'Javed?' she said.

'Salaam, memsahib,' he said, recognizing her immediately. 'Romen-sahib left about half an hour ago.'

'Half an hour ago?' said Sonali. 'You mean he was there all evening?'

'Yes,' said the bartender. 'He tried to phone you; I heard him asking someone to call you. He waited for a while and then he left.'

'Oh,' said Sonali, She had a sudden vision.of Romen standing at the far end of the horseshoe-shaped bar, tall, burly and balding, hunched over the club's telephone, holding the mouthpiece in that awkward fumbling grip of his.

'Do you know where he went?' she asked.

'No,' came the answer. 'But I know he sent the Sierra home with his driver.'

'So how did he go?'

'He took a taxi.'

'A taxi!' Sonali was astonished. 'But Romen always takes his own car. Where was he going? Do you know?'

'No,' said the bartender. But then he added, 'Wait a minute memsahib.' He put the phone down and she heard him talking to the other bartenders. Then he came back to the phone. 'Memsahib?' he said. 'The durwan who was on duty at the gate heard Romen-sahib talking to the taxi driver.'

'Did he hear him say where he was going?' Sonali asked. 'Yes. He was going to Robinson Street, but he wanted to stop on the way, at Park Circus.'

'Oh.' Sonali switched the phone off and went slowly back inside.

'What's the matter?' said Urmila, jumping to her feet. 'You look like you've had a shock.'

Sonali fell into a chair. 'Apparently Romen's on his way to Robinson Street,' she said, chewing on her knuckles.

'I see,' said Urmila. 'Did he have an appointment?'

'Not that I know of,' Sonali said. 'And he's going to stop at Park Circus on the way.'

'Why there?'

'I don't have any idea,' said Sonali. 'The only person I know who lives there is Phulboni. But Romen didn't say anything about visiting him: he said he'd come here around nine tonight.'

Urmila gave her arm a pat. 'I'm sure he'll be here soon,' she said in a soothing voice.

Sonali made a distracted gesture. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Everyone seems to be disappearing today. If he doesn't come soon I'll have to go and look for him.'

She laughed, a little nervously. 'Now what was it that you wanted to ask me about?' she said.

Urmila sat up eagerly, 'Iwas curious,' she said, 'about whether you ever heard Phulboni talk about someone called Laakhan?'

'Someone called Laakhan?' Sonali lowered herself into a sofa. 'That's interesting. Why do you ask?'

Chapter 15

THE CROWD IN the restaurant was thinning now; the tables were emptying fast as people hurried back to work. Antar glanced from his watch to Murugan, sitting across the table. He was pouring from the restaurant's bamboo-handled teapot, evidently unconscious of the time. Antar decided to stay a few minutes longer.

'What's the joke?' Murugan said sharply, his voice cutting through the buzz.

Antar sat up, startled: 'I'm sorry?'

'Why are you smiling?'

'Was I smiling?'

'You bet you were,' said Murugan.

'Well, then,' Antar said. 'I suppose I was smiling.'

'You think this scenario is funny or something?' Murugan asked.

'Frankly, I don't know what to think,' Antar said. 'I've heard you out, and as far as I can see you don't have a shred of real evidence, or proof or anything… '

'And what if I said that's what my proof is?'

'The lack thereof, you mean?' said Antar, trying not to smile.

'I mean secrecy is what this is about: it figures there wouldn't be any evidence or proof.'

Antar shrugged. 'But even if I were to grant that,' he said, 'your version still wouldn't make sense. If I followed you correctly, you were suggesting that this other team – to use your phrase – was already ahead of Ross on some of this research. But then why wouldn't they just go ahead with this research themselves? Why wouldn't they publish their findings and put themselves in the running for the Nobel?'

Murugan ran his hand over his chin. 'All right,' he said, after a long pause. 'I'll sketch a scenario for you. I'm not saying that's how it happened: I'm just asking you to hear me out.'

'Go ahead,' Antar said politely.

'Let me put it like this,' Murugan said. 'You know all about matter and antimatter, right? And rooms and anterooms and Christ and Antichrist and so on? Now, let's say there was something like science and counter-science. Thinking of it in the abstract, wouldn't you say that the first principle of a functioning counter-science would have to be secrecy? The way I see it, it wouldn't just have to be secretive about what it did (it couldn't hope to beat the scientists at that game anyway); it would also have to be secretive in what it did. It would have to use secrecy as a technique or procedure. It would in principle have to refuse all direct communication, straight off the bat, because to communicate, to put ideas into language, would be to establish a claim to know - which is the first thing that a counter-science would dispute.'

'I don't follow,' said Antar. 'What you're saying doesn't make sense.'

'You took the words out of my mouth,' Murugan said. 'Not making sense is what it's about – conventional sense, that is. Maybe this other team started with the idea that knowledge is self-contradictory; maybe they believed that to know something is to change it, therefore in knowing something, you've already changed what you think you know so you don't really know it at all: you only know its history. Maybe they thought that knowledge couldn't begin without acknowledging the impossibility of knowledge. See what I'm saying?'

'I'm listening,' said Antar. 'For what it's worth.'

'Maybe none of this makes sense,' said Murugan. 'But let's just try and take it on its own terms for a minute. Let's look at the kinds of working hypotheses it yields. Here's one: if it's true that to know something is to change it, then it follows that one way of changing something – of effecting a mutation, let's say – is to attempt to know it, or aspects of it. Right?'

Antar nodded.

'OK,' said Murugan. 'So let's run with this for a bit. Let's say that just about the time that Ronnie's beginning to work on malaria there's this other person – this team that's also been working with Plasmodium jalciparum but in a different way; a way so different it wouldn't make any sense to anyone who's properly trained. But let's say that by accident or design they've made a certain amount of progress; they've taken their work to a certain point and then they've run smack into a dead end: they're stuck, they can't go any further – because of the glitches in their own methods, because they just haven't got the right equipment. Whatever. They decide that the next big leap in their project will come from a mutation in the parasite. The question now is: how do they speed up the process? The answer is: they've got to find a conventional scientist who'll give it a push.

'Enter Ronnie. But what do they do next? They can't tell him what they know because it's against their religion. Besides, they can't exactly walk up to him and say, "Hey there, Ron, what's cooking?" To begin with they wouldn't get past the guards of the 19th Madras Infantry. Even if they did, Ronnie wouldn't believe them. They've got to make it look like he's found out for himself. So they go into a huddle and try to think through their next move. Remember that these guys haven't got a whole lot going for them: they're fringe people, marginal types; they're so far from the mainstream you can't see them from the shore. On the credit side, there's a lot of them and they know all about Ronnie, but neither Ronnie nor anyone else knows anything about them. They've also got the best collection of parasites in town. They've just got to play their cards right and they can do it.'