Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (36 page)

“I think we have some idea now,” said Rama.

“Yes. True. And I hope I’ve managed to redeem myself by pulling you out of Korolev’s ‘Yamapuri’ in the nick of time. I hope that proves where my loyalties really lie.”

Aanandi was speaking to all of us, but I could tell – or chose to believe – that she was addressing me directly, personally.

She went on, “I’m not happy with the way the whole theogenesis project is headed. That part of the note was genuine. Things have been happening that I don’t agree with and never signed up for. I’ve been kept in the dark about stuff, same as you have, and that doesn’t sit well with me. The Trinity have gone too far already, and I’m scared they’re going to go even further.”

“What I don’t get,” said Vamana, “is who the fuck they’re hoping to sell the technology to, if the missiles start flying. There won’t be much of a market for devas once the world’s a glowing radioactive ash cloud and everyone’s dead.”

“Oh, they don’t believe the Indo-Pakistan situation is going to go nuclear,” said Aanandi. “And even if it does, they reckon the conflict will stay confined to the subcontinent. It won’t spread any further.”

“That’s naive.”

“Or hubristic. Or optimistic. Or, just possibly, a fair assessment of the circumstances. Some say that any exchange of nuclear weapons will have a cascade effect, rippling out across neighbouring countries, drawing in the other nuclear powers, until everyone is launching their ICBMs left, right and centre, and we all fry. Others predict that the horror of one or two nukes exploding will bring all parties involved to their senses and stop a war dead in its tracks. Worked in 1945, didn’t it?”

“Different age,” said Parashurama. “Before proliferation. Nobody else but America had the Bomb back then, so there was no danger of things spiralling out of control.”

“I’m not saying I subscribe to that idea. I’m just telling you how the Trinity are thinking. They’re confident they can work the crisis to their advantage, however it plays out. That’s the kind of men they are.”

“And we’re nothing more than loose ends now,” said Kurma.

“As far as they’re concerned, yes,” said Aanandi. “Again, that’s not something I’m happy with.” She glanced at all of us in turn, but her gaze rested longest on me. “How casual they are about other people’s lives.”

“Buddha...” said Parashurama, with feeling.

“Scratch a plutocrat and you’ll find a sociopath,” said Vamana.

“Being ruthless is an asset in business,” said Aanandi, “but those three take it to a whole new level.”

Kalkin, who was sitting propped up against a wall, let out a soft groan. His leg was healing, but he still had a bullet lodged in his shoulder and there was little amrita could do about that. It needed to come out.

“Aanandi, is there anyone in this place with medical expertise?” Rama asked.

She shook her head. “Professor Korolev studied as a physician before switching to biochemistry, but he’s gone.”

“Plus, evil,” I said.

“Not so much that as amoral. Solely in it for what he can get out of it. Either way, he’s the only one who could have helped. There’s maybe ten people onsite right now, aside from us, and none of them’s a doctor or a nurse. Maintenance and ancillary staff. Cloncurry has a hospital, though. Kalkin could go there.”

“Or one of you could dig the bullet out of me,” Kalkin said. “Wouldn’t that be quicker and simpler?”

“But a whole lot more painful,” said Kurma.

“I played a surgeon once,” said Vamana, adding, “But it was for a comedy sketch at the Edinburgh Fringe. Didn’t exactly have to pick up any skills to make it look authentic. They just gave me this giant scalpel and I stood on a stool beside the operating table. Hilarious.”

“Thanks for that,” I said. “A useful contribution.”

“Still a bloody contribution. What have you got to offer?”

“I know a little about combat casualty care,” said Parashurama. “I guess I could have a go.”

“Works for me,” said Kalkin.

“I’m sure I can find a knife and some dressings,” said Aanandi. “Give me a few minutes.”

“Hurry, before I change my mind.” The Horseman flashed a weak grin.

“Fancy some company?” I asked Aanandi.

She didn’t say no, so I went with her.

Out in the corridor I said, “Thank you. For saving us back there. Pulling our arses out of the fire. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be plain old Zak Bramwell again.”

“And we couldn’t have that.”

“No, we could not. I love being Hanuman. I owe you big time for helping talk me into it, and for planting the idea in Bhatnagar’s head in the first place. I wouldn’t give this up for the world.”

“It does seem to agree with you.”

“Agree? It’s a dream come true. Superheroes are basically preadolescent wish-fulfilment fantasies. ‘If only I could fly. If only I could beat up the school bullies. If only nothing could hurt me.’ Most people grow out of them and gain whatever status they can as adults to shield them against the unfairness of life. Me, I’m still stuck in childhood, secretly longing for some cosmic ray or irradiated spider to come along and magically make me a superior being. Only, I don’t have to worry about that any more, because it’s happened. Result!”

“What’s nice is you haven’t changed. Outwardly, yes, but you’re the same person on the inside. Don’t give me that look. I mean it. I was worried that becoming Hanuman would be the undoing of you. You’d turn into this, I don’t know, power-crazed jock or something. But you’ve kept a level head. Kudos.”

“That may be the kindest thing anyone’s said to me. No girlfriend’s ever called me level-headed before. Plenty of other things but never that.”

Oops. See what I did there? It just popped out.
Girlfriend
. Complete accident. Aanandi wasn’t my girlfriend. I wasn’t sure if she was my anything. And now it sounded as though I presumed she belonged in that category, and how was she going to react to that? Not well, probably.

