Part 9 (2/2)
Two were the feeds from the searching drones. The third was the bioremediation demonstration out at Kanwal's farm.
There was Kanwal, hungrily watching Pallava explain the activity of the technicians gathered around the well. Kanwal's ambitions were an energy, waiting to be shaped.
”Michael!”
Cody's tense voice startled him. His gaze swept the other two screens, and he caught sight of Rajban, gazing upward, her golden face washed in the harsh light of the noon sun. ”Michael, we've found her.”
He whooped in triumph. ”She looks all right!”
m.u.t.h.aye squeezed his arm. ”Why is she outside at noon? It's so terribly hot. Look at her cheeks. Look how flushed they are. We must hurry.” She leaned forward, to tell the address to the driver of the zip.
The driver's eyes widened. Then he laughed in good humor. ”I no go there. Too many of the politics there. Don't like any new way. Throw mud my zip.”
m.u.t.h.aye sighed. ”He's right. It's a bad neighborhood. Michael, you won't be welcome there.”
”If it's that kind of neighborhood, you won't be welcome either. You'll be as foreign as me.”
A ghost of a smile turned her lips. ”Maybe not quite so, but-”
”I can't send a security team in, you understand? This isn't company business, and I've already stretched my authority by using the census. But I can go after her myself.”
”We can both go after her,” m.u.t.h.aye said. She used a cash card to pay the driver. ”I only hope she is willing to leave.”
The silent drone floated above the courtyard. From this post, Cody looked down and saw that something had changed. Rajban had moved out of the shade of the little potted tree. She stood in the suns.h.i.+ne now, her back straight, no sign of timidity in her posture. Her gaze was fixed on the house. She seemed in possession of herself and it made her a different person. The timorous girl from Michael's garden was gone.
Cody swallowed against a dry throat. Clearly, Rajban intended something. Cody feared what it might be.
A woman who has been cornered and condemned all her life should not protest, but Rajban's obedience had been corrupted-by the whisperings of m.u.t.h.aye, by her glimpse of a different life.
Cody felt as if she watched herself, ready to burst in the close confines of Victoria Glen. She wanted to cry out to Rajban, tell her to wait, not to take any risks ... but the plane had no audio.
Rajban stepped toward the house with a clean, determined stride.
Cody ordered the drone to follow. The micropumps labored and the plane sank, but with excruciating slowness. It was only halfway down when Rajban disappeared inside.
m.u.t.h.aye hid her face with her sari. She walked a step behind Michael but no one was fooled. Change had risen in a slow flood over Four Villages, dissolving so many of the old ways, but here was an island.
The people of Rao's neighborhood had resisted the waters, throwing up walls of h.o.a.ry tradition to turn the flood away. It was as if history had run backward here. Girls received less schooling every year, they were married at younger and younger ages, they bore more children ... or at least they bore more sons.
The s.e.x selection implant was an aspect of modernity that had worked its way inside the fundamentalist quarter. It was a breach in the walls that must ultimately bring them tumbling down ... but not on this day.
Michael walked at a fast, deliberate pace, following the directions whispered to him by Jaya as she watched from the second drone aircraft. He felt the stares of unemployed men, and of hordes of boys munching on sweets and flavored ice. Tension curled around him like a bow wave.
A link came in from his chief of security. ”Mr. Fielding, I don't like this at all. Let me send some people in.”
”No,” Michael muttered, keeping his voice low, trying not to move his lips. ”Sankar, you send your people in here, you're going to touch off a riot. You know it.”
The brand of fundamentalism didn't matter, and it didn't even need a religious affiliation. Michael had encountered the same irrational situation as a boy when he'd gotten off the bus at the wrong stop, finding himself in a housing project where the presence of a prosperous mixed-race kid was felt like a slap against the hip-hop culture.
Fundamentalism was so frightening because it taught the mind to not think. Such belief systems cramped people's horizons, sabotaging rational thought while virulently opposing all compet.i.tive ideas.
Michael heard m.u.t.h.aye gasp. He turned, just as a clump of mud hit him in the cheek. A pack of boys hanging out at the entrance of a TV theater erupted in wild laughter. ”Keep walking,” m.u.t.h.aye muttered through gritted teeth. Mud had splashed across her face. Her sari was dirtied. More clumps came flying after them. Michael wanted to take her arm, but that would only make things worse. Boys jeered. They made kissy noises at m.u.t.h.aye. A few ma.s.saged their crotches as she pa.s.sed.
Jaya was watching over them from the drone. ”Turn here,” she said, her voice tight. ”There is hardly anyone in the alley to your left. All right, now go right-walk faster, some of the boys are following you-keep going, keep going. Turn again! Left. There. Now you're out of their sight.”
”How much farther?” m.u.t.h.aye whispered into the open line. Michael glanced back over his shoulder, but the boys were not in sight.
Mother-in-Law looked up as Rajban stepped across the threshold. Surprise and anger mingled in herwrinkled face as she scurried to guard the water cube. Rao pretended not to notice. Women's business.
Rajban drew a deep breath. The little airplane had been a sign, pure as the searing sky, that the time hadcome to follow m.u.t.h.aye's mother into another life. So, without looking at Mother-in-Law again, she walked past her. She kept her face calm, but inside her soul was trembling. Rajban pa.s.sed the table. She approached the door. Only then did Rao admit her existence. ”Stop.” His voice ever stern. ”Get back to your work.”
Her insides felt soft and hot as she told herself she did not hear him. She took another step, then another, the concrete floor warm and hard against her toes.
”I said stop.”
The doorway was only five steps away now, a blazing rectangle, like a portal to another existence.
Rajban walked toward it, her steps made light by the tumbling rhythm of her heart.
Rao stepped in front of her, and the light from the doorway went out.
Rajban made no effort to slip around him. Instead she reached for her sari and pulled it farther over her head, so that it partly concealed her face. Then she stood motionless, in silent protest.
At last.
The drone dropped to the level of the doorway. Through the cameras, Cody gazed into the house-and could not believe what she was seeing.
Rajban was walking out. She was heading straight for the door. Cody watched her pa.s.s the fl.u.s.tered old woman, and the table where Rao sat. It seemed certain she would reach the door, when abruptly, Rao rose to his feet. In two steps he stood in front of Rajban, blocking her exodus. Rajban stopped.
For several seconds nothing more happened. Rajban stood in calm serenity, refusing to yield or to struggle. It had the flavor of a Gandhian protest, an appeal to the soul of the oppressor. Rao did not seem to like the taste of guilt. Outrage convulsed across his face. Then Cody saw a decision congeal.
Warmth fled her gut. What could she do? She was half a world away.
”Michael,” she whispered. ”It would be good if you were here now.”
”Two or three more minutes,” Jaya said. ”That's all.”
It was too much.
Cody ordered the drone forward. The autopilot guided it through the door, its wingtips whispering scant millimeters from the frame.
She could not defend Rajban, but she could let Rao know that Rajban was no longer alone.
Rajban kept her head down, knowing what would happen, but so much had changed inside her she could not turn back. Her heart beat faster, and still the expected blow failed to arrive. Cautiously, she raised her eyes-to encounter a sheen of unexpected blue. The little airplane! It hovered at her shoulder like a dream image, so out of place did it seem in the hot, cloistered room.
Brother-in-Law stared at it as if he faced his conscience.
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