The Karma Booth

“You want to tell me what this job is now so I can say no and stop wasting both our time?”

“No, Professor. Let’s talk about India.”

“If they had any lingering concerns over India, they wouldn’t have sent you. And technically, it was barely in India. It was on the border.”

“I have concerns.”

“Go to hell.”

“You’ll want this job, Professor.”

“I have a job, thanks,” said Tim, on the move again and quickening his step. “And I actually have no ambitions to return to diplomatic service—or to work for government in any other capacity again.” He pushed hard on the door leading to the green lawn of the courtyard.

Schlosser followed him out to the sunshine. “You’d be a private contractor on this one.”

“Don’t care. If they let a paper-pusher like you ask about that incident then that’s enough to suggest there would be more interference.”

“This is the last time you see me,” said Schlosser. “As for how others interact with you… Well, I can’t make any guarantees. You’d be well compensated.”

Another cocky smile. “I make enough now when I see corporate clients.”

Schlosser had disliked the man from his department bio, and he despised him thoroughly now. He felt no one should ever be fully confident in his own security. It allowed him the privilege of indulging his own beliefs instead of following carefully developed policies. When he got back to Washington, he promised himself he would complain about being assigned the task of enabling such a man.

“There are other rewards to consider, Mr. Cale.”

“Oh, this is rich! An appeal to my intellectual vanity?”

“Not your vanity, Professor. Curiosity. Now assuming they take you on with my recommendation, you’ll do this job not for your own ambition or for any monetary gain, but so you can learn certain things—perhaps some things you’ve wanted to know for a long time.”

Tim didn’t break stride, looking straight ahead. “That’s a hell of a display of logic! Jump to conclusions of motive before you’re sure of my course of action! Mr. Schlosser, in less than five minutes, we’ve learned only two things. One is that you don’t know me, and two is that you’re a pompous ass.”

Schlosser was tired of both the walk and the verbal humiliation. “You’re right, I don’t know you, but Dr. Weintraub claims he does. He says you’ll be interested.”

Tim stopped again. “Weintraub could have phoned me himself.”

“Departmental formalities.”

“Uh-huh. Meaning Weintraub recommended me, but this has to go through the department… whatever it’s really about. Go back to Washington, Schlosser. Tell them I’ll speak with the Attorney General myself. Direct. I’ll send my fee request to his office.”

Schlosser pulled out his cell. “Okay, I’ll phone and get you the email for his executive assistant.”

“Don’t need it. I have Weatherford’s own email.”

“Mr. Cale, I don’t know why I ask, since it sounds like I already have the answer,” sighed Schlosser, “but they’ll want to know: What are your views on capital punishment?”

“I’ll make them clear if I ever wind up having to kill somebody,” snapped Tim. “It’s amazing you can move around at all, Schlosser, dragging all those assumptions around.”

“You never answered my question.”

“If they want to know, they can ask me themselves,” replied Tim. “And you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

He turned on his heel and left Schlosser standing there.

There were only four witnesses to the Nickelbaum execution that weren’t in lab coats. One was the warden. A second was the administrative and theoretical head of the R and D team, Gary Weintraub. The third was a general electrician in overalls, a fellow who had no idea what was going on and was there just in case the power was lost or there was an electrical fire. And like the warden, he had signed a legal statement that prohibited him from telling anyone what he saw. The fourth person was the least known to the scientists, Timothy Christopher Cale.

When the murderer disappeared in the carvings of light and the wretched figure of Mary Ash was led out of the booth like a frightened animal, Tim Cale was as shocked as anyone else—and the most quiet person in the room.

He supposed the researchers had a right to be curious about him because, only two hours before, the head of their team, Gary Weintraub, had ushered him around without volunteering what he did or why he was there. The researchers all assumed he was a bureaucrat sent to babysit, so they sneered the “Mister” next to his name as if it were an insult. Tim’s sense of mischief was tempted to correct them, but he had seen enough class and status nonsense to last him a lifetime back when he was posted in London. And today had given him much to think about, just like the others. He decided to be self-effacing in the circle of experts and lab coats, not gushing over the astonishing thing they had just witnessed and not congratulating them at all.

