Under the Burning Clouds Read online

  The small hotels may or may not take non-whites, depending on the preferences of their owners. Medium-sized ones were likely to feel they had appearances to maintain and might be difficult. The biggest would be happy to take Indians and were the least likely to make a fuss.

  She looked along the front. There was a gap in the buildings; if her memory served, that would be the Grand Metropolitan, set back from the others. They should not arrive on foot, but there was a line of taxicabs near the station. The fact that she and the children were not very clean and had no luggage would be dealt with by her best British accent and the money they had been lent.

  She hired a cab, which conveyed them along the front and into the grounds of the hotel. The doorman looked askance as she paid the driver, but the haughty angle of her chin, along with the unusual but clearly expensive cut of her clothes—even if they were dirty—gained them access.

  The look they received from the desk clerk might have cowed a duchess, but Maliha was used to it.

  “A small suite for myself and my charges,” she said.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and fiddled with one of his buttons.

  “Come, come, do not waste time. I have had a most trying day.”

  “One moment, madam,” he said and fled into a room in the rear.

  Moments later the night manager emerged. His dark suit was impeccably cut. He had a wide but neatly trimmed moustache that declared him a man to be reckoned with. Maliha met his gaze. She was relaxed, he was not.

  She took the initiative. “A suite, if you would be so kind. And, if you have someone available, a maid. My luggage and fiancé are both lost at present.”

  “Lost?”

  Maliha glared. “I am not about to discuss my personal affairs in public,” she said, rummaging in her bag. “However, I’m sure you would like to know that I can pay, so here.”

  She tossed four white fivers onto the counter. “Now, a suite if you would be so kind.”

  Forty-five minutes later she was luxuriating in a bath, with Lilith at the other end sitting upright and nervous amid the warm water and foam bubbles. Izak had been given a bowl and instructed to wash thoroughly. Maliha was not sure how he would cope, but it was a start.

  “Here,” said Maliha and she tossed a sponge to Lilith. It landed on the foam and stuck there. The girl took it between thumb and finger. Her eyes showed her confusion. Maliha picked up another one, dunked it into the water and set about scrubbing her skin with the rough surface. Lilith copied her.

  “It scratches.”

  “It’s supposed to. It will make you cleaner than you have ever been.”

  Lilith pulled a face.

  “Come here and I’ll do your back.”

  “I don’t want to, it’s slippy. I might fall.”

  “Then I’ll catch you.”

  Lilith moved gingerly along the bath, holding tight to the edges. Maliha sat up, crossed her legs and had the child sit down, facing away from her. Lilith’s hair was in dense, plaited ringlets that were thick with dirt.

  The bath water was turning cold by the time Maliha had them all undone. Dead insects dropped out of Lilith’s hair as the process continued, but thankfully Maliha did not notice anything living.

  She scrubbed the child’s scalp and back. Lilith was ticklish and squirmed. Maliha took the opportunity to examine Lilith’s skin closely. It was problematic; since Maliha had not studied it before, there was no way of telling whether it was abnormal. However, it seemed to be healthy and there was no sign of any infection at this point.

  Finally Maliha got her out of the bath and drained it. Considering the state of it—lined with grime and dead insects—she wondered whether she should have another one. But it was getting late, or early.

  The suite comprised the main bedroom, a smaller one for a child and a bathroom. She would put Izak in the small room and Lilith in the big bed with her. For now, all three of them were wrapped in large towels. She called the kitchen for food, which arrived with a seamstress and a small selection of nightwear.

  There was a nightdress for Lilith, pyjamas for Izak, and a nightdress with matching dressing gown for Maliha. She put them on in the bathroom while the seamstress measured the children and then took her measurements when she emerged.

  “Can you take these to be washed as well?” asked Maliha, indicating her clothes. They would not bother washing Izak’s and Lilith’s. They were better burned.

  With everything settled they went to bed, but Maliha spent a long time staring at the ceiling while Lilith’s soft breath murmured beside her, mingling with the distant sound of the breakers on the rocks.

  iii

  The time it took to organise matters preyed on Maliha’s mind. Each day was another one lost, but it was impossible for her to move things along faster without revealing herself.

  Once she was settled in the hotel it did not matter how much expense she incurred, since it was simply added to the bill. This was just as well because she had thrown almost all her money at the concierge that first night. The first step had been to visit a bank and set in motion the process of claiming her money.

  It took two days for the message to return from the Fortress that Alice Ganapathy did have money in the bank. Clearly Amita had acted swiftly, as Maliha had instructed in her letter. She had created a bank account under the new name and transferred funds to it.

  Maliha relaxed. The next stage was simply to book passage through a travel agency to Venus. This did present something of a difficulty—it was not expected that a woman with children would travel unaccompanied. However, it was not forbidden and was arranged.

  The cost was astronomical even without purchasing a return ticket. She was advised that a bank draft for all the funds she would require was the best way to take her money to Venus, since it would be light and easily hidden. This seemed reasonable, but she arranged three drafts instead, stored separately, any two of which could provide her with what she needed.

