'Careful,' the man snapped. He looked her over suspiciously as she straightened her damp, dirt-streaked sari. 'What do you want?' he said. 'We're very busy right now; no time to talk.'

Urmila stiffened, falling immediately into her professional manner. 'I am a reporter for Calcutta,' she said, in a crisp, firm voice. 'And I'd like to ask you a question.'

The man's frown deepened. 'What question?' he said. 'Why? I don't know anything. We're not involved in politics.'

'It's not about politics.' Urmila thrust Murugan's drawing into his hands. 'Can you tell me what kind of image this is?'

The man narrowed his eyes, directing a sharp glance at Murugan. 'I've never seen anything like this in my life,' he said, handing the drawing back. 'I know every divine image there is and I've never seen one like this.'

Urmila turned to Murugan to translate, but he cut her short.

'I got that,' he whispered. 'But something tells me he's in denial mode.'

'You don't know anything about this image, then?' Urmila said to the man in the dhoti. 'Are you sure?'

'What did I tell you?' the man said, his voice rising. 'Haven't I said "no" already? How many times do I have to say it?'

A couple of younger men had gathered around them now. Urmila held the drawing out to them but the older man cut her short.

'What can they tell you?' he said. 'They're just boys.' He herded Urmila and Murugan quickly towards the door, muttering under his breath. He saw them to the door and shooed them impatiently off: 'Go on, go on, there's nothing for you here.' He watched them leave and then disappeared into the interior of the workshop.

'Well,' said Murugan, dusting his hands. 'I guess that's as much as we're going to get from him.'

Urmila was about to walk away when Murugan pulled her to an abrupt halt. 'Look!' he said, with a sudden intake of breath. 'Over there.' His finger was pointing at a child, a six- or seven-year-old girl, who was sitting by the roadside playing with a doll.

'At what?' said Urmila.

'Look at what she just put into her doll's hands,' Murugan whispered into her ear.

Now, looking closely, Urmila noticed that the girl was trying to push a tiny semicircular object into the unyielding grasp of her sightless plastic doll. 'What is it?' she said. 'I can't tell.'

'Don't you see?' said Murugan. 'It's a little stylized microscope, just like the one I saw.' He gave her a nudge: 'Go on, ask her, ask her where she got it.'

Urmila took a step forward, and as her shadow approached, the girl glanced up, her eyes widening warily. Urmila gave her a reassuring smile and sank slowly down to her knees, beside her.

'Why, how beautiful,' she said, speaking softly, in a child's Bengali, pointing at the tiny microscope, now firmly lodged in the dolls hands.

'It's mine,' the girl said defensively, closing her fist upon the doll's hand.

'Yes, of course it's yours,' said Urmila. 'Your father gave it to you, didn't he?'

The girl nodded, moving her head slowly up and down.

She cocked her head at the workshop. 'My father is in there,' she said. 'He's made a lot of them.'

'Oh?' said Urmila, nodding encouragement.

'He made them for the big puja tonight,' the girl offered. 'Really?' Urmila smiled. 'I didn't know there's a puja tonight.'

'There is,' the girl nodded vigorously. 'Today is the last day of the puja of Mangala-bibi. Baba says that tonight Mangala-bibi is going to enter a new body.'

'And whose is that?' Urmila said.

'The body she's chosen, of course,' the girl said. 'No one knows whose it is.'

Murugan hissed into Urmila's ear: 'Ask her about Lutchman.' But before Urmila could say another word a man burst out of the workshop. Picking up the girl, he took her inside. Then the elderly man in the dhoti appeared again, carrying a stick.

'Why are you still here?' he shouted at Urmila. 'Why were you talking to that child? Are you kidnappers? I'm going to call the police, right now.'

'Don't bother,' said Urmila, rising to her feet. 'We're going.' She tapped Murugan on the arm and set off briskly down the lane.

ANTAR WAS DRIFTING OFF to sleep when Ava began to emit an urgent summons. It wasn't very loud and Antar felt it before he heard it, in his belly, reverberating through the floor.

Antar made his way gingerly into the living room, and spotted the outer nimbus of a package, deep inside Ava's delivery slot. It was a folder from the personal terminus of the Council's Assistant-Secretary General for Human Resources. It began by thanking him for the time and effort he had already invested in the L. Murugan case. Then, in polite but uncompromising language, it informed him that since he was already 'cognizant of the details' it had been decided that he should proceed with a further investigation of the matter. He was thus given authority to open up a direct line to the Council's representative in Calcutta, in order to conduct whatever interrogations were necessary (there followed a lengthy sequence of codes and clearances).

Antar spent a few minutes lashing together a raft of commands to take Ava through to Calcutta. When he was ready he went into the kitchen and splashed water over his face.

Tara's apartment was still dark, except for a light in the living room, which she always left on, night and day. As Antar was patting his face dry something shot up out of the air-shaft and began to knock furiously on the glass window pane. Antar recoiled, throwing his arms up: it was a pigeon, flapping against the glass. Its beady red eyes fixed on him for an instant, and then it was gone.

Antar poured himself a glass of water and carried it into his living room. Then he began the process of arming the raft.

It took exactly 5.65 seconds before the raft came to a stop at the personal terminus of the Director of the Council's office in Calcutta. It ran up against a barrier and began to thrash about, like a fish at a lock, sending back frantic signals: there was no one in the office and the only person who was directly connected was the Director himself. And the Director was at his residence, with the privacy controls in his surveillance system activated. Ava wouldn't be able to get through without a Shatter Command.

Antar looked up the code in his list of clearances and fed the command in. It took Ava just an instant to break through and a moment later a holographic projection of the Director appeared in Antar's living room, half-size. He was standing under a shower, a tall paunchy Peruvian. His eyes were closed and he was crooning to himself and scratching his balls.

Resisting the temptation to say 'Boo!' Antar cleared his throat with a gentle cough.

The Director opened one eye very slowly, looking around in disbelief. When he saw what was happening, his hands flew down to cup his genitals. He began to scream, his voice rising from a soundless wheeze into a high-pitched shriek. He dropped to all fours and began crawling furiously, dripping soap and water on the floor. Antar guessed he was heading for a towel, but he couldn't see the rest of the bathroom: to him, the director looked frantically stationary, in the middle of his living room, as though he were crawling on a conveyor belt.

The Director jumped to his feet, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his middle. 'You fucking son-of-a-bitch,' Ava translated, into gleefully demotic Arabic, as the Director began to scream at Antar. 'You can't do this! I'll have you brought to book I'll see you pay for this! You'll go to jail, you wait… '

Antar tried to explain but he wouldn't listen. So Antar hit the bathroom with the Alert signal until he quieted down and went to look for his clothes.

He went on grumbling while he dressed. 'You don't know what it's like here,' he muttered, pulling on his trousers. 'I have to run the whole office myself.'