As doctors accompanying the young girl left for the private hospital in Manhattan, the remaining witnesses filed into a conference room, and Tim joined the slow exodus to a long table. They could barely contain what they felt, and few wanted to sit. This was one of the rare moments when scientists could be children again.

Tim watched them whisper and talk, voices climbing over each other, pairs of hands gesticulating. Others scribbled down estimates and equations. One of them—there would always be one—was the oracle of caution, suggesting the phenomenon might not be easily repeated. Weintraub, now free to talk about certain details more candidly, was busy saying things like “No, no, it will work again.”

Tim already knew Weintraub from university symposiums and presidential committees. He was a man in his sixties with a moon face and spectacles who didn’t mind at all that his students had nicknamed him “Bunsen Honeydew” after The Muppets character. Weintraub had first achieved fame as a documentary host, and since the media liked physicists to be interesting personalities (it was easier than trying to understand what they said), much was made of his distinctive nasal voice, his amateur skill at jazz piano and how as a young man he’d made a pilgrimage to study with one of his scientific heroes, the equally eccentric Leó Szilárd (when Szilárd didn’t like someone, he liked to pull out his colostomy bag and show them). Weintraub was arguably the smartest man in the room. Tim Cale was certain he was.

The multiple conversations grew to an insect hum, and at last Weintraub raised his hands.

“Okay, okay, first of all, there is no possible way I can expect this won’t leak out, legal documents or not,” he said, wearing the same self-congratulatory smile as the staff. “We do have an official announcement drafted and a news conference scheduled—we prepared all this in advance in case things went well.”

A new buzz around the table: their director had apparently known what to expect, while the others had been left mostly in the dark. But the lab coats’ resentment couldn’t last. It was crushed to insignificance by what they had seen.

“The media doesn’t always go through proper channels so if you are asked, please, please, be careful in your use of language. Don’t use any words of religious connotation—I’m sure they’ll happily go overboard on those themselves. Make sure they understand we followed a procedure, and it won’t be up to us how the transposition booths are assigned. That’s a matter for the courts and the legislators.”

“We don’t even have to go there, do we, Gary?” piped up one of the scientists. “Don’t we have years of research ahead of us before we try to repeat what we saw?”

The arguments and counter-arguments all ran for a few seconds with Weintraub unable to restore order.

“Come on, how do you test and research this? What we’ve got to do is ensure the safety of an arrival who—”

“People will not want to wait for years of clinical—”

“Look at in vitro fertilization and the stigma that was attached to—”

“You can’t compare the social history of decades ago to a completely new radical—”

“How does it work?”

The most innocent and direct of questions came from their guest. There was a sudden hush around the conference table, all the scientists now facing Timothy Cale. And he saw a remarkable, almost tangible shame in their expressions. I’ll be damned, thought Tim.

Because he realized: They don’t know.

Weintraub spoke for them all. “We’re not completely sure.”

“Meaning you don’t have a clue, right, Gary?”

He and Weintraub liked each other. Tim knew Weintraub didn’t have a molecule of condescension in his body for laymen, nor was his ego so fragile that he couldn’t admit to ignorance. They could speak plainly here.

“What you must understand, Tim, is that we had nothing to do with the manufacture of the transposition equipment or its original R and D,” replied Weintraub.

“What? Are you kidding?”

“I assure I’m not. We served as oversight on its health and safety aspects and on the scientific evaluation. Washington gave the green light, and we went ahead and… Well, we needed to figure out protocols, to make sure it does what we were promised it will do…”

Tim was incredulous. His friend hadn’t given him a clue what he would see today, and neither, in fact, had Schlosser or those out in Washington. He had expected a bit of a magic act from Gary Weintraub—he always got one. The man’s theatrical flair was part of his professional success both on campuses and on television. But nothing like this, nothing with such ramifications!

