Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (37 page)

The skeletal steel framework of the stairs zigzagged up a vertical shaft. Some way above us, multiple footfalls clattered. The site staff. We added our own clatter to theirs. Vamana had enlarged himself to the point where he could carry the unconscious Kalkin easily in his arms, but not so tall that he had to duck to avoid hitting his head.

We charged up that shuddering staircase with the earth groaning and bellyaching around us. The red glare of auxiliary lighting bathed everything in an all-too-appropriately hellish glow. The same forces that had been harnessed to provide the installation with energy were now being turned towards destroying it.

Onward we climbed, the staircase shaking ever more violently. Fissures were appearing in the shaft walls. Sedimentary rock flaked off and crashed at our feet. The air swarmed with choking dust.

Finally, a door; daylight. We rushed out one after another into the infernal blaze of an Outback afternoon. We didn’t stop for a breather. The site staff, ahead, were still running, scrambling downhill onto open plain, and we took our cue from them. They must know what minimum safe distance was, and even if they didn’t, even if they were just rabbiting, it seemed sensible to get as far away from the installation as possible. The rumble was continuous now, and loud, like a neverending roll of thunder.

Then, with a sharp, deafening detonation, something deep within the world broke. Part of the hillside behind us leapt, then slumped in on itself. Chunks of slope calved off and tumbled down onto the pithead, engulfing the rusted old machinery and burying the mine entrance.

The avalanche continued for some time, a slithering tide of boulders, scree and shale, as further sections of the ridge imploded in a kind of chain reaction. I imagined the installation’s corridors caving in, the demon depot crushed under a million tons of rock, the bodies of the former asuras mashed to paste.
¹

The chaos subsided. The falls of debris slowed and settled. A dust cloud the size of a small town massed in the sky above the devastation, breezes tearing at its edges and beginning to thin it out. The ridge of hills sported a new depression, a jagged gouge in its otherwise undulating contours, as though God had taken a hatchet to it.

Parashurama was the first to speak. “Sound off. Everyone okay? Anyone hurt?”

We checked our limbs, inspected one another for injury. Other than a liberal coating of dust, nobody had much to complain about.

Except Krishna, who swore in Syrian Arabic, something evocatively guttural about a dog licking your mother or your mother licking a dog, I forget which even though he did translate the oath for me later on.

“My chariot,” he said, with a mournful, angry look at the rubble-strewn disaster area that had been the pithead.

Somewhere beneath that mass of fallen rock, most likely mangled beyond all recognition, lay his nifty rocket-propelled sled. We wouldn’t be zipping around in
that
ever again.

He was upset, and I sympathised. It was by no means the shittiest thing that had happened to us that day. The Trinity’s betrayal, Buddha’s death, four devas almost having their siddhis revoked – these all trumped the loss of the chariot. Not to mention the little matter of the underground installation blowing up and very nearly taking the lot of us with it, which only a fool would fail to realise had been the Trinity’s doing. Who else could have triggered the overload in the geothermal plant? Who else could have nullified the shutdown protocols and made the failsafes fail? They sincerely did not want us devas around any more to queer their pitch.

But still, the chariot was the final insult, the kicker. It had been just a vehicle, a piece of machinery, but it had been a cool one, and its getting wrecked seemed a harsh and unduly capricious twist of fate.

Krishna, moreover, had been attached to it, and felt superfluous without it. “What good am I now?” he lamented. “A Charioteer without a chariot.”

Aanandi stepped forward. It’s a tribute to the woman’s grit and determination that she was still carrying the weapons she had gathered from the armoury – the sword, the club, the discuses. She could quite reasonably have dumped them the moment the alarms kicked off. But instead she had clung on to them gamely. I still had the crossbow and bolts, too, by the way.

“Here.” She proffered the J-shaped sword to Krishna.

“What’s this?”

“Nandaka. Yours.”

Bemused, he took the sword from her. He slashed it experimentally through the air. A small smile crept onto his face.

“I feel like... I feel I know what to do with this, even though I have never held such a thing before in my life. How is that?”

“Why shouldn’t you? Krishna in the
Mahabharata
is a warrior, and Nandaka is his blade.”

