‘Ey, you, out here, get out, trying to cheat, damn gora.’

‘What here, but?’

Out onto this tiny, traffic island twenty centimetres in front of him twenty centimetres behind him, on one side a tall man in a white shirt and black pants, on the other a fat woman in a purple sari who smelled of dead rose, and the phatphat, the little yellow-and-black plastic bubble, looked/sounded like a hornet as it throbbed away into the terrifying traffic.

‘You can’t do this, my dad’s building this country!’

The man and the woman turned to stare. Stares everywhere, every instant from the moment he slipped out of the back of the Hi-Lux at the phatphat stand. They had been eager for his money then, Hey sir, hey sahib, good clean cab, fast fast, straight there no detours, very safe safest phatphat in Varanasi. How was he to know that the cheap, light cardboard pogs were only money inside the Cantonment? And now here he was on his traffic island, no way forward, no way back, no way through the constant movement of trucks, buses, cream-coloured Marutis, mopeds, phatphats, cycle-rickshaws, cows, everything roaring ringing hooting yelling as it tried to find its true way while avoiding everything else. People were walking through that, just stepping out in the belief that the traffic would steer around them; the man in the white shirt, there he went, the woman in the purple sari, Come on boy, come with me, he couldn’t, he daren’t, and there she went and now there were people piling up behind him, pushing him pushing pushing pushing him closer to the kerb, out in that killing traffic ...

Then the phatphat came through the mayhem, klaxon buzzing, weaving a course of grace and chaos, sweeping in to the traffic island. The plastic door swivelled up and there, there, was Salim.

‘Come on come on.’

Kyle bounded in, the door scissored down and the driver hooted off into Varanasi’s storm of wheels.

‘Good thing I was looking for you,’ Salim said, tapping the lighthoek coiled behind his ear. ‘You can find anyone with these. What happened?’ Kyle showed him the Cantonment pogs. Salim’s eyes went wide. ‘You really haven’t ever been outside, have you?’

Escaping from Cantonment was easier than anything. Everyone knew they were only looking for people coming in, not going out, so all Kyle had to do was slip into the back of the pick-up while the driver bought a mochaccino to go at Tinneman’s. He even peeked out from under the tarpaulin as the inner gate closed because he wanted to see what the bomb damage was like. The robots had taken away all the broken masonry and metal spaghetti but he could see the steel reinforcing rods through the shattered concrete block work and the black scorch marks over the inner wall. It was so interesting and Kyle was staring so hard that he only realised he was out of Cantonment entirely, in the street, the alien street, when he saw the trucks, buses, cream-coloured Marutis, mopeds, phatphats, cycle-rickshaws, cows close behind the pick-up and felt the city roar surge over him.