“Now wait a minute,” Tim tried again. “How can you go ahead with something this momentous without knowing how the damn thing fundamentally works?”

“Hey, uh, Mr. Cale,” interrupted one of the scientists, an up-and-coming physics star who looked barely old enough to shave. “Before Gary answers that, can you, like, tell us a little bit more about what you do and how you came to be here?”

Tim smiled at the naked challenge. “If it helps, I’m here at the request of both the US Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. I’m a consultant.”

“What kind of consultant, Mr. Cale?”

“The expensive kind.”

There was hesitant laughter over the quip, but the faces were so earnest, he knew he should offer a more definitive response. After all, he was asking them plain enough questions.

He made eye contact around the table and explained, “My career is somewhat eclectic, ladies and gentlemen. I used to be with diplomatic services stationed overseas, posted at various legations—mostly in Asia. I conducted investigations that involved any high-profile American national. But over time, I’ve fallen into what can loosely be called, for lack of a better term, ‘risk management.’ I don’t pretend at all I have your scientific background or anything close it, but because of umm… well, a few personal experiences, which I won’t go into today, the White House likes to use me from time to time to write reports and investigate certain phenomena—though up to now nothing on the scale of what we all saw today.”

The young expert who had challenged Tim leaned forward. “And where did you have these experiences, Mr. Cale?”

Tim looked down the table and met his gaze evenly. “India… South East Asia.”

Tim knew the smirks would begin first and then the traded looks. He had seen it all before, and he didn’t care. He didn’t have to prove his credibility here or with the White House, certainly not at the contract price he was charging, and there were fortunately others in positions of influence who were less dogmatic.

“Dr. Weintraub?” he prompted. “Gary? About my question?”

Weintraub leaned forward to respond, but another of the scientists jumped in.

“Listen, Mr. Cale. Tim, is it? Tim, there have been countless scientific innovations where the discovery and our reaping of benefits preceded our full understanding. Penicillin for one—”

“I am familiar with the history of penicillin, thank you, Mister…?”

“Doctor Andrew Miller,” answered the scientist. “I’m team leader for Gary’s neuroscience division.”

His straight brown hair almost reached his shoulders, looking like it could use a wash, and his large hazel eyes were fierce in their direct stare. No doubt, he used all this Byronic intensity with girls. Tim knew his type from his university classes.

“Good for you, but I know about penicillin, Doctor Miller,” Tim said calmly. “That was a time when—”

Miller wasn’t listening. “Fine then, look at the recent tests that demonstrate adrenaline can play a factor in memory. We don’t fully understand them, but they began with mice running around a drum full of water. Drug trials went ahead even though researchers didn’t know exactly what was going on. Look at atomic energy—”

“Maybe that’s a bad example,” one of the scientists interjected.

“Hippie!” joked Miller, and he got a good laugh.

“We’re talking for the moment about applications ahead of full comprehension of potential,” said Weintraub, wanting to get them back on track.

“There is only one application,” said Miller. He sighed as if satisfied with his judgment and laced his fingers behind his head. “We’ve seen its potential. We know it! We know the results.”

“Really?” asked Tim.

Miller leaned back in his chair and pushed a sneaker against the edge of the table, tilting his chair back. “Frankly, even if we did understand the scientific process behind this machinery, it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell you. I don’t mean you personally—I mean any layman.”

“Make it personal if you like,” answered Tim. “What’s your rationale in keeping it secret?”

The rest of those seated around the conference table could hardly believe the naïveté of the question. There were gasps and pens tossed on notepads, more squeaking of pushed chairs and mutters under the breath.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” sneered Miller. “We’re going to catch enough flak from people bitching and whining the old saw that ‘just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should do it.’ Jesus… You want this process out there where it can be abused?”

“That isn’t where I’m going,” replied Tim. “And your logic is flawed. You assume that by limiting those knowledgeable to a select few, the technology isn’t vulnerable to abuse. But here’s the thing.”

