Samir grimaced.

"We don"t know yet if it"s good or bad," he said. "Maybe that officer wants to offer his services. Second of March, Madan. The day after our colony becomes legal. If he wanted to put a squeeze on me, he"d have simply gone on to my house after talking to Sunil, and waited until I came home."

"I don"t like this Sunil," said Madan. Samir sighed, and said:

"You know, it would be good if you met him before we bring him over. Are you joining us soon? When are you moving to Mumbai?"

"There is a lot of things I have to do before we can leave Khalapur. You cannot even imagine how many," Madan said reproachfully.

"Don"t give me that. What is it, Madan? What"s holding you back? It isn"t Kali. She said she"ll be glad to move."

"She was being polite."

"Nonsense."

"You have nowhere to put us."

"I told you I have a construction crew coming. By the time you arrive, there"ll be a room waiting just for you."

"There are things we want to take from Khalapur. Too many for us to carry."

"I will personally hire a cart or a couple of donkeys, and send them to Khalapur to fetch you."

It went on like that for a while: Madan raised new objections, and Samir demolished them one by one. He raised his voice as his patience ran out, and ended up shouting at Madan to make up his f.u.c.king mind. It worked: Madan finally confessed what was the problem.

"We"ll be putting ourselves completely at your mercy," he said, avoiding Samir"s eye. Samir couldn"t deny it was true. He"d thought of that long before Madan brought it up. In fact, it had been an important reason for asking Madan to move to Mumbai.

But something that cannot be denied can always be given a new label. Samir said:

"Mercy? Are you out of your mind? I keep asking you to move because I really need you in Mumbai. There are just too many things for me and Rani to manage, we"re close to losing control. I need you there with me, Madan. I"m not sure I can go on without your help. I am the one who is at your mercy, and not the other way around."

Madan liked that. He said:

"You"ll really hire a cart and send it for me?"

"I"ll hire the best transport I can find. Who knows, maybe I can send a car. I saw a couple of old Amba.s.sador taxis on the road today. I saw a couple of mopeds, too."

"I thought only military vehicles could run."

"Any vehicle without a data transmitter can run."

Madan laughed.

"A car!" he said. "That would be traveling in style. But tell me: how are you going to pay for all this?"

"We have to crank up exports," said Samir, his course at Mr Go"s business college suddenly kicking in. "And diversify in what we send. Not just food, but other things."

"Like what? Pots and baskets? Food is the only thing that sells."

Samir smiled a very superior smile, and said:

"We"ll send money. We"ll send ready-made coins, maybe metal. It is better if we smelt the ore here in Kulaba. But it will be easier to mint coins in Mumbai. Better tools."

"Much better tools," agreed Madan. All the tools they had in the New World were made of wood, stone, and hardened clay. Madan could make and bake a clay knife as sharp as a razor but it would be brittle, wearing out quickly and shattering into pieces if dropped on a hard surface.

"It"s time we paid a visit to that valley where we found the copper and the silver," Samir said.

"I couldn"t agree more. The furnace I"m using for baking clay is good enough for copper and silver. And, Samir?"

"What?"

"The stream that runs through that valley. Did you examine the stones and the gravel in the stream bed? I think we can get tin from the gravel. Then we could smelt bronze."

"That would be very,very good," said Samir. "But for now, we"ll concentrate on the copper and the silver, all right?"

Madan shrugged.

"Tin is very easy to smelt," he said. "All you need is a campfire. I want a basket of that gravel in Kulaba. You"ll thank me for that when you get your first ax with a bronze head."

Samir and Madan began their journey early the next day. They took two big baskets each, with shoulder slings that left their hands free for weapons. Each of them carried a bow with a dozen arrows and a bamboo pole with a long, sharp end. Madan also carried a stone ax, and Samir - a couple of ceramic knives. It was wise to always have at least a couple of these because of their fragility.

The area around Kulaba was heavily wooded, but as they traveled inland the soil changed and the trees became spa.r.s.e. By late afternoon, they were walking through a gently rolling savannah, with solitary trees and bushes scattered in a sea of tall yellow gra.s.s. In the distance, they could see the hills that hid the mineral-rich valley which was their destination.

They had been alert and watchful when they"d started their journey, but as time went on their vigilance relaxed. One of the reasons the New World felt so bucolic was the almost total absence of creatures that could make life there a misery, or outright dangerous. There were some mosquitoes, but it seemed they did not transmit diseases. Madan claimed to have seen a scorpion once, and Samir had seen a snake sliding into the vegetation a couple of times. It had happened so quickly he wasn"t even sure of what kind of snakes he"d seen. Most snakes were harmless, anyway.

