17, Attraction

Chapter 17 - Attraction

Kamala walks towards the edge of the garden, her bare feet pressing the dewy grass in the wake of the serpent - a flashing, golden stream slicing the darkness. When it reaches the edge of the garden, she stops but it keeps on flowing forwards, over the steep drop to the plains below, sugared with lights just as the sky is sugared with stars. She thinks it’s disappeared over the edge but then it rises and swims through the air curving and looping and waving - up and around and over the plain and back to Kamala… it stops in front of her and draws a long, looping figure of eight with its body, then it raises its hood before her and whispers, a hiss, then a breath, then a hiss, then a breath… “seee-mmaah, seee-mmmaaah!” Kamala doesn’t quite understand, ‘Seema‘? ‘See Ma‘? 'Maashi'? Either way, it seems important, so she too steps off the edge of the hill, rises up and starts to drift, gently over the plain… following the gleaming trail of the flying serpent. When the lights of the town are below them, dulling the glow of the serpent, lighting up Kamala’s belly and chin and knees and shins, they start to dive.

They fall and fall, Kamala with a delicious feeling of being drawn back to something huge and inexorable which she had never wanted to leave. She sees below her two great white stone serpents chasing each other’s tails - she falls, no dives with purposeful grace in the serpent’s golden wake - into the darkness at centre of the serpent circle. She falls through centuries of darkness and soon notices (strange to notice such a thing at a time like this) that though they must now be nearing the centre of the earth it is getting colder, not hotter. Her eye lashes crackle with ice and goose flesh stands up all over her skin. But though it is cold, colder than anything she has ever known before, she’s filled with a warm sense of homecoming. And finally she arrives. And she is surrounded by love, by a Mother’s embrace more encircling and safe and powerful than any she has known before.

And a voice which is not a voice fills her head and it is saying WELCOME MY CHILD, WELCOME. I HAVE BEEN WAITING A LONG TIME FOR YOU TO BE. YOU TO BE HERE. NOW YOU HAVE COME AT LAST THE WORK MUST BEGIN. THE DANGER IS NEAR. The next morning, Kamala popped a little yellow pill just to be sure. She didn’t have many of them left now - she would need to be careful. She rubbed the crustiness away from her eyelashes (that must be why she dreamt they were icing over) but she didn’t want to get up and start 'the work' just yet… her bed felt so warm and inviting, like those few occasions when Mother had allowed her to snuggle in with her, when she was poorly - or that last night in Aunty Seema’s bed. The whole room was filled with a delicious warmth, like the warmth of milk.

She‘d pulled the laptop into bed and was lazily tapping out her thoughts in an email to Jerome. ‘Perfectly rational‘, she told him after describing the dream, ‘The snake in the forest gave me a shock so it’s stayed in my subconscious, seeing it triggered the memory of those weird gateposts I saw on the way here in that dingy little town down below, I’m homesick and missing Mother and have been thinking a lot about Aunty Seema since I’ve been here… it’s just all those things mixed up by my brain.’

‘What about ‘the danger?’ Jerome zapped back.

"That could be anything, couldn’t it?" she replied "there’s the whole terrorism and world wars thing that everybody‘s always talking about, I’m always worrying subconsciously about that. Or, you and Amelia are always saying we’re all in danger of being taken over by the big multinational conglomerates - can‘t see what‘s so scary about a bunch of shops and factories myself, but I guess you know what you‘re talking about - And then there’s all those warnings in the news (see, I have been really listening!) about the End of Civilization As We Know It when the fuel runs out and everything grinds to a standstill… Ahaa! This project’s supposed to be exploring an alternative energy source… so that must be it, that must be the work that must begin… All perfectly logical and not weird at all."

"If you say so, loony :-) " Jerome responded, softening it with the smiley emotikon. "...but watch your back. That evil bastard White is on his way over to you soon. Watch him."

"What, you mean the 'evil bastard' who's set up ergonomically designed solar powered houses for people displaced by the dam?" Kamala tapped back, she was rather pleased with herself for having retained this piece of information, and wished there was an emotikon for smug sarcasm.

"Meelie here, Kam, yes, that evil bastard, and you can forget the "". You don't seriously think he's doing it for love do you? It's just a PR exercise - what do poor farmers know about solar power and ergonomics? They just want to carry on working the land like they've always done. He's just using them as pawns to enrich his evil empire! Put that together with his arms dealing, his stranglehold on the world's press and his influence on just about every government in the world and you'll understand what evil bastard means!" Kamala thought about the gentle, refined, rather dishy features of Andreas White, about that dazzling smile, that Voice, all of which seemed to pop up in the papers, on the internet news sites and on TV so frequently these days. She just couldn't see him as a power crazed monster planning to nuke the world.

Meelie and Jerome! Honestly, she loved them to bits, but what a couple of paranoid loonies...! It was sad that they couldn't accept that someone could just want to do something good. Hang on a sec, Meelie? She checked the World Clock on the internet... it was 3 am back in England. She flicked the email window open again.

