the one blessing that flying saucers can never bring! You must bear us two sons, seven, twelve!”

Leela immediately locked herself in the suite's large bathroom.

“What are you doing in there?” called Puneet plaintively.

“All will be well, dear husband,” said Leela. Her voice was indistinct through the heavy, gilt door. “I'm consulting expert counsel.”

Time passed. Puneet watched television, which consisted entirely of 20th century satellite reruns from China and Brazil. And now someone was pounding on the hallway door. Puneet opened up to find an attractive white woman standing there. She had smooth, pale skin, a lustrous bob of dark hair, and a writhing, bandage-wrapped package cradled in both her arms. It resembled a mummified crocodile.

“Did you lose this?” said Ida, in Russian-accented English.

“That's mine!” cried Puneet. “That's my magic saucer lizard, it's the source of all my business!”

The Russian woman tenderly set the writhing mummy onto the marital bed.

Leela unlocked the bathroom door and pranced into the hotel suite. She was still in her wedding lingerie, and had tidied her hair and make-up.

“This is the Russian woman you were talking about?” Puneet asked Leela.

“I phoned her for help,” said Leela.

“Help with what?” said Puneet. “We were doing fine here! We just got married!”

“Does that make you the master of life and death?” put in Ida, rolling her glorious eyes in disdain. “While you frolic in satin sheets, a Russian hero gave his life for mankind!” She turned to Leela. “Open the windows. A miracle is at hand. A redemption. A resurrection.”

Leela obeyed at once. The low, city-lit clouds were roiling with dark energy, swirling with an almighty monsoon of flying scraps and silver shreds. Ukrainian saucer grubs hailed in through the open windows, mounding upon the twitching silver crocodile in the bed. The grubs merged into a mass that split open, and—

“A son for me?” cried Puneet.

No. It was Kalinin. His eyes glowed like the staring orbs of a painted Byzantine icon.

“Oh darling,” said Ida, hurrying forward and kissing his pale lips.

“We're going to America,” said Kalanin, pulling free.

*   *   *

Ida and Kalinin walked hand-in hand down a waterfront street in the grotty south end of San Francisco. It was a fine summer night, nearly dawn, with a full moon on the horizon. They'd been to an art party. There had been wine. And a smorgasbord of barbecued saucer grubs.

“I love the sight of saucers now,” said Kalinin, gazing into the haunted, moonlit sky. He still had his beaky nose and his high cheekbones. His teeth were straighter than before, and he spoke English. His passage through the phantom world of the saucer-beings had changed him other, less definable ways. He said odd things, and he had a heavy aura.

Kalinin had told Ida that he was one of twelve resurrected saucer saints—twelve saints scattered across the surface of the Earth—and that he could hear the voices of the other saints within his head at all times. But Ida and Kalinin kept these secrets from those around them. They walked among humankind like an ordinary woman and man.

Silvered by the low moon, a nearby saucer's energetic surface was a ceaseless flurry of subtle, mercurial patterns, like wave-chop, or like the scales of a swimming fish.

“You always understood them better than anyone else, Kalinin,” said Ida. “Do they plan to annihilate us? Is that why they sent you back?”

“They're refining us,” said Kalinin. “Like ore within a crucible. Like vapor in an alembic. Life and death are philosophical mistakes.”

“Sometimes I miss the old Kalinin,” said Ida. “It was noble to be so stubborn. Fighting the inevitable, no matter what.”

“Discarded dross,” said Kalinin. “Economics, government, military power—nonsensical, distorted, irrelevant.” Imposing as he seemed to others, when he gazed at Ida, his eyes were as warm as ever before. “Love remains. Art is the path to the final unification.”

“Everyone at the party was saying things like that,” said Ida, shrugging her bared shoulders in her shining gown. “People are so full of themselves in America! They talk as if they were demigods, but what do they do? They crank themselves up on grubs and watch someone's thousand-hour video in ten minutes.”

“A mirage that flies by, half-seen, half-sensed,” said Kalanin. “The saucers want a richer kind of art. They want us to change the world.”

“But Kalinin, what if the saucers are like children who poke sticks into anthills to watch the ants seethe? The ants build and build, they strive and strive—but are any of them famous artists?”