“I wasn’t implying that you were my, er, you know, whatever,” I said, hastily backtracking. “It came out wrong. Slip of the tongue. No girlfriend’s called me level-headed, but that doesn’t mean you’re one.”

She halted and turned.

She went up on tiptoes.

It wasn’t a huge kiss. No tongues. No tonsil-sucking.

It was just a kiss.

But it was a hell of a kiss nonetheless. Warm, with just the right level of pressure. The kind of kiss that leaves your lips tingling and your head spinning for minutes afterwards.

She walked on. I stayed frozen to the spot.

“Are you coming?”

Like a happy zombie, I shuffled after her.

In the kitchen Aanandi located a first aid kit with bandages and wadding, along with a small sharp knife and some cooking brandy to serve as disinfectant. We took the stuff back to the antechamber, where Parashurama set to work. He did a good job, considering he wasn’t trained for it and everything he’d learned, he’d learned from watching medical corpsmen at work on the battlefield. Kalkin acquitted himself well, too. He only screamed once or twice when the knife tip probed a little too deeply. Otherwise he was as stoic as one of the samurai he admired so much.

Parashurama applied a field dressing, and Kalkin wondered aloud if he could pass out now, and promptly did.

Aanandi beckoned me, and we set off along the main corridor again. “I have something to show you,” she said, and I got excited, thinking she was leading me to a room in the living quarters where we could... oh, you know.

But it wasn’t to be. The kiss was a marker, a promise, but we weren’t going any further than that, not yet.

Instead, we ended up at a door marked R&D, which turned out in fact to be an armoury.
¹
Prototype handweapons lay on workbenches, crafted in the same quasi-Mughal style as Parashurama’s axe and Kalkin’s talwars, all curlicued appendages and intricate symmetrical
koftgari
inlay.

“The Trinity had metalsmiths working on upgrades to the Dashavatara’s existing arsenal, and new weapons for the devas who don’t currently carry any,” Aanandi said. “They discontinued the programme a few days ago. These ones you see would have been introduced as part of a second phase, had we all stuck to the original script. That club over there, for example, that’s for Kurma. His power set is mostly passive, so it would give him offensive capability.”

I picked up a pair of hollow discuses with lethally sharp edges. “Who are these for?”

“Matsya. And the J-shaped sword? That’s called Nandaka, and it’s meant for Krishna.”

“I get anything?”

“As a matter of fact, no. Sorry. Only the Ten. You were an afterthought, remember?”

“I prefer ‘a belated but vital addition.’”

“Yes, of course. Isn’t that what I said? You must have misheard.” Aanandi began gathering up the items she had already pointed out.

“Can I grab something too? If everyone else is getting a new toy, I don’t want to be left out.”

“Help yourself.”

I went looking, and was drawn to a pistol crossbow. I liked the heft of it, the way it sat in my hand. Rama had his recurve bow. I merited something similar.

The pistol crossbow seemed easy enough to operate. Crank the cocking lever upward to draw back the string. Slot a steel-tipped bolt into the groove. Curl finger around trigger.

Ker-thwack!

The bolt embedded itself in the floor at my feet, centimetres from my big toe.

“Note to self. Hair trigger.”

I shot a second bolt, this time taking the precaution of levelling the crossbow and aiming before shooting, and scored a direct hit on the side of a lathe.

“I am death to all metalworking machinery,” I declared.

I was lining up a third test shot when a deep rumble echoed through the entire installation.

“What the – ? What
was
that?”

Aanandi’s eyebrows knitted together. “No idea, but it didn’t sound good. Earthquake? No, couldn’t be. Not in the heart of Australia.”

I hooked the pistol crossbow into my belt and scooped up as many of the bolts as I could carry in both hands. Then I rushed out of the room, alongside Aanandi with her armful of armaments.

All at once alarms started hooting, and another rumble reverberated around us, so profound it made us stagger. The overhead lights flared, then dimmed. Plaster dust trickled down from the ceiling.

We heard a cry, and some people in hard hats and overalls came sprinting past, looking distinctly panicked.

“The plant,” one of them gasped as he went by, gesticulating wildly. “The flaming thing’s gone haywire on us. We’ve been trying to contain it for the past half-hour, but every time we use a shutdown protocol it gets cancelled, and none of the failsafes are kicking in like they’re supposed to. The turbines have stopped and won’t restart. Flash steam is building pressure. We’ve tried venting. We’ve tripped every damn relay there is. No good. It’s like we’ve been locked out of our own system. Like someone’s sabotaged it.”

“The plant?” said Aanandi. “The geothermal plant?”

“Yes!” said the man, dancing backwards to keep up with his fleeing colleagues. “It’s overloading. Going critical. Everybody needs to get out of here. Now. It blows, and the whole site’ll come crashing down around our ears!”

¹
Here I could insert all sorts of saucy double entendres about wielding weapons, thrusting swords, shooting ammunition and so on, but that’s just not who I am.

42. MCDUNN’S TAVERN

W
E LEGGED IT
back to the antechamber, where the Avatars were already up on their feet and preparing to move. They might not have known exactly what the alarms signified, but anything making that raucous a racket was clearly not summoning people to dinner or prayer. The rumbles were their own kind of alarm anyway. The lights were flickering like crazy as well, another ominous sign.

Aanandi led us to the emergency staircase. The freight elevator was not a viable option, not with the electricity supply faltering. Besides, it was glacier-slow. We could move faster on foot.