Turbulence (9 page)

“But are you sure the air chief marshall doesn’t know about this?”

“If I wasn’t sure, would I risk my life sitting with an Air Force super-strong flying man and asking him to help me find out the truth?”

Vir has no words.

Aman takes a deep breath.

“I’m a part of this too, and it makes me feel dirty. I’ve been
helping you push this under the carpet. But I have to know what happened to the foreigners.”

“I don’t understand,” Vir says. “Why would you do that? In fact — why don’t you just go public? In your place, I probably would. If you’re right, there should be an investigation. Jai should be court-martialled.”

Aman sighs. “I thought about it. I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing,” he says. “But at this point, there’s more at stake. Our survival.”

“Because you think the squadron — Jai’s troops — are killing off or recruiting everyone on that plane. But if you revealed what you know publicly, you could be safe. You could be protected.”

“If someone like you decided to kill me, Vir, I don’t think there’s anyone who could protect me. But I’m not talking about myself, or my friends. I’m talking about all of us — everyone who was on BA142. People with powers.”

Tia clears her throat. “It took a while for Aman to explain this to me, but now I see where he’s coming from. The fact is, whether we like it or not, we’re more than human now. If —
when —
we’re discovered, people aren’t going to be happy about our existence. Especially if we’re a threat to them, and we definitely are.”

“We’ll be hunted down, imprisoned, either way — by your people or by someone else,” Aman says. “It’s like the X-Men.”

“Who?” Vir asks.

“Have you been living under a rock? You don’t know the X-Men? Not even the movies?”

“Aman, I don’t have time for movies. I spend my life defending India.”

“Good for you. What was I saying? Yeah, so, everything’s changed for all of us now, but I don’t think many of us have
bothered to figure out what that means. Take you, Vir, for instance. You can fly. And you’re still thinking about India and Pakistan. This is so much bigger. And it’s not just you and your military friends. There’s a girl I know — powered — who wants to be famous, to have everyone know who she is, even though she knows there are people out there who want to kill her. It’s going to take time for everything to sink in.”

“What girl? The reporter?”

Tia shoots a warning glance at Aman.

“Yes,” Aman says. “And the cricketer, too — he thinks his fame will protect him. And then there’s that blue baby that they’re saying is a god who will lead an army of superheroes — what did you think of that?”

“I’ve had a lot to think about. What do you want me to do?” Vir asks.

“I want you to clean house. I can’t do it over the phone. Someone has to stop powered people from hurting others. Once that’s done, once we’ve all seen we need to work together, we can come up with a plan. We need strategies, laws, rights, rules. And you need to get to work on saving the world.”

“Me? I’m just one person. Being able to fly doesn’t really make a huge difference.”

“Rubbish. Can you imagine what we could achieve together? With just a small bunch of us, we could change everything. We could stop global warming, make the Sahara a rice bowl, save endangered animals, stop genocide, find alternatives to oil, stop the damned recession. The kind of things superheroes would do in comics, except that
Rural Infrastructure Development League
comics wouldn’t really sell well next to
Bondage Wonder Woman.”

Vir leans back in his chair, frowning in concentration.

“Even though I don’t really understand what you’re saying, let’s assume you’re right,” he says. “We could do so much. But you know that’s never going to happen.”

“Why not?” Aman demands.

“It’s just not human nature. All this is good in theory, but if everyone could actually work together then we could change the world even without powers.”

“So what if it’s not human nature, Vir? We’re not human any more.” Aman replies.

“Sorry to interrupt the heal-the-world plan,” Tia says. “But can we have this debate
after
we’ve figured out what to do about the people trying to kill us? Sooner or later, the world is going to know about us. You can delay this for a while, Aman, but it’ll happen eventually. And when they do find out, how do we keep them from being terrified?”

“Well, by making the world better,” Aman says. “When they see how much good we’ve done, they’ll love us.”

Tia shakes her head. “Won’t work.”

“I should go,” Vir says. “I’m not sure your ideas will work, but I’m going to think about them. Don’t assume that the people running the project are power-mad supervillains, Aman. They’re all people who have years of experience in dealing with dangerous situations, and taking decisions that affect lives. You might be a superhero expert, but you don’t have any real experience. I’m going to find out what happened to the missing powered people. Maybe you should come and talk to my superiors. I’ll arrange that when I’m sure I can guarantee your safety.”