  While Colombo possessed all the services a tourist might require for their stay on the coast, it lacked the shops that could outfit a trip to Venus. Those establishments were at the Fortress, so she was forced to arrange matters by catalogue and letter. She was concerned about being recognised, so her plan was to ensure all her baggage had already been transferred to the station. They would then arrive at the last moment and board the shuttle-craft that would take them up to the Victoria station with as little delay as possible.

  The whole process troubled her as so much of it was out of her direct control. There were pamphlets available that explained Venusian necessities and there was a great deal of nonsense published as well. She found it necessary to acquire various publications and compare them.

  The difficulty came when a document published by, say, Ventris ‘Stays-Lit’ Venusian cookers over-emphasised the need for their company’s products, while completely failing to mention storage facilities for the food that one would take to cook.

  In fact, the most reliable sources, such as those produced by the Army & Navy Stores, indicated that all food taken on an expedition should be pre-cooked and sealed. Most raw foods became inedible within a day and food preparation was difficult due to the high humidity. It was also mentioned that while many of the native species were edible most others were toxic.

  The Ventris pamphlet was discarded.

  It was only a week after she had landed in the Consulate’s moat that she departed the hotel, having paid in full, with minimal luggage of undistinguished quality filled with a fresh wardrobe appropriate to her new role as a professional escort for young children.

  Her charges also wore new clothes. Lilith in particular had protested at the layers of white and blue clothing she was forced to wear but, while Maliha sympathised, they were a necessity. Izak’s discomfort in his purple velvet travelling suit communicated itself as surliness appropriate for a young boy of his age.

  A carriage transferred them to the station and Maliha took a long las
t look at the waves crashing on the beach in fountains of white.

  She had taken walks along this beach with Izak and Lilith. She did not begrudge them the opportunity to splash in the water. Simply playing was not a skill they had learnt on the streets of Johannesburg. Lilith found it easier than Izak.

  It had not required much persuasion to get him to remove his shoes and stockings—he had never owned any before and he disliked them—but the feeling of the wet sand ebbing and flowing beneath his toes upset him. So instead he walked with Maliha on the dry sand and pebbles further up the beach while Lilith played tig with the waves.

  “Are there monsters in the ocean?” he had asked.

  “Who’s to know?” said Maliha. “There are always tales of monstrous fish and squid with tentacles that that could envelop a ship. But they are probably falsehoods created to make the speaker sound important, or to explain the disappearance of an experienced crew.

  “Besides,” she said. “No one but fishermen sail the seas any more. Any passengers and cargo are taken through the sky.”

  “But no monsters.”

  “Not here, perhaps, but on Venus they have great creatures on the land. I think it’s safe to believe they also exist in the one sea that Venus possesses.”

  And we may yet get to see them, thought Maliha as she settled Izak in the seat by the window and herself along the aisle, with Lilith between them.

  She ran her fingers through Lilith’s hair. Even if she had not seen the alteration in the child’s skin during one of their baths, she would have changed her mind about taking them to Venus. But something was growing under the girl’s left shoulder blade. A slightly spongy patch had developed and it was not the only one. Lilith did not seem to notice. Maliha did not mention it. But she could not abandon the girl now, nor could she separate the two of them.

  The atmospheric was not busy. Thursday was not a day for going home. They were not travelling first class, as that would be inappropriate in her new guise. She had bought first-class tickets at the hotel, to keep up appearances, but exchanged them for second-class tickets at the station.

  The carriage had three commercial travellers, of whom two were reading the Times of India and the other a book.

  It was barely an hour later—though the children were already getting restless—that Sigiriya, with towering buildings of stone, glass and iron perched on its summit, came into view.

  “Is it Heaven?”

  “Not at all,” said Maliha, “though perhaps it might be called the gateway to the heavens.” Her play on words was lost on them, which was perhaps just as well since it was not particularly clever.

  For about a mile the tube housing the atmospheric was carried on pylons thirty feet above the ground, above the unnamed city that had sprung up around the wall. The buildings leaned one against the other and were built from anything that had come to hand. Most did not exceed a single storey above the ground, but one or two were higher and single-minaret mosques pierced the irregular surface of roofs at regular intervals.

  The atmospheric plunged through the wall of the Compound and emerged into the organised perfection of the British Empire with its wide clean streets, lines of identical residencies and majestic civil buildings. The area within the outer wall contained, manned and supported the administrative offices for hundreds of trading lines, as well as for the British Army and Navy Far Eastern forces.

  Control of the Void was given over to the Fortress itself.

  The atmospheric came into the station and jerked sideways as it was shunted off to a platform. It slowed and came to rest. Through the window they could see the cathedral-like ceiling of the great hall. At the end of each platform stood a colossal furnace and boiler that generated the pressure to begin an atmospheric’s journey. And each of those great engines depended on a valve designed by Maliha’s father.

