Singh was having none of it. “My dear Rana, I run a police force here, the biggest law enforcement agency in India, not some welfare scheme for Dullits, beggars and pick-pockets.”
“I like working with children, sir. I wouldn’t be happy anywhere else.”
“Your skills are needed elsewhere, Lieutenant.”
“Are you saying that if I were less skilled at my job, then I would still be able to work with the kids?” The thought appalled her.
“I am saying, Lieutenant, that the department’s work with the homeless children of Calcutta is low-priority.”
“But it’s necessary work, sir! Much of what I’ve done has given these kids jobs and security, kept them from prostitution and thieving.”
“Lieutenant, your work will be carried on. I am not eradicating the post you held.”
“Who?” Rana asked. She stared at him. “You can’t mean Khosla? I thought he was only taking over temporarily?”
“He’s a young, intelligent and ambitious officer.”
“Ambitious for promotion, maybe,” she said. “But he doesn’t know the first thing about the kids. You heard him today. He’s ignorant and dangerous. He has not the slightest sympathy with them.”
“Then perhaps, Lieutenant, a year or two in the post will educate and enlighten him.”
They stared at each other for what seemed like long minutes, opponents who would not concede defeat and back down.
“What if I refuse the promotion?” Rana asked at last.
“Then I will be forced, with great reluctance, to ask for your resignation.”
She shook her head. Was he calling her bluff?
Commissioner Singh gave an indulgent laugh. “I’ve heard a lot about your unconventional spirit, Lieutenant. My predecessor called you a wild cat. I think he was understating the case.”
Rana felt tears prickle her eyes as she realised what she had to do. Ah-cha, so she might not be able to work officially with the kids any more, but she could still see them in her own time. She would continue helping them, try to counter the mess Khosla would make of his posting.
“When do I start, sir?” she asked at last.
“Good. I’m glad you’ve seen sense. You can go and clear your desk immediately. Vishwanath’s department is on the eighth floor. You’ll find him a good man and a hardworking boss. I hope you do as well in Homicide as you have done in Child Welfare, Lieutenant. Well done.”
She stood, saluted, wheeled around and left the room. In a daze she made her way back to her office on the second floor.
An efficient fan turned on the ceiling, disturbing what little paperwork sat on her desk. Her com-screen glowed with a dozen files she could no longer call her own. She stared at the windowless walls. One was filled entirely with the pix of young boys and girls, gazing out at her with eyes made tired by experience.
Her screen flashed. It was Singh. “Oh, Lieutenant. I forgot to mention a couple of things. Firstly, you’ll be moving into a new apartment near the river. Also, you’ll be receiving a pay rise. I’ll download the information right away.”
Seconds later Rana was staring at her new contract. She read the clause detailing her yearly salary. Either her pay as the Child Welfare officer had truly represented the law enforcement agency’s contempt of the post, or the officers at Homicide were grossly overpaid. She would be earning three times the amount she’d been paid in Welfare.
She considered all she would have been able to achieve if the money had been directed at her office, and not at the fat cats upstairs. Then again, she supposed, someone had to catch the killers.
She read through the details of her new apartment overlooking Nehru park. It sounded fantastic: three air-conditioned rooms, fully furnished, the building patrolled by security guards. It was a far cry from the sultry, one-room apartment she had now in a poor district of the city prone to burglary. She considered the luxury of a three-room apartment, and then felt a sudden pang of guilt.
She began the quick job of clearing her effects from the desk. They filled a small plastic bag: a stylus and an antique biro pen, an old softscreen recording from her childhood and an effigy of Ganesh, the elephant god, which her mother had given her years ago. She no longer believed in anything like that, but it was her only reminder of her mother. She decided to keep these things at her new apartment, now that she could be assured of security.
She stood and looked around the room. One thing caught her eye. She walked over to the wall and knelt to examine the pix. A small girl with jet-black bangs and frightened eyes stared out at her. On the tag-line beneath the pix was the computer code and a name: Sita Mackendrick.
Rana slipped the pix into her pocket and took the elevator to the eighth floor.
3
After ten days in space, enduring cramped living conditions and consuming recycled food and drink, a leave period on Earth was like parole in paradise.
Bennett drove from the spaceport on the perimeter of Los Angeles and took the highway into the desert. The shuttle had touched down in the early hours, and it was still a couple of hours until dawn. The road stretched away beneath the swollen lantern of the full moon, the tarmac laced with luminescents so that it glowed green in the night. In an age of draconian energy conservation, luminous road surfaces were a means of doing away with the expensive street-lighting of old. Seen from space, as the terminator swept across the Americas, the rising sun illuminated the roads that crossed the western seaboard like the veins on the brow of an old but healthy patriarch.
Bennett accelerated, enjoying the cool air on his face. He sipped occasionally from a carton of fresh orange juice and thought about the near miss in orbit. All things considered, his extended leave would compensate for the carpeting and/or fine he could expect on his return to the station in ten days. As he drove, he considered renegotiating his contract in favour of more leave on Earth. He even entertained the fantasy of changing jobs, looking for something a little more varied.
Two hours later he passed Mojave Town, where his father was hospitalised and Julia worked as a landscape designer. Constructed piecemeal at the end of the last century by eco-freaks dreaming of an environmentally friendly society, its population had been augmented over the years by an exodus of well-to-do home-workers, artists, computer specialists and on-line business people. In the light of the moon, multi-level domes glistened like agglomerated soap bubbles, interspersed with oasis gardens, trees and lakes, and tall masts bearing solar arrays.
Bennett’s habitat dome was situated twenty kilometres further along the highway. From the veranda of his dome, Mojave Town was a blur in the distance, and his nearest neighbour was ten kays away. He was surrounded by the soothing silence of the desert, his only company the occasional patrolling condor or scavenging jackal.
He pulled off the highway, trundled the final three kilometres along the rough track, and parked in the tropical garden that shaded his dome, patio and swimming pool.
The habitat came to life as he climbed the interior steps to the main lounge. Lights turned themselves on; he was greeted by a selection of his favourite music—mood-jazz from one of the colony worlds. Beside the sliding door to the veranda, his com-screen flared into life.
He took a beer from the cooler and sat in the swivel chair before the screen. One quarter of the screen displayed a head-and-shoulders shot of Julia, frozen mid-smile, another quarter someone Bennett had never seen before, a silver-haired man in his seventies. The upper half of the screen listed e-mail shots that had come in during his absence.