“That’s fair,” Aman says. “And, Vir?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for listening.”

“You have to do one more thing before you leave Mumbai,” Tia says.

“What?” Vir asks.

“You have to take me out.”

“I know he’s a superhero, but maybe this is not the best time to be picking up relative strangers, Tia,” Aman says. “He has work to do.”

“He could die tomorrow, and then I’d never know,” Tia says.

Vir stands up and bows with all military gallantry he can summon.

“It would be an honour. Where do you want to go?”

“Out,” Tia says. She points a finger at the sky, and grins.

Tia-who-left-with-laptop reaches her Yari Road home, passes it by and drives on, checking her rear-view mirror.

A few cars behind her, Mukesh, his pink shirt now sweat-stained red, listens to an annoying FM radio channel as he slithers in pursuit of the little red car. His air-conditioning is switched off; cold air makes him sluggish.

Tia veers right from Yari Road, and sets her course for the mangrove marshes that surround the offshoots of Malad Creek. After a while, the sludge of traffic becomes a trickle, the buildings shrink from high rises to shacks, and the road gets bumpier, muddier. Prey and predator drive past dark trees under the afternoon sun.

Mukesh makes his move. He accelerates and veers towards Tia, trying to push her off the road. Tia’s car swerves into a large mud puddle and splutters to a halt. Mukesh laughs aloud and spins his wheels, skidding until his car is in front of hers.

Tia emerges from her car and stalks towards Mukesh’s, ugly streams of road-rage invective spewing from her pretty mouth. Mukesh ogles her for a few seconds, and then leaps out of his car through the open window. His skin is beginning to turn green, and large scales and leathery stretches emerge all over his body like fast-forward blisters.

“What are you?” Tia gasps.

Mukesh doesn’t reply — instead, he shows her.

His arms shrink, fingers curving as they shorten into talons. His eyes turn yellow, pupils morphing into vertical slits; his mouth broadens, elongates; his nose flattens; his hairline recedes. His forehead stretches and flattens out as his head changes into something terrible, reptilian, blood-curdling. His forked tongue slithers out obscenely between his gleaming fangs. It twitches.

“Hi babe,” he gurgles. “I’m Poison.”

“Isn’t that taken? All the good names are taken.” Tia says.

Mukesh hisses and advances slowly, his head swaying from side to side.

“What are you supposed to be?” Tia asks. “Snake? Dinosaur? Crocodile? What kind of sick person dreams of being one of those?”

Mukesh leaps.

With one huge bound, he’s on her. She struggles briefly, but his fangs sink into her throat, and she falls, her blood spurting, staining the road. Mukesh raises his snout in the air, spits out a chunk of flesh, and screams harshly, a triumphant predator’s scream.

“See,” a woman’s voice says, “you really shouldn’t have done that.”

Tia’s car door slams and Mukesh’s head jerks, swivels. His
snake eyes widen as Tia steps out of the car, holding a gun. Beneath him, Tia’s dead body crumbles to dust and disappears. Her bloodstains fade away.

He springs to his feet, crouches raptor-like.

Four more copies of Tia fan out, two to the left, two to the right. Each holds a gun trained on Mukesh.

“I’ve never actually fired a gun before,” one Tia says.

She fires, and hits Mukesh on the thigh.

His startled yell is more human than monstrous.

“It’s fun,” she says. “I’m learning the tango in Madrid and meditating in Tibet, but this? This is fun.”

Screeching, he leaps forward, and the Tias dive. He catches one, sinks his fangs into her arm, exults as his poison-sacs gush venom into her veins; feels her dissolve and crumble.

Four gunshots ring out. Each finds its mark. Mukesh falls heavily and writhes on the ground, moaning, wheezing.

“I’ll tell you where you made your mistake,” a Tia says. “See, you people are all playing for power. Stupid games for stupid boys. Me, I have a son. I’m not going to let anything harm him.”

Two more gunshots.

Mukesh whimpers as they hit his back.

“What were you doing on Carter Road?” she asks.

