Pegasus in Space (2 page)

“Aiyeee!” screamed his wife, sliding her length in the mud, face down. The fall both amused and irritated Zahid. Sputtering curses, he caught hold of her arm with his free hand, the arc of the light he held going every which way again. Ayud Bondha grasped her other flailing arm and, between them, they managed to lift her out of the mud. Solicitously, Salma used the long end of her already sodden sari to clear Jamila’s mud-smeared face while she gasped for breath and spat out the grit in her mouth.

“Aiyeee!” Jamila screamed again, wildly pointing at the rushing water. “Something in the river!” She grabbed her husband’s hand with her muddied ones and steadied the broad beam of the flashlight on what she had glimpsed when his beam was erratically flashing about.

“Nothing alive,” Zahid retorted, trying to wrest control of the torch from her.

“I see something, too,” Salma said, and Zahid snarled under his breath. That was all he needed. Her to side with the thin stick who was his wife.

“There is something,”Ayud agreed, and by then the rest of their group had caught up to them.

Rafiq and Rahim added their lights to his reluctant one and even he had to admit that there was something, a small child perhaps, clinging to the fork of two branches. Zahid was stunned. A tree of such size had to have floated down all the way from the Terai region. Even as he watched, he
saw movement, a wide-open mouth in a white face, probably calling for help. Suddenly, the current of the Jamuna whimsically pushed the tree closer to the levee.

“
Joldi!
” cried Salma, pushing at Zahid. “
Sahajyo!
Quick! Help!”

“
Ki kore?
How?” Zahid demanded, one hand gesturing his helplessness while, with the other, he stubbornly followed the slowly spinning mass with his light.

“Dig your feet in!” Rahim cried, leaping forward. “We make a chain. Grab my hand, Rafiq. You, too, Jabbar, Khaliq. Make a chain. Zahid, light us.”

Rahim barely got a firm grip on Rafiq’s hand before Zahid pushed Jabbar and Khaliq into place, making himself the end of the human rescue line. He was as heavy as Rahim and could be the anchor despite the slippery mud. His wife wailed and moaned that surely they would not be in time, that they would all fall in the water and drown, and then what would become of them? Then Salma grabbed the light from Zahid’s hand as he was pulled forward, closer to the edge of the levee. Frantically he dug his heels into the slippery soil, determined to stop his forward movement. Khaliq also dug his feet in. Then Rahim, living up to his name of “mighty soldier,” caught hold of the nearest branch of the tree fork and hauled it closer. He stretched the human chain to its full length as he made his first grab at the child. It let out a shriek that could be heard above the wind’s screech and lay limp across the bole. Rahim made a second grab and got a firm grip on one leg.

“
Tana!
” cried Rahim, struggling to shift his balance back to the levee.

Pull the others did, Jabbar going down on his knees in the mud to keep from sliding further. As Rahim teetered backward, Khaliq dropped Jabbar’s hand and rushed to grab Rahim’s shirt to draw him and his burden to the relative safety of the higher bank. Salma focused the light on the tree that, its passenger now safely ashore, was caught by an eddy and swirled away.

“Light, woman!” Zahid shouted, angrily snatching it back and shining it on the child.

Rain slanted down on the unconscious face and the open mouth. Suddenly Rahim jerked the tattered shirt down, glancing warily at Jamila who had bent to examine the human flotsam.

“A girl child,” she said. Then she saw and touched the limp left arm that dangled at an unnatural angle. “Broken.”

“Give Iswah thanks for preserving the child,” murmured Zahid.

“Did I do that?” asked Rahim, panting from his exertions and reaching out to the injured limb.

“Iswah knows,” Jamila said with pious absolution. “Young bones heal easily.”

“You were holding the other arm, Rahim Ali,” Salma said, flinging a sodden braid over her shoulder.

“How could you see?” Zahid demanded.

“I was holding the light,” she replied, but now Ayud Bondha tapped her shoulder in tacit reprimand. “I did see,” she said defensively. Then she fumbled in the bundle she had over her shoulder and brought out a smoothed stick, wood oiled by long usage in cooking. “Jamila, this for a splint. Tie with this.” Dragging the end of a piece of fabric out, she gnawed a cut in the hem and then, with a strong gesture, tore off the end. She handed the strip and the utensil to Jamila.