“Yes. Yes! Of course. I fought Rukmi with it on the battlefield and won. Rukmini, his sister, pleaded with me to spare his life, and I did, for she was then my fiancée, soon to be my wife. But not before I shaved off Rukmi’s hair and moustache, like so.”

He performed a few deft flicks with Nandaka, its tip at head height, the same manoeuvres he would have used to depilate his foe.

“That taught him!” he crowed. “Nothing conveys the shame of defeat like having all your hair shorn off.”

Krishna’s sour mood lifted somewhat, although we all still faced the prospect of a long trek back to the
Garuda
in fearsome heat and the full glare of the sun. At Parashurama’s suggestion, we set off straight away. “No shade to be had hereabouts, and sunset’s still several hours off. Might as well be moving as standing still. Going to broil either way.”

Along with the site staff we formed a straggling line, trudging south. Rather than clamber over the hills eastwards to where the
Garuda
was parked, we circumnavigated them along the mine access road, a longer but flatter journey.

We had only gone a mile or so when what should come soaring majestically over the brow of the ridge but the
Garuda
itself. Captain Corday and Matsya had heard the tumult of the hillside collapsing and seen the dust cloud, and come to investigate. Spotting us, Corday changed course and alighted by the roadside, and soon we were inside the blissfully air-conditioned cabin and flying to Cloncurry.

We dropped off the site staff at the hospital so that they could have themselves checked out if they wanted. They all repaired to the nearest bar instead.

Then we called in at the airport a few miles outside town, only to learn that Lombard’s Cessna Citation X had departed an hour earlier. Destination? The flight plan said Sydney, but the air traffic controller, who was more than a little awed to have devas quizzing him, confessed that the jet had made a sharp turn shortly after takeoff, diverting east. “Last I saw of her on the radar, she was making a beeline for the Pacific.”

“It was a long shot,” said Parashurama as we left the control tower. “At least now we know where they might be headed.”

“The States?” I said.

“There ain’t much else that-a-way.”

We couldn’t go after them immediately; Captain Corday had already logged his maximum total flying hours for the day. “It just wouldn’t be safe,” he said. “I don’t get my rest, chances are I’ll nod off at the yoke, and no one wants that.”

We all of us checked into a motel, charging the rooms to Aanandi’s Trinity Syndicate credit card, ha ha. Apart from Matsya, that was, who took a cab to Chinaman Creek Dam just outside the town and immersed himself in the reservoir there for the night to rehydrate.

Corday went straight to bed. The rest of us cleaned ourselves up, split into groups and went out to see what Cloncurry had to offer, which, it being hardly a bustling metropolis, was not much. Dusk was falling as Parashurama, Rama and I wandered down the dusty four-lane main street, drawing inquisitive glances from passersby. I’d invited Aanandi to join us, but she had excused herself, pleading exhaustion. I think she was reluctant to associate with the Avatars, given her part in luring us to the Golden Rocks Mine. She felt guilty – unjustifiably, I thought.

We entered a tin-roofed pub called McDunn’s Tavern.

“Bugger me,” said the landlord, none other than McDunn himself. “I heard the circus was in town. Dashavatara, yes? Did I pronounce that right? So what can I get you fellas? We’ve got beer or beer. Or beer, if you’d rather.”

Rama and I ordered beers. Parashurama, who was teetotal, asked for a Coke, which made McDunn’s face crease up in suspicion.

“You’re in Oz, mate. You’ve got to be careful. Me, I’m a liberal-minded bloke, but there’s people who might get the wrong idea about a man who doesn’t drink beer. Especially one who dresses like you do.”

The Warrior gave the landlord a look that would have cowed a rampaging bull.

“Only kidding,” said McDunn. “Just a spot of ocker humour. No harm meant. One Coke. Ice? Lemon? Dinky little cocktail umbrella?”

We sat down at a melamine-topped table on rickety plastic chairs. There were a dozen or so other patrons in the pub, all male. An Australian Rules Football game played on the TV, and they were pretending to watch it, but really they were more interested in us. It hadn’t occurred to me how hard it was to be unobtrusive when you were a superhero – or at least when you were in the company of two people clad in superhero garb and known the world over. Hanuman wasn’t famous himself, but the guys he was with most definitely were, and they were drawing constant sidelong looks.