“Having an ice-lolly.”

“You want me to shoot you again?”

“Killed a doctor. Powered. He could see everything. All diseases. Couldn’t take it. Tore his eyes out. He was actually happy when I got to him.”

“What a waste.”

Mukesh catches his second wind, rises with horrifying speed. A swipe of his talons, a leap, a snarl, five bullets sailing through empty air, a shimmying strike, and two more Tias die, blood arcing through the air and dissolving like smoke. Another Tia runs for cover, but he leaps right over the car, a dark-green reptilian streak in shiny trousers, and lands on her, snapping her spine. Then he jumps on top of her car with terrifying ease, his large, three-toed feet denting the roof.

“I’m not so easy to kill,” Mukesh hisses. “How many bodies you got?”

She gives him three bullets in the stomach, and he kneels and screeches.

“Enough,” Tia says.

He rolls off the car roof and slumps on the road.

“What now?” he asks.

“Now you’re going to take me to your headquarters, and I’m going to talk to your boss and finish this. “

His throat rattles, and he nods. His features melt back, and a few moments later he’s human again, torn and bleeding.

“You’ll live?” Tia asks.

“Forever,” he says, and staggers to his feet, leaning on the car door.

“Get in.”

Mukesh slumps in the passenger’s seat, sulking.

Tia gets in the driver’s seat and starts the car.

“You couldn’t have planned this,” he says.

“I take life as it comes. Not a big deal.”

“You’re not scared?” he asks.

“I’m terrified,” she says. “If you die before we reach Kashmir, I’ll have to find another one.”

He chuckles, and then the chuckle turns into a rattle, and he
lunges towards Tia, fangs sprouting in her throat. She bleeds, screams in pain, and disappears.

“Stupid bitch,” he mutters to himself as he pulls himself together slowly, painfully. “Never play with a snake in a closed space.”

A sudden movement behind him. Two cold points at his temples. He sees two Tias in the rear seat, each holding a gun to his head.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says. “Drive.”

Uzma switches through a succession of insane Indian TV channels, marvelling that her head has not yet spontaneously exploded. She is losing her mind — and not because of the stream of mad prophets, telemarketers, reality shows, soap operas and mind-numbing music videos in dozens of languages she doesn’t understand. TVs can be turned off, but the argument between Bob and the Scientist, currently raging around her at possibly illegal decibel levels, is beyond the control of any remote.

Sundar claims he has found the beginnings of a new social-historical-cultural-scientific-psychological theory, a theory he will come up with a clever name for some time in the near future. The fundamental premise is that heroic myths and legends through the course of human history are all true — possibly exaggerated by enthusiastic re-tellers, especially the bits about gods and monsters, but the demigod heroes in these stories all actually existed. And these heroes, from Hercules
to Sherlock Holmes, appeared because of these legends: the legends were not records of their actions, but prophetic texts derived from collective human aspirations that paved the way for their arrival.

Throughout the history of science, says Sundar, human imagination, human dreams have paved the way for inventions and progress. Asimov led to Asimo the robot, Apollo’s chariot to Apollo 11. It is the same with stories of heroes: humanity’s dreams of a more-than-mortal saviour, expressed through fiction whether oral or printed, led at some point to the manifestation of new cultural heroes — evolutionary forerunners empowered by mysterious agents.

It is no coincidence, says Sundar, that he and his fellow passengers have been given abilities according to their dreams — which are nothing but a random sample of current global societal desires. Superhero comics, born in the time of the American depression and tempered in the fires of World War Two, fuelled by nuclear nightmares, political upheavals and the struggles of social change, are essentially user manuals humankind has created for the benefit of the superpowered — to acclimatise ordinary people to the idea of their existence, to prepare the world for their presence.

Now, armed with several gigabytes of superhero comics Aman has helpfully downloaded off torrent sites, Sundar is determined to spend his waking hours reading, removing impurities such as capes and interdimensional alien invaders, and obtaining a distilled superhero sample. The purpose of this: to understand how superheroes function, what problems they face and how they affect the world around them. Sundar now believes that all superhero comics were written for his benefit,
and that they will give him the elixir to transmute base humans to heroes.