With the experienced deftness of those accustomed to dealing with minor injuries, Jamila and Rahim straightened the thin arm against the smooth wooden stirrer and deftly wound the makeshift bandage around it. The fabric was already sodden from the persistent rain but it would hold the tiny limb to the splint.

“
Joldi! Joldi!
Be quick,” Zahid said, irritated by the holdup. He flashed his light toward the Jamuna and everyone could see that the water had risen against the levee in the short time since the child had been rescued.

Jamila cradled the child in one arm and, with a toss of her head at the scowling Zahid, started off again. Zahid, imperiously waving his light, took a few running steps to take up his forward position.

“
Ami neta,
” he said in a fierce tone. “I am leading.”

They had gone no more than fifteen paces when he saw the bobbing of lights coming toward them.

“Are you all right?” someone shouted.

“HA!” Zahid yelled back, cupping his free hand to his mouth.

“We were seeing you stop,” the someone said as half a dozen men came into the beam of his torch.

“We are all right but our women are tired,” Zahid called back. He did
not wish to explain that, at great peril to their lives, they had rescued only a girl child. The saving of a boy would have been worth bragging about.

“We have saved an injured child,” Salma shouted.

Then the contingent from the
shomiti
converged on them and assisted the weary travelers the rest of the way up the slight but muddy incline to the welcome shelter of the community center. The greedy waters of the Jamuna were still below the levee on this stretch, not yet washing at the sturdy columns that held up the building.

Salma had gone to school in this
shomiti
so she called out to one of the Teachers in the largest room where a huge pot was simmering on a brazier.

“Rupoti Apa,” she cried, and the woman looked up from stirring the rice mixture. “We found a child.”

“A girl child,” Zahid said.

“We are all precious to Iswah,” the Shikkhika said, giving Zahid a mildly reproving glance as she rose and came forward to see the limp figure Jamila held out.

“With a broken arm. Is the
daktar
here?” Jamila asked.

Shaking her head, Rupoti Apa peered at the limp body, noting the splinted arm, the many scratches and bruises, and a skin wrinkled from long immersion. “He is not here. The child is not too badly hurt. Bring her and yourself, Salma, to the fire and be warm. Jamila, take bowls. We have rice and fish to eat. Hot and good.” She waved toward the stack of rough pottery bowls on the far side of the brazier.

When Salma had eased herself to a sitting position by the fire, Jamila transferred the child to her and set about serving the piled bowls to those from her
bari
.

Salma was glad of the excuse of the child and a position by the fire. When Rupoti Apa handed her a bowl of the rice, she made a cradle of her damp sari and put the child in it while she fingered the rice into her mouth. It was hot and burned a little as it went down but the heat was welcome. So were the pieces of
mach
she was delighted to find liberally sprinkled in the rice. She tried not to eat too quickly but hunger was on her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ayud, Rafiq, and Jabbar in the corridor, eating as quickly as she. It was a generous portion and filled the empty places in her.

She was dozing, chin on her chest, when the child—older than a babe or it would not have survived in the flood—finally roused. Its thin pained
squall roused others in the room. Before Salma could orient herself and remember why she had a child in her lap, Rupoti Apa lifted the little girl out of her improvised cradle.

“Daktar Mohammed is here and will tend her. Do you know whose child she is?”

Salma shook her head and went back to sleep, not willing to relinquish her place near the fire, now embers of red charcoal. She never saw the child again.

W
hen the telekinetics that Peter Reidinger had carefully ’ported to Zia Airport got to work, they managed to stem and control the flood crest before the Buriganga River could inundate the sprawling city of Dhaka.

They could not repair all the levees that had collapsed along the four main rivers, which shifted their beds as often as they changed their names, Ganges/Padma and Brahmaputra/Jamuna, along with the tributaries they acquired on their journey down to the Bay of Bengal. Those who lived in Dhaka called what flowed past them the Buriganga River. From the east came the less ferocious Meghna and Sitalakhya rivers. It was feat enough at first to reinforce the levees protecting a city of twelve million souls, spread out in the apex of the river already enlarged by its tributaries. Lance Baden set up his headquarters in a quickly evacuated building in Motijheel, the financial district of the city. There he directed the operations, quickly organizing and sorting out the problems of the most affected divisions: Rajshahi, Dhaka itself, Barisal, and finally Chittagong, which had its own special problems stemming from Kaptai Lake. Whenever district engineers could make contact with Lance’s personnel, he directed his telekinetics to send stopgap matériel to be rammed into place.