He had their attention.

“By not explaining the science, making it absolutely crystal clear how this thing works, you already begin an abuse of the technology. It makes the whole apparatus into a kind of Ouija board—something occult. It’s the natural product of ignorance.”

Miller drummed his pen on the table and tipped his chair back another inch.

“Ignorance is something we’ve always had to tolerate.”

He glanced around the table and smiled to the other faces, but they were unconvinced. Tim thought he looked too young to have tolerated much of anything yet.

He rose to leave. He could see he would get nowhere with them for the moment. “I’m sorry, I’ve worked several years in diplomacy, but I have to say that’s one of the most irresponsible, stupid things I’ve ever heard. You’re scientists. You’re not supposed to tolerate ignorance—you’re supposed to cure it. Oh, and trust me, time has a nice way of curing hubris.”

CHAPTER TWO

India. But not India. Not quite. It was what changed everything for him, and it was likely why the government needed him now. Let’s talk about India, that government man had asked him. What was his name? Schlosser. But he didn’t talk about India with anybody.

Timothy Cale had been at his mid-level posting in Delhi for a year when the American embassy got a strange request to mediate in a violent ethnic clash. Of course, the details were so few as to be practically useless for any preparation. He was told that a remote village on the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar had been invaded by a group of rebels, their exact affiliation vague and obscure.

It wasn’t clear to him even why a US representative should get involved in what seemed like an internal dispute, especially when there were no obvious American interests. It didn’t matter. He would go. Sure, the assignment was at his discretion, and as one of the principal secretaries of the embassy, he could have easily turned it down. In looking back on it later, he cursed his own ambition and an almost juvenile urge for thrill-seeking. His Paris and London appointments had been junior postings, but it was the locales that held the glamour, not the office work itself: pushing papers, handling tourist complaints and making sure the colleges for overseas students were behaving themselves. This might be something substantial.

As he boarded an ancient-looking Bombardier turboprop commercial plane, he secretly hoped for adventure, with the equally childish wish that, of course, he’d come out on top and his resolution of the affair would help his career.

All he knew of Bihar he had picked up from the backgrounders written up in neat Times Roman 12 point type from the policy office and from his dog-eared Lonely Planet India guide. He stepped off a plane into Patna, gasping over the pollution and the rampant poverty, which was clear from the minute a US Consulate limo picked him up in the Bankipur district. It would take him to where he would rendezvous with an armed Indian escort for the next leg of his journey.

He got a fleeting glimpse of the Ganges, and then the city became another Third World blur with naked, dirty children, a clamor of street noise and sizzling grills for kiosk food, all contrasting sharply with the opulence of the modern glass castles for the city’s rich businessmen. There were pungent spices. There was the almost crippling stench of decaying shit in the alleys and backed up sewers, and the coppery smell of stale blood—whether from accident or violent robbery, you could never tell and didn’t want to know. Auto-rickshaws buzzed like dragonflies near the Ashok Rajpath, the main market.

Bihar was practically marinated in religion—the Buddha had walked this countryside, and there were lavish Hindu festivals to last you for ages. The last, tenth Guru of Sikhism was born right in Patna. A cynic would have enjoyed pointing out the fact that, amid all this faith, the province had an appalling rate of illiteracy, poverty, inter-caste warfare. The Bihari people faced a revolting degree of bigotry and ridicule in the rest of India.

And here he was, the fair-haired American boy from Illinois, thinking himself sophisticated after his years in Paris and London and a brief stint in Bangkok. Fool. He knew nothing. But that didn’t stop him. And where he was going was a dot on the map with the name of a Bihari–Nepalese subgroup of a people, a similar but unique culture with a name he couldn’t even pronounce, on the knife edge of a border. A no man’s land that would make even the Himalayas—so many miles away but still familiar from photos and news reports—a touchstone of reassuring normalcy.

