The message might still be found, Ava told him. It would just take a while. It had been typed on one of those oldfashioned, contact-based alphabetical keyboards. The electronic signals emitted by the keys were probably still traceable. It was simply a question of matching the electronic 'fingerprint' of Murugan's E-mail message to every electronic signal that was still alive in the ionosphere.

Antar keyed in a query asking how long the whole procedure would take.

Ava took a moment to answer. It would mean sifting through about six thousand eight hundred and ninety-two trillion cufiabytes, came the response, in other words, roughly eighty-five billion times the estimated sum of every dactylographic act ever performed by a human being. It was certain to take at least fifteen minutes.

Antar keyed in two names, Cunningham and Farley, and cut Ava loose.

Suddenly Antar was very tired. He looked down and noticed that there was a mild tremor in his hand. His heart sank as he touched his forehead and cheek. They were hot and clammy: it felt like the start of one of his bouts of fever. Evidently he would have to forgo his walk to Penn Station today.

In a way Antar was almost relieved. He decided to lie down while Ava searched the skies.

Antar had almost drifted off to sleep when Ava began to chirrup a summons twenty minutes later. Heaving off his bedclothes, he rose shakily to his feet and wrapped himself in a dressing gown. Then he made his way down the corridor to his living room.

A message was waiting for him on Ava's screen: the search had yielded a few traces of Murugan's lost E-mail message. But the signals were faint and possibly distorted. Ava had reconstructed a semblance of a narrative by running the retrieved fragments through a Storyline algorithm. But she was unable to vouch for the authenticity of the restored text.

Antar typed in a query asking if Ava could generate an image-simulacrum of the text with her Simultaneous Visualization program. That way all he'd have to do to review the text was to lock himself into his Sim Vis visor. He could just lie back and watch: Ava would do the rest. His hands felt very unsteady now: he knew he wasn't up to the task of reading through a long document.

A hand appeared on Ava's screen, sketching a gesture of regret. The answer was negative: the text was too corrupt to do a continuous image conversion. The best she could do was provide a verbal rendition.

Antar winced: he hated listening to Ava read, in her flat, uninflected voice. But on the other hand he was in no position to do it himself in his current state.

Reaching for his headphones, Antar snapped them into place.

IT WAS PAST ELEVEN when Urmila got home. The flat was in darkness and everybody was in bed.

She let herself in, as quietly as she could, and stood by the front door while her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness. Her younger brother was snoring in the sitting room. He had played in a Second Division football match that afternoon: one of the stringers for the sports page had come over to the reporting desk to tell her that he'd almost scored. She tiptoed into the sitting room and found him lying on the sofa, with the light on. He was barebodied, dressed only in his team's blue sweatpants, with one foot on the floor and one arm thrown over the back of the sofa. His head was on the armrest with his tongue lolling out of his open mouth, trailing a ribbon of drool.

A plateful of food was waiting for her in the kitchen, under a net cover. The net seemed to dissolve when she turned the light on; a swarm of cockroaches melted away into the cracks and corners. 'Isn't anyone going to be allowed to sleep?' her older brother shouted, from the bedroom he shared with his wife and three children. 'Who's turned the light on at this time of the night? '

Urmila leapt for the switch, almost dropping her plate. During the day her older brother worked as a salesman for a company that marketed shares and stock offerings. In the evenings he earned a little extra by doing tuitions for schoolchildren. He was always exhausted at night.

She stumbled out of the kitchen in the dark, balancing her plate carefully in her hands. She made her way to the bathroom, edging past the campbed where she slept, and half-closed the door before switching on a light. Seating herself on the edge of the bed she began to pick at the plateful of cold dhal and chapattis.

There was a rustle and a footstep in the landing and she looked up to see her mother, standing beside the camp bed, dressed in her white night-time sari. 'When did you get in?' her mother said sleepily. 'I waited and waited… '

'Why?' said Urmila. 'You shouldn't stay up so late – you remember what the homoeopath said.'

Motioning to her to keep her voice down, her mother seated herself beside Urmila and put a hand on her knee.

'I had to tell you tonight Urmi,' she whispered. 'There's some good news, some really good news, I knew you would be so happy.'

'What?' said Urmila.

'That's what I was going to tell you: we had a phone call from the Secretary of the Wicket Club at eight o'clock. About your brother, Dinu. I was the one who answered and, let me tell you the first thing I said was: "Oh, if only my daughter was here, she would be so happy… "

The member-secretary of the Wicket Club had telephoned, she said, to let them know that a senior incumbent of the club's executive committee was going to pay them a call the next day, in person, with a view to discussing Dinu's prospects.

'You know what this means Urmi?' her mother said, glowing with pleasure at the sudden good fortune that had befallen her son.

'What?' said Urmila.

'It means they want to give your brother a First Division contract. Everyone says so – if they're sending an E.C. Member then it means a First Division contract, definitely.'

'Are you sure?' said Urmila. 'We've heard this talk about a First Division contract so many times but nothing ever seems to come of it.'

'But this time's different,' her mother cried. She put an arm around Urmila's shoulders and pulled her close. 'Just think, Urmi; a First Division contract – money, maybe a flat. At last you'll be able to give up this stupid job and stay at home. Everything will be paid. Maybe we can even get you married before it's too late. We can put an advertisement in the papers… '

'Ma, that's enough,' Urmila said wearily, knowing exactly what was to follow: that her time was running out; her hair was thinning; she looked older than she should; the neighbours were talking about how late she got home…

Urmila broke in quickly, before the litany could get fully under way. 'Before you start planning my wedding,' she said, 'let's see if we can get the contract signed.'

Her mother did not fail to notice the sceptical note in her voice. 'I thought you would be glad, Urmi,' she said with a catch in her voice. 'I thought it would make you happy to hear our news. But instead all you do is pull a long face. You just don't care about us any more; all you think about is that awful job of yours.'

'Ma, if I didn't have the job,' Urmila said wearily, 'how would we get by? How far would Baba's pension go? How would we feed the children? Can you tell me that?'

Her mother paid her no attention; she was dabbing her eyes now. 'That's all you think about,' she said. 'Money, money, money. You have no place in your heart for our joys and sorrows. You should have seen how happy your brother was when I told him about the phone call from the Club: the first person he thought about was you. He said: "Didi must cook fish tomorrow, something special like ilish-mach so we can ask the Club's representative to stay for dinner."

Urmila threw her a look of disbelief. 'Ma, I can't cook fish tomorrow morning,' she said. 'I have to be at a press conference at nine – the Communications Minister is arriving on an early-morning flight from Delhi. That means I have to leave the house by eight fifteen at the latest otherwise I'll never get to Dalhousie on time. You know what the traffic is like.'