Read Online The Serene Invasion by Eric Brown - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eric Brown
Tags: Science-Fiction
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Lal was staring at the carpet and pretending he hadn’t witnessed his boss’s little weakness.
“Sir?
Morwell approached Lal. “If you’re pulling some kind of joke, Lal, you’re gonna be awful sore in the morning.”
Impulsively he raised the bat, meaning to swing it with reasonable force into the Indian’s midriff.
He stood with the bat in mid-air, and tried to swing...
He was frozen, as if the impulse to act had lodged somewhere between brain and arm.
He strained in an attempt to swing the bat, but the only result was that his arm began a palsied tremor.
Sweating, and not only with the effort of the abortive exertion, Morwell slumped into his swivel chair and told Lal to get the experts in here, on the double.
CHAPTER FOUR
A NA D EVI SQUATTED on a girder beneath the footbridge at Howrah station and watched the Delhi Express slide alongside platform ten. She shared her perch with a grey-furred, red-bottomed monkey a couple of metres away, but that’s all she was sharing with the devil. She clutched a banana to her ragged t-shirt, and the monkey eyed the fruit with greedy, beady eyes.
“ Chalo! ” she yelled at the animal. It remained where it was, watching her impassively. It would be a mistake to start eating the banana now, even though she was hungry, because the monkey would be incensed by the aroma and try to snatch the fruit from her.
And every fool knew that the station monkeys were diseased, and that one scratch or bite could spell a lingering, painful death.
Down below the train halted and disgorged a thousand passengers. The crowd flowed along the platform towards the exit and the stairs to the other platforms, and seconds later Ana heard the thunder of footsteps just above her head.
The cacophony of the pedestrians succeeded in doing what she had failed to do: the monkey pulled back its lips to reveal a set of wicked, curved incisors, gave a howl, and bounded off along the girder-work of the bridge.
Ana laughed, peeled the banana and wolfed it down.
The footfalls above her head diminished, the train eased itself with a hiss from the platform, and comparative calm settled over Howrah station.
Ana missed her brother, Bilal.
Most of the time she was fine. She had friends among the kids who made Howrah station their home, a gang of boys and girls fiercely loyal to each other because they had no one else. It was the only family she had ever known, though she had a vague recollection of the aunt and uncle who had looked after her and her brother when their parents died in the cholera epidemic of 2014. Then Ana’s aunt had fled her uncle when Ana was six, and had been unable to fend for two hungry, growing children. Bilal, fifteen at the time, had taken Ana to Howrah station, where he had friends among the street kids who lived like monkeys in the rotting infrastructure of the old buildings. He’d lived with her there for a time, begging and stealing and making sure that she was provided for. Then, just as she was settling into life at the station, Bilal disappeared.
He’d gone to sleep with her one evening in the ancient goods truck they used as a bedroom, tucked up with her and a dozen other children like sardines in a can, and in the morning he was gone. There wasn’t even a gap where he had been, because the other kids had shuffled up to let another child lie down. He’d owned nothing other than a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and an enamelled metal cup, white with a blue rim, and much chipped. After a day of searching the station and the streets around about, she’d given up in despair.
Then Prakesh, a friend a year older than Ana, had dragged her along to platform fourteen and pointed down at the silver tracks. There, crushed flat and the enamel shattered, was a cup just like Bilal’s. She’d jumped down, despite the danger, and retrieved it. On its flattened underside was the letter B that Bilal had scratched to make the cup his very own.
But Ana had refused to
“Sir?
Morwell approached Lal. “If you’re pulling some kind of joke, Lal, you’re gonna be awful sore in the morning.”
Impulsively he raised the bat, meaning to swing it with reasonable force into the Indian’s midriff.
He stood with the bat in mid-air, and tried to swing...
He was frozen, as if the impulse to act had lodged somewhere between brain and arm.
He strained in an attempt to swing the bat, but the only result was that his arm began a palsied tremor.
Sweating, and not only with the effort of the abortive exertion, Morwell slumped into his swivel chair and told Lal to get the experts in here, on the double.
CHAPTER FOUR
A NA D EVI SQUATTED on a girder beneath the footbridge at Howrah station and watched the Delhi Express slide alongside platform ten. She shared her perch with a grey-furred, red-bottomed monkey a couple of metres away, but that’s all she was sharing with the devil. She clutched a banana to her ragged t-shirt, and the monkey eyed the fruit with greedy, beady eyes.
“ Chalo! ” she yelled at the animal. It remained where it was, watching her impassively. It would be a mistake to start eating the banana now, even though she was hungry, because the monkey would be incensed by the aroma and try to snatch the fruit from her.
And every fool knew that the station monkeys were diseased, and that one scratch or bite could spell a lingering, painful death.
Down below the train halted and disgorged a thousand passengers. The crowd flowed along the platform towards the exit and the stairs to the other platforms, and seconds later Ana heard the thunder of footsteps just above her head.
The cacophony of the pedestrians succeeded in doing what she had failed to do: the monkey pulled back its lips to reveal a set of wicked, curved incisors, gave a howl, and bounded off along the girder-work of the bridge.
Ana laughed, peeled the banana and wolfed it down.
The footfalls above her head diminished, the train eased itself with a hiss from the platform, and comparative calm settled over Howrah station.
Ana missed her brother, Bilal.
Most of the time she was fine. She had friends among the kids who made Howrah station their home, a gang of boys and girls fiercely loyal to each other because they had no one else. It was the only family she had ever known, though she had a vague recollection of the aunt and uncle who had looked after her and her brother when their parents died in the cholera epidemic of 2014. Then Ana’s aunt had fled her uncle when Ana was six, and had been unable to fend for two hungry, growing children. Bilal, fifteen at the time, had taken Ana to Howrah station, where he had friends among the street kids who lived like monkeys in the rotting infrastructure of the old buildings. He’d lived with her there for a time, begging and stealing and making sure that she was provided for. Then, just as she was settling into life at the station, Bilal disappeared.
He’d gone to sleep with her one evening in the ancient goods truck they used as a bedroom, tucked up with her and a dozen other children like sardines in a can, and in the morning he was gone. There wasn’t even a gap where he had been, because the other kids had shuffled up to let another child lie down. He’d owned nothing other than a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and an enamelled metal cup, white with a blue rim, and much chipped. After a day of searching the station and the streets around about, she’d given up in despair.
Then Prakesh, a friend a year older than Ana, had dragged her along to platform fourteen and pointed down at the silver tracks. There, crushed flat and the enamel shattered, was a cup just like Bilal’s. She’d jumped down, despite the danger, and retrieved it. On its flattened underside was the letter B that Bilal had scratched to make the cup his very own.
But Ana had refused to
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