They expected her to own a car. That was the explanation. SAMMANA owned several fleets, by what she had seen. They had drivers all over the country.
None of which were available for a Gaya to Shimla trip, apparently. Or they were too expensive, or something.
As it was, Samvrita Kachwaha was deputized to get there as soon as feasible to get some visa work straightened out.
GAY to ATQ to SLV …. No. SLV only went to Delhi and Amritsar. GAY to DEL …2PM. Bus? No. She did not trust bus drivers, based only on what she had seen out of the Aabsami Detective agencies’ windows. No cabs for the same reason. She would have trusted a SAMMANA driver, had it been offered, but… no. Train? A train she could manage. She just had to be careful not to depend on one of the covid specials. It was honestly surprising how many were still running. Or discouraging. Mask. She’d keep a mask on.
GAY to DEL? Fine. She would have preferred standing, sure.
DEL to NDLS? She was glad for her mask on the subway.
NDLS to KART? 2057 UHL JANSTB SPL. Fine. Fine.
Samvrita paused. Her desk was covered with books, brochures. They kept up with her questions better than any internet connection she could achieve here.
She had done it again. Let herself get too far into research. She rolled her chair back to the wall and, not looking, grabbed a chocolate bar from the box sitting up top. She was really starting to hate the flavor of this batch – but a crash was inevitable if she didn’t get some calories down soon.
She took a moment to walk around the room, let her legs do anything other than tense. She would start calling to order tickets in a moment.
She looked out the front window – the road two stories down was a mess as usual, people trying to park in front of the clinic across the road – or get out, the way they moved it was questionable if even they knew which. Certainly the consistently crushed “parking in back” signs had no bearing in their decisions.
The phone rang. She turned on her heel and waited until the third ring before picking it up. “Aabsami Investigation Group, how might I direct your call?” It was her telephone voice, one that would have got her dead stares back in the force. But this was business. This was also a single room office with a toilet on a different floor. She’d take a moment to clear her throat if she needed.
“Ms. Kachwaha? This is Doctor M****. Do you have a moment to schedule an appointment? I’ve just come across an interesting-“
“I don’t, actually. A job just came in, I’ll be out of Bihar for a bit.”
“I see, I see. Perhaps we can schedule an in-person discussion… Sunday? I really think I’ve come across a treatment that might-“
“Do one thing – call again in a week. Sorry, doc, I need to book my flight now. Good day.” She hung up the phone without further ceremony – pulled over her notes, and started into the calls.
~
She could never fall asleep on planes, even if it was the best thing to do. Trains though? Samvrita somehow managed to make the transfer without quite waking up, her first registered waking thought being that it was getting cold outside.
Shimla was a city without a valley to its name. The snowy peaks where the rich of the world went to hopefully not quite die were, in some places, visible off in the distance – but here was twisting roads, dramatic drops, and retaining walls that hopefully held.
At least the tiny train up the mountain was in service.
~
Peredharna was today’s stop. It was certainly not Shimla’s only christian church – the Summer capital of the Raj would be nothting if not filled with spires sharp enough to poke their god’s eye out – it was the only one with a “convent”. It was hardly surprising that in the course of serving gods, men still got the top billing.
As described, on the phone, it was a paperwork issue. The Delhi FRRO had rejected the Shimla FRO branch’s forwarded application – which meant, on usual immigration schedules, an Australia citizen, one “Megara Floras”, had at most two months staying in the country before she was a criminal… and given how long things took to process, probably significantly less.
Kachwaha, for the amount of money SAMMANA paid for jobs, had no issue dealing with paperwork – back on the force, she had been known for making the bureaucracy of sheaves go away, not that she had ever gotten promoted over it.