  It was then Maliha noticed three men loitering on the concourse. They had no baggage and, though they stood in what might be seen as a friendly group, she could see them studying every person who disembarked. Particularly the women.

  They might be looking for someone else, but it was a risk she could not take.

  There was no Mama Kosi here to help them. She might be able to delay disembarking for a while but, unless she could find another way out from the station, the prospect was hopeless.

  “They after us, Goddess?” asked Lilith. She too was looking at the men and so was Izak. Living on the streets gave them a sense of when things were not safe.

  “Just me,” she said. “And if they take me, you two should run.”

  Maliha pulled out one of the cards she’d had made up with her new name and wrote an address on the back. Barbara Makepeace-Flynn—she should be in Pondicherry with Amita, but there had been no time to sell the house yet.

  “Get someone to take you to the address on the card,” she said. “The people there will help you. They’ll send you to Amita.”

  “We won’t leave you, Goddess,” said Izak. “We’ll fight them.”

  Maliha’s attention was caught by a movement on the concourse. Between the disembarking travellers, she caught sight of half a dozen policemen surrounding the group of three men. There was considerable gesticulating and possibly some shouting since passengers paused to stare before moving on.

  There was a brief scuffle and the three were taken away.

  “I’d say that makes us about even, Miss Anderson.” The coarse Glaswegian accent rolled across the carriage. “Wouldn’t you?”

  iv

  Maliha turned and could not suppress the smile on her face. “Inspector!”

  “He’s a crusher?” said Izak.

  “He’s a friend.”

  “Friend, is it, Miss Anderson?” he said. “I seem to recall you interfering with my investigations and robbing me of my perpetrators.”

  “I think you’ll find that was Valentine.”

  Inspector Forsyth drew closer and glanced at her left hand. “Making an honest woman of you, is he?”

  “I was always an honest woman, Inspector.”

  “Aye, that you were,” he said. “And who are these ruffians dressed in finery?”

  “Izak and Lilith, Inspector—my wards.”

  “And you have the documentation to prove it?”

  “Of course.”

  Forsyth bent down and looked out the window. “All right, the lads have removed them. There’s a car outside that will take you directly to the Fortress, no messing about.”

  They disembarked. Their luggage was already in transit. No one bothered them as they crossed the concourse.

  “It seems rather quiet,” said Maliha.

  “I applied some pressure to the station staff and insisted on them delaying any further incoming atmospherics.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like being indebted, and the way you’ve been going, Miss Anderson, you’ll be dead before I could pay.”

  “You know about Johannesburg?”

  “I have a vested interest in staying up to date with the waves you’re causing. I don’t intend to be caught napping when one of them rolls in my direction.”

  Rather than exiting through the main entrance, Forsyth guided them through a door marked ‘Staff only’, along a passage and out into a narrow cobbled street that ran down the side of the station.

  A steam police carriage puffed quietly. The driver turned and grinned, Sergeant Choudhary.

  Forsyth opened the door and ushered them all in, then followed and closed the door. When they were settled he banged on the glass to the front.

  The curtains were pulled closed on all the windows. The carriage moved off along the bumpy road, its rubber tyres and suspension failing to improve the ride.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Oh, not much detecting needed for that,” he said. “An order came from on high, alerting all divisions to be on the lookout for Miss Maliha Anderson, last seen in the company of two negro children. Well, there’s only one Maliha
Anderson.”

  “What did it say I had done?”

  “Escaped lawful custody.”

  “For what crime?”

  “It was a little vague on that precise point, but it implied you had incited a riot against the civil government.”

  “She stopped it,” burst out Izak.

  Forsyth turned his attention to the boy. “You have big ears, young man. Wise to keep them open, wiser to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Well, she did,” said Lilith. “She’s our goddess.”

  Forsyth looked back at Maliha. “That business in Pondicherry?”

  Maliha frowned. “Your obsession with my affairs could be considered worrying.”

  Forsyth shrugged. “It was a bad business. You have my condolences.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t believe a word of it and I remembered that little affair with the Guru and Timmons. The toffs are all best pals, so I put two and two together and found you first.”

  “You got hold of the French police reports, then the South African police reports, realised I might be going to Venus, so you checked the passenger lists. You know my full name and the name of my family back home.”

  Forsyth smiled. “If I had a daughter, Miss Anderson, I would be happy if she grew up to be half the woman you are.”

  “Won’t you get into trouble for helping me?”

  “Only if someone finds out.” Forsyth leaned back and filled his pipe without looking at it. “Someone reported those men at the station for being shifty, so picking them up was routine. There will be apologies if it turns out they were official, otherwise they’ll spend some time in the cells. Either way, they’ll get out long after you’re gone. And there’s only one other person who knows you’re in this carriage.”

  As he spoke the carriage slowed to a stop and there was the faint sound of discussions outside.

  “Goddess, I’m tired,” whined Lilith. “And my head hurts.”

  “Hush, dear heart. I’ll deal with it when we’re safe.”