By the time the sun slid down to touch the treetops they"d left behind, Samir and Madan had dropped their guard low enough to talk as they walked. Madan argued it was time to launch their new religion.

"What, you"ve already thought one up?" Samir sneered.

"I did," Madan said gravely.

"Excellent! Who gets nominated G.o.d?"

"Our great-great-great - grandchildren, of course. They gave us this place."

"I remember reading on the cube they specifically asked not to call them G.o.ds."

"I don"t think they"ll mind," said Madan. "Anyway, they won"t be worshipped in the active sense. They"ll be like the founding fathers, a benign spiritual presence somewhere in the background. The G.o.ds that will be actively worshipped will be the demi-G.o.ds physically present in the New World."

"Demi-G.o.ds? Like in mythology?"

"Something like that. Maybe a little better."

"And who would those demi-G.o.ds be?"

"Us," Madan said simply. "You, me, Rani, Neil. Whoever - as long as they originate on Earth."

Samir started laughing. He couldn"t help it. Finally, he said:

"So there will be quite a few G.o.ds around with your religion. Many more than the worshippers, in fact. No chance of a sudden shortage?"

"It doesn"t matter," Madan said. "I would even say, the more G.o.ds, the better. Why not? It"s more democratic, in a way. And with time, with more and more people born in the New World..."

"I still don"t see why those New World people should choose us to be their G.o.ds," Samir said. "I mean, it won"t be hard for them to see we eat and s.h.i.t and sleep and f.u.c.k just like them."

Madan smiled a superior smile that really got on Samir"s nerves.

"Go on," he said. "Tell me. Tell me how to get myself nominated as a G.o.d or demi-G.o.d or whatever. Maybe I can work the same number back in Mumbai."

"You can"t," said Madan. "It isn"t possible. It"s possible in the New World only thanks to the timescale difference. A single year back home translates into ten New World years. Didn"t you notice how fast your daughter is growing up?"

"What are you talking about?"

"She"ll be having her first birthday soon," said Madan. "And in the meantime, you"ve aged just a couple of weeks. She"ll grow up, marry, have children, and die - all in the s.p.a.ce of five or six years of your life. Because she was born in the New World. She is not a replicated Earth human. And this will apply to everyone else born here, too. They"ll be born, and live their lives and die, and in their eyes we"ll remain ageless. Untouched by time! We will become their G.o.ds whether we like it or not. It will be completely automatic."

Samit stopped so abruptly the basket sling slid off his right shoulder and down the arm which held the long, sharp bamboo pole. The basket now hung from his wrist, impeding movement, but Samir was too scared to let go of the pole even for a couple of seconds.

Madan had stopped right after Samir did, and was looking at Samir in great surprise. But then he followed Samir"s eyes and instantly became very scared, too.

There was a tiger standing directly in their path, no more than ten steps away. Its striped coat harmonized perfectly with the play of light and shadow in the tall gra.s.s. It was its eyes that gave it away - reflected light made them blaze like miniature suns, the pupils contracted into tiny vertical slits.

Samir and Madan stood perfectly still: they both stopped breathing. Samir desperately tried to remember what was the right thing to do. He was almost sure everyone warned against looking into a tiger"s eyes, but he was helpless. He just couldn"t tear his eyes away.

His gaze was locked with the tiger"s for what seemed like an eternity. Then the tiger growled softly. To Samir, it sounded like a don"t-f.u.c.k-with-me growl, as opposed to an I"m-about-to-tear-your-head-off growl. He tried to convey a similar message to the tiger.

It looked as if he was succeeding. The tiger moved back a step; then another. Its eyes were still locked with Samir"s. Then it snarled and suddenly was away in a series of leaps and bounds. It disappeared almost instantly, but Samir could hear it crashing through the vegetation for quite a while.

When the sound died away, he permitted himself a look at Madan. Madan was grinning like a madman. Samir shook his head and said:

"Who knows. Maybe there is something in this demi-G.o.d idea of yours. At least the tiger seemed to think so."

They both laughed. Then they resumed their journey, looking for a good place to spend the night. Their choice fell on a large acacia tree whose bottom branches were almost horizontal.

The night pa.s.sed without incident, and so did the rest of the trip. They arrived in the valley shortly after noon. Everything was exactly as it had been on their last visit, except for one thing.

There was a small campfire still smouldering near the pebbled sh.o.r.e of the stream.

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