~
The temple of Peredharna – no, they had a different word. And perhaps, if christians got in the habit of paying her for services, she would learn them through repetition. The Temple had opted to teeter over the edge of the road, framed by blue sky and hiding the distance of the fall with trees and overgrown flower bushes out of season. It looked different than the spires of the others in the city – more Russian, maybe? Her expertise was on other things. The living quarters were nestled beside and below it, a bit more obviously modeled on the mud brick of the lowlands instead of cut and whitewashed stone of the temple – but oh it must be a bother to take the steps down from the road to get there with regularity. And even to see one coming, the roof in some places was almost level with the road.
To say the woman that greeted her at the doors of this residence was a tall glass of water would be an understatement. She’d be a whole stack of cups – A black and white “habit” – as such as “nuns” label them – surrounding a darker void. The light reflected off what had to be eyes felt alot like it was supposed to move any moment, galaxies in the distance about to crash into each other. Even when she spoke, the darkness did not seem to register movement.
Sister Baphiwe would be happy to show her to Sister Philothei – who had anticipated a visitor. As black on black turned to lead Kachwaha to the reference library – sure, why not – her outline in motion became a bit clearer; whatever nuns did, Kachwaha suspected that stacking two of them under a habit was not their hab– wont, leaving the woman in front of her better described as 150% of a woman, as if a child, finding a decapitated plastic doll, had decided to glue a second torso in its place, without the presence of mind to remove the second set of arms.
Despite the draw towards the being in front of her, Kachwaha tried to keep her eyes moving. The space wasn’t in the best repair, but probably would have been worse in wetter climes – unpainted cracks in the ceiling said plaster, more shifting from the cold season than the wet one. The light was mostly natural, the walls of the hallway not quite parallel. If this place had received British attention, it was not much of it.
Not too far in, one of the doors was opened to a smell of paper old enough that one might be afraid of airing it – with the undertone of a kerosene lamp that didn’t quite burn cleanly.
There were a few small desks of unfamiliar make, barely enough for a single person to hunch over, pushed to the ends of bookshelves – at least one retrofitted to have a clear plastic top and a keyboard tray, lest the modernity of a laptop break the ambience.
And the woman inside – rising up from a chair to greet her. Samvrita realized some people wouldn’t even necessarily register her as a woman.
Her eyes, not quite moored to her face, her pupils twisting like the hands of a clock being set as she examined Samvrita. Wack.
Her hair was mostly hidden under her nun-hat, just as the taller guide. What was clearly not hidden was not one, but two separate pairs of horns poking through it. One curved up, back and out, a second spiraling in on itself. Wack.
Her gait. She seemed to be wearing a gaiter of some kind, with no obviously visible shoes behind it. The knees hit too high up on her skirt. It might be some sort of toe walk, if the proportions were so wrong. Wack.
The hand offered for a handshake – skin mistakable for sunburnt, the nails opaque, as if every single nail had been crushed and scabbed under. Wack.
The taller one announced their arrival in Hindi. This one also spoke Hindi, but that certainly wasn’t a British accent underneath it. Wack.
“”Sister Philothei, this is Miss Kachwaha from Sammana. Forgive me, i have duties to return to – but Meg knows where to find me if you need anything. Again, thank you for helping us.”” Black on black gave a little bow before disappearing back into the hallway.
“”Yes, thank you”” A goat. there was almost nothing about her that didn’t say goat. “Do you – mind if we use English? I’m afraid I’ll slip up ta translation mode if I stick to hindi. I am Megara Floras, by the way. The woman you just met is Baphiwe Izandla.” There was still a twang to her English, but no indication that it was affected in any way.
“Forgive me…” Samvrita didn’t know what to say. And she was trying to keep her analysis light – it was one thing for her to hyperfocus while sitting in her own office, analyzing every detail. Standing meant risking a full faint.
“You are here to review my visa application, aren’t you?”
“Reviewing, not approving. I have a name at the Shimla TRS office we need to schedule a meeting with, hopefully tomorrow, if we can iron out the inconsistencies in your application today. It will require some… travel.”