"Meelie????? What are you doing with Jerome at 3 am might I ask???!!!!" There was a long 'silence' during which Kamala tapped her fingers on the edge of the laptop and grinned excitedly...

"Ok, ok, you caught us!" Came the eventual reply.

"You dirty dogs!!"

"No we're not. We're in love. A&J"

"Aaaaah! I'm really happy for you guys, I can't imagine a better suited couple - you have so many paranoid delusions in common!! Listen, gotta go, darlings, people to meet places to go.
Tata, and watch out for Dr Strangelove! : )" She was about to log out, when the You've got Mail icon popped up with an urgent red exclamation mark beside it.

"Seriously Kamala - please watch out, babe, that's no teddy bear's picnic you've got yourself mixed up in out there... we've found out some pretty scary things about your beloved Greenfields - it's a subsidiary of White Enterprises. You don't think factories are scary? Depends what they're making, doesn't it? Forget guns, forget weapons of mass destruction, think Weapons of the Apocalypse. They invest in death and decay not life and growth, they destabilise economies, use up the earth's resources... all for profit! And they've been buying up all the papers and TV satellite channels too, which they've been using to stir up all this international tension, they've bought up medical supplies, drugs, planes... there's nothing they want more than a good, profitable world war, and they've got it all set up... all they need now is the ammo. There's your danger. Jez."

Kamala felt a twinge of anxiety, but then she laughed. Jerome! Such a dramatist... the world would just be too dull for him without an evil mastermind stroking a white cat on his lap and waiting to take over the world!

She jumped out of bed, stretched and opened the curtains. There on the edge of the garden, standing on the exact spot where her dream self had so recently launched itself into the ether, was a figure in white with arms stretched wide like Jesus on Sugarloaf Mountain. The early morning sun shone through the white of his kurta outlining in gold the silhouette of his outstretched arms and his up-stretched torso. A breeze blew the blue-black shoulder length hair back off his face. Kamala could see the smooth, brown edge of his forehead, his nose, his cheek, his thin beard - and they too were outlined in gold. She watched for a long time as he moved through one posture after another with the slowness and poise of a praying mantis. Then he stopped, turned and seemed to look straight towards her window. She blushed fiercely and swiped the curtains shut again. Her heart was beating fast.

She felt wretched with embarrassment as she was introduced to him at breakfast; his surly “How do you do” and his refusal to meet her eye could have meant he was equally embarrassed, or that he hadn’t noticed her at all - she couldn‘t tell. He certainly barely seemed to acknowledge her existence. His name was Deepak. He was a photographer, apparently, who’d been commission to make a visual record of the project. He was in his early thirties, she guessed, and had long, thick dark lashes, lips that seemed to be permanently pouting and that blue-black hair, like Superman’s, which kept falling across his face and the little beard which lent him the air of a Renaissance French painter or an Austrian psychiatrist.

The other two new arrivals were Dr Karan Singh, the senior researcher and project manager, and Astrid Jensen, the guest researcher from Sweden. Astrid, or Ms Jensen, as she insisted on being called, was not much older than Kamala. Her pale hair, cropped close to her head, matched pale eyelashes and pale rimmed glasses - she nodded at Kamala as Dr Singh introduced them and her mouth gave a tight lipped twitch which could - if you were feeling generous - have been interpreted as a smile. She picked at her breakfast - a spicy semolina dish studded with mustard seeds, onions and roasted cashew nuts - trying unsuccessfully to conceal her distaste. On Kamala’s first day there, she had been a little surprised herself to be served ‘curry’ for breakfast, but one mouthful of the soft, warm, crumbling, spicy mixture had converted her.

Dr Singh was a thin, amiable man in his forties who welcomed Kamala warmly and instantly made her feel a part of the team. “Kamala, my dear,” he cried as she sat down opposite Ms Jensen and beside Deepak, “Delightful to have you join the project. So glad you could come at such short notice. How much do you know about it?” She’d read the proposals, of course and the initial study reports, but much of it was blotted out with an official looking stamp reading 'Sensitive material'. Now Dr Singh filled her in on some of the details…

“Have you any idea what it could mean for India if we pull this off? India’s economic problems would be solved for ever! Everybody would be able to afford power, we wouldn’t need to rely on fossil fuels, or have to flood valleys and villages any more... Never mind India - the whole world will benefit! Isn’t that so, Ms Jensen?” (he took Ms Jensen’s assent for granted and charged ahead) “This research is unique in the world today, we are at the forefront of something really spectacular…”

Having been offered an opportunity to speak, Ms Jensen now seemed determined to take it - but the only way to do so in the face of Dr Singh’s galloping enthusiasm was to interrupt. She interrupted...