He brought Bangladeshi workers in from the drier divisions, Sylhet, the upper Rajshahi, and Khulna. His kinetics managed to seal the worst levee collapses until reinforcing materials could be set into place along the Buriganga. A special team was making certain that the raging Jamuna would not undermine the Great Jamuna Bridge. That renowned structure was a source of great pride to all Bangladeshi, built as it was by their labor and their hard-earned
takas
.

Four days later, when the weather satellites reported the abatement of
the monsoon, additional relief personnel and supplies were airlifted in and the work of mopping up began. Despite urgent entreaties from their section bosses on the Padrugoi Station, and outright threats and rantings from Commissioner Ludmilla Barchenka, the team did not rush back.

The injured were cared for, the homeless were sheltered, the hungry fed, and the bedraggled clothed. The most needy towns were supplied with food, fresh water, and seed. Fortunately, the extremely fertile soil of Bangladesh could produce two crops a year—with any luck—so there might still be a harvest later in the year. While the weather had certainly been unlucky around the world, it was late October and perhaps the monsoons were over.

Among the homeless, the orphans were assigned to the various facilities, examined, registered, and, depending on their ages and abilities, given such community tasks in the center as their age suggested.

The child who had been rescued from the Jamuna was sent to an orphanage just south of Bogra. The local industry of hat-making made use of the nimble fingers of the older children and their employment was carefully monitored by a telepath, Bahadur Ali Shan. He came as often as he could, when the press of duties permitted, but, as he had never seen any abuse or a shadow of it in the minds of the industrious and generally happy children, he did not worry too much when the floods enlarged the orphanage complement considerably.

The orphan girl from a small
shomiti
outside of Sirājganj was judged to be four or five years of age. The broken arm that was mentioned on the tag carefully written by Shikkhika Rupoti at the
shomiti
did not appear on the X ray taken at the Bogra medical center during the routine examination. A greenstick fracture of the ulna was visible but the injury was so well healed that the splint and bandage were superfluous. If anyone noticed that the little girl kept stroking her left arm over the site of the old break, they did not mention it. The tag stated that the child was unknown to anyone in the
shomiti
. The examining physician found her uncommonly well grown and well nourished, but noted that she did not speak.

Possibly this is due to the trauma of her recent experience in the flood-waters. But attempts should be made to encourage her to speak. She hasn’t got a cleft palate, she’s not speech-impaired, and there is no physiological reason why she is incapable of speech
, read the medical report.

The nuns at the orphanage gently tried to wheedle her name out of
her but she only regarded them with wide eyes. A child of four or five should remember its own name.

“They’re a deep blue, you know,” Sister Epiphania said. “Not brown.”

“Oh dear,” said Sister Kathleen. A child of mixed races by no means shocked her for all they had both thought her Bangladeshi. She peered at the delicate features—so many Bangladeshi children were beautiful. Some subtlety of feature and physique made her feel that, whatever she was, the child was not half-caste. “Well, she’s a child of God. We’d better give her a name.”

Sister ’Phania considered this, laying a callused forefinger athwart her lips in thought. “Zada? That means lucky.”

“You’re assuming she is Bengali?”

“Well, yes. The report says that the bandage around her arm had been torn from a sari. And look at her black hair!”

Sister Kathleen held a strand out, before tucking it back over the child’s shoulder. “What about Jamuna as a name? She was plucked from it, after all.”

“Not at all,” ’Phania said, pressing her lips together.

“Kalinda? Because she came from the river?”

“Hmm.” That didn’t seem appropriate to ’Phania either.

“If we go to a floral name, remember we already have two Lilas. You wouldn’t like Kusa for grass? After all,” and Kathleen pointed to the little patch of ground, neatly fenced off with twigs, which had absorbed the little girl once she had finished helping to weed the kitchen garden, “she’s clearly interested in growing things. Maybe a farmer’s child?”