Eventually a couple of the townsfolk ambled over to us, one of them a meaty Caucasian, the other an Aborigine. I wondered if there was going to be a challenge, the kind of confrontation that happens when outlandish-looking strangers arrive in a remote, conservative town and visit a local watering hole. McDunn’s Tavern seemed like that kind of establishment, where the resident yahoos didn’t take too kindly to weirdos from faraway parts. Damn it, I’d seen
Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert
; I knew how this was going to pan out.

These two looked intimidating. Maybe they were drunk and thought they could beat us up – bring the big bad devas down a peg or two, show them that they weren’t so tough. If that was the case, they were in for a shock.

Then, all at once, they were grinning inanely and asking for autographs. What I’d taken for menace was in fact reticence, shyness. The Caucasian was Barry; the Aborigine, Tommo. Parashurama and Rama signed beer mats for them. Hanuman? They’d not heard of me. They assumed I was just some civilian hanger-on, an Avatar groupie. I didn’t get to sign a beer mat, even after I told them I was a deva too. To them I was just some twat in a monkey T-shirt. I didn’t look the part, did I? No spandex.

Barry and Tommo asked endless questions about fighting asuras, about having powers, about everything, while the rest of the pub listened in, the football game forgotten.

“Why’re you here anyway?” Tommo wanted to know. “Are there monsters on the loose nearby?”

“Only my missus,” Barry said, and roared with laughter. “Don’t suppose you could get rid of her for me, could you? Only I can’t afford a bloody divorce.”

“Just Avatar business,” Parashurama said cagily. “It’s all sorted now. You’ve nothing to worry about.”

They begged Rama to do some arrow tricks for them, but he had left his weapon in the
Garuda
, as had Parashurama.

“How about a dart trick instead?” he said.

The pub’s dartboard was mounted on the wall not far from the TV set. Rama steadied himself at the oche, three darts in his left hand. The locals gathered round eagerly.

The first dart scored a bullseye. Everyone cheered, not appreciating that Rama could have made the shot from considerably further than eight feet away. Standing on his head. With his eyes shut.

He went all Robin Hood with the second dart, propelling it into the back of the first. Its point sank into the intersection of the other dart’s flights.

The cheers were far louder this time. Beer slopped over the rims of glasses, drizzling precious amber nectar onto the floor. Beefy hands clapped Rama on the back. “Good on yer!” “Bonzer!” “Ripper!”

“The same again,
peut-être
?” Rama said, lining up the third dart. He was playing to the crowd, relishing the attention. And why not? Who could blame him? Our team had had a crappy time of it lately. It was good to be reminded that the public liked devas.

“Five bucks says he screws up!” someone shouted.

“You’re on!” someone else shouted back.

Others joined in the betting. Banknotes flapped in the air.

Rama focused. Brought the dart up to his eye. Levered back his elbow.

The dart flew.

Thunk!

And missed the board altogether, embedding itself in the wall instead.

There was silence, then uproar. Mocking laughter. Men demanding their winnings. “Bad luck, mate,” Rama was told. “Nice try.”

I couldn’t believe he had missed. Parashurama’s expression said likewise. We looked closer at the Archer, and saw that his gaze wasn’t on the dartboard. He was oblivious to the fuss going on around him. He didn’t appear to care that his shot had gone wild.

He was staring at the TV.

On the screen, the words BREAKING NEWS blared in capitals. A grave-looking newscaster was saying, “...if you’ve just tuned in, we’re interrupting the Swans versus Bulldogs game to bring you an important announcement. We’re getting reports, so far unsubstantiated, of a large, a very large explosion in Kashmir which occurred at seven thirty-five Eastern Standard Time. We don’t know as yet that this is indicative of a nuclear detonation, but the evidence suggests that it is. The blast appears to be centred on the city of Srinagar in the Kashmir Valley, which lies in the Indian-administered area of the state. The Prime Minister is due to make a statement outside Kirribilli House in a few minutes, and we’ll have that for you, live, when it happens. In the meantime, let’s go over to our defence correspondent...”