“Of course, Svedish scientists have been investigating the energy potential of botanical phenomena for some time. Ve are very much in tune with nature back in Sveden…”

“Of course, Ms Jensen, of course. The project benefits immeasurably from the Swedish contribution, that must certainly be acknowledged... The world will be grateful, all future generations will be grateful if we pull this off - renewable energy for all for ever! Think of it! And at such little cost - trees are everywhere, photosynthesising away, sucking in that light, pumping that sap up from the ground, converting energy into matter. Of course we're not sure yet how the conversion takes place or how to harness it, but the point is, we know it's possible! And that's what we're going to find out now! Isn’t it amazing that up to now we’ve just chopped them down and used their carcasses when all the time we could have been putting all that living energy to our service? ”

"What kind of energy, exactly, Dr Singh?" Asked Kamala, a little puzzled still. This didn't quite gel with what the reports seemed to refer to, but it was hard to say with all the sections obscured with big blotchy black 'Censored for Security Purposes' stamps.

"Well, that's the mysterious part. We're not quite sure - over the years we've detected huge surges of energy on certain very sensitive instruments... but without any of the corresponding disturbance you'd expect around it. And we haven't quite pin-pointed what 'it' is exactly. But that's what we're going to find out, isn't it? We're going to really get to the bottom of the potential of these trees!"

Bits of semolina sprayed from his lips in his enthusiasm. He paused momentarily to take a sip of tea. Ms Jensen saw a chink of opportunity and leapt in…

“Back in Sveden, ve have been exploiting the potential of trees for all kinds purposes for many years…”

“Oh certainly, Ms Jensen, Sweden is a very clever country… lovely wood burning stoves! But we're talking about serious energy here...”

Dr Singh, all charm and smiles and infectious excitement, rattled on oblivious to Ms Jensen's burning cheeks.

“It’s so thrilling to hear him talk,” Kamala emailed Jerome and Amelia later, “I feel so proud and excited to be part of it all, but a bit guilty too. I feel like a bit of an impostor who really has no right to be here.” Deepak said nothing at all. She wasn’t even sure he was listening. He just concentrated on eating his breakfast with his hair swinging into his face as he leant forward to eat, the Greenfields logo spoon delicately balanced on his slim, smooth, brown fingers, browner by contrast with the white sleeve of his kurta… the same one he’d been wearing in the garden this morning. She blushed again at the memory and quickly looked away.

Her only conversation with him during that meal had only made her feel more awkward. While Dr Singh was talking, Kamala had suddenly reached out and started passing Deepak the water jug. A fraction of a second later he looked up from his cereal and said "Could you pass me the....oh, thank you" And had given her a weird look. It had not only been embarrassing, but had reminded her yet again of her dreadful, illogical condition - whatever the hell it was. She kept her eyes studiously away from him after that. But she must have looked back at him involuntarily because a few minutes later she noticed that his hand was trembling and his lips were no longer soft and round, but pressed tightly together. He was glaring at cheerful, smiling Dr Singh.

Kamala tried to remember - what had Dr Singh just said? Something about who owned the trees… or the land the trees were on, wasn’t it? Yes that was it - Greenfields had thought they might have trouble getting legal access to the land because of some new law, there were some people who lived in the forests, but it was alright, Dr Singh had said - the project had top level government backing and there would be no trouble about shifting “a few stone age tree huggers…” “…after we’ve got them to show us how to milk those trees, of course! Do you know, Kamala, dear, there’ve been rumours going around for years - centuries probably - that these tribals have a way of producing vast amounts of energy from a particular tree or type of tree - but no-one believed them. But our investigations have now identified and narrowed down a series of previously unexplained power surges to a particular patch of forest up in those hills."

He waved his arms excitedly "We're really very close now! Think of all that energy wasted on a bunch of tribals who still use bows and arrows to hunt!” He looked up in surprise as Deepak’s spoon hit his bowl with a loud ringing noise, like the bell at the end of a boxing round. “Excuse me” Deepak snapped, and marched out of the room. “Delightful fellow” said Dr Singh mildly - but looking a shade puzzled “Delightful. Nice to have him with us to document these historic times, eh?” Kamala was puzzled too, and a little unnerved. She had been so looking forward to working with Dr Singh, to going out into the forest and doing some real field work, being part of this whole project… but this other strange, brooding man made her feel unsettled in ways she couldn‘t quite decipher. She felt drawn to him like a moth drawn to light, but at the same time she was afraid (as any moth with good sense should be), like a child who sees monsters in the dark.

She never mentioned him in her emails to Jerome, Amelia or Mother, she didn’t know why, and for some reason the omission made her feel slightly guilty. Jerome and Amelia's return emails were getting dull. They almost never sent her messages saying anything personal anymore - they were always just circulated messages, strident warnings of the evils of multinationals, White Enterprises, Extronn and Greenfields the most evil of them all. Kamala was hurt. She knew this was their 'thing', and maybe some of the big companies did do some bad things, damage the environment, pay crap wages and things like that, but why did they have to ram it down her throat? They knew this was her big chance in life. They should be happy for her. It just wasn't polite.