The sergeant showed up just a couple of hours after Samir woke up in Mumbai. Samir barely had the time to wash and eat and have a talk with the construction crew that arrived to work on his house. He told them he might have more work for them: he wanted a couple of small barracks built on the edge of his property, close to the lane that ran to the main road.
The two boys and the girl Rani had brought from the market were squatting in one of the spare rooms on the ground floor. Samir gave each of them a few mangoes, and told them to make themselves scarce. He did not want the kids around when the sergeant came. He would interview them later, when the visit was over.
The kids hadn't been gone for more than a couple of minutes when the sergeant arrived. He came in a jeep driven by another soldier, who remained in the parked vehicle. Samir invited the sergeant to sit down and to help himself to some fruit: he'd noticed him hungrily eyeing the mangoes in the bowl on the table. He waited patiently while his guest greedily ate half a dozen mangoes.
The sergeant apologized to Samir for making him wait, and got straight to the point.
"Thank you for the fruit," he said. "I'm not sure if you remember my name: it's Arjun Varma. I am a sergeant commanding a squad in the 16th Infantry Division. You've already met some of my soldiers while they were guarding the cube in the field outside your house. They're good, disciplined men. And I hope you remember I let you keep some items from the cube."
Samir said that yes, he remembered it very well, and was grateful. He would happy to return the favor. Was there anything he could do for the sergeant?
"Yes, there is. None of us got paid this month," said the sergeant. "And there is no sign we'll get paid next month. The army feeds us, but I also have a family. Each of my men has a family. I know you have a colony running in the New World."
"Who told you?"
"No one. It wasn't necessary. I have eyes and ears. I also have a pair of good binoculars. You should know that anyone standing on the roof of a building can look into the rooms on the upper floor of your house. You have a small pile of implant kits and mats in the room directly above us. You should cover up the empty window holes."
Samir burned with shame at being caught out like that. He said:
"I've already moved everything, and hid it from the workers I have here. They'll be putting shutters and doors everywhere."
"That's good," said the sergeant. "You must understand I'm not here to blackmail you. I want to ask you for something else. I already told your wife, she said she'd pass it on to you. Here it is: me and my men want to join your colony. We all know how the whole process works. But we want something in return. Enough food to feed our families, and maybe some money. Nothing big. A cut of your profits that would reflect the contribution we'll be making to your colony."
"I see," Samir said. He said that whenever someone's words triggered a vision in his mind. The vision he saw now was of a group of replicated soldiers taking over Kulaba, and imposing a military dictatorship.
"I think I can promise you we'll be very useful," said the sergeant. "You must know you're not alone in the New World. Our unit is confiscating illegal implant kits and hiber beds every day. I suspect that in Mumbai alone, hundreds if not thousands of people have already replicated themselves in the New World."
"I wouldn't know," Samir said evasively. "Let's get back to the subject. I like your proposition, but it's a big decision for me. I'd like to think about it."
"I need an answer now."
"You said you would be coming back next month to my neighbor the other day. What's the big hurry now?"
"As of today, the army has stopped issuing us extra rations for our families. Like I told you, I have a family - a wife and two children. All of my men have wives and children, too. That's the big hurry."
Samir nodded.
"Fine," he said. "I can agree in principle right away. But I need more time to work out how to handle this. It's not as easy as you might think. Listen, I'll give you some food later today. Come around in the evening."
"I'll be here. But can I ask you something? Could you give us enough food so that everyone gets at least a single meal?"
"Everyone?"
"Me, my men, and our families."
Samir groaned.
"But that will be thirty or forty people," he said. "Am I right?"
The sergeant's guilty silence told him that indeed, he was right, probably even underestimated things a little.
Samir sighed.
"I will help you," he said. "But it really isn't going to be easy. And now you'd like enough food for forty meals, right away! I need you to help me so that I can help you."
The sergeant became wary. He shot Samir a suspicious glance.
"I have a friend living in Khalapur with his wife," Samir explained. "And I need to move them here. My friend is an excellent craftsman. He has skills that are very useful in the New World. But he has no transport, and neither have I. You do."
