“Stop it, Kusum!”

“Don’t worry. They can’t see us.”

Kolabati knew that, but it gave her no comfort.

“Stop it now! Take me back up!”

Kusum hit another button. The descent stopped. He looked at her strangely, then started the platform back up. Kolabati sagged against him, relieved to be moving away from the rakoshi but knowing she had deeply disappointed her brother.

It couldn’t be helped. She had changed. She was no longer the recently orphaned little girl who had looked up to her older brother as the nearest thing to a god on earth, who had planned with him to find a way to bring the rakoshi back, and through them restore the ruined temple to its former glory. That little girl was gone forever. She had ventured into the world and found that life could be good outside India. She wanted to stay there.

Not so Kusum. His heart and his mind had never left those blackened ruins in the hills outside Bharangpur. There was no life for him outside India. And even in his homeland, his rigid Hindu fundamentalism made him something of a stranger. He worshipped India’s past. That was the India in which he wished to live, not the land India was striving to become.

With the belowdecks port shut and sealed behind them, Kolabati relaxed, reveling in the outside air. Whoever would have thought muggy New York City air could smell so sweet? Kusum led her to a steel door in the forward wall of the superstructure. He opened the padlock that secured it. Inside was a short hallway and a single furnished cabin.

Kolabati sat on the cot while Kusum stood and looked at her. She kept her head down, unable to meet his eyes. Neither had said a word since leaving the hold. Kusum’s air of disapproval rankled her, made her feel like an errant child, yet she could not fight it. He had a right to feel the way he did.

“I brought you here hoping to share the rest of my plans with you,” he said at last. “I see now that was a mistake. You have lost all touch with your heritage. You would become like the millions of soulless others in this place.”

“Tell me your plans, Kusum,” she said, feeling his hurt. “I want to hear them.”

“You’ll hear. But will you listen?” He answered his own question without waiting for her. “I don’t think so. I was going to tell you how the rakoshi could be used to aid me back home. They could help eliminate those who are determined to change India into something she was never intended to be, who are bent on leading our people away from the true concerns of life in a mad drive to make India another America.”

“Your political ambitions.”

“Not ambitions! A mission!”

Kolabati had seen that feverish light shining in her brother’s eyes before. It frightened her almost as much as the rakoshi. But she kept her voice calm.