“Ah. Well I do know of two things what might have triggered the review – uh, you don’t mind me removing my veil, do you?” The words didn’t get an immediate response, “My hat? Baph insisted that I go full habit for the visitor, but this seems like a ‘I have nothing to hide’ case, you know?”
“Haaa… yes, please, go ahead.”
This was less than straightforward to remove, having to allow the horns to properly pull through tailored holes in the fabric – but removing it revealed straightened, waxy hair and, a beaded necklace wrapped around the left set, suspending a tiny wooden cross a little above the forehead.
This did reveal, along with not exactly sunburnt skin, a layer of uneven fur.
“Do you shave?” This wasn’t the time for propriety, was it.
“Occasionally. Straight edge.”
“Would you object to being called a monster?”
“My parents certainly would – and have several times. It’s vague though. ‘Daemon’ isn’t vague, but that would require me to know things. Etymology. And nobody’s proved I know bugger all,” Megara gave a shallow grin.
She was trying to cut the tension. Fine. There was a job to do anyways.
“So what do you think is going on?”
“Yeah. You see,” it was a bundle of papers – applications that probably existed in multiple offices now in photocopy form, but these were the originals “the photo from my original visa application, taken back in Perth – the smoke nears where I grew up,” She held up a snapshot that seemed to be mostly frizzy hair, a little darker than what she appeared to have now – which did a pretty good job in obscuring the curling horns either side of her face – raising her chin hid most of the upright pair, though both were visible under the slightest scrutiny.
“And this was… six weeks ago. With Baph’s photography skills.” Much higher contrast, “veil” on, id anything exaggerating the horns by their angle.
“That… is not horrible. The first is on your passsport? You have that available?”
Megara pulled it form the edge of the stack. “The convent usually keeps these in a safe. A fireproof safe. Just in case. I’ve been told it’s happened before.”
Quick examination – it was not heavily stamped, but it did have the expected biometric chip – “Do you remember providing fingerprints, scans when applying?”
“Uh. Sort of. That’s getting into the second problem. I was supposed to receive a health check when I arrived and the doctor sort of. Refused.” Another form was handed over – a largely blank form, besides being dated and ID’d.
“But you were still allowed. They still -“
Megara shuffled something and produced, to Samvrita’s surprise, a second pair of hands. Connected to a second pair of arms.
“Are you a spider?”
“No, that’s eight legs,” Megara said, dismissively, “I usually…” she crossed the lower pair of arms across her chest – managing to hold them at just the right angle they appeared as a bust line, “I’m not trying to lie about anything – it’s just the attention isn’t worth any hassle.”
“And no fingerprint system is going to have space for 20 fingers.”
“And… yes.”
“Is there anything else. Anything else I should know about. Tomorrow is going to be all about spinning any inconsistencies to the- to a point where they can be seen as easily understandable. I’ve got my camera – we can shoot a few good photos to show you are the same person you were a year ago. But. Horns. Eyes. Extra hands. Fur. Legs – those are flat out animal legs, I know, I saw you walking. Are there anything other strangenesses that you can voluntarily tell me – so the visa officer knows you trust me, so he can trust me.”
“Uh.” Her pupils seemed to tick as she though about what she could answer with, “Uh. I’m pretty flexible. Physically. Uh. I’m good at getting up to high places. Like changing light bulbs and such.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I can go up and… Oh. Oh. I can walk up most walls. Like a goat. Like a goat, naturally. That’s a lot more useful than being bendy, most of the time.”
“Like -“
“Oh it’s. Keeping center of gravity over the wall as you can – nothing magical or anything. Just a good sense of balance, I really don’t have to think about it. But I’ve carried up fallen rocks and spackled them back into place and stuff.”
“And that’s all?”
“All that comes to mind at the moment.”
“Acha, very good. Then… I think we need to get some proper pictures,” Kachwaha went into her light luggage to retrieve her camera bag, “I assume you would be fine offering to receive a proper health exam tomorrow, as you were willing when originally entering the country?”
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