The sergeant thought this over. Eventually he said:
"You want me to drive to Khalapur and bring your friend?"
"And his wife. They don't have children - not in Khalapur, I mean."
"You'll have my food waiting when I bring them here?"
"You'll go right away?"
"Yes. It's not far. I can be back in a couple of hours."
"My friend will need some time to pack."
"They can only take as much as I can load into the jeep. And that's not much. Let's add an extra hour. I'll see you three hours from now. Give me your friend's name and address."
"I don't have it handy," Samir said. "I have to look for it. Can you wait by your car? I'll bring it to you in a few minutes."
As soon as a newly suspicious Arjun Varma walked out, Samir retrieved his hiber bed from under the mattress, cursing the broken telepathic link with the New World. Neil and Amrita were outside, doing the exact same thing they were doing in Kulaba: weeding the vegetable patch. Samir called Amrita over and told her to wake him in five minutes, or earlier if she saw the sergeant approach the house.
He lay down, entered Kulaba, found Madan after a frantic search, warned him of the impending move, and memorized Madan's Khalapur address at the last possible moment: Amrita woke him when he was still repeating the street name and number to himself. He got up from the mat, wrote Madan's address down on a notepad and tore off the page. After a moment's hesitation, he also tore a thin strip of paper off the top. He didn't want the sergeant to see the Go Far Logistics logo that was printed on top of the page. He knew the sergeant would guess Samir had stolen the notepad from his place of work.
Walking to the parked jeep he saw that Sunil was standing outside his house, watching the scene. Samir felt a twinge of guilt: he had suspected Sunil of snitching to the army about the colony. He would let Sunil join the colony, after all. Sunil was innocent. Sunil, Sunil's family, the three new kids, eight soldiers - he was going to need more implant kits, many more implant kits.
"Here's the address," Samir said, handing the sergeant the mutilated notebook page. "You say you'll be back in three hours?"
"If everything goes well," the sergeant said, putting Madan's address into his breast pocket and buttoning the flap.
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then we'll be here a little later. But you can be sure we'll be here with your friend. So please make sure you have the food ready and waiting."
"I will," Samir said. He quickly walked back to the house, lest Sunil approach him and start adding more worries to his present load. The sergeant had already added quite a few.
So there were thousands of illegal colonists around Kulaba! Why hadn't they run into any? Well, that was not quite true. He had run into Madan. But Madan wasn't even from Mumbai. After the street gang took over his budding settlement, he and Kali had made the trek to the coast in the New World!
There was the dead girl they'd found recently. Wherever she came from, there would be others. All the same, Samir was sure there was no one within a day's trip of Kulaba, in any direction. They'd explored the area very thoroughly, and found no traces of human presence.
Suddenly, he understood why the campfire in the valley had been built the way it was. It wasn't meant for cooking. It was meant to produce as much smoke as possible. The girl was trying to alert someone to her plight, someone close enough to see the smoke.
Samir felt a shiver run down his back. Kulaba was in danger! Arjun Varma and his soldiers were a godsend. He would give implants to all of them the very next morning. They would have to cope without any clothes initially, and sleep without a roof over their heads. Too bad.
In the meantime, he needed to get food, lots of food. As soon as the kids got back, he would send them off to the New World with fresh instructions. Rani had told him she'd already fed the kids. It was time for them to start earning their keep. But first he had to get rid of any potential snitches.
Samir left his room and found the foreman of the construction crew. He was standing by the side of the house, chewing a straw and examining his men, who in turn were examining the building materials they'd brought. No one was actually doing any work.
"You can go now," Samir told the foreman brusquely. "That's it for today. We'll start tomorrow at seven sharp, all right? I can't have you around now, I've got people coming from out of town."
"What about our food?"
"What food? You didn't do any work today. You just brought the building materials and the tools. You'll get your pay at the end of the day tomorrow. I'll add a little extra for today."
Of course, he had to give them the last of the mangoes before they left. Happily, the kids appeared almost the moment the workers disappeared. Samir stood in the doorway and watched them approach, a grim smile on his face. He glanced to the side and saw that Sunil was coming his way, too. No, no, no! This was too much.
"I think I'm going to go crazy," he whispered.
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