He was briefed in minutes that “the situation hasn’t changed,” and he didn’t even get the chance to ask what the hell the situation was before the Indian soldiers in their neatly pressed khaki uniforms insisted he climb into the SUV. It was monsoon season, but they would have good luck with the roads—little report of flooding. Just potholes.

He couldn’t detect the passage of time. Bumped and rocked for hours, with only brief rest stops, he tried unsuccessfully to doze and ignore a pounding headache as the rain hit the vehicle’s roof in torrents. There were streaks of glistening drops across the windows, while bullets of moisture dug into the brown soil and made the road into a slippery obstacle course. It was late at night when the engine stopped, and the five Indian soldiers reached for their rifles, the interpreter telling him, “This is it.”

“It” was a village of ramshackle houses and a few lights, with a single two-story Victorian building up on a hill and a ring of dark silhouettes, waiting.

His escort had rifles. He could see none carried by the “rebels.”

But there were bodies at their feet. Men and women in what looked like traditional clothing, woolen caps and coats associated more with the Nepalese than the northern Bihari. They lay on their backs or with their faces in the mud, and they were all paler than corpses. Tim had seen dead, and this looked worse than dead. Those whose faces weren’t obscured by the brown clay of the soil held an expression of demented shock, mouths slack and open. Frozen.

He stopped at one victim then turned to one of the soldiers and asked to borrow his flashlight. If the shadows up ahead had waited this long for their mediator, they could spare a few more seconds. Tim shone the beam of the flashlight on the dead man at his feet. He was clearly Asiatic, yet his eyes, wide in horror, were a vivid Nordic blue.

He swung the beam of light to a woman sprawled a few feet away. Her eyes were open as well. On the blurry halo edge of the light, he could see all of their eyes were open, each and every one of the victims lying dead on their backs or on their sides staring into nothing.

And each one had vividly blue eyes.

He knew next to nothing about genetics, but his instinct told him that was impossible, even as a hereditary trait in a relatively closed community. He read somewhere that doctors believed that light triggered the production of melanin in the irises of newborn babies—it was why baby eyes change color over time. Disease, injury—they could affect eye color, too. But this…

He had no idea what it meant, or if it meant anything at all.

Set after set of bright blue eyes, staring.

It magnified the rictus of horror on each face. The expressions looked almost canine, animalistic in their dread, and their decomposing skin was beginning to look waxy under the constant monsoon shower.

“Mr. Cale,” called the interpreter. It was a faintly disguised plea. In other words, let’s get the hell away from this place.

Only they couldn’t. They were going to meet those who did this.

Their hosts didn’t raise any weapons at the soldiers. One of them simply lifted a hand in the universal sign that meant: This is as far as you go. Then the man in the center turned a palm up, closing it with a flip-flip-flip for Tim to step forward. As the interpreter followed half a step behind, a flat baritone voice told the man in fluent English, “Your services won’t be needed.”

Tim was grateful to at least be out of the downpour. He was led into a sad-looking structure with stained plywood walls but with a tent roof, the light provided by a Coleman camping lamp. He was waved to a rough-hewn table. His chair was the most beautiful thing in the room, elaborately carved, as if by a traditional master craftsman.

Now he at last had a chance to study who was responsible for the crisis, but these people’s clothing and manners told him little. Men and women stood in religious robes like those worn by monks—except their color scheme was unusual, not like anything Tim had seen on monks in other countries. They weren’t saffron or gold; instead, a mauve and forest green shade that seemed to bleed into the backdrop of the squalid room. And over the robes, they wore traditional woolen vests and jackets and brightly colored scarves of the local people as protection from the weather. Yet somehow they acted as if they barely felt the rain or wind at all.

There were a few young ones, but the older ones stood out to him, their eyes like doll beads and their ruddy golden cheeks lined and cracked with thousands of minute folds and character lines. The man who had beckoned to him took the lead, sitting down in front of Tim, his forehead half in shade, half in light from the lamp. Tim found it difficult to detect an actual personality to the man’s face, it was so tortoise-like, ancient and mummified; yet the smile was guardedly polite and the eyes were alert.